exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, ' at all events, this 

 inscription of Silo am shows that the curved or Phenidan character was in 

 use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew Monarchy r , as well as the conter- 

 minous Phenicia^ Moabitis, and the more distant Assyria. No monu- 

 ment, indeed,' continues Dr. Birch, ' of greater antiquity, inscribed in 

 the square character (Hebrew), has been found, as yet^ older than the 

 fifth century^ A.D. ; and the coins of the Maccabean princes, as well 

 as those of the revolter Barcochab, are impressed with Samaritan 

 characters.' " As to the Moabite Stone, I would refer my readers to a 

 little work entitled "An Inquiry into the Age of the Moabite Stone," 

 by Samuel Sharpe, the celebrated author of " The History of Egypt," 

 in which will be found abundant evidence to prove that the inscription 

 on the Stone is a forgery of about the year A.D. 260. 



Apart from the history contained in the books of the Old Testament, 

 there is absolutely no record of the Jews as an independent people, 

 except that contained in the writings of Josephus (about A.D. 100) ; 

 and, although that author may be tolerably trustworthy when relating 

 matters near to his own time, yet in his description of Jewish 

 antiquities he evidently, as he himself asserts, rests only on tradition. 

 For instance, he alone records the story of Alexander entering the holy 

 place at Jerusalem and offering sacrifice on the altar ; but Arrian, in his 

 " Anabasis of Alexander the Great," where he specially treats of the life 

 and actions of this great conqueror, says not one word about such a 

 place as Jerusalem, or about such a story as that recorded by Josephus, 

 Curtius, who wrote a far more detailed account of the life and conquests 

 of Alexander, mentions neither Jerusalem nor the story of Alexander 

 and the holy place. Herodotus, about B.C. 430, when narrating the 

 two raids of the Scythians through Syria, as far as Egypt, says not a 

 word about any Jews. Xenophon, who wrote 150 years after they were 

 said to have returned from Babylon, or about B.C. 386, appears to have 

 been unconscious of their existence, only mentioning the Syrians of 

 Palestine. Neither did Sanchoniathon, Ctesias, Berosus, nor Manetho 

 even once mention them as a nation. Diodorus also, when writing of 

 the siege of Tyre by the soldiers of Alexander, neither mentions the 

 Jews as a nation nor Jerusalem as their chief town. In fact, we have 

 no account of them at all, except that contained in the Old Testament 

 and that in the writings of Josephus, until we find them subject to the 

 Romans, under Antiochus Epiphanes, about B.C. 165, when in all 1 

 probability they had just settled down into a dependent nation, having 

 been driven into Syria by the Babylonians, whose fertile valleys these 

 Arabian nomads had attempted to colonise. Being surrounded on all 

 sides by nations whose religions so very far surpassed their own in 

 development, it did not take long for the Yahoudi (afterwards called 



