TES

[1] The city here called "Babylon" by Josephus, seems to be one which
was built by some of the Seleucidae upon the Tigris, which long after
the utter desolation of old Babylon was commonly so called, and I
suppose not far from Seleueia; just as the latter adjoining city Bagdat
has been and is often called by the same old name of Babylon till this
very day.

[2] Here we have an eminent example of Herod's worldly and profane
politics, when by the abuse of his unlawful and usurped power, to make
whom he pleased high priest, in the person of Ananelus, he occasioned
such disturbances in his kingdom, and in his own family, as suffered him
to enjoy no lasting peace or tranquillity ever afterward; and such
is frequently the effect of profane court politics about matters of
religion in other ages and nations. The Old Testament is full of the
miseries of the people of the Jews derived from such court politics,
especially in and after the days of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, "who made
Israel to sin;" who gave the most pernicious example of it; who brought
on the grossest corruption of religion by it; and the punishment of
whose family for it was most remarkable. The case is too well known to
stand in need of particular citations.

[3] Of this wicked Dellius, see the note on the War, B. I. ch. 15. sect.
3.

[4] When Josephus says here that this Ananelus, the new high priest, was
"of the stock of the high priests," and since he had been just telling
us that he was a priest of an obscure family or character, ch. 2. sect.
4, it is not at all probable that he could so soon say that he was
"of the stock of the high priests." However, Josephus here makes a
remarkable observation, that this Ananelus was the third that was ever
unjustly and wickedly turned out of the high priesthood by the civil
power, no king or governor having ventured to do so, that Josephus knew
of, but that heathen tyrant and persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes; that
barbarous parricide Aristobulus, the first that took royal authority
among the Maccabees; and this tyrant king Herod the Great, although
afterward that infamous practice became frequent, till the very
destruction of Jerusalem, when the office of high priesthood was at an
end.

[5] This entirely confutes the Talmudists, who pretend that no one under
twenty years of age could officiate as high priest among the Jews.

[6] A Hebrew chronicle, cited by Reland, says this drowning was at
Jordan, not at J