Authenticity of the Mosaic Record.
THE formation of man, with all his full-grown powers of body and mind—primeval rectitude, federal character and fall—the promised Saviour and his predicted victories—the patriarchal age—the deluge—the foundation of the new world—the settlement of the mother country—the division of the earth—the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion—the early settlement of Egypt—the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire, even to the names of all its successive princes from the first to the last—the origin, peculiarities, and overthrow of the Hebrew state—the progress and decline of Canaan, Persia, and Media,—are all familiar topics of Biblical history. Ancient cities, too,—Thebes—the No-Ammi of Nahum—Nineveh, Jerusalem, Babylon, with all that rendered them the wonders of the world, would be traced to the remote darkness of the fabulous age, but for the Old Testament. The only authentic history of these remote events and kingdoms is in the pentateuch and in the prophets. Before the days of Moses, there were no historical records either in Assyria, Egypt, Phœnicia, Chaldea, or Greece. No other historian has lived at so remote a period as the exodus from Egypt. Dr. Winder shows, at considerable length, that Moses is the only man who had any considerable materials for Egyptian history; as the ancient learning of Egypt must have been chiefly lost by the excision of the first-born and the disasters of the Red sea. Since the priests, the more common depositaries of learning, usually attended in their wars, the people who were left behind must have been chiefly the common people: so that for a long time after this disaster, Egypt was involved in ignorance and darkness; nor is this nation subsequently mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures until the reign of Solomon. “Moses was the father of history.” Infidels have affirmed, there were astronomical calculations in Babylon that reached back to a period much farther than the Mosaic history; which, therefore, if true, invalidate the entire account given by Moses. This assertion has received a very conclusive refutation from the astronomical calculations of Bedford. But there is a fact stated by Gillies, in his history of Greece, that confirms the calculations of Bedford. This historian states, that, after the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, he “eagerly demanded the astronomical calculations that had been carefully preserved in that ancient capital about nineteen centuries. By the order of Alexander, they were faithfully transcribed and transmitted to Aristotle,” who was the preceptor of this prince. And “they re-mounted to twenty-two hundred and thirty-four years beyond the Christian era,” a period not even so remote as the deluge. There is no history that can be so safely relied on, or that is so ancient, as the Mosaic history. Every other attempt at history, until the reigns of David and Solomon, is but a mass of shapeless, re-arranged tradition, as corrupt as it is fabulous. Long after this time, indeed, the pages of writers, esteemed the most authentic, are disfigured by absurd and disgusting fictions. This defect in the annals of earlier times must be everywhere and deeply felt, if we exclude the information obtained from the Bible. There only is the deficiency supplied. Sanchoniathon, Berosus, Ctesias, and Manetho are the oldest human historians; “but Moses was five hundred years before the first, and more than a thousand before the last.”—Sears’ Hist. Bible.