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else could be the subject of their talk save the history of their
ancestors, since to that all history was reduced, and men did not study
science or art, which now form a large part of daily conversation? We see
also that in these days tribes took particular care to preserve their
genealogies.

627. I believe that Joshua was the first of God's people to have this name,
as Jesus Christ was the last of God's people.

628. Antiquity of the Jews.--What a difference there is between one book and
another! I am not astonished that the Greeks made the Iliad, nor the
Egyptians and the Chinese their histories.

We have only to see how this originates. These fabulous historians are not
contemporaneous with the facts about which they write. Homer composes a
romance, which he gives out as such, and which is received as such; for
nobody doubted that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed than did the golden
apple. Accordingly, he did not think of making a history, but solely a book
to amuse; he is the only writer of his time; the beauty of the work has made
it last, every one learns it and talks of it, it is necessary to know it,
and each one knows it by heart. Four hundred years afterwards the witnesses
of these facts are no longer alive, no one knows of his own knowledge if it
be a fable or a history; one has only learnt it from his ancestors, and this
can pass for truth.

Every history which is not contemporaneous, as the books of the Sibyls and
Trismegistus, and so many others which have been believed by the world, are
false, and found to be false in the course of time. It is not so with
contemporaneous writers.

There is a great difference between a book which an individual writes and
publishes to a nation, and a book which itself creates a nation. We cannot
doubt that the book is as old as the people.

629. Josephus hides the shame of his nation.

Moses does not hide his own shame.

Quis mihi det ut om