Mosheim, in his Commentaries, Introduction, chap. 2, observes, that the Jewish religion, at the time of our Saviour's appearance, "was contaminated by errors of the most flagrant kind; even in the service of the temple itself, numerous ceremonies and observances, drawn from the religious worship of heathen nations, had been introduced and blended with those of Divine institution; and in addition to superstitions like these of a public nature, many erroneous principles, probably either brought from Babylon and Chaldea by the ancestors of the people at their return from captivity, or adopted by the thoughtless multitude in conformity to the example of their neighbors the Greeks, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, were cherished and acted upon in private." Again, "To the prince of darkness, with his associates and agents, they attributed an influence over the world and mankind of the most extensive nature; so predominant, indeed, as scarcely to leave a superior degree of power even with the Deity himself." "At the time of Christ's appearance, many of the Jews had imbibed the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the origin of the world, and were much addicted to the study of a recondite sort of learning derived from thence, to which they gave the name of _Cabbala_. The founders of several of the Gnostic sects, all of whom, we know, were studious to make the Christian religion accommodate itself to the principles of the ancient Oriental philosophy, _had been originally Jews_, and exhibited in their tenets a strange mixture of the doctrines of Moses, Christ, and Zoroaster. This is of itself sufficient to prove that many of the Jews were in no small degree attached to the opinions of the ancient Persians and Chaldeans. Such of them as had adopted these irrational principles would not admit that the world was created by God, but substituted, in the place of the Deity, _a celestial genius_ endowed with vast powers; from whom, also, they maintained that Moses had his commission, and the Jewish law its origin. To the coming of the Messiah, or deliverer, promised by God to their fathers, they looked forward with hope, expecting that he would put an end to the dominion of the being whom they thus regarded as the maker and ruler of the world." Mosheim, Int., Com., chap. 2. It would be alike tedious and useless much further to multiply citations from the history of Gnostic and other Oriental writers, to show that the nations represented by those writers regarded Satan as the creator of the world and god of their idolatry.