Palæographia sacra. Or discourses on sacred subjects / By William Stukeley.

  • Stukeley, William, 1687-1765.
Date:
1763
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Palæographia sacra. Or discourses on sacred subjects / By William Stukeley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ Ir7 ] And this among the Greeks was the moft common original of idolatry, and mythology, return we now to Cadmus, after this digrefiion, fuitable to a Sunday’s meditation, fome later hero of Cadmus’s family is to be underftood, whofe adts are confolidated with the original, of higher times, he confults the oracle where he fhould fix his feat, order’d not to return, unlefs he found his fifter Europa, who was carried away from. Phoenicia, by a young king of Crete, called yupiter. he, as I faid, was one of the Diofcouri, the firft traders, and navigators; with whom joined the Phoenicians of the fame profefiion ; with whom joined the Arabian defendants of Abraham by Keturah, who came to Brittain for Tyn. Confulting oracles was original in Canaan, at Salem, where Melchifedec prefided. there Rebekah confulted. Genefts XXV. 22. the ox which Cadmus meets, and follows, means a facrifice, which he prepar’d to offer, for good fuccefs in his new undertaking ; the founding of a city, he fends his men to a fountain, water ever necefiary on thefe occafions. the fnake which kills his men, and which he afterwards kills, means the Dra~ contium, or ferpenti-ne temple, which he erected of ftones, fet in the ground, in the ferpentine form : fuch as we have in Brittain. “ He kill’d the fnake, by throwing a vafl ftone, with “ which, with like force, the mightieft walls had been “ crufhed and crumbled into duft,” as the fables re¬ late. While wondring at its prodigious bulk, a divine voice orders him to fow its teeth, and a band of armed men