doth fays he was fufpended, because he had fo enchanted all trees, that none would bear his weight) he is ftoned and hanged at Jerufalem itself.-This book, then, which gives an account so different and inconsistent with that given by the Jews in their Talmud, and before it, in Celfus's work, about Jefus, while at the fame time, it appeals to that as speaking concerning his mother, must be of a more recent date, and by confequence, be far inferior in point of its age, to our gofpels. Its fictions were not then known nor received by the unbelievers among that nation. If we rely upon Wagenfeil, the rude traces of it are first to be seen in a book written by Agobard archbishop of Lyons, concerning Jewish fuperftitions, and in a treatife of the once celebrated Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, that is, about the year 800; for then these writers flourished. However, they are very far fhort, as the learned reader will perceive below *.

6

* Ibid. Says Maurus, ' Jefum filium ethnici cujufdam Pandera adule more latronum punitum effe, aiunt. Clamante vero ac jubente magiftro eorum Jofua celeriter de ligno depofitum ; et in quodam 'horto caulibus pleno in fepulchro projectum, ne terra eorum contaminaretur. Iterum de fepulchro extractum, et retorta cervice per totam * civitatem tractum, ficque projectum : et propter hoc ufque hodie fepul'chrum ejus stare vacuum,' &c. According to Agobard, ' In doctri'nis majorum fuorum Judaei legunt Iefum juvenem quendam fuiffe apud eos honorabilem, et magisterio Joannis Baptiftae eruditum quamplures habuiffe difcipulos, quorum uni, propter duritiem et hebetudinem fenfus, Kephae vel Petrae nomen impofuit; ad extremum vero ' propter plura mendacia accusatum, Tiberii judicio in carcerem retru6 fum,-veluti magum deteftabilem fuiffe fufpenfum atque hoc modo 'occifum, juxta quendam aquae ductum fepultum, et Judaeo cuidam ad cuftodiam commendatum. Noctu vero, fubita aquae ductus inun

Finally, though Mr. Voltaire intimate it is more worthy of belief than our gospels, must it not appear, in comparison, undeferving of all credit with every person of probity and candour? Is there not a moft glaring contradiction between the different copies of the book itself? To omit leffer inftances; in the book published by Raymundus, whose integrity in reciting Jewish books, fo far as I know or recollect, hath never been suspected, Queen Helena is spoken of as a stranger, altogether unacquainted with Jewish affairs, and as an enemy to Jefus, who fent foldiers to feize him, and who, when she had gotten him into her power, delivered him into the hands of the Jews, that they might deal with him according to their wishes. But in Wagenfeil's, the is represented as a kinfwoman of Jefhu, fo of Jewish extraction and parentage, as favourable to him while he lived, and as angry at the wife men of the nation for killing him without her advice.-In the fame book, published by Raymundus, the ftone on which the name of God was written, instead of being spoken of as that which covered the mouth of the abyss, fo that the fafety of all men, and of all nature depended on it, which is the description in Wagenfeil's copy, is called fimply, the ftone on which the ark of the Lord of old refted: while, again, in Buxtorf's copy of the work, according to a citation from it, in his Talmudical dictionary, it is declared to be the very stone which our father Jacob anointed with oil,

⚫datione, fublatum, Pilati juffu per 12 lunas quaefitum, nec ufquam in' ventum;' and then he goes on to Pilate's ordering to adore him as rifen. See these writers quoted by Wagenfeil, Confut. Toldoth. 12, 13. and Confer. Bibliothec. Patrum. tom. 9.

-That of their wife mens

after fleeping on it as his pillow.Again, doth it not contain the most ridiculous fables? for example, that of the great cabbage stock; to abate our aftonishment at which, Raymund's book adds a tale of one in the house of the fanctuary, which yields every year one hundred pounds weight of feed: tho', according to the accounts of travellers, cabbagestocks there are not much fuperior in fize and height to thofe in Britain;-That of a ftone's being depofited in the holy of holies, on which was written the four lettered name of God, by learning whereof, perfons might bring defolation on the world, and do whatever they would ;making lions which should give alarm at a person's coming out of the temple after the acquifition of the ineffable name, in fpite of all his magical fkill, but give none when he entered it with the mischievous intention of acquainting himself with it; -That of God's favouring a magician to learn his name, and through it defeat their contrivances, (as thus he was enabled to escape unobserved by the watch of priests and Levites which was continually kept in the temple, and engaged in going round with burning torches, even through the night, and to open unperceived those vaft gates defcribed by Jofephus to require the force of 200 men to shut them,) though not indeed without needing to cut his flesh, when yet he had ordered fuch to be punished with death by his law, Exod. xxii. 17;--That of making another Jew defeat and ruin Jefus by coming to the knowledge of the name which he had, when none of the Jews ever employed this expedient, powerful as it must have been, for the protection of their holy temple and

country against their enemies. Further, how irreconcileable with all history the narrative of this book? I will not infift on the negative argument, that no fuch ftone, memorable as it must have been, is mentioned either by the facred authors, or Jofephus, in their minute accounts of the building of the temple.-But, how comes David to have found this stone in digging the foundation of the temple, and to have lodged it in the holy of holies; when it is certain it was only the work of Solomon his fon to begin and finish that facred edifice? Could Jefus fuffer when Jannaeus's queen ruled over Judea after the death of her husband, which happened in the 67 5th year of Rome, before the time of any of the Caefars, when it is evident from Tacitus *, that he underwent capital punishment only in the time of the emperor Tiberius, the third of the Caefars, by order of Pontius Pilate, his procurator in that country, which, fometime before, had been made a Roman province, that is, not till more than a hunred years after her reign?-Once more, is it not a matter of public notoriety, allowed by the enemies of Christianity from the most antient times, that Jefus, instead of being ftoned to death and then hanged, according to the Mosaic law, was put to death by crucifixion?

Surely then, no wife and impartial man can hesitate a moment whether he should give the preference to the evangelical history beyond this Toldoth Jefhu, a work fo remote in the aera of its compofition from the time of Jesus's birth, and life, and Annal. xv. 44. Auctor nominis ejus (Chriftiani) Chriftus, qui Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum fupplicio affec

tus erat.

death; fo inconfiftent + in its different copies; fo ftuffed with monftrous tales, and fo contrary to histories of approved accuracy and fidelity.

If Mr. Voltaire do indeed receive this book, while he rejects our gofpels, he is in this, as in fome other § articles, an example of the most blameable and

+ I once thought that the Toldoth Jefhu, published by Huldric, 1705, was a different copy of the fame book, and had observed, on the authority of Dr. Sharp, in his argument for Chriftianity from conceffions of enemies, page 40, that it gives an account of the king's or'der to kill every infant in Bethlehem, which was accordingly done :' while of this there is no mention in Wagenfeil's or in Raymund's copy; looking on this as another infance how much the different copies of the fame book varied from each other. But I now find that Bafnage, in his hiftory of the Jews, fpeaks of that book as the work of a different author; and indeed from the representation he hath made of it, it appears to be fuch. For it makes Jefus born under King Herod, from whofe maffacre of the children in Bethlehem, he only escaped by flight into Egypt, and to have died under him too. See History of the Jews, b. 4. c. 28. But having had no opportunity of seeing the book itself, I forbear making more extracts.

I might have also remarked, that the story of Simon Kepha is such, who is described to have gone to the metropolis of the Nazarenes (meaning Rome) after Chrift's death; to have gathered a multitude of them to him as fand on the fea-fhore; to have exhorted them to forbear killing Jews; to have appointed the celebration of the days of Chrift's paffion, and afcenfion, and birth, and circumcifion; and to have died in a tower they built for him at his defire: all which agrees ill with the perfecuted scattered ftate of Jefus's followers then, and the account of the introduction of these festivals in the church.

§ Thus in his Philofophy of History, chap. 18. page 86, &c. he fays, 'That the Chinese annals carry with them the stamp of certainty, if any annals do, the history of heaven and earth being in them united, and each reign of their emperors being written by cotempo'raries.' And having added, 'that they are confirmed by the una nimous opinion of our travellers of different fects, Jacobins, Jefuits,