Keeping this ON TOPIC: I heard a shortwave minister mention the
doctrine of Balaam in connection with the works of Flavius Josephus.
I'll make that one or more separate posts.

The Antiquities of the Jews was written by a Jewish historian named
Flavius Josephus. It is NOT considered to be inspired by God but does
fill in some of the blanks left by the Bible. Yes, The Bible has blanks
in it. The Gospel according to Saint John, KJV, tells us in chapter
21, verse 25 that, "...there are also many other things which Jesus did,
the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the
world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
They didn't have computers, file compression software, and/or
microfiche in those days. :-) They didn't even have printing presses.
All books were written out by hand -- one copy at the time!

Too many doctrines are founded upon one or two scriptures which are
taken out of context. It has been said that the Bible itself is its own
best commentary. Therefore, doctrines must be examined in the light of
the entire Bible. One may then use historical texts to fill in some of
the gaps which seem to be present in the scriptures.

OK. OK. I'm getting to the point! :-) The Antiquities of the Jews,
being hundreds of years old has gone into the public domain and can be
legally downloaded off the net from various sites. I'll not try to
direct you to any one site. Just use Google, or any other search
engine, and look for "Antiquities of the Jews" and download a copy or
use it online. I prefer downloading a copy so I can search it without
tying up the phone line. It contains some very interesting information.
There is at least one copy which is a zip file and becomes an exe file
when opened. While it is good for doing the searching, etc., the
gentleman implants his own contact information in the program AND
PROHIBITS / DISABLES YOUR ABILITY TO DO A CUT AND PASTE from within the
built in browser, by not allowing you to do a copy of marked or
highlighted information. Yes, it presents the information in HTML
format. While you *may* want to download, and use, this program you'll
also want to do a cut and paste from time to time so I'd recommend also
getting it from a site that just lets you download the html, text, or
doc version of it.

I DO NOT imply that there's not some leaven of the pharisees contained
therein, but it also supports the scriptures in a number of places.
Jesus warned His disciples in Luke 12:1, KJV, "... Beware ye of the
leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

I'll refer to the Antiquities of the Jews in another post or two, but
I'll make them separate posts. Any who wish to know some of the secular
history of the days of Christ will appreciate the works of Flavius Josephus.

Al