thought worthy of imitation by some of them. This is declared by
Theophrastus, in his writings concerning laws; for he says that
"the laws of the Tyrians forbid men to swear foreign oaths."
Among which he enumerates some others, and particularly that
called Corban: which oath can only be found among the Jews, and
declares what a man may call "A thing devoted to God." Nor indeed
was Herodotus of Halicarnassus unacquainted with our nation, but
mentions it after a way of his own, when he saith thus, in the
second book concerning the Colchians. His words are these: "The
only people who were circumcised in their privy members
originally, were the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the
Ethiopians; but the Phoenicians and those Syrians that are in
Palestine confess that they learned it from the Egyptians. And
for those Syrians who live about the rivers Thermodon and
Parthenius, and their neighbors the Macrones, they say they have
lately learned it from the Colchians; for these are the only
people that are circumcised among mankind, and appear to have
done the very same thing with the Egyptians. But as for the
Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I am not able to say which
of them received it from the other." This therefore is what
Herodotus says, that "the Syrians that are in Palestine are
circumcised." But there are no inhabitants of Palestine that are
circumcised excepting the Jews; and therefore it must be his
knowledge of them that enabled him to speak so much concerning
them. Cherilus also, a still ancienter writer, and a poet, (16)
makes mention of our nation, and informs us that it came to the
assistance of king Xerxes, in his expedition against Greece. For
in his enumeration of all those nations, he last of all inserts
ours among the rest, when he says," At the last there passed over
a people, wonderful to be beheld; for they spake the Phoenician