it should rather be rendered) the greatest part, of
those that were with him were either slain or taken prisoners."

In these two passages, the designation of this impostor, an "Egyptian,"
without the proper name, "the wilderness ;" his escape, though his
followers were destroyed; the time of the transaction, in the
presidentship of Felix, which could not be any long time before the
words in Luke are supposed to have been spoken; are circumstances of
close correspondency. There is one, and only one, point of disagreement,
and that is, in the number of his followers, which in the Acts are
called four thousand, and by Josephus thirty thousand: but, beside that
the names of numbers, more than any other words, are liable to the
errors of transcribers, we are in the present instance under the less
concern to reconcile the evangelist with Josephus, as Josephus is not,
in this point, consistent with himself. For whereas, in the passage here
quoted, he calls the number thirty thousand, and tells us that the
greatest part, or a great number (according as his words are rendered)
of those that were with him were destroyed; in his Antiquities he
represents four hundred to have been killed upon this occasion, and two
hundred taken prisoners:(Lib. xx. c. 7, sect. 6.) which certainly was
not the "greatest part," nor "a great part," nor "a great number," out
of thirty thousand. It is probable, also, that Lysias and Josephus spoke
of the expedition in its different stages: Lysias, of those who followed
the Egyptian out of Jerusalem; Josephus, of all who were collected about
him afterwards, from different quarters.

XLI. (Lardner's Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. iii p. 21.) Acts
xvii. 22. "Then Paul stood in the midst of Marshill, and said, Ye men of
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; for, as
I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship,
him declare I unto you."

Diogenes Laertius, who wrote about the year 210, in his history of
Epimenides, who is supposed to have flourished nearly six hundred years
before Christ, relates of him the following story: that, being invited
to Athens for the purpose, he delivered the city from a pestilence in
this manner;--"Taking several sheep, some black, others white, he had
them up to the Areopagus, and then let them go where they would, and
gave orders to those who followed them