Hugo Grotius · 65 of 132

SECT. XVI. The authority of the books of the Old Testament.

BUT, since God has been pleased to leave us the records of the Jewish religion, which was of old the true religion, and affords no small testimony to the Christian religion, it is not foreign to our purpose to see upon what foundation the credibility of these is built. That these books are theirs to whom they are ascribed, appears in the same manner as we have proved of our books. And they, whose names they bear, were either prophets, or men worthy to be credited; such as Esdras, who is supposed to have collected them into one volume, at that time when the prophets Haggai, Malachi, and Zecharias, were yet alive. I will not here repeat what was said before in commendation of Moses. And not only that first part delivered by Moses, as we have shewn in the first book, but the later history, is confirmed by many pagans. Thus, the Phœnician annals mention the names of David and Solomon, and the league they made with the Tyrians. And Berosus, as well as the Hebrew books, mention Nabuchadonosor, and other Chaldeans. Vaphres, the king of Egypt in Jeremiah, is the same with Apries in Herodotus. And the Greek books are filled with Cyrus and his successors, down to Darius; and Josephus, in his book against Appion, quotes many other things relating to the Jewish nation: to which may be added that we above took out of Strabo and Trogus. But there is no reason for us Christians to doubt of the credibility of these books, because there are testimonies in our books, out of almost every one of them, the same as they are found in the Hebrew. Nor did Christ, when he blamed many things in the teachers of the law, and in the Pharisees of his time, ever accuse them of falsifying the books of Moses and the prophets, or of using supposititious or altered books. And it can never be proved or made credible, that, after Christ’s time, the scripture should be corrupted in any thing of moment; if we do but consider how far and wide the Jewish nation, who every where kept those books, was dispersed over the whole world. For, first, the ten tribes were carried into Media by the Assyrians, and afterwards the other two. And many of these fixed themselves in foreign countries, after they had a permission from Cyrus to return; the Macedonians invited them into Alexandria with great advantages; the cruelty of Antiochus, the civil war of the Asmonæi, and the foreign wars of Pompey and Sossius, scattered a great many; the country of Cyrene was filled with Jews; the cities of Asia, Macedonia, Lycaonia, and the isles of Cyprus, and Crete, (and others, were full of them; and that there was a vast number of them in Rome, we learn from Horace, Juvena1, and Martial. It is impossible that such distant bodies of men should be imposed upon by any art whatsoever, or that they should agree in a falsity. We may add further that, almost three hundred years before Christ, by the care of the Egyptian kings, the Hebrew books were translated into Greek, by those who are called the seventy; that the Greeks might have them in another language, but the sense the same in the main; upon which account they were the less liable to be altered: and the same books were translated into Chaldee, and into the Jerusalem language, that is, half Syriac, partly a little bcfore, and partly a little after, Christ’s time. After which followed other Greek versions, that of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion; which Origen, and others after him, compared with the seventy interpreters, and found no difference in the history, or in any weighty matters. Philo flourished in Caligula’s time, and Josephus lived till Vespasian’s. Each of them quote out of the Hebrew books the same things that we find at this day. By this time the Christian religion began to be more and more spread, and many of its profession were Hebrews: many had studied the Hebrew learning, who could very easily have perceived and discovered it, it the Jews had received any thing that was false, in any remarkable subject; I mean, by comparing it with more ancient books. But they not only do this, but they bring very many testimonies out of the Old Testament, plainly is that sense in which they are received amongst the He. brews, which Hebrews may be convicted of any crime sooner than (I will not say of falsity, but) of negligence, in relation to these books; because they used to transcribe and compare them so very scrupulously, that they could tell how often every letter came over. We may add, in the first place, an argument, and that no mean one, why the Jews did not alter the scripture designedly; because the Christians prove, and, as they think, very strongly, that their Master Jesus was that very Messiah who was of old promised to the forefathers of the Jews; and this from those very books which were read by the Jews. Which the Jews would have taken the greatest care should never have been, after there arose a controversy between them and the Christians, if it had ever been in their power to have altered what they would.