* See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when, having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they resided for three successive generations, that they imbibed manners and opinions which had been rejected as contrary to their law. When our king Cyrus had delivered them from slavery, their heart was won to us by gratitude; they became our disciples and imitators; and they admitted our dogmas in the revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in particular, was never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up after the return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted the Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
* In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
most learned of those who have since been denominated
heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
Mahomet. See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
Homel. 3. sect. 42.
Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
the principal proofs have escaped them. These I mean to
exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
or the celestial Genius that opened the year. The
Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
Orion.
"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored to repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we announced a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,* the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras; the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
* Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
of God or of light, meaning the six summer months. In the
first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
man; corresponding with the account in Genesis. For
particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
religion of the ancient Persians. It is remarkable that the
same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
houses of the sun. In the first thousand, God made heaven
and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
sixth man. See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
first the identity of their theological and astrological
opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
years.
** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
laying on of hands in confirmation. The priest of Mithra,
says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
same time with the sword, etc.
In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
names of the animal constellations. The ceremony of mass is
nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
of Eleusis. The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
p-ka. See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony. And the various parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown epochs.
A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews and the Parses, said:
"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years, it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are their books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not justly conceal them from every eye!"