[6] It is here well worth our observation, what the reasons are that such ancient authors as Herodotus, Josephus, and others have been read to so little purpose by many learned critics; viz. that their main aim has not been chronology or history, but philology, to know words, and not things, they not much entering oftentimes into the real contents of their authors, and judging which were the most accurate discoverers of truth, and most to be depended on in the several histories, but rather inquiring who wrote the finest style, and had the greatest elegance in their expressions; which are things of small consequence in comparison of the other. Thus you will sometimes find great debates among the learned, whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest historian in the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the real value of each of their histories; while it would be of much more moment to let the reader know, that as the consequence of Herodotus's history, which begins so much earlier, and reaches so much wider, than that of Thucydides, is therefore vastly greater; so is the most part of Thucydides, which belongs to his own times, and fell under his own observation, much the most certain. [7] Of this accuracy of the Jews before and in our Savior's time, in carefully preserving their genealogies all along, particularly those of the priests, see Josephus's Life, sect. 1. This accuracy. seems to have ended at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, or, however, at that by Adrian. [8] Which were these twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament, see the Supplement to the Essay of the Old Testament, p. 25-29, viz. those we call canonical, all excepting the Canticles; but still with this further exception, that the book of apocryphal Esdras be taken into that number instead of our canonical Ezra, which seems to be no more than a later epitome of the other; which two books of Canticles and Ezra it no way appears that our Josephus ever saw. [9] Here we have an account of the first building of the city of Jerusalem, according to Manetho, when the Phoenician shepherds were expelled out of Egypt about thirty-seven years before Abraham came out of Harsh. [10] Genesis 46;32, 34; 47:3, 4. [11] In our copies of the book of Genesis and of Joseph, this Joseph never calls himself "a captive," when he was with the king of Egypt, though he does call himself "a servant," "a slave," or "captive," many times in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, under Joseph, sect. 1, 11, 13-16.