In the writings of Josephus there is another and very characteristic notice as to the use of the water of separation. Speaking of the funeral rites, he says, “Our law also ordains that the house and its inhabitants shall be purified after the funeral is over, that every one may thence learn to keep at a great distance from the thought of being pure, if he hath once been guilty of murder.”[37] We are not to suppose that the spiritual meaning of these rites had been so utterly lost by the Jews, that Josephus, a priest, a Pharisee, a man of extensive learning and reputation, imagined this to be a true account of the nature and meaning of the ordinance. But he was speaking in defense of Judaism, against the assaults of Apion, a Greek philosopher of Alexandria, at the bar of the pagan philosophy of Greece and Rome. He affects, for himself, a profoundly philosophic style and spirit, and aims to vindicate a similar character for the laws and institutions of Moses. Knowing that the truths of God as committed to Israel would be foolishness to the wise, to whose applause he aspired, he sets them aside in favor of his own “philosophic” inventions. He seems to have taken the suggestion from certain heathen observances, of which we shall see more further on. The foregoing extracts not only illustrate the law as to the water of separation, and the use of the word, _baptizo_, with reference to it, but indicate the place held by the ordinance among the observances of Israel, down to the time of Jerusalem’s desolation. Footnote 37: Josephus against Apion. Book ii, 27. SECTION XLII.—_Imitations of these Rites by the Greeks and Romans._