mity to this, Moses speaks of writing things for a memorial in a book. But books were liable to injuries; therefore Jeremiah commanded that the book that contained the purchase he made of some lands in Judea, just before the captivity, should be put into an earthen vessel, that it might continue many days, Jer. xxxii. 12, 14: and for this reason also Job wishes his words might be even graven in a rock, the most lasting way of all, and much more effectual to perpetuate them than a bookThus the distinction betwixt writing and writing in a book becomes perfectly sensible, and the gradation appears in its beauty, which is lost in our translation, where the word printed is introduced, which, besides its impropriety, conveys no idea of the meaning of Job, records that are designed to last long not being distinguished from less durable papers by being printed.

OBSERVATION II.

Of the Form and Materials of their Books.

As to the form of their books, and the materials of which they are composed, I have nothing considerable to offer. Some things however, relating to the last of these, should be taken notice of.

That their books were rolled up, instead of opening in the manner ours do," in the time of

Sir J. Chardin, in a MS. note on Isa. viii. 1, tells us, VOL. III.

K

our LORD, appears from some remains of antiquity; that they were of the same form much more anciently, we learn from Jer. xxxvi. 2. Psalm xl. 7, &c.: this circumstance has been often remarked, and for that reason I pass it over with barely mentioning it.

The materials of which their books were composed, is that which is rather to be considered, and is what this Observation is designed a little to enquire into. The ancient Egyptian books were made of the papyrus, a sort of bulrush of that country, according to Dean Prideaux, which rose up to a considerable height, and whose stalk was covered with several films, or inner skins, on which they wrote. Maillet gives a different account of the papyrus. But be this as it will, we are told the use of the papyrus for these purposes was not found out, till the building of Alexandria: the rolls then "the Eastern people roll their papers, and do not fold them, because their paper is apt to fret." This observation may account for that inconvenient way, so long retained, of rolling up their writings. The Egyptian papyrus was much made use of; the brittle nature of it made it proper to roll up what they wrote; and it having been customary to roll up their books, &c. many continued the practice when they used other materials, which might very safely have been treated in a different manner.

h

e Many of the fine MSS. which have been discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum are in rolls; so are also those which have been taken out of the ancient Egyptian Mummics; but at present, books are seldom made to roll up in the East. Many indeed of the very fine Persian and Arabic MSS. are written upon a kind of thin paste-board like paper; and being jointed at the back and front, fold up like pattern cards. EDIT.

f Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, part 1. book 7. 8 Lett. 9. p. 19. See Prid. Conn. in the above-cited place.

that are mentioned in the Prophet were not formed of this plant: for Alexander the Great, the founder of that city, lived after the prophetic times. The art of engraving on stones and metals was very ancient, as old at least as the days of Moses, as appears from Exod. xxviii. 11, 36; but these ancient books were not formed of tablets of stone, or plates of metal, since they were rolled up; besides which, we find that the book which Baruch wrote, from the lips of Jeremiah, was cut in pieces by King Jehoiakim, with a pen-knife, and those pieces thrown into the fire which was burning on the hearth before him, Jer. xxxvi. 23, which liableness to being cut, and consumed in the fire, determines that they were neither of stone nor of metal.

Parchment, Dr. Prideaux shews in the same. place in which he speaks of the papyrus, was a later invention than the Egyptian paper, and therefore one would imagine could not have been the material of which the old Jewish books were formed, which yet the Dean supposes, imagining that if Eumenes of Pergamus was the first among the Greeks that used parchment, he could not however have been the inventor of it, since the Jews long before had rolls of writing, and who, says he, can doubt, but that these rolls were of parchment? He goes on," and it must be acknowledged, that the authentic copy of the law, which Hilkiah found in the Tem ple, and sent to King Josiah, was of this material, none other used for writing, excepting

parchment only, being of so durable a nature as to last from Moses' time till then, (which was eight hundred and thirty years.") But is this reasoning demonstrative? The very old Egyptians used to write on linen, things which they designed should last long; and those characters continue to this day, as we are assured by those that have examined mummies with attention. So Maillet tells us, that the filletting, or rather the bandage (for it was of a considerable breadth ) of a mummy which was presented to him, and which he opened in the house of the Capuchin Monks in Cairo, was not only charged from one end to the other with hieroglyphical figures, but they also found certain unknown characters, written from the right hand towards the left, and forming a kind of verses. These he supposed contained the Eulogium of the person whose this body was, written in the language which was used in Egypt in the time in which he lived. That some part of this writing was afterwards copied by an engraver in France, and these papers sent to the Virtuosi through Europe, that if possible they might decypher them; but in vain.'—Might not a copy of the Law of Moses, written after this manner, have lasted eight hundred and thirty years? Is it unnatural to imagine that Moses who was learned in all the arts of Egypt, wrote

'Lett. 7, p. 278.-There is a piece of writing of this kind now in the British Museum, which was taken out of an Egyptian mummy, and a similar book was found in a mummy by Mr, Denon, an engraved fac simile of which may be found in his Travels. EDIT.

after this manner on linen? And does not this supposition perfectly well agree with the accounts we have of the form of their books-their being rolls; and of their being easily cut in pieces with a knife, and liable to be burnt? The old Jewish books might indeed be written on other materials; but these considerations are sufficient to engage us to think, that their being written on parchment is not so indubitable as the Dean supposes.

The most considerable arguments that Prideaux makes use of, are quotations from Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus, which give an account of the writing on skins by the old Persians and Ionians, long before the time of Eumenes; yet as to this, it is surprising that he should so confidently suppose those skins must of course be dressed like parchment it is visible that these skins must have been preparéd in a much more clumsy way, and have been very unlike parchment, of which we are assured Eumenes was the inventor, and which, if found out before, would have made the want of the Egyptian paper no inconvenience to that prince. Such skins might do for records, and some occasional writings, but would have been by no means proper for books. Is it not then, upon the whole, most natural to suppose the ancient Jews wrote on linen as the Egyptians did?' If so,

The linen was first primed, or painted all over, before they began to write, and consequently would have been liable to crack if folded.

1 Among other objections Monsieur Voltaire has made to the Antiquity of the Pentateuch, in his Raison par