No More Learning

It may be added that the period in which the heavenly
bodies perform their revolutions is regulated by the number seven.

"These rites and ceremonies, from whatever source derived, owe their
chief support to their antiquity.

They have other institutions, in themselves corrupt, impure, and even
abominable; but eagerly embraced, as if their very depravity were a
recommendation. The scum and refuse of other nations, renouncing the
religion of their country, flocked in crowds to Jerusalem, enriching
the place with gifts and offerings. Hence the wealth and grandeur of the
state. Connected amongst themselves by the most obstinate and inflexible
faith, the Jews extend their charity to all of their own persuasion,
while towards the rest of mankind they nourish a sullen and inveterate
hatred. Strangers are excluded from their tables. Unsociable to all
others, they eat and lodge with one another only; and though addicted to
sensuality, they admit no intercourse with women

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from other nations. Among themselves their passions are without
restraint. Vice itself is lawful. That they may know each other by
distinctive marks, they have established the practice of circumcision.
All who embrace their faith, submit to the same operation. The first
elements of their religion teach their proselytes to despise the gods,
to abjure their country, and forget their parents, their brothers,
and their children. With the Egyptians they agree in their belief of a
future state; they have the same notion of departed spirits, the same
solicitude, and the same doctrine. With regard to the Deity their creed
is different.
The Egyptians worship various animals, and also symbolical
representations, which are the work of man: the Jews acknowledge one
God only, and him they adore in contemplation; condemning as impious
idolaters all who, with perishable materials wrought into the human
form, attempt to give a representation of the Deity. Their priests made
use of fifes and cymbals; they were crowned with wreaths of ivy, and a
vine wrought in gold was seen in their temple. Hence some have inferred
that Bacchus, the conqueror of the East, was the object of their
adoration. But the Jewish forms of worship have no conformity to the
rites of Bacchus. The latter have their festive days which are always
celebrated with mirth and carousing banquets. Those of the Jews are a
gloomy ceremony,

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fall of absurd enthusiasm, rueful, mean, and sordid. "



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"Chæremon *, professing to write the history of Egypt, says, that under
Amenophis and his son Ramessis two hundred and fifty thousand leprous
and polluted men were cast out of Egypt. Their leaders were Moses the
scribe, and Josephus, who was also a sacred scribe. The Egyptian name
of Moses was Tisithen, of Joseph Peteseph. These coming to Pelusium, and
finding there 380,000 men left by Amenophis, which he would not admit
into Egypt, making a league with them, they undertook an expedition
against Egypt. Upon this Amenophis flies into Ethiopia, and his son
Messenes drives out the Jews into Syria, in number about 200,000, and
receives his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia. I know Lysimachus**
assigns another king and another time in which Moses led the Israelites
out of Egypt, and that was when Bocchoris reigned in Egypt; the nation
of the Jews, being infected with leprosies and scabs and other diseases,
betook themselves to the temples to beg their living, and many being
tainted with the disease, there happened a dearth in Egypt. Whereupon
Bocchoris consulting

* Joseph, lib. i. contra Apionem.

** Idem.