(Σανχονιάθων), a Phoenician philosopher and historian, who is said by some to have flourished about the time of the Trojan war, and according to others, about the time of Semiramis. Of this most ancient writer the only remains extant are various fragments of cosmogony, and of the history of the gods and Sanctuniathon first mortals, preserved by Eusebius and Theodoret, both of whom speak of Sanctuniathon as an accurate and faithful historian; and the former adds that his work, which was translated by Philo-Byblius from the Phoenician into the Greek language, contains many things relating to the history of the Jews which deserve great credit, both because they agree with the Jewish writers, and because the author received these particulars from the annals of Hierombalus, a priest of the god Jeus (Jebus).

Several modern writers of great learning, however, have called in question the very existence of Sanctuniathon, and have contended, with much plausibility, that the fragments which Eusebius adopted as genuine upon the authority of Porphyry were forged by that author or by the pretended translator Philo, from enmity to the Christians, and that the pagans might have something to show of equal antiquity with the books of Moses. These opposite opinions have produced a controversy that has filled volumes, and of which our limits would hardly admit of an abstract. We shall therefore in few words state what appears to us to be the truth, and refer such of our readers as are desirous of fuller information to the works of the authors mentioned below.

The controversy respecting Sanctuniathon resolves itself into two questions: first, Was there in reality such a writer? and, second, Was he of the very remote antiquity which his translator claims for him?

1. Now that there was really such a writer, and that the fragments preserved by Eusebius are indeed parts of his history, interpolated perhaps by the translator, we are compelled to believe. Eusebius, who admitted them into his work as authentic, was one of the most learned men of his age, and a diligent searcher into antiquity. Father Simon of the oratory imagines (Bibl. Crit., vol. I., p. 140) that the purpose for which the history of Sanctuniathon was forged was to support paganism by taking from it its mythology and allegories, which were perpetually objected to it by the Christian writers. But this learned man totally mistakes the matter. The primitive Christians were too much attached to allegories themselves to rest their objections to paganism on such a foundation. What they objected to in that system was the immoral stories told of the priests. Is it conceivable that a writer so acute as Porphyry, or indeed that any man of common sense either in his age or in that of Philo, would forge a book filled with such stories as these in order to remove the Christian objections to the immoral characters of the pagan divinities? The very supposition is impossible to be made. Nor let any one imagine that Sanctuniathon is here writing allegorically, and by his tales of Ouranos, and Ge, and Kronos, is only personifying the heaven, the earth, and time. On the contrary, he assures us that Ouranos, or Epigeus, or Autochthon (for he gives him all these names), was the son of one Elian or Hypsistos, who dwelt about Byblus, and that from him the element which is over us was called heaven on account of its excellent beauty, as the earth was named Ge after his sister and wife. And his translator is very angry with the Neoteric Greeks, as he calls them, because that, "by a great deal of force and straining, they laboured to turn all the stories of the gods into allegories and physical discourses." This proves unanswerably that the author of this book, whoever he was, did not mean to veil the great truths of religion under the cloak of mythological allegories; and therefore, if it was forged by Porphyry in support of paganism, the forger so far mistook the state of the question between him and his adversaries that he contrived a book, Sanctuniathon, if admitted to be ancient, totally overthrew his own cause.

2. The next thing to be inquired into with respect to Sanctuniathon is his antiquity. Did he really live and write at so early a period as Porphyry and Philo pretend? We think he did not; and what contributes not a little to confirm us in our opinion is that mark of national vanity and partiality common to after-times, in making the sacred mysteries of his own country original, and conveyed from Phoenicia into Egypt. This, however, furnishes an additional proof that Porphyry was not the forger of the work; for he well knew that the mysteries had their origin in Egypt (see Mysteries), and would not have fallen into such a blunder. He is guilty, indeed, of a very great anachronism when he makes Sanctuniathon contemporary with Semiramis, and yet pretends that what he writes of the Jews is compiled from the records of Hierombalus the priest of the god Jeus; for Bochart has made it appear in the highest degree probable that Hierombalus or Jerombaal is the Jerub-baal or Gideon of Scripture. Between the reign of Semiramis and the Trojan war a period elapsed of near eight hundred years, whereas Gideon flourished not above seventy years before the destruction of Troy. But supposing Sanctuniathon to have really consulted the records of Gideon, it by no means follows that he flourished at the same period with that judge of Israel. He speaks of the building of Tyre as an ancient thing, while our best chronologers place it in the time of Gideon. Indeed, were we certain that any writings had been left by that holy man, we should be obliged to conclude that a large tract of time had intervened between the death of their author and their falling into the hands of Sanctuniathon; for surely they could not in a short period have been so completely corrupted as to give any countenance to his impious absurdities. His atheistic cosmogony he does not indeed pretend to have got from the annals of the priest of Jeus, but from records which were deposited in his own town of Berytus by Thoth, a Phoenician philosopher, who was afterwards made king of Egypt. But surely the annals of Gideon, if written by himself, and preserved pure to the days of Sanctuniathon, must have contained so many truths of the Mosaic religion as must have prevented any man of sense from adopting so impossible a theory as Thoth's, although sanctioned by the greatest name of profane antiquity. Stillingfleet indeed thinks it most probable that Sanctuniathon became acquainted with the most remarkable passages of the life of Jerub-baal from annals written by a Phoenician pen. He observes, that immediately after the death of Gideon, the Israelites, with their usual propensity to idolatry, worshipped Baal-berith, or the idol of Berytus, the town in which Sanctuniathon lived; and from this circumstance he concludes that there must have been such an intercourse between the Hebrews and the Berytians, that in process of time the latter people might assume to themselves the Jerub-baal of the former, and hand down his actions to posterity as those of a priest instead of a great commander. All this may be true; but if so, it amounts to a demonstration that the antiquity of Sanctuniathon is not so high by many ages as that which is claimed for him by Philo and Porphyry; though he may still be more ancient, as we think Vossius has proved him to be, than any other profane historian whose writings have come down to us either entire or in fragments.

A useful edition of the fragments, said to be of Sanctuniathon, is Bochart, Scaliger, Vossius, Cumberland, Dodwell, Stillingfleet, Mosheim's Cadworth, and Warburton.

Of these indeed there are several proofs. Philo makes Sanctuniathon speak of Byblus as the most ancient city of Phoenicia, which, in all probability, it was not. We read in the book of Judges of Berith or Berytus, the city where Sanctuniathon himself lived; but not of Byblus, which was the native city of Philo, and to which he is therefore partial. He makes him likewise talk of the Greeks at a period long before any of the Grecian states were known or probably peopled.

Apud Eusebium, Prop. Evang., lib. I., cap. vii.

Geogr. Sac., p. 2, book ii., lib. ii., cap. xvii.

J. J. Scaliger. Sanctius, were published by J. C. Orelli, Leipzig, 1826; and in 1835 an MS. was said to have been discovered in Portugal of the nine books of Philo's translation of that ancient historian. This discovery caused immense squabbling among the German critics. The majority of them pronounced it to be spurious. Wagenfeld, the two Grotefends, Schmidt, and Movers, may be consulted regarding it. On the general subject the reader may refer to J. A. Fabricius, Biblioth. Graec., vol. i. p. 222.