h., \ '^ .; r 'i..-^'^ j**-^ 4'^- J.tjj^ J«^ -5-*-^^ Oii >•! ? J*^ 1- < 'i,".-*." ^f *(* ?¦.<• YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL Xibratig of Iblstortc XTbeoIoGig EDITED BY THE REV. WM. C. PIERCY, M.A. DEAN AND CUAFLAIH OP WHIT££ANDS COLLEGB ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS THE OLD TESTAMENT WRITTEN IN HEBREW? EDOUARD NAVILLE, D.C.L., tL.D., F.S.A. LIBRARY OF HISTORIC THEOLOGY Edited by the Rev. Wm. C. PIERCY, M.A. Each Volume, Demy 8vo, Cloth, Red Burnished Top, ss, net, VOLUMES NOW READY. THE PRESENT RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. By the Rev. Professor T. G, Bonhey, D.So, ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Professor Edouard Naville, D.CL. MARRIAGE IN CHURCH AND STATE. By the Rev, T. A. Lacey, M.A. (Warden of the Londoa Diocesan Penitentiaiy), THE BUILDING UP OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, By the Rev. Caaoa R. B, Gikdsestohb, M.A, CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER FAITHS. An Essay in Comparatlva Religion. By the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.D, THE CHURCHES IN BRITAIN. Vols. I, and //, By the Rev. A&fred Pbumher, D.D, (formerly Master of University College, Durham). CHARACTER AND RELIGION. By the Rev. the Hoh. Edward LvxzEfiioif, M.A, (Head Master of Eton CoUege), MISSIONARY METHODS, ST, PAUL'S OR OURS T By the Rev. Roland Allen, M,A, (Author of "Missionary Principles"), THE RULE OF FAITH AND HOPE. By the Rev. R. L. Ottley, D.D, (Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology ia the University of Oxford). THE RULE OF LIFE AND LOVE. By the Rev. R. L. Ottley, D.D. THE CREEDS l THEIR HISTORY, NATURE AND USE, By the Rev, Harold Smith, M.A. (Lecturer at the London College of Divinity), THE CHRISTOLOGY OF ST. PAUL (Hulseaa PriM Essay), By the Rev. S. Nowell Rostron, M.A, (Late Principal of St, John's Hall, Durham),' MYSTICISM IN CHRISTIANITY, By the Rev. W, K, Fleming, M.A., B.D. RELIGION IN AN AGE OF DOUBT. By the Rev. C. J. Shebbeare, M.A. The following works are in Preparation : — RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 1 ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. By the Rev. Prebeadary B. Reynolds. THE CATHOLIC CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH. By the Rev. W. J. Sparrow Simpsoh, D.D. COMMON OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. By the Rev. C L. Drawbridge, M.A. THE CHURCH OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE. By the Rev. C R. Davey Biggs, D.D. THE NATURE OF FAITH AND THE CONDITIONS OF ITS PROSPERITY. By the Rev. P. N. Waggett, M.A. THE ETHICS OF TEMPTATION. By the Ven, E. E, Holmes, M.A. AUTHORITY AND FREETHOUGHt IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By the Rev. F, W. Bdssebs, D.D, EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. By the Rev, Wm, C. Piercy, M.A. GOD AND MAN, ONE CHRIST. By the Rev. Charles E. Raves, MA, GREEK THOUGHT AND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, By the Rev. J. K. Mozirav, M,A, THE GREAT SCHISM BETWEEN THE EAST AND WEST. By the Rev, F, J. Foakes-Jacksoh, D.D. THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL IN OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By the Rev, A. Troelstra, D,D, Full particulars of this Library may be obtained from the Publisher. LONDON: ROBERT SGOTT. ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS THE OLD TESTAMENT WRITTEN IN HEBREW! BY EDOUARD NAVILLE D.C.L., LL.D., F.S.A FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, PROFESSOR OF EGYPTOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT ROXBURGHE HOUSE PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. MCMXIII EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE IN no branch of human knowledge has there been a more hvely increase of the spirit of research during the past few years than in the study of Theology, Many points of doctrine have been passing afresh through the crucible ; " re-statement " is a popular cry and, in some directions, a real requirement of the age ; the additions to our actual materials, both as regards ancient manuscripts and archaeological discoveries, have never before been so great as in recent years ; linguistic knowledge has advanced with the fuller possibiHties provided by tha constant addition of more data for comparative study; cuneiform inscriptions have been deciphered, and forgotten peoples, records, and even tongues, revealed anew as the outcome of diligent, skilful and devoted study. Scholars have specialized to so great an extent that many con clusions are less speculative than they were, while many more aids are thus available for arriving at a general judgment ; and, in some directions at least, the time for drawing such general conclusions, and so making practical use of such specialized research, seems to have come, or to be close at hand. Many people, therefore, including the large mass of the parochial clergy and students, desire to have in an accessible form a review of the results of this flood of new light on many topics that are of living and vital interest to the Faith ; and, at the same time, " practical " questions — ^by which is really denoted merely the application of faith to Ufe and to the needs of the day — ^have certainly lost none of their interest, but rather loom larger than ever if the Church is adequately to fulfil her Mission. It thus seems an appropriate time for the issue of a new series of theological works, which shaU aim at presenting a general survey of the' present position of thought and knowledge in various branches of the wide field which is included in the study of divinity. V vi EDITOR'S GENERAL PREFACE The Library of Historic Theology is designed to supply such a series, written by men of known reputation as thinkers and scholars, teachers and divines, who are, one and all, firm upholders of the Faith. It will not deal merely with doctrinal subjects, though pro minence wUl be given to these ; but great importance wiU be attached also to history — the sure foundation of all progressive knowledge — and even the more strictly doctrinal subjects will be largely dealt with from this point of view, a point of view the value of which in regard to the " practical " subjects is too obvious to need empha-sis. It would be clearly outside the scope of this series to deal with individual books of the Bible or of later Christian writings, with the Uves of individuals, or with merely minor (and often highly controversial) points of Church governance, except in so far as these come into the general review of the situation. This de tailed study, invaluable as it is, is already abundant in many series of commentaries, texts, biographies, dictionaries and mono graphs, and would overload far too heavily such a series as the present. The Editor desires it to be distinctly understood that the various contributors to the series have no responsibility whatso ever for the conclusions or particular views expressed in any volumes other than their own, and that he himself has not felt that it comes within the scope of an editor's work, in a series of this kind, to interfere with the personal views of the writers. He must, therefore, leave to them their fuU responsibility for their own conclusions. Shades of opinion and differences of judgment must exist, if thought is not to be at a standstill — petrified into an unpro ductive fossil ; but while neither the Editor nor aJl their readers can be expected to agree with every point of view in the details of the discussions in all these volumes, he is convinced that the great principles which lie behind every volume are such as must conduce to the strengthening of the Faith and to the glory of God. That this may be so is the one desire of Editor and contributors ahke. W. C. P. London. AUTHOR'S PREFACE THE title of this book: Archaeology of the Old Testa ment, does not agree exactly at first sight with its contents, which turn entirely on the question of lan guage, and in which I have attempted to show that the books of the Old Testament, as we know them, in their present Hebrew form, are not in the original language written by their authors. This question, which seems purely literary, is, however, archaeological in its origin. It has been raised by excava tions in Egypt. It arose when first the fellaheen unearthed the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and afterwards when the pick and spade of scientific explorers brought to light the Aramaic papyri of Elephantine. When the bearing of these two thoroughly unexpected finds is considered on all sides and when the circumstances in which these documents originated, the political, social and religious conditions which they presuppose are studied without any bias, one cannot help being led to question the assumption which has been long undisputed and held as unassailable, that these books of the Old Testament are in the language used by their authors when they wrote them down, and that they went through one change only, that of the script. For square Hebrew j does not go further back than the time of the Christian i era, when it took the place of the old Hebrew or Canaanite alphabet. Such is the foundation on which rest all the vii viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE present systems which profess to explain the composition of the Old Testament, especially the constructions of the critics, their minute analysis of the text, and the conclusions they have derived from that analysis. In regard to this, I put forward the following facts which can hardly be disputed. Before Moses, and after his time, Babylonian cuneiform was used in Palestine for official documents, contracts, and anything connected ' with law. The popular form of Babylonian and Assjnian cuneiform, their book form, was Aramaic as we know from the so-called bilingual tablets, and from the Aramaic version or papyrus of the inscription of Behistun. The Jews settled in Egypt wrote and spoke Aramaic, which was not the language of the country. The script peculiar to the Hebrew or Jewish language, the square Hebrew, is derived not from the Canaanite, but from the Aramaic alphabet. These facts, the historical value of which n^ay be recognized without being a Semitic scholar, do not seem to have been grasped by the critics in their fuUness. Philological criticism is here out of place. History is the point of view from which these discoveries have to be studied ; and looking at them in that light, I have been drawn to conclusions very different from the theories now in vogue. Some of these conclusions have only dawned upon my mind by degrees, from a careful study of the Aramaic papyri. During the last ten years the historical methods have gone through a peiriod of change. Anthropology and biology claim to be heard. For an explanation of the past, we now look, more than was done before, at the present condition of mankind. This principle I have endeavoured to foUow, and the reader wiU find that in several cases I have taken examples from the AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix present day which seemed to strengthen the argument. Our notion of language is also different from that of the old linguistic school. Language is no more pre eminently a written text. It is the speech of living men, which may vary according to time and locahties. Social circumstances may have induced men to invent an alphabet, to adopt a written language. But this progress towards unity is more or less conventional ; it is not limited by poUtical boundaries. It may extend in religious, literary or legal matters over coimtries where the people speak different dialects. A written language has not of necessity a script of its own which distinguishes it from neighbouring idioms. It may adopt one in common with other languages. Cuneiform is one of the most striking examples of an alphabet used for different tongues. Historical facts viewed in the light of new methods are the foundation of my theory, which in certain respects will be considered as more radical and revolutionary even than Reuss' critical sjretem when it first appeared. Reljdng on that evidence, I can, using the expressions of one of the most conservative critics, the late Dr. Briggs, " have the face " to challenge " the Old Testament scholars of the world." On the other hand the readers wUl recognize that the new line I have taken has brought me back to the old traditional view about the authorship of several books of Scripture. I hope that such chapters as that on Egypt will show thatjt is not through emy " dogmatic environment " but from a sincere conviction based on facts, that I joined the "contemptible minority " .which still believes in the Mosaic autiiorship of the Pentateuch and that I have ranked mjreelf among the so-called " anti-critics " in spite of the distinguished divine's prophecy, "The signs of the times indicate that x AUTHOR'S PREFACE in a few years they will disappear as completely as the slave-holders." This book consists of two parts, each of them dealing chiefly with the results of one of the two great discoveries. Since it is intended for the public, and not for scholars only, I have not gone into long discussions. Philological questions being left aside, by the nature of the argument, it was not necessary to mention the names of the critics, except occasionally. For instance, in the chapter on Genesis I quote Kautzsch and Socin, not because their views are not held by others, but because on their analysis of that work rests the coloured or " rainbow " Genesis which is well known. The quotations of the Biblical text are always from the Revised Version, the translation generally used by scholars. I cannot close without expressing to the Rev. Wm. C. Piercy my deep thankfulness for the invaluable help he gave me in improving my English style. StiQ, I must beg the British and American readers who will do me the honour to peruse these pages, to be indulgent as regards the form, and not to mind here and there expressions which may sound too much hke French, the native language of the present writer. Whatever may be the judgment of the critics, I shall feel myself very fortunate if my conclusion that the words of the Old Testament, like those of our Lord, have come to us in a form which is not their original garb, and that the oldest of them are the work of the author whose name they bear, may attract the attention of those who have a sincere reverence for the Holy Writ, and may induce them to look more closely into systems which are now generally presented by their authors and supporters as being above discussion. EDOUARD NAVILLE. CONTENTS PART I THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT BEFORE SOLOMON PAGE CHAPTER I THE LANGUAGE 3 Babylonian Cuneiform. ..... 3 The old Hebrew Alphabet ..... 25 CHAPTER II GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT . 30 The First Four Tablets ..... 30 The Garden of Eden and the Land of Egypt . 36 Ham and Canaan 43 Abraham 51 Abraham, Isaac and Abimelech .... 57 CHAPTER III EGYPT 66 The " Days " of Creation 66 Joseph 70 xi xu CONTENTS CHAPTER IV THE JOURNEY TO CANAAN The Exodus . The Tabernacle . DeuteronomyThe Archives PAGE 89 89 "5 127130 PART II THE LATER BOOKS. CHAPTER V THE PAPYRI FROM ELEPHANTINfe ' . . .139 The Colony at ELEPHANTiNt . . . . i39 The Temple 145 The Language , . . . . . .163 CHAPTER VI ARAMAIC 175 Ezra 175 The Prophets . . . . . . .189 CHAPTER VII THE PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT . 196 CONCLUSIONS 202 PART I The Books of the Old Testament before Solomon ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Was the Old Testament written in Hebrew .? CHAPTER I THE LANGUAGE Babylonian Cuneiform IN what language were the earliest books of the Old Testament originally written ? I mean the Penta teuch, and the books prior to Solomon's time. This question wiU certainly startle a great number of my readers. Up to the present, it has always been admitted, and considered as above discussion, that they had been written in Hebrew, and that the texts which we have were original, and not translations, not even adaptations from another idiom. Still, various circumstances might have brought doubt to the minds of those who have made a closer study of these texts, especiaUy to the higher critics who rely nearly exclusively on philological arguments. It is an absolutely certain fact that these books have not been written in the square Hebrew of our Bible. This script, which is a modified form not of the old Hebrew or Phoenician alphabet, but of the Aramaic, did not assume the appearance under which we know it, before the time of the Christian era. Even then it was written without vowels. The vowel points added to it by the 3 4 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Massora do not go further back than the fifth century, and the system was not completed till about the eleventh. We learn from Josephus that the manuscripts brought to Ptolemy Philadelphus were written in characters very like the Syrian, or as we should say the Aramaic, and the rabbis tell us that Ezra brought from Babylon the Assyrian writing, ashurit, which was not the square Hebrew, but the Aramaic, such as we know it from the papyri found at Elephantine. But before the Aramaic, the alphabet commonly in use must have been the Canaanite or Phoenician, known to us by the inscriptions coming from Phoenicia proper and Carthage, and outside of these regions by a small number of engraved texts, the most important of which are the stele of Mesha, the king of Moab, and the inscription of Siloah of the time of Hezekiah, and also by the newly discovered ostraca from Samaria. Was this alphabet ever used for books ? Have the earhest documents of the Old Testament been written with those characters ? This very grave question has been raised quite lately, and discoveries such as the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna compel us to face it and to take it into serious consideration. Looking at it in the light of the different finds of the last thirty years, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the oldest documents of Hebrew hterature have been written neither in the Hebrew language, nor with the Hebrew script, but in the idiom and with the characters of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, namely Babylonian cuneiform. In studymg the beginnings of a hterature like that of the Hebrews, we must bear in mind an important fact too often overlooked, and which we may observe every where in our time in spite of our schools. There is a considerable difference between the speech of the people THE LANGUAGE 5 and their written language. When we consider nations of the remote past, owing to our own education we can not sufficiently divest ourselves of the idea that there is an abstract thing called " the tongue " which is subject to strict rules set down by scholars. Every man is imbued with these rules from his childhood, and their domain is limited by definite geographical boundaries. This view, which still prevails largely in philology, is purely theoretical and is opposed to the facts observed by anthropology. Spoken language existed long before it was put down in writing. In many parts of the world, there are still primitive tribes or nations for whom language is only speech, and who know no writing. They do not feel the want of it. In their commercial intercourse, when they barter or exchange, they do not employ any written document. In any transaction which is binding for the future, they would call for witnesses ; and their laws are mere customs transmitted from father to son, without much change, and these sometimes persist through ages. Writing, or rather written language, is a convention, the result of social progress, and it supposes a more advanced degree of civihzation. But written language does not supersede the original speech, it does not mean its abolition, not even its change, except in highly civUized modern nations with compulsory education. Both may have a parallel existence and their own special domain. Especially if we consider the religious books, the difference is particularly striking. Take for instance the Bible; even in Protestant countries where it has been translated into the native tongue, the people do not use the language of the Bible. The labourer in the field does not speak as does his clergyman in the pulpit, and a certain respect for Holy Writ may even prevent him from using 6 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT sentences or words taken from its contents. Supposing we wished to ascertain the language of a peasant from one of the rural counties, we should not turn for that to the Authorized Version, The reverse is equally true. This difference exists not only for rehgious books, but also for laws which are transmitted in the same form and in the same words during many generations ; and generaUy speaking for aU legal documents, as weU as for records of what has taken place in the past. They are composed in a language more or less conventional, although here and there, in official writings, in contracts or anything connected with law, local expressions may appear borrowed from what is spoken by the people. It would be easy to quote many instances of these facts, taken from languages of the present day, though schools and education greatly contribute to unify the language of a country and to wipe away the variety of dialects such as that existing even in a smaU land like Switzer land. The origin' of these dialects certainly goes back earHer than the first attempts at literary language. But let us revert to the old Hebrews, to the contem poraries of Abraham, to Moses or to the early prophets like Samuel. There is absolutely no proof that in that remote time there existed already a written literature ; I mean a written Hebrew such as that which we find in the Bible. That does not mean that there was no hterature of the people, no unwritten compositions such as we find in nearly aU nations. Take the primitive men who do not know what writing is, or those who practically have no writing, the Uhterate populations of some remote parts of Europe, the peasants of the Middle Ages, or the people who tiU recently hved chiefly on war and brigandage ; they have their literature, their songs, their myths and THE LANGUAGE 7 often very fine poetry. The authors of these songs or of these poems are often unknown ; they were not men trained in the schools. They have not composed their songs pen in hand in a language approved by literary authorities and called by them classical. Their poetry has been dictated to them by the inspiration of the hour, and it has been transmitted oraUy from generation to generation perhaps long before it was put down in writing, or before some lover of folklore gathered it for fear it might be forgotten. We might quote a great number of national songs the origin of which is not known ; they nearly always are in the common and usual language of the people, and they are quite independent of the written literature which may exist at the same time and among the same people. This unwritten literature may increase and progress even where there is a considerable written literature which rules in its own field. A striking instance may be quoted from the history of the city of Geneva. In the night of the 12th of December, 1602, the city was miracu lously saved from a treacherous attack by the Duke of Savoy. This event is called in the popular language " r Escalade." The following morning the population flocked to the cathedral and sang Psalm cxxiv. But this was not the popular Te Deum. There arose a long hjmin, from beginning to end in the popular dialect. The first words would be translated': "He Who is above." As the original does not belong to the written language, there is no orthography for these words and they may be spelt in various ways. The learned who follow the rules of historic grammar wiU write : ce que I' en Haut ; but this is not the usual speUing, which is either ce qu'e I'aino, or ce qu'e laino. In a popular song like this, people do not apply the rules of the schoolmaster, they write 8 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT what they hear and what they speak ; for them words are sounds, and they are guided by the ear. This hymn arose in a city where a few years before Calvin had published his works, which are considered as the standard prose of the time, where he had preached his sermons, where his successor, Theodore Beza, was stUl teaching, and where there was a considerable litera ture in the French of the time. This was understood by the people, but it was very different from the every-day speech, and from the popular hymn. It was their re ligious language'and also the official one, used for purposes of law and in the councils of the government. Let us suppose the case of a philologist two thousand years hence, arguing that the written language of Geneva cannot be the same French as that which was used in France, but that there must be a speciaUy Genevese Written literature in the Genevese language which became literary when the hymn of 1602 was written. This learned man would reason in a way very similar to that of some Hebrew scholars who consider it to be certain that there existed in early times a Hebrew written literature, and who rely for their conclusion upon the following fact. I shall quote only one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars. Professor Koenig tells us that a literary Hebrew language must have existed at least at the time when the song of Deborah originated, which according to the judgment of the most acute critics goes back as far as the time of the Judges. In my opinion the song of Deborah does not prove anything as to the existence of a written Hebrew language. Deborah is a prophetess, she is one of those heroines, of whom we know several in history, who arise in critical times. Her nation is crushed down by Jabin the king of the Canaanites. She caUs on THE LANGUAGE q Barak and commands him to gather the Israehtes and to march against the oppressor. Barak refuses to do so, unless Deborah goes with him. They smite the enemy, and when Barak pursues him, Jael shows him Sisera whom she has slain. Hearing of this great deliverance, Deborah does not sit down to write a poem (Judges v.). She breaks forth into a paean of praise and joy. She sings : " Awake, awake. Deborah, utter a song," She is carried away by her feelings, and such a mighty exultation can only be ex pressed in language spontaneous and familiar to her, such as she, as weU as the triumphant Israelites, speak every day. She does not consult the books which may exist at the time, she does not shape her sentences in accordance with the words of the law, of which she was probably absolutely ignorant; she sings. Her hymn may after wards have become a national song, a song of victory which one generation transmitted to the following, until it was written down by the author who compiled the book of Judges ; but certainly it is quite independent of any written literature, and it does not give the shghtest indication as to the existence of books written in the same language. Unless it has been modified in later time, it shows what the Israelites spoke in her time, but nothing more. We might be tempted to consider Deborah's song as a piece of a written literature, if the discoveries of the last twenty years had not revealed to us the great use made in Palestine of Babylonian cunei form. It certainly was an archaeological event of first impor tance when the fellaheen of Tel-el-Amarna in Middle Egypt came upon the hoard of cuneiform tablets, an impor tant and valuable part of the archives of Amenophis IV. It is hardly necessary to describe anew this correspondence. 10 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT It first revealed the absolutely unknown and startling fact that Babylonian Cuneiform was the usual written language in Palestine at the time of the Eighteenth Djmasty. It is quite natural, and what might have been anticipated, that kings of Mesopotamia like Bumaburiash should use that language and writing, which evidently were their own. But it was all the more surprising and unexpected from governors of the Palestinian cities who had to write to their sovereign and report to him what was going on in the region they governed. Why did Abd-hiba of Jerusalem, Abi-milki of T-yre and aU the prefects of Zidon, Megiddo, Ashkelon, Gaza, write in Baby lonian unless it was their own written language. For the king of Egypt did not understand it ; he was obliged to resort to the help of a targumanu, a dragoman. Letters of that kind must be in the language either of the ruler or of the subject. Since it was not that of the Pharaoh, it could only be that of the Canaanite governors. The scholars who have studied that correspondence are unanimous in saying that it is Babylonian or Assyrian with a clear Canaanite trace. One of them who has made a special study of those texts with that point of view. Dr. Boehl, says that the Assyrian of these letters is only a thin veil which hides the native language of the writers. This fact seems to me the best proof that these letters show the written language of the country. They are permeated with words and forms belonging to the spoken language. This might have been expected. Take a language hke French, which extends over various countries and over a wide area. Two letters, written one at Bordeaux and the other at Brussels, will not be in a language exactly simUar. Especially if the writers are not very cultivated, their letters wiU deviate from the typical and conventional prose which is caUed French and THE LANGUAGE ii contain local words, perhaps also local forms. Two legal documents will perhaps differ still more, since they wiU be obliged to make a greater use of words to which the people are accustomed. It seems to have been exactly the same with Assyrian or Babylonian. A writer in Babylon would not forget his own dialect, nor would the governor of Ashkelon, The script is the same for both, and so is the language in its general appearance ; neverthe less it bears traces of what is spoken in the native country of each of them. The correspondence of Tel-el-Amarna, which is later than the first settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan but older than the conquest of Canaan, is not all that we have of cuneiform documents from Palestine. A rich harvest of tablets was gathered at Boghaz Keui, the capital of the Hittites. In that place was discovered the cuneiform copy of the treaty between Rameses II and the king of the Hittites, Hattusil. From Palestine itself originated a series of letters and edicts written both in Assyrian and Hittite concerning the Amurru, the Amorites, a Palestinian nation. In Palestine, at Gezer, two contracts have been dis covered. According to Professor Macalister more might have been found had the excavations on that spot not been stopped by a native cemetery. These contracts are about the sale of property. They are legal documents having a local origin, and in language which must have been the legal language of the city. They are in cunei form Assyrian ; one very fragmentary letter is said to be in cuneiform Babylonian. These contracts are of the years 650 and 647 B.C., showing that even at that late time cuneiform writing was still in use. At Taanach also eight tablets or fragments have been discovered. I cannot do better than quote the words of 12 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT the excavator. Dr. SeUin. After having said that from 1500 to 1350 Babylonian writing was the only one used at the courts of the princes of Palestine, the learned author adds : " Even supposing that this writing was used only by the rulers and their officials, and that the people could not read or write, this fact is certain : in the already exten sive excavations carried on in Palestine, no document was ever found except in Babylonian writing. As for the Phoenician old Hebrew writing ... it cannot be asserted with certainty that it existed before the ninth century," ^ Thus, from the time preceding the conquest of Canaan down to the seventh century, we find in Palestine cunei form documents in the Assyrian or Babylonian language, which was the literary language as well as that of laws and religion, differing up to a certain point from the speech, or idiom, of the people, as we see that Uterary language does at the present day even in the most civilized countries. It is not necessary to go back to the origin of cuneiform writing, which succeeded a linear script and which took its well-known appearance when the writer saw that he could write much more quickly by pressing his stylus into soft clay. Cuneiform may be called the cursive writing of an old linear script. It entirely superseded the linear since it was copied even on the sculptures of the palaces, Cuneiform writing can be imitated by engraving on stone or metal ; but it cannot be written on anything but wet clay. It cannot be pressed into hard material such as a potsherd, nor can it be written on soft or thin stuff such as papyrus, or even skin. In Mesopotamia where clay was abundant, all kinds of documents could be written on tablets. Not so in Palestine, a mountainous and dry country. Clay tablets ^ Tell Taaittiek Nachlese, p, 35, THE LANGUAGE 13 were used there for documents of importance which had to be preserved, hke the deeds of property found at Gezei", letters which had to travel a long way, edicts and treaties of the Amorites ; but for common use, in a country where clay was not always at hand, it was necessary to have also another method of writing. For a short note or memorandum, for inscribing the number of jars of oU or wine, what corresponded to the scrap of paper which we use in such cases was a potsherd. On potsherd it was not possible to impress cuneiform characters with a stylus ; one could only make a coarse engi^aving or write with pen and ink. Therefore it was necessary to have an alphabet, different from cuneiform, which could be written and not pressed. The Canaanite, or so-called Phoenician, alphabet must have been at first a potsherd writing. If we look at the most ancient specimens, the ostraca found by Mr. Reisner at Samaria, we see that they are notes regarding what may have been the royal ceUar, or its contents in wine and oil. The same excavation has produced also a cuneiform fragment which has not yet been deciphered, but which shows the presence of the two writings at the same time. The Canaanite writing cannot be traced in Palestine before the tirae of Solomon, that is not until there were close relations with the Phoenicians. Whether the Phoe nicians were the inventors of that alphabet or whether it is to be attributed to others is a question which is now very much discussed. No doubt they must have made great use of it in their trade, and must have contributed to diffuse it among their neighbours as far as the Greeks, But at the time of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence the governors of Tyre and Zidon also wrote in cuneiform. Let us now revert to what we read in Genesis : Abram went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, came first unto 14 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Haran, and from there to the land of Canaan, We know the written language of Ur, the present Mukajryar, At first it wasSumerian, and after the Semitic conquest it was the Babylonian, which, later, was called Assyrian, The script was that of the Sumerians taken over by the Semites, the engraved linear being very soon entirely superseded by the pressed cuneiform. It is hardly to be supposed that Abram,^ if he could write while he was in Mesopotamia, did not use Babylonian cuneiform. As for the language which he spoke, we do not know exactly what it was. It certainly belonged to the Semitic famUy, but it probably differed from the book-language, from the style and forms of edicts, laws, or even religious texts, as is the case, even now, with the coUoquial and popular idiom. Semitic scholars teU us that it must have been very like that which was spoken in Canaan. " Whether Abraham adopted the language of the Canaan ites, or brought the Hebrew with him from the East, is unimportant, for the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian are nearer the Hebrew and Phoenician than they are to the other Semitic languages. If these languages, as now presented to us, differ less than the Roman languages, the daughters of the Latin, in their earlier stages, in the time of Abraham, their differences could scarcely have been more than dialectic." We thoroughly agree with Dr. Briggs' view. Between Abraham's idiom and that of Mamre, the Amorite, or Abimelech, the king of Gerar, there was only a difference of dialects ; therefore they understood each other easily. Dialects are generaUy unwritten languages. Here again I may be allowed to take an example from modern times, namely, from the German language. German-speak- ^ In the use of Abram or Abraham, I follow exactly the differing use of the Bible (R.V.) for the different periods of his life. THE LANGUAGE 15 ing nations extend over a vast area in Europe. But what is caUed German, the literary, conventional language, the origin of which may be traced to Luther's translation of the Bible, covers a considerable number of dialects which are not written, which go back to a high antiquity and which are stiU in use in the present day. I need not go very far. In the parts of Switzerland where German is spoken, each canton has its own dialect. What is heard at Berne sounds very differently from what is heard at Zurich. Nevertheless two men from these cantons who are in conversation wiU understand each other without the shghtest difficulty ; they wiU both read the same Bible, which is not in the idiom which they speak ; when they write they wUl also both use the same forms, the same words, and the same speUing. Here the distinction between written and spoken language is as clearly marked as possible. The circumstances must have been analogous in Canaan. The excavations have shown that between 2500 and 2000 B.C. a Semitic invasion conquered the old Canaanite population, and covered the greatest part of the country. The invaders evidently brought not only the idiom they spoke, but also their written lan guage, which was Babylonian cuneiform. The tablets of Tel-el-Amarna and those of Taanach are indisputable proofs that, at the time of the Eighteenth D3masty, Babylonian cuneiform was the written language of the country. At a later date the finds of Boghaz Keui, the correspondence of the Amorites, show that there had been no change in that respect. Even in the seventh century, at Gezer, cuneiform was stiU in use for certain documents, although by that time the Canaanite alphabet had been adopted. The old tradition had remained in force. i6 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Now let us think of the Israelites in Egypt. They evidently took with them the language of Canaan, a tongue foreign to the Egyptians, one which they did not know. We read that Joseph's brethren, " knew not that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them." During the time of the captivity, living by themselves, apart from the Egyptians, they kept their language, as did, later, the Jewish colonists who settled in the country, like those of Elephantine. If they had any writing, we have no proof whatever that they had the Canaanite alphabet, which, if it existed, was not used in Canaan, since the Egyptian captivity is the time of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence. Besides, it is not probable that there were many of them who could write. The Israelites were nomads, shepherds who had preserved in Egypt their former way of living, and for whom the persecution consisted in a forced change of their habits. Instead of living the easy life of shep herds, they were compeUed to be masons under hard taskmasters. In the life of cattle drivers there are not many occasions for writing ; there is hardly any necessity for it. Therefore we must consider that among them, thdfee who could write were only a few exceptional persons. The only one of them who is known as having had what we might caU a hterary education is Moses, who was brought up like the son of Pharaoh's daughter, which means, as Stephen says in his speech, " that he was instructed in aU the wisdom of the Egyptians." With out giving a historical value to the legends which Josephus relates about the youth of Moses, we can admit what is shown by the narrative of Exodus, that he kept up some intercourse with his countrymen, and perhaps that he was used as an intermediate agent between the Egyptians and their Hebrew subjects. Moses could write ; this is THE LANGUAGE 17 constantly mentioned in the history of his hfe. But, certainly, the Semitic writing which he learnt at Phar aoh's court was not the Canaanite, and could only be Babylonian cuneiform. Among the discovered tablets there are answers from the Egyptian king. He must have had at his court men who could write the same lan guage as that of the letters he received. The reports sent to him by the governors of the Palestinian cities were not in Egyptian, they were in the language of those officials ; . and Pharaoh would not have been understood if he had answered in Egyptian hieratic. It was necessary that he should have men who could write the language of Abd-hiba of -Jerusalem, or Gitia of Ashkelon, dragomen like those of the embassies of the present day. If Moses was taught a Semitic writing, which seems natural considering his origin and position, it is obvious that he learnt Babylonian cuneiform, a writing which aUowed him to have intercourse with the Semitic world of his time. The first jsriting of Moses mentioned is the Decalogue, the two tables of the law. The late eminent Semitic scholar, M. PhUippe Berger, had already come to the conclusion that the tables of the law were written in cuneiform, this being thus the sacred writing mentioned in Exodus xxxii. 16 : " and the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables." When Moses had hewn "two tables of stone hke unto the first, he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments." (Exod. xxxiv. 28). Therefore Moses knew what is caUed God's writing. If we turn to Egypt, we see that hieroglyphical script is also caUed the writing of the god himself. The Rosetta stone teaches us that hieroglyphs were called " the writing of divine words," and when we read of " writings of divine c i8 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT words which are the book of Thoth," of an inscription engraved in blue " by the god himself," it clearly means writings in hieroglyphs which Thoth was supposed to have taught to mankind, and the expression is quite analo gous to that of Exodus (xxxi. i8) : tables of stone written with the finger of God. In the case of the tables of the law, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that they were written in Eg5rptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian was not the language of the Israelites ; they probably did not understand it, nor was this script their script, while Babylonian cuneiform extended aU over Western Asia. Besides, if they had written the Ten Commandments in hieroglyphs, which was a picture writing, they would have had in the very text of their law likenesses of " forms in heaven above or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth " which were strictly prohibited by the Second Command ment. The existence of a sacred writing which could only be cuneiform, different from the cursive, lasted as late as the prophet Isaiah, perhaps even later. We read (ch. viu. ver. i) : " And the Lord said unto me : Take thee a great tablet, and write upon it with the pen of a man For Maher-shalal-hashbaz." The word which the Revised Version translates " tablet " is found only in this passage. The LXX have here : " a piece of new and large paper," and the Coptic has " a large piece of a new book " ; the word book being that which in old Egyptian means a roU of papyrus. The French transla tion of M. Philippe Berger is : " prends un grand rou leau." Thus, according to aU these translations, what the prophet is told to take is a piece of soft material, papjnrus or perhaps skin, but neither a wooden nor a stone tablet. THE LANGUAGE 19 The Hebrew words hereth-enosh, " pen of a man," show that there was a distinct instrument for another writing ; and if we inquire with what this " pen of man " is contrasted, we find only the "finger of God" with which the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, were written (Exod. xxxi, 18). This explains the word enosh for man, which is generaUy poetical, and is em ployed " of man " in comparison " with God," especiaUy when the writer wishes to contrast the weakness and in feriority of mankind with the majesty of Godhead. A striking instance of this passage of the eighth Psalm, verse 3 : " When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers . . . What is man {enosh) that Thou art mindful of him. . . ." As there are two writings, the writing of God and that of man, the word for man is naturaUy enosh. The word hereth is translated in the dictionaries by " style," an instrument for engraving on metal, and by metonymy as we say, style. But the LXX and the Coptic use two Greek words which mean a pencU, or sometimes a drawing in outhne. This agrees weU with the sense given by them to the first word : a piece of paper or skin on which they cannot draw anything but cursive writing ; for cuneiform can be sculptured on stone, but otherwise it is a writing produced only by pressure on wet clay ; it is not a drawing. The instru ment used for cuneiform can only form wedges, it cannot make any curved line, it cannot draw. The pressure of the four-sided stylus would leave no trace on paper or skin, nor could it be used with ink. At the same time cuneiform could not be pressed into hard stuff like pot sherds. Therefore, for any material which was not clay, it was necessary to have another alphabet, the Canaanite or the Aramaic alphabet, a writing which could be used with pen and ink or engraved on material like wax, 20 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT wood or potsherds. Undoubtedly this is the writing meant by Isaiah in using the words hereth enosh. What ever be the hteral translation of these two words, their true meaning is that given in the margin of the Revised Version : " common characters," Thus it seems certain that as late as the time of Isaiah there were two writings ; one which was considered as having been originaUy the work of God engraved by His finger, the cuneiform, and one which was called human because it was used in every-day life and not for law or any literary purpose. The old Hebrew potsherds found at Samaria, which are the accounts of the ceUar of the king, show distinctly for what original purpose this alphabet was invented. Can we suppose that this script was used for the word of God or for the sentences of a legislator ? We can hardly think so ; and the fact that Isaiah is speciaUy told to use common characters seems to indicate that he did not employ them when he wrote the word of God. The reason he is told to make this exception is given in verse i6 : " Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among My disciples." This confirms the translation of the LXX. Isaiah is to take a piece of large paper, he is told afterwards to roll it up, to tie it with a piece of string and seal it, as was done for the Egyptian papyri. Cuneiform could not be pressed on any material which had to be roUed, therefore it was necessary that the prophet should use common writing, but the Babylonian cuneiform was still in existence in Isaiah's time. Beside the Decalogue, Moses had to write the laws which God Himself had taught him. He would not use hereth enosh, nor the common characters, admitting even that they were invented in his time which is far from being established. They would never have been caUed the work of God, It is even doubtful whether in Palestine THE LANGUAGE 21 they were adopted by learned people, for, except the stele of Mesha and the inscription of Siloah, there are no Uterary documents in that script, which may never have been used for books. Moses caUed himself an Aramean like aU the Israelites of his time. " An Aramean ready to perish was my father," says the author of Deuteronomy (xxvi. 5.) Even Josephus, the Jewish writer hving under the Roman emperor, has preserved that tradition. When in his history he reaches the point of the arrival of Jacob in Egypt, he interrupts his narrative, as Genesis does, in order to introduce the description of the famUy of the patriarch ; but before beginning the hst he gives the foUow ing curious reason for quoting aU the names : " I thought it necessary to record those names, in order to inform those who do not suspect it that we are Mesopo- tamians and not Egyptians." The ancestor of Moses, Abram, is said to have started from Ur. In his native city he must have heard of the great legislator Hammurabi, " the royal offspring whom Sin has created, who enriched the city of Ur," as he says in the introduction to his famous code of laws. Can we suppose that Abram and his tribe, leaving Mesopo tamia, where the literary language was Babylonian cimeiform, a language which was especiaUy that of such laws as were caUed a divine inspiration, could take to Canaan any other Uterary language and any other writing ? If at that time there had been in Mesopotamia a cursive writing, it would have been Aramaic, and not Canaamte Hebrew. Since, after centuries of bondage in Egypt, the Israelites StiU considered themselves as Arameans, they must have preserved some tradition of the old country. It is quite possible that Moses knew who Hammurabi was, and that 22 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT this king was for him a legislator above aU others. When he had to write laws himself, laws which God had dictated to him, as Marduk was said to have done for the Baby lonian ruler, Moses must naturaUy have been inclined to adopt the language and writing in which the great law giver of his country had proclaimed and written his code. It was the most appropriate language for laws and also for expressing divine words. The more attentively we consider the circumstances in which Moses lived, the nation to which he belonged, and the traditions which he followed, the clearer it appears that he could not have written anything but Babylonian cuneiform. This fact gives to his books a special character and throws a peculiar light on his whole work. We are too apt, in studying old writers of that remote time, to apply to them the cut-and-dried rules of the present day. We have now for every author some special fixed requirements which he has to fulfil. We have classified authors, we speak of an historian, a poet, a novel-writer, and for each one of these there are strict regulations which he cannot put aside. Besides this, a writer, especiaUy a prose writer, has before his eyes a definite plan ; his work has a beginning and an end, and unroUs itself in accordance with a scheme which he has in his mind. There is nothing of this in the case of Moses. He is not a professional writer ; he is a prophet and takes his tablets only when he feels inspired, or, as is often said, when the Lord speaks to him. One day he wiU be a poet, he wiU strike up the hjmin of Miriam after the passage of the Red Sea. In the desert he wiU be the law-giver and, hke Hammurabi, he wiU teach his people the law which he has received from God and write it down in order that it be not forgotten. Another time he wiU feel prompted THE LANGUAGE 23 to record the ways of God towards His people since the beginning of the world. He wiU describe the creation of the earth, of the animals and of man, or he wiU picture Abraham's life. He wiU go into great detaU about Joseph's time, and, for a reason which we can only presume, omit entirely what happened from Joseph's death to his own time. It is very important to remember that Moses does not write in a book, not even in a papyrus roU. He is not obUged to take up his narrative where he left off. Cunei form tablets are independent of each other, each one forms a whole. Nor is it necessary that he should foUow the chronological order ; the tablets relating the history of Joseph may have been written before the description of the creation.^ The introduction of a tablet may sum up or even repeat what is found on another, as we see in the first two tablets of Genesis. There is no plan which binds the author to a certain order of his tablets or to certain proportions. It wiU be the redactor's task to put the tablets in order chronologicaUy, to make a book out of them, hke Genesis, and to hnk them together by transitions. Nevertheless the fact of Moses having written on tablets wiU always appear in the lack of connection which we notice in certain parts of the Penta teuch, especiaUy in Genesis and which has been interpreted by the critics as showing the hands of several authors, the most important of whom are the Elohist, the Jahvist and the writer of the Priestly Code. But the most serious consequence which we derive from the fact that the oldest Hebrew documents were written in Babylonian cimeiform, is that we must recog nize that these books are not original documents as regards language. In their present form, they are trans- * On tablets intended to form a series see p. 183. 24 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT lations or adaptations of documents written in another idiom. This is very much Hke what we have in the case of the New Testament. The rabbinic Hebrew in which we now read the books of Moses is to them what Greek is to the words of our Lord. PhUological criticism, on which rests the reconstruction of the books of the Old Testament, has been exercised upon translations. The texts which the critics continuaUy dissect with their phUological microscope and in which new authors are constantly being discovered are not original. The pic ture shown to us of a kind of mosaic made of stones gathered in various places, the manufacture of which is described to us in the most minute detail, is aU based upon what is but the latest form given to words and writings of the old Hebrew writers which have under gone several transformations. I shaU only mention two : that of Ezra, who is said to have brought from the Captivity the writing called by the rabbis ashurit, the Assyrian, which is the Aramaic of Mesopotamia, and the transforma tion due to the rabbis of the first centuries of the Christian era who adopted the square Hebrew and the vowel points. Ezra made a change of language as well as of writing. Where he transcribed the books in Aramaic characters, it was in order that they might be better understood, because at that time the Aramaic language was becoming more and more the idiom of the country. He not only replaced the alphabet by another, he adapted the text to the language which was then spoken and written. One can hardly call it a translation since it was oiUy a dialectic modification. But that is enough to shake considerably, I even might say to destroy, the confidence in results which the critics have attained mainly through philological and literary analysis of the present text. THE LANGUAGE 25 How many of the books of the Old Testament may have been written in Babylonian cuneiform ? Evidently everything of which Moses was the author or which was written by Joshua, his disciple and successor. In Joshua we know from the proper names, especially those of the cities, that there was an older text which the LXX used for their translation. Frofn Joshua to David's time, during the period of the Judges and the incessant wars of the Israehtes with their neighbours, it is probable that there was not much writing. The PhiUstines against whom the Israelites struggled, and who, according to the latest discoveries, are supposed to have come from Crete, were probably not Semites. It is not likely that they introduced into the country a new alphabet. If any religious book was written at that time, as its author was a prophet or a man instructed in the law, he would naturaUy employ the sacred script and the language of Moses, the Babylonian cuneiform. However, there must have been, at an early date, an alphabet for common use. There is no doubt that there was one at the time of the prophets. We have seen that it is mentioned by Isaiah, and Jeremiah is described as writing with ink in a roU. That is the regular bookwriting of which we do not know with certainty whether it was Aramaic or the Canaanite alphabet. Old examples of Canaanite are the potsherds found at Samaria by Mr. Reisner and which are of the time of Omri, the father of Ahab. This alphabet, the Canaanite, or so-called old Hebrew, is the same as the Phoenician, and we find it after Phoenician influence was strongly established in the country. The Old Hebrew Alphabet Most Semitic scholars admit that the first Canaanite inscriptions axe of the time of David or Solomon. It has 26 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT been argued that this alphabet bears the character of a script which has been long in use, therefore it must go back much further. But we do not know where it was invented, whether in Phoenicia or, as Professor Sayce thinks, among the tribes of Northern Arabia. It may be much older in its native country, and yet be a later importation into Palestine. Admitting that it was known in Palestine before Solomon, it does not foUow that it was used for books and especially for sacred writings. It is even questionable whether old Hebrew or Canaanite was ever chosen for books, particularly in the most ancient times. We have no remains of an3rthing hterary in Phoenician or old Hebrew. The stele of Mesha of Moab can hardly be caUed a literary document. One can fancy a king of Moab having his inscription engraved in the language spoken by his subjects who perhaps had no literature nor script of any kind. What the excavations have revealed to us of literary matters are only two things : the cuneiform tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, Lachish, Gezer, Taanach, and Boghaz Keui, showing that Babylon ian was the written language of Palestine at the time of Moses and later, and the papjni of Elephantine, from which we gather that the Jews who had left their country to settle in Egypt spoke and wrote Aramaic. The introduction of the Phoenician, or old Hebrew, alphabet must be connected with the increase of Phoeni cian influence in Canaan. We do not know when the Phoenician cities first became independent under their own rulers. In the correspondence of Tel-el-Amarna, the letters of Abi-mUki of Tyre and Zimrida of Zidon are the same as the other ones, and are written in the same language. The distinct Phoenician character of these cities does not yet appear. As I said before, the Phoeni cian or Canaanite alphabet seems to have been invented THE LANGUAGE 27 for common use, for writing on any material. An alpha bet of that kind would be particularly useful for a nation of tradesmen like the Phoenicians. Various theories have been put forward as to its origin. We shaU not inquire whether it comes from a tribe in the Arabian desert, or from the North, But it is hardly to be sup posed that it originated among the Hebrews who, especi aUy before Solomon's time, were an agricultural nation, and do not seem to have been much occupied with Uterary, or even industrial, pursuits. The circumstances changed when Solomon came to the throne. His reign seems to have marked an im portant step in the progress of civUization. From the first, he was desirous of building a temple which should be a central point for the kingdom in general, but chiefly for worship according to the prescription of Deuteronomy : " the place which the Lord your God shaU choose out of all your tribes to put His Name there, even unto His habitation" (xii. 5). But he had neither the necessary material for building a temple worthy of being " God's habitation," nor the skUled workmen who could work metal. He was obliged to apply to Hiram, King of Ts^re, with whom he was at peace, and with whom he had made a league. He sent to him saying (i Kings v. 6- 2 Chron, ii. 7-10) : " Now therefore command that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon ; and my servants shaU be with thy servants ; and I wiU give thee hire for thy servants according to aU that thou shalt say ; for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skiU to hew timber like unto the Zidonians." It is the king himself who says that his subjects did not know how to work timber. It was the same with metal (i Kings vii, 13) : " And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. a8 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT He was the son of a widow woman of the tribe of Naph- thali, and his father was a man of T3Te, a worker in brass, and he was filled with wisdom and understanding and cunning to work aU works in brass." Now if we consider the enormous levies of men sent to Lebanon to hew cedar and fir under the direction of Zidonians who instructed them how to do this, is it not natural to sup pose that the Zidonians taught them also their alphabet, that the accounts, probably on potsherds, of the hire for the servants of Hiram which Solomon's officers had to pay were written in Phoenician script ? Industry cannot very weU go on without writing ; and if Solomon had to rely upon the industry of the Phoenicians to such a large extent, surely he may weU have taken over their writing also, and made use of it. The adoption of this new writing probably took place naturally amongst the workmen of the two nations, but if it became general amongst the subjects of Solomon, it must have emanated from the king himself by a decree or edict proclaimed by the highest authority in the kingdom. What gives to this hypothesis a certain degree of probability, is the fact that Solomon is described to us not as a warrior, like his father David, but as a man having hterary tastes. He is said to have been an author : " who spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall ; he spoke also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." Without taking the above passage too literaUy, we may infer that he was more qualified than any of the rulers who reigned at Jerusalem to adopt characters infinitely simpler and easier to handle than the cuneiform. After Solomon, the time when we see Phoenician in fluence most prevalent, was during Ahab's reign. In his father's time the Phoenician script was commonly used THE LANGUAGE 29 at Samaria, as we know from the great number of ostraca found by Mr. Reisner in Omri's palace. I fancy that it was owing to the conquest of Moab by Omri and Ahab that the Canaanite writing extended as far as Dhibon, where Mesha wrote his inscription. Later, Phoenician influence must have been in conflict with Assyrian, and was entirely superseded, especiaUy in Judea, by the Assyrian conquest. The idea that Solomon established in his kingdom the Canaanite writing for common use is an hypothesis which is not yet proved, but it seems to me to agree with the historical circumstances such as we know them from the books and with the character of Solomon, which was totaUy different from that of his father, and from that of the rulers of Israel, whoever they were, judges or kings, who preceded him. We are led again to the con clusion that before Solomon's time all religious books must have been written in Babylonian cuneiform. CHAPTER II GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT THE evidence that has been reviewed in the pre ceding chapter seems to prove that the first books of the Old Testament were written in Babylonian cuneiform, on tablets. We should Uke now to consider further the bearing of this fact on the form of the book of Genesis. We shaU consider chiefly the events which took place before the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt, Literary arguments rather than archaeological wiU often have to be adduced and also information which may be derived from Egyptian writings. But the reader must not expect to find here a complete study of this venerable document. A few points only wiU be chosen, showing the Mosaic authorship and the unity of the book. The First Four Tablets The review of the facts has led us to conclude that the Pentateuch and the earUer writings of the Old Testa ment were originaUy written in Babylonian cuneiform. Therefore they were written not in books, but on tablets. This fact is so important that I must be aUowed to dweU again on the character of writings on tablets ; for this circumstance involves a complete change in our views conceming these writings and in our method of studying them. We have to do away with the description and 30 GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 31 the nature of what we caU a book, whether it be written on a pap3nnis roU or printed hke those of the present day. A book, especiaUy an historical one, is made on a definite plan ; it has a beginning and an end, and it must be composed according to a definite order. If it is divided into chapters, the middle ones or the last wiU not be written before the earher ones. The second chapter presupposes the first, it is intimately connected with it as its logical successor. There is no break between the two, and the same connexion exists between the second and the third. A tablet is something quite different. It is a whole, a composition, we might even say a book in itself; it is not connected with another, it does not foUow a pre vious one, it does not go on to a succeeding one. It has no fixed place in a series as have the chapters of a volume. The author may write his tablets whenever he Ukes, he is not bound either by a chronological order or by a definite plan. Supposing a tablet to be a narra tive, it may require an introduction which recaUs facts mentioned in another one, or it may even be a summary of such facts. Therefore a series of tablets put together in book form, as was probably done by Ezra for the tablets of Moses, wiU necessarily produce a composition hke Genesis, where the connexion is very loose between the different parts, and in which there are repetitions and a complete absence of proportion in the way each subject is treated. NaturaUy, a scholar who has not divested himself of the notion which we have of a book wiU find himself tempted to find different authors in a text which consists of fragments, pieced together, which one author wrote at various times and under various circumstances. When Ezra compUed the tablets he could not begin 32 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT otherwise than by those which referred to creation. We can easily separate the first four : the creation of heaven and earth, the creation of mankind, the generations of men as far as Noah, and the deluge. The first begins with an indication of time: in the beginning, iv apxfi, God created the heaven and the earth ; then the writer relates 'the work of the six days, after which God rested. Being the summary of God's com plete work, the narrative mentions the creation of man and the fact that he is to have dominion over all that had been made before. Since the creation of man is only an episode in the whole work, one feature in the general picture, it is not treated with such detail as it is in another tablet, the special subject of which is the creation of man kind. The tablet ended with these Avords : (n. 4.) " These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created," It is evidently an error to consider these words as the title of the next narrative — we should say, of the next tablet — ^which does not speak either of the creation of the heaven or of that of the earth. Some critics, e.g, Kautzsch and Socin, and others, have very cor rectly considered these words as the end of the first narrative. This seems also to be the interpretation of the LXX., who translate: Avrr) jy ^L^'Ko<; yeveareax; oipavov Kal 7>j?, ore eyivero, ' ' This is the book of heaven and earth when they were created." A book ended there, or as we should say, a tablet. The word ySiySXo?, papyrus-book, is employed here because the LXX translated from Aramaic papyrus-roUs. Now begins a new tablet, which, as we have said, is independent of the first ; it is a book in itself. Therefore the first sentence does not follow the last one of the other tablet, as would be the case with two pages. It is a new narrative which requires an introduction. The event? GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 33 related occur after the creation, but the author begins with contrasting the primitive state of the earth, when it was first created and before the existence of man, with the Garden of Eden (u. 4.) " In the day that the Lord made heaven and earth iv v/j,epa iiroltia-ev Kvpio^ 6 debi the earth was entirely barren, " for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to tiU the ground." But, when the Lord had formed man. He put him into the Garden of Eden, the vegetation of which was luxuriant. Why ? — ^because a " river went out of Eden to water the garden," and man was there " to dress it and to keep it." At the beginning no rain and utter barrenness, on the contrary in the Garden of Eden where man had been put, abundance of plants and fruits due not to rain, but to a river which divides itself into four branches, a detail which it is very important to notice. I do not beUeve that the critics have ever paid any attention to this fact, since they suppose that aU that is said of the river is an interpolation due to a different author. This, I do not hesitate to say, shows a strange lack of insight into the composition of the narrative. Why shoiUd the author have mentioned at the beginning the absence of rain and the emptiness which was the result of it, if it was not to put it in opposition to the riches and plenty which a river brought to the garden. It is interesting to notice that this reveals an author who knew Egypt. For him fertihty is derived not from rain, but from a river, and this river divides itself into several branches. Evidently when he wrote that description Moses had the NUe before his eyes. We shaU see in another chapter that he again quotes EgjTpt as the type of a fertile and rich country. After the description of the river, which is somewhat detaUed, the writer reverts to man whom the Lord has D 34 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT put in the garden. He describes the command given to man not to eat from one of the trees, the birth of Eve, the temptation, the f aU and its consequences, the birth of Cain and Abel and of their first descendants. The tablet closes, like the former one, with these words, which I translate from the LXX : (v. i.) " Thisis the book of the generation of mankind." Avtt) ¦^ j8i/3Xo? yevia-ecoi avOpmirtov. Here the Hebrew also has the word " book." The tablet of the creation of mankind ends there. Another tablet begins (v. i. ) It also has the necessary in troduction and it opens exactly like the former one with the words : " in the day that " . . . ¦rj VH-^P9- i'n-oirja-ev 6 deo-i. The author is about to describe the generations of men as far as Noah, and very aptly begins by sajdng that God made men male and female, therefore they could give birth to children. He here mentions only the father, while in the tablet of the generation of mankind the mother is nearly always mentioned. Here again we may recognize the man who knew Egypt, where the idea that a divine being, for instance a god, could give birth to his son from his own substance, by himself, was very famiUar, an idea with which the writer of the tablet disagrees completely. I believe we have also the indication of the end of this tablet. It goes as far as Noah, and the words (Gen. vi. 9), " these are the generations of Noah," seem to have been misunderstood. They cannot apply to the foUowing narrative, which is that of the deluge. Even critics like Kautzsch and Socin have noticed the discrepancy between the title and the text, since they translate : this is the family-history of Noah. We must translate this rubric hke that of the first tablet, to which it is exactly sinular in Hebrew : " this is the generation of Noah." It is his genealogy since Adam. GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 35 The tablet of the deluge, which foUows, is one of the most important of Genesis. It is, in fact, the description of Noah's hfe untU his death. It bears very strongly the same character as each of the previous writings. It is a book in itself, which Moses may perhaps have written before he wrote the tablets of creation.. NaturaUy, at the beginning the writer introduces the man who may be caUed the hero of the deluge. Noah was a righteous man who had three sons, and he walked with God while the inhabitants of the earth were corrupt. This is a repetition of what is in another tablet, which might be unknown to the reader, since this is not a mere continu ation of it. In my opinion, this tablet ended with the death of Noah (ix. 29). We cannot now go further in the separation and analysis of these tablets, which are no longer in their original lan guage. But such seems to me the method according to which these ancient texts ought to be studied. They are a series of tablets, arranged by Ezra or^by some compUer, whoever it might be. Each tablet is a whole in itself and may contain facts or sentences found also in another. The task of the critics is now to separate them and to distinguish the old documents from the work of the com pUer. Putting them together, changing their language and their script must necessarily have had some influence on the text. I should fancy, for instance, that the compUer would replace geographical names absolutely unknown to his contemporaries by those in use in his time, just as a French writer of the present day might put Paris in place of Lutetia. I beUeve that if the Pentateuch is studied in this Ught, many of the assertions which are proclaimed by the critics to be unassaUable are bound to disappear. What reason is there for assigning different authors to the four tablets 36 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT which we traced in the first nine chapters of Genesis ? For instance, the first tablet, the creation of heaven and earth, being attributed to the Priestly Code, must be post exUic, and therefore 400 years younger than the second, the creation of mankind, which is Jahvist. Yet there is no discrepancy between them, though they are independent, and we have found no ground whatever to question their being the work of one author. Kautzsch and Socin distinguish four authors in the first two chapters of Genesis, and one tablet has to be divided between two or three. On the contrary, we have noticed that each tablet is a whole which unfolds itself quite logicaUy, and that so-called repetitions from another form the introduction necessary in order that the tablet may be weU understood. Why should Moses not be the author, as he is said to be by the tradition of many centuries ? Why should his tablets not have been preserved just as much as Hammurabi's code, or the letters of the Palestinian governors ? I am convinced that the fact of the Pentateuch having orig inaUy been written on cuneiform tablets, when new discoveries shall have confirmed the information which we have already derived from the fact, wiU be a fatal blow struck at WeUhausen's theory, and that it wiU be the end of the " Rainbow Bible," of the picture with variegated colours, each one representing an author whose name, origin and date are absolutely unknown, and whose conjectural existence is based merely on a literary criticism which is quite irrelevant since it is not appUed to an original text. The Garden of Eden and the Land of Egypt The tablet of the creation of mankind gives the de scription of the Garden of Eden, out of the ground of which GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 37 the Lord God " made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." We noticed that this luxuriant vegetation was due, not to rain, but to a river which " went out of the garden to water Eden " and after wards divided itself into four branches described at some length. This seems to reveal an author who knew Egypt, the fertiUty of which proceeded, and stiU proceeds, not from rain, but from its magnificent river. Moses had Egypt before his eyes ; that country was for him the type of the most fertile and rich land which he could imagine. We find an allusion to Egypt in another passage also ; in Genesis xiii. 10, Abram has come out of Egypt with his nephew Lot. Their herdsmen quarrel, and in order that there should be no strife, Abram teUs Lot that they must separate, and that he may go to the right or to the left. Lot lifts up his eyes and beholds " aU the Plain of Jordan that it weis weU watered everjrwhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord, hke the land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar." It seems natural to connect this passage with the description of Eden. The Plain of Jordan is weU watered, like the garden which the Lord prepared for man, and also like the land of Egypt " as thou goest unto Zoar." Surely the two descriptions must be by the same author. The critics have cut them up between various writers. The description of Eden is by the Jahvist, except what is said of the river ; that belongs to the redactor. In the thirteenth chapter the verse quoted above is also by the Jahvist, but the words " like the land of Egypt " are put doAvn as a late gloss, the author of which is not known. On the contrary, we shcdl see that these words belong to the old Mosaic text. This conjecture of the critics is due to a confusion in the vowel points ot the Massora, which resulted in their 38 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT not distinguishing two quite different cities of Zoar. Undoubtedly there was a City of Zoar south of the Dead Sea, in Moab. There Lot took refuge after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is mentioned in Deuteronomy (xxxiv. 4) as the southern point of the view before the eyes of Moses, and also by the prophets Isaiah and Jere miah. There is what is called a popular etymology of the name in what Lot says to the angel, " Oh, let me escape thither, is it not a httle one ? . . . therefore the name of the city iva.s caUed Zoar," which means " little." The LXX always transcribe the City of Moab Segor, I'nyap. This city was separated from Egypt by the whole Sinaitic desert, so it cannot be meant in the passage of chapter xiii. " Like the land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar " refers to a quite different city, which the LXX read Zogora : Zoyopa, the Egyptian Zar. This city is weU known. It was on the most eastern branch of the Nile, the Pelusiac. Not only do we find it mentioned in many inscriptions, but we have a picture of it in one of the sculptures repre senting the campaign of King Seti I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, against the popiUations of the Sinaitic peninsula and the southern part of Palestine. It was caUed a fortress, and we see that it consisted of pylons and towers on both sides of the river, joined by a bridge. It has long ago been identified with the present Kantarah {the bridge), one of the stations on the Suez Canal which used to be, and was tiU quite lately, one of the entrances into Egypt for the caravans coming from Palestine. In scriptions lately discovered have confirmed the identifi cation of Zar with the site of Kantarah. The road from Egypt to Canaan through Zar was the most northerly one. There was another more southerly one through Pithom, of which we shaU have to speak further. Zar was con- GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 39 sidered as the limit of Egypt on that side as late as the Ptolemies. Its name in Egyptian contains a sign indicat ing that it is a foreign word. On the east was the desert where, here and there, the Pharaohs had dug weUs and buUt towers and stations on the road to Canaan ; but it was neither so weU-watered nor so weU cultivated as the land on the west. TTie western part of the Delta between the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches was a very rich land. As late as the fourth century a Christian pUgrim, SUvia Aquitana, describing it, says that when she joumeyed along the NUe (the Pelusiac branch) she went " through vineyards which produced wine, and vineyards producing balsam, through orchards extremely weU cultivated, fields and gardens. What more ? I do not think I ever saw a more beautiful territory." Although the good lady, who is a perfect tj^pe of many tourists of the present day, beheves whatever is said to her by her guides and sees the old IsraeUtes every where, the description she gives of that part of the country is most interesting. It is a striking iUustration, given quite unintentionally, of the passage in Genesis. That part of the country has changed considerably since SUvia Aquitana's joumey. The sUting up of the Pelusiac and Tanitic branches, the formation of Lake Menzaleh, due to the sinking of the ground, have destroyed the former beauty of the land. A few years ago the ruins of the great city of Tanis could only be reached by going across marshes and a swampy country, the quite barren white soU of which is the salt land, the type of steriUty for the Psalms and for Jerennah. Evidently that part of the Delta is quite different from what it was even in Ptolemaic times. Canals are now being dug there in order to restore to that region part at least of its ancient fruitfulness. The passage : " like the garden of the Lord, like the 40 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT land of Egypt as thou goest unto Zoar," is extremely embarrassing for the critics. It is supposed to have been written by the Jahvist who lived in the kingdom of Judah in the ninth century (b.c). In that case, there is absolutely no reason for speaking of Egypt, a country far distant and unknown to the inhabitants of Judea. In comparing the land of Sodom and Gomorrah with another which was particularly beautiful, it is obvious that the writer must have chosen a region which his readers knew, so that they might judge how far his com parison was true. He has first spoken of the garden of the Lord, which I have no hesitation in considering as being Eden, the ideal type of fruitfulness and beauty. Eden had never been seen by any of the contemporaries of the writer, so he must choose a country which they might see : Egypt. Then the author cannot have been one who hved in Judea. His comparison would not in that case have appealed in the least to his readers. Supposing it made in our time by a Scotch preacher to his congregation, it would come to this ; like the garden of the Lord, hke Normandy as thou goest to Le Havre. What kind of impression would such a comparison make upon Scotch hearers ? Most of the critics consider the words, " Uke the land of Egypt," as a gloss. We shaU not inquire whether there is any reason for inserting this gloss into the text since this insertion makes the sentence quite incongruous. For Zoar is always considered by them as being the city south of the Dead Sea ; therefore on the way to Zoar thou dost not go through the weU-water.-d land of Egypt, but, on the contrary, through a waterless desert; so that the whole passage is quite inconsistent and mean ingless. GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 41 It is not much clearer when, with Kautzsch and Socin, we strike out the gloss and translate : hke the paradise as far as Zoar. The paradise does not exist ; how can there be a way from that garden towards Zoar ? Other critics suppose that the Upper Jordan vaUey is the Garden of the Lord. But we do not think that this name is ever appUed to the Jordan vaUey ; besides, going from there to Zoar it was necessary to skirt the Dead Sea, the very region which had been destroyed. How then could this be the second term of the comparison ? I need not dwell longer on the utter inabihty of the critics to give a reason able explanation of this sentence unless they correct the text. Some of their translations are absolutely meaning less. There seems to be only one way to solve the difficulty, and to interpret the sentence as it is, without striking out anything. But before coming to Egypt, let us begin with " the Garden of the Lord." In my opinion, this cannot be anything else than the Garden of Eden, the magnificent dweUing which the Lord had devised and prepared for man. The author has before his eyes the vision of the glorious creation of the Lord described in another tablet. The land of Sodom and Gomorrah was a true Eden. This comparison has for Moses a majesty and a nobleness which it has lost entirely in modern times, since the name Eden has been prostituted to hotels and cafts-chantants. But no one except Adam had been in Eden. The author himself knows its existence only from tradition, or from some early documents which had been preserved unto his time. In order that his comparison may be reaUy teUing for his contemporaries, he must quote something which they have before their eyes ; and this is the land of Egypt. Zoar, the Egyptian Zar, is the fortress on the 42 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT frontier, it is the place where Egypt ended. On the eastern side of the Pelusiac branch the country is no longer Egypt, it is the desert. The fertile and beautiful land is on the west, so that the sentence means, as the LXX and the Coptic read " like the land of Egypt, untU thou reachest Zoar" : m<; '^ jfj Ai^vittov eia)? iXdelv et? Zoyopot There is no possible misunderstanding, the sentence is written for a man who lives in Egypt and who goes towards the border-city of Zoar. How then can the author be a writer in the kingdom of Judah ? For this does not apply to a traveUer going from Judea to Egypt. It is just the reverse. At Zoar Egypt ends ; west of it, towards Judea, there is the desert inhabited by the nomads caUed the Shasu. Let us now revert to the Israelites in Egypt. This beautiful country is contiguous to the land of Goshen where they reside. Probably a great number of them know it, perhaps they kno-\y the city of Zoar on the way to Canaan with which they may have intercourse of some kind. Does any explanation account better for the meaning of this sentence than that Moses was its author, and that the tablet relating this episode of Abram's life was written before Moses left Egypt ? As we said before, there seems to be such a strong connection between this passage and the description of Eden, that it shows the hand of one single author for both tablets. This is also the opinion of the critics, except that they take out of the tablet of man's creation the description of the river watering the Garden of Eden, and out of this tablet the words " hke the land of Egypt." Fot the second time we notice that the suppression of so-caUed interpolations or glosses destroys entirely the drift of the passage ; and in this case takes away from the sentence all reasonable sense. Thus in these short GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 43 passages : the description of the river in Eden, and this comparison concerning the state of the land before the destruction of the cities, whUe the critics trace there different authors, we find only Moses writing in Egypt. Ham and Canaan The tenth chapter of Genesis, " the generations of the sons of Noah," is one which has been most discussed by the critics, who attribute it to various writers. We shal consider here only one verse, (6) " And the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan." There is no doubt about Mizraim, the ordinary name for Egypt. As for Cush, it is generaUy translated Ethiopia, the region of the Upper NUe, above Egypt. Certainly this was the meaning of the name of Cush in later times, as we know from Egj^tian inscriptions ; but in the chapter of Genesis where we find the origin and the first dweUing of the various branches of mankind, it seems estabhshed by the works of Assyrian scholars that Cush is Northern Arabia, " especiaUy the district around D jebel Shammar." ^ Phut, as Rouge first pointed out, is the incense country of Punt situated on both sides of the Red Sea. The Egyptian inscriptions place it either south or east of Egjrpt, the real position being south-east. One of the reasons for attacking the authenticity of chapter x. is the name Canaan. Canaan being the residence of the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, who both spoke a Semitic language, the first ancestor of the in habitants cannot be a son of Ham. He must be a Semite. Therefore they say that the Ust is certainly erroneous on that point. Anthropology has now taught us, by unassailable facts, ^ Hommel in Hilprecht : Explorations in Bible Lands, p, 742, 44 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT that language and race are far from being identical and that language is no sure criterion of the ethnical type of those who speak it. If we look at the Egypt of the present day, where nothing but Arabic is spoken by the fellaheen, we should say that the Egyptians are a Semitic popula tion. Yet Greek had been so generaUy adopted until the Mohammedan conquest, especiaUy as a written lan guage, and for documents of aU kinds that, if we used the same argument as the Hebrew scholars use about Hebrew and which we controverted in the preceding chapter, we should say that the Egyptians spoke Greek, and therefore they belonged to the Indo-European stock. In this case we can trace when the change of language took place and we know the original idiom. Not so with the old Asiatic nations about which we have very scanty information, especiaUy considering that a conquest may have influenced language in memy ways. In ancient as weU as in modern times, if the conquest brought a change in the religion the original language was inamediately affected. For example we see that the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs having resulted in the destruction of Christianity and the substitution of the mosque for the church, a change of language foUowed at once : Arabic took the place of Coptic. The Christian ized Egyptian, the Coptic, remained only in famihes where the Christian faith was preserved. It is still a religious language, the language of the Church ; but since the end of the seventeenth century it is dead as a spoken idiom. In the same way Arabic superseded the North African languages, it foUows in the steps of the Mohammedan religion. The tribes which have kept their idiom are those whose Mohammedanism is merely nominal. The same also with Turkish. In the empire of the Sultan it is the language of the conquerors, the foUowers of the GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 45 prophet, who often forced their belief upon their subjects by the sword. If we go back to Egj^t, we find no trace of the language of the Hyksos, who occupied the country for several centuries, and who were certainly an Asiatic nation, coming, according to aU probability, directly from Asia. They had another reUgion than the Egjrptians. " They reigned ignoring Ra," as a papjnnis says ; and this was one of the reasons why they were the objects of the hatred of the natives. But they did not enforce their worship on the Egyptians. On the contrary, they seem to have adopted more and more the rehgion of the country they had conquered, buUding temples on the same principle and having the names of their kings enclosed in two cartouches, one of which is introduced by the rehgious titie " son of Ra." The same happened at the Assjrrian conquest . Esar-haddon did not buUd in Egypt sanctuaries to his gods, his reUgion did not conquer the worship of Amon and Osiris. Therefore the language remained the same. We see also in antiquity, as weU as in our time, that the same language may be written by nations or tribes belonging to different races, as is shown by the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna. The population of Palestine was certainly not hoinogeneous as to race and origin, neither was it entirely Semitic ; nevertheless the governors of the various cities wrote only a Semitic language ; and certaiiUy it would be a great mistake to draw an ethnological con clusion from this fact. Assuming that the whole population of Canaan spoke Semitic, it would not foUow that it was a Semitic race. I should even say that the scanty indications which have been preserved lead us to the opposite idea. It is said that Canaan begat Zidon his first-bom, and Heth. " And 46 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT the border of the Canaanite was from Zidon as thou goest towards Gerar and Gaza, as thou goest towards Sodom and Gomorrah. . . ." The territory of the Canaanite is described by this passage as being in the first place the fertile plain along the sea, from Zidon to Gaza, and then turning at a right angle, it extends over Southern Pales tine and Judea as far as the Dead Sea, this part of the country being inhabited by the Jebusites, the Amorites and the Girgashites, evidently the descendants of Heth, while six others, being in the north, must be the sons of Zidon. Whenever the text sums up the description of the posterity of one of the sons, it adds : " Nations divided in their lands every one after his tongue, after their famUies, in their nations " . . . or " after their famUies, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations," showing that the dispersion implies not only different lands, but also different tongues. These passages do not lead to the theoretical idea which has prevailed too long in philology, as to Indo-European and Semitic languages, of a typical mother-tongue whence dialects should have diverged. On the contrary they agree with the idea now advocated by anthropology, of the diversity of lan guage being simultaneous with the dispersion, so that one does not know where to find the mother-tongue. The further back we go, the greater is the variety, as with the primitive people of the present day. We learn from the Egyptian inscriptions that the Sinaitic peninsula was first inhabited by a population caUed the Anu Mentu. There are several branches of Anu which are aU African nations, inhabitants of Nubia, and of the countries bordering Egypt on the west ; they occupied also the vaUey of the NUe itself, where their name has remained in that of An On, Heliopolis. They are cer- GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 47 tainly not Semites. They are a Hamitic population, sons of Ham as much as are the Egjrptians. It is quite possible that the Anu Mentu, the population of the Sinaitic penin sula, may have marched further north and have occupied also the southem part of Palestine, the mountains of Judea, where the tenth chapter of Genesis locates the sons of Ham. Those who were in the beautiful and fertile plain along the sea might easily push further north as far as Zidon. On the coast, also, we find the PhiUstines. We do not know exactly when they settled in the country to which they gave their name. The most recent excavations tend to show that they came from Crete, and also that the civihzation of this great island is closely related to that of Egypt. The first inhabitants of Crete were undoubtedly not Semites ; nor do they seem to have been Aryans ; so that here again, even if the Phihstines were already settled in Canaan at the time when this tablet was written, that part of the country was inhabited, by descendants of Ham. But we have other indications that the Phoenicians did not originaUy inhabit the coast of Palestine. Herodo tus says twice that they came from the Red Sea. It is probable that by that name we must not understand the whole of the present Red Sea. The northern part of the Gulf of Suez is for Herodotus the Arabian Gulf ; so that the name* Red Sea may have extended to part of the Indian Ocean and perhaps to the Persian Gulf. This seems to connect them with some Cushite nations which were settled on both sides of the present Red Sea. Lepsius explained the Latin name of Poeni and the Greek 0otVtf by that of the inhabitants of Punt, whose name he read Puna, which most Egyptologists read Punti, and which I read Puni. The assimUation made by Lepsius has to 48 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT be considered seriously, in spite of the contempt with which it has been treated by some German scholars. According to this opinion, the Phoenicians would have to be reckoned as belonging to the posterity of Phut, one of the sons of Ham. The tenth chapter of Genesis raises difficult questions in reference to original authorship. We can understand the Hebrews having preserved the tradition concerning the creation of the world, or that of mankind. Even the flood may be one of those popular narratives handed on from father to son, through many generations. Nearly aU nations have traditions of that kind which are put down in writing, sometimes very long after they originated. It is not at all impossible that the Israehtes had these traditions before Abram left Mesopotamia, especiaUy since they were intimately connected with Abram's worship. For we must not consider Abram's migration into Canaan as that of a single fdmily. It must have been that of a tribe of some importance, since we see that on the occa sion of the war of the Mesopotamian kings against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah Abram led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, so that he must have been a chief having a power worthy to be compared with that of the rulers among whom he settled. If now we try to find the reason which induced Terah to take his son Abram and his grandson Lot to go to Canaan, stopping first at Haran ; and afterwards Abram to take Lot as his companion and to choose as his abode the South of Canaan, it is hardly possible to find for that migration any other cause but religion. These words: " Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I wiU show thee ... So Abram GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 49 went, as the Lord had spoken unto him" (Gen. xii. 1) seem to show that his worship was not that of his f amUy, and that he went to Canaan, to a country where he could practise his own rehgion without incurring the enmity of those who were not foUowers of the same worship. Appljring to the Abrahamites a modern name, we should caU them a sect. A sect naturaUy must have its reUgious books, relating its origin. It has some documents showing whence it comes and how it was born. In fact the first eleven chapters of Genesis are nothing but the generation of Abram, beginning at the first man. They are his pedigree. These chapters may have been written on tablets brought from Haran, which Moses used or copied. He may have chosen from among a larger number those which best answered his purpose. The fact of these tablets having been written in Mesopotamia accounts for their simUarity to the Assyrian documents on the deluge or even on creation, a simUarity upon which so many theories have lately been based. A few tablets may easily have been carried by nomads even to a great distancer as were the letters written by the governors of Palestinian cities, or the kings of Babylon to Amenophis III in Egypt. EspeciaUy would this be the case if the Abrahamites gave them a rehgious value ; if these tablets were for them a kind of titie-deed showing that theywere the tribe set apart to caU upon the Name of the Lord and be faithful to the worship of Yahveh Elohim, the people with whom the Lord would make a covenant, and in whom aU the famiUes of the earth should be blessed ; surely they would take special care of them, and value them as a treasure. As we said before, these early tablets, which were left by Moses as a coUection of independent documents, were prob- 50 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ably put into book form by Ezra when he turned them into Aramaic. He may have added or inserted a few glosses so that his |book might be better understood by his contemporaries ; for instance, it is doubtful whether the PhUistines were known under that name at the time when the tablet was written ; but here, again, there is no reason for dividing this chapter between three or four absolutely unknown authors. The tablet describing the posterity of Noah began with these words (x. i) : " Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah." It ended with verse 32, which is the end of the chapter : " These are the famUies of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations : and of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood," This sums up the genealogy, and teaches us that the division of the nations took place after the flood. We must remember that all this is written, not by a historian who considers it his duty to record aU events which took place at a certain time or in a certain country, but by an author who has a quite different aim in view. He has to show how everything is directed towards the choice of Abraham and his posterity as the elect. " These three were the sons of Noah : and of these was the whole earth overspread " (ix. 19), says the tablet of the deluge. " Of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood," (x, 32) are the closing words of the tablet which we have just considered. In the foUowing one we learn how this division took place. The narrative begins with the necessary introduction. The author goes back to what happened immediately after the flood. There was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when men tried to build the Tower of Babel, the Lord confounded their languages and scattered them abroad upon the f^ce of all the earth. Now in GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 51 this vast confusion of nations and languages, where could be found the chosen ones, those who were set apart ? They spring from one of the sons of Shem ; therefore the writer reverts to this son of Noah, and to part of his descent which he has mentioned before, in another tablet. Arpachshad was the ancestor of the elect, and the writer enumerates aU his descendants as far as Abraham and to the death of Terah, Abraham's father. If we remember that this is a tablet not linked in writing to another as two consecutive chapters of a book ; if we take it as a piece of literature standing by itself, we cannot but recogmze that there is an intimate connexion between the two parts which, at first sight, are so dissimilar. There is no inconsistency. The genealogy of Terah is the necessary sequel to the description of the chaos of man kind. It is the leading thread which wiU bring us out of this confusion to Abraham's famUy. Therefore I cannot understand how it can be attributed to three different authors, two of whom would be separated by several hundred of years, and one about whom the critics have a very indistinct idea. I consider that this is the last of the tablets brought from Mesopotamia. It is quite possible that the first writer gave them a somewhat different form. Moses may have modified them in some respects. We find the trace of his hand in the passage about the Garden of Eden and the land of Egypt. He evidently had these old documents, and embodied them in his own tablets in which he recorded either events preserved by tradition, like the history of Joseph, or those which took place in his time and of which he could speak as an eyewitness. Abraham One of the striking features of Genesis is the complete 52 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT lack of proportion. Some events are described at great length, others are entirely left alone. For instance, except a few names, giving us the generations of Shem, there is nothing between the dispersion of mankind and Abraham's migration to Canaan. We have no account whatever of the reason why Terah was called to leave Ur with part of his family to settle in Haran, and why he did notgo further, but remained there until his death. We must not consider Genesis as an ordinary book of history. History as we understand it now did not exist at that time. The idea of recording what had taken place in ancient times merely for the sake of preserving the recoUection of the past did not occur to these old writers. When they related what had happened many centuries before their time, it was with a definite purpose ; it was to iUustrate something they had at heart and which had for them a special importance. What constitutes the admirable unity of Genesis, al though it consists of separate parts not joined together hke the chapters of a book, and what is utterly disregarded and even destroyed by the critics, is that from the beginning every narrative is chosen so as to show how Israel is set apart from the rest of mankind. The reason of that choice is that a special duty will be laid upon Israel, it wiU have a primary task to fulfU : the mission of worshipping Yahveh- Elohim, and of having no other God but Him. Every thing tends towards that central idea from the very begin ning. The first tablets which we showed could be traced lead us towards what we may caU the cornerstone of the history of the IsraeUtes. It is remarkable how everjrthing which has no bearing on that dominating fact, the setting apart of Israel, is passed over rapidly or left entirely out. First comes the creation of heaven and earth, then that of man and his generations ; those are mentioned^with GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 53 hardly any detaU. Noah is set apart and saved from the destruction of the men who had been wicked and corrupt* The deluge and the preservation of Noah is related at great length ; the Lord made a covenant with Noah, and we are taught how mankind was renewed from the families of his three sons. They are scattered abroad, and^are divided into three branches, each bearing the name of one of Noah's sons and described after their famUies, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations. In that restored humanity one branch only is chosen, that of Shem ; among his descendants one f amUy only, that of Arpachsad, and from his numerous sons and daughters, those who wiU be the ancestors of Terah, the father of Abram. We shaU not hear any more either of the posterity of Japheth or Ham, nor of the other descendants of Shemp They are quite useless for the history of Israel. Since this narrative is not written in a book, but on tablets, there are what I may caU Uterary irregiUarities, repetitions and other failures against the nUes set down by masters in the art of writing. These hterary faults have been the stumbling-block of the critics, and have driven them to that mincing process, to that cutting up of Genesis into smaU pieces due to various authors from different places and separated sometimes by several centuries. This destroys completely the unity of the book, it hides this higher conception on which it rests. Minute philolog ical analysis has obscured to the critics the true scope and purport of the book. It has deafened their ears to the leading note, though that note sounds in it from beginning to end. " Now the Lord said unto Abram (xu. i) : Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I wiU show thee, and I wUl make of thee a great nation, and I wiU bless thee, and 54 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT make thy name great." As I said before, this seems to show clearly that it was a religious reason which drove Abraham out of his country. His migration is connected with a blessing, and a blessing generaUy implies the promise of multiplying and of giving birth to a numerous posterity. Abram is the man with whom the Lord made a special covenant. He, above all others, is considered by the Israehtes as their ancestor. Therefore his life is described at great length, as well as the various episodes which show how God set him apart and promised him repeatedly that he should be the father of a great nation. Not only do we find here the outward events of his life, such as the deliver ance of Lot from the hands of the Mesopotamian kings, but the writer of the tablets shows us what we may caU his religious character, his pecuUar intercourse with God, which is revealed by the sacrifice of Isaac, or by the mar veUous sort of discussion which Abram had with God about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two striking episodes, wherein is brought forward in so vivid a way the moral and religious life of Abraham, are attri buted by the critics to two different writers ; what I have caUed the discussion with God to the Jahvist and the sacrifice of Isaac to the Elohist who wrote one century later in the Northern Kingdom, the Jahvist residing in Judea. They must have both painted for themselves Abraham's character with very similar colours, since both wrote fragments which fitted so weU into the literary construction raised by the redactor ! Here a question occurs naturaUy to our minds which I shaU have other occasions to repeat : Where did these two authors get the traditions on which they based their nar rative ? — for we cannot suppose that they are romances of their invention. There must have been in each kingdom a GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 55 tradition very similar, I might even say identical, though the writers who recorded them did not Uve in the same country, and wrote at a different time. How could these two traditions correspond so weU to each other ? Who were those authors ? What was their purpose in writing books of which short fragments only have been preserved ? Even if we admitted the existence of these two writers it would be hardly possible to suppose that they had not at their disposal an old document from which they both borrowed the facts of their narratives. The supposition which seems tome the; most reasonable is that these recoUections of Abraham's hfe were preserved by his descendants, and perhaps partly put in writing, untU Moses coUected and re- wrote them. In the drift of the narrative we find many Mosaic touches. Moses shares the'same feelings with Abraham and the same faith. He has the same famUiar intercomrse with God. One may weU fancy that it is the same man who wrote Abram's requests about Sodom and Gomorrah, when he dared not plead for less than than six men, and Moses's own prayer when on the border of Canaan he besought the Lord, say ing : " Let me go over, I pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan," and received the answer : " Let it suffice thee, speak no more unto Me of this matter." Genesis not being an historical book, but a number of tablets put together, it is not necessary that we should always find a strict chronological order. Some parts may be a summary of previous events in a man's Ufe. For instance, the last chapter, which refers to Abraham, begins with these words (xxv) : " And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah," and the text goes onto give the hst of aU Abraham's sons whose mother was Keturah. This tablet gave Abraham's posterity exclusive of Isaac's descendants. We must picture to ourselves 55 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Abraham as one of those great nomadic chieftains; what we should now caU a sheikh. With those men, polygamy was the rule, as it stiU is. One of their wives was the predom inant one ; she had special rights, and her sons were the heirs ; but a powerful and rich man might have slaves and concubines, wives of a lower rank, whose children would receive gifts, like the children of Keturah, while aU that Abraham had was given to Isaac. We must not think therefore that Keturah became Abraham's wife only after Sarah's death. She is men tioned at the beginning of the tablet which relates the patriarch's end and which gives the list of his posterity. We do not know when Abraham took Keturah. Here the author of the tablet recalls something in the past, as we have already seen several times. It seems to me that the true meaning would be better rendered if we translated also here : Abraham had taken another wife. As for Ishmael, he alone is mentioned with Isaac as being Abraham's son. These brothers alone buried their father, though there were many others. The explanation of this fact lies in the circumstances of Ishmael's birth. We see here that Sarai transfers her rights to Hagar : " It may be that I shaU obtain chUdren by her." Therefore she wiU consider Hagar's chUdren as her own, and when once such an utterance had been made to Abraham, and probably before Hagar herself, it could not be withdrawn. Sarai alone could use such language, since she had the privileges of which Abraham could not despoil her, for it rested on blood-kinship. Sarai was Abraham's half-sister. This kind of marriage is often seen in Egypt, especiaUy in the royal family. A king liked to marry his half-sister because in that case his son had a right to the throne on both sides. Between Isaac and Ishmael there was the same difference as between two Egyptian princes, one of GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 57 whom is the son of a queen who entitles herself royal wife and royal sister and the other of whom has royal blood only through his father. In that case the king often confers through association with his son the rights which this son has not got from his mother's side. Sarai substitutes Hagar for herself, and though she repents of it afterwards, and obtains from Abraham the dismissal of Hagar, stiU Ishmael comes next to Isaac and above his other brothers. Hagar, who twice in her flight took the road to Egjrpt, probably wishing to retum to her own country, receives the promise that her son will become a great nation. She takes for him a wife from her^own people, and Ishmael setties in the desert south of Canaan and also in the northern part of Arabia. His descendants may have been the Shasu, the nomads who, at the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, were the enemies of Seti I and against whom he made his first campaign. Abraham, Isaac and Abimelech There is a narrative which occurs three times in Genesis under very similar but not quite identical circumstances. This narrative also has been a stumbling-block for the critics. The first time that Abram goes to Egypt, because there was a famine in Canaan, he says to Sarai his wife (xu. 11) : " Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon, and it shaU come to pass, when the Egyptians shaU see thee, that they shaU say, This is his wife, and they wUl kiU me, but they wiU save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister : that it may be weU with me, for thy sake, and that my soul may hve because of thee." Sarai does as she is commanded to do, and she is taken into Pharaoh's house. But Pharaoh and his people are stricken by great plagues, and they hasten to send Abram away, with plenty of sheep and oxen, and he-asses 58 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT and menservants and maidservants, and she-asses and camels. He was not to remain in the land. A second time Abram does the same thing. Many years afterwards, when both he and his wife were advanced in age, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (xx.) he goes to sojourn in Gerar. Again he says of his wife : " She is my sister," and Abimelech, the King of Gerar, takes her. But warned in a dream, he immediately restores Sarah to her husband, ar^d when he questions Abraham why he has deceived him, he receives this curious answer : " It came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her. This is thy kindness which thou shalt shew unto me ; at every place whither we shaU come, say of me. He is my brother." The third episode of the same kind is in Isaac's hfe (xxvi). A famine occurs ; Isaac would feel tempted to do as his father did, to go to Egypt, where there was corn in abimdance, but the Lord appears to him, and he is told to dweU in the land. He therefore goes to Gerar to Abime lech, who must have been the son of the king who had known Abraham. Isaac also likewise says of Rebekah : " She is my sister," for he feared to say " my wife." But Abimelech discovers that she is Isaac's wife and reproaches him for having deceived him. Isaac does not leave Abime lech's country, but he increases so much in wealth and power, that Abimelech says unto him : " Go from us, for thou art most mightier than we." Thereupon we hear of the quarrel between the herdsmen of Gerar and those of Isaac because of the weUs. The critics have attributed the journey of Abram to Egypt to the Jahvist, the episode with Abimelech to the old Elohist writing about 750, and the narrative of Isaac and Abimelech again to the Jahvist with fragments belonging to the redactor. Undoubtedly these repetitions GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 59 are difficult, and one may well understand the critics being tempted to see there the hands of several writers ; especi aUy in the case of Abram. If one gives to these stories their most obvious interpretation, it seems that Abram hopes that the beauty of his wife wiU save him and prevent him from being murdered. This is weU in keeping with Abram's joumey to Egjrpt, but not at aU with his arrival in Abimelech's territory. In that case one might well ^uppose that the cuneiform tablets had not been arranged in chronological order, and that this had to be placed earher in Abram's life. But I beheve there is another explanation, agreeing much better with the circumstances of these three cases. It seems to me to solve the greatest difficulties which stand in the way of the critics. We see that among the ancient eastern rulers, the pledge, we might say the Uving pledge, of a treaty of peace between two nations was a marriage or rather the gift of a female relative of one of the kings to the other. If we look at the tablets on Tel-el-Amarna, in the letters of Dushratta the king of Mitanni to Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, father and son, we see the importance which the foreign king gives to these marriages with GUuhipa his sister and Taduhipa his daughter. Dushratta begins one of his letters with these words : " To Nimmuria (Amenophis III), king of Egypt, my brother. It is weU with me, may it be weU with you, with GUuhipa my sister, may it be weU with your house, your wives, your sons." He singles out his sister among the wives of Amenophis III. He wiU say the same thing of Taduhipa who is his daughter : " May it be weU with you, with my daughter Taduhipa, your wife whom you love, may it be weU with your wives, your sons ..." Evidently Taduhipa had taken the place of her aunt in the royal 6o ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT harem. She is said to be the wife of Amenophis III, and the word wife is the same as that used when he mentions others. Curiously when Dushratta writes to Amenophis IV he uses exactly the same language as he had done towards Amenophis III, his father, when speaking of his daughter : May it be well with you, with your houses, your mother Ti and the land of Egypt, my daughter Taduhipa your wife, your other wives, your sons ..." In one of his letters to Amenophis IV, Dushratta relates how Nimmuria's father (Thothmes IV) sent to Artatama his grandfather, " and for his daughter made request, my grandfather refused. Five or six times he sent, but at no time did he give her, and then when forced he gave her." When Amenophis III sent to Shutarna, Dushratta's father, as king, for his daughter, Dushratta's sister, " he never gave her . . . five or six times he sent, and then forced he gave her." Nimmuria makes the same request to Dushratta. He asks for his daughter. Dushratta first refuses and makes some difficulties about the price the king of Egypt is to pay. FinaUy he agrees, and sends her with a dowry which was countless. The princess was conveyed^by a messenger who had to pay the dowry of Taduhipa. When Amenophis III saw her he rejoiced very greatly and made her beautiful presents. As far as one can judge, Amenophis III had not Taduhipa long in his harem. Dushratta writes further : " When my brother Nimmuria died, . . . when Naphuria (Amenophis IV)' the distinguished son of Nimmuria by his distinguished wife Ti entered upon his reign, I spoke say ing : Nimmuria is not dead, Naphuria his distinguished son by his distinguished wife Ti is in his stead. He wiU not change from its place one word from what it was before." This means in the first place that he wUl take over Tadu hipa, and give her the same position as she had under her GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 6i father, and henceforth we see in his letters that he always caUs Taduhipa the wife of Amenophis IV who had thus inherited her from his father. These letters show the real character of these marriages. The princesses were the living pledges of friendship, a kind of hostages which had to be renewed at the beginning of a reign. Amenophis III asks first for Shutarna's daughter, GUuhipa. After Shutarna's death, when Dush ratta is on the throne, he also asks for Dushratta's daughter Taduhipa. Amenophis III dies and Dushratta contrives that his daughter should be for the son exactly what she had been for the father, his so-caUed " wife." We must notice that in nearly aU cases the king of Mitanni yields only when he is " forced." This looks very much as if his daughter had been taken violently, or as if he could not resist the threats of the king of Egypt who would have considered him as hostile, as an enemy, if he had not given his daughter. The correspoiidence of Amenophis III with Kallima- Sin, king of Babylonia, turns almost entirely on marriages of this kind. Even Buznaburiash, who corresponds with Amenophis IV, also speaks of his daughter being sent to the king of Egypt. This custom must certainly have been very old in Babylonia, and Abraham, who was a native of that country, must have known of it. This same custom prevailed also amongst kings who were not Mesopotamians. When, after long wars in which his successes were certainly not so great as he boasts, Rameses II at last made peace with the Hittites, the token of friendship between the two rulers was a princess, the daughter of the king of Kheta who is seen on a tablet of the temple of Aboo Simbel coming to Egypt. She is accompanied by her father. A custom so general among the eastern sovereigns must 62 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT have been adopted also by the chiefs of tribes. When we think of Abram leaving Mesopotamia, we must not imagine a single family numbering only a few heads. Abram was very likely a sheikh, the head of a tribe sufficiently numerous to provide him with a troop strong ^enough to rescue Lot from the Mesopotamian kings. Abram left his country for a religious reason. Probably his faith differed from that of his countrymen. He was going abroad to lands where he supposed he would find a strange worship, and of which he would say : Surely the fear of God is not in this place. Therefore, from the first he made to Sarai the foUowing request. I quote his words (Gen. xx. 13) : " And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her. This is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me ; at every place whither we shall come, say of me. He is my brother." This was a request made once for all ; he did not say so in view of Egypt only, but for every new place to which his wandering life might lead him. He expected that there might be several occasions when this statement on the part of Sarai would be useful to him. and he instructed her accordingly at the moment of his departure. We shaU not consider here the moral side of Abram's conduct ; we shall only try to discover the reason which induced him to act in this way. One can imagine that in a time of famine the king of Egypt was afraid of seeing a powerful tribe approaching his frontier. He knew that his kingdom had often suffered from the nomads of the desert, and he might weU doubt for what purpose these strangers came to the vaUey of the Nile. Were they hostile invaders, or people who came with peaceful intentions ? Were they a tribe with whom an aUiance might be made and whose friendship might be GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 63 guaranteed by the marriage of a daughter of the sheikh with the king of Egypt ? Abram had no daughter from Sarai ; he could not, like the chief of Kheta, send to the king of Egypt a daughter of his own family on her mother's as well as her father's side, foUowing himself in her train. He therefore says that Sarai is his sister. He does not actuaUy offer Sarai to the king of Egypt, but he uses this artifice in order to show to the Egyptians that ;he comes to them as a friend, as a man ready to seal his friendship by a marriage, to contract an aUiance with them. Sarai saves his life in that way. Otherwise the Egyptians would have considered him and his tribe as enemies, and would have killed him ; and if they struck the sheikh, the head of the tribe, the tribesmen would soon have been scattered or subdued. Evidently the Egyptians were rather afraid of Abram's power. When they saw that the marriage could not take place, and that the friendship of Abram could not be guar anteed, they hastened to send him away, making him all sorts of presents, perhaps on condition that he would leave the country. The king in the narrative seems rather impatient that he should go : " Now therefore behold thy wife, take her and go thy way. And Pharaoh gave men charge concerning him ; and they brought him on the way, and his wife and aU that he had." Something very similar happened with Abimelech (Gen. xx). The king of Gerar took Sarah in good faith, evidently in order to be assured of Abraham's friendship. Having as his wife the sister of the sheikh, he might feel certain that there would be no hostile feeling from his tribesmen. In fact when he also discovers that he cannot marry Sarah, he contracts a kind of aUiance with Abraham, makes him presents, and says : " Behold my land is before thee, dweU where it pleaseth thee." Afterwards the two men make a regular covenant. 64 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT If we consider Abraham's conduct in that light, and if we remember that these two incidents are the results of a general instruction given to Sarai by Abram when they first departed from Mesopotamia, there is nothing extra ordinary that they should occur twice in Abraham's hfe under similar circumstances. The third similar occurrence is in Isaac's life. (ch. xxvi) The country again suffers from famine and Isaac goes unto Abimelech in Gerar, The critics attribute this narra tive to the Jahvist, but they strike out the reference to Abraham in the first verse of the chapter, the warning not to go to Egypt and the repetition of the promises made to Abraham. AU this is attributed to the redactor. This summary way of dealing with the text seems to me again to show a lack of understanding of the whole history. And the Lord appeared unto him and said : " Sojourn in this land." It is quite natural that the Lord should explain to Isaac why he is to remain at Gerar. The Lord repeats to him aU the blessings promised to Abraham, which appear here for the first time in the narrative of Isaac's Ufe; they had not yet been uttered to him in such a distinct way. The Lord then renews with Isaac the aUiance made with Abraham, and since Abraham is quoted several times and Isaac mighf feel tempted to do as his father had done, there is nothing extraordinary that Isaac should be warned not to go to Egypt, but to stay in the fertile land of Gerar. Later, his son Jacob wiU be speciaUy told to go down to Egypt. The verses struck out by the critics are of primary impor tance ; they are among those to which Moses must have given the greatest weight. They constitute Isaac as the rightful heir to Abraham ; not the heir merely of his wealth and riches, but the heir to the promises — " For unto thee and unto thy seed I wiU give^ aU these lands, and I wiU GENESIS BEFORE THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT 65 establish the oath which I sware to Abraham thy father." This is not said anjnvhere else to Isaac in so many words. There is only an aUusion to it a httle further on. It is the chEirter given by the Lord to His chosen people. This is the part which the critics assume not to belong to the original narrative ! When Isaac arrived in Abimelech's land, the repetition of what had happened before with Abimelech's father must again be construed as something different from a mere fancy for a woman " fair to look upon." Like his father, Isaac stayed in the land, a rich country which the Egyp tians caUed Zahi, and from whence they drew corn. There he became so great, his flocks and herds grew to such an extent, that Abimelech asked him to depart, and, being afraid on account of a quarrel which arose between the men about the weUs, asked Isaac to make a covenant with him that he would do him no hurt. This covenant was made on oath, since no daughter of Isaac's family could be given in marriage to Abimelech. Except this episode of Isaac with Abimelech, describing how the Lord renewed His aUiance with Isaac and how Isaac made a covenant with Abimelech, we know hardly anjrthing of Isaac's life. AU the rest refers to his sons and explains why Esau the eldest was put aside in favour of the youngest. Nothing else in Isaac's hfe had any bearing on his position as heir to the promises. Moses left aside aU that did not lead him to his aim, which was to show how Israel was the chosen people. As I said before, there is no reason for attributing these three narratives to different writers. Sucl^ episodes, when they are understood in the right way, could weU happen several times in a man's life, whenever he changed his dweUing-place. CHAPTER III EGYPT IN this chapter I shaU not go into the general question of the influence exerted over Israel by Egypt. I should hke to show by a few instances that the writer of the Pentateuch was a man who knew Egypt thoroughly weU, as was the case with Moses. This is often revealed by smaU details indicating a writer who has hved on the banks of the Nile, and who sometimes speaks from experi ence. This is especiaUy remarkable in the narrative of Joseph's hfe. Though these events took place long before the time of Moses, the tradition conceming them had been preserved amongst the Hebrews. The Exodus and the journey through the desert, on the other hand, were events of which Moses had been an eye-witness and where he had often been the leader. I shaU merely foUow the books as we find them in the Bible, dweUing on the points most striking in this respect, without attempting any systematic classification. The "Days" of Creation I cannot help thinking that in the first chapter of Gene sis there is decidedly an Egyptian influence ; not at aU in the sequence of creation — there is nothing similar in the Egyptian mythology — ^but in the word day, in the division of the period of creation into six " days." Here we must remember the difficulty which the ancients had to express an abstract idea. They generaUy had recourse to a meta- 66 EGYPT 67 phor or to something perceived by the senses. Even now, though we have philosophical languages expressing the most abstruse ideas, we constantly make use of metaphors because we have not yet found the adequate expression to define with sufficient correctness that which is in our mind. When we say, for instance, " the sun rises," or in French, " le soleU se l^ve," we use a metaphor to which we no longer pay any attention, because it is too usual. In fact, in both languages, we speak of the sim as of a man who was Ijring down, and who gets up and stands, or as in German, is going up. Supposing it is necessary to express the idea which is conveyed to us by the word " period," a certain length of time having a beginning and an end, how wUl primitive man, or even a man hke the old Egyptian whose thought and language have not yet reached what 1 should caU the phUosophical stage, how wiU such a man render that idea which is so famihar to us ? For him the abstract conception of a period does not exist. He knows only the measure ments of time connected with his hfe or with natural phe nomena which take place before his eyes. The notion of a period, of a space of time independent of something which touches his body or his life, is quite strange to him. He wiU understand the day, beginning with sunrise and ending with sunset, the month, the interval between two births of the moon, the year consisting of so many moons ; the Egjrptian wUl know the interval between two risings of the NUe. Therefore if he wishes to speak of a certain duration of time having a definite beginning and end, the most obvious metaphor at his disposal wiU be to caU it a day. This word here does not apply to the astronomical duration of twelve hours opposed to the twelve hours of night ; it is only a metaphor. This seems to me the meaning of the word day in 68 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Egjrptian. The chief document of the funerary literature has a title translated in various ways : " Three single words," says Le Page Renouf, " perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy of explanation." In fact Renouf's translation " coming forth by day " hardly conveys any clear idea, especiaUy if we remember that day in Egyptian does not mean daylight, but it is a date or a measure of time. Therefore I translate : " Coming out of the day." Several passages in the Book of the Dead teach us that a man's life, the period between his birth and his death, is caUed " his day." For instance the deceased says : " I am delivered from the quarrels of those who are in their day. I shaU no more be among them." Or this : " I have come forth from the day, and I shine among the gods." The king Unas goes out of this day in the true appearance of a blessed one (Khu), or he increases his day of life. Elsewhere we find mention of a king being in his day, and the variants say : " in his time." After death the life of an Egyptian is no more a day, no more a period with beginning and end ; his existence wUl last with various phases and various episodes ; he wiU take a great number of forms, but his existence in the other world wUl be no more limited in time, he wiU have gone out of the day. A similar sense, a period with beginning and end, seems to me to have been given to the word " day " in the first chapter of Genesis, the chapter of creation. We have first to notice that the Hebrew word translated " created " does not apply to aU that is done during the six days : it applies to what might be caUed the preUm inary work : in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth is described in Hebrew by two words translated waste and void. In the LXX it is some- EGYPT 69 what different : a6paToTo, which at first sight seeras also to raean " copied," but the Greek version adds two very important words : " These are the Proverbs of Solomon alaSiaKpiToi.. In authors like Polybius this adjective means : the uninteUigible ones. This cannot refer to the sense of the sentences— they are easy enough to understand— but to the alphabet. They were uninteUigible to those who could not read cuneiform, as the law was to Hilkiah ; and the men of Hezekiah did not only copy them, they wrote thera in a script which could be understood. This would 194 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT correspond to the word of the Vulgate transtulerunt, and also to the Hebrew word which according to Koenig raeans " iibertragen," a word, which, Uke the English " translate " has a figurative as weU as a proper sense. This would represent very weU the change of form pro duced by the passage from cuneiform to Aramaic. According to this interpretation of the passage, Solomon wrote in cuneiform. In our first chapter we have advo cated the idea that during his reign the Phoenician alphabet had been introduced into the kingdom by the people who worked upon the temple and who went to Lebanon. But Phoenician script could not be used for solemn words of the king which had the character of a moral law. For such impressive sentences, which people were to take at heart so as to rule their conduct according to the precepts, the language and the script of Moses would be used. The change from cunei form is to Araraaic, so that this part of the book of Pro verbs, the title of which seeras to indicate a later addi tion, would already be in Aramaic before Ezra's time. We are led again to the prophets, and we have to face the sarae question. Did the prophets write in Aramaic or in their own native language ? Let us caU this lan guage by its proper narae. It is not Hebrew, it is Jewish (Is. xxxvi II, Neh. xui. 24). In the two passages where it is raentioned it clearly means the comraon language used by " the people on the waU " and by the mass of inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea, and this was different from the idioras spoken on the West or on the PhUistine coast, in the East at Moab or at Amraon. Undoubtedly Isaiah used that language when he spoke to his country men at Jerusalem, and even when he spoke to the king. But was it a book language ? When Isaiah took the " style of a man " and wrote, did he write Jewish ? and ARAMAIC 195 did he write it in the Canaanite script ? This is a very grave question, which does not seera to have been as yet seriously raised and the answer to which seems to me logically derived frora the facts newly discovered : the prophets in their writings used the literary language of their time, Aramaic, and when our Lord read Isaiah in the sjmagogue or when He quoted the twenty- second Psalm on the cross, these two texts which were in Aramaic were in the original form they had when first written down. It was not necessary for Ezra to transcribe them. If they had at the beginning been in Jewish, one does not understand the Aramaic stage which they went through. Besides this fact offers us a ready explanation of the present form of the docuraents of the Old Testa raent. CHAPTER VII THE PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IF the Old Testament books were written in Hebrew with the so-caUed old Hebrew alphabet why did not the rabbis preserve the books as they were ? What were the reasons which induced them to change the script ? And, when they changed it, why, instead of modifying the alphabet considered as their own, the old Hebrew, did they adopt a variant of the Araraaic alphabet ? Half a century ago the erainent French scholar, the Marquis de Vogiie estabhshed the fact that sguai:e_ Hebrew was not derived from old Hebrew, or, as it is now caUed, Canaanite ; but from Aramaic. The bearing of this discovery does not seem to have been realized to its fuU extent, especially as regards the fact that the inventors of the new script turned not to the Canaanite, but to the alphabet which is supposed to have originated in Mesopotamia, Araraaic. We are not certain at present that Canaanite was ever the script of a book language ; what has been preserved of it consists of inscriptions, ostracas, coins, but no book or fragment of book properly so-caUed ; whUe^documents like the papyri of Elephantine can only be the products of a book language which had had a. long existence. Bearing this in mind, and also the fact of the Aramaic derivation of square Hebrew, one is led to ask whether the idea that writings hke the books of Kings, Isaiah or Job 196 PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 197 were in the Hebrew language and in Canaanite character is not a raere hterary hypothesis without any archaeolo gical evidence in its favour. No doubt Hebrew goes back to a high antiquity as the dialect spoken by the Hebrews perhaps as early as Abraham. Such a dialect may last through centuries and deviate very Uttie from its original form. We have proof of its existence in this passage : " When Laban and Jacob parted, and as a taken of their covenant made a heap of stones, Laban caUed it Jegar-sahadutha, but Jacob caUed it Galeed (Gen. xxxi. 47). The name given by Laban is clearly Aramaic, meaning the heap of witness ; that given by Jacob is Hebrew and the lexicographers give it the same sense as the Aramaic on the strength of the translation of the LXX. But this word Galeed, the sarae as the geographical narae of GUead, though it is Hebrew, does not prove anything as to this idiora being a book language. The same is the case with the song of Deborah which, as we have seen, was not written down by the prophetess and may be corapared to the often beautiful poetry found in some remote viUages of the Abruzzi, and recited or sung in an Italian dialect very different from the literary and written Itahan. In the same way I should call Hebrew the national dialect of the Hebrews, generaUy an unwritten idiom, having no script of its own, and, when it was necessary to write it for common use, emplojring the Canaanite alphabet. We have seen already that when Hebrew is spoken of as a language it is CciUed Jewish ; both passages occur at a late date in the tiraes of Hezekiah and Nehemiah. In both cases " Jewish " means the language of Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. EspeciaUy when Nehemiah speaks of it, it is the language of the Jews of the remnant of the kingdom of Judah who had returned from Babylon 198 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT to rebuUd the teraple and reoccupy their native land. In connexion with this fact we have to notice these two others. Square Hebrew appears about the time of the Christian era, and this new Hebrew is a variant of Araraaic. These three facts seem to support each other and to countenance the foUowing explanation. The time of the Christian era was the epoch when the Roraan empire extended over a great part of the East and West, when it brought under its yoke nations of very different type and origin. Though Roman policy left, as much as possible, to the subject nations their custoras and their worship, nevertheless a certain amount of uniformity was necessarUy introduced amongst thera. They had the sarae masters and were governed according to the same principles. The Roman coinage was the outward sign of their subjection to a comraon ruler. Even the Jews were not absolutely hostile to their foreign governors, since some of thera, like St. Paul, were Roraan citizens and availed themselves proudly of their privi leges. Though they were a Roman province the Jews had retained a very strong national feeling ; they stiU reraera bered that they were the elect, God's people, they stiU repeated " we have Abraham to our father." But for them their national existence was intimately connected with their worship, with the strictest and the most formal observance of that law to which they had added many details. This worship distinguished them from the GentUes for whora they felt an undisguised contempt and enmity. Their religion justified in their eyes their exclusiveness, it was the barrier which separated them from all the strange nations. This rehgion, on which their life as a nation rested, was regulated by their sacred books, the law of Moses eind the PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 199 prophets, and one may conceive how they would be attached to those books and the kind of worship which the rabbis more and more felt for its text. But the form of these writings in the last centuries bef ore Christ had no distinctive character such as we might have expected from the particularism of the Jews. The writings were in Aramaic, the language of a considerable literature ; they might be confused with other writings. I beUeve therefore that the rabbis found it necessary to give to their books a national character and appear ance. They turned them into Hebrew, the idiom spoken by their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which was certainly their own language, that of Jerusalera. This they did not share with any other people. But this had no script and it was necessary to invent one. They would not take Canaanite ; that was not their own ; it had been used by the Phoenicians and other nations like Moab. They therefore invented a script, and for that they took the alphabet to which they were accustomed and which they used in their writings. They altered Araraaic sufficientiy for their new script to be distuiguished frora it, so that it should stand by itself, and raight be caUed their own. Since its adoption by the rabbis, Hebrew has thus become the distinctive language of the Israehtes, and has given rise to a considerable hterature. The change of script, the adoption of square Hebrew at a late date, is not denied. It is a weU estabUshed fact for aU Hebrew scholars, who have generaUy inter preted it as a mere change of letters. Square Hebrew according to them simply took the place of the old Canaan ite, the script of the Hebrew authors. This seems to me to be somewhat too subtie for these old scribes. The distinction between the letter and the word, between the characters and the idea which they express has been 200 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT estabhshed by modern phUology and is one of its element ary principles. One can hardly imagine the rabbis changing merely the characters, transliterating a word from the Canaanite character letter for letter into the new script which they had adopted. It is quite different if they apphed for the first tirae a new script to a language which had none before. They might have written it with the Aramaic alphabet which was famUiar to them, but since they wished to have a distinct one, they merely modified that. One thing is important to notice. When the rabbis turned the sacred books into the Jewish dialect, they did not translate the narae of God. The narae Jehovah, which is to be read Yahveh, is said (Ex. iii. 14) to mean " I am." The word "to be " is not here in its Hebrew form. It occurs in this form in two or three instances in which it is called, by lexicographers like Koenig, old and poetical. But it is the usual Aramaic for "to be " in the papjrri of Elephantine. Frora this word their name of God Yaho or Yahu is derived. It is an abbreviated form of Yahveh. Thus the origin of the narae of God is not Jewish, it is Araraaic. Certainly it would be strange if the Hebrews had called their national God by a narae coraing from a foreign dialect. The difference in the language itself is only dialectical. There is no wide breach between the Hebrew of the Bible and the Araraaic of the letter to Bagoas ; we may even suppose that the scribes and the rabbis knew both the book language and the popular idiom just as a clergjrman to-day in England or in a Swiss canton would understand equaUy weU the text of the Bible and the popular speech of the peasants amongst whom he is Uving. This sugges tion does not in the least impair the beauty of the Hebrew language nor of the works which it has produced. Be- PRESENT FORM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 201 cause Deborah's hjrmn is in the popular idiom of her day, it is not less striking; the depth of her feehngs, the triumphal emotion which pervades her heart does not come out less strongly because her song is not a written poem and was probably preserved in the meraory of the people for a long tirae before it was put down in writing. Hebrew as a spoken dialect deserves our adrairation just as ranch as if frora the first it had been a hterary lan guage. Moreover it is interesting to think that the invention of the square Hebrew was not a mere Uterary fancy or a graphic simphfication, but arose from a definite and decided intention to separate their sacred books from any other literature, and to set them apart as being the charter of the election of the Jews and the foundation of their national life. CONCLUSIONS THE reader who has foUowed me from the beginning wiU, I hope, have understood the principle on which are based the views here expounded as to how the oldest books of Scripture have been written. Some of these views, for instance those on the language of Genesis, had been already advocated by Assjrriologists, chiefly by Professor Sayce ; but I do not think that the general idea as to the way in which they reached their present form has been propounded before. Since the year 1885 there have been two great discover ies, both made in the soil of Egypt, the Tel-el-Amama tablets, and the papyri of Elephantine. In my opinion these discoveries entirely change the traditional views concerning the language in which the books of the Bible have been written, and they sap the foundation of the critical system which rests necessarUy upon the assump tion that these books were original documents. It is not the first time that excavations havejproduced such surprises, and have revolutionized not only literary theories, but even the great lines of history. Half a cen tury ago whoever spoke of Homer, especiaUy in German universities, paid homage to Wolff and bowed before his critical analysis of the poet's text. Since then Schheraann has appeared. His untiring zeal and passionate love for the Greek poet have revealed the reraains of an unknown epoch at Troy and at Mycenae. Men of my age can remem ber the incredulity with which the discoveries in the capi- 202 CONCLUSIONS 203 tal of the Atrids were first received, and now the Mycen ean civihzation is a rich chapter in the history of Greek life and art. Older yet than Mycenae, Crete shows us a cul ture which nobody suspected before Sir Arthur Evans brought it to Ught ; and now the old idea that civihzation was introduced by the Aryans, that this branch of human ity had a sort of monopoly of culture and progress, is fast being abandoned. There was, it is clear, a briUiant civihz ation before the Aryan invasions ; Africa, the dark con tinent which was looked at with a sort of contempt ; the Hamites, despised because of Noah's curse, are coraing raore and raore to the front, and may have been after aU among the oldest teachers of that part of raankind which lived on the shores of the Mediterranean. These stupen dous discoveries, these entirely new fields, opened not long ago in a chapter of history which scholars thought they had correctly set forth from written documents and hnguistic analysis, we owe not to books but to the work of the spade, to what has been found in the soil. A discovery of a similar bearing has been made at Tel-el- Amarna, in the remains of the archives of an Egyptian king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. These tablets have shown that at that time, shortly before Moses, the written language of Palestine was Babylonian cuneiform in its local form with traces of a popular idiom appearing here and there. This fact has been confirmed by the excavations at Boghaz Keui where have been discovered documents of a later date. At the same time no trace of any kind of a literary Hebrew has been found belonging to such a remote epoch. Now, looking at the work of the critics in general, this fact, so important and so weU ascertained, has evi dently never been grasped in its fuUness. In various ways they have tried to fit it into their system, but at present no critic has ever attempted to revise the system, to shape 204 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT it according to this fact, one of the best established in lin- gliistic history. Leaving aside the philological analysis on which rests entirely the theory of the various documents of the Pentateuch, and taking merely the historical fact that the written language in Palestine, and not in that country only, but in the whole of ^ Western Asia from Meso potamia to the Mediterranean, was Babylonian cuneiform, the conclusion which occurs naturaUy to our mind is that Moses wrote in Babylonian cuneiform. This was preemi nently the language of ^laws, especiaUy when they were sup posed to have been dictated by God Hiraself. Moses, an Aramean, certainly had heard of Hamraurabi the great Babylonian lawgiver ; he had been educated at the court of the king of Egypt where the correspondence not only with the governors of vassal cities but even with the sovereigns of Mesopotamia was in Babylonian cuneiforra. He learnt that language and that script in the palace of Pharaoh. He may have spoken with his countrjrmen the dialect they had brought from Canaan, and which can be perceived in the letters of the governors, but this was certainly no written language, it was the popular and coUoquial idiom, and not considered appropriate for laws and for God's words. Critics wiU not deny this fact, but they wiU argue, as one of the most eminent of them wrote to me, that in the Pentateuch nothing comes directiy from Moses, and that, at the utmost a few sentences raay be older than the time of the Kings. That objection I have tried to answer by reviewing historically what is written about Egypt, about Joseph's life, about the Exodus and the Tabernacle. How could aU these events be described as they are by two or more various authors hving in different parts of Palestine and at different epochs ? How could, in particular, the history of Joseph have been written down except by a raan CONCLUSIONS 205 who was in Egypt at the time when the tradition was very vivid, when the Hebrews were stUl in Egjrpt and while they knew whose action had induced them to settle there ? The fact that all these narratives were written not as a running book, but on tablets, changes completely the char acter of the composition. It explains repetitions, which have been stumbhng blocks to the critics, as the summaries of what has been said in previous tablets. Also we can distinguish those which were written separately and joined together afterwards in a book, hke the beginning of Genesis, from those which were to form a series and are therefore more closely hnked together. The style of the composition is no longer to be judged according to the rules set down for a book. Deuteronomy, a copy of which I beUeve to have been put in the foundations of Solomon's temple, certainly bears the character of the last words of Moses, the character of a time when the people were in the sight of Canaan, when they could see better in what country they were going to settle and what were the inhabitants and their customs. Moses speaks there for the first time of a king because he foresaw that the Israehtes would imitate the Amorites and the men of Bashan who were the subjects of Sihon and Og ; this was the way in which aU neighbouring nations were governed, but as to the worship he does not prophesy smjrthing. He is certain there must be a place chosen among the tribes for the Lord's abode, but he does not know where. He is not aUowed to enter the good land, therefore he cannot assume the glorious task of choosing that place ; that choice wiU devolve upon his successors. The idea of a cedar temple to the Lord is quite strange to him ; it does not even occur to his mind. If the Pentateuch is the work of Moses, as history and the contents of the book seera to prove, it cannot have been written irfHebrew which if it existed at 2o6 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT all at that time was oiUy a spoken idiom and not a book language ; it must have been written in Babylonian cuneiform. The first transformation it went through was to be put into Aramaic, and this I attribute to Ezra. Such an enter prise seems to me to be in accordance with the character of Ezra as described in his]book, and more especiaUy in that of Neheraiah, and also with rabbinical tradition conceming hira. Besides this it agrees also with the circurastances of his tirae. That was the epoch where cuneiforra was raore and raore being abandoned for the popular language. Several centuries earlier the Mesopotaraian kings had Aramaic scribes who explained to the people the contents of the cuneiform contracts, and who marked thera with Araraaic dockets. Aramaic was the language in which Ezra conversed with the king, the king's letters and de crees were in Aramaic, as was also the law of the king which was to be obeyed hke the law of God (Ezra vii. 26). Ezra, caUed by the king hiraself a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, did for the law of Moses what raany scribes, his contemporaries did for other documents in Meso potamia. Although Ezra occupied hiraself pre-eminently with the books of Moses, it is quite possible that, as the tradition of the rabbis alleges, he also settled the canon of Scrip ture for the Old Testament ; he perhaps coUected and sifted the writings which were to forra the sacred volurae. As it carae out of his hands the volurae was entirely Aramaic. The question as to the composition of the books of the prophets and of the didactic books is not so clear for a few of them. These writings, however, even if they were not originaUy composed in Araraaic as perhaps some of the Psalms, raust have been put before the time of the LXX in Aramaic, and they were in Aramaic when our CONCLUSIONS 207 Lord read Isaiah at Nazareth, and when he quoted the twenty second Psalm on the cross. This change of form and script, which I have attributed to Ezra, cannot be caUed a real translation ; it was only a dialectal modification. When I come to the present forra of the Old Testaraent, the Hebrew of our Bibles, and have to explain its origin, I feel in a position sirailar to that of the critics, who after they had dissected the Pentateuch into smaU fragments had to create the seven authors to each of whom they at tribute a different nuraber of fragments. Having estab Ushed an Aramaic form for the Old Testaraent it is necessary to explain the transition to the Hebrew language and to the Hebrew script. In ray opinion these two changes were simultaneous. Hebrew, I have no doubt, was a spoken language, the dialect of Judea and of a great part of Pales tine ; the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna already show its exist ence, but it had no script of its own. What is caUed old Hebrew is Canaanite and is known much raore by inscrip tions of Phoenicia and Moab than by properly Jewish texts. When the rabbis wished to give to their rehgion, to their laws, to their national hfe which rests entirely on their books, a thoroughly and exclusively Jewish character, they made a dialectal modification ; they turned their books into the language spoken at Jerasalem ; but since that had no script, they had to invent one and they adopted a modified form not of the Canaanite but of Aramaic, the one real book-language which they already knew. Between the new script and the old one there was no greater differ ence than between the two idioms. With this sumraary of my conclusions I close this book, which, I have no doubt, most of my readers wiU find marked by a boldness verging on presumption. I hope, however, that they wiU recognize that in rejecting the philological 2o8 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT criticism I have endeavoured to the best of my abihty not to deviate from historical facts. This method has 1 ed me to endorse completely the traditional view as to the books of Moses. I beheve the books bearing the name of the great lawgiver are reaUy his work, but that the form which they now have is not that of their original language. The words of our Lord Jesus Christ hkewise are not known to us in the Aramaic in which they were uttered ; they are known to us in Greek. But in the case of His words the translation is a coraplete one, whUe in the Old Testament it is merely a change of dialect. INDEX Aahmes, King, 90 Aaron, 100, 123, 125 Abd-hiba of Jerusalem, 10, Abel, 34.. Abib, month, 161 Abimelech, King of Gerar, ... M,v58, 59. 64, 65 Abi-miUa of Tyre, 10, 26 Aboo Simbel, 61 Abram, Abraham, 6, 13, 21. 23. 37, 48, 49. 50, 51-65,82,88,133,181,182, 191, 197, 198, 199 Abrahamites, 49 acacia, shittim, 118, 119, / - 126, 150 acacia seyal, 120 Adam, 34, 41 Africa, 203 Ahab, 25, 28 Ahaz, 144 Alexandria, 186, 188 altar, 117, 156, 158 Amalekites, 162 Amanus, 120 Amenophis III, King,49,59, 60, 61, 75, 94,99,164. Amenophis IV, King, 9, 59, 60, 61, 95 Amenophis, sou of Hapi, 85 Ammon, 172, 194 Ammonites, 179 Amon, 45, 95 Amorites, Amurru, 11, 13, 15, 46, 205 Amos, 193 Amyztaeus, King, 139 An On, 46, see Heliopolis Anakim, 133 Anani, 147 Antiochus Eupator, 156 Antonine, Itinerary of, 106, 142 Ann, 46, 161' Mentu, 46, 47 d'Anville, 97 Apophis, Apepi, King, 71, 89 Arabia, 173 Northem, 26, 43, 57 Arabian desert, 27 gulf, 47. IOI Arabic alphabet, 192 language, 44 Arabs, 44 Aram, 167 -Beth-rehob, 167 -Naharaim, 167 -Zobah, 167 Aramaic alphabet, 3, 4, 19, 21, 24, 25. 181, 188, 196, 200, 207 language, 24, 30, 105, 115.130.145.163-170. 173. 178, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 191, 195, 206, 208 papyrus rolls, 32 Arameans, 21, 166, 167, 170, 204 Archives, 132, 134 Aristeas, 186 Ark of the Covenant, 113, 116,118,127,128, 153 Arpachshad, 51, 53 Arsames, 146, 148 Artatama, 60 Artaxerxes, 175, 179, 181 Aryans, 47, 203 Ashdod, 172 Ashkelon, 10, 11 Assurbanipal, 131 Assyria, 141, 166 Assyrians, 120, 130, 140 Assyrian writing, 4, 24 conquest, 141 cuneiform, 11 Kings, 129 language, 10, 12, 166 temples, 134 Avaris, 90 Baal, 107 -zapuna, 107 -zephon, 103, 105, io5 Babel, Town of, 50 Babylon, 4, 49, 182, 197 Babylonian, cuneiform, 4, 10, II, 15, 17, 18, 21. 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 36, 115,130,1135,145,166,167, 191, 203, 204 civilization, 131 language, 10, 12, 14, 26 Bagoas, 145, 148, 156, 162, 163, 200 Barak, 9 Bashan, 205 Bedouins, 92, 120 Beersheba, 103 Berger, M. Philippe, 17, 18 Beza, Theodore, 8 Bezalel, 118, 123 Bitter Lakes, 97, 108, iii Boehl, Dr., 10 Boghaz Keui, 11, 15, 26, 132, 135, 203 Book of the Dead, 68, 77 Book of the Law, Finding of the, 129 Bourlos, L^e, 108 breastplate, 123 Briggs, Dr., 14, 116,191,192 Bubastis, 96, 102, 126 Buznaburiasb, King, 10,61 Cain, 34 209 Caleb, 132, 133, 134 calf, golden, 125 Calvin, 8 Cambyses, 146,149,163,164 Canaan, 11, 14, 16, 38, 47, 49, 57. 88, 113, 126, 127, 132, 140, 142, 144,151,192,204, 205 conquest of, 11, 12, 121, 181 South of, 48, 95 Canaan, son of Noah, 43 Canaanite alphabet, see old Hebrew language, 10 Candlestick, 124 Cauopus, Inscription of, 79 Captivity, the, 24, 163, 165, 175 Cedar, 119, 120, 121, 128, 146, 150, 153. 205 Chnub, god, 146, 161 contracts, cuneiform, 11 Coptic language, 44 translation, 18, 19, 42, 97, 132 Creation in six days, 66-70 of heaven and earth, tablet of, 32 of mankind, tablet of, 32-34 Crete, 25, 47, 203 Criticism, Higher, 115 Lower, 115 cuneiform, character of, 12 19, 166, 167 writing, 192, 193 Cush, 43 Cushite, 47 cypress, 120 Cyrus, 158 Daniel, 189 Darius 1, 106, 139, 140, 175 Nothus, 145, 146, 147 David, 25, 28, 119, 128, 129, 134, 160 Dawson, Sir William, 102, no day, 67-70 Dead Sea, 40, 41, 46,"i2 0 Deborah, 8 song of, 9, 197, 201 Decalogue : Ten Com mandments, 17, 20 Delayah, 147 Deluge, Taljlet of the, 35, 50, 53 Demetrius of Phaleron,i85 Deuteronomy, 21, 27, 113, 114,127-130.141,150, 133, 154. 156, 174, 180, 205 Dhibon, 29 210 dialects, character of, 14 variety of, 6, 190, 191 Djebel Geneffeh, in, 112 Mariam, 106, 107 Shammar, 43 dockets, Aramaic, 169, 206 Du Bois, Aym6, 102 Dushratta, King of Mit anni, 59, 60, 61 Edom, 113 Edomites, 82 Egypt, 16, 21, 26, 33,36-43, 51, 56, 57,66-126,140 Lower, 143 Upper, 143 Egyptian hieroglyphs, 18, 79 papyri, 20 Egyptians, 21 47, 63, 72 Eleazar, 186, 187 Elephantine, colony at, 16, 139.143,144,150,189 papyri, 4, 26, 139, 145, 189, 196, 200, 202 Eliakim, 171 Elohist, 23, 54, 58, 70, 71, 72, 73. 80, 179, 184 Ennedek, Sheikh, 107 ephod, 125 Ephron the Hittite, 133 Esar-haddon, 45, 167 Escalade V, 7 Esau, 65 Etham, desert of, 102, 103, no Ethiopia, 43, 82, 144 Eusebius, 71 Evans, Sir Arthur, 203 Eve, 34 Exodus, book of, 16, 82, 89-125, J50, 183 Ezekiel, 143, 144 Ezra, 4, 24, 31, 35, 50, 113,116,130,157,175 -195, 206, 207 book of, 158 finger of God, the, 18, ig, 20 For Maher-shaial-hash-baz, 18 French language, 8, 10 Galeed, 197 Garden of Eden, 33, 36-43, 51 of the Lord, 41 Gaza, 10, 46 Generation of Noah, tablet of the, 32, 34 Genesis, 23, 31, 48, 82, 183, 184, 202, 205 end of, 87 lack of proportion, 49 not a book of history, 52, 55 unity of, 52 Geneva, 7, 8, 108 Gentiles, 198 INDEX geographical names re placed, 35 Gerar, 46, 58, 63 German language, 14, 165, 171 Gezer, tablets of, 11, 13, 15. 26 Gilead, 197 GUuhipa, princess, 59, 61 Girgashites, 46 \ Gitia of Askelon, 17 Goshen, land of, 42, 91, 96, 102 Greek language, 44, 208 Hadad, 82 Hagar, 56, 57 Ham, 43, 47, 48, 53 Hamites, 203 Hamitic population, 47 languages, 102 Hammurabi, 21, 36, 204 Haran, 14, 48, 49 Hathor, goddess, 76 Hatshepsu, queen, 99 HattusU, King, 11 Hebrew. Old alphabet, Ca naanite, Phoenician, 3, 4,12,13,16,19,21,25, 29, 173.174, 181, 182, 188,192,193,194,195, 196, 197, 199,200,207 language, 4, 14, 145,173. 178, 188,189,191,192, 196, 197, 199, 200, 205, 207 literature, 4, 6, 203 rabbinic, 24 square, 3, 4, 24, 181, 182, 198, 199, 201 Hebrews, the, 4, 48, 73, 77, 81,90,91, 99,117,118, 126,130,188, 200, 205 Hebron, 132, 133, 134 Heliodorus, 84 Heliopolis, 83, 96 hereth-enosh, 19, 20 Herodotus, 47, 145, 174 Heroopolis, Ero, 97, loi, 106 Heroopolitan gulf, 97 Heth, 45, 46 Hezekiah, 4, 144, 153, 171, 172, 178, 193. 197 Hilkiah, 127, 129, 152, 153, 154, 193 Hiram, King of Tyre, 27, 150 Hiram, worker ia brass, 27 history in Egypt, 94 consisting of genealogies, 138 Hittites, Khetas, 11, 61, 63, 96, 98 Homer, 202 Horus, 83 Harmachis-Horus, 83 Hosea, 142, 144 Hoshea, king, 82 Hoshea, son of Nun, 114 Hull, Prof., 102 humiliation, feast of, 179, 181 Hydarnes, 146, 147, 148, 149 Hyksos, 45. 7i, 73. 75. 87 Indian Ocean, 47 Indo-European languages, 46 Isaac, 54, 56, 58, 64, 65, 88, 133. 199 Isaiah, 18, 20, 25, 144, 180, 187, 188, 193, 194, 195, 196, 206 Ishmael, 56, 57, 133 Ismailiah, 97, no, in Jabin, King of the Canaan ites, 8 Jacob 21, 30, 64, 72, 7% 88, 89, 97, 103, 133, 182, 183, 197, 199 Jael, 9 Jahvist, 23, 36, 37, 40, 54, 58, 64, 70, 71, 72, 73. 104, 179, 184 Japheth, 53 Jebusites, 46 Jegar-sahaiutha, 197 Jeremiah, 25, 39, 132, 141, 142, 143. 180, 193 Jeremias, Dr., 193 Jerusalem, 141, 155, 157, 165, 170, 176, 177. 178, 185, 194,199,202 Jesus Christ our Lord, 173, 185, 186, 187, 188, 195, 208 Jew's language. Jewish, 170, 171, 172, 178, 188, 189, 194, 195, 197, 200 Joah, the recorder, 171 Job, 196 Johanan, 145, 147 Jordan, plain of, 37 river, 127, 151. I55 valley, 41 Joseph, 16, 23, 51, 70-87 89, 204 Josephus, 4, 21, III, 145, 165, 186 Joshua, 25, 128. Josiah, 82, 127, 128, 152, 153. 165, 174 Jotham, 144 Judah, 72, 97 Kingdom of, 40, 141 tribe of, 118, 133, 134 Judea, 42, 46, 47, 54, 74, 98, 145. 148, 172, 185, 194, 207 Judges, book of, 9 Kadesh, 95, 115 Kallima-Sin, King of Babylon, 61 Kantarah, 38 Kautzscdi and Sodn, 32, 34, 36, 41, 130 Keturah, 55, 56 Kheta, see Hittites Kingdom, Nc^them, 54, 72, 77, 80 SouthCTn, 72, 78 Kings, Books o^ 196 Kirjath-sepher, 132, 133 Koenig, Prof., 8, 194, 200 Knyunjik, library at, 131 Laban, 197 Lachish, 26, 172 Language, s^ken, 5 written, 5, 7 Latin, 189 Layard, Sir Henry, 131 Leah, 133 Lebanon, 27, 28, 120, 150, 194 Le Page Renout Sir Peter, 68 Lepsius, 47, 93 Levites, 134, 177, iSS, 190 Leviticus, 156, 157, 160,174 Libnah, 172 Lieblein, Prof., no Linant Bey, 102, no Lot, 37, 38. 4S, 54 Macalister, Prof., 11 Machpelah, son o^ 133 magicians, 79, 80, 81 Hamre, the Amorite, 14 Manetho, 73 Marduk, god, 22 Mauaseh, lOng, 152, 153 Massora, the, 4, 37 Medum, S3 M^ddo, 10, S2 Memphis 96, 98, 142 Menephtah, King, 74, 94, 98, 112 Menzaleh Lake, 39, 108 M^ha, King of Moab, 4 Insadptiou of, 4, 21, 26, 29, 192 ) Mesopotamia, 10, 12, 21, 49. 51, 62, 64, 69, 79, 90, 105, 121, 167, 177, 181,182,154, 185,159, 191, 192, 196, 204, 206 Mesopotamians, 21,132,171 metal, beaten, 121, 122 metaphors, 67 Mej?^, Prof. Eduard, 72, 161, 174 midwives, 92, 93, 99, 100 Shiphrah and Puati, 99 Migdol, 103, 105, 106, 107, 112 ' Magdolon, 142, 144, 163 Miriam, 22, 112 Mithredath, 159 Mizraim, 43 Moab, 113, 172, 194. 199. 207 INDEX Moabite, 179 Mohammedan conquest, 44 priest, 178 religion, 44, 81 Moses, 6, 16, 17, 20-25,26, 33, 35, 36, 42, 43. 49. 55. 64, 66, 69, 70, 75. S5, 87, 89-135, 145, 151, 152,1154, 15/, 15S, I74,'i75,i77.i79, 180, 181,182,184,189, 190, 198, 204, 205,206,208 Mutemua, queen, 99 Mycenae, 202, 203 mj^itle, 119 NahrelKelb, 96 Naphuria, see Amenophis IV Nathan, 119, 128 Xazareth, 1S7, 206 Nebuchadnezzar, 150, 182 Nehemiah, 145, 157, 177, 189, 190, 197, 206 Nepayan, 146 Nile, 33, 67 Delta, 39, 90, 96, 142, 143. 156 Pelusiac branch, 38, 39, 95, 142 Tamtic branch, 39 Upper, 43 Nimmuria, see Amenophis III Nippur, library at, 131 Nisan, month, i6r Noah, 34,35,50,51.53.203 Noph, see Memphis Normandy, 40 Nubia, 140 offerings, 148, 160 bumtjiij, 147,151, 156, 157, 15S incense, 147, 156, 157 meal, 147, 156, 157 Og, King, 205 Oholiab, 124 Omri, 25, 29, 174 On, .sti; Hehopolis Onias, 156 Orr, Dr., 150 Osiris, 45 Ostanes, 147 Palestine, 10, n, 12, 26, 3?, 45, 47, 70, 77, 52, SS, 91, 94, 95, 9S, 102, 105, 119, 120, 121, 134,135,143,144.145,157, 163, 170, 171, 173. 189. 190. 191. 192, 203, 204 Southern, 46, 47 Passover, tlie, 140, 161, 162, 174 Pathros, 142, 143 Paul, apostle, 188, 198 211 Pentateuch, 3, 23, 35, 36, 127,130, i32,pc79, 181, 184, 204, 205, 207 Pepi, King, statue of, 121 124, 125 Pasia, 157 King of, 157, 181, 185 Persian gul^ 47 Petrie, Prof. F., 93, 97, 98 142 Pharaoh, 10,16, 17, 57,63, 71. 78, 80, 82, 84, 91, 94. 96, 98, 99. IOO. 103,104,109,111, 112, 141. I49.i50,;i63, 204 dream of, 76 Pharaoh-Hophra, 82 Pharaoh-Necoh, 82 Philistines, 25, 47, 50, 103, 120 coast of, 194 philological criticism, 24, 207 Phoenida, 4, 26, 207 Phoenician alphabet, see Old Hebrew inscriptions, 174 Phoenicians, 13, 25, 26, 27, 47. 48. 199 Phut, 43, 48 Pi-hahiroth, 103, 105, 107 Pi-kerehet or Pi-kdieret, 106 Pithom, 38, 91, 96, 97, IOI, 102, 106, 107, no Plagues, the ten, 100 Pliny, IOI Polybius, 193 Potiphar, 71, 83, 86 Poti-pherah, 83 PriesUy Code, 23, 36, 104, 105, 116, 119, 157, 158, 159. 161, 163. 179, 180, 184, 185 priests, 81, 83, 152, 153, 156, 185 primitive man, 6, 67 prophets, 189, 190, 192, 193. 194. 199 Proverbs, book of, 162, 193. 194 Psalm XXII, 187, 188, 195, 207 Psalms, 39, 114, 115 Psammetidius I, 142 II, 140 Ptolemaic times, 39, 83 Ptolemies 39 Ptolemy, geographer, loi Ptolemy Philadelphus, 4, 185 Puna, Punii, Pcmi, 47 Punt, land of, 43 Ra, god, 45, 71, 83, 90 Raamses, dty of, 91, 96, 97 rabbis, 196,199,200,206,207 Rabshakeh, 170, 171 - ( -i c " Rainbow Bible^'' 36 aiaRameses II, King, n, 6i, . 74. 94. 95. 96. 97. 112 land of, 97, 102, no Rebekah, 58 redactor, 23, 37. 58, 64 Red Sea, 22, 43, 47, 96, 97, 102,104,105,109, III, 112 Rehoboam, 150 Reinach, M. Theodore, 186 Reisner, M., 13 Revised Version, 18 Rh6ne river, 108 rings of gold, 122 river of Eden, 33, 37 Roman time, no, 123 language, PoiiuuirrC, 189 languages, 14 Romanche, 170 Rosetta stone, 17 Rouge, E. de, 43 Sachau, Prof., 145, 148, 173, 174 sacrifice, 117, 151, 160 Saites, dynasty, 163 Samaria, 147 ostraca from, 4, 13, 20, 25, 29, 174 Samuel, 6, 162 sanctuary, 118 unity of, see unity Sargonide dynasty, 173 Sarai, Sarah, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64,133 Saul, 134 Sayce, Prof., 26, 202 Schliemann, 202 sealskin, 125 Sed period, 84, 85 Sellin, Dr., 12, 132 Semites, 25, 43. 47, 96. i73 Semitic dialect, 191 invasion, 15 languages, 14, 45, 46 population, 44, 45 Sennacherib, 82, 169, 171, 172 Septuagint, LXX,i 8,1 9,20, 25. 32. 34, 38, 42. 68, 83, 97, 106, 114, 115, 126,132,142,144,156,172,186, 187,197, 206 Seqenenra, King, 90 Serapeum, sanctuary of Osiris, 106 station on the Suez Canal, 106, 112 Seti I, king, 38, 57, 95, 106 Shamash, god, 167 Shaphan, 129, 130 Shasu, nomads, 42, 57, 95 Shebna, the scribe, 171 Shechem, 133 Shelemyah, 147 Shem, 51, 52, 53 INDEX Shephelah, 120 Shihor, 141 Shinar, land of, 88 Shishak, king, 82, 150 Shutarna, 60 Sihon, 205 SUoah, inscription of, 4, 21 Silvia Aquitana, 39 Sin god, 21 Sinaitic desert, 38, 117 peninsula, 46, 95, 96, 120 Sisera, 9 So, King, 82 sockets, 126, 146 Sodom and Gomorrah, 37, 40, 41, 48, 54, 55. 58 Solomon, 13, 25, 26, 27- 29, 82, 128, 129, 130, 134. 150, 153. 159, 160, 193, 194, 205 " standards," 140 Stephen, 16 Strabo, 83, loi style, stylus, 19, 194 Succoth, 102, 106, no Thuket or thukot, 102 Suez, III gulf of, 47 Sumerian language, 14 Susa, 135 Switzerland, dialects of, 6, 15, 170, 171, 178 Syene, Assuan, 143, 144 synagogue, 187, 188 Syncellus, 71 Taanach, tablets of, n, 15, 26, 132 Tabernacle, 115-125, 128, 153, 204 Tabernacles, feast of, 159, 177 Tables of the Law, 17, 19 Tablets, clay, 12 character of, 30, 53, 183, 205 cuneiform, 23, 36, 130, 131, 182 forming a series, 183 of the renewal of the Covenant, 100 with Aramaic dockets, 169, 182, 206 Taduhipa, princess, 59, 60, 61 Tahpanhes, Daphnae, 141, 142, 144 Tammuz, month, 146, 147 Targum, 107 targumanu, 10 Tel-Defenneh, 142 Tel-el-Amarna, tablets of, 4,9,11,15,16,26,45,59, 95. 132. 145, 163, 164, 189, 202, 203, 207 Tel-el-Maskhuta, 97 Tel-el- Yahudieh, 156 Tel Rotab, 97 Temple of Jerusalem, 119, 129,134,150,153,157 of Elephantine, 140, 145, 145. 147..I49.I50,I58, 174 of Onion, 156 Ten Commandments, see Decalogue Terah, 48, 51, 53 Theban dynasty, 90 Thebes (Egypt), 89, 95, 112, 169 Thoth, 18 Thothmes IR, 88, 91, 92, N^94, 96; IV, 60 Ti, queen, 60 Timsah lake, 97, 106, 107, 108, no Tirhakah, King, 82 Troy, 202 Tum, god, 97 Turkish language, 44 Tussum, 107 Two brothers, tale of the, 86 Unas, 68 unity of sanctuary and worship, 126, 150, 152, 153. 154 Ur of the Chaldees, 13,14,21 Vogiie, Marquis de, 196 vowel points, 3, 4, 37 Vulgate, IOI, 132, 142, 194 Wady Tumilat, 96, loi Weights, 168 Wellhausen, Prof,, 36, 116 Winclder, Dr., 132 wind. East, 108 Wolff, 202 Yaho, 140, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149. 155, 156, 157. 158, 159. 162, 164, 165, 200 Yahveh, 149, 186, 200 Elohim, 49, 52 Yeb, fortress of, 146, 147, 148 Yedoniah, 146, 147 Zaphenath-paneah, 78, 80 Zar, Zoar of Egypt, 37- 42, 95, 103, 142 ' Zedekiah, 141 Zerubbabel, 158 Zidon, city, 10,46,47,94,126 son of Canaan,' 45, 46 Zimrida of Zidon, 26 Zoar of Moab, 37-42 Printed by Butler fi- Tanner, Frome and London. THEOLOGICAL AND DEVOTIONAL WORKS. By the Rev. H. G. GREY, M.A. A COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net By the Rev. Principal H. G. GREY; being the first Volume in the Readers' Commentary. Other Volumes in preparation :— THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS: by the Rev. Dawson Walkbr, D.D. THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS : by the Rev. F. S. Guy Warman, B.D. THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS : by the Rev. Cyril Emmet, M.A. Further announcements will be made in due course ; full particulars may be obtained from the Publisher. THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS. By JOHN WILLIAM DIGGLE, D.D. (Bishop of Carlisle). Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 2S. 6d. net. INTRODUCTION TO DOGMATIC THEOLOGY ON THE BASIS OF THE XXXIX. ARTICLES of the Chureh of England. By the late E. A. LITTON, M.A. New Edition, Revised by the Rev. H. G. Grby, M.A., of WyclifiFe Hall, Oxford. Introductory Note by the Rev. Principal A. J. TAIT. Demy Svo, Cloth, IDs. 6d. net. TOWARDS A PERFECT MAN: Studies in the Making of Character (Second Series). By the Rev. henry W. CLARK. Cloth, 2s. net. By the same Author. STUDIES IN THE MAKING OF CHARACTER. Cloth, 2s. net. LAWS OF THE INNER KINGDOM. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net "Full of seed-thought to preachers and teachers." — The Churchman. SERMONS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS. Arranged and Edited by the Rev. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. Cloth, 2s. net. Vital Questions of the Day by the following leading Theologians : J. G. Addbrley, M.A. ; Preb. J. Wakeford, B.D. ; J. E. Watts -Ditchfield, M.A. ; A J. Carlyle, D.D. ; Canon Masterman, M.A. ; Percy Dearmer, M.A. ; Canon Scott Holland, D.D. THE LIFE HEREAFTER. Thoughts on the Intermediate State. 2s. net. By the Rev. EDWARD HICKS, D.D., D.CL. THE CROSS IN HOLY SCRIPTURE. A Study of the Nature and Signifi cance of Christ's Redemptive Work. Cloth, 2s. net. By the Rev. JAMES LITTLE, B.A., S.T.D. LOMBARD STREET IN LENT. Edited by the Rev. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. Introduction by the Rev. Canon Scott Holland, D.D. Cloth, Is. 6d. net. GAINS AND LOSSES. By the Right Rev. G. H. S. WALPOLE, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. Stiff Purple Wrapper, Is. net ; Cloth Boards, Is. 6d. net. A SIMPLE GUIDE TO HOLY COMMUNION. Cloth, 6d. By the Right Rev. G. H. S. WALPOLE, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. IMITATION OF CHRIST. By THOMAS A KEMPIS. Faithfully Rendered into English Rhythm after the manner in which it was written. Preface by the late Canon Lidoon. Cloth, 2S. net; Velvet Leather, 4s. 6d. net. LONDON : ROBERT SCOTT. PATERNOSTpi ROW, E.C. specimen Page from a new Commentary on ROMANS 32 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS [chap. in. 23 for there is no distinction ; for all have sinned, and fall 24 short of the glory of God ; being justified freely by his xi. 22; Acts iii. 16; Gal. ii. 16, 20; Eph. iii. 1 2 ; Phil. iii. 9. no distinction] i.e. in that all fall short, ver. 23. There are differences in the degrees of falling short ; but one inch short of reach ing the other side of a chasm is as fatal as two yards. We must be careful to explain this. Harm is often done by statements which seem to imply that God cares not whether men are great or little sinners. God does regard those who seek to live uprightly, and He meets and rewards them by showing them His salvation ; as, e.g., to Cornelius, Acts x. i, etc. See Ps. 1. 23 ; Isa. Ixiv. 5 ; Rom. ii. 7, 10, II. But God's object is to begin by humbling men. So long as we think we can justify ourselves, we have a wrong principle within us of independence of Godj and our motive is selfish, not that of gratitude and love. See Gal. v. 6 ; 2 Cor. v. 14, 15, ix. 7 J John xiv. 15, 23, 24; and study Christ's dealings with inquirers, Luke x. 29, 30, etc.; Matt. xix. 21. 23. all have sinned] This may refer, according to the stricter use of the Greek tense here employed, to the fact that in Adam all fell; see chap. v. 14, etc. But more probably, as the English text runs, it is vague and refers to the fact that all are actual sinners. fall short] See note on ver. 22. The same word in Greek occurs in. Matt. xix. ao ; Mark x. 21; Luke XV. 14, xxii. 3j ; i Cor. i. 7 ; 2 Cor. xii. II ; Heb. vi. i, xii. 15, etc. of the glory of God] This may mean {a) the inherent glory of God, to see aud know which is man's highest good. See vi. 4; 2 Cor. iv. 4. 6; Eph. i, 12, 14; i Tim. i. II. Or {b) the glory which God intends to give His servants. See viii. 18 ; I Cor. ii. 7 j 2 Cor. iii. 18, iv. 17. The two are closely con nected. Cf. Ps. xxxvi. 9 ; Isa. lx. 20 ; John i. 14. 24. being, etc.] This verse contains many essential points of justification, viz. — (a) The firsi cause ox %o\az& — God — " his grace." See i Cor. i 30 ; 2 Cor. V. 18. (b) The condition — in one sense, none ; for it is " freely," by " grace," i.e. gratuitously, of free favour; in another sense, faith, which may thus be called the instrumental cause. See note on ver. 22. (c) The final cause, or object, is the justification of believers. {d) The meritorious cause — Christs redemption. Here is meant re demption in its ordinary widest sense, as also in Eph. i. 7 ; Col. i. 14; Heb. ix. 15. The primary idea is that of a ransom paid for some one. See words from the same root in Matt. xx. 28 ; Mark x. 45 ; I Tim. ii. 6; Luke i. 68, ii. 38, xxiv. 21 ; Tit. ii. 14; Heb. ix. 12; I Pet. i. 18. There are some pas sages where the kind of deliverance is not defined, Luke xxi. 28 ; Heb. xi. 35 ; Acts vii. 35. And in some the word is specially applied to the final stage of salvation, Rom. viii. 23; I Cor. i. 30; Eph. i. 14. But when used of Christ's death or blood, it clearly means that His sacrifice was an objective ransom for sinners. Various views have been taken — (i) For about a thousand years after Christj so far as any explanation was attempted, it was generally held that the ransom was paid to Satan. (ii) Then for some centuries the XTbe IReabets' Commentatig^ A Comprehenslva Commantapy. Baaad on tha Revisad Vapalon. THE FIRST VOLUME NOW READY THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS BY THE REV. PRINCIPAL H. G. GREY, M.A. DEMY Svo, CLOTH, 3s. 6d. NET. 'Y'HE COMMENTARIES, based on the English Revised * Version, are intended for the Clergy, Ministers, Christian Workers, Sunday School Teachers, and all Students of the Bible. They will be as far as possible simply written, will not shirk the difficulties of the text or the views of modern criticism, and will combine sound scholarship with the spirit of devotion, a careful explanation of the text with a reverent appreciation of the Book itself. There will be introductions to each volume, dealing with the history, date, occasion, etc., of the various books. THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. By the Rev. H. G. GREY, M.A. Cloth 3s. 6d. net. Principal A. J. Tait, in the Record, says : " Mr. Robert Scott's new series of commentaries (The Readers' Commentary) has made an excellent start . . . The comments on the texts are neither exclusively academic nor exclusively homiletic. They are not overloaded with detail, and at the same time they never become so thin as to lose attractiveness. Indeed, this well-judged balancing of a dual claim is one of tbe distinguishing merits of the work , . , It is admirable." THE 1st EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. By the Rev. DAWSON WALKER, D.D. THE 2nd EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. By the Rev. F. S. GUY WARMAN, B.D. THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. By the Rev. CYRIL EMMET, M.A. The Church Times, reviewing an earlier work by the Rev. Cyril Emmet, says : " We welcome Mr. Emmet as a notable addition to the ranks of theology. He is possessed of a sane judgment and a power of using his reading without being mastered bjr it. We shall greatly look forward to a more sustained e£fort from his pen." Particulars of othtr Volumes of ihe Readers' Commentary on application. LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS WORKS. By the Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, D.D. AN EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO S. MATTHEW. By the Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, D.D. With Full General and Greek Indices. Cloth, 12s. "By far the best and most useful EngUsh work on S. Matthew that has appeared in our generation. It is exactly the book for which students have been waiting many years. It is indispensable to the student of tbe Gospels as the best commentary on S. Matthew in the English language." — Guardian. "A valuable addition to the preacher's shelves. Dr. Plummer's work is pre-eminently readable and interesting, and his exposition is always sound and often masterly. This makes the book one of the best commentaries for the preacher we know. No student can give himself to its study without finding liis mind permanently enriched." — Preachers' Magazine. IPreaCberS of UO*&a^. Edited by the rev. j. STUART HOLDEN, M.A. Handsome Library- Binding. 3s. 6d. net each. HERE AND HEREAFTER. By the Rev. J. E. WATTS-DITCHFIELD, M.A. THE INEVITABLE CHRIST. By the Rev. Canon FREDERIC B. MACNUTT, M.A. THE CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT. By the Rev. JOHN M. E. ROSS, M.A. THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE REDEEMED. By the Rev. T. G. SELBY. CHRIST AND EVERY-DAY LIFE. By the Kev. W. E. CHADWICK, D.D. "Scholarly thought practically applied to the needs of every-day life." Church Family Newspaftr. THE FEAR OF THINGS. By the Rev. JOHN A. HUTTON, M.A. "New, in style, and thought, and rich suggestiveness." — Primitive Methodist. THE EXCHANGED CROWNS. By the Kbv. ALFRED ROWLAND, D.D. "Cultured and scholarly, a feast to educated readers." — Homiletic Review. REDEEMING VISION. By the Rev. J. STUART HOLDEN, M.A. Cloth, 3S. 6d. net. By the same Author. SUPPOSITION AND CERTAINTY. Cloth, 2s. net. ST. PAUL AND HIS CONVERTS: Studies in Typical New Testament Missions.By the Rev. HARRINGTON C. LEES, M.A. Cloth, is. net. "A gem, to be placed amongst our best-loved books." — The Record. THE FACT AND FEATURES OF THE LORD'S RETURN. By the Rev. HUBERT BROOKE, M.A. Cloth, 2s. net. THE VISION OF HIS FACE. By D. FARNCOMB. Introduction by Rev. J. Stuart Holden, M.A. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. CHRIST AND HIS CRITICS : Studies in the Person and Problems of Jesus. By the Rev. F. R. M. HITCHCOCK, M.A. Cloth, 2s. 6d net. By the same Author. SUGGESTIONS FOR BIBLE-STUDY. Cloth, 2s. net. LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. WORKS BY THE RT. REV. G. H. S. WALPOLE. D.D. {Bishop of Edinburgh). Life's Chance. Demy 8vo. Cloth gilt, 4s. 6d. net Personality and Power; or, the Secret of Real Influence. Fifth Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, 2S. 6d. net. "The book to give a boy when he takes up his life-work." — CmnmeniBealth. " A series of thoughtful addresses on the secret of real influence. The book is one well worth careful study ; its reflections will be found stimulating." — New Agt. " A thoughtful and beautiful tx>ok. These addresses are mature and sympathetic, and fitted to be most helpful. " — Church Family Newspaper. Vital Religion ; or, the Personal Knowledge of Christ. Twelfth Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, 2S. 6d. net. "The keynote in this interesting and beautiful book is tbe thought that religion is essentially the life of friendship and intimacy with God revealed in Jesus Christ " — Guardian. " This book has tha true tone of sincere and earnest piety, and the ring of honest conviction ; we like it, and we like the personality which seems to lie in peace and confidence tiehind it." — St. Andrew. "This is a fresh and interesting presentation of a perennially important subject. . . . The book is characterised by a spirit of true devotion to our Lord, and is marked throughout by earnestness of thought and appeal." — Life of Faith. The Kingdom of Heaven ; What it is and how we enter it. Third Edition. Crown Svo. Cloth, 2s. 6d. rut. " This timely and valuable contribution to current theological thought is full of ideas presented with much freshness, as well as scholarship and sanctified common-sense." — Guardian. "The value of this tK)ok is quite out of proportion to its size. Written with all Dr. Walpole's unfailing charm of spirit and Uterary grace it -mates the reader think." — Record. The above three volumes can be obtained in a spedal Presentation Edition, limp leather, full gilt back, gilt edges, silk register, 4s. 6d. net each. Gains and Losses. Crown Svo. Cloth boards, is. 6d. net. "Every line is worth reading, as all Bishop Walpole writes is marked by deep spiritual insight and sound common-sense." — Record. "A stimulating book, which should startle many into serious reflection." Guardian. Daily Teachings for the Christian Year. Selected and Arranged by the Bishop of Edinburgh. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. Presentation editions, paste grain, padded, gilt lettered, 7s. 6d. net ; morocco limp, round corners, gilt lettered, los. 6d. net, "Bishop Walpole has made an admirable collection of extracts from famous preachers, really reading like miniature sermons. They deal suitably with each day in tbe Christian Year." — Church Famil]/ Newspaper. Paraphrase Method of Bible Study. As recommended by the Bishop of Edinburgh. Paper, id., or 6s. 3d. per 100 ; wrapper, 2d., or I2S. 6d. per 100. Edited by the Rt. Rev. G. H. S. WALPOLE and the late Rev. C. BARTON. Handy Atlas to Church and Empire. Comprising 120 Maps, Plates, and Statistical Tables, showing the Advance of Missions in AU Parts of the British Empire to the Present Day. Cloth, is. fid. net. Mr. Eugene Stock : " It is simply delightful, full of valuable information." B1.SHOP OF St. Albans: "Most admirable." Bishop of St. Gbruains : " Excellent both in design and execution, and must prove of great service to all interested in Foreign Missions." LONDON: ROBERT SCOTT, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. WORKS BY THB RT. REV. G. H. S. WALPOLE. D.D. {Bishop of Edinburgh). Communion and Offering. Simple Instructions upon the Office of Holy Communion, together with Helps for the carrying out of same. Fifth Edition. Limp doth, uniform with Prayer Book, is. ; leather, 3S. ; lambskin, 3s. ; Persian calf, 3s. 6d. Canon Benhau : "It strikes me, at this moment, as about the best on Holy Communion which I have ever seen." The Rev. B. M. O. Hancock : " I feel the book is worthy of unqualified recommendation. It meets a real need ; the devotions and instructions are fervid, wise, and catholic." "The value of this excellent Uttle book is very great. It is for busy people who want short and good prayers, and who welcome sound instruction if it can be briefly given. . . . The whole forms a singularly complete and convenient manual, and we cannot doubt that it will l3e widely adopted." — Guardian. Holy Communion, A Simple Guide to. Cloth, 6d. The People's Prayer Book. Containing also the People's Psalter, 2S. 6d. n»t ; combined with Hymns Ancient and Modern. Cloth, 3S. net. A practical Prayer Book, containing the order of Morning and Evening Prayer, with the People's Psalter and Hymns Ancient and Modern. Bound in one volume, with Explanatory Notes of the proper meaning and purpose of each portion of the service. The book, in its handy and compact form, meets a distinct need, and will prove a real help to private and public devotion. The People's Psalter. Containing the Psalms of David, together with the Litany and the Canticles and Hymns of the Church. With the Pointing of the Cathedral Psalter (by permission). Foolscap Svo. Cloth, 2S. 6d. "The usefulness of an already useful and popular work has been greatly increased. " — Guardian. " This Psalter forms a volume that will prove useful and instructive to many a worshipper, and it should have a large circulation." — Oxford Chronicle. The People's Psalter. A Plain Book for those who wish to use the Psalms in Church with Intelligence and Devotion. Seventh Edition. Cloth, 2s. ; leather, 3s. ; lambskin, 3s. fid. ; Persian calf, 4s. fid. Bishop of Durham : " The book seems to be admirably adapted for its purpose, and I trust it will have a very wide usefulness. " " We think that this little book may be a useful help by suggesting ways in which difierent Psalms may be applied to present-day dimculties and to the problems and anxieties with which the Church is always confronted." — Guardian. Christ in the Home. Suitably bound in white, with gilt design and gilt top, fid. net ; cloth gilt, is. net. Presentation Edition, velvet leather, gilt edges, silk register, 3s. net. " Canon Walpole's teaching is so emphatically timely, so faithful, so completely calculated to elevate and purify bome ideals, that we commend it unreservedly." Sunday Strand. The Doctrine of the Resurrection. Paper Covers, 2d. " In the Mount of the Lord it shall be seen." The frontispiece from "Communion and Offering." Reprinted on cardboard and enlarged, size 16 ins. by 104 ins., for use in Classes. 4d. net. The Litany Divided and Arranged for Particular Inter cession. Demy iSmo. S pp. One Halfpenny. LONDON : ROBERT SCOTT, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 03918 5211 r;f^|^|^,. a-.---