16
The Fundamentals The first testimony, then, of this sort to which we allude, is a full description of the Tabernacle in all its parts, services, priesthood and history, very nearly the same as that which is given in our modern Bibles, which can be found in the earliest translation ever made of the Old Testament—that is, the Septuagint. This translation appeared some two or three centuries before the time of Christ, and therefore it ought to be pretty good evidence of at least what its con temporaries, or those far-off times, held to be true with regard to the matter under consideration. Then another testimony of like character comes from the Greek Apocrypha to the Old Testament, a work which appeared, or at least most of it, before the time of Christ; in which production there are found various allusions to the Tabernacle, and all of them to it as a real existence; as, e. g., in Jud. 9 :8; Wis. of Sol. 9:8; Eccl. 24:10, 15; and 2 Mac. 2:5. Moreover, in his Antiquities, Josephus, who wrote toward the end of the first century, gives another full description of that old struc ture in its every part, including also something of its history. (See Antiq., Bk. III., Chs. VI. to XII.; also Bk. V., Ch. I., Sec. 19; Ch. II., Sec. 9; Ch. X., Sec. 2; Bk. VIII., Ch. IV., Sec. 1.) And finally, in that vast collection of ancient Jew ish traditions, comments, laws, speculations, etc., which goes under the name of the Talmud, there are not infrequent ref erences made to this same old structure; and one of the treatises (part of the Bereitha)* in that collection is devoted exclusively to a consideration of this building. With so much literature, therefore, of one kind and an other, all telling us something about the Tabernacle, and all or at least most of it going back for its origin to very near the time when at least the last part of the Old Testament was ♦The Bereitha (or Baraitha) is an apocryphal part of the Talmud; but it is very old, and embodies about the same quality of tradition in general as does the compilation made by Jehudah ha-Nasi, which is usually considered the genuine Mishna, or basis of the Talmud.
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker