27 



whpse corrupt practices the translator complains.* !N^ay 

 Sanchoniatho himself, Philo adds, rejected many of theif 

 fables, as well as the allegorical explanation given of them ; 

 but after his time, the priests again related the same fables, 

 and extracted from them a mystic sense, which the Greeks 

 fiever before thought of ; but he says that both the Egyp- 

 tians and Phenicians were accustomed to reckon among the 

 greatest Gods, such men as contributed most to the happi- 

 ness of human life, by important inventions or other signal 

 benefits. This 1 believe to be true, with respect to the 

 antediluvian discoverers or improvers of various arts, and is 

 attested by Sanchoniatho : but no such apotheosis took 

 place after the flood, either in Egypt or in Phenicia; for 

 Herodotus expressly denies that hero worship was practised 

 by the Egyptians,-}- nor was it by the Phenicians in the most 

 ancient times ; otherwise the Israelites, ever prone to the 

 Canaanitish worship, would have adopted it, or, at least, ren- 

 dered it, to their own patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 

 Noah, tec. Yet we do not find that they were ever guilty 

 of such impiety : the prophets never reproached them with 

 il, but always with the worship of Baal, the sun or Lordj or 

 Baalim, tlie Lord's, that is, the planets, or the host of heaven,, 

 or Ashtaroth, the moon, or Moloch, who appears to be the 

 same as Baal, considered as an avenger ; for Ave read in 

 Jeremiah, xxxii. 35, they have erected high places to Baal, to 

 cause their sons and daughters to pass through (the fire) to 



E 2 Moloch, 



* Euseb. p. 33. t Lib. 2. § 50. 



