This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[323]
Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices
of the temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon;
but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored
God, and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad
at the revival of their customs, when, after a long time of intermission,
they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they
made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on
account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And
from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights.
I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared
to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival. Judas also
rebuilt the walls round about the city, and reared towers of great height
against the incursions of enemies, and set guards therein. He also fortified
the city Bethsura, that it might serve as a citadel against any distresses
that might come from our enemies.
1
1 HOW JUDAS SUBDUED THE NATIONS ROUND ABOUT; AND HOW SIMON BEAT THE PEOPLE OF TYRE AND PTOLEMAIS; AND HOW JUDAS OVERCAME TIMOTHEUS, AND FORCED HIM TO FLY AWAY, AND DID MANY OTHER THINGS AFTER JOSEPH AND AZARIAS HAD BEEN BEATEN
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.