Josephus, quoting Jewish
traditions, says, "The births and deaths of illustrious men, between
Adam and Noah, were noted down at the time with great accuracy." (Ant.,
lib. 1, cap. iii., see. 3.) Suidas, a Greek lexicographer of the
eleventh century, expresses tradition when he says, "Adam was the author
of arts and letters." The Egyptians said that their god Anubis was an
antediluvian, and it "wrote annals before the Flood." The Chinese have
traditions that the earliest race of their nation, prior to history,
"taught all the arts of life and wrote books." "The Goths always had the
use of letters;" and Le Grand affirms that before or soon after the
Flood "there were found the acts of great men engraved in letters on
large stones." (Fosbroke's "Encyclopaedia of Antiquity," vol. i., p.
355.) Pliny says, "Letters were always in use." Strabo says, "The
inhabitants of Spain possessed records written before the Deluge."
(Jackson's "Chronicles of Antiquity," vol. iii., p. 85.) Mitford
("History of Greece," vol. i, p. 121) says, "Nothing appears to us so
probable as that it (the alphabet) was derived from the antediluvian
world."
CHAPTER VIII.
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