But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to keep them to their duty, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on pain of death. Whence it is very astonishing that it has been constantly preserved during many centuries by a people, rebellious and impatient as this one was; while all other states have changed their laws from time to time, although these were far more lenient.
The book which contains this law, the first of all, is itself the most ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod, and others, being six or seven hundred years later.
620
The creation and the deluge being past, and G.o.d no longer requiring to destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give such great signs of Himself, He began to establish a people on the earth, purposely formed, who were to last until the coming of the people whom the Messiah should fashion by His spirit.
621
The creation of the world beginning to be distant, G.o.d provided a single contemporary historian, and appointed a whole people as guardians of this book, in order that this history might be the most authentic in the world, and that all men might thereby learn a fact so necessary to know, and which could only be known through that means.
622
[j.a.phet begins the genealogy.]
Joseph folds his arms, and prefers the younger.[225]
623
Why should Moses make the lives of men so long, and their generations so few?
Because it is not the length of years, but the mult.i.tude of generations, which renders things obscure. For truth is perverted only by the change of men. And yet he puts two things, the most memorable that were ever imagined, namely, the creation and the deluge, so near that we reach from one to the other.
624
Shem, who saw Lamech, who saw Adam, saw also Jacob, who saw those who saw Moses; therefore the deluge and the creation are true. This is conclusive among certain people who understand it rightly.
625
The longevity of the patriarchs, instead of causing the loss of past history, conduced, on the contrary, to its preservation. For the reason why we are sometimes insufficiently instructed in the history of our ancestors, is that we have never lived long with them, and that they are often dead before we have attained the age of reason. Now, when men lived so long, children lived long with their parents. They conversed long with them. But what else could be the subject of their talk save the history of their ancestors, since to that all history was reduced, and men did not study science or art, which now form a large part of daily conversation? We see also that in these days tribes took particular care to preserve their genealogies.
626
I believe that Joshua was the first of G.o.d"s people to have this name, as Jesus Christ was the last of G.o.d"s people.
627
_Antiquity of the Jews._--What a difference there is between one book and another! I am not astonished that the Greeks made the Iliad, nor the Egyptians and the Chinese their histories.
We have only to see how this originates. These fabulous historians are not contemporaneous with the facts about which they write. Homer composes a romance, which he gives out as such, and which is received as such; for n.o.body doubted that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed than did the golden apple. Accordingly he did not think of making a history, but solely a book to amuse; he is the only writer of his time; the beauty of the work has made it last, every one learns it and talks of it, it is necessary to know it, and each one knows it by heart. Four hundred years afterwards the witnesses of these facts are no longer alive, no one knows of his own knowledge if it be a fable or a history; one has only learnt it from his ancestors, and this can pa.s.s for truth.
Every history which is not contemporaneous, as the books of the Sibyls and Trismegistus,[226] and so many others which have been believed by the world, are false, and found to be false in the course of time. It is not so with contemporaneous writers.
There is a great difference between a book which an individual writes, and publishes to a nation, and a book which itself creates a nation. We cannot doubt that the book is as old as the people.
628
Josephus hides the shame of his nation.
Moses does not hide his own shame.
_Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?_[227]
He was weary of the mult.i.tude.
629
_The sincerity of the Jews._--Maccabees,[228] after they had no more prophets; the Masorah, since Jesus Christ.
This book will be a testimony for you.[229]
Defective and final letters.
Sincere against their honour, and dying for it; this has no example in the world, and no root in nature.
630
_Sincerity of the Jews._--They preserve lovingly and carefully the book in which Moses declares that they have been all their life ungrateful to G.o.d, and that he knows they will be still more so after his death; but that he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, and that he has [_taught_] them enough.
He declares that G.o.d, being angry with them, shall at last scatter them among all the nations of the earth; that as they have offended Him by worshipping G.o.ds who were not their G.o.d, so He will provoke them by calling a people who are not His people; that He desires that all His words be preserved for ever, and that His book be placed in the Ark of the Covenant to serve for ever as a witness against them.
Isaiah says the same thing, x.x.x.
631
_On Esdras._--The story that the books were burnt with the temple proved false by Maccabees: "Jeremiah gave them the law."
The story that he recited the whole by heart. Josephus and Esdras point out _that he read the book_. Baronius, _Ann._, p. 180: _Nullus penitus Hebraeorum antiquorum reperitur qui tradiderit libros periisse et per Esdram esse rest.i.tutos, nisi in IV Esdrae._
The story that he changed the letters.
Philo, _in Vita Moysis: Illa lingua ac character quo antiquitus scripta est lex sic permansit usque ad LXX._
Josephus says that the Law was in Hebrew when it was translated by the Seventy.
Under Antiochus and Vespasian, when they wanted to abolish the books, and when there was no prophet, they could not do so. And under the Babylonians, when no persecution had been made, and when there were so many prophets, would they have let them be burnt?