As to our statement that the present _Old Testament_ does not contain the original Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that:
(1) The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and _their_ “Law of Moses.” They will have neither the _Psalms_ of David, nor the Prophets, nor the _Talmud_ and _Mishna_: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in quite a different edition.(324) The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say.
(2) The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India—who know nothing of the Babylonian Captivity or of the _ten_ “lost tribes” (the latter a pure invention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India before the year 600 B.C.—have their Books of Moses which they will show to no one. And these Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls. Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi‐Chaldaic and semi‐Palmyrean) but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them—letters entirely unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.
(3) The Karaim Jews of the Crimea—who call themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel, _i.e._, of the Sadducees—reject the _Torah_ and the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the _Psalms_—nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law.
This makes it plain that the _Kabalah_ of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real _Kabalah_ is found only in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ now in the possession of some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Âryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to a Sage of its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, and had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus it was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilated them.
Âdi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, _i.e._, the first speaking races, in each of the seven zones—hence probably “Ad‐am.” And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught the divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabæans (according to a tradition preserved in the Sufi works) say that when the “Third First Man” left the country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree(325) was given to him, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history of all the races; the “Third First Man” meant one who belonged to the Third Root‐Race, and yet the Sabæans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper Egypt, and the Mohammedans generally, have recorded a tradition that the Angel Azaz‐el brings a message from the Wisdom‐Word of God to Adam whenever he is reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to every Seli‐Allah (“the chosen one of God”) for his wise men. The story narrated by the Kabalists—namely, that the book given to Adam before his Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, were, or were to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam’s Fall, but again restored to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; that this book was delivered by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and the latter to Abraham, and so on in succession to the most wise of every generation—relates to all nations, and not to the Jews alone. For Berosus narrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book, writing it at the command of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara(326) or Sippara, the City of the Sun, in Ba‐bel‐on‐ya, and was dug up long afterwards and deposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Ælian (in _Nimrod_) speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the beginnings brought to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their religion. The _Sam‐Sam_ of the Sabæans is also a _Kabalah_, as is the Arabic _Zem‐Zem_ (_Well of Wisdom_).(327)