Digression 1: On the Origin of Letters

Reasons for investigating the origin of letters — Authors who maintain that the use of letters is antediluvian — Arguments in favor of that opinion — Whether it is probable that Adam invented letters — Jews and Mohammedans foolishly assert that letters were created by God — The authority of Suidas and Pliny — The prophecy of Enoch — The columns of Seth — The opinion of Kircher — Reply to the arguments for antediluvian letters — Vol. 17. 18

Augustine calls that opinion a suspicion — Whether the prophecy of Enoch was written under the Old Testament — Arguments against the antediluvian use of letters — The word of God not committed to writing before the flood — No report of letters among the nations after the flood — Testimonies concerning the origin of letters among the nations — The Phoenicians commonly held to be the first inventors of letters — No certain monument or memory of letters before Moses — The constant report that Cadmus was the first to discover letters among the nations — From where the Phoenicians (of whom Cadmus was one) learned the use of letters — The arguments of Kircher for pre-Sinaitic letters are examined — Mercury Trismegistus — Concerning the book called Asclepius — The Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14) — Concerning the astronomical observations of the Chaldeans.

I. Since theology — that is, the doctrine of truth which accords with godliness — has now for the first time been committed to letters, it does not seem foreign to the work at hand to investigate briefly the origin of the use of letters, or of writing. I confess we are approaching a topic of no great importance, one exposed to the conjectures of all men and already sufficiently vexed by the writings of very many; but we shall be brief, and, I hope, not tedious to the reader — especially since there is no lack of reason to inquire further into the sources of such matters. For since we have demonstrated above that God gave very many promises and commands to men before that most celebrated legislation which we have expounded, and since some of these pertained to the whole human race while all of them were given to the whole church through one or another administrator, if we were to posit that the use of letters was known before this time, it would be worth inquiring why He chose to commit none of them to writing, when this could have been done to the greatest benefit of all, as the outcome makes plain. Indeed, one might not unreasonably conjecture from this that letters did not have their origin before the law was written, and that those which God inscribed with His own finger on stone tablets were properly speaking the very first of all; and since I myself hold that opinion, it seemed worthwhile to subject briefly to examination what learned men bring forward to the contrary.

II. There are, therefore, those who maintain that the use of letters and writing is antediluvian. In order to lend an appearance of truth to that opinion, they employ proofs — or rather conjectures — which they consider at least similar to the plausible. For first they judge it right that we should reckon that Adam, the parent of the world, most wise through long experience and use of things, watchful for the good of his posterity, also invented letters — so great a benefit to the human race. So Theod. Bibliander determined in his work On the Origin of Letters, and Angelus Roccha in his description of the Vatican Library. "In a brick half-column," he says, "Adam is depicted quite handsomely by the art of painting. Above his head are characters or letters of the more ancient kind, now called Hebrew; and at the feet of this same Adam a Latin inscription is read in the following form of words: 'Adam, divinely taught, the first inventor of the sciences and of letters.'" And he feels that reason itself persuades us that this was true. He did not wish, however, to burden himself with the tedium of setting it forth. Hermannus Hugo relies on his authority, in his work On

On the Origin of Writing, chap. vii. To these may be added Altissiodorensis, Annius Viterbiensis, and Camerarius. The Jews also affirm that Adam wrote certain books on the creation of the world and on repentance. "These wonders of books" — or rather portents — Giraldus says in his Dialogue on Poets i., "the Hebrews have been accustomed to relate mockingly to certain ignorant Christians of ours." But why should they not boldly say that Adam used books, when they affirm that the very letters were created by God on the evening of the Sabbath, as Munster witnesses in his Annotations on Genesis i. 1. The Mohammedans also foolishly assert that two verses of the Koran were created two thousand years before the world was founded and written by hand in God's paradise. Suidas, under the word Adam, has: this art and writing. What kind of letters he understands, however, he does not show; although earlier, under the word Abraham, he had said: he found sacred writings — by which words he seems to have intended Hebrew letters. They also make use of the authority or testimony of Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. vii. cap. lvi. "Letters," he says, "I have always considered to be Assyrian." And a little later: "From which it appears that the use of letters is eternal" — that is, coeval with the world. Furthermore, mention of the prophecy of Enoch is made in the epistle of Jude. How that could have been preserved in the memory of men, unless it had been committed to writing, is difficult to conjecture. They say further that Seth the son of Adam erected two columns — one of stone, one of brick — on which Josephus affirms that he inscribed the courses of the sun and stars and other observations of nature, Antiq. lib. i. cap. i. Polydore Vergil, lib. i. cap. vi.; Lud. Vives in lib. viii.; Augustine, On the City of God, cap. xxxix.; and others subscribe to the opinion of Josephus. Finally, unless I am mistaken, we observed earlier that Maimonides affirmed that "the antediluvian idolaters wrote many books in defense of their most pernicious error." III. There is no one, however, who, to my knowledge, ever took up the advocacy of this opinion so zealously as Athanasius Kircher, Obeliscus Pamphilius, lib. i. cap. i. pp. 2, 3. He relies, however, on Rabbinic testimonies, all of them recent, most of them utterly inept; indeed, lest anything should be lacking to his cause, he seems to lend credence to the most monstrous fiction about the creation of letters in paradise; at the very least he wishes to place it beyond controversy that God wrote a book and gave it to Adam. He also adduces the testimony of Josephus, but in words that nowhere exist in Josephus, and that doubtless never existed at all, p. 7. No one doubts that Ham discovered the impious arts, which, because Noah refused to allow him to bring them into the ark, he inscribed on rocks and iron plates. But such is that learned man that he seems scarcely anywhere to have considered what he ought to write, but only what he could; being prepared meanwhile to believe whatever "lying Greece dares in history" — Juv., Sat. x. 174. IV. And these are the arguments which learned men employ to render this opinion concerning antediluvian letters probable. Whether they have obtained by their help what they wished, it remains for us to see briefly.

That Adam invented letters is merely a suspicion and conjecture, to which no reason compels us to assent. Hence Augustine, Questions on Exodus, lib. ii. qu. lxix.: "It seems to some that letters began with the first men and were transmitted to Noah, and from there to the parents of Abraham, and from there to the people of Israel; but how this can be proved, I do not know." In which ignorance we, the most learned of men, all still labor. After his sin was remitted, the Chaldean Targum on Cant. Solom., cap. i. 1 reports that he "sang a song to God." The author adds nothing about writing, although he is otherwise full of trifles. Angelus Roccha relies on certain images — I know not what — and recent paintings in the Vatican Library; but how inept an author he is, how entirely devoid of judgment, we shall see presently. It is certain, moreover, that Adam did not invent all the arts and sciences; indeed, he perhaps did not devise even many of them, since he undoubtedly led a most toilsome life, and great was his misery as long as he lived. The authority of Pliny can have no weight in this matter, since he knew nothing about the origins of things beyond the fables and conjectures of the Greeks, and was therefore utterly ignorant in all true antiquity. Those who deny that the world is eternal cannot and should not use his testimony, since he invented the eternity of letters for no other reason than that he considered the world to have had no beginning.

V. Nor does the mention of the prophecy of Enoch seem to lend credibility or authority to this conjecture. The memory of such sayings over many centuries — and why not over all of them? — ought not to seem impossible, especially to those for whom ecclesiastical traditions satisfy stomach and palate. Caesar, De Bello Gallico, lib. vi. cap. xiv, reports that among the Druids it was "not lawful to commit sacred things to letters." It is well known that all the Pythagoreans and the theologians of the Egyptians observed the same discipline; and we showed this earlier from Herodotus, lib. i. Indeed, the Lacedaemonians committed no laws to writing, as Justinian observed, J. 2, 8. 20. Plutarch reports in the Life of Lycurgus: "He did not," he says, "allow written laws." Nor was there lacking hope of retaining in memory what was said concisely and laconically. But it is not necessary to assert the credibility of traditions in this matter. For whether the prophecy of Enoch existed unwritten or in written form through all those centuries from the time it was first uttered and became known until the days of Jude, there is no reason for us to believe that Jude learned it either from tradition or from written books. He who first committed it to letters, being moved by the Holy Spirit, it is not credible that he drew it from any other source than the inspiration of that Spirit Himself. And there was a very grave reason why it should then be rescued from very long oblivion. The time was near at hand in which this prophecy was to be most fully fulfilled in the total overthrow and horrible destruction of the Jewish church, the type and pattern of which had gone before in the flood; as Peter, weaving the same web as Jude, teaches in 2 Epist. cap. iii. The Holy Spirit, the very author of that prophecy, therefore repeats and recalls the most ancient prediction of the judgments of God now to be executed, in order to strengthen the faith of the saints. But for repeating His own words, He has no need of traditions or books. VI. Furthermore: it is true indeed that Josephus affirms that the posterity of Seth (not Seth himself) erected two columns, to whose account some are pleased to lend credence. Although I am not greatly moved by his bare authority in a matter least clear to him, it is enough in this matter to deny that he makes mention of letters; although Hornius boldly pronounces that he employed "incredible boldness, or frivolous credulity" in the whole of that affair, Introductio ad Geographiam Veterem. That this could have been done by other means without the use of letters properly so called is evident from Egyptian hieroglyphics. But all these things are uncertain, and in them there is not a trace or weight of reason, nor even a shadow, for establishing this conjecture. Nor should the testimony of Maimonides have weight against those most valid arguments by which we have proved that there were no antediluvian idolaters. VII. The suspicion of some, therefore, regarding Adamic or antediluvian letters, is in no way probable. But there is no lack of reasons by which (beyond the weakness of these proofs) it can be shown to be destitute of all appearance of truth — indeed, even of the color of probability; let it suffice to produce one or two. The one which we stated at the beginning of this disputation is sufficiently strong for settling this controversy. From the beginning of things, God had given to men, for the use of those who feared Him, many promises and commands which had their foundation nowhere except in His most free revelation. Without knowledge of those promises and commands, all that natural knowledge of God which they could obtain from the law of nature implanted within them, or from the contemplation of created things, was in vain. That God, who is supremely good, willed the human race to use all the means granted by Him as necessary for obtaining eternal life, requires no proof. But since it is undeniable that those means could best be preserved in writing and come to the knowledge of men, and since that manner of preserving the divine promises and precepts would not have displeased God — indeed, would have pleased Him most — what adequate reason can be given why He would not have willed this to be done before the flood, or would not have commanded it to be done, if the use of letters had been known at that time? But since no traces exist of any sacred writing composed by God's command before the flood, do not merely suspect but be certain that the use of letters was not known at that time. Hence Theophylact: "Those men before the law," he says, "were taught by God Himself, not by writings and books" — on Matt. VIII. Furthermore, if letters had been in common use before the flood, and consequently known to all those who survived that catastrophe of the flood, how shall we suppose it possible that immediate forgetfulness should seize all nations of a thing so excellent and most useful in human life; and that no memory at all of letters or their use should have been preserved among [illegible]

The nations dispersed in every direction from the Babylonian catastrophe, or that even the faintest report of them survived — the things commonly celebrated here and there about their first invention in one place or another do not permit us to believe. Now since the origins of letters which can be investigated with certainty not only exclude them from the antediluvian world, but from that entire span of time which elapsed between the flood and the legislation, we may briefly examine them. Whatever can be gleaned from the ancients — Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Tacitus, Lucan, and others — concerning the origin of letters, Lilius Giraldus reported in his first Dialogue on Poets, mixing much that is inept and false with what is true. Among other things, he invents that certain Jews — I know not who — discovered the Hebrew points and called them Mesoroth, ineptly enough; that the Hebrew pointing is not the Masorah, nor called so, those know who have not yet washed behind their ears; Hermannus Hugo transcribed his compilation into his own book, On the Origin and Antiquity of Writing. The origin of Phoenician letters and their first arrival in Greece was diligently and learnedly set forth from the monuments of the ancients by the eminent Samuel Bochart in the second part of Geographia Sacra, lib. i. cap. xx., to whose supreme learning and diligence scarcely anything can be added. The admirable Joseph Scaliger accomplished the same in his Animadversiones in Eusebii Chronicon, at the year 1617. Angelus Roccha, in his description of the Vatican Library, reviews the inventors of letters in various languages. But when Athanasius Kircher attempted to overshadow the diligence and learning of all in his great work to which he gave the title Oedipus Aegyptiacus (than which, I strongly doubt, any literary work has ever appeared with greater ostentation since men were born), what he accomplished the learned will judge. We shall set forth the whole matter briefly, so that we may arrive where we are heading.

IX. Concerning the antiquity of letters and the glory of their first invention, the Assyrians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and even the Greeks themselves contend — to say nothing of the fables of the Chinese. We showed earlier that Pliny considered Assyrian letters to have always existed, and therefore to be eternal. Diodorus Siculus, lib. v, reports that the Phoenicians received letters from the Syrians, or Assyrians. Manetho transmitted the tradition that Mercury taught the Egyptians the use of letters; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, lib. iii., and Plutarch, Symposiaca, ix. Quest. iii, report this — "Hermes," he says, "is reported among the gods to have first discovered writing in Egypt." As for the Greeks, some write that Cecrops the Athenian invented letters; so Tacitus, Annals, xi. cap. xiv.: "Some record that Cecrops the Athenian, or Linus the Theban, and in the time of the Trojans Palamedes the Argive, devised sixteen letter-forms; and that soon others, and especially Simonides, discovered the rest." Cecrops, however, is said to have come from Egypt and brought letters from there to Greece. Among the Phoenicians, no memory of letters exists before Cadmus and Phoenix his brother. And these are nearly all the things that are reported about the origin of letters with any appearance of truth. Let us first see whether their antiquity can be traced back beyond the times of Moses, and then we shall speak of other matters. Cecrops, who was also

Chapter 3. On the Origin of Letters. 279. He is said to have been contemporary with Moses himself, as Eusebius judges in his Chronicle, and older than Cadmus. Eusebius, however, places Moses 200 years later than all the ancient Christians, and even Porphyry, does — for which reason he is thoroughly rebuked by George Syncellus. X. But there is no tradition worthy of credence that he invented letters; and what remains to be said will perhaps refute the fable. Most scholars judge that everything reported about Hermes, or the Egyptian Mercury, is fictitious. Cicero affirms in the third book of De Natura Deorum that he was the fifth Mercury, and that he was called Thoth by the Egyptians, to whom he gave laws and letters. That he lived long after Moses, Augustine proves in The City of God, book 18, chapter 39. But whenever he lived, he appears to have taught the Egyptians no letters other than hieroglyphics. Hence Plutarch, in Symposiacs, book 9, question 3, writes concerning his letters: that in the first place among Egyptian letters they paint that serpent-devouring bird. And Kircher, in Oedipus Aegyptiacus, volume 3, doubt 2, page 47, proves that the ibis was the first letter among the Egyptians. This Mercury is Taautus, whose books Clement of Alexandria carefully reviews in the sixth book of his Stromata. That Sanchuniathon also diligently investigated these books, Philo reports: "With great care he examined the books of Taautus, knowing that of those who lived under the sun, Taautus was the first to devise the use of letters." He says furthermore that this Taautus was the son of Misor, the brother of Sydyc, who begot the Dioscuri, who are known to have lived a little before the Trojan War. It is a very ancient and consistent opinion that Cadmus brought letters into Greece. Especially notable is the testimony of Herodotus in the Terpsichore, chapter 58: "These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, among whom were the Gephyraeans, while they inhabited this region, introduced among many other arts also letters into Greece, which, as it seems to me, the Greeks did not previously have." And shortly after, continuing to speak of the same letters: "Since the Phoenicians had introduced them into Greece, they were called Phoenician." And so they were called thus; or Cadmus's Phoenician signs. These are the words of Timon in Sextus Pyrrhonius. And Plutarch, Symposiacs, book 9, question 3: "They were called Phoenician because of Cadmus" — namely, those 16 letters which the Greeks first used. And in the Comparison of Water and Fire, from a Phoenician letter; Pliny also in Natural History, book 7, chapter 56, affirms that "Cadmus brought letters from Phoenicia into Greece, sixteen in number." And from Critias, Athenaeus in the Deipnosophistae, book 1: "The Phoenicians invented letters, the aid of speech." Why, moreover, letters are called elements, Eustathius gives various reasons in

Odyssey, book 14: those things which serve speech, or which aid speech. Or, as he says: those by whose help speech is abridged. Casaubon, in his commentary on Athenaeus, book 1, chapter 22, thinks that letters may not inappropriately be called remedies for the soul, "on account of the power of speech in healing the disturbances of the mind." According to that saying: for souls that are sick, words are physicians. Tacitus likewise, in the Annals, book 11, chapter 14, says: "It is reported that Cadmus, carried on a Phoenician fleet, was the author of that art" (namely, of writing) "among the still-uncultured peoples of Greece." Among the epigrams written about Zeno, which Diogenes records in his Life, section 30, is that of Zenodotus the Stoic, which ends thus: "If his homeland is Phoenicia, what of it? For Cadmus himself was

a Phoenician, who gave the Greeks their first letters." Clement agrees with this tradition in the Stromata, book 1: "Cadmus was a Phoenician, and the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Ephorus says; hence Herodotus writes that the letters are called Phoenician." So also Suidas in his article on Cadmus, where he quotes the epigram of Zenodotus from Diogenes; and Phoenician letters are noted in Hesychius. He says they were named from Actaeon of Boeotia. But it is more probable that they were named thus from Cadmus himself, since he was a Phoenician; although Actaeon was the grandson of Cadmus through his daughter Autonoe. And Lucan, book 2, line 220:

"The Phoenicians first, if tradition is to be believed, dared to mark enduring speech with crude figures."

By these words he refers to that saying of Critias in Athenaeus, book 1: "The Phoenicians invented letters, the aid of speech." Elsewhere, however, the same Lucan teaches that hieroglyphic writing was in use among the Egyptians before the invention of the use of letters, in the same passage cited above, line 223:

"Memphis had not yet learned to weave together papyrus scrolls from the river: on stones alone, and birds and beasts carved, did animals preserve their magic tongues."

Curtius also, in book 4, chapter 4: "This people" (namely, the Phoenicians) "either first taught letters or first learned them." And Irenaeus, in book 1, chapter 12: "The Greeks confess that they received sixteen letters from Cadmus, and that afterward, as time progressed, they invented first the aspirated letters, then the double letters, and finally of all, that Palamedes added the long letters." Concerning scarcely any other origin of things is tradition more consistent throughout all antiquity. Kircher also assents to this opinion; but he vainly contends, with many words and almost no arguments, that Cadmus was an Egyptian — as he argues in Oedipus Aegyptiacus, volume 2, dissertation 3, prelude, pages 56–57. I grant that Eusebius held this view, in Chronicle, book 1: "Phoenix," he says, "and Cadmus, having set out from Egyptian Thebes into Syria, reigned at Tyre and Sidon." The contrary is proved by the manners, religion, and Phoenician names, which are wholly unlike those of the Egyptians. Concerning the number of letters also, which Cadmus brought into Greece, there is no less agreement. There were sixteen. So say Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch, and Eusebius in Chronicle, book 2, numbers 16–17. Pliny affirms that during the Trojan War Palamedes added four more to these, namely Θ, Ξ, Φ, Χ; and that afterward Simonides Melicus added the same number more, namely Ζ, Η, Ψ, Ω. It thus appears that the Cadmean letters were Α, Β, Γ, Δ, Ε, Η, Ι, Κ, Λ, Μ, Ν, Ο, Π, Ρ, Σ, Τ.

The words of Plutarch to the same effect are: those which were first called Phoenician and were named after Cadmus, being increased fourfold or by four, afforded the occasion also for those discovered afterward; and Palamedes first added four, and Simonides afterward added the same number. Symposiacs, book 9, problem 3. And Irenaeus, Against

the Heresy of Marcus: the Greeks agree that sixteen letters were first received from Cadmus. But if it is true that Cadmus brought only sixteen letters into Greece, it does not appear that those were the same as the letters then in use among the Hebrews. For before the times of Cadmus, the law was written by Moses, in which twenty-two letters occur everywhere; indeed, in the Decalogue all of them are found except one, Teth. If therefore Cadmus had made use of those letters, why should we not suppose that he made the remaining six known to the Greeks as well? It is probable, therefore, that the Phoenicians, after they had observed the use of letters among the Hebrews, devised certain ones of their own — sixteen, namely — after their example. These Cadmus brought into Greece. Whether they were the same as those called Samaritan letters is uncertain. We shall see that the Samaritan alphabet received the number of twenty-two letters only at a late time. It is likewise established that they changed the shapes, or characters, of the letters. There is thus no trace at all of letters among the nations before the age of Cadmus. Diodorus Siculus is the authority that the Phoenicians, to whom Cadmus belonged, learned the use of letters from the Syrians, in book 5, chapter 74. "The Syrians," he says, "were the inventors of letters; and from them the Phoenicians learned." No one is ignorant that the Hebrews were called Syrians. But it is established from what we have adduced concerning Cadmus that the Phoenicians received from the Syrians the use of letters, not the shapes, not the number. Indeed, some report of the mode of writing practiced among the Syrians penetrated into Greece, but the practice itself, as it appears, did not. They call it the sacred writing, and it proceeds from right to left. That this kind of writing is so called, Giraldus notes from the sixth book of Pompeius. Some have attempted to investigate the etymology of the word; unless I am mistaken, without success. Some trace of it seems to have been preserved in that style which they called boustrophedon. Concerning which Pausanias in the Eliac books, Isidore in the Origines, book 6, chapter 13, Suidas under the article on the law from below, Meursius in Attic Lectures, book 1, Vossius in Grammar, book 1, Bochart in Geographia Sacra, page 2, book 1, chapter 20, and others write. But what the shapes of those letters were — either of those which Cadmus first brought into Greece, or of those which the Ionians first used — is not fully established. Herodotus reports, in the Terpsichore, chapter 59 and following, that among the Thebans in the temple of Ismenian

in the temple of Apollo, he saw Cadmean letters cut into certain tripods, largely similar to Ionic letters. The first of the epigrams was as follows:

Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboans.

Scaios the boxer, having won the contest, dedicated me to Apollo of glorious victory, as a beautiful offering.

Laodamas dedicated this tripod to Apollo.

dedicated the beautiful offering to Heracles. Now, that Laodamas dedicated this tripod before the Trojan War — contrary to Josephus, who affirms that the Greeks were ignorant of the use of letters at that time — the learned Vossius, in De Grammatica, book i, chapter x, attempts to prove, but without success, since Laodamas's reign fell almost precisely in that very period. For he was the son of Eteocles, and the son of Polynices took part in that war. Joseph Scaliger reproduced these inscriptions — in ancient Ionic letters, which Herodotus affirms were similar to the Cadmean — in his Animadversiones in Eusebii Chronicon, at Eusebius number 1617, according to the forms he copied from columns in the Farnese Gardens in Rome. The example of the first verse is as follows:

AMPHITRYON. DEDICATED. FROM. THE TELEBOANS. XII. That these were the most ancient letter-forms among the Greeks I would scarcely have believed, had not Pliny taught that the ancient Ionic letters differed little from those of the early Latins, book vii, chapter lviii. And Tacitus, Annals xi: "The shapes are like Latin letters, which are the most ancient of the Greeks."

XIII. For they do not differ so greatly from those in common use that knowledge and understanding of them would have escaped the most learned of the ancients — and yet that is precisely what we read concerning the Ionic letters. For Philostratus, in the Life of Apollonius, relates the following about the Eretrians who were led captive in the time of King Darius into a certain region of the Medes not far from Babylon: they write after the Greek manner — that is, from left to right, not from right to left as do the Orientals — "and the letters are indeed Greek, but of a kind they affirm they have never seen." He likewise relates that the Greeks who inhabited Gades inscribed certain things on the Pillars of Hercules in letters "neither Egyptian, nor Indian, nor known to anyone" (book v, chapter v). And yet the Greeks migrated there long after the Ionians had learned the Cadmean letters. I judge them to have been Phoenician, from which those letters set out above differ most widely.

XIV. Since it is therefore plain that the use of letters became known to the post-diluvian world only very gradually, by various degrees, and through various occasions and endeavors — whatever fiction about certain antediluvian letters may please others — to me, indeed, it is truly not credible. XV. Let us proceed to those ages that immediately followed the flood.

CHAP. III.] ON THE ORIGIN OF LETTERS. 283 — so that we may trace, if possible, the footprints of letters that arose before the Mosaic law was divinely given and written. Athanasius Kircher, by deliberate effort, strives to prove that the Egyptians had letters before the time of Moses; but he makes use of this one argument alone: that they were taught the use of letters by Mercury Trismegistus, whom he holds to have been more ancient than Moses and contemporary with Abraham. Furthermore, he maintains that Trismegistus wrote many books, and that some of them still survive. And so, once the disputed matter is thus at last resolved, he proceeds in earnest to celebrate his triumph with many words. But that I should show — in many passages — that this learned man (whose leisure or whose talent I am greatly at a loss to decide which more to admire) has heaped up nothing but crude conjectures, for the most part absurd, interpolated with the most extravagant fables,

— of the bulky work, it seems. For the testimonies he employs are for the most part of such a kind that no learned man could bring himself to review them except for the sake of showing off his polyglot erudition. Indeed, they are the most putrid fictions of ignorant men, none of which any ancient writer who was not a trifler ever mentions. And in those that seem to be of somewhat better quality, the age or the writing is not that of Hermetic provenance. What of the fact that Athanasius himself elsewhere concedes that this Mercury used hieroglyphic letters only? For when he had occasion to mention the many thousands of books attributed to this Mercury, he immediately adds: "I would not, however, have anyone suppose at this point that Trismegistus wrote thirty-six thousand complete volumes; rather, by such books are properly understood certain definite hieroglyphic systems, by which he indicated various arts and sciences." Furthermore, he also attributes to the same Mercury, and claims for him, the book still extant called the Asclepius, and denies that it was composed by ancient heretics, as some suppose; and to this argument he devotes a special digression. When I read it, I frankly pitied the man. For no mortal could ever have more uselessly expended his labor and study. Anyone who can persuade himself that these centos, so evidently stitched together from the sacred Scriptures and the writings of the Platonist philosophers, were written by that Hermes Trismegistus as older than Moses — such a person, it seems to me, is prepared not only to give his very ready assent to the most putrid and ridiculous trifles, but also to hold it as a fixed and settled conviction within himself that he will never open his eyes in the sunlight, lest the light should shine in upon one unwilling. But Kircher is captivated by the most portentous fictions of that rhapsodist — even that dreadful blasphemy by which he calls God, on account of the generation of the Son, without beginning. And to speak freely, what he chatters about the triform divine power and other such matters in his exposition of obelisks and hieroglyphics is plainly dreadful and full of scandal. The same man, however, confesses "that he cannot at all deny that many books were at one time circulated as spurious." For it is very well known that some of the ancients applied themselves to constructing that fraud. We have demonstrated this above from Plato. But as for that book falsely ascribed to Mercury, let the reader consult Casaubon, Exercit. 1, on

Apparat. Annal. sec. 1a. at num. 18, and let him learn how ineptly the most shameless impostor fabricated very many things. Cicero, Plutarch, and others record that many men celebrated for their wisdom were famous under the name of Mercury in antiquity. Of these, we showed above that the one whom they called Thoyth, or Thouth, or Touth, taught the Egyptians letters. No trustworthy testimony exists that he lived before the times of Moses or that he invented letters properly so called. And beyond all doubt, if they had possessed knowledge of the use of letters from the earliest antiquity, they would not have been so foolish as to have wished to use perpetually the perplexed, obscure, and useless mode of indicating the thoughts of the mind by means of hieroglyphics. Some also report that Zoroaster was older than Moses and wrote certain books — I know not what. But it is well that Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, affirms that he showed by many arguments that the book inscribed with the name of Zoroaster is spurious and recent.

XVI. Setting aside these trifles, therefore, let us see what is usually said seriously in this matter. There are two things which the champions of the antiquity of letters put forward with some appearance of probability. The first is that Moses himself makes mention of the "Book of the Wars of the Lord," written, namely, before those times (Numbers 21:14). The words are: — "Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the Lord:" by which he shows that a book had been written previously. But the Hebrew word does not signify only "book" but also any "narration" whatever. The root word properly means "to recount" or "to number"; "to write" only incidentally. Thus in Genesis 5:1, the phrase means "This is the narration" — namely, "of the generations of Adam" — and it is maintained that nothing written in a book is being asserted, but something told in a certain narration. Thus the ancient name of the city of Debir is said to have been Kiriath-sepher (Judges 1:11). The Vulgate adds, "That is, the city of letters" — from the Greek of the LXX, which has "city of writings." And the same city was called Kiriath-sanna (Joshua 15:49) — that is, the city of doctrine. By this term, therefore, doctrine or history is understood; for history teaches, especially that which concerns the acts of the Lord. Furthermore, the form of the word that follows does not denote what has been said but something about to be said; the Hebrews suppose the Book of Judges is intended; I think this very book of Numbers is what is meant. "It shall be said," Moses declares — that is, "from the Book of the Wars of the Lord" it shall be celebrated and on the lips of men.

XVII. The second argument in this matter is one which the distinguished Vossius also employs in De Arte Grammatica, chap. 9, book 1: that Simplicius, in his Commentary 46 on Aristotle's book 1 On the Heavens, asserts that "the astronomical observations which Callisthenes had sent from Babylon at Aristotle's command were of one thousand nine hundred and three years, which Porphyry reports" — as someone adds — "to have been preserved down to the times of Alexander of Macedon"; which indeed was not particularly difficult, if Callisthenes sent them from Babylon. But Simplicius lived approximately one thousand years after that dispatch by Callisthenes.

Chap. I. ON THE ORIGIN OF LETTERS. 285

XVIII. How easy it is to err in the reckoning of years — especially when no trustworthy monuments of the events in question survive — we all know. Nor does Simplicius set forth his own view; rather he reports what Porphyry had written somewhere: "The astronomical observations," he says, "were sent" — and Porphyry narrates that these were of one thousand nine hundred and three years, and that they had been preserved down to the times of Alexander of Macedon. In what work Porphyry related these things is uncertain, since those words are nowhere found in his surviving works. Berosus affirms that those observations extended only to 480 years — that is, to the thirteenth year of Antiochus Soter, to whom he presented his historical works. Epigenes taught that they amounted to 720 years, as Pliny witnesses, book 7, chap. 56. Moreover, Marcus Tullius mentions observations of 470,000 years among the Babylonians and the inhabitants of the Caucasus, in book 2 of De Divinatione, chap. 46. It is certain that nothing certain can be extracted from these rumors. Furthermore, the record of astronomical observations can be maintained through other arts without letters; after the use of letters was discovered, those things that had previously been preserved from destruction by human memory, by traditions, and by hieroglyphics were committed to letters. Epigenes, or Epigones, according to Pliny, teaches that the observations of the Babylonians were inscribed on baked bricks. How this was done is narrated by an old anonymous author on the divine wisdom according to the Egyptians. "The wise men of Babylon and Egypt," he says, "penetrating by the acuteness of their minds into the hidden things of the highest world, described the conceptions of their minds (as we ourselves are eyewitnesses) in stones by means of signs. And they did the same in all the arts and sciences. Then they placed the stones on which those things were described in their temples and displayed them as pages to be read through, and such things were in use among them in place of books." The distinguished Vossius further adds, and asks: if letters had not existed before "the giving of the law, for what purpose would the law have been written on bronze tablets by the very hands of God?" — bronze instead of stone being an apt memorial. But the answer is easy: for God did this both to provide for the perpetual preservation of His law and to instruct Moses, and thereby the whole people, in the use of letters. Although, therefore, I would not wish to carry on a contentious dispute with anyone who holds a different view on a matter of no great moment, I do not hesitate to affirm that no one has yet demonstrated, by sound arguments or trustworthy testimonies, that the use of letters properly so called is older than the Mosaic legislation — so that I fully rest in the judgment of Eupolemus, the most ancient historian among the Greeks, whose words Clement of Alexandria reports in the Stromata, book 1: "They say," he states, "that Moses was the first wise man, and that he was the first to deliver letters to the Jews, and that the Phoenicians received them from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians" — that is, "They say that Moses was the first wise man, and that he first taught the Jews letters, and that the Phoenicians received them from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians."

DIGRESSION II. ON THE ANCIENT LETTERS OF THE HEBREWS.

Concerning the ancient letters or characters of the Hebrews, with which the law was written by God Himself, and according to the standard of that writing all the books of the Old Testament.

II. The Mosaic Pentateuch, written in those letters commonly called Samaritan, yet in the Hebrew language, still exists and has existed from the most remote Christian antiquity. Origen and Jerome make mention of it. Whether either of them ever actually saw the book itself, or any copy of it, is uncertain. That work which Origen, with great labor and great expense, produced and published for the sake of the Hebrew truth and of the Greek translations — there was no more celebrated literary monument in the whole ancient church. If he had ever seen that Samaritan Pentateuch, or (if he saw it) had considered it worthy of any place or esteem, he would without doubt have assigned it some notable place, at least some place, in that great work of his; yet this was not done by him.

2. Jerome affirms that the Samaritan text is written with as many letters as the Hebrew; but since this is most manifestly false, that most learned man appears to have pronounced on the matter only from rumors and the reports of others. Both of them also write that the letter Tau among the Samaritans resembles a cross. Jerome, on Ezekiel ch. 9: "To come to our own subject: among the ancient letters of the Hebrews, which the Samaritans use to this day, the final Thau has the likeness of a cross." Tertullian and Augustine were of the same opinion. But there is no mention whatever of the letter Tau in Ezekiel; and most absurdly, and not without asinine stupidity, some people trifle about the sign of the cross being impressed on the foreheads of men from this passage. The words are a Hebrew cognate-object construction, which our translators rightly render, "And set a mark" — "Signabis signo." For that intransitive verbs take a cognate noun is something even schoolboys know among the Hebrews. It is false, moreover, that the final letter in the Samaritan alphabet is cross-shaped. That character of this letter, which appears in the alphabet that Schickard produced from the Vatican Library in his Bechinath Happerush, is without doubt fictitious. I do indeed acknowledge that in certain coins a figure not unlike a cross appears in the place of the Hebrew letters; but concerning coins, Jerome says nothing; nor was that dubious merchandise yet held in any esteem. It is not probable, therefore, that those most learned men ever saw that Samaritan Pentateuch — at least the one that still survives. From their testimony, however, it is sufficiently clear that the Samaritans of that time had the Mosaic Pentateuch written indeed in the Hebrew language but in a character different from that which was in use among the Jews. The Samaritans were that people whom Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, about one hundred and thirty years

— or thereabouts, before the Babylonian captivity — transplanted to Samaria and to the other cities formerly inhabited by the ten tribes whom he had led away captive. That they were descended from Babel, Cuthah, Avah, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, sacred Scripture shows at 2 Kings 17:24: from Cuthah they were afterward called Cutheans. They were therefore Chaldeans and Syrians, as is evident from the names of the places, cities, and regions from which they were derived. That at their first arrival in the land of Canaan they used, along with their vernacular tongue — that is, the Syro-Chaldean — also Chaldean letters, no one, I think, can doubt. That the knowledge of letters was known to the Chaldeans from such great antiquity that some have held the Assyrian letters to be eternal, was shown previously from Pliny. The art of writing, and that in Chaldean, was therefore known and familiar to those peoples transplanted to Samaria. The Babylonian and Syrian colonists accordingly occupied the Israelite settlements, using their own language and ancestral customs. Concerning the idols which they worshiped — first in the place of God, then alongside God — namely, Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Ashima, Adrammelech, and Anammelech, let the reader consult the most learned Selden's Syntagma on the Syrian Gods.

3. This most base people, therefore — a rabble of various nations, amounting to almost nothing — inhabited the wilderness, without law or king, subject to the Jews, and remained ignoble and obscure until the Babylonian captivity. But when they were afflicted by lions sent against them by God on account of the holy land being defiled with idols, against the Noachic precepts, that is, against natural law — and when the neighboring Jews, among whom alone the worship of the true God flourished, refused to have anything in common with them — they arranged for Shalmaneser the king to send them a Jeroboamic priest, who would teach them the manner of worshiping God as observed by the idolatrous Israelites. The Rabbis write that his name was Dusthai. For they speak as follows: "Sennacherib sent to the Cutheans Rabbi Dusthai son of Jamzi to teach them the law." This is most absurd in their manner, inventing some Rabbi whose Rabbinic title was born many centuries too early, and claiming he was sent by Sennacherib, to whom this business had nothing to do. The words that Epiphanius reports on this matter are altogether monstrous and most like the ravings of dreamers, written with such great negligence — to say nothing harsher — that he does not appear to have deigned to consult sacred history. For he first narrates "that the Assyrian nations were sent into Judea by Nebuchadnezzar, at the request of the elders who were led into captivity in the days of Jeconiah" — nearly as many monstrosities as words. Then he says "that Ezra was sent from Babylon to instruct the Samaritans in the law of the Lord." Concerning the law, he says: "We sent Ezra the priest as a teacher of the law from

Babylon, to those Assyrians settled in Samaria" — and not even once throughout the whole narration of history does he wake up. Then he would have it that the Samaritans are called, as it were, guardians: "Interpreting the Samaritans," he says, "as guardians, because they were once placed in that land in the order of guards, and because they were appointed by Moses to keep the law" — they interpret Samaritans

Guardians, because they were once placed in that land as guardians, or because they were constituted by Moses to keep the law. Although these things are most absurd, Denis Petavius, in his Animadversiones in Epiphanius, affirms that nearly all Greek and Latin writers embrace that idle interpretation of the word; and indeed Eusebius expressly anticipated him in this etymology in his Chronicles — unless the very words "which is expressed in Latin as 'guardians'" were added by Jerome, as Scaliger and Petavius suspect. But whatever kind of priest he was, not at all concerned with the worship of the true God — which ought properly to be performed only at Jerusalem — he taught the new peoples that impious manner of worshiping God which had prevailed among the Israelites before the captivity. The Samaritans were thus admitted into the Israelite religion in the same way that the Americans were admitted into Christianity by the Jesuits and other Roman emissaries; for in order to make the business of conversion easier, they granted them permission to worship and adore the idols they had previously held — especially their household gods and domestic shrines, which they called Zemas — adorned with the titles and names of saints. But why should I speak of the Jesuits, those bold corrupters of the entire religion of Jesus Christ, who devote themselves solely to expanding the pontifical kingdom, when that whole harvest of ceremonies which springs up everywhere among Christians has grown up from nothing but Gentilism and pagan superstition? IV. Whether that priest communicated the written law of God to these Samaritans is uncertain. No testimonies of that fact remain, no monuments. But as the affairs of the Jews were crushed and moving toward ruin, it is credible that these Cutheans gradually raised their heads, and afterward, when the Jews were led away captive, occupied their vacant settlements. Whether they made any progress at all in the Jewish religion and in the knowledge of God, or utterly abandoned it, is uncertain. It is true that when they wished to join themselves to the returning Jewish people, enticed by the carnal hope of sharing in the privileges that the kings of Persia had granted to them, they affirm that they had sacrificed to God from the days of Esarhaddon, who had transplanted them into the region of Samaria, or that "they had not sacrificed to any other" (Ezra 4:2). For the written text has the one reading, the marginal reading the other. But the people of God gave no credence to those lying hypocrites who were seizing upon the opportunities of the time to advance their own carnal interests. Rejected therefore by the first reformers of the Jewish church and by the votes of the whole returning people, and seizing upon the occasion of a dispute that had arisen between the high priests, with the help and persuasion of a vain man who had been banished for his crimes, they built for themselves a temple on Mount Gerizim after the likeness of that which they had seen the Jews constructing at Jerusalem. But Jerome and also Epiphanius affirm that they had invented that very mountain, and falsely called it Gerizim, when in reality it was not. Both maintain that Gerizim is situated near Jericho, far enough from Neapolis; Mercator holds the same opinion; against whom, however, Masius disputes in his Commentary on Joshua ch. viii. And in what religious spirit they were held from that time, their

— history of those times. For even if we grant that the common report of the Jews was a lie when they affirm that the Samaritans had placed an image of a dove at the top of the temple they were building, in order to worship it, there is yet no cause for doubt that what Josephus brings forth from trustworthy monuments is most true. When Antiochus was troubling the church with various afflictions, that most trustworthy author proves that the Samaritans, fearing lest some evil might arise to themselves from that quarter as well, openly renounced by letters sent to the king all worship of the true God. Josephus, Antiquities, Book 12, ch. vii.

V. Whether they had received the use of the Pentateuch by that time, I for my part greatly doubt. For since they knew that that impious tyrant had no hatred so great as his hatred of the sacred writings, which he strove with all diligence to wrench from the hands of men and to consume with flames, and since they were of such a mind as to offer their temple voluntarily to be dedicated to Jupiter of Greece, why would they not also have handed over the law itself to be burned, so as to demonstrate clearly that they had been entirely removed from any participation in the Jewish crime? But the corruptions that still remain in their Pentateuch seem to persuade the contrary — corruptions which were probably made while the temple they had built on Mount Gerizim still stood, that is, before the reign of the Jewish pontiff Hyrcanus, who overthrew that temple and leveled it with the ground. These corruptions, moreover, clearly demonstrate the spirit with which they dealt in that religion which they had unwillingly embraced. Since the birth of mankind, nothing has ever been attempted or perpetrated by the most criminal of mortals with such great wickedness and impious boldness, in any religion true or false which they had determined to follow, as what those most impure scoundrels employed in corrupting the sacred books. Let us pass over those lesser crimes — of inserting the name of Shechem into the text, and of substituting Gerizim for Ebal, in order to give patronage to their error. Consider only this: that they added a tenth commandment to the ten commandments of God, namely their own particular crime. The Decalogue is set forth in two places, Exodus 20, when the law was first given, and Deuteronomy 5, when it is solemnly repeated; in both places they inserted that commandment of theirs among the commandments of God; and no copy of their Pentateuch survives in which that most impious fraud does not appear. The words as exhibited in the Paris and London Polyglots are as follows: "But when the Lord your God shall have brought you into the land of the Canaanites, to which you are going to possess it, you shall set up for yourself two great stones, and you shall plaster them with lime, and you shall write upon those stones all the words of this law. For after you have crossed the Jordan, you shall set up those stones which I command you today on Mount Gerizim, and you shall build there an altar to the Lord your God — a stone altar; you shall not lift iron upon them. From uncut stones you shall build that altar to the Lord your God, and you shall sacrifice peace offerings, and you shall eat there, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God on that mountain, beyond the Jordan, after the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanite who dwells in the plain, opposite Gilgal, near the oak of Moreh, toward Shechem." These words, by which they endeavor to confirm their entire crime,

those bold impostors pretend that God Himself pronounced on Mount Horeb along with the law itself. Ussher is of the opinion that Dositheus, that most notorious corrupter of the Jewish religion, first gave them the Pentateuch interpolated by himself: Ussher, Sacred Chronology, ch. vii. He there also produces a specimen of that bold man's fraud in corrupting the text. From this, I say, it sufficiently appears in what spirit they dealt with sacred things, and what is to be thought of their Pentateuch wherever it is found to depart from the Hebrew text.

VI. But around the time of the return of the church from Babylon and the restoration of the temple and divine worship, some most learned men affirm that something wonderful and entirely unprecedented occurred, the like or equal of which no memory of earlier times, no monuments of history, record. For they are of the opinion that both peoples — the Jewish and the Cuthean — as if by a conspiracy, abandoned the ancient letters that had long been known and familiar to their ancestors and to themselves, and that each adopted the other's: the Jews, that is, adopted the Chaldean letters, and the Cutheans or Chaldeans adopted the Jewish. What this amounts to, we shall see in a few words. They teach that those letters commonly called Samaritan were the ancient and original letters of the Hebrews; that the law was written with them by the finger of God, and that according to their view the entire Old Testament was written in them. These same writers affirm that these letters alone were in use among the whole nation up to the Babylonian captivity, and no others besides them. We showed above that the Samaritans were Assyrians and were skilled in Assyrian writing. That they made almost daily use of it under the kings of Assyria and Babylon, under whose empire and dominion they were, no one can doubt. Yet they are said to have renounced those letters and to have adopted Hebrew letters in their place. Their language was indeed Syro-Chaldean, mixed according to the circumstances of the time; that they retained it is not in doubt. Only their own proper, ancestral, beautiful, easy letters — well known to themselves — they are said to have abandoned, and to have adopted in their place those ungainly, disconnected, complex Hebrew letters now in use, which exhibit no words that they themselves could scarcely or not even scarcely understand. The Jews, likewise, it is said, did the same: for the same authors report that the two tribes, after enduring several years in captivity — some more, some fewer — had forgotten their own language. For this reason, the returning people, although they did not trouble to have the scripture transferred into that language which they are said to have unlearned, are yet said to have resolved to abandon the letters in which it had originally been written — which had been the people's own from the very cradle of the nation and were used exclusively — and either to devise new ones or to adopt the Assyrian. To what end or benefit this would have occurred to them, I for my part cannot see; nor could the church have expected any advantage from it. Since the language expressed by the letters remained entirely the same, it seems impossible that any good should arise from this exchange of letters. For the knowledge of the characters in which a language is written contributes little to acquiring proficiency in that language.

VII. Since, therefore, I differ most widely from the authors of this opinion, I judged it not foreign to the matter at hand if I were briefly to examine the arguments and authorities on which it rests, and also to set forth those considerations which lead me to hold the contrary position — and I resolved to do this nonetheless, although I have recently been assailed, among other things, with the insults of a most insolent tongue.

VIII. We have set forth what the opinion of the learned men truly is in this matter: they prefix to it certain assertions that are no more pleasing to me. These, then, must be considered in the first place. They affirm, first, that "the Jews during the captivity forgot their own language and their letters," and they would have it believed that from this arose some necessity for a change of the ancient characters. But this does not seem probable to me; much less does it seem a sufficiently firm foundation on which to build a doubtful and most uncertain opinion. From the destruction of the temple and the city to the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, under whom the greater part of the people returned, approximately fifty years elapsed. That very many survived this span of time is both inherently probable and attested by the sacred page. For it teaches that the same men saw both the burning of the first temple and the laying of the foundations of the second. But that so great a people, or the greater part of them — indeed, the very same men — should, within the span of a single generation, have forgotten their own vernacular tongue, which they regarded as more sacred than all others, is not at all credible.

IX. Furthermore, during that captivity the greater part of the captives lived together in the same cities. This came about by God's gracious ordering, so that they might be more ready for the return, and in the meantime a mutual consolation to one another. That a great multitude of the common people and very many of the elders of the people lived in the place where the prophet Ezekiel exercised his ministry is evident from the entire series of his prophecy. Nor did they ever mingle with the nations among whom they lived dispersed; in sacred matters they had nothing in common with them, and in civil matters very little. All causes of corruption or change of language were far removed. Among the vitals of other na-

tions this people dwelt alone and was not reckoned among them. They contracted no marriages with the Chaldeans, no family alliances; moreover, they had without doubt carried with them very many copies of the sacred books — copies which the prophet Daniel used (Daniel 9:2). No one denies that all of these were written in the ancient and accustomed characters of the Hebrews. That they saw, possessed, or read any other books written in another language or with other letter-forms is neither apparent nor can it be proved. To learn the Chaldean arts was unlawful for them. That they also maintained written correspondence with Jews in other parts of the world is credible, and the letter of the prophet Jeremiah to them indicates as much. If in that correspondence they had not used their own vernacular tongue and their ancient letters, they would have been unintelligible to one another. Moreover, among the captives there were many priests and Levites. These devoted themselves to instructing the people in the knowledge of God from the sacred Scripture. This could not have been accomplished except by the reading and exposition of the law. With these teach-

ers, they applied themselves to performing all the sacred duties which it was lawful for them to carry out beyond the borders of the holy land. And this was the most effective means of retaining the vernacular tongue. By God's command and promises they always cherished a firm hope of return, and they continually consumed the end of the captivity with eager expectation. For this reason, unless we suppose that they diligently preserved their native language, letters, and customs, we will scarcely reckon them to have been human beings. To what advantage, then, would they have learned the language or letters of those whom they knew to be devoted to external destruction, and from whose company they daily expected liberation?

X. Moreover, God graciously granted them prophets throughout the entire period during which they were held captive. Daniel survived to the return. These prophets, furthermore, both exercised their ministry in the Hebrew tongue and used Hebrew letters. Certain portions of Daniel's prophecy have a special consideration with respect to language. But no one doubts that even these were written in Hebrew letters. Now, while the autographs of these prophets not only still existed but were practically fresh from the hands of the writers, to suppose that Ezra, rejecting them, copied those prophecies in a different script, seems to me to be near madness.

XI. It is pretended, however, that the Jews lived dispersed throughout all Assyria, and that consequently they so learned the language of the Assyrians or Chaldeans that they forgot their own — and they say that from this it came about that when the law was publicly read to the common people after the people's return, the Levites were obliged to interpret the words read into Chaldean so that the people might understand their meaning, as is clear from (Nehemiah 8:8). Some also write that from this arose the custom of reading and writing the law in alternating Hebrew and Chaldean verses, so that after a verse of the text was recited or written, its Targum was immediately appended. A few manuscript copies of the law still exist written in this manner. The Answer: We showed previously — as is also most fully evident from the history of the returning Jews — that those to whom God granted the inclination and ability to return to their homeland lived not in great dispersion but together in very numerous colonies. This will be clear to anyone who carefully considers the history of the return found in chapters 2 and 8 of Ezra. The Holy Spirit narrates the exposition of the law by the Levites in these words (Nehemiah 8:7, 8): "The Levites were teaching the people the law, the people remaining in their place; for they read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly, and they gave the sense, imparting understanding through the very Scripture." That anyone should wish to understand by this exposition the translation of the meaning of the law's words into the Chaldean tongue — which the Rabbis call the Targum — there is, beyond all doubt, no such person, unless one who would prefer to trifle with the Rabbis rather than embrace the plain truth. The holy man recounts that the Levites diligently attended to their duty in teaching the people. God had appointed them to the task of instructing the people in the law through its continuous exposition, through the narration of its meaning, and through preaching. What they were accustomed to do in the performance of the duty assigned before the captivity, that same thing they also did at that time under the reformation of the church.

This solemn occasion, sacred history attests — namely, they publicly read the law, narrated its meaning, and instructed the people in understanding it; which is the most manifest description of solemn preaching of the word. Finally, Scripture openly teaches that the returning people spoke in the pure Jewish tongue; and for this reason Nehemiah was vehemently angry at those who, through their impious mingling with the neighboring peoples, had contracted even the corruption of language, ch. xiii. 23-25: "In those days also," he says, "I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, and their children spoke half in the language of Ashdod, not knowing how to speak in the Jewish tongue, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, cursing them, and striking them," etc. There was certainly no reason why the holy man should be so enraged that they did not know how to speak purely in the Jewish tongue, but used a mixed and barbarous speech, if the whole people had been afflicted with the same defect of ignorance in speaking. A copy of this Hebrew-Chaldean Pentateuch is held in the Bodleian Library among the books of the distinguished Selden; it is, unless I am mistaken, the very copy cited in support of this opinion concerning the corruption of the language of the returning Jews. But it would be most absurd to refer that Targum arrangement — first reading the text, then appending the supposed Chaldean paraphrase — to this ancient custom. For this manuscript was written, to the best of my knowledge (I have not heard of any earlier examples of its kind existing anywhere), at least one thousand years after the Syro-Chaldean tongue ceased to have any use among the Jewish people.

XII. Moreover, it is very well known that colonies can preserve their language uncorrupted for a very long time, provided that a large multitude of people of the same stock spend their lives in the same place and do not mingle with other peoples through marriages or commerce. Let the Anglo-Saxons in Ireland serve as an example. Nearly four hundred years have elapsed down to our century since a not very large company of Englishmen, brought over to Ireland, settled at Wexford and there preserved their vernacular tongue so precisely that Camden does not hesitate to affirm that an Englishman, if he wishes to learn and understand his native language properly, ought to go to Wexford. Vain, therefore, is what is pretended in the first place in this case — namely, that the Jews forgot their own language; since for that forgetfulness they would have sought, foolishly and in vain, a remedy in a change of letters while the language itself was retained.

XIII. Furthermore, the defenders of the change of the Jewish letters suppose that those letters which are called square script are ancient Assyrian or Chaldean ones; but, I ask, driven by what argument, relying on what testimonies do they affirm this — what reason persuades us to believe it? No writings of the Chaldeans or Assyrians exist, none have ever existed within human memory; there is no ancient author who affirms that he read or even saw any; from what source, then, can we learn what letter-forms they used? The Targums, to be sure, are written in the language, but in the letters that were in common use among the Jews from the days

Ezra. Nor do the ancient advocates of this opinion assert this. Eusebius writes, "Ezra changed the Hebrew letters"; he does not teach that he used Assyrian ones. "He devised other ones," says Jerome; he is silent about Chaldean ones. "He invented new ones," so Bede. Those Jews who incline toward the opinion of a change of letters trifle in claiming that the exemplar of these letters was derived from the angelic writing on the wall, which is recorded in the fifth chapter of Daniel. Johannes Potken of Cologne, who was the first of the Europeans to publish anything in Ethiopic, judged that it was the Chaldean language and letters, as appears from the letter prefixed to his edition of the Psalms.

XIV. But what they say is plainly futile — that it was not without the providence of God that the Holy Scriptures were written out in Chaldean letters, since the empire of the Chaldeans had spread itself far and wide throughout all the East, and from that the truth could be made known more widely. Futile, I say, this is, and that for more than one reason. For what fruit or advantage, I ask, could accrue from this to those ignorant of the Hebrew language, that the sacred books were written in Chaldean letters? For can any advantage be gained in learning a language from the fact that it is written in a familiar character rather than another, which can be perfectly mastered and retained within the space of one hour? Since the language itself, which alone embraced the heavenly truth, remained the same, that change of letters unquestionably brought no benefit whatever to the promotion of the knowledge of that truth. Moreover, the empire of the Chaldeans had been utterly overthrown, and the Chaldeans had been cut off to the point of destruction, when this prodigious transformation of the script is feigned to have taken place. It is not established that the Medes or Persians, in whose hands at that time the supreme authority in the East rested, used the same characters or language as the Chaldeans. What, therefore, could bare Chaldean letters accomplish toward promoting the truth on account of the Chaldean empire, when that empire had plainly ceased to exist?

XV. But since we are moving among the most uncertain conjectures, I would venture to wager any pledge, if an arbiter could be given, that the ancient Samaritan letters were Chaldean. Indeed, it is not even improbable that they were in some use among the Israelites before the captivity of the ten tribes. For the Jews themselves have testified that some of them understood the Syro-Chaldean or Assyrian language. "Speak," say the servants of Hezekiah, "to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it" (2 Kings xviii. 26); and the Assyrians also understood Hebrew, as is established from the same passage. But just as the language of each people was known to the other, or at least to some among the other people, why should we not also judge that the letters of the Assyrians were in some use even among the Jews — letters which the Samaritans afterward used exclusively, since those letters were native to them.

XVI. Some affirm that the Jews made this change of letters out of hatred of the Samaritans — so that, namely, they might have nothing in common with them in the worship of God; and why also for the same reason might they not have rejected the Pentateuch

Chap. III.] On the Ancient Letters of the Hebrews. 295

of Moses, which the Samaritans had embraced? It is indeed true that the Jews pursued the Cutheans with immortal hatred and were in turn regarded by them as mortal enemies: the reasons for this perpetual dissension are to be narrated when we come to treat of the reformation of the Jewish church. I would not even deny that it is characteristic of that depraved habit of mind that those who are thoroughly imbued with it count it as nothing what disadvantage may befall themselves, provided they can prostrate and oppress those with whom they carry on enmity. But that the Jews were driven by their hatred to such a pitch of madness that, without any disadvantage or prejudice to their enemies, they would dismiss their ancient letters — given by God Himself and consecrated by all the divine writers — and call in others of some sort to take their place, either newly invented and devised, or borrowed from the most superstitious of all peoples, is utterly incredible. It is well known that the Samaritans maintained a contested dispute with the Jews over sacred and ecclesiastical privileges: is it reasonable to think that the Jews so greatly indulged their hatred as to concede to the Samaritans so great a ground for boasting as seems to lie in the fact that those alone retained letters written out by the hand of God Himself and of Moses, while the Jews used certain novel and profane ones of some sort? That most obstinate nation does not, to be sure, even now deal in such a way with those against whom it burns.

XVII. And these are the general foundations which the learned men lay down in advance for their opinion concerning the Ezraic change of letters; all of which we have shown to be uncertain, if not openly false. For neither reason, nor occasion, nor any probable cause of the change of the letters can be assigned.

XVIII. But the learned men will prove that it was done, even though there were no reasons why it should be done. The arguments they use are testimonies and other monuments of history; I will briefly weigh the chief of these, to see whether they are sufficient to establish faith in this paradoxical opinion. XIX. Of the testimonies they use, some are drawn from the Jews, others from the writings of certain Christians. The chief of the Jewish testimonies is from the Talmud, Tract. Sanhed. chap. ii. sec. 3: [Hebrew text] — that is, "Mar Zutra also said, and Mar Ukiba: At the beginning the law was given to the Israelites in Hebrew script and the holy language; then it was given to them in the time of Ezra in Assyrian script and the Aramaic language; but they chose for themselves the Assyrian script and the holy language. The Hebrew script and the Aramaic language were left to the commoners; and who are those commoners? says Rab. Chasda, they are the Cutheans" — that is, the Samaritans. He who is openly false and lying in well-known matters ought to be held as of only dubious trustworthiness in doubtful and uncertain ones.

But the greater part of what is recorded here by Zutra and Ukiba is manifestly most false. For what? Was Holy Scripture given in the days of Ezra in the Syro-Chaldean tongue? That is utterly false; for only a few minor portions of one book or another were written in that dialect, which they retained in that language. Those prophets who were contemporaries of Ezra — Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi — did not produce so much as a single word in Chaldean in their writings. And no Targum existed except one written long afterward. It is likewise utterly false that Holy Scripture was left to the Samaritans in Hebrew letters but in the Assyrian language. The Pentateuch, which is said to have been transmitted to them, is Hebrew, not Chaldean — as everyone knows.

XX. Since, therefore, all the rest of what these Amoraic Rabbis assert is utterly false, why should not what they babble about the change of letters also be judged false? The Talmudic Jews reply that those words of the Rabbis in the Talmud, and therefore all those passages in which mention is made of Assyrian letters, are to be understood in a sense far different from how they are commonly taken. For they affirm that this Assyrian script was the very one in which the tables of the law were written, and therefore the entire Old Testament. So Ben Israel on chapter 1 of the Talmudic Tractate Megilla: "This script," he says, "with which we today write the books of the law and every sacred thing, and which is called the Assyrian script, is the very one that was on the tables of testimony and in the book of the law that was placed beside the ark of the Lord." Then they give the reason why it is called Assyrian; Rabbi in the Talmudic Tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 1: why it is called "Assyrian" — because it is "meussurith, that is, beautified in its writing." Others give other explanations of this word; but I have no wish to pronounce anything on their wranglings, since they are most mendacious triflers, especially the older ones, every last one of them. Let the reader consult Joseph. de Voisin, Praefat. ad Pugi. Fid. pp. 86, 87; Hottinger. de Nummis Heb. pp. 122, 128; Buxtorf, Dissertat. de Literar. Heb. Antiquitate.

XXI. Very many testimonies exist in the Talmudic work itself, attributed to older teachers, beyond those adduced on the contrary side, which openly, directly, and consistently affirm that the square letters, used today by Jews and Christians, were the ancient letters of the Hebrews in which the law and all of Holy Scripture was written. There is no need for me to transcribe these, or any of them, here, since in my own judgment what they say contributes little or nothing at all to settling this dispute. The most distinguished Buxtorf, however, gathered them in so great a number (for they are a number, and nothing more besides) that he does not hesitate to conclude his Thesis with these words: "We think we have shown this more clearly than midday light — that the greater and better part of the Hebrews, both ancient and recent, stands and fights for the antiquity of the Hebrew letters, contrary to what others have hitherto sought to persuade us."

Chap. III. On the Ancient Letters of the Hebrews. 297

XXII. But those things that occur among certain ancient Christians seem to carry greater weight, and for that reason they too must be briefly reviewed. Eusebius, Jerome, and Bede are considered to have given their opinion on this matter. And these words are cited from Eusebius, Olympiad 180, year 2: "Ezra was a most learned scribe of the divine law and a renowned teacher of all the Jews; and it is affirmed that he restored the divine Scriptures from memory, and, so that they might not be mingled with the Samaritans, that he changed the Jewish letters." But this statement of Eusebius errs in many ways and is by no means adequate to support the position stated above. For first, it rests upon I know not what rumors: "it is affirmed," he says — but by whom, and when it was affirmed, he does not teach, nor does he indicate whether he himself places any credence in this rumor. Then he commends the source of the rumor — the rumor, that is — as one guilty of the most manifest falsehood. For this very source affirmed that Ezra restored the lost Scriptures from memory, than which blasphemous fiction nothing more absurd or more repugnant to truth could ever be imagined. Now whenever any witness is found lying, it is right that credence in him should be withdrawn altogether for that reason. Furthermore, those unknown persons did not affirm that Ezra introduced the use of Chaldean letters, but only that he changed the ancient letters — which could perhaps be referred to the invention of the vowel points. Moreover, it is well established that the Jews, or the Samaritans themselves, were the originators of this report; and how much weight such parties deserve in history is well known to all.

XXIII. What is cited from Jerome in his Preface to the Books of Kings reads as follows: "There are," he says, "twenty-two letters among the Hebrews, as the language of the Syrians and Chaldeans also testifies, which is closely related to Hebrew in large measure; for they too have twenty-two elements, with the same sounds but different characters. The Samaritans likewise write the Pentateuch of Moses with the same number of letters, differing only in the form of the figures and their points. And it is certain that Ezra, the scribe and teacher of the law, after the capture of Jerusalem and the restoration of the temple under Zerubbabel, devised other letters, which we now use; since up until that time the characters of the Samaritans and the Hebrews had been the same." So he. But Jerome, do you truly say it is certain that Ezra abolished the letters given by God and substituted others in their place? Certain that he laid his hand upon the writings of all the prophets, including some recently published? But where, I ask, does this certainty come from? Or by what evidence do we know that to be even probable? Then, what, I ask, were those other letters which you say it is certain he devised? Chaldean? You deny that, since you say the Chaldeans have the same number of letters and that their script is related to the Hebrew. Or would you have him to have invented new ones? By what authority or on whose account that could be suspected is not yet established. Do you also say that the Samaritans had the Pentateuch written with the same number of letters as the Hebrew? But that is manifestly false, if they had it at that time in the form of which some copies have reached us. But whatever may be certain in this whole little narrative, it is most certain that the credulous Jerome was repeatedly imposed upon by lying Jews —

Imposed upon him is most certain. Next, I would like to know what those points are by which he says the Samaritan letters differ from the Hebrew beyond and above the forms of the characters themselves. How letters that differ entirely in their forms can also be said to differ in their points, I do not understand. I do not deny that Ezra devised points for the letters, but I hold it to be most true that by those points the vowel points are meant. Jerome therefore seems here to remember a threefold alphabet, each consisting of twenty-two letters: the Syro-Chaldean, the Jewish with the points added by Ezra, and another Jewish script which the Samaritans retained, which he says was certainly in common use among the Jews before Ezra. And thus the Eusebian "it is affirmed" grew, within a short space of time, into that "it is certain" —

Of Jerome, and this grew with Bede into "it is most certain" — for Bede explicitly affirms that Ezra devised new letters. And so, going that far, this rumor, which was at first uncertain, grew as such things are wont to do, until among certain learned men anyone who is not prepared to give it credence is scarcely judged worthy of the name of a man — so that Tacitus would perhaps have called those fools "who"

denied that the Jews worshipped the image of a donkey, after the fame of its cult had spread so widely that there was not a single one of the most reputable historians who had not committed it to memory. But why those who deny that Ezra restored the wholly lost Scriptures anew should not equally be judged half-men, no reason can be invented. For far more ancient witnesses testify to the restoration of the lost Scriptures than to the change of letters. Irenaeus, cited by Eusebius (lib. v. cap. vii.): "When"

the Scriptures had wholly perished while the people of Israel were held captive under Nebuchadnezzar, God stirred up Ezra, a priest from the tribe of Levi, by the divine inspiration of His Spirit, so that he both wrote out afresh all the books of the prophets who had gone before, and also the law —

he restored anew to the people what had been promulgated by Moses." Thus Eusebius: "It is affirmed that he composed the divine scriptures from memory." Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women, ch. 3: "When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian conquest, the entire body of Jewish literature is known to have been restored through Ezra." And Basil, Epistle to Chilon: "This is the field in which, having withdrawn, Ezra poured forth all the divine books at God's command."

Theodoret has similar things in his Preface to the Psalms. Even before these,

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book 1: "Ezra the Levite, who had become a priest, prophesied, renewing all the ancient scriptures." And nearly none of the ancients is of a different opinion; yet this most foul delusion stands opposed by the express testimony of Scripture (Ezra, ch. 8), and it is plainly a blasphemous fiction.

XXIV. There is no reason why these testimonies should be thought to carry any weight or importance toward settling this dispute. The most ancient of these witnesses, Eusebius, lived eight hundred years after the death of Ezra, to whom this deed is attributed. Some celebrated calamities of those intervening centuries brought about the greatest ignorance of past events. Moreover, after the Jews had divulged some things about themselves,

after a long period of misery, they filled the whole world with the most impudent fables. From their pools of ignorance these trifles were drawn. Furthermore, these witnesses do not agree with one another at all. They all affirm things that are utterly false; they produce or press forward no history of the times, no received tradition, no concurrent report, but bring forward the rumor of certain obscurantists, to which no man of sound judgment should ascribe authority. The Rabbis, therefore, carry weight in this cause — and those not even the most ancient or wisest of that company: more learned men object, and those who hold the opinion that Ezra introduced the use of the new letters, pretending in the rabbinic manner — that is, boldly and most shamelessly — that they had been divinely devised and thus consecrated for sacred use. Let whoever wishes for more answers consult Pico della Mirandola, Epistle to an Unknown Friend; Buxtorf, Thesaurus on the Antiquity of Hebrew Letters; Joseph de Voisin, Preface to Pugio Fidei; Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, vol. 2, ch. 2. XXV. But we have by no means finished with this matter; those who have undertaken the defense of the Ezran substitution of letters place their strongest stronghold of the cause in the ancient coins of the Hebrews. They affirm that very many of these have been dug up in places around Jerusalem and where that city once stood. And nearly all of these have Samaritan letters inscribed on them. There are indeed very few in which square letters appear; but those are recent, struck after the return of the people from captivity, while the others are ancient. Here the advocates of the Ezran substitution triumph in earnest, and they rage against all those to whom the contrary opinion appeals, as if those persons were stupid, obstinate, of stubborn intellect, and incapable of yielding to truth. But to be frightened by threats, or to be driven from a position which one has embraced only after a serious examination of all the relevant evidence, is not the mark of a man who loves truth. I hope, therefore, that I may recall this testimony to examination again without offense to anyone — especially since it has long been established by the investigation of others that it deserves to be suspected of the charge of forgery.

Learned men here suppose several things:—

1. That the coins produced by some are genuine and authentic coins of the ancient kings of the Jews, struck or cast while the first temple was still standing; and that no fraud lies hidden or lurks within them.

2. That the coins on which Samaritan letters are engraved were struck under the first temple, and those to which square letters are attached, all under the second; for it is certain, from these coins, that Samaritan letters alone were in use before the return of the people from captivity. 3. That there was only one kind of script among the Israelites before the Babylonian captivity, which was destined for every use, both sacred and profane; so that the character they used in striking coins was the one, and no other, that they used in all writing.

But in truth all these things are doubtful and uncertain; some are plainly false, —

destitute of all testimony and probability, as will become evident from an examination of them.

XXVI. It is well known that some persons possess coins struck from silver and bronze, marked with Samaritan characters — or at any rate characters not unlike those commonly so called. Learned men consider these to have come from ancient coins of the kings of Judah, and from them they have reproduced the images of several in writing. Kircher exhibits nine, drawn from Villalpando and others; Hottinger exhibits several. Some are also held in the Bodleian Library, which formerly belonged to the distinguished Selden. Selden himself, when he published his most learned book on "the law of nations among the Hebrews," exhibited two or three images borrowed from the books of others, not yet himself having come into possession of any such coins — though he subsequently obtained some, being a diligent investigator of ancient things, letters, and monuments. I thought to exhibit some of these for you, reader, but there are obstacles to doing so. We readily acknowledge, therefore, that coins of this kind exist, variegated with the letters or characters called Samaritan. It remains for us to examine in the next place what authority they ought to carry. That many people have practiced fraud in striking and selling coins — forgeries that turn up everywhere — leaves no one who is not out of his mind in doubt. Deception of this kind is perhaps found nowhere else in the whole field of antiquarian study — a field in which, nevertheless, many find pleasure in making sport of the credulous. Some, for the sake of gain; others, wickedly inflamed by an itch to deceive credulous men, have devoted themselves to this imposture. Countless counterfeiting fabrications of impostors of this kind still survive. On a coin of Ptolemy Euergetes, this title is read: PTOLEMAIOU PHYSKONOS EUERGETES. Likewise, on certain coins one person is called Alytes, another Adyros; but among the Boeotians, Alytes and Adyros were ridiculous terms of reproach, imposed against the will of those so named. It is not the act of a sane man to believe that the proudest of kings would have consecrated their own dishonors to eternity on coins. It would be remarkable if somewhere there did not exist a coin of Tiberius with the inscription, OF CALIGULA THE BEAST OF NERO.

XXVII. Cardinal Baronius therefore rightly says, at the year of Christ 324, no. 113: "There have appeared," he says, "in our own century — shall I call them impostors? — who, having obtained a bronze coin covered with thick rust, cunningly forge whatever shapes and letters they please, for the sake of base gain, not without great prejudice to the study of antiquities." Now the contrivance of pretending to have discovered things underground is sufficiently old and well known. Romulus made use of this device when he wished to bring the Sabine women under his power. Plutarch says in his Life of Romulus that he spread word that he had discovered underground an altar of a certain god, naming that God Consus. Hence there passed into a proverb among the Romans, "To venerate a grave-stone as a god," which Cicero uses in his speech for Plancius, and elsewhere. Similarly, Martin of Poland, in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 104, says that the body of a certain giant was dug up at Rome, whose height exceeded the height of the city walls; he affirms this was the body of Pallas, whom Turnus slew; for this, he says, was apparent from the epitaph that was inscribed on it —

"Here lies Pallas, son of Evander, whom the lance of the soldier Turnus slew, after his own manner." Whether this was composed by the mother of Evander himself, I cannot say, as Phavorinus relates by way of Gellius. XXVIII. Among the countless proofs of this kind of fraud — not mere traces of it, but express testimonies, found everywhere — I judge that the most elaborate fabrication concerning Prosper of Fiesole, which Curtius Inghirami published under the title Antiquities of Etruria, deserves a place here. From this one example, however, let the reader learn how much labor, study, and expense those who intend to spread falsehoods and draw others into fraud are prepared to expend. I would not deny, to be sure, that he actually found the little balls he mentions, with the histories and images of things that he published as discovered by the noble gentleman. For it is not reasonable for us to suspect that any man had been so learnedly wicked and base as to first fabricate a long story for the purpose of deceiving others and weave it through to the end, and then swear he had not fabricated it. But that the whole work was the fabrication and sport of a man lacking neither leisure, nor wit, nor learning — who concealed those balls in the earth — I am unwilling to suspect, since the matter is obvious. The evidences that reveal the imposture are countless; for in so long a fabrication, it was nearly impossible for him to be so self-consistent, and so mindful of circumstances, as to observe what was fitting everywhere. He foretold that he would have dealings with the Phoenicians when he feigns that the man who was consumed in the Catilinarian war, so many years before Christ was born, made express mention of that crucifixion. For on the first ball — which, like the rest, he calls a scarith — these words were inscribed: "You have found a treasure; mark the place and depart; in the year 1624 announced by the King of the Jews, crucified in 1591." Nonsense! It was granted to no angels, no demon, and no man to foreknow that any king of the Jews would be crucified. Let the reader learn from this how much vanity there is in these matters, and how far the ingenious but utterly base vanity of certain men has proceeded in fabricating false images of ancient things — how many tokens and markings of seals and subscriptions are said to have been dug up there from the rubble of walls, the roots of trees, and the depths of caves? All the Hebrew coins known to exist anywhere do not equal the number of tokens that a single page of that book exhibits; and yet all of these appear to have been fabricated by one man. XXIX. Of this same character was that deed of Alexander which Plutarch records in his Life; for when he had reached the Ganges and could not obtain the consent of his soldiers to cross the river, doing many things for the sake of glory and fame with posterity, he manufactured and concealed larger-than-life arms, horse-mangers, and bridles of greater weight than had ever been in use — so that posterity, upon discovering them, might think that the soldiers of Alexander, to whom those arms belonged, and the horses, to whom those mangers and bridles belonged, had far exceeded the common measure of men and horses.

Chapter 3. On the Ancient Letters of the Hebrews. 303

in Hebrew letters, engraved on a stone placed at the foot of the mountain, he transcribed and brought with him to Europe. Now a certain Checaudus, p. 119, who had himself also spent much time in those regions, applauding Kircher's interpretation of the inscription, asserts that that very stone was the altar which Moses built on Mount Horeb. Kircher does not doubt that the inscription itself was carved into the rock at the time when the Israelites, returning from Egypt, were dwelling in the Arabian deserts. And this is its impression.

XXXI. And these were, it seems, the ancient Hebrew letters which Moses and the wandering people used. But if these things are true, no one, I think, will deny that all further labor of inquiry in deciding this dispute is in vain. For beyond doubt, these characters — if they are to be called characters at all — are neither Hebrew nor Samaritan. Yet from them Kircher extracts these words: "God will cause a virgin to conceive" — a phrase by no means congruent with the era, as Hottinger shows in his Preface to the Hebrew Alphabet. For from those misshapen little lines he had equal license to fabricate anything with equal probability. But I do not doubt at all that that entire inscription, along with those others of the same kind which Kircher mentions in that passage, was a fabrication of that Thomas Obicinus — or at least that cunning Muslims, seeing the man scraping together from every quarter whatever he could transport with him to Europe, imposed upon the credulous friar. Nor is it improbable that the solemn Muslim confession of faith is enigmatically set forth in those figures. From all this it is apparent how much credence should be given even to coins brought from those regions.

and then it is proved that these letters are most ancient because they are engraved on the most ancient coins. So after the error of the Vulgate translator had led people to believe that the face of Moses descending from Mount Sinai had horns, coins were immediately struck bearing the image of a horned Moses.

XXXIII. There are also some coins inscribed with Samaritan letters in which the Tau takes the form of a cross. But there are many things that persuade us that the shape of that letter, resembling a cross, was never in use among the Samaritans. The error of Origen and Jerome without doubt gave occasion for the fabrication of these.

XXXIV. For there exist coins variegated with Kabbalistic names of God, expressed in Samaritan characters. But everyone knows that these could only have been fabricated long after the destruction of the second temple. There are also coins on which the name of Jesus, who is likewise called Savior, is inscribed in Samaritan letters. But no one doubts that all of these are underlaid with fraud. And who, I ask, will establish credibility for the claim that whatever remains of these coins did not come from the same workshop of impostures?

XXXV. But it may also be conceded that the character called Samaritan was known to the Jews before the destruction of the first temple, and was in some use. It is the consistent opinion of all of them that the Jews formerly used two kinds of letters. Buxtorf demonstrates this at length with very many testimonies cited. Among the ancient Christians, Irenaeus held the same opinion, lib. vii. cap. xli. For he makes mention of priestly letters differing from those in common use. Hence the author of the Targum affirms in the book of Esther that the Jews in the days of Purim read the volume of the law according to the script of the Hebrew character (Esther 9:27); clearly indicating, in his judgment, that the law had also been written out in another character besides that ancient sacred one of the Hebrews — namely, the one they call Libonean.

XXXVI. That other nations also adopted the same custom cannot be denied. That the Egyptians used three kinds of writing is attested by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V. Those educated among the Egyptians, he says, first of all learn the Egyptian method of letters called epistolographic. The second is the hieratic, which the sacred scribes use; and the third and last is the hieroglyphic, of which one kind is expressed by the first elements of words, called kyriologic, and the other is symbolic. Heliodorus likewise reports the same of the Ethiopians, book iv.: I read through the band inscribed with Ethiopian letters — not common letters, but royal ones, resembling what are called sacred among the Egyptians. So also Diogenes Laertius in the Life of Democritus, section 49, after he had reviewed the catalogue of books which Democritus had written, from Thrasyllus, adds: There are those who separately assign to his commentaries the works on the sacred letters in Babylon, and on the sacred letters in Meroe.

— of sacred letters — There are those who separately assign to his commentaries these works: on the sacred letters in Babylon, and on the sacred letters in Meroe. A twofold kind of letters was therefore in use among the Babylonians and the Meroeans. Theodoret likewise speaks of the Greeks, in Questions on Genesis, question 61: In the Greek temples there are certain distinctive characters of letters, which they call sacred. There was therefore no nation acquainted with letters that was content with a single kind of characters for all purposes. Some assert that the Jews kept all their sacred things openly, and therefore had no need of a character other than the one in common use. For that, they say, was the sole reason why other nations invented certain cryptic letters — namely, so that things written for their sacred rites would not spread among the common people. But no one can prove that this was the sole reason for that custom. There could have been other causes. Furthermore, although the Jews were obligated to instruct all their own people in the knowledge of all sacred things, they nevertheless had a religious scruple against letting those things which were sacred among them flow out to profane nations. Hence the great ignorance of Jewish affairs pertaining to religion among all other nations. Indeed, those who think that Ezra devised a new kind of writing affirm that he did so in order that the Jews would have nothing in common in their sacred writings with their neighboring Samaritans. It can therefore not seem altogether unlike the truth that the Jews used one kind of characters in their commerce with the nations, and a different kind that was consecrated to the writing of the sacred books.

XXXVII. It is also possible that they used this common kind of letters for carvings, incisions, embossed work, engravings, gold-writings, and other things of that sort. The Samaritan letters seem well suited for uses of this kind, since compared with all others they are misshapen and unnatural. When I had said this elsewhere, I do not know what commotion was stirred up by a learned man concerning natural and unnatural letters, and nonsense of that kind, which, being poured out from black bile, I am ashamed to recount. I meant that they were unsuitable and unfit for writing, and therefore that they were suited for the arbitrary use to which, as I said, they were peculiarly appointed. So Schickard, in Bechin. Happeruse, page 82, says: Gaping, misshapen, rough, laborious, and difficult to engrave, and therefore artificial. Fuller has similar remarks in Miscellanea Sacra, book iv, chapter iv.

XXXVIII. Most scholars think that this Samaritan character is the very one which the Jews call Libonza. There is disagreement among learned men about the meaning and etymology of this word, and likewise about the reason why the Samaritan character would be so called. Morinus derives it from a root meaning a chisel or graving tool, and takes Libonza to mean a thing incised or sculpted. It therefore appears to have been invented for that purpose. The Rabbis also make mention of large letters, which, as they say, the ancients used in amulets. Rabbi Solomon affirms that these were the Libonzea letters: The letters, he says,

Are large, such as those with which they write in amulets and on door-posts and hats. These words are reported by Rabbi Azarias, Meor Enaiim, page 171. Fuller lucidly expounds the whole matter in the place cited above, whose words I have therefore decided to reproduce here: Although the Samaritan letters as written are entirely the same as those enclosed on shekels, it is not therefore necessary that these alone, and no others, were in use among the ancients. As though, indeed, it were necessary that one nation always used only one kind of letters — a thing which even experience itself easily refutes, I believe, among all the more civilized nations. Certainly among ourselves we see that the distinctive characters of archives differ greatly from common ones. Indeed, experts know that the Arabs are familiar with multiple forms of letters, differing from one another not a little. But these things are perhaps obscure and not sufficiently known to scholars. Yet who is ignorant of the most illustrious and most ancient commonwealth of the Egyptians? What then? Shall we suppose that it was sufficiently equipped with only one kind of characters? Their hieroglyphic characters, I am most certain, had a supreme and almost admirable dissimilarity from common and popular ones. And who will fight so strenuously as to adjudge that the wisest nation of the Hebrews was bound to only one form of letters, as if assigned to perpetual servitude? We do not doubt, therefore, that for those two chief and distinct kinds of affairs and business — namely, sacred and civil — a twofold form of letters at minimum was customary among the ancient Hebrews. The matter itself can immediately teach this very thing, in my judgment; for one kind the extant written monuments of the Jews, surviving in abundance to this day, clearly demonstrate, and the other the books and coins of the Samaritans rescue from destruction. So much for him. XXXIX. There are also coins marked with square letters. But these, they say, are not ancient. Why so? Because, of course, they are not inscribed with ancient letters. But that these other letters are ancient — from what does this appear? From the fact, they say, that we see them engraved on ancient Hebrew coins. This is utterly absurd: the coins prove that the Samaritan letters are ancient, and in turn these letters testify that the coins are ancient. But these coins of the later kind, they say, were struck under the second temple. Who says so, I ask, and on what grounds does this rest? Because, of course, they are marked with Assyrian letters, which were not in use before that time. And here too the question-begging is plain to see. Nor are there lacking reasons that expose these conjectures as worthless. For if that kind of coins, on which square letters are inscribed, were struck under the second temple, how, I ask, do we suppose it comes about that they are found so rarely, while those of the other kind, which were struck or minted only while the first temple stood, are found frequently enough — so that a learned man does not hesitate to affirm that they are dug up daily? The people who lived at the time of the destruction of the second temple were far richer and possessed a far greater store of money than those who perished with the first temple, the latter having been worn down by very many calamities over several preceding centuries, and nearly.

Ch. III.] ON THE ANCIENT LETTERS OF THE HEBREWS. 307 — exhausted; it was far richer and had a far greater store of money. The historian also reports that all kinds of people, with the Roman devastation imminent, hid all the wealth of money they had in underground places. Moreover, in the restoration of the temple and the city, it is credible that the ruins and rubble of all the walls and buildings were thoroughly searched by the new inhabitants. Furthermore, for four hundred years before the final decisive decree, an extremely avaricious people inhabited the city, who would not hesitate to penetrate into the very bowels of the earth for the sake of finding money. It can therefore rightly seem remarkable to anyone that so great a number of those coins which were cast or struck before the Babylonian captivity should be found, while those others which are said to have been struck while the second temple stood are so infrequent.

XL. Furthermore, Schickard testifies that he saw an ancient coin dug up at Jerusalem, struck while the kingdom of the Hebrews was still intact, marked with common square letters, bearing on one side the image of Solomon and on the other the representation of the temple. Villalpandus denies that this coin is genuine; Kircherus affirms it with Schickard. Others find themselves obliged to follow Villalpandus, for if this coin were granted to be genuine, the entire position which they fight to defend so vigorously would immediately collapse. Yet they would not seem to exercise this judgment without reason. For they say it was unlawful for the Jews, without a special command, to fashion or paint the image or likeness of any living creature, and therefore that a coin displaying a human face ought not to be acknowledged as genuine, since it was unlawful for them to stamp such images. But why, I ask, do they say living creature? The commandment extends to the likeness of all things that are in heaven, or on earth, or in the waters, whether they are living creatures or not. And yet all Hebrew coins that exist anywhere display images of such things. The Urn and the Rod of Aaron were things existing on earth, no less than Solomon himself. Moreover, those who fell into idolatry changed not only the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, but also into images of inanimate things. If, therefore, there were any force in this line of reasoning, it would equally remove all coins, including the one bearing the face of Solomon. Nor is it altogether improbable that the ancient Hebrews produced no shekels variegated or marked with figures or letter inscriptions. For our only contention is that, notwithstanding this reasoning, all coins should be held in the same esteem and value. Nevertheless, it has not yet been proved that it was absolutely unlawful for the Jews to fashion any image at all, provided it had no regard to religious worship. For although they had a very great abhorrence of images prohibited by the law, they nevertheless used Roman coins struck with the protruding imperial image; and even now throughout the whole world they almost worship images of kings stamped on coins. Indeed, when Pilate brought the imperial standards into the temple, the people, as Josephus testifies, began to riot. Yet we know that the same people.

Embraced such imperial effigies and images on coins. The Arabs still call those effigies Sxno or methalias, from which the name of medals, now commonly received, was born; and perhaps our own word medal. And the author of the Targum on Esther affirms that Mordecai was clothed in a purple garment having painted on it every kind of bird and fowl of the heaven.

And so also they did not in former times reject the little images of the Philistines that were offered to them upon the return of the ark. If, therefore, those who have undertaken the advocacy of the mutation of the Hebrew letters are to have such authority over ancient coins as to pass a verdict of forgery at will upon whatever coins they please, and to admit others to bear testimony, then this whole argument from coins is plainly settled. But whoever is able to persuade himself, on account of these cold little conjectures, to believe that the prodigious mutation mentioned above actually took place — he will do so without me as a rival competitor; for I would impose on no one the necessity of believing what he does not wish to believe, or of not believing what he does wish to believe, provided only that I am allowed to use my own judgment in these matters.

It remains for us to enumerate briefly the arguments that support the antiquity of the Hebrew letters. Passing over the great many on which learned men are accustomed to insist and which can be drawn from their writings, it will suffice to have noted the heads of those arguments that carry the greatest weight with me.

First, therefore, the possession itself — which cannot be overturned by the testimonies and conjectures adduced above — serves as an argument for the antiquity of these letters. If we are prepared to yield ground at the feeble assaults of whatever adversaries there may be of this kind, we shall stand safe, stable, and firm nowhere. The square letters, which alone were used in the church for inscribing the Holy Scriptures, were in use by common consent for nearly a thousand years before any mortal, whether Jew or Christian, called them into question. Will it be judged fair that the bare assertions of a few ancients and the crude conjectures of recent writers should override a prescription of so many years — indeed, of so many centuries? Who, I ask, said, wrote, or committed to memory that, at least six hundred years after the death of Ezra, he had cast aside letters given by God and used by all the prophets, repudiated the ancient manuscripts inscribed with those sacred letters, sent them away to the Samaritans, devised new ones, or introduced into sacred use the letters of an idolatrous, accursed nation — a nation most recently laid waste and cut off on account of the oppressed church? If anyone is pleased to suspect that he thus handled the word of God, I cannot prevent them, since suspicion lies within everyone's power; but to me, those who bring forward such suspicions seem to be telling Milesian tales.

Second, we showed above that there was in fact no just, legitimate, or necessary cause — indeed, not even the slightest occasion — for this prodigious change. For the Jews did not forget their own native language in captivity, nor, even if they had forgotten it, would that change have in any way addressed the hardship under which they were laboring.

But this people began to depart from the purity of the original language only after the death of Ezra and all the prophets — and this not from the forgetfulness said to have overtaken them during the captivity, but from the barbarism and Syriac idiom that commerce with neighboring peoples had rubbed off on them. For when, shortly before the Maccabean period, they were oppressed by the dominion and power of the Syrian empire, scattered here and there and retaining nothing sacred or intact in either their commonwealth or their religion, they also admitted the corruption of their language. But this has no bearing whatever on the times of Ezra, who is alleged to have removed the ancient letters from their possession.

XLV. Nor, third, should such a change be considered possible, if we would speak truth rather than marvel. Many thousands of Jews, very many of them priests and nobles, remained in the eastern regions and never returned to Jerusalem. To deny that they retained copies of Holy Scripture in their possession belongs to those who are ignorant alike of the customs of the nation and of all ancient history. That all those copies were written in the character that had been in ancient use, even those who invent that a change was made by Ezra must concede. Now, that the returning people sent away the ancient letters to the Samaritans, devising new ones or adopting Assyrian ones in their place and use — at a time when the greater part of the entire people, clinging to their eastern dwellings, continued to employ and retain those ancient letters — no one, I think, unless occupied with prejudices, will readily believe. That innumerable thousands of Jews persisted in the east, in Babylon and the adjacent Assyrian regions, Josephus is the most copious witness: within a few years they multiplied into so great a multitude that they waged enormous wars, which, after many battles in which they gained victory, were at last barely suppressed by the full strength of the Parthian empire. Moreover, the author of Sepher Ikharim (lib. viii. cap. xxii.) proves most powerfully by this argument that the sacred manuscripts were never corrupted: "When," he says, "Ezra went up from Babylon, only a few had gone up with him; but the great men of Israel, all the wise and noble, remained in Babylon. Since, therefore, all the great men and those learned in the law had remained there, Ezra could not change anything in the law; otherwise his law would not have been consonant with the law of all the others who had remained in Babylon, and who were living in the cities of Samaria, and in the land of Assyria, and in other places, who were unwilling to go up with Ezra." Such is the argument that contends here — which is certainly most powerful — against the change of letters and the corruption of books. Moreover, no one has yet shown what would have become of those innumerable manuscripts which, inscribed in ancient letters, were dispersed throughout nearly the entire world. After Ezra had devised the vowel points and inserted them into the text, nevertheless countless manuscripts remained throughout the entire east in which they were not inscribed; and this for other reasons as well, and also for this reason specifically — namely, that it was not a matter of a brief time, indeed not even of one age or century, to communicate that divine work to all Jews everywhere among the nations. Most, therefore, using ancient manuscripts without points, transmitted others transcribed from them to posterity in the same manner as they had received their own from their predecessors.

Others copied from them were transmitted to posterity in the same manner as they had received their own from their predecessors. And so manuscripts inscribed without points were always surviving in great numbers through all the ages. But if the opinion of these learned men is granted — that all ancient letters were rejected and new ones substituted, perhaps within a few days — it must be supposed that immediately throughout the entire world all Jews wherever they were agreed to this so completely that no trace, report, monument, or rumor survived of those manuscripts which alone they had previously possessed and which in some parts of Scripture they had recently received from the very secretaries of the Holy Spirit. From the time at which this change of letters is alleged to have been made, down to the completion of the Babylonian Talmud around the year of Christ 500 or 600, there were very many Jewish colonies, synagogues, and schools, continued in an unbroken succession, to whom the Samaritans — for whose sake this innovation is pretended to have been made — were scarcely known; much less did they have any fellowship with them, or fear that they might be infected by the contagion of their superstition through contact with them. It would be a prodigy if no one among so many thousands had taken care to copy the ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures, whose characters had been first consecrated to sacred use by God Himself at the founding of their church, and then by the prophets in continuous succession down to those times in which some of them had lived. Whenever the vowel points may have been devised, it is plain that in every age very many manuscripts were preserved and copied in which they were not inserted. But according to the position of the adversaries, once new letters had been adopted into use, the old ones were immediately and utterly exterminated from the borders of the church. Let Apella believe it!

XLVI. Fourth: there exist innumerable testimonies of ancient Jews, by which they deliver their judgment against the fiction of the Ezraic change of letters. Enough of these — if anything in the way of testimonies can be considered enough in this case — has long since been produced by the learned Buxtorf, to whom we refer the reader.

XLVII. Finally: most of what is said about these Samaritans, and on which the opinion concerning the change of letters is built, is altogether most uncertain. When they first received the Mosaic law is uncertain; that they corrupted it is most certain. Whether they ever sincerely admitted the worship of God is uncertain; that they openly renounced it is most certain. Whether any from that rabble of nations which they were still survive is uncertain, or even whether they survived through many centuries; for those who now embrace their delusions are mostly, if not all, Jews by birth and blood, called Samaritans on account of their corrupt superstition, as is evident from the Itinerary of Benjamin. Our first contact with those who are commonly so called we owe to the most distinguished Scaliger. He was the first to write to them, and he urged Peiresc to send to the east to obtain a copy of their Pentateuch.

He urged him, as Gassendus reports in the Life of Peiresc, p. 157. 48. What was accomplished by that mission the same author shows from p. 327. The same author relates that Scaliger died before any copy of the Pentateuch had been brought to his hands. He had, to be sure, previously received the alphabet and certain fragments concerning the computation of the year and of time. From that time, all who did not believe that their letters — the forms of which he himself almost alone in all Europe possessed — were the most ancient Hebrew were pronounced semi-humans. For so had that great man disposed himself that he could not bear anyone dissenting from him even in minor matters without heaping abuse upon them. Benjamin of Tudela in his Itinerary affirms that those Samaritans who lived at the time when he was traveling through the east lacked three letters — namely, ayin, nun, and yod — which everyone knows could not possibly be the case if they were using the ancient Hebrew letters, since at least a special mention has been made of resh, pe, and shin. Many affirm that Benjamin lied. I confess that he was a Jew, and therefore, rightly suspect in narrating the affairs and circumstances of his own nation. But to say that he lied, and that he lied specifically in this narrative, is not sufficient unless a weighty cause for bringing the charge is ready at hand. They say, therefore, that all the copies of the Pentateuch that have been brought to Europe prove that he lied boldly and ignorantly. But in truth all those copies are much more recent than the age of Benjamin. What and how many there are, Morinus teaches in his Opuscula Samaritana, and Hottingerus in Smegma Orientale, lib. iii. part. ii. cap. iv., and others. None of them is more than three hundred years old. Since, therefore, we have shown the notorious audacity of those men in corrupting the sacred text, who will persuade us that they did not innovate, at their pleasure, whatever they wished in their letters as well? Nor, however, is this said by me as though it were settled that Benjamin should be trusted; although I know that he ought to be of no less authority among the learned than any of those Jews who bore testimony among the Jews to the Ezraic change of letters, of which we have treated.

49. But I fear that I have lingered over these minutiae longer than is fitting; which I certainly would not have done at all, had I not perceived that this opinion concerning the change of the ancient Hebrew letters holds a primary place among those pernicious opinions which certain learned men foster and actively champion to the prejudice of Hebrew Truth.