at Jews could not, consistently with their laws,
be soldiers, it is contradicted by one branch of the history before us,
and contrary to innumerable instances of their fighting, and proving
excellent soldiers in war; and indeed many of the best of them, and even
under heathen kings themselves, did so; those, I mean, who allowed them
their rest on the sabbath day, and other solemn festivals, and let
them live according to their own laws, as Alexander the Great and the
Ptolemies of Egypt did. It is true, they could not always obtain
those privileges, and then they got executed as well as they could, or
sometimes absolutely refused to fight, which seems to have been the case
here, as to the major part of the Jews now banished, but nothing more.
See several of the Roman decrees in their favor as to such matters, B.
XIV. ch. 10.

[12] Since Moses never came himself beyond Jordan, nor particularly to
Mount Gerizzim, and since these Samaritans have a tradition among them,
related here by Dr. Hudson, from Reland, who was very skillful in
Jewish and Samaritan learning, that in the days of Uzzi or Ozis the
high priest, 1 Chronicles 6:6; the ark and other sacred vessels were,
by God's command, laid up or hidden in Mount Gerizzim, it is highly
probable that this was the foolish foundation the present Samaritans
went upon, in the sedition here described.

[13] This mention of the high priest's sacred garments received seven
days before a festival, and purified in those days against a festival,
as having been polluted by being in the custody of heathens, in
Josephus, agrees well with the traditions of the Talmudists, as Reland
here observes. Nor is there any question but the three feasts here
mentioned were the passover, pentecost, and feast of tabernacles; and
the fast so called by way of distinction, as Acts 27:9, was the great
day of expiation.

[14] This calculation, from all Josephus's Greek copies, is exactly
right; for since Herod died about September, in the fourth year before
the Christian era, and Tiberius began, as is well known, Aug. 19, A.D.
14, it is evident that the thirty-seventh year of Philip, reckoned from
his father's death, was the twentieth of Tiberius, or near the end of
A.D. 33, [the very year of our Savior's death also,] or, however, in the
beginning of the next year, A.D. 34. This Philip the tetrarch seems to
have been the best of all the posterity of Herod, for his love of peace,
and his love of justice.