4 On the supposed Change 



world where there is no weather cold enough to congeal 

 water on the earth.* 



Instead therefore of proving that snow and ice were 

 formerly common in Midian and Palestine, the frequent 

 mention of these substances in Job, is almost conclusive 

 evidence that Moses was not the author. That book, 

 which is an excellent description of human nature, was 

 unquestionably written by some person, either in Uz, or 

 the northern parts of Judea, where ice, frost and snow 

 were then, and are now, annually seen on the mountains. 

 *' If I wash myself in snow water, and make my hands 

 never so clean," says Job, chapter 9th ; which is a de- 

 scription that would not answer for Egypt or Midian, f 

 but answers well to the greatest part of Judea. " The 

 sweet influences of Pleiades," mentioned in the 38th 

 chapter, allude doubtless to the spring rains, which fell 

 in Judea about the rising of that constellation, which, in 

 Pliny's time, happened near the vernal equinox, but 

 which, fifteen hundred years earlier, must, by the pre- 

 cession of the equinox, have happened about the first of 

 March. This circumstance answers well to the climate 

 of Syria, but not at all to that of Egypt, where the rising 

 of that constellation was the most sickly and disagreea- 

 ble time in the year. The former and latter rain, men- 

 tioned also in that book, indicate that it was descriptive 

 of the climate of Syria and Judea ; for the success of ag- 

 riculture did then, as it does now, depend entirely on 

 th€ ^lutumnal and spring rains. This division of rainy 

 seasons however did not exist in Egypt ; it was used on- 

 ly in Syria and Italy, and perhaps in Greece. Every 

 circumstance that occurs to my view, in regard to the 

 book of Job, tends to prove that Moses could not have 

 been the author ; and most of the Jew^ish Rabbins have 

 been of this opinion. Certain it is, from internal evi- 

 dence, that the scene of it was laid in a country much 

 colder than Midian, or the champaign country of Pales- 



*See an account of a hail-storm in Africa — Hirtius Pansa de Bello 

 Afric. 42. 



1 1 speak of the Midian, near the Arabic Gulf, where Moses liv- 

 ed, with his father in law j not of Midian on the borders of Judea. ,■ 



