The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

CHAP. XXIX. Of Letters. (Book 29)

THAT the Hebrew Tongue was from the foundation of the World, none deny, but whether the Letters be so ancient, some question. Some hold that those Let∣ters that God wrote with his own Hand in the two Tables, were the first Letters that ever were written. The studious Pliny thinks, that among the Assyrians, letters have been always, but Gellius thinks they were invented in Egypt by Mercury, and others think among the Syrians. If we examine Pliny well, we shall find him true in the first and last, however in the middle. If the Assyrian Tongue were the Chaldee Tongue (as most like it was) then were those Letters from the beginning of the World: the Hebrew and Chaldee Letter, being all one, unless the Assyrian differed from both. If you take Syrian in the sence that Theodoret does for Hebrew, then Pliny speaks true, that Letters were first among the Syrians. For Theodoret calls the Hebrew Tongue Syrian, as the Gospel calls the Syrian Tongue Hebrew, Joh. 19. 20. But Pliny concludes that Cadmus first brought Letters into Greece out of Phaenicia. Justin Martyr saith, that Greece thinks so her self. Athanasius holdeth the Phaenicians for the first inventors of Letters. That the Phaenicians and Syrians first found out Letters, is a received opinion in Clemens Alexandrinus. Eupolemus thinks that the Phaenicians received Grammar from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phaenicians. And Euphorus thinks that Cadmus was he that conveyed them. Chaerilus in Eusebius makes Phaenicians and Jews all one. For he nameth Jews in Xerxes army, and names their Tongue the Phaenician, his words be these:

〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉

In English thus.

A wondrous people marcht behind along: Their Dialect was the Phaenician Tongue. On hill of Solymae they dwelt: thereby A spacious lake not far remote doth lie.

These Phaenicians (if you will call them so) or Jews, were the first that had Let∣ters. But the Jews were not Phaenicians indeed nor their Tongue the same, yet for bordering of their Countries, the Poet makes them all one. The Phaenician is not now to be had, unless the * 1.1 Punick or Carthaginian, and Phaenick or Phaenician, were all one (which most like they were.) And then some few lines of the Tongue are to be found in Plautus his Paenulus; which as Paraeus saith, can little or nothing be made of. Eusebius speaks of Sancuniathou, that wrote the Phaenician History in the same Tongue, but more of the Language he saith not: But to the matter. That Letters were so long in use before the giving of the Law, I am induced to believe upon these reasons.

First, Josephus is of this mind, that Letters were before the Flood. And the Scrip∣ture cites Enochs Prophesie, which whether it were written by him or not, is uncertain: yet if there were any such thing, those many places which we find of it in Tertullian, Clemens, and others, do argue, that so much could not punctually be kept by word of mouth.

A second reason to move me to think of Letters before the giving of the Law is, to think of Josephs accounts in Egypt, which seem almost impossible without writing.

Thirdly, But omitting that, I cannot see how all Arts and Sciences in the World should then flourish, as (considering their infancy) they did without the groundwork of all Learning, Letters.

Fourthly, Again for the Jews, upon the writing of the Law to be put to spelling (as they that had never seen letters before) and not to be able to read it, had been a Law upon the Law, adding to the hardness of it.

Fifthly, Nor can I think, that when Moses saith, blot me out of thy book, that he taketh the Metaphor from his own books (which it is probable he had not yet written) but from other books which were then abounding in the world.

Sixthly, The Egyptian Chronicles of so many thousand years in Diodorus and Laertius, I know are ridiculous; yet their carefulness of keeping Records I have ever believed. The Greeks were boys to them, as it is in Plato, and Moses was Scholar to them or their learning, Act. 7.

Now I cannot think that this their exceeding Humane Learning was kept only in their brains, and none in writing. Nor do I think that if it were written, that it was de∣cyphered only in their obscure Hieroglyphicks, but that some of it came to ordinary writing of familiar letters.

Notes

• * 1.1

  The Syrian translating of the word Phae∣nicia in the New Testament, seems to confirm this for true.