Читать книгу The History of Persecution - Samuel Chandler - Страница 9

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There is a passage in the book of Judith1 which intimates to us, that the ancestors of the Jews themselves were persecuted upon account of their religion. Achior, captain of the sons of Ammon, gives Holofernes this account of the origin of that nation. “This people are descended of the Chaldeans; and they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were in the land of Chaldea; for they left the way of their ancestors, and worshipped the God of heaven, the God whom they knew. So they cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and sojourned there many days.” St. Austin2 and Marsham3 both take notice of this tradition; which is farther confirmed by all the oriental historians, who, as the learned Dr. Hyde4 tells us, unanimously affirm, that Abraham suffered many persecutions upon the account of his opposition to the idolatry of his country; and that he was particularly imprisoned for it by Nimrod in Ur. Some of the eastern writers also tell us, that he was thrown into the fire, but that he was miraculously preserved from being consumed in it by God. This tradition also the Jews believed, and is particularly mentioned by Jonathan5 in his Targum upon Gen. xi. 28. “Nimrod threw Abraham into a furnace of fire, because he would not worship his idol; but the fire had no power to burn him.” So early doth persecution seem to have begun against the worshippers of the true God.