Josephus was a Jewish priest, who was made prisoner by Titus, in the war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. He afterward, at Rome, wrote his Jewish “Antiquities,” and his “History.” He thus describes the manner of purifying with the ashes of the heifer. “Any persons being defiled by a dead body, they put a little of these ashes and hyssop into spring water, and _baptizing_ with these ashes in water, sprinkled them on the third day and on the seventh.”[35] This is a literal translation from the Greek of Josephus; but differs from the popular version of Whiston. He renders it,—“They put a little of these ashes into spring water with hyssop, and dipping part of these ashes in it, they sprinkled them with it,” etc. But this is a very incorrect translation, is incongruous to the ordinance as described by Moses, and converts the account into nonsense. According to it, the ashes are in the first place put into the water, and then part of them “dipped in it!” How they were recovered from the water, in order to the dipping, and how the ashes could be _dipped_ in the water at all, we need not inquire, as the translation is incorrect. “Baptizing with these ashes-in-water,” truly represents the original.[36] “Baptizing,” was the action; the mixture of “ashes in water,” was the element; “sprinkling,” the mode; and “the third and seventh days,” the time. In fact, in using the water of separation, according to the law, there was no dipping of any sort, except of the hyssop bush, with which the water was sprinkled. The only action to which Josephus can refer,—that to which he does undoubtedly refer,—by the word, “baptizing,” is the purifying rite, of which he immediately states the form to have been a _sprinkling_. Footnote 35: Josephus, Antiquities, IV, iv, 6. Footnote 36: “Βαπτίσαντες τε καὶ της τέφρας ταύτης εἰς πηγὴν.” Τῆς τέφρας ταύτες is the partitive and instrumental Genitive, and indicates the ashes-in-water, as that with which the baptism was to be performed. (Compare John ii, 7.—“Fill the water pots _with_ water.”) To get rid of the force of this passage, Baptist writers have proposed an arbitrary alteration of the text, by the erasure of the entire clause (_te kai—pēgēn_) “with these ashes in water.” The change thus suggested is purely gratuitous. The reading which they propose is without the pretense of sanction from any manuscript of Josephus, and is sustained by no sound principles of criticism. Its only warrant is the necessities of the Baptist position. On the contrary, the rendering which we have given is, in some of the manuscripts of Josephus, enforced by the preposition (_meta_) _with_, after the word, “baptizing.” According to this version, the passage can be read no otherwise than as we have given it. “Baptizing _with_ these ashes in water.”