III.

Nor is this an opinion confined to ourselves alone. For it was also known to the Jews of old and before Christ, and it was most carefully observed by them.16 πρὸς αὐτῶν—others read πρό, before them. And this may be learned from what Philo, and Josephus, and Musæus have written; and not only from these, but indeed from others still more ancient, namely, the two Agathobuli,17 Anatolius writes that there were two Agathobuli with the surname Masters; but I fear that he is wrong in his opinion that they were more ancient than Philo and Josephus. For Agathobulus, the philosopher, flourished in the times of Adrian, as Eusebius writes in his Chronicon, and after him Georgius Syncellus.—Vales. who were surnamed the Masters, and the eminent Aristobulus,18 ᾽Αριστοβούλου τοῦ πάνυ—Rufinus erroneously renders it Aristobulum ex Paneade, Aristobulus of Paneas. Scaliger also, in his Animadversiones Eusebianæ, p. 130, strangely thinks that the text should be corrected from the version of Rufinus. And Bede, in his De Ratione Computi, also follows the faulty rendering of Rufinus, and writes Aristobulus et Paniada, as though the latter word were the proper name of a Jewish writer, finding probably in the Codex of Rufinus, which he possessed, the reading Aristobulus et Paneada, which indeed is found in a very ancient Paris manuscript, and also in the Codex Corbeiensis. But that that Aristobulus was not one of the seventy translators, as Anatolius writes, is proved by Scaliger in the work cited above. This Aristobulus was also surnamed διδάσκαλος, or Master, as we see from the Maccabees ii. 1. For I do not agree with Scaliger in distinguishing this Aristobulus, of whom mention is made in the Maccabees, from the Peripatetic philosopher who dedicated his Commentaries on the Law of Moses to Ptolemy Philometor—Vales. [See vol. ii. p. 487, and Elucidation II. p. 520, same volume, this series.] who was one of the Seventy who translated the sacred and holy Scriptures of the Hebrews for Ptolemy Philadelphus and his father, and dedicated his exegetical books on the law of Moses to the same kings. These writers, in solving some questions which are raised with respect to Exodus, say that all alike ought to sacrifice the Passover19 τὰ διαβητήρια θόειν. after the vernal equinox in the middle of the first month. And that is found to be when the sun passes through the first segment of the solar, or, as some among them have named it, the zodiacal circle.