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[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.
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