THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT CONNECTED, IN THE HISTORY O F THE JEWS AND NEIGHBOURING NATIONS, FROM The Declenfion of the Kingdoms of Ifrael and Judah, BY HUMPHREY PRIDEAUX, D. D. DEAN OF NORWICH. PART I. VOL. I. Edinburgh: PRINTED BY D. SCHAW & Co. RIDDELL'S CLOSE, こ LAWNMARKET. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE DANIEL, EARL OF NOTTINGHAM, PRESIDENT OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL. MY LORD, IT being by your recommendation to your noble father, that I was by him made prebendary of the cathedral church of Norwich, while he was Lord Chancellor of England, and it being also by your Lordship's like favourable recommendation of me to her late Majesty Queen Anne, that I was promoted to be dean of the fame church, I humbly offer unto your Lordship this product of my ftudies, in a grateful acknowledgement of the favours I have received from you. And, if the Public receive any benefit from it (as I hope fome may), nothing is more juft and reafonable, than that they fhould receive it through your Lordship's hands, who, in having been fo much a patron to the author, have acquired thereby the best title to all the fruits of my labours. labours. What I now offer unto your Lordfhip is only the first part of what is intended. If God gives life, the fecond fhall follow, and beg its paffage into the world under the fame patronage. The only additional favour I am now capable of receiving, is your Lordship's kind acceptance of this expreffion of my gratitude; which I humbly pray from your hands: and I am, MY LORD, Your most obedient, and Moft obliged humble Servant, HUMPHREY PRIDEAUX. THE PREFACE. HE calamitous diftemper of the ftone, and the unfortunate cut for it, ven me out of the pulpit, in wholly difabling me for that duty of my profeffion, that I might not be altogether ufelefs, I undertook this work, hoping, that the clearing of the facred hiftory by the profane, the connecting of the Old Teftament with the New, by an account of the times intervening, and the explaining of the prophecies that were fulfilled in them, might be of great ufe to many. What is now published is only the first part of my defign. If God gives life, the other will foon after follow; but if it fhould pleafe him, who is the Difpofer of all things, that it happen otherwise, yet this hiftory being brought down to the times, when the canon of the Hebrew fcriptures was finished, it may of itself be reckoned a complete work: for it may ferve as an epilogue to the Old Teftament, in the fame manner, as what after is to follow, will be a prologue to the New. Chronology and geography being neceffary helps to hiftory, and good chronological tables being moft ufeful for the one, as good maps are for the other; I have taken full care of the former, not only by adding fuch tables in the conclufion of the work, as may anfwer this end, but also by digesting the whole into the form of annals under the years before Chrift, and the years of the kings that then reigned over Judea; both which are added in the margin at the beginning of every year, in which the actions happened that are related. And as to the latter, fince Dr Wells, Cellarius, and Reland have fufficiently provided for it, both by good maps of the countries this hiftory relates to, and alfo by accurate descriptions of them, I need do no more than refer the reader to what they have already done in this matter. What Dr Wells hath done herein, being written in English, will beft ferve the English reader; but they that are alfo fkilled in the Latin tongue may moreover confult the other two. In the annals, I have made ufe of no other æra, but that of the years before Christ, reckoning it backward from the vulgar æra of Chrift's incarnation, and not from the true time of it. For learned men are not all agreed in the fixing of the true time of Chrift's incarnation, fome placing it two years, and fome four years, before the vulgar æra. But where the vulgar æra begins, all know that ufe it; and therefore the reckoning of the years before Chrift backward from thence, makes it a fixed and certain æra. The differ ence that is between the true year of our Saviour's incarnation, VOL. I. |