Chapter XIX. Molon on the Same, From the Same Work

‘BUT Molon, the author of the collection Against the Jews,says that at the time of the Deluge the man who survived departed from Armenia with his sons, being driven out of his home by the people of the land; and after crossing the intermediate country came into the mountain-district of Syria which was uninhabited.

‘After three generations Abraham was born, whose name is by interpretation “Father’s friend,” and that he became a wise man, and travelled through the desert. And having taken two wives, the one of his own country and kindred, and the other an Egyptian handmaiden, he begat by the Egyptian twelve sons, who went off into Arabia and divided the land among them, and were the first who reigned over the people of the country: from which circumstance there are even in our own day twelve kings of the Arabians, bearing the same names as the first.

‘But by his lawful wife he had one son, whose name in Greek is Γέλως, “laughter.” Abraham died of old age, but Gelos and a wife of his own country had eleven sons, and a twelfth, Joseph, and Moses was in the third generation from him.’

So much says Polyhistor; and to this he adds, after some sentences, what follows:

‘But not long after God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a whole burnt-offering to Him. And he led his son up to the mountain, and heaped up a pyre, and set Isaac thereon; but when about to slay him he was forbidden by an Angel, who provided him with a ram for the offering: and Abraham took down his son from the pyre, and offered the ram.’