621

The creation of the world beginning to be distant, God 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

[Japhet 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 multitude 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 God’s people to have this name, as Jesus Christ was the last of God’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 nobody 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 pass for truth.