Excerpt from Manners of the Ancient Israelites: Containing an Account of Their Peculiar Customs and Ceremonies, Their Laws, Polity, Religion, Sects, Arts and Trades, Divisions of Time, Wars, Captivities, &C., With a Short Account of the Ancient and Modern Samaritans Every attempt to illustrate the Bible, the oldest and most important book in the world, a book that has God for its Author and the eternal happiness of the human race for its end, deserves the most serious attention of all those who profess the Christian religion. It is granted on all hands, that this book has many difficulties; but this is not peculiar to the Jewish scriptures; all ancient writings are full of them: and these difficulties are generally in proportion to the antiquity of such writings; for the customs, manners, and language of mankind are continually changing; and were it not for the help received from the records of succeeding ages, which are only accessible to the learned, many valuable works of primitive times must have remained in impenetrable obscurity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.