¹⁷ Here the terrain is not the trading of insults (an argument focused on ethos), but the display of evidence and proof (a matter of logos). Hence the material on the antiquity of Judeans is characterized as a correction of ignorance (1.3, 5), where “disbelief” ( ἀπιστία, 1.6, 161) is countered by reliable evidence worthy of belief ( πίστις; noun, verb, or adjectival forms in 1.4, 38, 72, 112, 143). One can imagine many aspects of Josephus’ Antiquities open to doubt, but in what follows he chooses to focus on only one. The problem of disbelief (and malice) had been recognized in the earlier work ( Ant. 14.187; 16.44.