the Targum of Jerusalem, the accredited exposition of the Jewish church, and in the slight and casual way in which he has expressed a disapprobation of the rendering of the Targum, in his Greek Lexicon. It is really not to be believed that he and the other modern Lexicographers—Bates, Taylor, Calassio, &c., should have been ignorant, for I believe they all suppress the rendering. It ought to serve as a warning to all inquirers that they never can be too much on their guard. How true is the dictum of Bacon, that every thing connected with religion is to be viewed with suspicion!
Wisdom was the first emanation from the Divine power, the protogonos, the beginning of all things, the Rasit of Genesis, the Buddha of India, the Logos of Plato and St. John, as I shall prove. Wisdom was the beginning of creation. Wisdom was the primary, and beginning the secondary, meaning of the word. Of its rendering in the LXX., by the word Αρχη, I shall treat presently at great length. The fact was, Parkhurst saw that if the word had the meaning of Wisdom it would instantly establish the doctrine of Emanations; and if he had given, as he ought to have done, the authority of the Jerusalem Targum and of Maimonides, no person would have hesitated for a moment to prefer it to his sophistry. But as the doctrine of emanations must, at all events, be kept out of sight, he suppressed the authorities.
The meaning of wisdom, which the word Ras bore, I can scarcely doubt was, in fact, secret, sacred, and mystical; and in the course of the following work my reader will perceive, that wherever a certain mythos, which will be explained, was concerned, two clear and distinct meanings of the words will be found: one for the initiated, and one for the people. This is of the first importance to be remembered. If the ancients really had a secret system it was a practice which could not well be dispensed with, and innumerable proofs of it will be given; but among them there will not be found one more important, nor more striking, than that of the word ראש ras or כראשית b-rasit. To the reconsideration of the meaning of this word I shall many times have occasion to revert. I shall now return to the text of Deuteronomy, from which I have digressed.
That the angels are in fact emanations from the Divine substance, according to the Mosaic system, is proved from Deut. xxxiii. 2. Moses says, according to the Septuagint, The Lord is come from Sinai: he has appeared to us from Seir; he shined forth from Paran with thousands of saints, and having his angels on his right hand. But M. Beausobre[1] has shewn, (and which Parkhurst, p. 149, in voce, דת dt, confirms,) that the Hebrew word אשדת asdt, which the Septuagint translates angels, means effusions, that is, emanations, from the Divine substance. According to Moses and the Seventy translators, therefore, the Angels were Emanations from the Divine substance. Thus we see here that the doctrines of the Persians and that of the Jews, and we shall see afterward, of the Gnostic and Manichean Christians, were in reality the same.
The fact has been established that the Septuagint copy which we now possess is really a copy of that spoken of by Philo and the Evangelists, though in many places corrupted, so that no more need be said about it. But if any one be disposed to dispute this passage of the LXX., it may be observed to him, that the probability is strongly in favour of its being genuine.
It is not a disputed text. It is found in these words in the ancient Italic version, which was made from the Septuagint,[2] which shews that it was there in a very early period, and it did not flatter the prejudice or support the interest either of the modern Jews or the ruling power of the Christians to corrupt it, but the contrary. As M. Beausobre properly observes, if the question
