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nearly a thousand years earlier, been uninterruptedly accepted and observed
by the Jews. I likewise think it strange that the first law of the world
happens to be the most perfect; so that the greatest legislators have
borrowed their laws from it, as is apparent from the law of the Twelve
Tables at Athens, afterwards taken by the Romans, and as it would be easy to
prove, if Josephus and others had not sufficiently dealt with this subject.
620. Advantages of the Jewish people.--In this search the Jewish people at
once attracts my attention by the number of wonderful and singular facts
which appear about them.
I first see that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and whereas
all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of families, this,
though so wonderfully fruitful, has all sprung from one man alone, and,
being thus all one flesh, and members one of another, they constitute a
powerful state of one family. This is unique.
This family, or people, is the most ancient within human knowledge, a fact
which seems to me to inspire a peculiar veneration for it, especially in
view of our present inquiry; since if God had from all time revealed himself
to men, it is to these we must turn for knowledge of the tradition.
This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular
by their duration, which has always continued from their origin till now.
For, whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon, of Athens
and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since perished, these
ever remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many powerful kings who have
a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as
it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a
space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation
has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest,
their history comprehends in its duration all
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