The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-02-15
QUESTION OF INTEREST
 IS BROADLY DISCUSSED
BY A. E. cAFFEE.

through the Babyionians," thus opposing probabilities and conjectures to a vast multitude of facts; to monuments to tra- ditlons to history, to records of a na- tion; even to the testimony of It's enc mics; and what sort of probabilities, tool Continuing they say: f'This name Bram. Abram, Ibrahim, was famous in Persia, etc" The learned sJews l. their letters to voltaire on this. very subject say: ''Yes, but when did 1t begin to be famous there? Was it before the Hebrews were acquainted with it. or was it after they were spread through Persia and gave this name celebrity there7 You should have cleared that up. Perhaps you are going to do it." A very forcible and com plete answer. And to the statement of the scientists that "the Persians pretend ed that this Abraham. or Ibrahim, was from the country of Bactria, and that he lived near the city of Balek," the learned Jews make the similar reply by asking "but did they pretend this before the times in which the Jews place tho birth of Abraham?s The most absurd proposition the measurers of foreign bones advance is that many learned men pretend that he (Abraham) was the same law-giver whom the Greeks called Zoroaster' This is also Voltaire's as-
 
 pertinently reply to this as follows But do these learned men acknowledge only one Zoroaster. or more than one? At what period do they place them? Dates are of consequence here. Many learned men, sir, ancient and modern. distinguish two Zoroasters; one who lived under Darius, the son of Hystapes, and was consequently many centuries posterior to the father of the faithful. The other st fc .nfr f,f.. lnk, learned men place him five or six hundred years before Darius, and others farther back still. If your learned men speak of the Zoroaster who was contemporary of Darins, the period is too recent and even If it be the ancient one, there is no foundation for it." A more forcible reply to this foolish idea that Zoroaster and Abraham were the same person is, that many learned men believe that the books of Zoroaster were written by Jew; cer- tainly they were written by a person thoroughly acquainted with the Jewish religion; not only some flaws are found In the Zende Avestas very similar to those of Moses in the distinction of ani- mas clean and unclean, the keeping the sacred fire up, the payment of tithes, etc, etc, but in many places the author uses the very words and thoughts of the Scriptures; he partly copies the Psalms
 
 creation nearly in the same terms with Genesis; speaks of Adam. Abraham, Jo7 seph, Hoses. Solomon, almost in the same manner that the Jewish sacred writers do.
 For the information of the readers of the Age-Herald the Zende Avesta was translated a few years ago by Professor Max Muller and published in English by the Oxford University Press, and can | Ina ~od lNxr t1,, foot note l find this most interesting piece of ancient information: 'Indeed Mr. Auguetil does not think that Zoroaster was Jew. or that he borrowed his doc trines of the Jews; he believes him a Per sian by birth, and a descendant of the ancient kings of that country; but he represents him to us as going from Irak to Babylon to study mathematics. as- tronomy and the sciences and then teach4 ing them in that capital, where he had Pythagorus for disciple" This was at time when 'the Jews were well known | in Persia" Zoroaster was .'fnforming himself of doctrines till then unknown to him-those traditions which instruct him in the origin of the human race and in the cause of those evils which oppress it. So we find that Zoroaster at that date twenty-five hundred years ago. was doing exactly what Dr. Maurice Fishbere
 
 ing to do today; and, too, with about as little success, and as much absurdity A well authenticated historical fact is not to be easily overturned in the practical mind by over-strained and seductive theories, and while the Jews have been robbed and beaten and plundered by every nation of the earth, they may vet feel safe In the possession or the ancient father, their patriarch of the patriarchs- one of the grandest and sublimest figures in all history, in spite of Dr. Fishberg and the joint meeting of the ethnologists and anthropologists.
 It Is strange that this same question which was discussed in all it's bearings | by the Voltarian school century and a half ago should be resurrected by our modern scientists and attract even pass ing attention. l have adopted the same arguments with which those scholarly Spanish Jews of that day so completely overthrow the great French infidel-often using their exact words.