INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY

...might be able to The text begins mid-sentence, continuing from the previous page's discussion on how inventions could be preserved.. It also seems probable to the author that Tubal-Cain discovered a more extensive use of iron and bronze, and perhaps even the harmful use of weapons, as Josephus Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian mentioned on the previous page. also suggests; in Exercises on the History of the Patriarchs, Exercise VI, § XVIII, pp. 218–219. Some also conclude from this that Tubal-Cain was skilled to some degree in the chemical arts In this context, "chemical arts" refers to metallurgy and the refining of ores., using the following argument: If Tubal-Cain showed how to forge bronze and iron, he must have first taught—or learned from others—the methods by which metals could be prospected, smelted, cast, separated, and purified. Compare Georg Pasch’s Georg Pasch (1661–1707) was a German scholar known for his work New-Old Inventions, which argued that many "modern" inventions had ancient origins. New-Old Inventions, chapter VI, § XI. If this is understood as a general skill in handling metals, it can, in my opinion, be easily granted.

Seth was of a different mind; it is well known that he was a devotee of wisdom. For although it might perhaps be counted among fables, Flavius Josephus has recorded concerning the descendants of Seth that they were greatly devoted to astronomy original: astrologiae. In the author's era, this term encompassed both the study of stars (astronomy) and their perceived influences (astrology)., and that they engraved this science, as far as it was then developed, upon two columns—one of brick and the other of stone. This was done so that if the world were to perish by fire or water according to Adam’s prediction, at least one of the two ways [of preserving] the most useful...