Dataset Viewer
text
stringlengths 0
6.32k
|
|---|
What a wonderful book is the Bible ! But what connection has the Biblo with
|
American Antiquities ? Because of all Antiquities, it is the most valuable and
|
marvellous specimen ; because with all antiquities it is associated in the most
|
important and interesting relations ; because the most valuable discoveries in antiquity
|
must appeal to the Bible for interpretation; and die registers of long lost events and
|
generations, inscribed upon the rocks and buried in Uic fossil remains of far distant ages,
|
or scattered far and wide in the ruins of once mighty empires, are so many witnesses,
|
constantly multiplying, to the history contained in the Bible.
|
As a SPECIMEN of antiquity, what is comparable in point of interest with this Book?
|
Suppose that in searching the tumuli that are scattered so widely over this country,
|
the silent, aged, mysterious remembrancers of some populous race, once carrying on all
|
the business of life where now are only the wild forests of many centuries, a race
|
of whom we ask so often, who they were, whence diey came, whidier they went ;
|
suppose that under one of those huge structures of earth which remain of their works,
|
a book were discovered, an alphabetic history of that race for a thousand years,
|
containing their written language, and examples of their poetry and other hterature, and
|
all undeniably composed many hundreds of years before any of the nations now possessing
|
this continent were here ! What a wonder would this be ! What intense interest would
|
attach to such a relic ! What price would not the learned be willing to give for it !
|
What fragments of Egyptian inscriptions ; what unintelligible characters among the ruins
|
of Belus ; what remains from the bowels of the earth, telling of some ancient convulsion
|
of its rocks, could be compared in value to such a specimen of the mind, the language,
|
the literature, such a detailed history of the deeds of a nation otherwise unheard of?
|
But much more than this is the Bible. It contains histories, specimens of literature,
|
examples of poetry and eloquence, unquestionably written, some eiglit hundred years before
|
the writing of the oldest book of any description which the literature of the world has
|
preserved. Greece was a land of barbarians for many centuries, after Moses composed
|
his history of the world and of Israel. There is no evidence that alphabetic writing
|
was known when he wrote, except among the nation over which he ruled.
|
But tiien, what should we know of the history of die world, and its nations, for
|
three thousand years, if all that has been derived exclusively from the Bible, were
|
obliterated from all memories and all books? Where should we go for knowledge of that
|
B
|
6 PREFACE.
|
immense extent of time— one half of the age of the world? To the most ancient
|
nations, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Phenicians ? Alas, it is all wilderness
|
there; a few fragments of pretended annals, which, like the gloomy remains upon the
|
plains of Shinar, can neither be referred to the right place in chronology, nor interpreted
|
so as to give them their right estimate in point of truth; mere continuation of the
|
confusion of tongues at Babel. Do we inquire of Egyptian literature for an ancient
|
book containing authentic details of far ancient times? We are referred only to IManetho.
|
But he wrote so late as the third century before Christ. All his professed autliority was
|
certain sacred inscriptions on pillars, which probably never existed. And nothing is
|
extant, of even such history, but a few inconsiderable fragments. We enquire next of
|
Babylonian literature; and are told only of Berosus, a Priest of Belus. When did he write?
|
No one knows, except that it was somewhere in the period of the Macedonian dynasties.
|
What remains of his writing? A few fragments preserved by Josephus, Eusebius and
|
Tatian; of value indeed, because confa-raing the history in the Bible, but almost
|
useless,' without that history. We inquire next of Phenician history and are referred
|
only to the work of Sanchoniathon, famous for having been used by Porphyry, (the shrewdest
|
antagonist Christianity ever had) in opposition to the writings of 3Ioses. What remains
|
of ft now? One book only, and that upon the Phenician theology, and of course
|
full of fable ;1 and as a history, unaided by any better, useless. But does Greece,
|
ancient, classic, learned Greece flirnish nothing more valuable concerning the first three
|
tliousand years of the world? Alas, of Greek historians, the antiquity of the oldest, whose
|
names have been preserved, docs not much exceed the times of Cyrus and Cambyses.
|
Of many of tliese, we have only their names; no knowledge even of their subject.
|
Of the remainder, notliing extant, is older than the Persian war. And of that
|
nothin"' is to be depended on, connected with times prior to the Peloponesian war.
|
Thucydidcs asserts, and proves this. " The matter preceding that time, (about four hundred
|
and four years, B. C.) cannot now, through the length of time, he accurately discovered
|
by us/'' Plutarch, in writing of the earlier periods, has to "implore the candor of his
|
readers, and their kind allowance for the tales of antiquity." "As geographers thrust
|
into the extremities of their maps, those countries that are unknown to them, remarking,
|
at the same time, that all beyond is hills of sand, and haunts of wild beasts, frozen seas,
|
marshes, and mountains that are inaccessible to human courage, or industry; so, in com-
|
paring the lives of illustrious men, when I have passed through those periods of time which
|
may be described with probability, and where history may find firm footing in focts, I
|
may say of the remoter ages that all beyond is full of prodigy and fiction, the regions
|
of poets, and fabulists, wrapt in clouds, and unworthy of belief"
|
So said that learned Boeotian, who knew not the scriptures. So appeared to him the
|
history of more than three thousand years of the world. Such also would it be to us,
|
were we destitute of the Bible. Just as we now wander among the mysterious remains of
|
the race which once possessed all this land, and pausing beneath some lofty mound, crested
|
with sturdy oaks, which have stood for centuries and are now nourished with die decayed
|
materials of a former generation; or, measuring the exact angles and regular outhnes
|
of some vast system of warlike defence, for which the traditions of no race now known
|
amon«^ us have the least explanation, are deeply impressed with the evidence that we are
|
PREFACE. 7
|
constantly walking over the graves of an immense population, and pained with a
|
sense of utter darkness, as to every thing connected with tlicm, except that tliey
|
bequeathed to posterity those existing and confounding traces of their existence; so precisely
|
should we be situated, with regard to all the human race, and all the mightiest changes in
|
the surface of the globe, were we, as Plutarch was, destitute of all that history for which
|
we are exclusively indebted to the Old Testament Scriptures. We should have die
|
tumidi which, from the days of Homer to the present, have been seen on the plains
|
of Troy; the frightful heaps of desolation on the foundations of Babel; the ruined tombs,
|
temples and pyramids of ancient Egypt, sculptured with characters, which curiosity has
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 4