Geography

​As for Judaea, its western extremities near Mount Casius are occupied by the Idumaeans and by the lake. The Idumaeans are Nabataeans, but having been driven out from there in a sedition, they joined the Jews and shared in the same customs with them. Near the sea, the Sirbonis Lake occupies most of the territory, and the region continuous with it extends even as far as Jerusalem; for this city also is near the sea, since it has been said that it is in sight from the harbor of Joppa. These, then, are the northern parts; but the greater part, in detail, is inhabited by mixed tribes of Egyptian, Arabian, and Phoenician nations. For such are those who hold Galilee, Jericho, Philadelphia, and Samaria, which Herod renamed Sebaste. Although they are thus mixed, the most prevailing report of those believed concerning the temple in Jerusalem represents the ancestors of the people now called Jews as Egyptians.

​For a certain Moses, one of the Egyptian priests, holding a part of the country called the Lower land, departed thence hither, being disgusted with the established institutions, and many who honored the divine being departed with him. For he said and taught that the Egyptians did not think rightly in representing the divine being by wild beasts and cattle, nor yet the Libyans; and that the Greeks also were not right in fashioning them in human form; for this one thing alone is God which encompasses us all, and land and sea, which we call heaven, the universe, and the nature of things. Who, then, that has sense, would venture to fashion an image of this, resembling any of the things about us? But one should abandon all image-making, and after setting apart a sacred precinct and a worthy shrine, worship it without any image. And indeed, they themselves should sleep in the temple for themselves, and others who are favored with good dreams for others; and those who live temperately and with justice should expect some good thing and always some gift and sign from God, but the others should not expect them.

​He, then, by saying such things, persuaded not a few right-minded men and led them away to this place where now is the settlement in Jerusalem. And he occupied it easily, since the place was not enviable, nor one for which anyone would eagerly fight; for it is rocky, itself indeed well-provided with water, but having the surrounding country wretched and waterless, and the territory within sixty stadia also rocky beneath. At the same time, instead of weapons, he put forward the sacred rites and the divine being, deeming it right to seek a seat for it, and promising to deliver such a worship and such a ritual as would neither trouble those who used it with expenses, nor with divine possessions, nor with other strange undertakings. He, then, having obtained a good reputation by these means, established no ordinary sovereignty, as all the people around joined him easily because of his intercourse and his proposals.

​And his successors for some time remained in the same practices, acting justly and being truly pious; but afterwards, when there were appointed to the priesthood first superstitious, and then tyrannical men, from superstition arose the abstinences from foods, from which indeed it is still their custom to abstain, and circumcisions, and excisions, and whatever such things were established, and from the tyrannies arose the robber-bands. For those who revolted harassed both the country itself and the neighboring land, while those who cooperated with the rulers plundered the property of others and subdued much of Syria and Phoenicia. Nevertheless, there was still a certain respectability about their acropolis, as they did not loathe it as a seat of tyranny, but honored and revered it as a temple.