94 ON THE DATE AND ORIGIN 
teuch, which is in the Pheenician®? character, and, as is supposed by 
Le Clerc, was written by the priest of Eserhaddon®? about 670 
years before the age of christianity. 
7th, The opinion of Dr. Gillies applies cogently to Grecian litera- 
ture; but Greek and Roman®* testimonies assign the invention of 
letters to the people of Pheenicia; and those testimonies have been 
admitted by many learned antiquaries of all ages. The literature of 
the Pheenicians is handed down to us, in the form of quotation,®* by 
the two fathers of the christian church, Eusebius and Theodoret ; 
and the works of Sanchoniatho of Berytus, a small town to the north 
of Sidon and Tyre, on the coast of Pheenicia, had perished amid the 
wreck of time, had they not exposed to christian contempt the erring 
imbecility of a heathen and an atheist ; whose date may be placed, in 
reference to pagan and sacred history, about the middle®® or end of 
NON LICET TIBI SCRIPTO DIVULGARE.”—< For you know that 
the Talmud itself received among us, was not formerly digested into a defi- 
nite book, on account of that reason, which at that time obtained universally 
in our nation, namely, i is not lawful for thee to divulge in writing the 
words which I have spoken to thee with my mouth.” 'The writings of San- 
choniatho contained a history of the Jews similar to that of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, according to the christian fathers Eusebius and Theodoret. 
62 “'The Samaritans having received the Pentateuch (or the five books of 
Moses) from the priests sent by Eserhaddon, have preserved it to this day in 
the same language and character as it was then written in, i. e. the old He- 
brew or Phoenician, which we call the Samaritan, to distinguish it from the 
modern Hebrew” (or Chaldee).—Calmet, art. Samaritans. 
63 “ He,” Le Clerc, “ therefore, imagines that the Pentateuch was com- 
posed by the priest sent to the Cuthites or Samaritans.”—Jbid. This priest 
is mentioned in Kings ii. 28. “Then one of the priests whom they had 
carried away came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should 
fear the Lord.” It is, however, somewhat enigmatical that the Samaritan 
Pentateuch was unknown in Europe till the sixteenth century.—Read Ca/- 
met, Samaritan. 
64 Herodotus, 5,58; Lucan, Pliny, Curtius. 
65 The arguments in favour of the authenticity of these quotations are 
well sustained by the northern encyclopzedists, in the article “ Sancho- 
niatho.” 
66 The date of Sanchoniatho has been much disputed. By some it has 
been attributed to the time of Semiramis, 1900 years before the christian era. 
Sanchoniatho, however, refers to the building of Tyre as an ancient event.— 
Now the building of Tyre has been attributed to a time posterior to Gideon, 
about 1250 pc. “ All this,” say the authors of the Ency. Brit. “may be 
true, but, ifso, it amounts to ademonstration that the antiquity of Sanchoni- 
atho is not so high by many ages as that which is claimed for him by Philo 
and Porphery, though he may still be more ancient (as, we think, Vossius 
; 
’ 
