of
a book which is four or five hundred years old may put their own price
upon it, for some antiquarian will be sure to purchase it.

But how modern, how very far from being ancient, the oldest of our
English books, printed in the most primitive black letter, appears, when
it is laid side by side with that curious old book which travellers,
visiting the little village of Nablus, are shown this very day. Well may
the old white-headed man who has charge of that book bring it out with
pride, for it is one of the oldest books in the world.

The book is in the form of a roll of parchment. It is made of goat
skins, twenty-five inches broad, and about fifteen feet long. The skins
are neatly joined together, but in many places they have been torn and
rather clumsily mended. The roll is kept in a grand silver-gilt case in
the form of a cylinder, embossed and engraved. On this case are carved
representations of the Tabernacle, of the ark, of the two altars, of
the trumpets, and of the various instruments used in sacrifice. A
crimson satin cover, on which inscriptions are worked in gold thread, is
thrown over this precious book.

This old manuscript is written in Hebrew, and is said by the Jews to be
the work of a man whose name has already come before us in Nehemiah's
story. We saw that Eliashib, the high priest, had a grandson named
Manasseh, that Manasseh married the daughter of Sanballat, the Samaritan
governor, and that Nehemiah felt very strongly that the temple would
never be cleansed, nor God's blessing rest upon them as a nation, so
long as one of their own priests had a heathen wife, and was in constant
communication with Sanballat. Accordingly he chased Manasseh from him,
he made him at once leave the temple and his high position there; and
Manasseh, in disgust and indignation, went off to Samaria to his
father-in-law, Sanballat, taking his heathen wife and family with him.

Now it is that very Manasseh who was, according to the Jews, the writer
of the Samaritan Pentateuch, that old copy of the Books of Moses. The
Samaritans themselves declare that it is far more ancient; that it was
written soon after the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, by the
great-grandson of Aaron; whilst some scholars think it is far more
modern than some other copies of the Pentateuch which have been
discovered; but the Jews pronounce it to have been the work of Manasseh,
the grandson of Eliashib, the high priest of Nehemiah's day.

Ma