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    but think it necessary for me to describe the actions of this prophet , so far as I have found them recorded in the Hebrew books . " * " 1 have given this account as I found it written . " ^ " Thi s prophet predicted many other things besides these concerning Nineveh , which I do not think it necessary to repeat ; and I here omit them , that I may not appear troublesome to my readers . '' J " Let no one blame me for writing down every thing of this nature

    , as I find it written in our ancient books ; for I have plainly declared , at the beginning of this history , to those who may think me faulty in this respect , or who may complain of my management , and told them , that I intended to do nothing more than translate the Hebrew books into the Greek language . " § " For my own part , I have related these things just as I found them and read them : but , if any one feels disposed to think otherwise respecting them , he is at liberty to enjoy his own opinions without incurrtncr any

    blame from me . " || These are evidently the remarks of one who is fully convinced of the divine origin and authority of the prophetical writings , but who is not eager to obtrude his opinions concerning them upon the attention of his readers , lest he should weary their patience , or diminish the interest which they might otherwise feel in the perusal of his narrative . The work in which they occur is strictly historical ; and , though many of the events which the author has to relate , in giving a connected view of the Jewish

    history , assume a miraculous character in the hands of the sacred writers , it is one of Josephus ' s main objects to explain them as much as possible upon natural principles . It is only when he has occasion to mention the name of a prophet , or to describe an event of which the Bible contains some recorded and striking prediction , or to refer to an historical fact contained in the writings of a prophet , that he ventures to make an express allusion to the

    sacred oracles ; and the casual notices of this kind which are scattered up and down in his Jewish Antiquities , while they answer every purpose contemplated by him in the publication of that celebrated work , afford at the same time so many indirect proofs of the high estimation in which the writings of the Jewish prophets were held by himself and the rest of his countrymen at the close of the first century .

    By the rest of his countrymen , however , the reader must be apprized , are meant , in this place , the Jews of Palestine only , and not the whole body of Jews dispersed throughout the world ; although there are good and valid reasons for supposing that the sacred books used by the Hellenistic Jews were precisely the same as those which were acknowledged as sacred by their brethren in Judaea . For the canon in use among those Jews who spoke

    the Greek language , and the principal seat of whom was at Alexandria in ^• gypt ? we must have recourse to the writings of Philo , whose references to the books of the prophets are of the same incidental character as those which we find in the works of Josephus , and whose testimony to the divine origin and authority of those books must therefore be estimated by the same rule , and valued according to the weight rather than the number of the passages from which it is collected .

    When Philo has occasion to speak collectively of those books to which he attributes a divine origin , he calls them by various names , such as the " The Sacred Writings , " " The Sacred Books , " " The Sacred Word , " or , as they are styled in 2 Pet . i . 19 , ( irpo ^ Tmbv Xfyov , ) " The Word of Prophecy . " In his account of the Therapeutic , contained in his Treatise " On a Contemplative Life , " ^[ he divides the Jewish Scriptures into three classes , —the

    * Antiq . Lib . ix . C . x . § 2 . f Ibid . % Lib . x . C . viii § Lib . x . C . x . § 6 . 11 Lib . x . C . xi . § 7 . II Eusebii Hist . Ecclea . Lib . ih C . xvii .

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    Canonical Authority of the Booh of the Prophets . 335

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 335, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/23/