Page images
PDF
EPUB

that such is the character of error, so frequent are its inconsistencies, and so glaring its absurdities, that a simple statement of a writer's own doctrines will sometimes produce the same effect as the most powerful strain of ridicule.

Another difficulty which editors of periodical publications experience, is that of suiting the tastes and wishes of different classes of their readers. The attempt to please all would be ridiculous. But we shall not cease to labor that our work may be as extensively useful, as it shall be within the limits of our means to render it. While we shall pay a respectful attention to intimations from any of our patrons, with regard to practicable improvements in our work, we must request them likewise to pay a similar attention to what they may presume to be the wishes of other patrons. would always encourage the utmost fredoom in suggesting such improvements as will make the Panoplist more conducive to the purposes for which it is published-the promotion of useful knowledge and undefiled religion.

We

We are sorry that our subscription list will not warrant the enlargement proposed in our number for March. By the use of a smaller type in a part of the work, there will be room for some additional matter. The contemplated enlargement will still be kept in view; and will be adopted whenever an increased patronage shall authorize the additional expense. The war has so impeded transportation by water, that we fear a serious diminution of subscribers from that cause alone.

As many of our subscribers number the volumes of the Panoplist from the beginning, without making the distinction of the new series, it will be most convenient that the same mode be universally adopted. We shall therefore designate this volume as the ninth, instead of the sixth of the new series.

We conclude with beseeching the God of all grace to make our feeble efforts in some measure successful, and to impart the knowl edge and love of the truth to all mankind.

RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

LECTURES ON THE EVIDENCES
OF DIVINE REVELATION.

No. XV.

In the preceding Lecture I exhibited a series of testimonies from ancient heathen writers concerning the events, which immediately preceded the deluge; the deluge itself; and the patriarch, who was preserved

from that general devastation of the world. I will now go on to mention other testimonies, relat ing to the same great subject. These, though blended by the writers, and incapable in various instances of being separated, as would indeed naturally be supposed, I shall yet distribute, chiefly under the following heads:

The family of Noah;

The Ark;

Thamanim; which in the ancient

The Mountain, on which it language of Armenia signifies

rested;

The Dove; and

The Raven,

It will not be in my power, and indeed it must in the nature of the case be very 'difficult, to arrange them in a perspicuous order.

1. I shall recite some testimonies concerning the family of

Noah.

The original gods of Egypt were held to be eight; the Odeas, celebrated by antiquity. Of

these Pan was the eldest.

The Cabiri, the principal priests of heathen antiquity, are said by Damasis, as quoted by Photius, to have been the sons of Sadyc; the just man: the appellation, given by Moses to Noah. They are said to have been three; and to have been the authors of all useful science and

arts.

Sanchoniathon also says, They were the offspring of the just man; and that they lived in the time of Barith: a Hebrew word signifying an Ark.

They are said to have been the first, who built a ship; to have been the first husbandmen; to have built a city; and in it to have consecrated Λείψανα Ποντε; what was left by the ocean: i. e. what the Deluge had spared.

These priests are said to have been priests of Theba: another Hebrew word, signifying an Ark.

Diodorus Siculus says, They were universally esteemed the offspring of the Ocean, according to the traditions of the ancients.

Ebn Patricius says, "After the family of Noah left the Ark, they built a city, which they called

Eight; and which, according to him, means, We are eight."

Elmasinus calls the city the place which Noah built, when he came out of the Ark.

William de Rubruquis says, "There are two mountains on which the Armenians say the ark, mentioned by Moses, rested; and a little town, named Cemainun, (eight) which, they say, was built, and so named, by the per sons, who came out of the Ark. This is plain from the name, which signifies eight: They call the mountain (that is, one of these mountains,) the Mother of the world.”

Moses Chonorensis says, that this town is held in great reverence by the Armenians; who say, that it is the oldest town in the world, and was built, immediately after the Deluge, by Noah.

The same writer informs us, that the Armenians furnish us, by their Poems, a far more copious account of ancient things, than any other nation.

From these sources this respectable writer extensively derived, it would seem, his own accounts of antiquity.

Galanus says, The natives say concerning this town, that its true name is Nachib-shivan; which means the first place of descent, agreeably to Josephus.

Berosus says, That in this place the patriarch gave instructions to his children, and vanished from the sight of men.

According to Epiphanius, the family of Noah remained here during five generations, or six hundred and fifty-nine years.

In Genesis x, 25 it is said

that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg, the fifth generation from Noah.

In the retreat of the Argonauts, it is said, that Minyae retired from mount Caucasus to the remotest part of the earth. Ararat is a part of the great chain of Caucasus. Armenia, also, was anciently called Armeni, and Arminni: i. e. Aram Minni; and by Jeremiah, Ararat Minni. Jer. li, 27.

Mankind, it is said, first dwelt in the region of the Minyae, at the bottom of mount Baris, the mountain of the Ark; the Ararat of Moses.

Callimachus says, "The Kronides, (i. e. the sons of Kronus, Saturn, or Noah) determined, or set out, by lot the several regions of the world."

Homer makes Neptune, the son of Saturn, say, that his broth ers parted the world into three shares, and that each obtained by lot his own share.

Plato says, "The gods i. e. the three sons of Saturn, obtained the dominion of the whole earth according to their different allotments; and without contention took possession of their provinces by a fair lot."

The Greeks called Japhet, or Japetus, the first of men; and to express the highest antiquity of any thing said, proverbially, that it was older than Japhet.

That Ham settled in Africa is evident because,

First; Hammon was worshipped as a god by the Egyptians; and had temples erected to him. Secondly; Because cities, places, and people, were named from him. In Egypt the great city Diospolis, or the city of Jupiter, is called Amon, or Ham

on-No, by the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Nahum. In Arabia, were the river Ammon, the promontory Ammonium, and the people Ammonii. In Africa was the city Ammonia.

Alexander Polyhistor, who lived in Egypt under Ptolemy Lathyrus, testifies that all Africa was called Ammonia; and that it was so called from the god Ammon. Lucan also says, that Ammon was the god of Ethiopi ans, Arabians, and Indians.

Plutarch calls Egypt Chemia from Cham. The Copts, as Bochart testifies, call Egypt to this day Chomi. The Arabians, also, call Cairo Misr, from Misr the father of the Misraim.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that Ham was Jupiter, and was worshipped under the name of Jupiter Ammon: or that the temple, erected to him, was discovered by Hornemann in the year 1798, at Siwah: about three hundred miles west by south of Cairo.

2. Testimonies concerning the Ark.

The principal Tartars, or Tatars, declare themselves to be descended from Turk, i. e. Turgoma (Togarmah) the son of Japhet, the son of Noah; who was saved from the Deluge in the Ark, on the mountain of Baris, or the Ark. The Turks were originally called by themselves Turcomans. You will remember, that not a small number of testimonies concerning the Ark have been already mentioned; being too intimately interwoven with other testimonies to be separated.

The word agra used by Plutarch, Alexander Polyhistor, Nicolaus Damascenus, and Theo

philus of Antioch, is exactly equivalent to the Hebrew word Theba, used by Moses for the Ark, and translated gag by Josephus.

From this name Parnassus is derived: of which Stephen of Byzantium says, Parnassus was anciently called Larnassus; be cause the Augra (Larnax) or ark of Deucalion was wafted thither. The priests of Ammon, in their religious rites, carried in their procession a boat; in which was an Ark or oracular Shrine, holden both by them, and the people, in great veneration. This custom was of the remotest antiquity. Two representations of it were copied from Luxor or Luxorein, in Upper Egypt by bishop Pocock; and taken from the apartments of the temple, so much celebrated by Diodorus Siculus. The ends of the boats, copied by Pocock, are alike.

The name of this boat, or ship, of Isis, was Baris. The same was the origin of all the navicular Arks, or shrines, in the ancient worship. You will remember, that Baris* was the name of that mountain in Armenia, on which the ark of Noah was supposed to have rested; and that it is no other than the Hebrew word Barith signifying

an Ark.

At Erythra, in Ionia, the god Hercules was represented on a float, as Pausanias testifies.

At Athens the sacred ship was also carried about with great reverence in honor of the goddess Damater, at the Pan-Athenaea; and

Are not the English bark, the French barque, the Spanish barca, &c. signifying a boat, or ship, deriv ed from this word? ED.

At Smyrna in honor of Dionusus. Of this we are informed by Aristotle.

At Olympia, the most sacred place in Greece, the same rite existed.

Many cities were anciently named Theba, from the ancient word, used to signify the Ark. These were in Cilicia, Attica, Syria, Egypt, Pontus, Italy, &c.

In the Sybilline oracles it is said, that on Ararat, a mountain of Phrygia, the ark rested on a high summit.

In the ancient delineation of the Solar System a ship was represented as regulating the whole course of nature, in which were seven kindred sailors.

The ship Argo, in the celestial sphere was a memorial of the Ark. In proof of this I observe, that the name Argo is used to signify an Ark, 1 Sam. vi, 8; that the harbor, in which the ship Argo was built, was called in ancient fable the port of Deucalion.

The Argo, in the celestial sphere, is said by Plutarch to have been the ship of Osiris.

The celestial Argo is partly concealed in the clouds. It was supposed to have been oracular, and to have been conducted im. mediately by the will of the Deity. On the rudder is a bright star, called Canopus; supposed to have been originally Ca-Nou-fi, the city of the oracle of Noah.

Tacitus says, that among the Suevi the chief object in their religious worship was an Ark, or ship.

Many ancient historians declare the remains of the Ark to have existed a long time on the mountain of Ararat. This will seem less improbable, when it is remembered, that it was built

of cypress, and smeared with bitumen.

3. I shall now mention some testimonies concerning the Mountain, on which the ark rested.

That Ararat is in Armenia is evident, First; Because the Seventy render the Hebrew word Ararat Armenia in 2 Kings xix, 37; Theodoric in Isaiah xxxvii, 38; and Jeremiah li, 27; and the Vulgate in Genesis viii, 4.

Secondly. Berosus declares the sons of Sennacherib to have fled into Armenia, which in the Hebrew is called Ararat.

Thirdly; Abydenus says, "Xisuthrus sailed in the ark to Armenia,"

Fourthly; Melo says, "The man, who escaped the deluge, came with his sons out of Arme

nia."

Fifthly; Berosus declares, that the Ark touched the mountains of Armenia.

Sixthly; Nicolaus Damascenus, and Aratus, both testify the same thing; as do, also, the Fathers Eustatius, Chrysostom, Isidorus, &c. That Ararat is the same with the Gordyacan mountains testify Berosus, Polyhistor, Jonathan, and Onkelos, Herpenianus, Georgius Elmasinus, the Nubian geographer, Agathias, and Epiphanius.

Lucian, a native of Samosata, upon the Euphrates, where the traditions and memorials of the deluge were eminently preserved, and a constant reference was had to it in their worship, says, "Most of the eastern Authors, who have recorded the deluge, say, that the remains of the Ark were to be seen on one of the mountains of Armenia, in their own time. To this fact Berosus,A

bydenus, Theophilus,and Chrysostom, appeal as being well known. Nicolaus Damascenus says, "There is a great mountain in Armenia, called Baris, to which many flew together at the time of the deluge; particularly one floating in an Ark, came to the summit, and was saved."

Hatho, the Armenian, says, that in Armenia is a mountain, named Arath, which is higher than any other mountain on earth. On the summit of this mountain the Ark of Noah first rested after the deluge. The meaning of the name is the mountain of descent: in Hebrew, properly expressed Ar, or Har, Irad. It is called arobarngiov by Josephus.

The mountain Ararat has been called by this name through all ages.

It has also been called Masis, Thamanim, and Shamanim. Tha manim in the old Armenian language, and Shamanim in the Hebrew both signify eight.

It has been objected to the Scriptural account of the Ark's resting on Ararat, that Tournefort found, that there were no olives growing in the country of Armenia. To this it is decisively answered, that Strabo, a native of Asia Minor, asserts, that in his day Armenia was fruitful

in olives.

Both the Arabians, and Tartars, land the ark on mount Ararat, says Howard.

4. I will now mention some testimonies concerning the Dove.

Plutarch says, that the dove, sent out of the ark, brought certain proofs to Deucalion of the continuance of the tempest, by returning to him, and of its cessation, by staying abroad.

Of the dove there are many

« PreviousContinue »