The Antiquity of the Book of Genesis

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The sailor escaped from an alarming tempest, doubted not that Poseidon had calmed the waves, or that the Dioscuri had heard his prayer, and hastened to hang up his votive offerings in their friendly temple. But such credulity, if it existed at a later period, was confined to the vulgar. The philosophers...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The sailor escaped from an alarming tempest, doubted not that Poseidon had calmed the waves, or that the Dioscuri had heard his prayer, and hastened to hang up his votive offerings in their friendly temple. But such credulity, if it existed at a later period, was confined to the vulgar. The philosophers disbelieved or doubted the existence of the gods?or, believing them to exist, thought them far too elevated to care for Man. Omnis enim per se Divum natura necesse est Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur, Semota a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe: Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri, Nee bene promeritis capitur, nee tangitur ira. Luchet. II. 645. Indeed, to the writers of the classical era the gods of Olympus were become mere names, which added a charm to poetry ?whose temples and images were everywhere to be seen and admired?but whose real existence they no more believed than that of the fabled Scylla or Polyphemus, once the terrors of the Sicilian mariner. Let us now throw back our glance about a thousand years?to a period when the ancient religions were flourishing in full splendour and vigour in Italy, Greece, the Lesser Asia, Persia, and all the East. The period I havementioned is no doubt a vague one; but for the sake of argument it may be admitted for the moment, and we may suppose the scene to be displayed before us which these countries exhibited ten or twelve centuries before the Christian era. At that time idol-worship was universally prevalent?with the single exception of the land of Israel; and though, undoubtedly, the idea of a Supreme God was never totally erased from the minds of the heathen, yet it was in a great degree obscured by the worship of visible things, and of inferior intelligences...