justly determined;
whence we are not always to depend on the authority of Herodotus, where
it is unsupported by other evidence, but ought to compare the other
evidence with his, and if it preponderate, to prefer it before his. I do
not mean by this that Herodotus willfully related what he believed to
be false, [as Cteeias seems to have done,] but that he often wanted
evidence, and sometimes preferred what was marvelous to what was best
attested as really true.

[5]About the days of Cyrus and Daniel.

[6] It is here well worth our observation, what the reasons are that
such ancient authors as Herodotus, Josephus, and others have been read
to so little purpose by many learned critics; viz. that their main aim
has not been chronology or history, but philology, to know words, and
not things, they not much entering oftentimes into the real contents of
their authors, and judging which were the most accurate discoverers of
truth, and most to be depended on in the several histories, but rather
inquiring who wrote the finest style, and had the greatest elegance in
their expressions; which are things of small consequence in comparison
of the other. Thus you will sometimes find great debates among the
learned, whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest historian in
the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the real
value of each of their histories; while it would be of much more moment
to let the reader know, that as the consequence of Herodotus's history,
which begins so much earlier, and reaches so much wider, than that
of Thucydides, is therefore vastly greater; so is the most part of
Thucydides, which belongs to his own times, and fell under his own
observation, much the most certain.

[7] Of this accuracy of the Jews before and in our Savior's time, in
carefully preserving their genealogies all along, particularly those of
the priests, see Josephus's Life, sect. 1. This accuracy. seems to have
ended at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, or, however, at that by
Adrian.

[8] Which were these twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament, see
the Supplement to the Essay of the Old Testament, p. 25-29, viz. those
we call canonical, all excepting the Canticles; but still with this
further exception, that the book of apocryphal Esdras be taken into that
number instead of our canonical Ezra, which seems to be no more than a
later epitome of the other; which two books of Canticles and Ezra it no
wa