Philochristus

Of my Childhood in Galilee; and how I gave myself wholly to the Study ofthe Law. MY former name was Joseph the son of Simeon, and I was born inSepphoris, the metropolis of Galilee, in the twentieth year of the reign ofthe Emperor Augustus, about four years before the death of King Herod. Inthose days Israel was grievously afflicted, and tribulation befell therighteous. Satan put it into the heart of the rulers of the land to move thepeople to the worship of false gods, and the Lord God had not yet raisedup a Redeemer for Israel. In my fourth year my father's brother, the Rabbi Matthias, was burnedalive by Herod for causing his scholars to cast down the golden image ofan eagle which the king had set up over the gate of the temple of the Lord. Not many months afterwards, the Romans marched through Sepphoris inorder to bring succour to Sabinus, who was hard beset by the men ofJerusalem in the fortress called Antonia; and we fought against them, andmy father was taken captive and crucified by Varus. Now as concerningmy father and my father's brother, how they were slain, perchance Iremember their deaths rather from my mother's often mention of them inafter times than from what I heard then: but this thing can I never forget, for I saw it with mine own eyes: namely, how, when my mother broughtme forth from the caves of Arbela whither we had been sent for refuge, behold, where Sepphoris had stood, there was not now one housestanding; and I saw also the bodies of many of my kinsfolk, which layunburied and crying unto the Lord for vengeance. Yet the Lord sent noavenger. After this came tidings that the Parthians, which went with Varus, had laidwaste the country in the south far and wide, and had slain our brethrenwith the sword; and that Varus had taken two thousand of my countrymenin Jerusalem and had crucified them, and among them Eleazar, theyoungest and dearest of my mother's brethren. Then my mother led me toa rocky place not far from Sampho. There was a cave there, and only onepath led to it, and that so narrow that no multitude of men could force