1.279
It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now the Egyptians
acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a divine person; nay, they
would willingly lay claim to him themselves, though after a most abusive
and incredible manner, and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and one of
the priests of that place, and was ejected out of it among the rest, on
account of his leprosy; although it had been demonstrated out of their
records that he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier, and then
brought our forefathers out of Egypt into the country that is now inhabited
by us. But now that he was not subject in his body to any such calamity,
is evident from what he himself tells us; for he forbade those that had
the leprosy either to continue in a city, or to inhabit in a village, but
commanded that they should go about by themselves with their clothes rent;
and declares that such as either touch them, or live under the same roof
with them, should be esteemed unclean; nay, more, if any one of their disease
be healed, and he recover his natural constitution again, he appointed
them certain purifications, and washings with spring water, and the shaving
off all their hair, and enjoins that they shall offer many sacrifices,
and those of several kinds, and then at length to be admitted into the
holy city; although it were to be expected that, on the contrary, if he
had been under the same calamity, he should have taken care of such persons
beforehand, and have had them treated after a kinder manner, as affected
with a concern for those that were to be under the like misfortunes with
himself. Nor ;was it only those leprous people for whose sake he made these
laws, but also for such as should be maimed in the smallest part of their
body, who yet are not permitted by him to officiate as priests; nay, although
any priest, already initiated, should have such a calamity fall upon him
afterward, he ordered him to be deprived of his honor of officiating. How
can it then be supposed that Moses should ordain such laws against himself,
to his own reproach and damage who so ordained them? Nor indeed is that
other notion of Manetho at all probable, wherein he relates the change
of his name, and says that "he was formerly called Osarsiph;"
and this a name no way agreeable to the other, while his true name was
Mosses, and signifies a person who is preserved out of the water, for the
Egyptians call water Moil. I think, therefore, I have made it sufficiently
evident that Manetho, while he followed his ancient records, did not much
mistake the truth of the history; but that when he had recourse to fabulous
stories, without any certain author, he either forged them himself, without
any probability, or else gave credit to some men who spake so out of their
ill-will to us.
1.288
And now I have done with Manetho, I will inquire into what Cheremon
says. For he also, when he pretended to write the Egyptian history, sets
down the same name for this king that Manetho did, Amenophis, as also of
his son Ramesses, and then goes on thus: "The goddess Isis appeared
to Amenophis in his sleep, and blamed him that her temple had been demolished
in the war. But that Phritiphantes, the sacred scribe, said to him, that
in case he would purge Egypt of the men that had pollutions upon them,
he should be no longer troubled. with such frightful apparitions. That
Amenophis accordingly chose out two hundred and fifty thousand of those
that were thus diseased, and cast them out of the country: that Moses and
Joseph were scribes, and Joseph was a sacred scribe; that their names were
Egyptian originally; that of Moses had been Tisithen, and that of Joseph,
Peteseph: that these two came to Pelusium, and lighted upon three hundred
and eighty thousand that had been left there by Amenophis, he not being
willing to carry them into Egypt; that these scribes made a league of friendship
with them, and made with them an expedition against Egypt: that Amenophis
could not sustain their attacks, but fled into Ethiopia, and left his wife
with child behind him, who lay concealed in certain caverns, and there
brought forth a son, whose name was Messene, and who, when he was grown
up to man's estate, pursued the Jews into Syria, being about two hundred
thousand, and then received his father Amenophis out of Ethiopia."
1.293
This is the account Cheremon gives us. Now I take it for granted
that what I have said already hath plainly proved the falsity of both these
narrations; for had there been any real truth at the bottom, it was impossible
they should so greatly disagree about the particulars. But for those that
invent lies, what they write will easily give us very different accounts,
while they forge what they please out of their own heads. Now Manetho says
that the king's desire of seeing the gods was the origin of the ejection
of the polluted people; but Cheremon feigns that it was a dream of his
own, sent upon him by Isis, that was the occasion of it. Manetho says that
the person who foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the king was Amenophis;
but this man says it was Phritiphantes. As to the numbers of the multitude
that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well note
the former reckoning them eighty thousand, and the latter about two hundred
and fifty thousand! Now, for Manetho, he describes those polluted persons
as sent first to work in the quarries, and says that the city Avaris was
given them for their habitation. As also he relates that it was not till
after they had made war with the rest of the Egyptians, that they invited
the people of Jerusalem to come to their assistance; while Cheremon says
only that they were gone out of Egypt, and lighted upon three hundred and
eighty thousand men about Pelusium, who had been left there by Amenophis,
and so they invaded Egypt with them again; that thereupon Amenophis fled
into Ethiopia. But then this Cheremon commits a most ridiculous blunder
in not informing us who this army of so many ten thousands were, or whence
they came; whether they were native Egyptians, or whether they came from
a foreign country. Nor indeed has this man, who forged a dream from Isis
about the leprous people, assigned the reason why the king would not bring
them into Egypt. Moreover, Cheremon sets down Joseph as driven away at
the same time with Moses, who yet died four generations note
before Moses, which four generations make almost one hundred and seventy
years. Besides all this, Ramesses, the son of Amenophis, by Manetho's account,
was a young man, and assisted his father in his war, and left the country
at the same time with him, and fled into Ethiopia. But Cheremon makes him
to have been born in a certain cave, after his father was dead, and that
he then overcame the Jews in battle, and drove them into Syria, being in
number about two hundred thousand. O the levity of the man! for he had
neither told us who these three hundred and eighty thousand were, nor how
the four hundred and thirty thousand perished; whether they fell in war,
or went over to Ramesses. And, what is the strangest of all, it is not
possible to learn out of him who they were whom he calls Jews, or to which
of these two parties he applies that denomination, whether to the two hundred
and fifty thousand leprous people, or to the three hundred and eighty thousand
that were about Pelusium. But perhaps it will be looked upon as a silly
thing in me to make any larger confutation of such writers as sufficiently
confute themselves; for had they been only confuted by other men, it had
been more tolerable.
