CHAPTER III.

EARLY TRADITIONS CONFIRMATORY OF THE

FIRST CHAPTERS OF GENESIS.

THE traditions of ancient nations cannot be accounted for, or understood, except by the key that is presented in the Book of Genesis. The nations that claim an ancient history are very few, and are confined to Asia and Africa. The Persians, Chinese, Hindus, Tartars, and Assyrians, are the oldest Asiatic nations; and the Egyptians and Ethiopians are the oldest in Africa. There is no people in Europe that ever claimed an antiquity as high as the commonly received date of the deluge, or for whom it was ever claimed; and about the origin of the early inhabitants of America nothing certainly is known.

Some of the most curious traditions of the ancient nations, bearing upon the antediluvian world, are worthy of brief notice.

The most ancient heathen writer, any of whose productions are extant, was perhaps Sanchoniathon, who lived in Phoenicia, within the limits of what is

now called Palestine. The precise date of his life is not known, and all of his writings now extant are found as quotations, translated into Greek, in a book entitled, “The Preparation and Defence of the Gospel,”* by Eusebius, a bishop of Cæsarea, in Palestine, who lived in the fourth century after Christ. How he obtained Sanchoniathon's writings is not known; and as his quotations are introduced without a specification of their nature, or a statement of their authority, they are of but little intrinsic value. It is, however, clear that though this extract is loaded with heathen superstitions, the Mosaic account of the creation, and of the antediluvian world, are confirmed by it.t Historians generally have attributed great value to the few extracts we have from Sanchoniathon, and regard

as a sober historian. His representation of the creation is, “That the beginning of all things was a dark, condensed wind, turbid and black, and, for a long series of ages, destitute of form.” chaos. “But finally, through its own love,

Ο “ Ευαγγελικής αποδείξεως προπαρασκευή,” or “Preparatio Evangelica,” lib. i, cap. x, and lib. iv, cap. xvii.

† See also Cory's Ancient Fragments. London : Pickering. 1832. Page 3, &c., where a literal translation into English is given.

him

This was

[attraction,] a union was formed, and this was the beginning of the creation of things.” “First, animals without sensation were formed: but when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced; thunders and lightnings followed; intelligent animals sprung up; and, finally, two men were created, Eon and Protogonus; and Eon discovered food from trees. Their descendants were Genus [perhaps Cain] and Genea."

This account is fanciful, but is it a perversion of the truth, or a mere imagination The reader can judge as well as the learned men who have affected to decide.

Another ancient writer is Berosus, who is said to have been a priest of the worship of Belus, in Babylon, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and for some years a resident in Athens, Greece. He lived more than half a century after the last Hebrew prophet, whose writings form a part of the Old Testament; and in confirmation of the Mosaic history his account would not be of the slightest worth, did he not pretend to have access to the ancient books of the Babylonians, and to draw his information from them.

A fragment of Berosus's writings is preserved by Alexander Polyhistor, who lived in Phrygia, in the second century of our Lord. He was a heathen writer, and celebrated for his varied and abundant learning. According to him, Berosus says, “In the first year [or earliest times] there appeared a superior being, Oannes, who gave the following account of the creation: There was a time when nothing existed but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein existed hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle.” Then follows a lively allegorical picture of chaos.

Finally, Belus (or the Divinity] divided the darkness, and separated the heavens from the earth, and reduced the universe to order.” Then follows a fanciful account of the creation of

6

man.

This information Berosus claims to have found written and delineated on the walls of the temple of Belus, in Babylon, of which he was one of the priests.

No traditional view of the creation among the Egyptians, worthy of notice, has been preserved; though it is plainly stated by Jamblichus, a great friend of the apostate emperor

Julian, and the strongest defender of Paganism, in the fourth century after Christ, that the ancient Egyptians believed in one God, the Creator of all things.

Plutarch, a Grecian, who lived in the second century after Christ, says that he read the following inscription in an Egyptian temple: “I AM ALL THAT HAS BEEN, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE;" which strongly reminds us of the fourteenth verse of the third chapter of Exodus : “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." • That the earliest Egyptians believed in one God, the Creator, is affirmed by modern investigators of their monuments and writings. They believed also in the immortality of the soul, in a resurrection of the body, and in future rewards and punishments.*

That the ancient Hindoos had a clear tradition of the creation, corresponding in its general features with the statement in Genesis, though mixed up with many strange conceits, is unanimously asserted by all who have investigated