and that his vow extended only to her being devoted to serve God at the taber nacle, or elsewhere, in a state of perpetual virginity; and that neither that law did enjoin any human sacrifices, nor do we meet with any example of its exe cution in this sense afterwards. Philo never mentions any such law, no more than Josephus: and when Josephus thought that Jeptha had made such a vow and executed it, he is so far from hinting at its being done in compliance with any law of God, that he expressly condemns him for it, as having acted contrary thereto; or, in his own words, "* as having offered an oblation neither con. formable to the law, nor acceptable to God, nor weighing with himself what opinion the hearers would have of such a practice." 7. That Isaac being at this time, according to Josephust, who is herein justly followed by Archbp. Usher,‡ no less than twenty-five years of age, and Abraham being, by consequence, one hundred and twenty-five, it is not to be supposed that Abraham could bind Isaac, in order to offer him in sacrifice, but by his own free consent; which free consent of the party who is to suffer seems absolutely ne. cessary in all such cases; and which free consent St. Clement, as well as Jose. phus, distinctly takes notice of on this occasion. St. Clement describes it thus: "Isaac,being fully persuaded of what he knew was to come, cheerfully yielded himself up for a sacrifice." And for Josephus,|| after introducing Abraham in a pathetic speech, laying before Isaac the divine command, and exhorting him patiently and joyfully to submit to it, he tells us, that "Isaac very cheer. fully consented;" and then introduces him, in a short but very pious answer, acquiescing in the proposal; and adds, that "he then immediately and readily went to the altar to be sacrificed." Nor did Jephtha¶ perform his rash vow whatever it were, till his daughter had given her consent to it. 8. It appears to me that Abraham never despaired entirely of the interposttion of Providence for the preservation of Isaac, although in obedience to the command he prepared to sacrifice him to God. This seems to me intimated in Abraham's words to his servants, on the third day, when he was in sight of the mountain on which he was to offer his son Isaac, **" We will go and worship, and we will come again to you." As also in his answer to his son, when he inquired, "Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." Both these passages look to me somewhat like such an expectation. 9. However, it appears most evident, that Abraham, and I suppose Isaac also, firmly believed, that if God should permit Isaac to be actually slain as a sacrifice, he would certainly and speedily raise him again from the dead. This, to be sure, is supposed in the words already quoted, that both he and his son would go and worship, and come again to the servants; and is clearly and justly collected from this history by the author to the Hebrews, chap. xi. 17-19. "By faith Abra ham when he was tried offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten, of whom it was said, that in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting or reasoning that God was able to raise him from the dead.” And this reasoning was at once very obvious, and wholy undeniable, that since God was truth itself, and had over and over promised that he would †† "multiply Abraham exceedingly; that he should be a father of many nations; that his name should be no longer Abram, but Abraham, because a father of many nations God had made him, &c.; that Sarai his wife should be called Sarah; that he would bless her, and give Abraham a son also of her; and that he would bless him; and she should become nations, and kings of people should be of her, &c., and that "in Isaac should his seed be called." And since withal it is here sup posed that Isaac was to be slain as a sacrifice, before he was married, or had any seed, God was, for certain, obliged by his promises, in these circumstances, to Antiq. B. I. chap. xiii. Ush. Annal. ad. A. M. 21. Antiq. B. I. ch. xiii. sect. 3. ¶ Judges, xi. 36, 37. Gen. xvii. 2-6, 16. Gen sxi. 12 Antiq. B. v. chap. vii. sect. 10. Gen. xx. i. 5,7. * *aise Isaac again from the dead, and this was an eminent instance of that faith whereby Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness, viz. that if God should permit Isaac to be sacrificed, he would certainly and quickly raise him up again from the dead, † from whence also he received him in a figure, as the author to the Hebrews here justly observes. 10. That the firm and just foundation of Abraham's faith and assurance in God for such a resurrection was this, besides the general consideration of the di vine veracity, that during the whole time of his sojourning in strange countries, in Canaan and Egypt, ever since he had been called out of Chaldea or Meso. potamia, at seventy-five years of age,‡ he had had constant experience of a special, of an overruling, of a kind and gracious Providence over him, till this his 125th year, which against all human views had continually blessed him and enriched him, and in his elder age had given him first Ishmael by Hagar, and afterward promised him Isaac to "§spring from his own body now dead,|| and from the deadness of Sarah's womb, when she was past age, and when it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women," and had actually performed that and every other promise, how improbable soever that performance had appeared, he had ever made to him, and this during fifty entire years together; so that although, at his first exit out of Chaldea or Mesopotamia, he might have been tempted to "stagger at such a promise of God through unbelief, "** yel might he now after fifty years constant experienee be justly strong in faith, giv ing glory to God, as being fully persuaded, that what God had promised, the resur rection of Isaac, he was both able and willing to perform. 11. That this assurance, therefore, that God, if he permitted Isaac to be slain, would infallibly raise him again from the dead, entirely alters the state of the case of Abraham's sacrificing Isaac to the true God, from that of all other human sacrifices whatsoever offered to false ones, all those others being done without the least promise or prospect of such a resurrection; and this, indeed, takes away all pretence of injustice in the divine command, as well as of all inhumanity or cruelty in Abraham's obedience to it. 12. That, upon the whole, this command to Abraham, and what followed upon it, looks so very like an intention of God to typify or represent beforehand in Isaac, a beloved or only begotten son, what was to happen long afterward to the great son and seed of Abraham, the Messiah, the beloved and the "only begotten of the Father, whose day Abraham saw by faith beforehand, and rejoiced to see it," viz. that he, " by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God should be crucified, and slain"‡‡ as a sacrifice, and should be raised again the third day, and this at Jerusalem also; and that, in the meantime, God would accept of the sacrifices of rams, and the like animals, at the same city Jerusalem, that one can not easily avoid the application. This seems the reason why Abraham was obliged to go to the land of Moriah, or Jerusalem; and why it is noted, that it was the third day§§ that he came to the place, which implies that the return back, after the slaying of the sacrifice, would naturally be the third day also; and why this sacrifice was not Ishmael the son of the flesh only, but Isaac the son by promise, the beloved son of Abraham, and why Isaac was styled the only son, or only be gotten son|||| of Abraham, though he had Ishmael besides; and why Isaac himself was to bear the woodTT on which he was to be sacrificed; and why the place was no other than the land of Moriah,*** or vision, i. e. most probable a place where the Shecinah or Messiah had been seen, and God by him worshiped, even before the days of Abraham, and where lately lived, and perhaps now lived, Melchisedeck, the grand type of the Messiah (who might then possibly be present at the Gen. xv. 6. Rom. iv. 20, 21. Gen. xxii. 2. 4. *** John, xix. 17. Heb. xi. 19 Gen. xii. 4. Gen. xviii. 11. 11 Acts, ii. 23. 11 Gen. xxii. 6 sacrifice,) and why this sacrifice was to be offered either on the mountain alled afterward distinctly Moriah, where the temple stood, and where all the Mosaic sacrifices were afterward to be offered, as Josephus* and the generality sup pose, or, perhaps, as others suppose, that where the Messiah himself was to be offered, its neighbour mount Calvary. This seems also the reason why the ram was substituted as a vicarious sacrifice instead of Isaac. These circumstances, seem to me very peculiar and extraordinary, and to render the present hypothesis extremely probable. Nor, perhaps, did St. Clement mean any thing else, when, in his forecited passage, he says, that "Isaac was fully persuaded of what he knew was to come;" and, therefore, "cheerfully yielded himself up for a sacri. fice." Nor, indeed, does that name of this place, Jehovah Jireh, which continued till the days of Moses, and signified, God will see, or, rather, God will provide, seem to be given it by Abraham on any other account, than that God would there, in the fullness of time, "provide himself a lamb [that lamb of God, which was to take away the sins of the world]† for a burnt-offering." But if, now after all, it be objected, that how peculiar and how typical soever the circumstances of Abraham and Isaac might be in themselves, of which the heathens about them could have little notion, yet such a divine command to Abraham for slaying his beloved son Isaac must, however, be of very ill example to the Gentile world, and that it probably did either first occasion, or, at least, greatly encourage their wicked practices, in offering their children for sacrifices to their idols, I answer by the next consideration. 13. That this objection is so far from truth, that God's public and miraculous prohibition of the execution of this command to Abraham, (which command itself the Gentiles would not then at all be surprised at, because it was so like to their own usual practices), as well as God's substitution of a vicarious oblation, seems to have been the very occasion of the immediate oblation of those impious sacrifices by Tethmosis, or Amosis, among the neighbouring Egyptians, and of the substitution of more inoffensive ones there instead of them. Take the account of this abolition, which we shall presently prove was about the time of Abraham's offering up his son Isaac, as it is preserved by Porphyry, from Manetho, the famous Egyptian historian and chronologer, which is also cited from Porphyry by Eusebius and Theodorit." Amosis," says Porphyry," abolished the law for slaying of men in Heliopolis of Egypt, as Manetho bears witness, in his book of Antiquity and Piety. They were sacrificed to Juno, and were examined, as were the pure calves, that were also sealed with them: they were sacrificed three in a day. In whose stead Amosis commanded that men of wax, of the same number, should be substituted.” Now, I have lately shown, that these Egyptians had Abraham in great veneration, and that all the wisdom of those Egyptians, in which Moses was afterwards learned, was derived from no other than from Abraham. Now it appears evidently, by the forecited passage, that the first abolition of these human sacrifices, and the substitution of waxen images in their stead, and particularly at Heliopolis, in the north-east part of Egypt, in the neighbourhood of Beersheba, in the south of Palestine, where Abraham now lived, at the distance of about one hundred and twenty miles only, was in the days, and by the order of Tethmosis or Amosis, who was the first of the Egyptian kings, after the expulsion of the Phoenician shepherds. Now, therefore, we are to inquire when this Tethmosis or Amosis lived, and compare his time with the time of the sacrifice of Isaac. Now, if we look into my chronological table, published A. D. 1721, we shall find that the hundred and twenty-fifth year of Abraham, or which is all one, the twenty-fifth year of Isaac, falls into A. M. 2573, or into the thirteenth year of Tethmosis or Amosis, which is the very middle of his twenty-five years reign; so that this abolition of human sacrifices in Egypt, and substitution of others in their room, seems to have been Antiq. B. i. cap. xiii sect. † John, i. 29. Marsh, p. 301. occasioned by the solemn prohibition of such a sacrifice in the case of Abraham, and by the following substitution of a ram in its stead which account of this matter not only takes away the groundless suspicions of the moderns, but shows the great seasonableness of the divine prohibition of the execution of this com mand to Abraham, as probably the direct occasion of putting a stop to the barbarity of the Egyptians in offering human sacrifices, and that for many, if not for all generations afterward. DISSERTATION III. Tacitus's Accounts of the Origin of the Jewish Nation, and of the Particulars of the last Jewish War; that the former was probably written in Opposition to Josephus's Antiquities, and that the latter was for certain almost all directly taken from Josephus's History of the Jewish War. SINCE Tacitus, the famous Roman historian, who has written more largely and professedly about the origin of the Jewish nation, about the chorography of Judea, and the last Jewish war under Cestius, Vespasian, and Titus, than any other old Roman historian; and since both Josephus and Tacitus were in favour with the same Roman emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian; and since Tacitus was an eminent pleader and writer of history at Rome, during the time or not long after our Josephus had been there studying the Greek language, read. ing the Greek books, and writing his own works in the same Greek language, which language was almost universally known at Rome in that age; and since, therefore, it is next to impossible to suppose that Tacitus could be unacquainted with the writings of Josephus, it cannot but be highly proper to compare their accounts of Judea, of the Jews, and Jewish affairs together. Nor is it other than a very surprising paradox to me, how it has been possible for learned men, particularly for the several learned editors of Josephus and Tacitus, to be so very silent about this matter as they have hitherto been, especially when not only the correspondence of the authors as to time and place, but the likeness of the subjectmatter and circumstances is so very often so very remarkable; nay, indeed, since many of the particular facts belonged peculiarly to the region of Judea, and to the Jewish nation, and are such as could hardly be taken by a foreigner from any other author than from our Josephus, this strange silence is almost unaccountable, if not inexcusable. The two only other writers whom we know of, whence such Jewish affairs might be supposed to be taken by Tacitus, who never appears to have been in Judea himself, are Justus of Tiberias, a Jewish historian, contemporary with Josephus, and one Antonius Julianus, once mentioned by Minutius Felix in his Octavius, sect. 33, as having written on the same subject with Josephus, and both already mentioned by me on another occasion, Dissert. I. As to Justus of Tiberias, he could not be the historian whence Tacitus took his Jewish affairs, because, as we have seen, in the place just cited, the principal passage in Tacitus of that nature, concerning Christ, and his sufferings under the emperor f'iberius, and by his procurator Pontius Pilate, was not there as we know from the estimony of Photius, Cod. xxx. And as to Antonius Julianus, his very name shows aim to have been not a Jew but a Roman. He is never mentioned by Josephus, and so probably knew no more of the country or affairs of Judea than Tacitus himself. He was, I suppose, rather an epitomiser of Josephus, and not so early as Tacitus, than an original historian himself before him. Nor could so exact a writer as l'acitus ever take up with such poor and almost unknown historians as these were, while Josephus's seven books of the Jewish war were then so common were in such great reputation at Rome; were attested to, and recommended by Vespasian and Titus the emperors, by King Agrippa, and King Archelaus, au Herod king of Chalcis; and he was there honoured with a statue: and these his books were reposited at the public library at Rome, as we know from Josephus himself, from Eusebius, and Jerom, while we never hear of any other history of the Jews that had then and there any such attestations or recommendations. Some things, indeed, Tacitus might take from the Roman records of this war, I mean from the Commentaries of Vespasian, which are mentioned by Josephus himself, in his own Life, sect. 65, vol. iv. and some others from the relations of Roman people, where the affairs of Rome were concerned; as also other af fairs might be remembered by old officers and soldiers that had been in the Jew. ish war. Accordingly, I still suppose that Tacitus had some part of his information these ways, and particularly where he a little differs from or makes additions to Josephus: but then, as this will all reach no farther than three or four years during this war, so will it by no means account for that abridgment of the geo graphy of the country, and entire series of the principal facts of history thereto relating, which are in Tacitus, from the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, 240 years before that war, with which Antiochus both Josephus and Tacitus begin their dis tinct histories of the Jews, preparatory to the history of this last war. Nor could Tacitus take the greatest part of those earlier facts belonging to the Jewish na. tion from the days of Moses, or to Christ and the Christians in the days of Tibe. rius, from Roman authors; of which Jewish and Christian affairs those authors had usually very little knowledge, and which the heathen generally did grossly pervert and shamefully falsify: and this is so true as to Tacitus's own accounts of the origin of the Jewish nation, that the reader may almost take it for a constant rule, that when Tacitus contradicts Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, he either tells direct falsehoods, or truths so miserably disguised, as renders them little bet. ter than falsehoods, and hardly ever lights upon any thing relating to them that is true and solid, but when the same is in those Antiquities at this day; of which matters more will be said in the notes on this history immediately following. HISTORY OF THE JEWS. BOOK V. CHAP. II. SINCE We are now going to relate the final period of this famous city [Jerusa lem,] it seems proper to give an account of its original.*-The tradition is, that the Jews ran away from the island of Crete, and settled themselves on the coast of Libya, and this at the time when Saturn was driven out of his kingdom by the power of Jupiter: an argument for it is fetched from their name. The mountain Ida is famous in Crete; and the neighbouring inhabitants are named Idai, which, with a barbarous augment, becomes the name of Judæi [Jews.] Some say they were a people that were very numerous in Egypt, under the reign of Isis, and that the Egyptians got free from that burden by sending them into the adjoining countries, under their captains Hierosolymus and Judas. The greatest part say, they were those Ethiopians, whom fear and hatred obliged to change their habi tations in the reign of King Cepheus.† There are those which report they were Assyrians, who, wanting lands, got together, and obtained part of Egypt, and soon afterwards settled themselves in cities of their own, in the lands of the Hebrews, and the parts of Syria that lay nearest to them. Others pretend their origin to be more eminent, and that the Solymi, a people celebrated in Homer's poems, were the founders of this nation, and gave this their own name Hierosolyma to the city, which they built there.§ * Most of these stories are so entirely ground ess, and so contradictory to one another, that they do not deserve a serious confutation. It is strange Tacitus could persuade himself thus crudely to set them down One would wonder how Tacitus or any heathens could suppose the African Ethiopians under Copheus, who are known to be blacks, could be the parents of the Jews, who are known to be whites This account comes nearest the truth; and this Tacitus might have from Josephus, only disguised by aimself. This Tacitus might have out of Josephus, Antiq. B. vii ch, iji, sect. 2. |