Next, after other matters, he adds, saying: "With a greater plague than these the Egyptian false prophet afflicted the Jews. For this man, a sorcerer, having come into the country and laid upon himself the credit of a prophet, gathered about thirty thousand of those he had deceived, and leading them round from the wilderness to the mount called Olivet, he was prepared to force his way thence into Jerusalem, and, overpowering the Roman garrison and the people, to rule as a tyrant, using as bodyguards those who had rushed in with him.
But Felix forestalled his onset, meeting him with the Roman soldiers; and all the people joined in the defence, so that when battle was joined the Egyptian fled with a few men, while the greater part of those with him were destroyed or taken alive."
Josephus relates these things in the second book of his Histories. It is worth setting alongside what is here recounted concerning the Egyptian also the account in the Acts of the Apostles, where, in the time of Felix, the tribune at Jerusalem said to Paul, when the multitude of the Jews was rioting against him, "Art thou not then that Egyptian who before these days stirred up a revolt and led out into the wilderness the four thousand men of the Sicarii?" Such, then, was the course of events under Felix.