Chapter XXXVI.—Testimony of the Chaldeans to the Antiquity of Moses.
But let Homer be not later than the Trojan war; let
it be granted that he was contemporary with it, or even that he was in
the army of Agamemnon, and, if any so please, that he lived before the
invention of letters. The Moses before mentioned will be shown to have
been many years older than the taking of Troy, and far more ancient
than the building of Troy, or than Tros and Dardanus. To demonstrate
this I will call in as witnesses the Chaldeans, the Phœnicians
and the Egyptians. And what more need I say? For it behoves one who
professes to persuade his hearers to make his narrative of events very
concise. Berosus, a Babylonian, a priest of their god Belus, born in
the time of Alexander, composed for Antiochus, the third after him,
the history of the Chaldeans in three books; and, narrating the acts of
the kings, he mentions one of them, Nabuchodonosor by name, who made
war against the Phœnicians and the Jews,—events which we
know were announced by our prophets, and which happened much later than
the age of Moses, seventy years before the Persian empire. But Berosus
is a very trustworthy man, and of this Juba is a witness, who, writing
concerning the Assyrians, says that he learned the history from Berosus:
there are two books of his concerning the Assyrians.
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