Excerpt from Scripture Manners and Customs: Being an Account of the Domestic Habits, Arts, Etc., Of Eastern Nations, Mentioned in Holy Scripture, Illustrated by Extracts From the Works of Travellers It must not, however, escape our observation that the state of society described in the very earliest ages of the Bible history did not admit of such advances as have taken place in our own country. Abraham lived in a simple, but by no means a barbarous age: his manners were extremely courteous: he was provided not only with the necessaries, but even the elegancies of life: jewels and personal ornaments were suffi ciently common: the art of writing was probably understood; and frequent and safe communication was carried on with the great seats of civilization and commerce, viz.: Mesopotamia in the east, and Egypt in the south-west. If, therefore, we find a considerable degree of resemblance in ancient and modern times, it does not follow that in the latter, society is so far behind what it should be, but rather that in the former it had already attained a high state of advancement. The fact, however, seems to be that in the latter, society' has actually retrograded in consequence of the desolat ing wars and the insecure state of property, which have so long prevailed in those parts, and that, as far as real civilization is concerned, Palestine is in a less favoured condition than at the time that Abraham entered it from Haran. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.