to the priesthood (and yet some of them were priests) but by their genealogies, which stood partly upon prophetic authority. 11. It hath been the temper of all people, it was more particularly the temper of the Jews, to honour and reverence their ancestors. One cannot suppose, unless there were overbearing evidence for it that the Sadducees accounted their whole history, and all their own annals from their entrance into Canaan, to have been a bundle of fictions, and their forefathers, from Joshua to Malachi, to have been made up of two sorts of men, of deceivers who pretended to prophecy, and of dupes who were deluded by them. The very Pagans believed more than this, and paid more regard than this to the Jewish prophets, of whom some had been consulted, protected, and honoured by neighbouring princes. 12. The Sadducees, you will perhaps say, admitted what was historic, and discarded what was didactic in the sacred books; but see what follows: the Sadducees believed a God, and admitted his government, and a general providence rewarding and punishing the Jewish nation, according as the people observed or neglected the law of Moses. Now add to this that they rejected the prophets, and from such a system it must have followed, that God suffered the nation to flourish most under David and Solomon, who both pretended to be prophets; that Ahab, Jezebel, and other wicked princes did well in cutting off the prophets, and yet were cut off themselves for it; that Moses gave them a most useless instruction how to distinguish true from false prophets, instead of admonishing them to receive none; that the prophets foretold the fates of their own country, and of neighbour ing nations, that their predictions were accomplished, and that, notwithstanding all this, they were false teachers, &c. and yet we read of no bedlam erected at Jerusalem for the reception of these Sadducees. 13. Some of the Jewish fasts, and feasts, and religious customs stood upon prophetic authority, and with these the Sadducees complied. They paid as much regard to the temple, and to the service of the temple as the other Jews, for which they had only prophetic warrant, and they heard the prophets read in the synagogues. 14. They came at first to John the Baptist as to a prophet, though perhaps afterwards, like the Pharisees, finding that John was not such an one as they expected, and that he had borne testimony to Christ, they slighted and rejected him. See Matth. iii. 7. Luke vii. 30. and the commentators. 15. The Rabbins, in their disputes with the Sadducees, have never charged them with discarding the prophets; but, on the contrary, reason against them from the prophets. Of this many instances might be given from their writings. Interrogarunt Sadducæi R. Gamalielem, undenam probaret Deum mortuos vivificaturum. Dixit illis, Ex Lege, ex Prophetis, ex Hagiographis: ex Lege, Deuter. xxxi. 16. ex Prophetis, Esai. xxvi. 19. ex Hagiographis, Cant. vii. 9. Gemara Sanhedrin cap. 11. Here are the texts produced by this doctor for proofs of a resurrection. And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, &c. Deut. xxxi. 16. Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise: awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. Isa. xxvi. 19. And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak*, Cant. vii. 9. The doctor seems to have been in great distress for a proof ex Hagiographis. Surely he might have made a better choice. In the question before us, the learned are vided: on your side are Origen, Tertullian, Jerom, Petavius, Prideaux, &c. on my side, Jos. Scaliger, Pearson, Van Dale, Le Clerc, Samuel and James Basnage, &c. The case I take to have been this: The Sadducees admitted the prophets, as sent from God to instruct and reform the nation, and to enforce the law; but they held that all articles of faith, and fundamentals of religion were contained in the law, and were to be sought no where else. So that in reality they paid more regard to the prophets than did the Pharisees, who equalled their silly traditions to the sacred books. In preferring Moses to the prophets, the Jews seem to have been all pretty well agreed, and they made his superiority to consist in several things. Thus you see, Sir, that I am not willing to give up the point without a struggle. I have been pleading my cause again, partly for my own sake, lest I should seem to you to take up opinions at mere hazard, and lay them down as easily; and partly for your sake, that if you should do me the favour to reply, you may not have a tame and passive antagonist to deal with, in * Rabbi Schabtai published in the year 1683, a catalogue of Rabbinical writers, and called it, Labie Dormientium, from Cantic. vii. 9. which of all the fantastical titles that I can recollect, is one of the prettiest. It hath a double meaning, of which Schabtai was not aware; for most of his rabbinical brethren talk very much like men in their sleep. in conquering whom there would be no credit. If I fall, I could wish to fall like Hector in Homer, by an honourable hand, and after an honourable resistance: Μὴ μὲν ἀσπεδεί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην, ̓Αλλὰ μέγα ρέξας τὶ καὶ ἑσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι. il. x. 304. viii. p. 483. II. An ORACLE in Herodotus. Αλλ' ὅταν ̓Αρέμιδος χρυσάορον ἱερὸν ἀκτὴν, This oracle was supposed to have been delivered by Bacis, before the battle of Salamis, and to have been fulfilled in the signal victory which the Greeks then obtained over Xerxes. On this oracle I received the following observation: Give me leave to propose to you this question, Whether in your Remarks, Book 1. p. 115. κρατερὸν κόρον ὕβριος ἐὸν, be rightly translated Juvenem superbum? I apprehend I. that that Gronovius has mistaken the word ni35, which signïfies here, not juvenem, but fastum, or insolentiam. My reason for this opinion is, that I find Pindar uses the word in this sense Olymp. xiii. 12. where also he gives Insolence the same parentage which the oracle attributes to it, viz. Pride, "Yep. His words are these: speaking of the social virtues that dwell at Corinth, he says, Ἐθέλοντι δ' ἀλεξῶν ὕβριν κέρα Ματέρα θρασύμυθον. where it seems necessary that xogos must signify insolence, or some such concomitant of pride. In Olymp. A. 89. κόρῳ δ' έλεν — The scholiast says, κόρῳ, τῇ ὕβρει καὶ ἀλαζονεία. the words that follow, indeed, shew that it was a metaphorical sense in which the word is here used in the opinion of the Scholiast: bat this is not the case in Olymp. xiii. nor is it the case in Olymp. ii. aivov Ca xoc. which is thus explained: τὸν ἐπαινὸν τὴν δόξαν τῷ Θήρωνος, κύρος δὲ ὕβρις. The Scholiast here plainly takes xogos to signify pride, or some of its malignant attendants. And as from these passages it seems that the word may have the meaning of insolence, so I fancy you will not think it an inconvenient sense in the oracle cited. The insolence of the Persians, confident in their immense superiority, in the number of their troops, and spreading desolation in their march, is nobly painted in the verses following that which you have quoted, and this insolence seems a very fit object of divine punishment. I need not add, that if this interpretation be the true one, the expression is not in the Oriental manner, but entirely Grecian. THE sameness of expression in Pindar and in the oracle is very well observed by this gentleman, and these two writers were contemporaries: but the passage in Pindar, Olymp. xiii. is obscure, and has perplexed his Commentators. Abundance |