![]() ![]() ![]() At the same festival also, (4) a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskilful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it. Thus also before the Jews’ rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, and at the ninth hour of the night, (3) so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time which lasted for half an hour. (1) Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and (2) a comet, that continued a whole year. For ease of reference Beachcombing numbers these portents in bold. Beachcombing offers up here the entire passage where Josephus is describing the various portents for one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history: Vespasian’s burning of the temple and also the way in which the ‘stupid’ people misinterpreted them. Could the chariots have even been ships projected into the sky by unusual atmospheric conditions?īut this same event is almost always taken out of context. If you ask unexcitable, over-rational sorts they will talk here about the fata morgana: an optical illusion in the heavens and the unexcitable, over-rational sources might in this case have a point – the fata morgana is perhaps more common at sunset and dawn. If you inquire of Erik von Daniken and his emulators they are ancient foo fighters jumping around the sky. Jewish scholars, meanwhile, are quick to note that God is often associated with chariots. If you ask a certain kind of Christian they are the angels of Revelation beginning the work of God’s kingdom. These sky armies have been marshalled over the years for many causes. 65 AD.īesides these, a few days after that feast, on the twenty first day of the month of Artemisius, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding the cities (6,5,3). One of the most celebrated reports from antiquity of bizarre goings on in the sky appears in Josephus, History of the Wars relating to c. ![]()
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