the Egyptians were extant, most diligently compiled by Ptolemy, a priest of Mendes, in Egypt. According to Ptolemy, "in the reign of Amosis, the Jews departed from Egypt into their own country, under Moses, their leader." He also represents Amosis as contemporary with Inachus.

Tacitus, the Roman historian, gives a very particular account of the Jews. "It is related," he says, "that the Jews, being exiles from the island of Crete, took possession of the most remote parts of Syria, at the time that Saturn was violently expelled by Jupiter from his kingdom. An argument is borrowed from their name. It is said that Ida, being a famous mountain in Crete, the inhabitants, then called Idæi, were, by a barbaric change of the name, denominated Judæi. According to some, during the reign of Isis, a great multitude inundating Egypt, under Hierosolymus and Juduces, their leaders, settled on the nearest lands." Having mentioned other accounts he adds, "the most of authors agree that a bodily contagion made its appearance in Egypt: when king Oichosis inquired concerning the means of cure, he was commanded by the oracle of Hammon to purge the kingdom, by expelling such men as were detestable to the gods. A great rabble being collected, they were warned by Moses, one of the exiles, that they could expect no help from either gods or men, as they were deserted by both, but that they might be delivered from their present miseries by implicitly confiding in him as a heavenly leader. To this they assented, and blindly set out on a journey by chance. Nothing distressed them so much as the want of water. And now, not far from destruction, they all lay flat on the ground, when a flock of wild asses, leaving their pasture, climbed a rock shaded with wood. Moses, forming a conjecture from the verdure of the soil, followed them, and discovered abundant springs of water. Having obtained this refreshment, and continued their journey for six days, on the seventh day they took possession of lands, in which they built a city and temple, having expelled the former inhabitants. Moses, in order to secure the nation to himself in succeeding times, instituted new rites, which were contrary to other nations." He afterwards assigns the same reasons with Trogus, for the consecration of the seventh day of the week, observing that they devoted the seventh year also to idleness." He says, "others apprehend that this honor belongs to Saturn, and that we have either received the first principles of religion as handed down by the Idaians (or Jews,) who were expelled with Saturn, and were the founders of

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and the greatest power among the seven planets, by which men are governed, and the most of the heavenly bodies exert their power and finish their courses by the number seven. But in what manner soever these rites were introduced, they have the sanction of antiquity."

From what Tacitus here says, it appears that certain more early writers attributed to the Jews, as a nation, an antiquity nearly coeval with the very commencement of the fabulous history of the Greeks. It is also evident that there was a general belief that the Jews received their law from Moses very soon after they left Egypt, and that it had the highest antiquity. In what Tacitus says concerning the Israelites being in danger of perishing from thirst, and the means by which they obtained relief, we have several of the facts recorded in Scripture, but blended together and mingled with fiction. Then there is an obvious allusion to what we are told concerning the Israelites traveling three days before they found water, as well as to their murmuring and objections on that account. In the story concerning the rock shaded with wood, we have evidently a mixture of the circumstances related in Scripture concerning the rock which was smitten by Moses, and the twelve fountains of Elim, where there were three score and ten palm trees.*

Artapanus, in his work concerning the Jews, gives the following relation: Moses was shut up in prison by Nechephres, the king of the Egyptians, because he demanded the liberation of the Israelites. By night, the prison being opened by the will of God, he went forth, entered into the royal palace, stood before the sleeping monarch, and awaked him. The king, astonished at what had taken place, commanded Moses to tell the name of that God who had sent him. Moses approaching the ear of the king told him his name. Upon hearing it the king was struck dumb; but when Moses laid hold of him he revived. The leading circumstances here mentioned are entirely different from those recorded in the sacred history. There seems indeed to be an allusion to what was done by Moses in declaring to Pharaoh the name of JEHOVAH as the God of the Hebrews: and to Pharaoh's calling for Moses and Aaron by night. But what deserves special notice is that the passage affords a satisfactory proof of a general tradition among the heathen that Moses had wrought miracles in the presence of the king of Egypt, and even such as particularly affected himself.

Although none of the names of the Egyptian magicians are men

Exodus xv. 27.

tioned in the Pentateuch; yet, from what the apostle Paul says concerning" Jannes and Jambres withstanding Moses," there is no reason to doubt that the names of these persons, as being the chief of the magicians, and some other particulars concerning them not recorded in Scripture, had been preserved among the Jews by tradition. Their names are found in the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch. Jonathan thus renders Exod. vii. 11, “Jannes and Jambres, Egyptian magicians, also did in like manner by the muttering of their enchantments." The names of these magicians are also mentioned in the Talmud in the book of Zohar, in Schalscheleth and in Tanchuma. These magicians seem to have been well known to heathen writers Eusebius quotes a passage from Numenius, an ancient Pythagorean philosopher, which not only attests the scriptural account concerning these magicians, but plainly shows a general belief that Egypt, by the instrumentality of Moses, had been visited by some plagues. He says, "Jannes and Jambres, scribes of the religion of Egypt, at the time that the Jews were expelled from that country, were universally deemed inferior to none in acquaintance with magical arts. They were therefore both chosen by the common consent of the Egyptians to oppose themselves to Musæus, the leader of the Jews, a man whose prayers were remarkably prevalent with God. These persons were reckoned able to romove the calamities which Musæus had brought upon Egypt." Eusebius gives a similar testimony from Artapanus, who calls them "priests above Memphis," relating that the king "threatened them with death if they did not perform things equal to those done by Moses."*

Strabo, in his sixteenth book, speaking of Moses as an Egyptian priest (which Josephus says he had from the Egyptian writers) says, "Many who worship the Deity agreed with him, (Moses) for he hath said that the Egyptians did not rightly conceive of God, when they likened him to wild beasts and cattle; nor the Syrians, nor the Greeks, in resembling him to a human shape." According to Artapanus, the Heliopolitans gave the following account of the passage of the Red sea: "The king of Egypt, as soon as the Jews had departed from his country, pursued them with an immense army, bearing along with him the consecrated animals. But Moses having by the divine command struck the waters with his rod, they parted asunder, and afforded a free passage to the Israelites. The Egyptians attempted to follow them, when fire suddenly flashed in their faces, and the sea

returning to its usual channel, brought a universal destruction upon their army." This circumstance of the Egyptians being struck with lightning, as well as being overwhelmed with the waves, is the more remarkable, since it is unnoticed in the Pentateuch, and is mentioned, but only incidentally, in the 77th Psalm: "Thou hast with thy hand redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah. The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths also were troubled. The clouds poured out water: the skies sent out a sound: thine arrows also went abroad. The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook." A similar tradition, though less minutely particular, is mentioned by Diodorus as existing even at the time when he wrote. He relates that among the Ichthyophagi, the natives of the spot, a tradition is given which is preserved from their ancestors, that by a great ebb of the waters, the whole bosom of the gulf became dry, disclosing its weeds, the sea rolling upon the opposite shore. But the bare earth having been rendered visible from the very bottom of the abyss, the tide returning in its strength restored the passage once more to its former condition." Nor is the old tradition of the country even yet extinct. According to a learned and respectable modern traveler, Dr. Shaw, the inhabitants of Corondel and its neighborhood (on the eastern side of the Red Sea) to this day preserve the remembrance of the deliverance of the Israelites; which event is further confirmed by the Red sea being called by the Arabian geographers "the sea of Kalzum, that is of destruction." The very country indeed where the event is said to have happened, bears testimony in some degree to the accuracy of the Mosaic narrative. Still is the scriptural Etham denominated Ecla: the wilderness of Shur, the mountain of Sinai, and the country of Paran are still known by the same names; and Marah, Elath, and Midian are still familiar to the ears of the Arabs. The grove of Elim yet remains ; and its twelve fountains have neither decreased nor diminished in number since the days of Moses."*

The writer of the Orphic verses, whoever he was, after saying that there was but one God to be worshiped, who was the Creator and Governor of the world, adds

So was it said of old, so he commands
Who, born of water, received of God

The double tables of the Law.

Diodorus Siculus, in his first book, where he treats of those who

⚫ Dr. Shaw's Travels in Barbary and the Levant.

made the gods to be the authors of these laws, says, "Amongst the Jews was Moses, who called God by the name of IOUA," i. e. JEHOVAH! which was so pronounced by the oracles, and in the Orphic verses mentioned by the ancients, and by the Syrians.

Dionysius Longinus, who lived in the time of Aurelian, the emperor, says, he who gave laws to the Jews was an extraordinary man, who conceived and spake worthy of the power of God, when he writes in the beginning of his laws, God spake: what? Let there be light, and there was light. Let earth be, and it was so. As a promulgator of a new religion, wholly divested of idolatry, Strabo describes Moses as abandoning Egypt, followed by those who worshiped God alone, and planting his people and his faith in that land of which Jerusalem was afterwards the capital.

The name of the desert, El Tih, or the wandering, is yet a testimony of the wanderings of the Israelites. And in reference to the history of Moses, Laborde, who partly traversed the same route, states that the Bible is so precisely true, that it is only by a close attention to each word that all its merits can be discovered.* The tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the land of Edom, and, surrounded as it is by many an evidence of prophetic truth, still bears testimony to the death and burying place of the first high priest of Israel. Aaron died there on the top of the mount. Though, till within a few years, unheard of and unknown, and situated in the midst of the land of the enemies of Israel; though for many ages possessed by the wild Arabs, neither of Israelitish nor of Christian faith; yet there, on the top of Mount Hor, where he died, is the tomb of Aaron, a memorial on the spot.

Thus it appears from collateral testimony, to say nothing of the internal evidence of the sacred books themselves, that there is no reason to doubt that Moses was not, as has been asserted, a mythological person, but a real character, and an eminent legislator; and that the miraculous events, which are recorded concerning the Israelites in the first period of their history as a nation, did transpire; for, as has been shown, the principal facts related in the books of Moses do not depend upon his solitary testimony, but they are supported by the concurrent testimony of all nations.

Another, and a very conclusive evidence of the truth of the Mosaic history, but which appears to have escaped the notice of all who have written upon this subject, with the exception of Mr. Keith, is here