Jews. It is true they
bound their Bibles differently from ours, but the contents were the very
same. They made up their parchments of the thirty-nine books in
twenty-two rolls or volumes, one for every letter of their alphabet;
putting Judges and Ruth, the two books of Samuel, the two books of
Kings, the two books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Jeremiah's
Prophecy and Lamentations, and the twelve minor prophets, in one volume
respectively. They also distinguished the five books of Moses as, _The
Law_; the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon as, _The
Psalms_; and all the remainder as, _The Prophets_.[141] Moreover, it is
well known that two hundred and eighty-two years before the Christian
era, these writings were translated into Greek and widely circulated in
all parts of the world. They were, in fact, not only popular, but
received as of divine authority by the Jews at that time, read in their
synagogues in public worship, and regarded with sacred reverence. How
did they come to receive them in this manner?

These writings were not only acknowledged by the Jews; their bitterest
enemies--the Samaritans--owned the divine authority of the five books of
Moses, and preserve an ancient copy of them, differing in no essential
particular from the Hebrew version, to this day. The Samaritans always
bore to the Hebrews such a relation as Mohammedans do to Christians, and
the Hebrews returned the grudge with interest: "For the Jews have no
dealings with the Samaritans." These heathen Babylonians, four centuries
or more before the Christian era, were somehow induced to receive the
Pentateuch as of divine authority, and to frame some sort of religion
upon it. Their enmity to the Jews is conclusive proof that, since that
time, neither Jews nor Samaritans have altered the text; else the
manuscripts would show the discrepancy.

These books are not such as any person would forge to gain popularity,
or to make money by. There is nothing in them to bribe the good opinion
of influential people, or catch the favor of the multitude. On the
contrary, their stern severity, and unsparing denunciation of popular
vice and profitable sin must have secured their rejection by the Jewish
people, had they not been constrained by undeniable evidence to
acknowledge their divine authority. They set out with the assertion of
the divine authority of the law of Moses, and everywhere sharply reprove
princes, priests, and people for breaki