The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1852-03-18
II ncfent Literature

- @ Vi "ftlhg, we are assured by Mr.
ldiddon, Is Of very remote antiquity. yasin
|ezlstence before history had being. The older
portions Of the Bible were complied from mora
ancient documents. The book of Job. for ex-
ample, was an Arabian production, and compo-
sea among literary people. This is evident
ken these expressions, "Oh that my words
were 0Titte7' Oh, that they were PRINTED in n
BOOK" He undoubtedly meant engraved like
the Chlnese works, not by modern typograpb
ers. Again;-''My desire is that my adversary
had sr'tte" book" Long before Moses was
| born, written chronicles and the subimest poe
try we're extant.
The Book of Genesis is divided into tsro per-
iecti! separate histories The first part is an
! account OF the CREATION, and the general bisto
/ ry OF mankind up to the building of the Tower
| OF Babel The second part is the history Of A
braham and his defendants" SBedenborg and
DR.. Lamb, from whom Mr. GIiddon made +bie
quotition, divide this book at precisely the same
/ point and include ten chapters and nine verses
of the eleventh, in the first part
But fanaticism, accident and casualties have
destroyed the great mass Of ancient literary
productions. We can allude to 1.-THE various in
stances of the annihilation of ancient archives
IN Asia Minor, Greece and Syria - the destruc-
ton of the Ptol2maic Library, also Of the Al
exandrian collection the destruction of the
Chinese annals by the Tartars, and likewise of
the Indian and Central Asiatic libraries by other
hordes of the same nation the Turkish deyas-
tatlons, the perishing of Tyrian literature at
the conquest by Alexander, and Of Rome annals
when Brennus entered that city the coufgra-
ton of Phenician manuscripts by Marius at
Carthage, and of the Hebrew archives by Titus
Fespasian. ''Mahomed Ali has permitted the
dcstructioniof more historical legends in forty
years than had been compassed by eighteen cen
turtles of Roman, Byzantian, Arab, or Ottoman.
misrule." The history of Hecateus, and the
annals of Manetho, Berosus, and Eratosthenes
arc lost, al but few mutiliated fragments So
are also she records of still earlier period
''saye such as Champollion has pointed out on
the monuments and papyri of Egypt" That
there was vast number Of books is shown by
the enumeration now extant. At the date of
90, b. c. above twenty thousand volumes were
IN constant universal and popular use among
the inhabitants of Egypt, the productions of
Saphts, -4Mothts, Nscho and PetoSyls all Egvp-
tan Pharaohs; no less than OF priests and other
philosophers, who lived nearly all of them
ages before Moses." Poems, especially epics,
were common, and Honor, who visited that
country eight hundred years before our present
era, stands charged by the Egyptian poet Nau-
| Gratis, with cleaning from Egyptian bard, the
ideas which, with such sublimity of thought
and diction, he perpetuated in his Had ard
Odyssey
But the original documents are lost forever
the glories of ancient Nile have perished and
the prediction Of the Hermetc books is fulfilled:
"Oh, Egypt Egypt the time will come, when
instead Of pure religion and pure belief,
thou shalt possess nothing but ridiculous fables
| incredible to posterity and nothing shall re-
| main TO thee but scords engrape1 on s<ones-the
| only monument that will attest thy piety"
The Chaldeans from whom the Hebrews ORR
glnated were literary at very early period
Their astronomical observations date as far back
as 1884, B. c., or seven hundred years before
Moses ''Yet Diodorus distinctly AYERS that the
Babylenians learned astronomy from the EgYp-
tians, being themselves an Egyptian colory'"-
-hesopotafnla also was AT tnat same time trlbU-
tary to Pharaonic rule. sBerosus gives a Chal-
dean history of the ten sntediluvian generations
that differs but in from the Hebrew &C
count" To Xisuthrus (or Noah) he gives the
credit of compiling the memoirs of the proceed
ing ages. Many centuries must have elapsed
before those nations could possess the requisite
mental discipline TO enable them to attain such
perfection in science andletters But it should'be
noted that these dates extend back to the popu-
lar era Of the Flood, without alluding to any
such catastrophe significant omission.
MIR. Gliddon himself remarks: al cannot re-
conoile with scriptural chronology, however ex-
tended, the lapse of time adequate for the rude
un'nstructed savage to acquire among the myri-
ads of progressive steps towards civilization,
the art Of writing, whether by symbolic or aLphG-
6ette signs Hrittng may be forever unnecessary
to vast tribes of human beings who are far
above the savage in the scale of civilization and
would, assuredly, not have been the art which
tor many generations, savage community
would strive to acquire, or to which their first
efforts would be directed. Centuries would
elspse before the hypothetical savage could reach
that wonderful process, attested by Egyptian
monuments, still erect on Nilotic shores, whose
construction precedes Abraham by unnumbered
generations" He therefore concludes that
civilization was not attained at first by long ages
or discipline but was of heavenly origin.