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 multitude.

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 God, 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 God, being angry with them, shall at last scatter them among all the nations of the earth; that as they have offended Him by worshipping gods who were not their God, 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, xxx.

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 restitutos, 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?

Josephus laughs at the Greeks who would not bear ...

Tertullian.[230]—­Perinde potuit abolefactam eam violentia cataclysmi in spiritu rursus reformare, quemadmodum et Hierosolymis Babylonia expugnatione deletis, omne instrumentum Judaicae literaturae per Esdram constat restauratum.