Section 104
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.02% accurate
72 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. CHAPTER XIX. The calamity which befel the Jews at Jerusalemj on the day of the Passover. WHILST Claudius held the government of the empire, it hap pened about the festival of the passover, that so great a sedition and disturbance took place at Jerusalem, that thirty thousand Jews perished of those alone who were crowded out of the gates of the temple, and thus trodden to death by one another. Thus the festival became a season of mourning and weeping to the whole nation and every family. This is almost literally the ac count given by Josephus. \But Claudius appointed Agrippa, the son of Agrippa, king of the Jews, having deputed Felix procura tor of all Samaria and Galileey and also of the region situated beyond Jordan. He died after a reign of thirteen years and eight months, leaving Nero as his successor in the empire. I CHAPTER XX. The deeds done at Jerusalem in the reign of Nero. JOSEPHUS, in the twentieth book of his Antiquities, relates the sedition of the priests, which happened whilst Felix was governor of Judea, under the reign of Nero, in the following words: — u There arose also a sedition between the chief priests on the one hand, and the priests and the leaders of the people at Jerusalem on the other. Each one of them forming collec tions of the most daring and disaffected, became a leader, and when these met they encountered each other with invectives and stones. Amid these disturbances there was no one that would interpose to rebuke them, but all this was done with the greatest licentiousness, as in a state destitute of a ruler. So greatly also, was the shamelessness and audacity of the chief priests, that they dared to send forth their servants to the barns, to seize the tithes due to the priests ; and thus it happened that those of the priests