350 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 



IX 



one which has come within range of my own 

 limited vision. 



In Josephus's " History of the Wars of the Jews " 

 (chap, xix.), that writer reports a speech which 

 he says Herod made at the opening of a war with 

 the Arabians. It is in the first person, and would 

 naturally be supposed by the reader to be intended 

 for a true version of what Herod said. In the 

 " Antiquities," written some seventeen years later, 

 the same writer gives another report, also in the 

 first person, of Herod's speech on the same 

 occasion. This second oration is twice as long as 

 the first and, though the general tenor of the two 

 speeches is pretty much the same, there is hardly 

 any verbal identity, and a good deal of matter is 

 introduced into the one, which is absent from the 

 other. Josephus prides himself on his accuracy ; 

 people whose fathers might have heard Herod's 

 oration were his contemporaries; and yet his 

 historical sense is so curiously undeveloped that 

 he can, quite innocently, perpetrate an obvious 

 lite'rary fabrication ; for one of the two accounts 

 must be incorrect. Now, if I am asked whether I 

 believe that Herod made some particular state- 

 ment on this occasion ; whether, for example, he 

 uttered the pious aphorism, " Where God is, there 

 is both multitude and courage," which is given in 

 the " Antiquities," but not in the " Wars," I am 

 compelled to say I do not know. One of the two 

 reports must be erroneous, possibly both are : at 



