or alluded to, was delivered by some Prophet by inspiration of God, and if so, Efdras must be here intended. What time Efdras lived is not certain; but if we are to judge of it from the chronological characters in this book, it must be in the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, about 390 years before Christ, that he saw the visions written in this book. Out of these I have selected only that described in the 13th chapter; not because I think he has nothing else relating to the same subject, but because it contains fome circumstances which are perhaps no where else to be met with relating to the ten tribes of Ifrael. I shall for brevity fake omit the vision itself, and only fet down the angel's interpretation of it.

LIII.

ESDRAS xiii. 25. This is the meaning of the vision: Whereas thou fawest a man coming up from 26 the midst of the sea, The fame is he whom God the highest hath kept a great season, which by his own self shall deliver his creature; and he shall or27 der them that are left behind. And whereas thou sawest that out of his mouth there came as a blast 28 of wind, and fire and storm; And that he held neither sword nor any instrument of war, but that the rushing in of him destroyed the whole multitude that came to subdue him; this is the interpretation :

29 Behold the days will come, when the Most High will begin to deliver them that are upon the earth. 30 And he shall come to the astonishment of them that 31 dwell on the earth. And one shall undertake to fight against another, one city against another, one place against another, one people against another,

and

32 and one realm against another. And the time shall be when these things shall come to pass, and the signs shall happen which I shewed thee before, and then shall my fon be declared, whom thou 33 sawest as a man afcending. And when all the people hear his voice, every man shall in their own land leave the battle they have one against another. 34 And an innumerable multitude shall be gathered

together, as thou fawest them willing to come, 35 and to overcome him by fighting. But he shall 36 stand upon the top of the mount Sion. And Sion shall come, and shall be shewed to all men, being prepared and builded like as thou sawest the hill 37 graved without hands. And this my son shall rebuke the wicked inventions of those nations, which for their wicked life are fallen into the tempeft; 38 And shall lay before them their evil thoughts, and the torments wherewith they shall begin to be tormented, which are like unto a flame; and he shall destroy them without labour by the law which 39 is like unto fire. And whereas thou sawest that he gathered another peaceable multitude unto him: 40 Those are the ten tribes which were carried away prifoners out of their own land, in the time of Ofea the king, whom Salmanazar the king of Affyria led away captive, and he carried them over the waters

41 and so came they into another land. But they took counsel among themselves that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a 42 further country where never mankind dwelt: That

they might there keep their statutes, which they 43 never kept in their own land. And they entered into 44 Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river. For

the Most High then shewed signs for them, and held 45 still the flood till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go; namely, of a year and a half: and the fame region is called Arfareth

H 2

46 Arfareth (or Ararath). Then dwelt they there until the latter time; and now when they shall begin 47 to come, The Highest shall stay the springs of the

stream again, that they may go through: therefore 48 sawest thou the multitude with peace. But those

that are left behind of thy people are they that are 49 found within my borders. Now when he destroyeth the multitude of the nations that are gathered together, he shall defend his people that remain. 50 And then shall he shew them great wonders. 51 Then faid I, O Lord, that bearest rule, shew me this: wherefore have I seen the man coming up 52 from the midft of the fea? And he said unto me, like as thou canst neither seek out nor know the things which are in the deep of the fea, even so can no man upon the earth see my son, or those that be 53 with him, but in the day time *. This is the interpretation of the dream which thou sawest, and whereby thou only art here lightned.

The account we here have of the removal of the ten tribes out of the Medo-Persian empire into a country uninhabited till that time, is so far from being an argument against the genuineness of this book, that it is rather a strong argument for it. For it is evident, and confefsed by all, that these ten tribes were carried thither by the Affyrians, Pul, Tiglath-Pul-Affur, and Salman-Affar. They were there till the death of Tobias, junior, who was one of them, when Nineveh was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and Aftyages; yet it

is evident, that when Zerdusht, the great legisla-
tor of the Medes and Persians, set up his religion
of Abraham in that empire, which was about the
middle of the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, there
appeared no Jews there, as we may easily observe
through the whole history of Dr. Hyde *; and
that neither their brethren, the Jerus, of the two
tribes in Judea, nor those in Babylon, have ever
since been able to give us any good account of
them, or have indeed at all known where they
are, to this very day. What is the natural con-
sequence of all this? but that about the very time
here specified, these ten tribes really removed
themselves unto fome unknown part of the world,
as we are here particularly informed. Accord-
ingly we find an account in Plutarch's life of this
Artaxerxes Mnemon, that in the 21st year of his
reign, there were a people called Cadusians, or ses Fuller's misest
holy people, (which was the common name for the 1.3.c.5.
Jews there in those days) situate on the north-
west parts of Media, near the beginning of the
Euphrates, whither the account supposes the ten
tribes to have bent their course. We also find
these Cadufians, or holy people, when pursued or
attacked by the Persians, escaping those Persians
under the conduct of two kings, or leaders, as
their forefathers had escaped the Egyptians under
the conduct of Moses and Aaron; and probably
not without fome such signs or wonderful works
as Mofes and Aaron of old wrought, and of which

* Hyde de relig. vet. Pers.

H3

our

The writers of of universal History (0.5.87 p.283) discredit this cos

fire of Fuller adopted by our writer: yet they themselors (2.4.7.31

ll us
Lasts
off Jes

4. Strahlenberg

a traveller of

of couver

or from of country which they ascribe to of Codhesions is porner

our accounts here make mention; though the
Perfians endeavour to palliate the matter, by a-
fcribing their own deliverance to a stratagem of
one Tiribazus, while they confess that otherwise
their army had been destroyed by these Cadufians.
We may also take notice that yet of these Cadu-
fians we hear nothing till this time, and that Strabo
calls them foreigners that came thither from else-
where; and lastly we may remark, that since Ar-
taxerxes thought fit to bring no fewer than 310,000
men into the field against these Cadufians, as Plu-
tarch witnesses, it looks much more like an attempt
to recover these intire ten tribes of Ifrael, who
had long been his subjects, his flaves, and his
captives, but were now departed out of his do-
minions, (like Pharaoh's attempt in Egypt) than
to reduce only scattered mountaineers who were
in rebellion against him, as Plutarch supposes,
Nor can this grand problem, what became of these
ten tribes in this very reign, be folved to the least
degree of fatisfaction, but by taking the direct
account that is here given by Efdras for a faith-
ful account, and by supposing this book of his
to be true and genuine at the same time.

The next Prophecy, and the only one more
that I shall lay before the reader out of the Apo-
crypha, shall be that of TOBIT, who was of the
tribe of Nephthali, and was led captive in the
time of Salmanazar, king of Affyria, 721 years
before Christ, and 133 years before the deftruc-
tion of Jerufalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The tran-
Nation in the second column is from the Hebrew
copy

they

ari

called Rubazin; a name not so

in from hidangan holy peoples but ut wray sp Did in brow how t

be greater.