hundred years afterwards the witnesses of these facts are no longer
alive, no one knows of his own knowledge if it be a fable or a history;
one has only learnt it from his ancestors, and this can pass for truth.

Every history which is not contemporaneous, as the books of the Sibyls
and Trismegistus,[226] and so many others which have been believed by
the world, are false, and found to be false in the course of time. It is
not so with contemporaneous writers.

There is a great difference between a book which an individual writes,
and publishes to a nation, and a book which itself creates a nation. We
cannot doubt that the book is as old as the people.

628

Josephus hides the shame of his nation.

Moses does not hide his own shame.

_Quis mihi det ut omnes prophetent?_[227]

He was weary of the multitude.

629

_The sincerity of the Jews._--Maccabees,[228] after they had no more
prophets; the Masorah, since Jesus Christ.

This book will be a testimony for you.[229]

Defective and final letters.

Sincere against their honour, and dying for it; this has no example in
the world, and no root in nature.

630

_Sincerity of the Jews._--They preserve lovingly and carefully the book
in which Moses declares that they have been all their life ungrateful to
God, and that he knows they will be still more so after his death; but
that he calls heaven and earth to witness against them, and that he has
[_taught_] them enough.

He declares that God, being angry with them, shall at last scatter them
among all the nations of the earth; that as they have offended Him by
worshipping gods who were not their God, so He will provoke them by
calling a people who are not His people; that He desires that all His
words be preserved for ever, and that His book be placed in the Ark of
the Covenant to serve for ever as a witness against them.

Isaiah says the same thing, xxx.

631

_On Esdras._--The story that the books were burnt with the temple proved
false by Maccabees: "Jeremiah gave them the law."

The story that he recited the whole by heart. Josephus and Esdras point
out _that he read the book_. Baronius, _Ann._, p. 180: _Nullus penitus
Hebraeorum antiquorum reperitur qui tradiderit libros periisse et per
Esdram esse restitutos, nisi in IV Esdrae._

The story that he changed the letters.

Philo, _in Vita Moysis: Illa lingua ac character quo antiquitus scripta
est lex sic permansit usque ad LXX._

Josephus