Letters from Pilate to Herod, from Herod to Pilate, give the data as to Herodias’ blindness. In these letters, Herodias’ daughter is referred to as a younger Herodias, not as Salome. Therefore I left Salome out of these stories. The fiction woven about Salome’s name in modern literature seems to me the most perfect example of sensualizing and degrading biblical records that could be devised. The most cursory glance at the Herod family tree show she must have been little more than a baby at the time of the Baptist’s death—certainly under eight or ten. When you consider the colossal pyramid of unclean modern literature and music built on Salome’s name, it isn’t much of a testimony to the modern heart being much cleaner than the Herod heart which we condemn. The superstition of the flower foretelling the lovers’ fate, which has come down to our own day in the petals of the field daisy, dates back to the very lotus flower worship of India and Egypt. The legendary “Ardath, the Field of Flowers” is, of course, from the Persian and will be found in the _Book of Esdras_. In fact, to understand this whole era, no student should fail to read _Esdras_ and _Enoch_, which are parallel in writing and sentiment to _Daniel_ and _Revelation_. Pilate’s fate and letters will be found in the _Apocryphal New Testament_. Malden thinks from Paul’s letters to the people of Thessaly 54 A.D. that, up to the assault on Jerusalem in 69-70, many of the Christians still looked for Christ’s second coming in glory and majesty and power; but in the letter to Cornith, when Paul had drawn his immortal picture of “the celestial body,” it is evident the Christians knew they were working for and in an Invisible Kingdom such as Onesimus described. Malden gives the correct chronology in which the books of the New Testament were written; so that one can follow the fuller and higher and closer outlook the workers were attaining of their own mission. Details on the trails down to the Jordan at this time can be found in Josephus, or Thomson’s famous _Land and the Book_. There is a full description of Machærus Fort in Thomson also. It is interesting to note that the Roman Consul, who befriended Paul at Corinth in the days of his work with Apollos, was Junius Galleo, a relative of Seneca’s, which seems to bear out that Paul and Seneca knew each other in Rome. In this period before Paul’s death, Burrhus, Nero’s handy man, was sent again and again on messages from the Jews of Cæsarea and Ephesus to Rome. Where was Mariamne, Herod the Great’s proud wife, murdered by him? Her tomb has recently been discovered near Jerusalem; but it was in the Fort east of the Dead Sea that Herod went mad with remorse over his crime against her. APPENDIX C THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM AND THE BREAKING UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE