Re: Well, the world is certainly looking grim, isn't it? 62804

what
are called the Twelve Tables, and from the other proofs which Josephus
gives.

But this law is at the same time the severest and strictest of all in
respect to their religious worship, imposing on this people, in order to
keep them to their duty, a thousand peculiar and painful observances, on
pain of death. Whence it is very astonishing that it has been constantly
preserved during many centuries by a people, rebellious and impatient as
this one was; while all other states have changed their laws from time to
time, although these were far more lenient.

The book which contains this law, the first of all, is itself the most
ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod, and others, being six or
seven hundred years later.

621. The creation of the deluge being past, and God no longer requiring to
destroy the world, nor to create it anew, nor to give such great signs of
Himself, He began to establish a people on the earth, purposely formed, who
were to last until the coming of the people whom the Messiah should fashion
by His spirit.

622. The creation of the world beginning to be distant, God provided a
single contemporary historian, and appointed a whole people as guardians of
this book, in order that this history might be the most authentic in the
world, and that all men might thereby learn a fact so necessary to know, and
which could only be known through that means.

623. Japhet b