present in Judæa; while, as before stated, the fact of so many Christian as well as Jewish writers having copied the history of Aristeas without any expression indicating a doubt of its authenticity, must be accepted as evidences in its favour.
In the time of Josephus, which was nearly 400 years after Aristeas, the twelve tribes had no doubt become so amalgamated as to have no distinctions markedly remaining, and he might thus have been led into the erroneous opinion that there were then only two tribes subject to the Romans. It is even possible that the passage in the 11th book, in which he makes this assertion, was the interpolation of some later rabbin, inasmuch as it seems to contradict the former part of the same sentence to which it is attached, and at all events it has been shown, that this very book in which it is contained was the "least considered and the worst digested of all he had written." The same remarks apply also in a great measure to the authority of St. Jerome, whose judgment was not in all cases of the most discriminating character; and even he, in referring to the translation of the Septuagint, not only gives his assent to the history of Aristeas, by repeating it, but tells us that he himself, when in Alexandria, had actually seen the ruins of the seventy-two cells, as he calls them, in which the seventy-two translators, sent from Jerusalem, had been lodged by Ptolemy. His evidence, therefore, in favour of the history of Aristeas cannot but be held as invalidating the opinion he elsewhere expressed of the ten tribes being still subject to the Parthians, and inhabiting in his time the cities and mountains of the Medes.
Beyond the statements of authors, however, but in corroboration of Aristeas, we have still another means of judging of the real facts of this question, in the constitution of the chief civil institution of the Jews of later times, the High Court, or Sanhedrim. It is quite unnecessary to repeat here any of the references on the subject which are to be found in the many popular works on Jewish antiquities, so easily accessible to every reader. Without entering, therefore, into the arguments respecting the origin of this court, it will be sufficient to express an opinion, that those writers appear best to be followed who held it to have risen into power in the time of the Maccabees, or within 200 years before our era. The theory of this court was, that it should consist of six elders out of each tribe, except Levi, which only sent four, making seventy in all, conformably to the council which Moses had formed for his assistance; and as Moses or Aaron, who were of the tribe of Levi, had to preside in all matters of importance, so the high priest, or his coadjutor, presided
