Watson Refuted. Francis Samuel Ward

      Secondly. We know that no canon of books ever existed among the Jew's till the time of the synagogue under the Maccabees. Before their reign, there had never existed among the Jews any such council; and, if the word occurs in the Pentateuch, it is a fault of the transcribers and composers, who lived when there was a synagogue, and is not to be understood in any other acceptation than a collection of priests. The Pharisees of the second temple chose the books they thought best among a multitude of forgeries. The Talmud relates, that this synagogue were about to reject the Book of Proverbs, Ezekiel's prophecies, and Ecclesiastes, because they imagined these writings contradictory to the law of God; but a certain Rabbin having undertaken to reconcile them, they were preserved as canonical. A prodigious number of forged Books of Daniel, Esdras, and of the Prophets, were then in circulation; and to distinguish the genuine from the false works became absolutely necessary. This doubt and uncertainty conspires to render the decision of the synagogue very doubtful; particularly, as we shall show in the sequel, that many passages of the Prophecies are written evidently about the time of this choice of sacred books, and inserted in them, probably by some cunning priest, as the oracles of Sybil were forged to suit Cæsar.

      Thirdly. The similarity of the mysteries of the Jews to those of the Babylonians, is too glaring not to let us see the origin of Genesis in particular. The creation in six days is a perfect copy of the Gahans, or Gahan-bars, of Zoroaster; the particulars of each day's work are literally the same. The serpent was famous among the Babylonians. The mythological deluge of Ogyges and Xissuthrus, are symbols of changes arising on earth, as they imagined, from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. These, a little ornamented by the historical narration of Deucalion's inundation related by Berosus, is the pattern of Noah's flood; the ark of Osiris and emblematical dove and raven were Egyptian hieroglyphics. The man and the woman in Paradise is a mere copy of Zoroaster's first pair. The original sin is Pandora's box. The Talmud of Jerusalem says expressly that the Jews borrowed the names of the angels, and even of their months, from the Babylonians. The Elohim, or Gods, (not God), are said in Genesis to have created the world. It was not Jehovah, but the genii or gods that are in the Hebrew called makers of the world. And these are the very genii, who according to Sanchoniatho, were by Mercury excited against Saturn.

      Fourthly. We ask, in what language was the Pentateuch written, if it really was the work of Moses? It is known that Hebrew is a dialect of the Phenician, and that the Jews spoke Egyptian for a very long time before they adopted the language of the people among whom they dwelt. In Psalm lxxxi. we learn that the Jews were surprised to hear the language of the people beyond the Bed Sea. If, therefore, Moses, or any person of that age, is the author of the Pentateuch, it is evident that the Hebrew books are mere translations. What degree of credit does a nation deserve, who have been able to take for originals books that were in the face of them translations? Is it right to persecute men, as priests have done while they had power, for refusing to give credit to this tissue of contradictory and absurd fables?