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an_inquiry_into_the_oirigin_of_the_antiquities_of_america

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What a wonderful book is the Bible ! But what connection has the Biblo with

American Antiquities ? Because of all Antiquities, it is the most valuable and

marvellous specimen ; because with all antiquities it is associated in the most

important and interesting relations ; because the most valuable discoveries in antiquity

must appeal to the Bible for interpretation; and die registers of long lost events and

generations, inscribed upon the rocks and buried in Uic fossil remains of far distant ages,

or scattered far and wide in the ruins of once mighty empires, are so many witnesses,

constantly multiplying, to the history contained in the Bible.

As a SPECIMEN of antiquity, what is comparable in point of interest with this Book?

Suppose that in searching the tumuli that are scattered so widely over this country,

the silent, aged, mysterious remembrancers of some populous race, once carrying on all

the business of life where now are only the wild forests of many centuries, a race

of whom we ask so often, who they were, whence diey came, whidier they went ;

suppose that under one of those huge structures of earth which remain of their works,

a book were discovered, an alphabetic history of that race for a thousand years,

containing their written language, and examples of their poetry and other hterature, and

all undeniably composed many hundreds of years before any of the nations now possessing

this continent were here ! What a wonder would this be ! What intense interest would

attach to such a relic ! What price would not the learned be willing to give for it !

What fragments of Egyptian inscriptions ; what unintelligible characters among the ruins

of Belus ; what remains from the bowels of the earth, telling of some ancient convulsion

of its rocks, could be compared in value to such a specimen of the mind, the language,

the literature, such a detailed history of the deeds of a nation otherwise unheard of?

But much more than this is the Bible. It contains histories, specimens of literature,

examples of poetry and eloquence, unquestionably written, some eiglit hundred years before

the writing of the oldest book of any description which the literature of the world has

preserved. Greece was a land of barbarians for many centuries, after Moses composed

his history of the world and of Israel. There is no evidence that alphabetic writing

was known when he wrote, except among the nation over which he ruled.

But tiien, what should we know of the history of die world, and its nations, for

three thousand years, if all that has been derived exclusively from the Bible, were

obliterated from all memories and all books? Where should we go for knowledge of that

B

6 PREFACE.

immense extent of time— one half of the age of the world? To the most ancient

nations, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Phenicians ? Alas, it is all wilderness

there; a few fragments of pretended annals, which, like the gloomy remains upon the

plains of Shinar, can neither be referred to the right place in chronology, nor interpreted

so as to give them their right estimate in point of truth; mere continuation of the

confusion of tongues at Babel. Do we inquire of Egyptian literature for an ancient

book containing authentic details of far ancient times? We are referred only to IManetho.

But he wrote so late as the third century before Christ. All his professed autliority was

certain sacred inscriptions on pillars, which probably never existed. And nothing is

extant, of even such history, but a few inconsiderable fragments. We enquire next of

Babylonian literature; and are told only of Berosus, a Priest of Belus. When did he write?

No one knows, except that it was somewhere in the period of the Macedonian dynasties.

What remains of his writing? A few fragments preserved by Josephus, Eusebius and

Tatian; of value indeed, because confa-raing the history in the Bible, but almost

useless,' without that history. We inquire next of Phenician history and are referred

only to the work of Sanchoniathon, famous for having been used by Porphyry, (the shrewdest

antagonist Christianity ever had) in opposition to the writings of 3Ioses. What remains

of ft now? One book only, and that upon the Phenician theology, and of course

full of fable ;1 and as a history, unaided by any better, useless. But does Greece,

ancient, classic, learned Greece flirnish nothing more valuable concerning the first three

tliousand years of the world? Alas, of Greek historians, the antiquity of the oldest, whose

names have been preserved, docs not much exceed the times of Cyrus and Cambyses.

Of many of tliese, we have only their names; no knowledge even of their subject.

Of the remainder, notliing extant, is older than the Persian war. And of that

nothin"' is to be depended on, connected with times prior to the Peloponesian war.

Thucydidcs asserts, and proves this. " The matter preceding that time, (about four hundred

and four years, B. C.) cannot now, through the length of time, he accurately discovered

by us/'' Plutarch, in writing of the earlier periods, has to "implore the candor of his

readers, and their kind allowance for the tales of antiquity." "As geographers thrust

into the extremities of their maps, those countries that are unknown to them, remarking,

at the same time, that all beyond is hills of sand, and haunts of wild beasts, frozen seas,

marshes, and mountains that are inaccessible to human courage, or industry; so, in com-

paring the lives of illustrious men, when I have passed through those periods of time which

may be described with probability, and where history may find firm footing in focts, I

may say of the remoter ages that all beyond is full of prodigy and fiction, the regions

of poets, and fabulists, wrapt in clouds, and unworthy of belief"

So said that learned Boeotian, who knew not the scriptures. So appeared to him the

history of more than three thousand years of the world. Such also would it be to us,

were we destitute of the Bible. Just as we now wander among the mysterious remains of

the race which once possessed all this land, and pausing beneath some lofty mound, crested

with sturdy oaks, which have stood for centuries and are now nourished with die decayed

materials of a former generation; or, measuring the exact angles and regular outhnes

of some vast system of warlike defence, for which the traditions of no race now known

amon«^ us have the least explanation, are deeply impressed with the evidence that we are

PREFACE. 7

constantly walking over the graves of an immense population, and pained with a

sense of utter darkness, as to every thing connected with tlicm, except that tliey

bequeathed to posterity those existing and confounding traces of their existence; so precisely

should we be situated, with regard to all the human race, and all the mightiest changes in

the surface of the globe, were we, as Plutarch was, destitute of all that history for which

we are exclusively indebted to the Old Testament Scriptures. We should have die

tumidi which, from the days of Homer to the present, have been seen on the plains

of Troy; the frightful heaps of desolation on the foundations of Babel; the ruined tombs,

temples and pyramids of ancient Egypt, sculptured with characters, which curiosity has