EXCURSUS B. ON CRETE, THE SECOND.

Casaubon omitted this excursus when the table of contents was read to him: "Pass on to the next head—I omit the second excursus on Crete" (Testimonia 33). It is printed here from the collections, and every paragraph of it is marked ∅.

∅It has been shown in the former excursus that the person whom the Cretans worshipped, and whose tomb they showed, is to be referred to the deifying of the patriarchs; and it remains to inquire, so far as the testimonies permit, which of the patriarchs he was, or whether he was any one of them in particular, and not rather a representative, under a single name, of the whole family from which the islanders descended. The question is one upon which I should have been content to say nothing, had it not been answered with great confidence by a writer whose opinion upon the Cretan traditions has been generally received, and whose answer, if it were admitted, would require a revision of the whole classification which I have proposed.¹ NB-32-003 NB-34-014

∅Mr. Faber, having examined the several fables of the island, concludes that "the Cretan bull, the bull of Europa, and the bull of Pasiphae; the Minotaur, Asterius, and even Jupiter himself; are all one and the same mythological character, the great tauric patriarch worshipped in conjunction with the Sun."² So far as this conclusion places the Jupiter whom the Cretans buried among men, and not among the gods, I have no quarrel with it, and I have myself arrived at the same result by a different road. But Mr. Faber proceeds to read the Minotaur as Noah himself, and to find in the seven youths and seven virgins whom Minos compelled the Athenians to send the number of the persons preserved in the Ark: "This, as we have repeatedly seen, was the precise number of the Corybantes, the Titans, and the Cabiri; in other words, the complement of the Ark, exclusive of Noah."³ In this I am unable to follow him. The number is drawn from a fable of the Athenians respecting a tribute exacted from them, and not from any tradition of the Cretans respecting their own origin; the Cabeiri have their own place, in which, as I have shown, their number is not to be settled; and an identification which requires the number of the Cabeiri to be first assumed in order that the Minotaur may be shown to be Noah, and the Minotaur to be first assumed to be Noah in order that the number of the Cabeiri may be confirmed, is not an identification but a circle. NB-32-003

∅There is a second testimony which may be thought to bear upon the question, and which I set down in order that it may not be supposed to have been overlooked. The theologians whom Cotta cites make the Cretan Jupiter a son of Saturn;⁴ and Bochart, in another place and upon another matter, where he sets Canaan beside Mercury, gives as the first ground of the identification that uterque Iovis fuit filius id est Hami (each was a son of Jove, that is, of Ham).⁵ If the Jove of the one were the Cretan of the other, the father of the Cretan Jupiter would be the father of Ham, and the Cretan would stand at the head of the line of Ham, among the patriarchs who came after the Deluge. But Bochart, in the place cited, speaks of Jove as Ham, and says it of two persons in the line of Canaan; he does not speak of Crete, nor name Saturn; and Cicero names Saturn and Crete, and says nothing of Ham. The two testimonies are therefore to be written side by side and not joined, since the inference which would join them is drawn from two witnesses who have not met, and who speak of different things. NB-34-014

∅It follows that the question, which of the patriarchs the Cretan Jupiter was, is not determined by the testimonies at present collected: not by Mr. Faber, whose answer rests upon a circle; not by the conjunction of Cicero and Bochart, which rests upon an inference that neither witness supports; and not by the Apostle, who, in ascribing the reproach of the Cretans to "a prophet of their own," shows that the reproach was Cretan, and shows nothing more.⁶ Which of the three Jupiters, if any, is the patriarch; whether the patriarch is one person or the representative of several; and whether the island received him from the family of Ham or preserved him from an earlier age, are questions which the present excursus raises and does not answer, and which I reserve to the conclusion of the work. NB-32-003 NB-34-014