CHAP. III.

Of the Chaldæan History.

I. The Contest of Antiquity among Heathen Nations, and the ways of deciding it. II. Of the Chaldæan Astrology, and the Foundation of Judicial Astrology. III. Of the Zabii, their Founder, who they were; no other than the old Chaldees. IV. Of Berosus and his History. V. An Account of the fabulous Dynasties of Berosus and Manetho; VI. From the Translation of the Scripture-history into Greek, in the Time of Ptolemy. VII. Of that Translation, and the Time of it. VIII. Of Demetrius Phalereus. Scaliger's Arguments answered. IX. Manetho writ after the Septuagint, proved against Kircher; his arguments answered. Of Rabbinical and Arabic Authors, and their little Credit in Matter of History. X. The Time of Berosus enquired into; his Writing contemporary with Philadelphus.

III.

I..

THE next whom our enquiry leads us to, are the Chal- CHAP. dæans, a nation of great and undoubted antiquity, being in probability the first formed into a national government after the flood, and therefore the more capable of having these arts and sciences flourish among them, which might preserve the memory of oldest times to the view of posterity. And yet even among these, who enjoyed all the advantages of ease, quiet, and a flourishing empire, we find no undoubted or credible records preserved, but the same vanity as among the Egyptians, in arrogating antiquity to themselves beyond all proportion of reason or satisfaction from their own history, to fill up that vast measure of time with: which makes it most probable, what Diodorus observes of them, that in things pertaining Diodor. to their arts, they made use of lunar years of 30 days: so they had need, when Tully tells us that they boasted of observations of the stars for 470,000 years. impossible for them to have been so extravagant in their c. 97. accounts of themselves, had they but preserved the history of their nation in any certain records. For want of which, the tradition of the oldest times varying in the several families after their dispersion, and being gradually corrupted by the policy of their leaders, and those corruptions readily embraced by the predominancy of selflove in the several nations, thence arose those vain and eager contests between the Chaldæans, Scythians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians, concerning the antiquity of their

Biblioth.

1. i. c. 26. Cicero de

It had been Divin. l. ii.

I.

BOOK several nations: which may be seen in Diodorus and others; by which it most evidently appears that they had no certain history of their own nations; for none of them insist upon any records, but only upon several probabilities from the nature of their country, and the climates they lived under. Neither need Psammetichus have been put to that ridiculous way of deciding the controversy, by his two infants bred up without any converse with men; concluding the language they spake would manifest the great antiquity of the nation it belonged to: whereas it is more than probable they had spoken none at all, had they not learned the inarticulate voice of the goats, they had more converse with than men. The making use of such ways to decide this controversy, doth not only argue the great weakness of those times as to natural knowledge, but the absolute defect and insufficiency of them, as to the giving any certain account of the state of ancient times.

II.

Of which the Chaldæans had advantages above all other Heathen nations, not only living in a settled country, but in or near that very place where the grand ancestors of the world had their chief abode and residence. Whereby we see how unfaithful a thing tradition is, and how soon it is corrupted or fails, where it hath no sure records to bottom itself upon. But indeed it is the less wonder that there should be a confusion of histories, where there had been before of tongues; and that such, whose design and memory God had blasted before, should afterwards forget their own original. But, as if the Chaldæans had retained something still of their old aspiring mind to reach up to heaven, the only thing they were eminent for, and which they were careful in preserving of, was some astronomical observations, which Tully tells us they had a great conveniency for, by reason of the plain and even situation of their country; whereby they might have a larger prospect of the heavenly bodies, than those who lived in mountainous countries could have. And yet even for this (which they were so famous for, that the name Chaldæans passed for astrologers in the Roman empire) we have no great reason to admire their excellency in it, considering how soon their skill in astronomy dwindled into that which, by a great catachresis, is called judicial astrology. The original of which is most evident among them, as all other Heathen nations, to have been from the divinity which they attributed to the stars; in which yet they were far more ra

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Biblioth.

tional than those who now admire that art: for, granting CHAP their hypothesis, that the stars were Gods, it was but III. reasonable they should determine contingent effects; but it is far from being so with them, who take away the foundation of all those celestial houses, and yet attribute the same effects to them, which they did who believed a divinity in them. The Chaldæans, as Diodorus relates, Diodor. 1. ii. set 30 stars under the planets; these they called Beλalous C: 30. Os others they had as princes over these, which they called τῶν Θεῶν Κυρίους: the former were as the privy counsellors, and these the princes over them; by whom, in their courses, they supposed the course of the year to be regulated. See then what a near affinity there was between astrology and the divinity of the stars; which Ptolem. Temakes Ptolemy call them Atheists who condemned astro- trab. 1. i. logy, because thereby they destroyed the main of their religion, which was the worshipping the stars for Gods. But it seems by Strabo, that one of the sects of the Strabo GeoChaldæans did so hold to astronomy still, that they graph. 1. wholly rejected genethlialogy; which caused a great division among the Orchoeni and Borsippeni, two sects among them, so called from the places of their habitations.

xvi. p. 509.

III.

And if we reckon the Zabii among the Chaldæans, as Maimonides seems to do, we have a further evidence of the planetary deities, so much in request among the Chaldæans; for the description he gives of them is to this purpose, that they had no other Gods but the stars, Maimon. to whom they made statues and images: to the sun golden, More Nevo. to the moon silver; and so to the rest of the planets of the P. 3. c. 29. metals dedicated to them. Those images derived an influence from the stars to which they were erected, which had thence a faculty of foretelling future things; which is an V. Scaliger exact description of the Eroeia, or Talismans, so much Ep. ad Cain request among the Heathens; such as the Palladium of saubon. & Troy is supposed by learned men to have been. These Ta- Selden de lismans are by the Jews called David's bucklers, and are Diis Syris, much of the same nature with the ancient Teraphim, both Syn. i. c. z. being accurately made according to the positions of the An. Clim. heavens; only the one were to foretel future things, the p. 578. other for the driving away some calamity. Concerning these Zabii, Maimonides tells us, that the understanding their rites would give a great deal of light to several passages of Scripture which now lie in obscurity: but little is supposed to be yet further known of them than what Scaliger hath said, that they were the more Eastern Chal

Ep. Gallic.

Salmas. de

Gent. 1. ii.

c. 7.

BOOK dæans: which he fetcheth from the signification of the 1. word. Several of their books are extant, saith Scaliger, among the Arabians; but none of them are yet discovered to the European 'world. Salmasius thinks these Zabii were the Chaldæans inhabiting Mesopotamia; to which is very consonant what Maimonides saith, that Abraham had his education among them. Saïd Batricides, cited by Selden de Mr. Selden, attributes the original of their religion to the Jure Nat. & time of Nachor, and to Zaradchath, the Persian, as the author of it; who is conceived to be the same with Zoroas ter, who in all probability is the same with the Zertoost of the Persees, a sect of the ancient Persians living now among the Banyans in the Indies. These give a more full and exact account concerning the original, birth, education, and enthusiasms or revelations of their Zertoost, than any we meet with in any Greek historians. Three books they tell us of, which Zertoost received by revelation, or rather one book, consisting of three several tracts : whereof the first was concerning judicial astrology, which they call Astoodeger; the second concerning physic, or the knowledge of natural things; the third was called Zertoost, from the bringer of it, containing their religious rites. The first was committed to the jesopps, or magi; the second to physicians; the third to the darooes, or churchmen; wherein are contained the several precepts of their law. We have likewise the rites and customs of these Persees in their worship of fire, with many other particular rites of theirs, published some time since by one Mr. Lord, who was a long time resident among them at Surat; by which we may not only understand much of the religion of the ancient Persians, but, if I mistake not, somewhat of the Zabii too. My reasons are, because the ancient Zaradcha, or Zoroaster, is by Said Batricides made the author of the Zabii, as we have seen already, who was undoubtedly the founder of the Persian worship, or rather a promoter of it among Am. Marc. the Persians; for Ammianus Marcellinus tells us, that he was instructed in the rites of the Chaldæans, which he 419. Edit. added to the Persian rites. Besides, their agreement in the chief point of idolatry, the worship of the sun, and consequently the Пugada, or symbol of the sun, the eternal fire, is evident; which, as far as we can learn, was the great and most early idolatry of the Eastern countries. And further we find God, in Leviticus xxvi. 30. threatening to destroy their on, their images of the sun, some render it; but most probably by that word

Flist. 1.

xxiii. p.

Francof.

C.

III.

is meant the Пlugadeia, the hearths where they kept their CHAP. perpetual fire; for those are on from non, which is used both for the sun and fire. Now hence it appears that V. Voss. this idolatry was in use among the nations about Pales- Idol. 1. ii. tine, else there had been no need of so severe a threaten- . 9. ing against it; and therefore most probably the rites of the Zabii (which must help us to explain the reasons of some particular positive precepts in the Levitical law relating to idolatry) are the same with the rites of the Chaldæans and Persians, who all agreed in this worship of the sun and fire; which may be yet more probable from what Maimonides saith of them, Gens Zabia erat gens quæ implevit totum orbem: it could not be then any obscure nation, but such as had the largest spread in the Eastern countries; which could be no other than the ancient Chaldæans, from whom the Persians derived their worship. It may not seem altogether improbable that Balaam, the famous soothsayer, was one of these Zabii, especially if, according to Salmasius's judgment, they inhabited Mesopotamia; for Balaam's country seems to be there; for it is said, Num. xxii. 5. that he dwelt in Pethor, by the river, i. e. saith the Chaldee paraphrast, in Peor of Syria, by Euphrates, which in Scripture is called the river. Esa. viii. 7. But from this great obscurity as to the history of so ancient and so large a people as these Zabii are supposed to be, we have a further evidence to our purpose, of the defectiveness and insufficiency of the Eastern histories, as to the giving any full account of themselves and their own original.

We are told indeed by some, that Nabonassar did burn and destroy all the ancient records of the Chaldæans, which they had diligently preserved among them before, on purpose to raise the greater reputation to himself, and blot out the memory of his usurpation, by burning the records of all their own ancient kings; which is a conceit, I suppose, that hath no other ground than that the famous era, so much celebrated by astronomers and others, did bear the name of Nabonassar; which (if we should be so greedy of all empty conjectures, which tend to our purpose, as to take them for truths) would be a very strong evidence of the falsehood and vanity of the Chaldæans, in their great pretences to antiquity. But, as the case stands in reference to their history, we find more evidence from Scripture to assert their just antiquity, than ever they are able to produce out of any undoubted records of their own: which yet hath been endeavoured

IV.