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Now we must not believe that Heber, from whose name the word Hebrew
is derived, preserved and transmitted the Hebrew language to Abraham
only as a spoken language, and that the Hebrew letters began with the
giving of the law through Moses; but rather that this language, along
with its letters, was preserved by that succession of fathers.
Moses, indeed, appointed some among the people of God to teach
letters, before they could know any letters of the divine law. The
Scripture calls these men UrammateisaUpUeis, who may be called in
Latin inductores or introductores of letters, because they, as it
were, introduce them into the hearts of the learners, or rather lead
those whom they teach into them. Therefore no nation could vaunt
itself over our patriarchs and prophets by any wicked vanity for the
antiquity of its wisdom; since not even Egypt, which is wont falsely
and vainly to glory in the antiquity of her doctrines, is found to have
preceded in time the wisdom of our patriarchs in her own wisdom, such
as it is. Neither will any one dare to say that they were most
skillful in wonderful sciences before they knew letters, that is,
before Isis came and taught them there. Besides, what, for the most
part, was that memorable doctrine of theirs which was called wisdom but
astronomy, and it may be some other sciences of that kind, which
usually have more power to exercise men's wit than to enlighten their
minds with true wisdom? As regards philosophy, which professes to
teach men something which shall make them happy, studies of that kind
flourished in those lands about the times of Mercury, whom they called
Trismegistus, long before the sages and philosophers of Greece, but
yet after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and even after
Moses himself. At that time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas
is found to have lived, that great astronomer, the brother of
Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the eider Mercury, of whom that
Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson.
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