140 THEORY OF THE EAUTH. 



til a long time after them, that pretended ex- 

 tracts were given from the Egyptian, Phenician, 

 and Babylonian annals. Berosus wrote only in 

 the reign of Seleucus Nicanor ; Hieronymus in 

 that of Antiochus Soter, and Manetho under 

 Ptolemy Philadelphia ; the whole three having 

 flourished only in the third century before the 

 Christian era. That Sanconiatho was an author 

 real or supposed, was not known till Philo of 

 Byblos had published a translation of his work 

 in the reign of Adrian, in the second century be- 

 fore Christ; and, when he did become known, 

 there was nothing found in his account of the 

 early ages, as in those of all the authors of this 

 kind, but a puerile theogony, or metaphysical 

 doctrines, so disguised under the form of allegory 

 as to be unintelligible 



One nation alone has preserved annals written 

 in prose before the period of Cyrus, namely, the 

 Jewish people. The part of the Old Testament 

 which is known by the name of the Pentateuch, 

 has existed in its present form, at least since the 

 separation of the ten tribes under Jeroboam, since 

 it was received as authentic by the Samaritans 

 equally as the Jews, which assures us that its ac- 

 tual antiquity is upwards of 2800 years. Besides 

 this, we have no reason to doubt the book of Ge- 

 nesis having been composed by Moses himself, 

 which gives it an antiquity of 500 years more, or 



