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Josephus again, after relating many things in connection with the
calamity which came upon the whole Jewish nation, records, in
addition to many other circumstances, that a great many of the most
honorable among the Jews were scourged in Jerusalem itself and then
crucified by Florus. It happened that he was procurator of Judea
when the war began to be kindled, in the twelfth year of Nero.
Josephus says that at that time a terrible commotion was stirred up
throughout all Syria in consequence of the revolt of the Jews, and
that everywhere the latter were destroyed without mercy, like enemies,
by the inhabitants of the cities, "so that one could see cities filled
with unburied corpses, and the dead bodies of the aged scattered about
with the bodies of infants, and women without even a covering for their
nakedness, and the whole province full of indescribable calamities,
while the dread of those things that were threatened was greater than
the sufferings themselves which they anywhere endured." Such is the
account of Josephus; and such was the condition of the Jews at that
time.
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