I 



23 



descendants, relative to the antediluvian transactions, pre- 

 ferably to the traditions transmitted by the descendants of 

 Seth, and handed down to Noah. On this hypothesis, the 

 errors and absurdities of the Phenician theology are clearly 

 accounted for; hence neither paradise nor the fall of man 

 are mentioned in it, nor are Abel or Seth, nor consequently 

 the banishment of Cai7i ; nor the flood, of which the wicked- 

 ness of his descendants was the principal cause. The 

 suppression of this grand event forms a strong presumption 

 of the truth of the motives I have stated, which induced the 

 Phenicians to pass it over in silence, as did the Egyptians, 

 who also descended from Cham, though the Chaldeans, 

 Persians, and Greeks expressly mention it, as may be seen 

 in the extracts of Berosus and Abydenus, preserved by 

 Eusebius, and in the first book of Ovid's Metamorphosis ; 

 but the Phenicians did not fail to remark that Cain worship- 

 ped the sun, which, indeed, is. not improbable, to j.ustify the 

 worship they themselves addressed to it. 



It is evident, however, that by the spirit which acknoza- 

 ledged no beginning, and " from whose love,, or rather bene- 

 " volence to the chaotic mass, all things originated," the 

 Supreme Being must be understood. The Phenicians would 

 not call him Jehovah^ as he was known under that name 

 to the Israehtes, whom they and the Canaanites hated. 



Again, by mot or mud, they certainly meant the earth, 



before the waters were separated from it, impregnated, they 



supposed, with the seeds of all things. Of the separation 



of 



