[Footnote 1: Derek Erez, ed. Goldberg, iii. 10.] [Footnote 2: Moed Katon, 23a. See above, p. 177.] [Footnote 3: Comp. Zunz, Gottesdienstliche Vortraege, pp. 154_ff_.] The chronicle of Yosippon is a summary of Jewish history, with considerable digressions--many of them later interpolations--about the history of the nations with whom the Hebrew people came into contact, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Like the Book of Chronicles, it begins with Adam and genealogies, explains the roll of the nations in Genesis, and then springs suddenly from the legendary origin of Babel and Rome to the relation of the Jews with Babylon. The history proper contains the record of the Jews from the first to the second captivity, but is broken by a mass of legendary material about Alexander the Great--reproducing much of what is found in pseudo-Callisthenes--and by a short account of the Carthaginian general Hannibal and several incidents of Roman history. These include a description of a coronation of the Emperor, which, it is suggested, applies to the medieval and not the classical period of the Empire. The book was known throughout the later part of the Middle Ages and down to the eighteenth century as the Hebrew Josephus, and contrasted with the [Hebrew: Yosifon la-Romim], or "Latin Josephus." When the genuine works of our worthy became known to the Jews, Yosippon was regarded as the true representative of the Jewish point of view against the paganizing traitor. Its author had not a first-hand acquaintance with our Josephus. He knew him only through the Latin versions, which were mixed with much later material. Possibly he meant to pass off his work as the Hebrew original of the Jewish history, and confused Joseph ben Gorion with Joseph ben Mattathias; for in the introduction to one manuscript we read, "I am Joseph, called Josephus the Jew, of whom it is written that he wrote the book of the wars of the Lord, and this is the sixth part." This, however, may be the gloss of a later scribe, who found an anonymous book, and thought fit to supply the omission. In places the Hebrew translator reproduces, though with some blunders, the Latin Hegesippus, but he sought to give charm to his work by legendary additions, which more often show Arabic and other foreign influences than traces of the Jewish Haggadah. Interpolations have served to increase the legendary element, and take away from the historical value. But it is this element, reflecting the ideas of the age, that gives the composition a peculiar literary interest.