THE BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES OF PHILO

TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION
BY

M. R. JAMES, LITT.D., F.B.A.

1. INTRODUCTION

GENERAL

THE book now presented to English readers has never been translated
before: not only is this so, but the very existence of it has remained unknown
to the great mass of students for over three hundred years, although it was
printed no less than five times in the course of the sixteenth century.

What is it, and why is it worth reviving after so long a period
of oblivion? It is a Bible history, reaching, in its present imperfect form,
from Adam to the death of Saul. It has come to us only in a Latin translation
(made from Greek, and that again from a Hebrew original), and by an accident
the name of the great Jewish philosopher of the first century, Philo, has been
attached to it. Let me say at once that the attribution of it to him is wholly
unfounded, and quite ridiculous: nevertheless I shall use his name in italics
(Philo) as a convenient short title.

Its importance lies in this, that it is a genuine and unadulterated
Jewish book of the first century–a product of the same school as the Fourth
Book of Esdras and the Apocalypse of Baruch, and written, like them,
in the years which followed the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. It is thus
contemporary with some of the New Testament writings, and throws light upon
them as well as upon the religious thought of the Jews of its time.