1 HEBREW. 2 GREEK. 3 ARABIC. 4 OLD IRISH. letters, together with the corresponding English letters, and shewing the 16 primitive letters, and the later compounded and supplementary PREFACE. It was my first intention to send forth this book without a Preface, leaving it to the reader to gather from its contents, and more especially from the Introduction, such inferences as might fairly be drawn from them, as to the particular views which guided me in its composition, and led to its publication. It appears, however, in the judgment of a friend, that some persons may fall into error as to the motives which caused me to publish this work, and may ascribe it to a feeling of hostility towards a book held in universal estimation. Against the injustice of this charge, I should still have not deemed it necessary to protect myself in any other way than by silence. For, though I will not pretend to be ignorant that the religious character of a work must vary greatly in proportion to its historical tendencies, yet I should still have left this book to advocate its own doctrines, had it not been strongly urged that some persons may even wilfully pervert its meaning, and ascribe to it a tendency which its author never contemplated. To guard against such a possibility, I think it right to premise that this work is historical, and not theological. Its object is, to assign a certain value and antiquity to the Old Testament,—such a value indeed and such an antiquity as to leave it, even in my own judgment, what it has always been in the opinion of nine-tenths of civilized men, the most wonderful record of past times that the world has yet seen. The conclusion which I have endeavoured to establish in this Historical Inquiry, so far from diminishing the value of the Old Testament, seems to me really to add thereto, for it substitutes certainty in the place of uncertainty, light for darkness, and reason for mystery, whilst it is left for those who pursue the subject by deducing religious doctrines from historical fact, to determine how far the same data may be of use as shewing the |