REVISED EDITION

to fulfill my promise, I was delaying. Almost an entire year has slipped away since then before I was free to think any further about a new edition. Having finally obtained some leisure this summer, about a month and a half ago—which was nonetheless frequently interrupted—I am now discharging my debt, being bound by a promise a year old.

But truly, let no one expect the little book to be enlarged in such a way as if I had merely scraped together and woven into our work the opinions or conjectures regarding any Syrian deity from more recent authors—those, namely, who have published since the first edition or whose works had not previously come into my hands. I admit that many things relevant to the subject we treat occur in the works of several such learned and distinguished men: both those who have recently compiled complete commentaries on the Old Testament original: "Vetus Instrumentum," a term often used by scholars of this period to refer to the Old Testament as a legal or historical record., or various parts of it—such as Johannes Drusius, Nicolaus Serarius, Claude Rangot, Gaspar Sánchez, Francisco Ribera, and others of that kind—as well as those who have distinguished their works with specific titles: namely, Pineda in his books On the Affairs of Solomon, Nicholas Fuller in his Miscellanies, Petrus Cunaeus on the Republic of the Hebrews, and Jacques Salian in his Ecclesiastical Annals. This is not to mention that most eminent man, a sun of both the more serious and the more elegant letters, Daniel Heinsius, in his Sacred Aristarchus A work of biblical criticism named after Aristarchus of Samothrace, the famous librarian of Alexandria.. I pass over writers of lesser rank original: "minorum gentium," literally "of the lesser families," a Roman idiom for those of lower status. who have occasionally, though lightly, put their sickle into this harvest A metaphor for scholars who briefly touched upon Selden's area of expertise. long ago. But to simply compile these authors, as a matter of principle, I was...