Epidemics. m 215 



what I desired : but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned 

 me. 40 For as it is hurtful to drink always wine, or always 

 water, but pleasant to use sometimes the one and sometimes 

 the other : so if the speech be always nicely framed, it will 

 not be grateful to the readers. But here it shall be ended." 



There is some slight difference between the Douay and 

 the authorized version of the Books of Maccabees. It is 

 barely possible that the Apocrypha, being non-canonical 

 both with the Jews and the Protestants, and canonical with 

 the Catholics, that the latter sect have taken greater pains 

 with their translation, and their version has therefore received 

 a prior claim ; as in matters of pure history each other's 

 conceits may be quietly waived. The portion quoted in II. 

 Maccabees xv. 38 40 is given to meet the views of those 

 who disregard inspiration altogether, that they may see for 

 themselves that, whatever sects have made of the writer, he 

 himself had no conception of writing from inspiration, but 

 simply as a pleasing historian and author. 



At what time they left Judaea is not given, but it was a 

 long time since they had had intercourse. 



Probably it was in the days of the early kings of Israel, 

 when they frequently lapsed into open idolatry and followed 

 the customs of the surrounding heathen. 



Ships from Sidon probably first removed them from 

 Palestine to Greece, or Sparta, where they lost their national 

 religion, and fell into the practices of those heathens 

 amongst whom they lived, and with whom they probably 

 intermarried, as a matter of duty and propriety forgetting 

 altogether, or not heeding, the institutes of Moses, but not 

 forgetting the common diseases they had whilst in Egypt, and 

 which subsequently followed them to Palestine. 



Granting the accuracy of the historian's account of the 

 nationality of the leading people of Sparta to be Jewish 

 (and the document has never been repudiated), it is natural 

 to suppose that, if a skin disease spread, and became scaly 



