By the Rev. J. L. Ross. 163 
fled at the command of God to another Mesopotamia at a consider- 
able distance from his native place for safety, of which he could 
not have been assured had he only removed to Mesopotamia near 
the Euphrates, which is no great distance from what is in general 
described as Chaldea. “It is generally agreed,” says Taylor, “that 
Abraham is described as the righteous man who came from the East,! 
where the word is not Kedem, but Metzarach, which signifies the 
rising-sun, and certainly denotes a remote region.” “Tf then,” he 
proceeds to infer, “the same word, MJetzarach denotes the same 
country, or nearly the same, then the ‘righteous man’ Abraham, 
came from a country far east of Babylon, and consequently far east 
of that Mesopotamia to which he fled from the face of the Gods of 
his native country ;—which was, as it should seem, the original 
seat and establishment of idolatry.” Without further pursuing 
this enquiry, it is sufficient to remark that it has been our object 
to prove the connexion of Abraham with the principal body of the 
Chasdim or Chaldees, and to have acquired from them, as a mem- 
ber of their body that philosophical and astronomical knowledge 
for which he has been celebrated throughout the East. This know- 
ledge he is supposed to have afterwards communicated to the 
original inhabitants of Canaan and Egypt, both of whom we have 
endeavoured to shew were also descendants of Shem. From this 
Patriarch accordingly, and afterwards from his descendant Joseph, 
the Egyptians obtained most probably their knowledge, which they 
afterwards communicated through Cadmus to the Greeks, and 
which has been since through the Tyrian Hercules and the Druids 
conveyed to the other nations of Europe, and formed the founda- 
tion of our literature and science. Whether then as a temporary 
resident in Canaan and Egypt, in his intercourse with Abimelech 
King of Gerar, or with the Kings of Egypt, there is little reason 
to doubt that Abraham instructed these descendants of their 
common ancestor Shem in not merely philosophy and astronomy, 
but in the religion of that God who had called him out of Ur of 
the Chaldees, and from the idolatry of the Chasdim and his country- 
men in Kedem. And it is evident we think, that Abraham could 
! Tsaiah xi, 1. 2. 
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