90 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



in the second century after Jesus Christ ; and when it was made 

 known, there was only discovered, as in all other authors of his kind, 

 a childish theogony, or metaphysics, so blended with allegories, as not 

 to be distinguishable, 



Only one people, the Jews, have preserved prose records of an ear- 

 lier date than the time of Cyrus. 



That part of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch exists, in its 

 original state, at least since the dispersion of the ten tribes under 

 Jeroboam ; for the Samaritans had it as well as the Jews ; and its 

 antiquity may be confidently reckoned at more than two thousand eight 

 hundred years. 



There is no reason to doubt but that the book of Genesis was com- 

 posed by Moses himself, which would give it a still farther antiquity 

 of five hundred years, namely, thirty-three centuries : and it is suffi- 

 cient to read it to perceive that it was composed partly of fragments 

 of former works. There is, however, no doubt of its being the most 

 ancient writing which the world is in possession of. 



But this work, and all those written subsequently, however unac- 

 quainted their authors were with Moses and his people, describe the 

 nations of the banks of the Mediterranean as newly formed ; they 

 mention them as half savages some centuries after ; moreover, they all 

 allude to an universal catastrophe, of an irruption of the waters, which 

 occasioned an almost entire regeneration of the human race ; and they 

 do not go verj-- remotely into antiquity to decide the epoch of this 

 event. 



The texts of the Pentateuch, which place this catastrophe the far- 

 thest back, do not go more remotely than twenty centuries before 

 Moses, nor consequently more than five thousand four hundred years 

 before our time *. 



The poetical traditions of the Greeks, the source of all our profane 

 history which refers to these early periods, have nothing which contra- 

 dicts the Jewish records ; on the contrary, they agree very harmoniously 

 as to the epoch which they assign to the Egyptian and Phoenician co- 

 lonies, which gave to Greece the first germs of civilization : we see, 

 besides, that about the same period as Israelitish tribes departed from 

 Egypt to carry into Palestine the sublime doctrine of the unity of God, 

 other colonies left the same country, to carry into Greece a more 

 gross religion, at least with respect to exterior form, whatever might 

 be the secrets which it reserved for the initiated ; and others, again, 



* The Septuagint, 53 45 years; the Samaritan text, 4869; the Hebrew text, 

 4174. 



