fragments, if not the whole of it. It was vastly admired by Tertullian, and some other fathers; but it has since their time been proved to be the product of some impostor who made it, according to Scaliger, Vossius, Gale, and Kircher, some time between the captivity and our Saviour's birth; but there are, I think, good reasons not to believe it even so old. As to Seth's pillars,' Josephus gives the following account of them. "That Seth and his descendants were persons of happy tempers, and lived in peace, employing themselves in the study of astronomy, and in other researches after useful knowledge; that, in order to preserve the knowledge they had acquired, and to convey it to posterity, having heard from Adam of the Flood, and of a destruction of the world by fire which was to follow it, they made two pillars, the one of stone, the other of brick, and inscribed their knowledge upon them, supposing that one or the other of them might remain for the use of posterity. The stone pillar, (says he) on which is inscribed, that there was one of brick made also, is still remaining in the land of Seriad to this day." Thus far Josephus: but whether his account of this pillar may be admitted, has been variously controverted; we are now not only at a loss about the pillar, but we cannot so much as find the place where it is said to have stood. Some have thought this land of Seriad to be the land of Seirah, mentioned Judges iii. 26, and that the quarries, as we render it, or the pesilim, as it is in the Hebrew, might be the ruinous stones of which this pillar of Seth was formerly made." Other writers think the word pesilim to signify idols, and that the stones here mentioned were Eglon's idols, lately set up there. Bishop Stillingflcet, if the word pesilim can signify pillars, approves of Junius's interpretation of the place, and thinks the stones here spoken of were the twelve stones pitched by Joshua in Gilgal, after the children of Israel passed over Jordan; but surely this interpretation is improbable, the stones pitched in Gilgal by Joshua would have been called as they were when they were pitched, ha abenim, from aben, a stone; or else the remembrance of the fact to be supported by them would be lost. The design of heaping them was, that when posterity should enquire what mean ha abenim, these stones, they might be told how the waters of Jordan were cut off. It is unlikely that the writer of the book of Judges should alter the name of so remarkable a monument. But it is more easy to guess where Josephus had his story of Seth's pillars, than to tell in what country they ever stood; there is a passage quoted from t Vossius de Etat. Mund. c. x. et Marsham Can. Chronic. p. 39. Manetho, the Egyptian historian, which very probably was the foundation of all that Josephus has said about them. Eusebius has given us the words of Manetho; for, relating what he asserted to establish the credit of his Egyptian dynasties, he says, that he pretended to have taken them "from some pillars in the land of Seriad, inscribed in the sacred dialect by the first mercury Thyoth, and after the Flood translated out of the sacred dialect into the Greek tongue in sacred characters, and laid up amongst the revesteries of the Egyptian temples by Agathodæmon the second mercury, father of Tat." Josephus very often quotes heathen writers, and Manetho in particular; and it is probable, that upon reading this account of pillars in that historian, he might think it misapplied. The Jews had an old tradition of Seth's pillars: Josephus perhaps imagined Manetho's account to have arisen from it, and that he should probably hit the truth if he put the history of the one and the tradition of the other together; and it is likely that hence arose all he has given us upon this subject. It may perhaps be inquired, what the wickedness was, for which God destroyed the first world. Some writers have imagined it to have been an excess of idolatry; others think idolatry was not practised until after the Flood; and indeed the Scripture mentions no idolatry in these times; but describes the antediluvian wicked y In Chron. a ness to have been a general neglect of virtue, and pursuit of evil. The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. There is one particular taken notice of by Moses, the earth, he says, was filled with violence. This expression, and the severe law made against murder soon after the Flood, makes it probable that the men of this first world. had taken a great licence in usurping upon the lives of one another. There should be something said, before I conclude this book, of the chronology and geography of this first world. As to the chronology, several of the transactions in it are not reduced to any fixed time. We are not told when Cain and Abel were born; in what year Abel was killed, or Cain left his parents; when the city of Enoch was built; or at what particular time the descendants of Cain's family were born. Moses has given us a chronology of only one branch of Seth's family. He has set down the several descendants from Adam to Noah, with an account of the time of their birth, and term of life; so that if there was not a variety in the different copies of the Bible, it would be easy to fix the year of their deaths, and of the Flood, and to determine the time of the continuance of this first world. |