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 afterwards 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 mean time, God would accept of the sacrifices of rams, and the like animals, at the same city, Jerusalem, that one cannot 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 begotten son of Abraham, though he had Ishmael besides; and why Isaac himself was to bear the wood|| on which he was to be sacrificed ;§ and why the place was no other than the land of Moriah,¶ or vision, i. e. most probably a place where the Shechinah or Messiah had been seen, and God by him worshipped, 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 sacrifice,) and why this sacrifice was to be offered either on the mountain called afterwards distinctly Moriah, where the temple stood, and where all the Mosaic sacrifices were afterward to be offered, as Josephus** and the generality suppose, 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 sacrifice." 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 fulness of time," provide himself a lamb [that Lamb of Godtt which was to take away the sins of the world] for a burnt-offering."

But now, if, 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 mira

culous 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 abolition 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 almost cited from Porphyry, by Eusebius and Theodoret: "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 afterward 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 a 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 Phenician 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 at 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 twentyfifth 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 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 shews the great seasonableness of the divine prohibition of the execution of this command 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' 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' Antiquities, and that the latter was for certain almost all directly taken from Josephus' 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, • Marsh, p 301.

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, reading 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 of 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 subject, matter, and circumstances, is 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 Tiberius, and by his procurator Pontius Pilate, was not there, as we know from the testimony of Photius, Cod. xxx. And as to Antonius Julianus, his very name shows him 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 epitomizer of Josephus, and so early as Tacitus, than an original historian himself before him. Nor could so exact a writer as Tacitus ever take up with such poor and almost unknown historians as these were, while Josephus' 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, and Herod, king of Chalcis; and he was there honoured with a statue and these his books were deposited at the public library at Rome, as we know from Josephus himself, from Eusebius, and Jerome, while we never heard of any other 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. and some others from the relations of Roman people, where the affairs of Rome were concerned; as also other affairs might be remembered by old officers and soldiers that had been in the Jewish 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 further than three or four

years during this war, so will it by no means account for that abridgment of the geography 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 the war, with which Antiochus both Josephus and Tacitus begin their distinct 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 nation from the days of Moses, or to Christ and Christians in the days of Tiberius, from Roman authors; of which Jewish and Christian affairs those authors had usually very little knowledge, and which the heathens generally did grossly pervert and shamefully falsify; and this is so true as to Tacitus' 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' Jewish Antiquities, he either tells direct falsehoods, or truths so miserably disguised, as renders them little better 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 [Jerusalem,] 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 Idæi, which, with a barborous augment, becomes the name of Judei [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 adjacent countries, under their captains Hierosolymus and Judas. The greatest part, say they, were those Ethiopians whom fear and hatred obliged to change their habitations, in the reign of king Cepheus. There are those who report that they were Assyrians, who wanting lands got together, and obtained part of Egypt, and soon afterward settled themselves in cities of their own, in the land 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.

CHAP. III.] Many authors agree, that when once an infectious distemper was arisen in Egypt, and made men's bodies impure, Bocchoris their king

Most of these stories are so entirely groundless, 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 heathen, could suppose the African Ethiopians under Cepheus, 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 himself.

This Tacitus might have out of Josephus, Antiq. b. vii. chap. iii. § 2

went to the oracle of [Jupiter] Hammon, and begged he would grant him some relief against this evil; and that he was enjoined to purge his nation of them, and to banish this kind of men into other countries as hateful to the gods.* That when he had sought for, and gotten them all together, they were left in a vast desert; that hereupon the rest devoted themselves to weeping and inactivity; but one of those exiles, Moses by name, advised them to look for no assistance from any of the gods, or from any of mankind; since they had been abandoned by both, but bade them believe in him as a celestial leader,† by whose help they had already gotten clear of their present miseries. They agreed to it; and though they were unacquainted with every thing, they began their journey at random. But nothing tired them so much as the want of water; and now they laid themselves down on the ground to a great extent, as just ready to perish, when an herd of wild asses came from feeding, and went to a rock overshadowed by a grove of trees. Moses followed them, as conjecturing that there was [thereabouts] some grassy soil, and so he opened large sources of water for them. That was an ease to them; and when they had journeyed continually six entire days, on the seventh day they drove out the inhabitants, and obtained those lands wherein their city and temple were dedicated.

CHAP. IV.] As for Moses, in order to secure the nation firmly to himself, he ordained new rites, and such as were contrary to those of other men, All things are with them profane which with us are sacred; and again, those practices are allowed among them which are by us esteemed most abominable.§

They place the image of that animal in the most holy places, by whose indication it was that they had escaped their wandering condition and their thirst.¶

They sacrifice the rams by way of reproach to [Jupiter] Hammon. An ox is also sacrificed, which the Egyptians worship under the name of Apis.** They abstain from swine's flesh, as a memorial of that miserable destruction which the mange, to which that creature is liable, brought on them, and with which they had been defiled.††

That they had endured a long famine they attest still by their frequent fastings. And that they stole the fruits of the earth, we have an argument from the bread of the Jews, which is unleavened.||||

It is generally supposed that they rest on the seventh day,§§ because that Strange doctrine to Josephus! who truly observes on this occasion, that the gods are angry not at bodily imperfections, but at wieked practices, Apion. b. i. § 28.

This believing in Moses as in a celestial leader, seems a blind confession of Tacitus, that Moses professed to have his laws from God.

This looks also like a plain confession of Tacitus, that Moses brought the Jews water out of a rock in great plenty which he might have from Josephus, Antiq. b. iii. chap. § 7.

Strange indeed! that 600,000 men, should travel above 200 miles, over the deserts. of Arabia, in six days, and conquer Judea the seventh.

§ This is not true in general, but only so far, that the Israelites were by circumcision and other rites to be kept separate from the wicked and idolatrous nations about them. This strange story contradicts what the same Tacitus will tell us presently, that when Pompey went into the holy of holies he found no image there.

* These are only guesses of Tacitus, or of his heathen authors, but no more. ++ Such memorials of what must have been very reproachful, are strangers to the rest of mankind, and without any probability.

1 The Jews had but one solemn fast of old in the whole year, the great day of expiation. Unleavened bread was only used at the passover.

It is very strange that Tacitus should not know or confess that the Jews' seventh

VOL. II.

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