I.

that Cadmus and his company were some of the Ca- CHAP. naanites who fled from Joshua, as others are supposed to have done into Africa, if Procopius's pillar hath strength enough to bear such a conjecture. But there is too great a confusion about the time of Cadmus's arrival in Greece, to affirm any thing with any great certainty about it.

Idol. 1. i.

- c. 13.

Yet those who disagree from that former computa- Vossius de tion, place it yet lower. Vossius makes Agenor, Cadmus's father, contemporary with the latter end of Moses, or the beginning of Joshua; and so Cadmus's time must fall somewhat after. Jac. Capellus placeth Cadmus in the third year of Othoniel. The author of the Greek Chronicle, in the Marmora Arundeliana, makes his coming to Greece to be in the time of Helen, the son of Deucalion; which Capellus fixeth on the 73d of Moses, A. M. 2995. But Mr. Selden conceives it somewhat lower and so it must be, if we follow Clemens Alexandrinus, who places it in the time of Lynceus king of the Argives, which he saith was ἑνδεκάτῃ ἄνωθεν ἀπὸ Μωσέως γενεᾷ, in the eleventh Strom. 1. i. generation after Moses, which will fall about the Oxon. time of Samuel: but though it should be so late, it would be no wonder it should be reckoned a matter of so great antiquity among the Grecians; for the oldest records they have of any king at Athens, begin at the time of Moses, whose contemporary Cecrops is generally thought to be; for at Cecrops's time it is the Marble Chronicle begins. Now that the Grecians did receive their very letters from the Phoenicians by Cadmus, is commonly acknowledged by the most learned of the Greeks themselves, as appears by the ingenuous confession of Herodotus, Philostratus, Critias in Athenæus, Zenodotus in Laertius, Timon Phliasius in Sextus Empiricus, and many others: so that it were to

c. 17. ed.

I.

in Euseb.

BOOK no purpose to offer to prove that, which they who arrogate so much to themselves do so freely acknowledge. Which yet hath been done to very good purScalig.Not. pose by Joseph Scaliger and Bochartus, and many Chron. n. others, from the form of the letters, the order and the 1617. names of them. It seems probable that at first they might use the form of the Phoenician letters, in which Herodotus tells us the three old inscriptions were extant; and Diodorus tells us, that the brass pot which Cadmus offered to Minerva Lindia, had an inscription on it in the Phoenician letters: but afterwards the form of the letters came by degrees to be changed, when for their greater expedition in writing they left the old way of writing towards the left hand, for the more natural and expedite way of writing towards the right, by which they exchanged the sites of the strokes in several letters, as it is observed by the forecited learned authors.

Bochart. Geogr. p. 2. l. i. cap. 20.

Not that the old Ionic letters were nearer the PhoScalig. ibid. nician, and distinct from the modern, as Jos. Scaliger

1. vii. c. 57.

ed. Har

duin.

in his learned discourse on the original of the Greek letters conceives; for the Ionic letters were nothing else but the full alphabet of twenty-four, with the Plinii Hist. additions of Palamedes, and Simonides Ceus; as Pliny tells us, that all the Greeks consented in the use of the Ionic letters: but the old Attic letters came nearer the Phoenician, because the Athenians, long after the alphabet was increased to twenty-four, continued still in the use of the old sixteen, which were brought in by Cadmus; which must needs much alter the way writing for in the old letters, they writ THEOΣ for V. Maus- eòs, which made Pliny, with a great deal of learning Harpocr. and truth, say, that the old Greek letters were the Salmas. in same with the Roman. Thence the Greeks called their

sacum in

Consecr.

of

Templ. p. ancient letters 'ATTIKà ypáμμaтa, as appears by Harpo

30.

I.

cration and Hesychius; not that they were so much CHAP. distinct from others, but because they did not admit of the addition of the other eight letters.

XXI.

Hist. 1. v.

We see then the very letters of the Greeks were no older than Cadmus; and for any considerable learning among them, it was not near so old. Some assert indeed, that history began from the time of Cadmus ; but it is by a mistake of him for a younger Cadmus, which was Cadmus Milesius, whom Pliny makes to be Plin. Nat. the first writer in prose; but that he after attributes c. 31. to Pherecydes Syrius, and history to Cadmus Mile- l. vii. c. 57. sius and therefore I think it far more probable, that it was some writing of this latter Cadmus, which was transcribed and epitomized by Bion Proconesius, although Clemens Alexandrinus seems to attribute it to Clem. the elder. We see how unable then the Grecians were c. 2. ed. to give an account of older times, that were guilty of Oxon. so much infancy and nonage, as to begin to learn their letters almost in the noon-tide of the world, and yet long after this, to the time of the first Olympiad, all their relations are accounted fabulous. A fair account then we are like to have from them of the first antiquities of the world, who could not speak plain truth, till the world was above three thousand years old; for so was it when the Olympiads began.

Strom. 1. vi.

So true is the observation of Justin Martyr, ovdèv Justin. Ἕλλησι πρὸ τῶν Ὀλυμπιάδων ἀκριβὲς ἱστόρηται ; the Greeks Mary had no exact history of themselves before the Olym- Græcos, piads: but of that more afterwards.

This is now the first defect which doth infringe the credibility of these histories, which is the want of timely and early records to digest their own history in.

C. 12. ed.

Oxon.

ad

BOOK
I.

I.

CHAP. II.

OF THE PHŒNICIAN AND EGYPTIAN HISTORY.

I. The particular defect in the history of the most learned heathen nations. II. First the Phoenicians. Of Sanchoniathon; his antiquity and fidelity. III. Of Jerom-baal, Baal-Berith. IV. The antiquity of Tyre. Scaliger vindicated against Bochartus. V. Abibalus. VI. The vanity of Phoenician theology. VII. The imitation of it by the Gnostics. VIII. Of the Egyptian history. IX. The antiquity and authority of Hermes Trismegistus. X. Of his inscriptions on pillars, transcribed by Manetho. XI. His fabulousness thence discovered. Terra Seriadica. XII. Of Seth's pillars in Josephus; and an account whence they were taken.

HAVING already shewed a general defect in the

ancient heathen histories, as to an account of ancient times, we now come to a closer and more particular consideration of the histories of those several nations which have borne the greatest name in the world for learning and antiquity. There are four nations chiefly, which have pretended the most to antiquity in the learned world, and whose historians have been thought to deliver any thing contrary to holy writ in their account of ancient times, whom on that account we are obliged more particularly to consider; and those are the Phoenicians, Chaldæans, Egyptians, and Grecians: we shall therefore see what evidence of credibility there can be in any of these, as to the matter of antiquity of their records, or their histories taken from them. And, the credibility of an historian depending much upon the certainty and authority of the records he makes use of, we shall both consider of what value and antiquity the pretended records are; and particularly look into the age of the several historians. As to the Grecians, we have seen already an utter impossibility of having any ancient records among them,

II.

because they wanted the means of preserving them, CHAP. having so lately borrowed their letters from other nations. Unless as to their account of times they had been as careful, as the old Romans were, to number their years by the several clavi or nails, which they fixed on the temple doors, which yet they were not in any capacity to do, not growing up in an entire body, as the Roman empire did, but lying so much scattered and divided into so many petty republics, that they minded very little of concernment to the whole nation. The other three nations have, deservedly, a name of far greater antiquity than any the Grecians could ever pretend to; who yet were unmeasurably guilty of an impotent affectation of antiquity, and arrogating to themselves, as growing on their own ground, what was with a great deal of pains and industry gathered but as the gleanings from the fuller harvest of those nations they resorted to; which is not only true as to the greatest part of their learning, but as to the account likewise they give of ancient times; the chief and most ancient histories among them being only a corruption of the history of the elder nations, especially Phoenicia and Egypt: for of these two Philo Byblius, Philo Bybl. the translator of the ancient Phoenician historian, San- seb. Præp. choniathon, saith, they were maλαióτaтol Twν Bapßápwv, c. 9. p. 32. Evang. 1. i. παρ ̓ ὧν καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ παρέλαβον ἄνθρωποι, the most ancient of ed. Viger. all the barbarians, from whom the others derived their theology; which he there particularly instanceth in.

We begin therefore with the Phoenician history, whose most ancient and famous historian is Sanchoniathon, so much admired and made use of by the shrewdest antagonist ever Christianity met with, the philosopher Porphyrius. But therein was seen the wonderful providence of God, that out of this eater came forth meat, and out of the lion, honey; that the

apud Eu

II.