DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0186
176
covery, was soon after attempted to be more fully established by a
Phoenician history, said to have been compiled many centuries be-
fore by one Sanchoniathon from the records of Thoth and Am-
nion ; but never brought to light until Philo of ByMos published
it in Greek with a procem of his own; in which lie asserted that
the mysteries had been contrived merely to disguise the tales of his
pretended Phoenician history,1 notwithstanding that a great part of
these tales are evidently nothing more than the old mystic allego-
ries copied with little variation from the theogonies of the Greek
poets, in which they had before been corrupted and obscured.
214. A fragment of this work having been preserved by Euse-
bius, many learned persons among the moderns have quoted it
with implicit confidence, as a valuable and authentic record of
very ancient history ; while others have as confidently rejected it,
as a bungling fraud imposed upon the public by Philo of Byblos,
in order to support a system, or procure money from the founders
of the Alexandrian Library ; who paid such extravagant prices for
old books, or for (what served equally well to furnish their shelves)
new books with old titles. Among the ancients there seems to have
been" but one opinion concerning it: for, except Porphyry, no
heathen writer has deigned to mention it; so contemptible a per-
formance, as the fragment extant proves it to have been, seeming to
them unworthy of being rescued from oblivion even by an epi-
thet of scorn or sentence of reprobation. The early Christian
writers, however, took it under their protection, because it
favored that system, which by degrading the old, facilitated the
progress of the new religion : but in whatever else these writers
may have excelled, they certainly had no claim to excellence
in either moral sincerity or critical sagacity; and none less than
Eusebius; who, though his authority has lately been preferred
to that of Thucydides and Xenophon, was so differently
thought of by ecclesiastical writers of the immediately subsequent
1 AAV ol jxw vttirraToi row UpoXo*) wv, to p.€v ytyovora irpixyixara e£ apxvs aTreTrt/.i\paino,
aWyjyopias Kat fxvOovs rKivoyiaavrfS, Kat rots KotXfxtKots trad-qitafft mryytvttav TrAavaficvoi,
fivtf rt) p ta /^aT6(^T7;(^ay, Kat troAvv avrois emjyoy rvtpov, us /SaSws rtva (Twopav to
««t' aAifOfav ytVOfMiEp! Pliilon. Bjbl. apud Enscb. Prwp. Evang. lib. i, c. 0.
covery, was soon after attempted to be more fully established by a
Phoenician history, said to have been compiled many centuries be-
fore by one Sanchoniathon from the records of Thoth and Am-
nion ; but never brought to light until Philo of ByMos published
it in Greek with a procem of his own; in which lie asserted that
the mysteries had been contrived merely to disguise the tales of his
pretended Phoenician history,1 notwithstanding that a great part of
these tales are evidently nothing more than the old mystic allego-
ries copied with little variation from the theogonies of the Greek
poets, in which they had before been corrupted and obscured.
214. A fragment of this work having been preserved by Euse-
bius, many learned persons among the moderns have quoted it
with implicit confidence, as a valuable and authentic record of
very ancient history ; while others have as confidently rejected it,
as a bungling fraud imposed upon the public by Philo of Byblos,
in order to support a system, or procure money from the founders
of the Alexandrian Library ; who paid such extravagant prices for
old books, or for (what served equally well to furnish their shelves)
new books with old titles. Among the ancients there seems to have
been" but one opinion concerning it: for, except Porphyry, no
heathen writer has deigned to mention it; so contemptible a per-
formance, as the fragment extant proves it to have been, seeming to
them unworthy of being rescued from oblivion even by an epi-
thet of scorn or sentence of reprobation. The early Christian
writers, however, took it under their protection, because it
favored that system, which by degrading the old, facilitated the
progress of the new religion : but in whatever else these writers
may have excelled, they certainly had no claim to excellence
in either moral sincerity or critical sagacity; and none less than
Eusebius; who, though his authority has lately been preferred
to that of Thucydides and Xenophon, was so differently
thought of by ecclesiastical writers of the immediately subsequent
1 AAV ol jxw vttirraToi row UpoXo*) wv, to p.€v ytyovora irpixyixara e£ apxvs aTreTrt/.i\paino,
aWyjyopias Kat fxvOovs rKivoyiaavrfS, Kat rots KotXfxtKots trad-qitafft mryytvttav TrAavaficvoi,
fivtf rt) p ta /^aT6(^T7;(^ay, Kat troAvv avrois emjyoy rvtpov, us /SaSws rtva (Twopav to
««t' aAifOfav ytVOfMiEp! Pliilon. Bjbl. apud Enscb. Prwp. Evang. lib. i, c. 0.