7th, as here; for Josephus
agrees with them, as to the distance of 150 days to the 17th day of the
7th month, as Genesis 7. ult. with 8:3.

[15] Josephus here takes notice, that these ancient genealogies were
first set down by those that then lived, and from them were transmitted
down to posterity; which I suppose to be the true account of that
matter. For there is no reason to imagine that men were not taught to
read and write soon after they were taught to speak; and perhaps all by
the Messiah himself, who, under the Father, was the Creator or Governor
of mankind, and who frequently in those early days appeared to them.

[16] This [GREEK], or Place of Descent, is the proper rendering of the
Armenian name of this very city. It is called in Ptolemy Naxuana, and
by Moses Chorenensis, the Armenian historian, Idsheuan; but at the place
itself Nachidsheuan, which signifies The first place of descent, and is
a lasting monument of the preservation of Noah in the ark, upon the top
of that mountain, at whose foot it was built, as the first city or
town after the flood. See Antiq. B. XX. ch. 2. sect. 3; and Moses
Chorenensis, who also says elsewhere, that another town was related by
tradition to have been called Seron, or, The Place of Dispersion, on
account of the dispersion of Xisuthrus's or Noah's sons, from thence
first made. Whether any remains of this ark be still preserved, as the
people of the country suppose, I cannot certainly tell. Mons. Tournefort
had, not very long since, a mind to see the place himself, but met with
too great dangers and difficulties to venture through them.

[17] One observation ought not here to be neglected, with regard to that
Ethiopic war which Moses, as general of the Egyptians, put an end to,
Antiq. B. II. ch. 10., and about which our late writers seem very much
unconcerned; viz. that it was a war of that consequence, as to occasion
the removal or destruction of six or seven nations of the posterity of
Mitzraim, with their cities; which Josephus would not have said, if
he had not had ancient records to justify those his assertions, though
those records be now all lost.

[18] That the Jews were called Hebrews from this their progenitor Heber,
our author Josephus here rightly affirms; and not from Abram the Hebrew,
or passenger over Euphrates, as many of the moderns suppose. Shem is
also called the father of all the children of Heber, or of all the
Hebrews, in a history long before Abram pa