Undertaking to examine the subject ab initio, we must take into account the sources of our information, and as our knowledge of every event antecedent to the discovery of writing must have been transmitted by oral or traditional agencies, we have to settle, in some degree, how far such evidence is worthy of credence.

According to popular belief, the Noahic flood destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of Noah and his family; who were therefore the sole depositories of the traditions of the events which had occurred between the time of Adam and themselves. The great longevity of these antediluvian fathers made this oral transmission easy; and we know, that the sons of Noah lived to see the birth of Abraham, whom, as the founder of circumcision, we claim as the first operative surgeon on record.

In dealing with dates, I adopt the commonly accepted chronology, unmoved by those refined speculations so much in favour at this time.

I begin with Moses, for whatever evidence may be urged upon us in the shape of marbles, or monuments, claiming an antiquity anterior to the advent of the Jewish lawgiver[lawgiver], it is a positive and unimpeachable fact, that no writings are in existence, which in point of age reach within many centuries of the Pentateuch; indeed, as we shall presently see, the oldest of the Greek writers are, in comparison with Moses, but as the children of yesterday.

The five books of Moses were written 1500 years before Christ. Hesiod, the father of Greek literature, flourished 500 years later; and Homer, the next in succession, nearly a century after Hesiod.

Herodotus places Homer 400 years before himself; thus bringing the “father of history,” as he is termed by Cicero, to about 500 years before the advent of our Saviour, so that the difference of date between the author of the Pentateuch and the oldest Greek historian cannot be much less than 1000 years.

I pass over the pretended antiquity of the Chinese and Parsis records: these have been disposed of very satisfactorily, and however much fancy may dwell upon the losses to literature inflicted by the Caliph Omar, when he destroyed the Alexandrian library,[[1]] in the year 640, a very little reflection will convince us that as these treasures, real or assumed, had been ransacked for ages, by the brightest spirits of Greece and Rome, everything worthy of note has been handed down to us.

The learned talk about the writings of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians; but they do not produce a single scrap of tangible evidence in support of these pretensions.

It may, however, be contended, that although there are no writings extant, traditional evidence is very strong; and this establishes a high antiquity for Lycurgus, who lived 900 years before the Christian era. The more, therefore, we inquire, the stronger the proof becomes, that Moses as a lawgiver flourished 600 years before the highest claimant to our veneration on the grounds of primitiveness; and thus we are entitled to assume that the Greek legislator took much that is excellent, in the laws ascribed to him, from his Jewish predecessor.

Lycurgus lived about the time that Shishak, king of Egypt, destroyed the temple of Solomon, and carried away many captives: it is therefore no very extravagant supposition, that the Pentateuch of Moses was known to the great lawgiver. During the peaceful reign of king Solomon, the intercourse between the Jews and the Egyptians was frequent and extensive, for the great monarch, needing the assistance of skilful artificers for the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, broke down that barrier of exclusiveness that had previously isolated his people.