In the Lausiac History of Palladius are these words (ch. 106): “In the caves of the Amorites which are in Jericho, which they had once constructed [when] fleeing Jesus [Joshua] son of Nun, who was then laying waste the foreigners, etc.” But [that] some fled into other regions, authors by no means to be despised attest. And concerning Libya, thus Evagrius (bk. 4, Ecclesiastical History, ch. 18): “Procopius narrates a matter which, down to his own age, remained by no means altered in the records — [a matter] very memorable, however, and almost surpassing all wonder. For thus he writes: [that] the Maurusii [Moors], a nation of Libya, having been cast out of Palestine, migrated into Libya; and [that] these [are] the Gergesites, Jebusites, and the rest of the nations which the sacred oracles record [as] stormed by Joshua the son of Nun. And [that] the matter is so, he takes the argument from an epigram which, written in Phoenician letters, he says he read; and [that] that [epigram] is near a spring, in which place there stand two columns made of white stone, on which are incised these words: WE ARE THEY WHO HAVE FLED FROM THE FACE OF JOSHUA THE ROBBER, THE SON OF NAVE [Nun].” But let us hear the first witness and source [of this] himself — Procopius (bk. 4, On the Vandal War): “After,” he says, “the Hebrews had returned from Egypt, and had settled in Palestine, Moses, a wise man, who led them on the journey, dies. To whom Jesus [Joshua] son of Nave [Nun] succeeded, who both led the people into Palestine, and — showing valor far above the nature of man — took possession of the region. Whence, overthrowing the nations, he easily gained many cities, and seemed invincible to all. At that time, therefore, the whole maritime region from Sidon unto the borders of Egypt was called Phoenicia; over which one [king] had long ruled, as all attest who have written the ancient history of the Phoenicians. Here dwelt numerous peoples — the Gergesites, Jebusites, and others having [various] names, recorded in the Hebrew volumes; who, when they beheld the invincible army of the newcomers, deserting their ancestral borders, migrated into the neighborhood of Egypt, and there, growing in number and offspring — when they had not found a place commodious enough for so great a multitude — penetrated into Africa, where, dwelling in very many cities, they held all that tract as far as the Pillars of Hercules, using a half-Phoenician tongue and dialect. And they built the town Tingis [Tangier], most fortified by [its] situation, in Numidia, where [there are] two columns of white stone set up near a great spring, on which are incised, in the Phoenician tongue, letters of this kind: ‘We are they who flee from the face of Jesus [Joshua] the robber, son of Nave.’ These, finally — because none among them are more ancient than they — are said to be the natives of Africa; for which reason a former King of theirs, Antaeus, who wrestled with Hercules in the Palaestra, was called ‘son of the earth.’” But the same Procopius adds how afterward the Phoenician Dido came into that same Libya, from those same regions, and founded Carthage. And all these [things] are strongly confirmed from St. Augustine (in the Exposition of the [unfinished] Epistle to the Romans), and other authors, whom I cited (q. 25) above (ch. 2), where I also showed the affinity of the Hebrew and Punic tongues. Concerning Germany, moreover, Genebrardus (in the Chronology) is indeed a witness — but [one] to whom a foster-son a little more genuinely German would unwillingly lend an ear, because he seems to relate it with some contempt of the nation. There is, then, from among the Jewish Rabbis, Abenezra [Ibn Ezra], and others more ancient than he, concerning whom [it is] thus, on the word “Ascenaz [Ashkenaz],” [in] the German Elias’s book Thisbi: “On that verse which (Obadiah 1) is ‘the Canaanites, as far as Tsarphath [Zarephath],’ Rabbi Ibn Ezra wrote [that] he had heard from the mouth of great [men] (Rabbis, namely, or [great] men) [that] the land of Alemania or Germany is [inhabited by] those Canaanites who fled from the face of the children of Israel.” And this could [be proved] likewise from the tongue
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and dialect. For the old Germanic [tongue] agrees, in very many [things], with the Hebrew — and especially with the Chaldee. Two [things], however, are to be noted here. One: [that] the Germans are Gomerians, from Japheth, not from Ham [Cham] — [as] was proved elsewhere (on Gen., ch. 10); so that only to the ancient Gomerians, in the empty and uncultivated lands of Gomerania [Germany], could perhaps some of those Canaanites have come. The other: [that] it seems to be outside the phrase and sense of Scripture to take “Tsarphath” for Gaul [France], [and] “Sepharad” for Iberia or Spain — as Scaliger says (bk. 7, On the Emendation of Times, at the end of the Jewish reckoning); but Ribera proves [it] (on ch. 1 of Obadiah, n. 103 and following), and more others [prove it], whom the later Rabbi lately cited (at scruple 4).
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