Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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The initial question as to whether Philo had a genuine Phoenician document before him or not, need not occupy us here, save in the most superficial fashion, as we are at present interested in the Egyptian elements of his account solely, and not in disentangling the native Phoenician substratum.
It must, however, in fairness be said that though the Byblian prefaces his account with an introduction and intersperses it with occasional remarks, all this is transparently his own, and is clearly distinguishable from what have every appearance of being translated
ARE HIS " PHCENICIAN HISTORIES " A FORGERY ?
The general theory, however, since the time of Orelli 1 has been that Philo forged the whole of this cosmogony and history. On the contrary, it was made considerable use of by Porphyry in his criticism of Christianity, and Eusebius2 quotes the passages used by Porphyry.3 The whole work of Philo, moreover, is claimed to be recovered by Wagenfeld, who has elaborately defended its genuineness.4 There indeed seems no reason to accept the forgery-hypothesis, which apparently rests on an even flimsier basis than the forgery-theory of the Trismegistic writings. The work, on the contrary, considered as a specimen of Phoenician story strongly influenced by Egyptian tradition, is a most interesting document for understanding the ancient Semitic mystery-tradition as distinguished from Jewish adaptations of general Semitic legend — in other words, the distinction of Semitismus and Israelitismus. Porphyry was not only a Semite himself but also a good critic, and not likely to base his arguments on a forgery; nor would Philo have ventured to put forward a forgery when there were thousands of learned and fanatical Jews who would have been only too glad to expose it.
1 J. C. Orelli, Sanchoniatlwnis Berytii quce feruntur Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1826).
2 Prceparatio Evangelica, I. vi., vii.
3 These are collected by Cory in his Ancient Fragments, pp. 3 ff. (London, 1832) ; and they may also be found in C. Miiller, Fragmenta Historicorum Gracorum, " Philo Byblius," iii. pp. 560 ff. (Paris, 1848).
4 F. Wagenfeld, Sanchuniathon's Urgeschichte der Phonizier in einem Auszuge a us der wieder aufyefundenen Handschrift von Philo' s vollstdndiger (fbersetzung (Hanover, 1836). In the following year Wagenfeld published the Greek text with a Latin translation under the title Sanchoniathonis Historiarum Phoenicia Libri IX. (Bremse, 1837). For the further consideration of the reliability of Sanchuniathon, see Count (Wolf Wilhelm) Baudissin's Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Heft ii., " Uber den religionsgeschichtlichen Werth der phonicischen Geschichte Sanchuniathon's" (Leipzig, 1876).
Philo tells us that the Phoenician public traditions being chaotic, " Sanchuniathon, a man of great learning and a busy searcher [after knowledge], who especially desired to know the first principles from which all things are derived, most carefully examined the Books of Taaut, for he knew that Taaut was the first of all under the sun who discovered the use of letters and the writing of records. So he started from him, making him as it were his foundation — from him the Logos whom the Egyptians called Thouth, the Alexandrians Thoth,1 but whom the Greeks have turned into Hermes."2
SANCHUNIATHON AND THE BOOKS OF HERMES
This evidently means that the source of Sanchuniathon's information as to the mystic beginning of things was derived from the Books of Thoth, and that this was so may be seen from the following passage :
1 Perhaps attempts at transliterating the dialectic variants of Upper and Lower Egypt of the name Tehuti.
2 Wagenfeld's text, Procem., p. 2 ; Euseb., Prcep. Ev., I. ix. 29.