The Life of Tycho Brahe

...in some of the books of the ancient Rabbis; but certainly not in the Holy Scriptures, regarding which there is deep silence on this matter. To the year 470. Furthermore, there are pious Doctors, and among others Salianus, who do not even consider this probable, because of Abraham's brief stay in Egypt; and they deem that it may therefore be more plausibly said of Joseph, his great-grandson. Gen. 11. And it is indeed read that Abraham departed from Ur of the Chaldeans; but it is not on that account read that he either received the science of the stars from the Chaldeans or transferred it from them to the Egyptians. Regarding Joseph, his great-grandson, it is indeed read that he favored the Priests, when, pledging the entire land of Egypt to the King on the occasion of that dire and lasting famine, he excepted the land of the Priests, to whom also, the Scripture says, Gen. 47. food rations were provided from the public granaries; 1. Polit. 10. 1. Metaph. 1. but since it is confirmed from this, as Aristotle holds, that among the Egyptians—whom he desired to be the most ancient of peoples for other reasons—the Priests were allowed to have leisure, and this had been their opportunity for establishing Mathematics; Joseph is nevertheless read neither to have taught them more, nor to have learned Mathematics from them less. Perhaps also that favor with which he treated the Priests was not only a token of that veneration in which they were held by the King and the people, but also of the gratitude he felt toward them because he himself, a shepherd boy ignorant of the disciplines, having come to them and becoming powerful in the Court, had been taught something by them. Indeed, afterwards, the divine Moses, brought into the same royal Court, is remembered not so much to have taught anyone as to have been himself learned in all the Wisdom Acts 7. of the Egyptians. Meanwhile, however, since this Wisdom