To proceed then to the more particular objections against the Scripture. The first I shall consider is, that it is obscure. And this I find alleged by two sorts of men to two differing ‘purposes; some endeavouring by it to disgrace the Bible, and others only making the pretended darkness of many of its passages an excuse for their not studying it.
To the first sort of objectors I answer, that it is little less than inevitable that many passages of the Scripture should seem obscure to us, and that it is but fit that divers others should be so too.
For first, the objectors, as I formerly observed, reading the Bible but in translations, are destitute of those helps to understand the sense of many passages that may be afforded by skill in the original languages. Besides, that even to those that have taken pains to understand the original tongues, the genuine sense of divers words and phrases is denied by the injury of time, through which (as was already noted) a greater part of the Hebrew and Chaldean tongues have been lost.
Secondly, many texts appear obscure to those that live in these latter times, only because that by reason of the perishing of those writings and other monuments of antiquity that were contemporary to the books of the Old Testament, we cannot be sufficiently acquainted with the history, the laws and customs of the Jews and other nations mentioned in the Scripture, so that it need be no wonder if divers passages of the Books of Genesis, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, the Kings, Esther, and other historical books of the Scripture, as also of the four last books of Moses, are obscure to us, and yet might be very intelligible to those in whose times they were written, and for whose use they were principally designed. As although Lucius Florus would in many places appear very obscure to such readers as know nothing of the Roman affairs but by the account given of them in his writings (whence divers late critics have been invited to illustrate him out of other Latin authors,) yet questionless to the Roman readers that lived in his time, or not very long after, his book was easy enough to be understood. How much the want of other historians contemporary to the penmen of the Old Testament may make things seem obscure that might by such stories be easily cleared up, we may observe from divers passages of the New Testament, which can scarce be well-understood without an account of Herod’s family, and the changes that happened about our Saviour’s time in Judea, which was sometimes all of it governed by Herod the Great that massacred the children at Bethlehem, and sometimes was governed by Pilate and other Roman magistrates, and sometimes was so divided that it was as to some parts only governed by Herod’s descendants under various titles; the want of the knowledge of which, and of the several princes that bore the name of Herod, does much puzzle many readers that are strangers to Josephus. And it seems somewhat strange to many, that Christ should in St. Luke admonish his hearers to fly out of Jerusalem and Judea, and not resort thither from the neighbouring countries, ‘when they should see Jerusalem encompassed with armies,’1 since those armies would probably hinder the counselled retirement, at least as to the city. Whereas he that finds in the story, that the Roman forces under Gratus did on a sudden, and, as good authors tell us, without any manifest cause withdraw from the siege of Jerusalem, and then return to it again, and, under Titus, carry the town by force; he that shall read also in Euseb. lib. iii. cap. 5, that the Christians of Jerusalem did (divinely admonished) make use of the opportunity presented them to quit all of them the city and retire to Pella on the other side of Jordan; he, I say, that shall read and take notice of all this, will notonly clearly understand the reasonableness of our Saviours warning, but admire the prophetic spirit by which he could give it. And asit is difficult to collect out of the Old Testament alone the history of those times wherein it was written; so it is not to be expected, that out of those books we should be able to collect and comprehend either complete ideas of the Israelitish government, civil and ecclesiastical, or the true state of their several sects, opinions and affairs in matters of religion: and yet without the knowledge of those it cannot be but that many texts will seem obscure to us, which were not at all so to them that were coætaneous to the penmen of those books. The labours of some modern critics that have put themselves to the trouble of making a thorough search into the writings of those Jewish rabbies that lived about our Saviours and his apostles’ times, have by the help of this rabinical learning already cleared up divers texts which before were dark, because they related to particular sects, customs, sayings, or opinions amongst the then Jews, whose knowledge, the writers of the new testament do not teach, but suppose. And I doubt not, but higher and valuable attainments in that kind of learning (how worthless soever I should think it, if it were not conducive to the illustration of the scripture) will, ere it be very long, disperse that obscurity, which yet dwells upon divers other texts, and will shew the groundlessness of all our cavils at them, as well as that of many of our too fierce contentions about them. I shall add, that I dare almost presume to question, whether even our famousest critics have not left divers Mosaical texts in the dark, if not clouded them by their comments, merely for want of knowing the religion of the antient Zabians, in opposition of whose magical worship and superstitions, I am apt to think divers ceremonies of the ritual law of the Jews to have been instituted. And yet of those Zabiists (or צביים and صابيين as the Hebrews and Arabians express the name) I find a deep and general silence in classic authors, except (the Rabbi’s oracle) Maimonides, out of whom our great antiquary (Mr. Selden) both in familiar discourse, and in his excellent tract of the Syrian deities, gave me first a hint, which by lighting on another author of those parts, I have since had the luck to improve sufficiently, to make me fear, that they, who are strangers to the Zabians rites and creed, will scarce give us the clearest account the theme is capable of in divers passages of the Mosaick law. As I am apt to think, that our ignorance or want of taking notice of the persuasions and practices of the Gnosticks, Carpocratians, and the sects allied to theirs, if it do not make us mistake and misinterpret, doth at least keep us from giving the clearest interpretations, whereof they are capable, to many passages of the New Testament, wherein they are either clearly pointed at, or closely related to.