The ritual, in brief, typifies the universal character of Judaism, which Josephus was anxious to emphasize in reply to the charge of Jewish aloofness and particularism. The three divisions of the Tabernacle symbolize heaven, earth, and sea; the twelve loaves stand for the twelve months of the year; the seventy parts of the candlestick for the seventy planets; the veils, which were composed of four materials, for the four elements; the linen of the high priest's vestment signified the earth, the blue betokened the sky; the breastplate resembled the shape of the earth, and so forth. We find similar reflections in Philo, but in his work they are part of a continuous allegorical exegesis, and in the other they are a sudden incursion of the symbolical into the long narrative of facts. Following the account of the Tabernacle and the priestly vestments, Josephus describes the manner of offering sacrifices, the observance of the festivals, and the Levitical laws of cleanliness. In his account of these laws Josephus makes no attempt either to derive a universal value from the Biblical commands or to read a philosophical meaning into them by allegorical interpretation. He normally states the law as it stands in the text, and in the selection he makes he gives the preference, not to general ethical precepts, but to regulations about the priests. He had a pride of caste and a love of the pomp and circumstance of the Temple service; and the national ceremony could be more easily conveyed to the Gentile than an understanding of the spiritual value of Judaism. The Hellenistic apologists enlarged on the humanitarian character of the Mosaic social legislation; Josephus mentions without comment the laws of the seventh year release and the Jubilee, though in his later apology, which was addressed to the Greeks, in the books _Against Apion_,[1] he dwelt more carefully on them. His interpretation of the laws, so far as it goes, in places agrees with the Rabbinic Halakah, but he admits some modification of the accepted tradition. Thus he states that the high priest was forbidden to marry a slave, or a captive, or a woman who kept an inn. He translates the Hebrew [Hebrew: zonah], which probably here means a prostitute, by innkeeper, a meaning the word has in other passages;[2] but the Aramaic version of the Bible supports him. He gives, too, a rationalizing reason for the observance of Tabernacles, saying, "The Law enjoins us to pitch tabernacles so that we may preserve ourselves from the cold of the season of the year."[3] The Feast of Weeks he calls Asartha, perhaps a Grecized form of the Hebrew [Hebrew: Atzereth], which was its old name, and he does not regard it as the anniversary of the giving of the Law. He promises to explain afterwards why some animals are forbidden for food and some permitted, but he fails to fulfil his promise. Since, however, the interpretation of the dietary laws as a discipline of temperance was a commonplace of Hellenistic