Whilst then, on the one hand, there is a probability of the Hebrews having borrowed the fable from Hellenistic sources, there is, on the other, the strongest objection to the supposition that the Greeks should have borrowed from the Jews. Everything which the latter say of themselves, indicates that they were exclusive to an inordinate degree, refusing to have intercourse on equal terms with any of their neighbours, that they never sought to make their history, laws, and customs, known to Gentiles, and especially those outside of Judea, and that their writings never assumed a Grecian dress until the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who ordered the Septuagint translation to be made about B.c. 285, with the direct view of making the Hebrew Scriptures known to the Greeks. Moreover, we know from everything which was said of the Jews by the Gentiles, that the latter treated the former with contempt and contumely, and would no more dream of imitating any of their writings, &c., than we should care to adopt the myths of Abyssinian negroes as an integral part of Christianity. It will now be profitable if we examine the story of Sanchoniathon and the statements of the Orphic Hymns. We have, in the course of this chapter and elsewhere, so" often referred to the Grecian story of the Creation as given by Sanchoniathon and in the Orphic hymns, that I think my readers are entitled to receive some further account of them; so I reproduce passages which bear upon supernatural generation, and especially that of the world and its inhabitants--my main authority being _Ancient Fragments, &c._, by J. P. Cory (London, 1832).