Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

being the great-grandson of Shem — that the Shem-
etic must be three generations older than the
Hebrew? Japhet, again, being two years older
than Shem, does it not follow that the Japhetic
is that much older? And Noah being the father
of both, what is the natural inference ? The truth
is, to worship the Hebrew character as sacred, is
superstition; to worship the Hebrew nation is
idolatry ; they were a timid, uninfluential handful,
compared wdth the Celtic tribes; nor did they ever
complete even a fine building without their assist-
ance. Who was the ornamental architect of Solo-
mon's Temple ? Was it not Father Hm-am, the
widow's son, a Tyrian? And who were the
Tyrians ? Celts under the symbolic or oracular
appellations of Canaanites or Phoenicians. The
very alphabet used by Moses, as Dr Murray*
sufficiently proves, was the Phoenician,] not the
Hebrew! Our argument is, that they were the
same, and that, whilst the Hebrew is known to
have sickened and expired more than two thousand
* Vide Outlines of Oriental Philology, p. 2.
t It is periiaps superfluous to note here, that several por-
tions of the Bible, such as Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Job, &c.,
are in the Chaldea diiilect.