See Acts xii. 19 sqq. ↩

Acts xii. 23. ↩

Josephus, Ant. XIX. 8. 2. ↩

44 a.d. Agrippa began to reign over the whole kingdom in 41 a.d. See above, chap. 4, note 3. ↩

Caesarea lay upon the Mediterranean Sea, northwest of Jerusalem. In the time of Strabo there was simply a small town at this point, called "Strato's Tower"; but about 10 b.c. Herod the Great built the city of Caesarea, which soon became the principal Roman city of Palestine, and was noted for its magnificence. It became, later, the seat of an important Christian school, and played quite a part in Church history. Eusebius himself was Bishop of Caesarea. It was a city of importance, even in the time of the crusades, but is now a scene of utter desolation. ↩

The occasion of this festival is uncertain. Some have considered it the festival in honor of the birth of Claudius; others, a festival in honor of the return of Claudius from Britain. But neither of these suggestions is likely. It is more probable that the festival mentioned was the Quinquennalia, instituted by Herod the Great in honor of Augustus in 12 b.c. (see Josephus, Ant. XV. 8. 1; B. J. I. 21. 8), and celebrated regularly every five years. See Wieseler's Chronologie des ap. Zeitalters, p. 131 sqq., where this question is carefully discussed in connection with the date of Agrippa's death which is fixed by Wieseler as Aug. 6, 44 a.d. ↩

The passage in Josephus reads: "But as he presently afterward looked up he saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of evil tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings to him." This conveys an entirely different sense, the owl being omitted in Eusebius. As a consequence most writers on Eusebius have made the gravest charges against him, accusing him of a willful perversion of the text of Josephus with the intention of producing a confirmation of the narrative of the Acts, in which the angel of God is spoken of, but in which no mention is made of an owl. The case certainly looks serious, but so severe an accusation--an accusation which impeaches the honesty of Eusebius in the most direct manner--should not be made except upon unanswerable grounds. Eusebius elsewhere shows himself to be a writer who, though not always critical, is at least honest in the use he makes of his materials. In this case, therefore, his general conduct ought to be taken into consideration, and he ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. Lightfoot, who defends his honesty, gives an explanation which appears to me sufficiently satisfactory. He says: "Doubtless also the omission of the owl in the account of Herod Agrippa's death was already in some texts of Josephus. The manner in which Eusebius deals with his very numerous quotations elsewhere, where we can test his honesty, is a sufficient vindication against this unjust charge." And in a note he adds: "It is not the substitution of an angel for an owl, as the case is not uncommonly stated. The result is produced mainly by the omission of some words in the text of Josephus, which runs thus: anakupsas d' oun met' oligon[ton boubona] tes heautou kephales huper kathezomenon eiden[epi schoiniou tinos] angelon[te] touton euthus enoese kakon einai, ton kai pote ton agathon genomenon. The words bracketed are omitted, and aition is added after einai, so that the sentence runs, eiden angelon touton euthus enoese kakon einai aition k.t.l. This being so, I do not feel at all sure that the change (by whomsoever made) was dictated by any disingenuous motive. A scribe unacquainted with Latin would stumble over ton boubona, which had a wholly different meaning and seems never to have been used of an owl in Greek; and he would alter the text in order to extract some sense out of it. In the previous mention of the bird (Ant. XVIII. 6, 7) Josephus, or his translator, gives it as a Latin name: boubona de hoi Romaioi ton ornin touton kalousi. Möller (quoted by Bright, p. XLV.) calls this the one case' in which, so far as he recollects, a sinceritatis via paululum deflexit noster'; and even here the indictment cannot be made good. The severe strictures against Eusebius, made e.g. by Alford on Acts xii. 21, are altogether unjustifiable" (Smith and Wace's Dict. of Christian Biog. II. p. 325). The Greek word boubon means, according to Liddell and Scott, (1) the groin, (2) a swelling in the groin. The Latin word Bubo signifies "an owl," and the word is here directly transferred by Josephus from the Latin into Greek without any explanation. A scribe unacquainted with Latin might easily stumble at the word, as Lightfoot suggests. In Ant. XVIII. 6, 7 where the bird is mentioned, the name is, to be sure, explained; but the alteration at this point was made apparently by a copyist of Eusebius, not of Josephus, and therefore by one who had probably never seen that explanation. Whiston in his translation of Josephus inserts a note to the following effect: "We have a mighty cry made here by some writers, as if the great Eusebius had on purpose falsified this account of Josephus, so as to make it agree with the parallel account in the Acts of the Apostles, because the present copies of his citation of it, Hist. Eccles. Bk. II. chap. 10, omit the words boubona ...epi schoiniou, tinos, i.e. an owl ...on a certain rope,' which Josephus' present copies retain, and only have the explanatory word angelon, or angel,' as if he meant that angel of the Lord' which St. Luke mentions as smiting Herod, Acts xii. 23, and not that owl, which Josephus called an angel or messenger, formerly of good but now of bad news,' to Agrippa. This accusation is a somewhat strange one in the case of the great Eusebius, who is known to have so accurately and faithfully produced a vast number of other ancient records and particularly not a few out of our Josephus also, without any suspicion of prevarication. Now, not to allege how uncertain we are, whether Josephus' and Eusebius' copies of the fourth century were just like the present in this clause, which we have no distinct evidence of, the following words preserved still in Eusebius will not admit of any such exposition. This [bird] (says Eusebius) Agrippa presently perceived to be the cause of ill fortune, as it was once of good fortune'; which can belong only to that bird the owl,' which, as it had formerly foreboded his happy deliverance from imprisonment, Ant. XVIII. 6. 7, so was it then foretold to prove afterward the unhappy forewarner of his death in five days' time. If the improper word aition, or cause,' be changed for Josephus' proper word angelon, angel,' or messenger,' and the foregoing words, boubona epi schoiniou tinos, be inserted, Eusebius' text will truly represent that in Josephus." ↩

Josephus (Ant. XVIII. 6. 7) records that while Agrippa was in chains--having been condemned to imprisonment by Tiberius--an owl made its appearance and perched upon a tree near him. A fellow-prisoner interpreted the event as a good omen, prophesying that Agrippa would soon be released from his bonds and become king, but that the same bird would appear to him again five days before his death. Tiberius died in the following year, and the events prophesied came to pass. The story was apparently implicitly believed by Josephus, who relates it in good faith. ↩

The text of Josephus, as well as the majority of the mss. of Eusebius, followed by Valesius, Stroth, Burton, and Schwegler, read epi tes makarizomenes lamprotetos, which I have adopted in preference to the reading of Heinichen, who follows a few good mss. in substituting makari& 231;tetos for lamprotetos ↩

This shows the success with which Agrippa had courted the favor of the Jews. A far different feeling was shown at his death from that exhibited at the death of his grandfather, Herod the Great. ↩

He was born in 10 b.c., and began to reign as successor of Philip and Lysanias in 37 a.d. See above, chap. 4, note 3. ↩

Herod Antipas. ↩

Luke always calls the king, Herod, which was the family name, while Josephus calls him by his given name Agrippa. He is known to us under the name of Herod Agrippa I. It seems strange that Eusebius should not have known that he bore the two names, Herod Agrippa, instead of expressing doubt in the matter, as he does. In the heading of the chapter he gives the king both names, without intimating that he entertained any uncertainty in the matter. ↩