probably live to see the evils which will immediately precede Christ's return, and must be on his guard against being amazed or overwhelmed by them. He is to "turn away from" the intense wickedness which will then be manifested, and go on undismayed with his own work. "Like as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth." The Apostle is obviously referring to the Egyptian magicians mentioned in Exodus. But in the Pentateuch neither their number nor their names are given; so that we must suppose that St. Paul is referring to some Jewish tradition on the subject. The number two was very possibly suggested by the number of their opponents:--Moses and Aaron on one side, and two magicians on the other. And on each side it is a pair of brothers; for the Targum of Jonathan represents the magicians as sons of Balaam, formerly instructors of Moses, but afterwards his enemies. The names vary in Jewish tradition. Jannes is sometimes Johannes, and Jambres is sometimes either Mambres or Ambrosius. The tradition respecting them was apparently widely spread. It was known to Numenius, a Platonic philosopher of Apameia in Syria, who is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria (_Strom._, I. xxii.), and quoted by Origen and Eusebius as giving an account of Jannes and Jambres (_Con. Cels._, IV. li.; _Præp. Evang._, IX. viii.). In Africa we find some knowledge of the tradition exhibited by Appuleius, the famous author of the _Golden Ass_, who like Numenius flourished in the second century. And in the previous century another Latin writer, Pliny the Elder, shows a similar knowledge. Both of them mention Jannes as a magician in connexion with Moses, who is also in their eyes a magician; but Pliny appears to think that both Moses and Jannes were Jews.[93] It is highly improbable that any of these writers derived their knowledge of these names from the passage before us; in the case of Pliny this would scarcely have been possible. His _Natural History_ was published about A.D. 77, and at that time the Second Epistle to Timothy must have been known to but few, even among Christians. The author of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus very possibly did derive his knowledge of the names from St. Paul; yet he may have had independent sources of information. He represents Nicodemus as pleading before Pilate that Jannes and Jambres worked miracles before Pharaoh; "but because they were not from God, what they did was destroyed." Whereas "Jesus raised up Lazarus, and he is alive" (chap. v.). One of the ablest of English commentators on these Epistles remarks upon this passage, "It is probable that the Apostle derived these names from a current and (being quoted by him) _true_ tradition of the Jewish Church." And in a similar spirit a writer in the _Dictionary of the Bible_ thinks that it would be "inconsistent with the character of an inspired record for a baseless or incorrect current tradition to be cited."