II. inventions to them? But, secondly, if either one or CHAP. both these pillars remained, whence comes it to pass that neither the Chaldæans, nor any of the oldest pretenders to astronomy, should neither mention them, nor make any use of them? Nay, thirdly, whence came the study of astronomy to be so lamentably defective in those ancient times, if they had such certain observations of the heavenly bodies, gathered by so much experience of the persons who lived before the flood? Fourthly, How comes Josephus himself to neglect this remarkable testimony of the truth of Scripture-history, in his books against Apion, if he had thought it were such as might be relied on? Fifthly, How comes Josephus so carelessly not to set down the place in Syria where these pillars stood, that inquisitive persons might have satisfied themselves with the sight of the pillar at least, and what kind of characters those observations were preserved in? But now, if we compare this of Josephus with Manetho's story, we shall find them so exactly resemble each other, that we may judge all those pillars to have been taken out of the same quarry. Two things make it yet more probable. First, The name of the place wherein they stood, which Eustathius, in Hexaemeron, takes out of Josephus, and calls Enipead; the very same place with that in Manetho. The other is the common use of the name of Seth among the Egyptians, as not only appears by Plutarch de Iside et Osiride, but by this very place of Manetho; where it follows, èv Bíßaw Zwłews, a book of his bearing the title, which Vettius Valens Antiochenus Vettius Val. apud Scal. tells us is not called Es, but Σ0. Now, therefore, not. Gr. Josephus, who frequently useth the testimony of hea- P. 438. then writers, and frequently of this Manetho, endeavoured to bring this fabulous relation of Manetho as I. BOOK near the truth as he could; therefore instead of Thoyth he puts Seth; and instead of the fabulous history of Egypt, the inventions of the Patriarchs; and Syria instead of Seriadica; a country too large to find these pillars in. CHAP. III. OF THE CHALDEAN HISTORY. I. The contest of antiquity among heathen nations, and the ways of deciding it. II. Of the Chaldæan astrology, and the foundation of judicial astrology. III. Of the Zabii, their founder, who they were; no other than the old Chaldees. IV. Of Berosus and his history. V. An account of the fabulous dynasties of Berosus and Manetho; VI. From the translation of the Scripture-history into Greek, in the time of Ptolemy. VII. Of that translation, and the time of it. VIII. Of Demetrius Phalereus. Scaliger's arguments answered. IX. Manetho writ after the Septuagint, proved against Kircher; his arguments answered. Of Rabbinical and Arabic authors, and their little credit in matter of history. X. The time of Berosus inquired into; his writing contemporary with Philadelphus. CHAP. I. THE next whom our inquiry leads us to, are the Chaldæans, a nation of great and undoubted antiquity, being in probability the first formed into a national government after the flood, and therefore the more capable of having these arts and sciences flourish among them, which might preserve the memory of oldest times to the view of posterity. And yet even among these, who enjoyed all the advantages of ease, quiet, and a flourishing empire, we find no undoubted or credible records preserved, but the same vanity as among the Egyptians, in arrogating antiquity to themselves beyond all proportion of reason or satisfaction from their own history, to fill up that vast measure of time with: which makes it most probable, what Diodorus observes of them, that in things pertaining to their arts, they Diodor. made use of lunar years of 30 days: so they had 1. i. c. 26. need, when Tully tells us that they boasted of ob- Cicero de servations of the stars for 470,000 years. It had been impossible for them to have been so extravagant in Biblioth. Divin. l. ii. c. 97. BOOK their accounts of themselves, had they but preserved I. the history of their nation in any certain records. For II. want of which, the tradition of the oldest times varying in the several families after their dispersion, and being gradually corrupted by the policy of their leaders, and those corruptions readily embraced by the predominancy of self-love in the several nations, thence arose those vain and eager contests between the Chaldæans, Scythians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians, concerning the antiquity of their several nations: which may be seen in Diodorus and others; by which it most evidently appears that they had no certain history of their own nations; for none of them insist upon any records, but only upon several probabilities from the nature of their country, and the climates they lived under. Neither need Psammetichus have been put to that ridiculous way of deciding the controversy, by his two infants bred up without any converse with men; concluding the language they spake would manifest the great antiquity of the nation it belonged to: whereas it is more than probable they had spoken none at all, had they not learned the inarticulate voice of the goats, they had more converse with than men. The making use of such ways to decide this controversy, doth not only argue the great weakness of those times as to natural knowledge, but the absolute defect and insufficiency of them, as to the giving any certain account of the state of ancient times. Of which the Chaldæans had advantages above all other heathen nations, not only living in a settled country, but in or near that very place where the grand ancestors of the world had their chief abode and residence. Whereby we see how unfaithful a thing tradition is, and how soon it is corrupted or fails, where it hath no sure records to bottom itself III. upon. But indeed it is the less wonder that there CHAP. should be a confusion of histories, where there had been before of tongues; and that such, whose design and memory God had blasted before, should afterwards forget their own original. But, as if the Chaldæans had retained something still of their old aspiring mind to reach up to heaven, the only thing they were eminent for, and which they were careful in preserving of, was some astronomical observations, which Tully tells us they had a great conveniency for, by reason of the plain and even situation of their country; whereby they might have a larger prospect of the heavenly bodies, than those who lived in mountainous countries could have. And yet even for this (which they were so famous for, that the name Chaldæans passed for astrologers in the Roman empire) we have no great reason to admire their excellency in it, considering how soon their skill in astronomy dwindled into that which, by a great catachresis, is called judicial astrology. The original of which is most evident among them, as all other heathen nations, to have been from the divinity which they attributed to the stars; in which yet they were far more rational than those who now admire that art: for, granting their hypothesis, that the stars were gods, it was but reasonable they should determine contingent effects; but it is far from being so with them, who take away the foundation of all those celestial houses, and yet attribute the same effects to them, which they did who believed a divinity in them. The Chaldæans, as Diodorus relates, set 30 Diodor. stars under the planets; these they called Bouλalous Biblioth. Beous others they had as princes over these, which they called τῶν θεῶν κυρίους : the former were as the privy counsellors, and these the princes over them; by whom, in their courses, they supposed the course of 1. ii. c. 30. |