“_It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem_“
LUKE xiii. 33
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BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
*The Riverside Press, Cambridge*
1895
Copyright, 1895,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
TO AGLAOPHONOS, PHYSICIAN OF THE GREEKS AT CORINTH, MESHULLAM BEN ZADOK, A
SCRIBE OF THE JEWS AT ALEXANDRIA, GREETING:—
_It was a joy and a surprise to me to hear news after many days from thee,
my master and my friend. To thee I owe whatever I have of Greek wisdom;
for when in the old days at the Holy City thou soughtest me for
instruction in our Law, I learnt more from thee than I could impart to
thee. Since I last wrote to thee, I have come to this great city, where
many of my nation dwell, and almost all the most learned of thy tongue are
congregated. Truly, it would please me much, and mine only son and his
wife, if thou couldst come and take up thy sojourn among us for a while._
_Touching the man Saul of Tarsus, of whom thou writest, I know but little.
He is well instructed in our Law, both written and oral, having received
the latter from the chief master among those of the past generation,
Gamaliel by name. Yet he is not of the disciples of Aaron that love peace;
for when I last heard of him he was among the leaders of a riot in which a
man was slain. And now I think thereon, I am almost certain that the slain
man was of the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, and this Saul was __among
the bitterest against them. And yet thou writest that the same Saul has
spoken of the Nazarene that he was a god like Apollo, that had come down
on earth for a while to live his life among men. Truly, men’s minds are as
the wind that bloweth hither and thither._
_But as for that Jesus of Nazara, I can tell thee much, if not all. For I
was at Jerusalem all the time he passed for a leader of men up to his
shameful death. At first I admired him for his greatness of soul and
goodness of life, but in the end I came to see that he was a danger to our
nation, and, though unwillingly, I was of those who voted for his death in
the Council of Twenty‐Three. Yet I cannot tell thee all I know in the
compass of a letter, so I have written it at large for thee, and it will
be delivered unto thee even with this letter. And in my description of
events I have been at pains to distinguish between what I saw myself and
what I heard from others, following in this the example of Herodotus of
Halicarnassus, who, if he spake rude Greek, wrote true history. And so
farewell._