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Do any, for instance, doubt that there was, from the beginning, a law against murder, the
breaking of which Cain was punished? Or against adultery, in keepingwith which Judah
said of Tamar, "Bring her forth and let her be burnt"? (Genesis 38:24). Similarly, it is
possible that tithe-paying may have been among the "commandments and the statutes and
the laws" of YEHOVAH which Abraham is praised for keeping, but which have not
come down to us in writing, (Genesis 26:5).

Or, again, if it be urged that tithes are not even mentioned until the days of Abram
and so were till then unknown, it is easy to point to persons and things which we feel sure
must have existed long before they are mentioned in the order of events recorded in
Genesis.

Melchizedek, for instance, is the first man in the Bible called a priest. Amraphel
of Shinar is the first man called a king, (Genesis 14:1), and Abram the first called a
prophet. But when these three lived, men had been on the earth for a great many years;
and are we to suppose that mankind had lived century after century without priests, kings,
and prophets?

Again, Noah is the first who is expressly called a "righteous man" and Abram is
the first who is said to have "believed in God," yet we know that before these, Abel and
Enoch were both righteous, and also believed in YEHOVAH God. Once more: the
human race had been on the earth, according to the received chronology, about a
thousand years before we read of musical instruments, (Genesis 4:21), and it was a
thousand years later still when Abraham weighed shekels of silver as payment. But he
would be a bold man who would affirm that before these dates, respectively, mankind
possessed neither music nor money.

The mere omission, therefore, of the definite mention of a law concerning tithe-
giving -- in the less than a dozen chapters given to us in Genesis concerning the early
history of the world -- is no proof or presumption whatever that such a law did not exist.

As another objection to our hypothesis, it has been suggested that the pagan
nations of antiquity may have learned the practice of tithe-paying from the Jews. But can
this suggestion be supported by one tittle of evidence? Can a single passage be adduced
from any Greek or Roman classic to confirm such an idea? Is there the remotest reason to
suppose that the Greeks before the Trojan war, or the Romans in the days of Romulus,
knew anything about the Jews? Or, even if they did, that they thought of them otherwise
than with contempt?

Nor does the suggestion much help us that the Phoenicians of Tyre might have
learned tithe-giving from Abram before they colonized Carthage, because it has been all
but demonstrated that tithes were paid in Babylonia before Abram was born. So for the
origin of the practice we are sent further back, seemingly, than 2000 B.C.

In face of the overwhelming probability that a tenth was the proportion of
increase originally required by YEHOVAH God from man, I, for one, prefer to believe