A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

Antiochus the Great, about two hundred years before Christ, on a certain occasion, transplanted two thousand families of Jews from the country about Babylon into Asia the Less; and so they and their post•••ty, many of them, settled in Pontus, Galatia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, and in Ephesus, and from thence settled in Athens, Corinth, and Rome. Whence came those synagogues in those places that the Apostle Paul preached in.

Antiochus the Great, about two hundred years before Christ, on a certain occasion, transplanted two thousand families of Jews from the country about Babylon into Asia the Less; and so they and their post•••ty, many of them, settled in Pontus, Galatia, Phrygia, Pamphylla, and in Ephesus, and from thence settled in Athens, Corinth, and Rome. Whence came those synagogues in those places that the Apostle Paul preached in.

Now, this dispersion of the Jews through the world before Christ came, did many ways prepare the way for his coming, and setting up his kingdom in the world.

One was, that this was a means of raising a general expectation of the Messiah through the world about the time that he actually came. For the Jews, where-ever they were dispersed, carried the holy scriptures with them, and so the prophecies of the Messiah; and being conversant with the nations among whom they lived, they, by that means, became acquainted with these prophecies, and with the expectations of the Jews of their glorious Messiah; and by this means, the birth of such a glorious person in Judea about that time began to be the general expectation of the nations of the world, as appears by the writings of the learned men of the Heathen ⟨p. 111⟩