CHAPTER XIX
Ly i | t iz eae
Tertullian' s Apology for the Christians.
critic of his time, sent to the Jews for their sacred writings in their own mother tongue, and-which were in their hands alone; for the prophets were raised up out of this nation, and the prophecies
_ addressed to them, as a peculiar people, chosen of God out of we pe eS 'respect to their forefathers.
Those who are now called Jews went heretofore by the name of Hebrews, and from hence is the title of the Hebrew tongue.
The Jews gratified the king in the request, and not only sent him their Bible, but also for fear their language should not be understood, sent seventy-two interpreters to translate it into Greek.
This is attested by Menedemus, the famous assertor of a providence, who joined with the Jews in this notion, and was a great admirer of their writings.
We have likewise the testimony of _ Aristeeus for the truth of this, who composed a book in Greek upon the same subject.
And in Ptolemy's library near the temple of Serapis, among other curiosities are these sacred writings shown to this day.
And besides all this, the Jews frequently and publicly on every Sabbath read the same; they are tolerated to do it, and pay a tax for the toleration.
Whoever hears them will find the worship of one God, and whoever will be at the pains to understand them will find himself necessitated to believe them.
CHAPTER XIX.
CONCERNING THE ANTIQUITY OF THE WRITINGS OF THE PROPHETS.
ONE great argument for the authority of these sacred writings is the greatness of their antiquity ;4 an argument you yourselves are pleased to make use of for the defence of your own religion. I say, therefore, that before any of your public monuments and inscrip1 Primam Instrumentis istis autheritatem summa Antiguitas vindicat.
The strongest and shrewdest adversary Christianity.ever met with was the philosopher
Porphyrius.
He was a man too well versed in antiquity to depend upon the vain pretences of the Grecians, and therefore made it his business to search after the most ancient records, to find something to match the antiquity of Holy Scripture.
- And after all his search, he could find no author to vie with Moses but Sanchoni-_ athon ; and yet when he had made the most of him, he was forced to allow him
"younger than Moses, though he made him older than the Trojan wars.
Nay, he goes about to prove the truth of Sanchoniathon's history by the agreement of it with that of Moses, concerning the Jews both as to their names and places, and so this Goliath fell by his own sword, and defended the cause he designed to destroy.
Vid. Euseb. Prep. Evang. lib. x. cap. 8, p. 285.
Tertullian's A ology for the Christians. tiviis, before any of your forms of government, before the oldest of your books, and the original of many nations, and foundation of many famous cities, and the very greyest of historians ; and lastly, before the invention of letters! (the interpreters of things, and the most faithful repositories of 'action), and hitherto, methinks, I have said but little, I say therefore before the very being of your gods, your temples, oracles, and sacrifices, were the writings of one of our prophets extant, which are the treasury of the Jewish religion, and ~ by consequence of the Christian.
If you have heard of Moses the prophet, I will tell you his age; he was contemporary with Inachus, the first king of the Argives, older by three hundred and ninety-three years than Danaus, the oldest in your histories.
About a thousand years before the destruction of Troy, or as others reckon, about five hundred years before Homer ;? the rest of the prophets, though later than Moses, yet.the latest of them fall in with some of the first of your sages, lawgivers,.and historians.
The proof of these things is not a matter of much difficulty, but only it would swell this
1 Tpsas denigue effigies literarum, etc.
Before the very use or knowledge of letters.
It is generally acknowledged by Herodotus, Philostratus, and the most learned of the Greeks, that the Grzecians received their very letters from the Phoenicians by Cadmus; and Parius, the author of the Greek Chronicle in the Marmora Arundeliana, makes Cadmus's coming into Greece to be in the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, which according to Cappellus was Anno Mun.
2995, though Mr. Selden sets it something lower, in 'the eleventh generation after Moses, about the time of Samuel; and that the Greek alphabet came from the Phcenician or Hebrew, is evident from the very sound of the names of the letters, as well as their form and order.
Thus the Greek #a¢« answers to the Hebrew aleph, Bara to beth, yéupa to gimel, dtrra to daloth, etc., all which, both as to form, order, and name, you may see in a diagram exhibited by the great Bochart. Geogr. lib. i. cap. 20.
And for anything of history in Greece, we meet with nothing before the beginning of the Olympiads, when the world was above three thousand years' standing.
2 Quingentis amplius et Homerum.
Five hundred years before Hom.
Josephus in his first book against Apion says that the Grecians of all nations, though they boasted so much of antiquity, had the least reasons to do it; for they were but of yesterday in respect of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians, and that notwithstanding they boasted of the invention of letters from Cadmus, yet could they not produce any inscription or sign of letters in his time, and that Homer was the most ancient book extant among them ; nor was
_ this left in writing, but learnt only by heart like other songs, and therefore we find so many fragments and incongruities in his works when they came to be committed to writing from bare memory.
But herein Josephus is thought to have strained the point too far, because of the inscription of Amphitrio at Thebes, in the temple of Apollo Ismenius in the old Ionic letters, and two others of the same age to be seen in Herodotus, and for some other reasons,
Vid. Bochart. Geog. lib. i. cap. 20.
But however this be, certain it is that we find no records of history in Greece till the world was full three thousand years
© of age and more.