Some persons have contended, that when the first books of the Old Testament were written, the zodiac was not yet divided into twelve constellations ;-that when that division did take place, the zodiacal signs were not represented in the same manner by the Egyptians and Orientalists, as by the Greeks; and finally, that in the time of Moses the knowledge of the sphere did not yet exist.

To fix the time when the books of Moses and Joshua were written, may not be so easy a task as some of the objectors seem to suppose; but let them take the earliest period which they can reasonably assume, and I fear not to show, that before that period the division of the zodiac into twelve signs was known to the Orientalists; and that the figures there represented did not materially differ from those, which were afterwards exhibited in the Grecian zodiac,

allowing for a few exceptions, which cannot affect my general argument.

I believe, that no person will pretend, that the Pentateuch was written at an earlier era than 1500 years before Jesus Christ. My own judgment would lead me to fix the date at a much later period; but upon this point I shall not insist.

M. Bailly, in his History of Astronomy, tells us, that the zodiac of the Indians had two different divisions, one consisting of twenty-eight, and the other of twelve, constellations. He also observes, that they had two different zodiacs, the one fixed, and the other moveable. The discovery of the latter he states to have taken place about 2250 years before Jesus Christ, and consequently 750 years before the Pentateuch could have been written.

The same author places the invention of the Persian sphere about 3000, or 3200 years before Jesus Christ, and consequently 1500 or 1700 years before the time, when it is pretended, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

To fix the exact date when the Egyptians first divided the zodiac into twelve signs, would be very difficult. Macrobius attributes the invention of the zodiac to the Egyptians, and Jamblichus asserts, that Hermes was the author of it. But it is not easy to determine the time when Hermes florished. The accounts concerning him are so vague and contradictory, that it seems idle to say more than that he lived at a very remote period of antiquity. This second Hermes, however, seems rather to have been the restorer, than the original discoverer, of science; since he is said by

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Manetho to have deciphered the hieroglyphics on the ancient monuments. I ain inclined to think, that the zodiac was divided into twelve signs by the Egyptians about the time, when they introduced the twelve great Gods. Now the Egyptian Hercules was one of these; and without attributing to him the extreme antiquity, which was claimed for him by the priests in the time of Herodotus, we may easily admit him to have florished long before the age of Moses. (See Herodotus, 1. 2. c. 4. 43. 144.)

According to Diodorus Siculus, the Grecian Hercules, whom we must not confound with the Egyptian, introduced the knowledge of the sphere (τὸν σφαιρικὸν λόγον) into Greece. Others have named Musæus, and others Chiron. Be this as it may, the Greeks appear to have become acquainted

with the sphere more than thirteen centuries before Christ; and consequently not two centuries after the time of Moses.

We have now seen pretty clearly, I think, that the Egyptians and Orientalists were acquainted with the sphere and with the zodiac, before the Pentateuch could have been written; even allowing, what I think to be extremely doubtful, that it was composed at so early a period as 1500 years before Jesus Christ.

But I have passed cursorily over this part of the subject, and have not even noticed the high pretensions of the Chaldeans, who date their astronomical discoveries from so remote a period as the reign of Belus. I imagine, that the objectors are chiefly disposed to argue, that the forms now exhibited in the Oriental zodiacs have