Though only to a small extent representing Jewish tradition, the book remained very popular among the Jews both of the West and the East, and was long regarded as authoritative. The first printed edition was issued at Mantua, in 1476, and was followed by the edition of Constantinople, in 1520, arranged in chapters and enlarged, and an edition of Basel, in 1541, containing a Latin preface and a Latin translation of the greater part. In 1546 a printed Yiddish edition appeared in Zurich, and in the Ghetto it retains its popularity to the present day. Other editions and translations have followed. Steinschneider has noted that as late as 1873 an abstract of the Arabic translation together with the Arabic version of the Book of the Maccabees was published at Beirut.[1] The spuriousness of the work has now been established, and of modern scholars Wellhausen[2] is almost alone in ascribing to it any independent historical worth. In the Spanish period of Jewish culture the real as well as the spurious Josephus was read by many of his race, and some hard things were said of him. Thus Rabbi Isaac Abrabanel, the statesman and apologist (1457-1508), regarded him as a common sycophant and wrote, "In many things he perverted the truth, even where we have the Scriptures before us, in order to court favor with the Romans, as a slave submits himself to the will of his master." Azariah de Rossi (ab. 1850), anticipating the ideas of a later age, alone balanced his merits against his demerits. Among the great Christian scholars of the Renaissance, however, he enjoyed great fame. Joseph Scaliger, the most eminent of the seventeenth century critics, could write of him, "Josephus was the most diligent and the most truthloving of all writers, and one can better believe him, not only as to the affairs of the Jews, but also as to the Gentiles, than all the Greek and Latin writers, because his fidelity and his learning are everywhere conspicuous."[3] It is illustrative of his popularity that Rembrandt named one of his great Jewish pictures after him. Whiston's English translation of his works became a household book, found side by side with the Bible and _The Pilgrim's Progress_.[4] [Footnote 1: J.Q.R. xvi. 393.] [Footnote 2: Der arabische Josippus; see J.E., s.v. Joseph ben Gorion.] [Footnote 3: De Emend. Temp. Proleg. 17.] [Footnote 4: Readers of Rudyard Kipling may recall that in _Captains Courageous_ one of the seamen on board the "We're Here" Schooner reads aloud on Sunday from a book called Josephus: "It was an old leather-bound volume very solid and very like a Bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges."]