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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

SOURCES OF HISTORY

PENTATEUCH

SIX LECTURES DELIVERED IN PRINCETON THEO
LOGICAL SEMINARY, ON THE STONE
FOUNDATION, MARCH, jSSa

SAMUEL C. BARTLETT, D.D., LL.D.
President of Dartmouth College

New York
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY
900 BROADWAY, COR. 20th STREET

Copyright, 1883,
Bv Anson D. F. Randolph & Companv

ST. JOHNLAND PRINTED PV
STEREOTVPE FOUNDEV. EDWARD O. JENKINS,
SUFFOLK CO., N. V. ao NORTH WILLIAM ST., N. V.

CONTENTS

LECTUEE FIRST.
THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY  1
LECTUEE SECOND.
EARLY MAN  36
LECTUEE THIED.
THE EAELY AETS  76
LECTUEE FOUETH.
THE EAELY CONSANGUINITIES  116
LECTUEE FIFTH.
THE EAELY MOVEMENTS OF THE NATIONS . . 148
LECTUEE SIXTH.
THE EAELY DOCUMENTS  180
APPENDIX.
EXTEACT FEOM STRACK ON THE PENTATEUCH . 217

SOURCES OF HISTORY IN" THE
PENTATEUCH.

LECTURE FIRST.
THE EAELIE.ST COSMOGONY.
The five books of Moses, like the Revela
tion of which they form the grand propyl^-
um, have in our day been chiefly put upon
the defensive. As many a writer, indebted
to the Christian system for his ethics, has
received the gift and disparaged the source,
80 have a large class of investigators gained
invaluable and indispensable aid from the
Pentateuch, and then endeavored to use its
own frank utterances to invalidate its autho
rity. And so the portico has been viewed
rather as a beleageured fortress.
I propose in this brief course of lectures
to abandon the negative position and set
forth in the direct and affirmative aspect
the claims of the Pentateuch as a book of
origins, containing the sources of all our

2 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
earliest consecutive knowledge, and alone
solving those great questions concerning the
human race which must be asked and which
lie otherwise unanswered. While an unpar
alleled assiduity and variety of research are
enlarging the boundaries of our knowledge
of the past, and a marvellous ingenuity is
unlocking the historic secrets which seemed
to have perished with their original possess
ors, it remains none the less true that these
results are fragmentary and often incoherent,
till they are laid beside the one central and
continuous story. This is the substantive ac
count, they are the adjuncts. For unexplored
centuries down to the time of him who is
called the Father of History, the Pentateuch
walks alone but with unfaltering step over
the pathway of the past. And it is begin
ning to appear more and more clearly, as I
shall attempt incidentally to show, that our
function is not to defend it, much less to
apologize for it, but to unfold, explain and
follow its guidance, properly understood, in
the well-grounded assurance that it will give
more light than it receives from these mod
ern researches, that they are to be brought
thither in good degree to be tested, and that
they must be laid beside it in order to give
them any complete coherence and valid sig-

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY, 3
nificanoe. And in a great measure their use
is to serve as furnishing the illustrative facts,
whereby its brief statements and often ob
scure hints shall be clearly understood. In
discussing this subject it is inevitable to
begin with the familiar if not hackneyed
theme of The Earliest Cosmogont. The dis
cussion is by no means superfluous. For
perhaps no theme has suffered more in the
handling, whether from friendly or hostile
pens. Largely, if not chiefly, from misap
prehension of the aim and method.
All fair criticism of any composition must
proceed from a recognition not only of its
nature, as poetry, philosophy, narrative and
the like, but, if it be history, of the class for
whom it is written, the end in view, and
therefore the method adopted. To deal fairly
with the Creation-narrative such consideration
is absolutely indispensable. I address my
self therefore first to these questions. What
then is the nature of the composition ?
Now, then, it is idle to designate this sim
ple record as anything else than a narrative.
To call it a parable as some have done, or a
psalm of Creation with others, is doing vio
lence to the most obvious facts. There are
psalms of Creation, pre-eminently the one hun
dred and fourth psalm, which, as Von Hum-

4 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
boldt" has well said, represents "the image
of the Cosmos," sketching with a few bold
touches the whole universe, the heavens and
the earth. That is manifestly poetry. But if
any records in the Old Testament read like
plain veritable history, the first chapter of
Genesis surely is one of them. Nothing could
be more sober, simple, matter-of-fact.
But for whom was it written ? For no one
class, but for all classes, ages, races, condi
tions, — for mankind. This fact carries con
sequences. With what aim was it written? Clearly,
not for its own separate value, but as a need
ful brief introduction to the revelation of God
for man's redemption, — a preliminary explana-.
tion. Again, not chiefly for his intellectual
education, but for his moral enlightenment
and religious impression; not for complete
ness of science, but for the uses of duty and
piety. This too carries consequences.
These and other considerations fix our at
tention on the metlwd of the narrative — a
matter of vital importance for its right inter
pretation. A failure to recognize distinctly
the writer's method is wholly to lose the clue
to any right apprehension or even fair treat
ment of the record.
' Humboldt's "Cosmos," ii. pp. 58-9 (Am. Trans.)

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 5
(1.) The first fact of method that we are
bound to consider, is its singular, I might
well say, its amazing brevity. The narrative
is here foreshortened to an unparalleled de
gree. Some thirty short verses are made to
contain the whole formation of this universe,
from its inception to its completion. Now
casting aside all the wilder claims sometimes
made for hundreds and thousands of millions
of years' since life began, and taking the
more moderate estimate of Sir William Thom
son, some years ago, of from seventy to one
hundred millions of years,' or the later and
much more moderate estimate of Tait* which
gives from ten to fifteen millions as the past
limit of the present order of things — the time
since the globe became fitted for the exist
ence of life — or the later estimate of Professor
C. A. Young" which assigns eighteen millions
2 Thus Haeckel: "The organic history of the earth must
not be calculated by thousands of years, but by palseon-
tologioal or geological periods, each of which comprises
many thousands of years and perhaps even millions or
milliards of thousands of years." "It is most advisable
from a philosophical point of view to conceive this period
of creation to be as long as possible " (" History of Crett-
tion," ii. p. 337).
3 Geike iuhis " Geology " (London, 1S82, p. 55,) still fa-
vors "not much less than a hundred million years."
4 "Eecent Advances of Physical Science," p. 167.
' "The Sun," p. 277.

6 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
of years as the longest limit of the past dura>
tion of the solar system, we should have on
the highest estimate, an average of from three
to five millions of years, and on the lowest
estimate, of half a million of years, to a verse.
What an unexampled compression 1 Suppose
a writer were required distinctly and vividly
to set forth the history of the world for six
thousand years, or of Europe for nineteen
hundred, or of America for two hundred and
fifty, in the compass of thirty sentences, what
would be the result? I can think of nothiii;:;
whereby to illustrate the process so eff"ectii-
ally as an attempt to draw a map of Nortli
America in the space of a square inch. Con
sider how details must disappear; rivers,
mountains and lakes of great magnitude are
wholly lost; the manifold indentations ofthe
coast give way to straight or slightly bent
lines; and a few brief strokes of the pencil
take the place of an indefinite amount and
variety of configurations. It is but an out
line sketch, — correct but necessarily incom
plete. Now in like manner the exceeding
brevity of this narrative necessitates (a) the
omission and disregard of details. It is and
can be but a graphic outline sketch, drawn
with bold characterizing strokes, overlooking
all minor particulars, even all modifying qual-

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 7
ifications and minute exceptions. This fact
at once obviates the necessity and propriety
of dealing with and looking for any but the
great characterizing features. If, for exam
ple, some lower (marsupial)' form of mammal
life anticipated the great outburst of mam
mals upon the earth we can no more expect
that the narrative should specify it than that
our square-inch map should recognize Curri
tuck Inlet or Cape Ann. The only expansion
it admits is the rhetorical fulness of expres
sion which shall make clear, impressive and
vivid its sweeping outline statements.
This brevity carries another feature, viz., (6)
a continuous forward movement and final dis
missal of facts once narrated in their order.
This is a feature of the narrative most im
portant to be recognized. It passes steadily
on from stage to stage, with the successive
steps, or rather germs of progress. It marks
the initiation of one stage of the creation, then
proceeds to another, but never afterwards re
sumes its account of the former though it
may have been a long-continued process, not
intermitted even when another supervenes.
The narrative describes each new movement
in succession, and then dismisses it finally.
' e. g.. The Miorolestes and Dromatherium, marsupials
and therefore semiviviparous, in the Trias.

8 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
And from this fact follows another noticeable
and important feature of the narrative, viz.,
(c) that the announcement and dismissal of
a given set of phenomena, — any distinct branch
of the creative work, — seeing that it is not to
be resumed and further narrated in the sequel,
is summed up and described as a whole, in its
completeness. It is the briefest possible method
of dispatching the subject. This fact meets
us unmistakably in regard to the formation
of the continents and the vegetable system,
in regard to the introduction of all the various
forms of life, and even, as we have reason to
believe, in reference to the functions of the
heavenly bodies, — each of which processes
was the work of long ages.
This singular condensation, with its three
subordinate points, of grand characterization
with omission of details, steady forward move
ment without recapitulation, and the summing
up and dismissal of each branch of the process,
announced in its totality and completeness,
removes nearly all the real and serious diffi
culties of the narration. Other less serious,
though more obvious occasions of question
ing are met by considering,
(2.) Another governing quality of method,
viz., its design to be intelligible to the hu
man race. This purpose carries by necessity

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 9
certain qualities which require only to be
mentioned, to be recognized: (a) the narra
tive is, as a description, thoroughly popular
and not in the slightest degree scientific. It
sets forth obvious and recognizable results,
and makes no attempt at a scientific account
of the processes. A statement of the scien
tific aspects of the case, had it been revealed
to the narrator, would have found, for more
than three thousand years, not only no per
son capable of comprehending, but none cap
able of receiving it. Such a narrative would
have been, down to the present century, a
hopeless stumbling-block at the threshold of
the sacred word. But the sacred history avoids
everything that is scientific, and is, as was in
dispensable, completely popular in its method.
And one very noticeable aspect of the narra
tive viewed in this light is that, instead of
fixing the attention upon the process, it de
scribes quite commonly by the result, — that re
sult being often simple enough of recognition as
a mere outward sign, but marking changes the
most immense and stupendous, — such changes
as must have preceded the appearance of a
visible welkin, or the disclosure of sun, moon
and stars. (6) Another kindred feature is
the necessary absence of everything like a
technical term. The Hebrew language, in-

10 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
deed, offered no such mechanism of speech;
If the case had been otherwise, it would have
been wholly alien from the writer's aim and
method. The narrative throughout is clothed
with all the drapery and attractiveness of the
language and scenery of human Hfe and ac
tion. We have no universe, ro nSv or rot
¦ttdvTcx, but "the heavens and the earth"; no
mammals, but " cattle and creeping thing and
beast ofthe earth" ; no atmosphere (as Gaussen '
would find in the "firmament"), but simply
"heaven," or the visible sky; no chaos, but
"emptiness and desolation" (Hebrew); no
cosmic gas, nor chemical elements uncon-
densed and un combined, but "the deep"; no
molecular action, but the " brooding" of God's
spirit. When the grains and the fruit-trees
are described as bearing "after their kind"
it is therefore simply characterizing by the
most obvious marks, and no assertion, as some
unwisely claim, of any recondite doctrine of
immutability of species. Nor can we fairly
find, even with the eminent Benjamin Pierce,
the "light" put as a representative of "the
forces of Nature " — a scientific conception. It
stands simply for itself, — light. God himself,
instead of putting forth volitions, "says," as
though audibly speaking, "let there be light";
' Gaussen, "The World's Birth Day," pp. 93 seq.

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 11
he gives names to the objects; he communes
with himself; he contemplates the results with
satisfaction, pronouncing thera "good," "very
good." It is all part of the graphic, untech-
nical, human method, which should meet the
apprehension and arrest the attention of any
and every member of the human race. And
it is strictly in keeping with this same method,
that the several stages of the creative process
are represented under the vivid aspect of so
many successive day's works of the Creator,
— which, as Bunsen suggests, ' is the simplest
mode of viewing the whole matter. And thus
instead of geological epoch or era, for which
the Hebrew language offered no phraseology
and the human mind for many thousand years
no receptivity, we have God's " day," the vast
extent of which the researches of future ages
alone should unfold. But of this more in the
sequel, (c). Another obvious as well as need
ful aspect of this method, is that it is purely
a phenomenal description. All is represented
as it appeared, or would have appeared, to
the eye of the beholder. And this fact has
even suggested to Godet, Kurtz, Miller and
others, the idea of an original revelation in
vision, by a series of what might be called
dioramic representations passing before the
8 "Bibelwerk," Gen. i. 5.

12 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
mental eye, opened and closed by its succes
sion of darkness and light. Such a supposi
tion, though not an impossible one, and though
in some respects facilitating the explanation,
is by no means necessary. It is enough to
recognize the unmistakable fact that the de
scription is phenomenal — not necessarily vis
ional, but chiefly visual or optical. This fea
ture appears beyond question in the case of
the heavenly bodies, described not as they
are, the sun a luminary, the moon a reflect
ing satellite, but as they appear in the hea
vens, the one to rule the day, the other the
night. This indeed may be emphasized as a
test case in regard to the character of the
whole narrative. But the same characteristic
appears more or less clearly in all the other
parts of the history — the visible heaven di
viding waters from waters, the obvious dis
tinctions of the forms of vegetation, the
" stretched out " creatures, the winged crea
tures flying "on the face'" (Hebrew) of the
expanse of heaven, and " everything that
creepeth upon the earth," — for so they look
upon the great globe — all of it phenomenal
and even pictorial.
All these qualities of method grow so nat
urally out of the aim of the narrator, and lie

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 13
so manifestly on the face of the narrative,
that when once clearly stated, they cannot
fail to be recognized as alike true and impor
tant. But the actual non-recognition of them
has been the constant stumbling-block. No
intelligent apprehension and no fair and can
did treatment of the narrative can overlook
their bearing. We might as well ignore the
dramatic character of Job or the figurative
phraseology of the Biblical poetry. This is
narrative, history, — but narrative written in
a thoroughly popular style and method, in or
der to reach all men. I lay aU emphasis on
these several principles, because in them lies
the clue to the whole narrative ; and its proper
interpretation comes from their application.
Applying now these true and simple princi
ples to the narrative, how readily we bring
out in this record, made in the comparative
infancy of the world, the sharp bold outline
sketch, of which the world in its supposed
maturity has only within a century been able
to supply the multitudinous and often con
fused details, and by laying them beside that
original sketch, so clear that all the world has
understood it in every essential feature, find
that there lay the true germ and outline of
the whole. The chief liability to inadequate
conception was on the one point of the lapse

14 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
of time, — a point on which all conception is
inadequate, and on which it would have been
not only needless, but worse than useless, to
attempt conveying an approximate impression
in advance of the slow gropings and discov
eries of investigation. Yet even here the ac
count is not destitute of clear hints by which
bright minds like Augustine's long ago pro
fited, to see that the " day " of God's working
was of unknown duration, and might be to
man's day somewhat in the ratio of God to
man.' Shall I now rapidly unfold this sketch of
creation in the double light of its own obvious
plan of description, and the latest results of
investigation. " The beginning " was evidently prior to
all existences in this universe of ours, except
that of God the Creator. The "heavens and
the earth" are clearly the visible universe.
"Creation" in the first verse cannot well be
understood of anything short of absolute or
igination, not alone or chiefly (1) because the
' Says Augustine: " What kind of days they are is either
very difScult or quite impossible for us to think, much
more to express. Tor we see that the days we know have
their evening only by the setting of the sun, and their
morning by its rising. But the first three were spent with
out the sun, which is related to have been made on the
fourth" ("Ciuitate Dd," xi. 6, 7).

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 15
Hebrew N'ja is the proper word to express
such a thought, even more specific than the
English " create," being used forty-eight times
in the Kal conjugation and always having God
for its subject, never accompanied with an ac
cusative of material, and being employed to
describe the Divine production, in the king
dom of nature or of grace, of what had no exist
ence before, nor even alone (2) because such
is apparently the exposition given in Heb. xi.
Z ; but necessarily (3) by the exigencies of the
narrative — inasmuch as every plastic process
is subsequently described, and so exhaustively
as to leave nothing for the " creation " except
origination of the material. If it be said that
the absolute origination of matter passes all
comprehension and conception, we reply, of
course, so do all things ultimate ; and it is, so
to speak, less incomprehensible that an al
mighty power could originate it, than that an
inert material could have been self-existent,
self-originated, or eternal.
It is important to observe that the second
verse cuts clear of the universe at large, or
even of the solar system, and confines itself to
"the earth." This fact would seem to pre
clude the view advanced by so high scientific
authorities as Guyot and Dana, that in a sub
sequent verse the dividing of the waters from

16 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the waters was the separation of the earth
from the nebula of which it was a part, and
forces us to a simpler and narrower explana
tion. "The earth" — to which our attention
is now confined — was after its creation "with
out form and void," literally " wasteness and
emptiness," in other words a chaotic mass,
described by two archaic Hebrew words,
inhj mn, and in the next breath designated
as " the deep " ; perhaps because no other than
this last term could so vividly describe the
vast, confused, unstable and, it may be, heav
ing and roaring mass of material in its earlier
stages, as the vast ocean abyss. For "the
spirit of God" at length "moved" or rather
hr coded upon it, began a steady and long
continued agency, — there being no necessity
of limiting this process to the initial stage,
inasmuch as the word "brood" hints other
wise. And in this " brooding," the chaos deep
is now described as "the waters," a phrase
which botli retains the figure of the ocean and
may suggest the mobile, not to say fluid, con
dition of the material, which scientists affirm
to have been once gaseous or nebulous. There
was a stage when all was darkness ; then came
the creation of light, " offspring of heaven first
born." Nothing would help us to explain the
whole transaction recorded ip a single verse

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 17
(3rd) SO well as the acceptance not alone of
the nebular theory — though not cleared of all
objections, e. g., the lack of certain elements
in the sun which are prominent in the earth,
— but even of the plausible speculations of
Lockyer, viz., that "the chemical elements
themselves are one kind of matter under
differently aggregated forms, at first dif
fused through the universe; that atom co
alesced with atom, singly or in groups, and
that the most primitive of our elements, such
as hydragen, were formed. Further and fur
ther aggregations took place, the equally dif
fused matter became more and more con
densed, in certain parts forming distinct
nebulae, which went on shrinking more and
more, and increasing in density as they di
minished in size, until, to take a single in
stance, the matter which uniformly filled a
space much greater than the entire solar
system, became condensed into the bodies
of the sun and planets, leaving between them
only that thin impalpable substance to which
we give the name of ether. The shock of
the atoms as they struck against each other,
not only gave them a motion of revolution,
but raised them to a temperature of which
we have scarcely any conception, and which
rendered the existence not only of com-

18 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
pounds, but of many of the actual metals
themselves, impossible."" This would help
us, if we might accept it, though it is not
indispensable. Fixing now the attention on the supposed
stage of the process when the great chemical
combination and condensation began in good
earnest, accompanied by an intense and in
conceivable heat — when the material of our
earth suddenly shrank from what Dawson
suggests" as two thousand times its present
diameter towards some approximation to its
present dimensions — and you have now that
intense molecular activity which, as Professor
Dana remarks, " would shoW' itself instantly by
a manifestation of light," and "a flash of light
through the universe would be the first an
nouncement of the work begun."
But observe that the statement, " there was
light,'' gives a fact that is not so much signi
ficant for itself as in its being the sign, the re
markable sign, of the most enormous changes
not otherwise set forth. This, it will be ob
served again, is characteristic of the whole
narrative. The existence of light before the
manifestation of the sun, and independent of
it, was the stumbling-block of Voltaire a cen-
>o Brunton's "Science and the Bible," p. 340-1.
11 "Story ofthe Earth and Man," p. 9.

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 19
tury since, and of an English churchman" but
twenty years ago, but offers no difficulty to a
well taught school-boy. This sudden breaking
in of light upon the scene of long preceding
darkness, like an evening followed by a morn
ing, falls in with, perhaps gives rise to, the
imagery of a divine day's work, thenceforward
maintained through the narrative, — although
afterwards the terms morning and evening
are perhaps generalized to denote the begin
ning and- ending of a formative period, or
(Lange) "the interval of a creative day."
That this word " day " does not signify a solar
day we are warned by the fact stated in the
narrative, that the solar day was not yet pro
vided for, a fact which long ago intimated to
such minds as Augustine's and Bede's " that
a solar day was not intended. When the
narrative ascribes the formation of the oceans
and continents to a part of one day, it therein
describes a fact which by the laws of hydro
statics could not completely take place in any
'^C. A. Goodwin, Oxford, "Essays and Keviews," p. 246.
13 Says Bede (Comment, in Pentateuchum, Vol. ii. p. 194,
Migne), " ' Unus dies.' Portassis hie diei nomen totius
temporis nomen est, et omnia volamina sseculorum hoc
vocabulo includit.'' In his Hexaemeron (i. D.) he speaks
however as though the day were of twenty-four hours ac
complished by the going and coming of the Ught, as now
of the sun.

20 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
part of a solar day. When it employs this
word " day " with four, if not five different ap
plications, in this one narrative (vs. 5, 14, ii.
4), it thereby warns against the possibility of
confining it to this one narrow meaning."
When it mentions God's " day " of rest from
creating, it mentions a day which has con
tinued now for many thousand years, and
constrains us by the rules of consistency to
recognize also his creative days as protracted
periods. The Biblical idiom and the popular
speech of man alike justify an indefinite ex
tension of the terms," such as the discoveries
of science compel. If it be said that the clos
ing consecration of the seventh day proves
that we are dealing only with a solar day, we
answer, the consecration of our seventh day
does not necessarily identify the actual length
of God's and man's day of rest, but only the
ratio in the two cases ; as God's resting day to
his working days, so is man's resting day to
his working days, the seventh to each of the
six. The whole series of events was on a
" In verse fifth it designates the total succession of light
and darkness when there was no sun, and also the light
portion of that period; in verse fourteenth, the solar day,
and also the light portion of that day; in ch. ii. 4, appar
ently, the whole time of the creation.
1' Day of salvation, visitation, prosperity, adversity; his
day, my day, etc.

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 21
colossal scale to which all terms of actual
measurement are alike inadequate. And in
treating this topic I prefer saying that the
tchole process is represented under the figure of
a series of day's works, rather than to insist
solely on a flexible use of the word "day " —
though the latter is a tenable position."
It may be added that the whole aim and in
struction of the narrative were subserved just
as well by leaving for the future unfoldings
of exploration, the incomprehensible, and, till
recently, incredible length of these periods of
creation. The attempted disclosure would
even have marred the influence and the use
fulness of the narrative.
We can proceed more rapidly. The sec
ond day is marked by the " firmament "
— the expanse — explained in the record
as being called heaven. The visible sky,
the blue welkin, is here designated, — not
(with Gaussen) the atmosphere, — which
would be too scientific. And the waters
below are the ocean, now at length able
i« Thus, though the case is not fuUy paraUel, I would
say that the parable of the unjust judge sets forth God's
acoessibleness to importunate prayer; but here, plainly,
we cannot properly say that God is represented as an un
just judge.
On the ratio of God's days and man's, see Eeusch,
"Bibel und Natur," p. 128. Bonn, 1876.

22 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
to lie on the cooler crust of the earth,
while the waters above, the clouds, are seen
floating, separated by the visible expanse. For
the y'pT is not ihefirmamientum of the Vulgate
(something hammered solid,) but something
hammered out thin,, spread out, an expanse.
But observe that this visible sky, with the
waters lying beneath and floating aloft, is, like
the " light " of the previous day, but the rec
ognizable and obvious sign of untold, enor
mous changes which have meanwhile gone
forward. There has been an amazing con
densation and combination of elements, in
conceivable heat and incandescence of a
gaseous and molten mass, a long cooling off"
till at length the surface is lower than the tem
perature 212 degrees, and the disengagement
of a surrounding atmosphere, widely different
from that of to-day, yet such that while a uni
versal ocean swathes the earth (as science also
affirms), dense vapors are borne aloft. All this
vast history, as we now know, is indicated, or
covered up by the simple mention of this vis
ible sign, a sky with waters above and below
it; just as we answer the question, how cold is
" Dana mentions that Helmholtz demands three hun
dred and fifty millions of years for the cooling from 2000
degrees to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. "Geology," p. 147.
The statement is given as a curiosity. "The estimate of
another author," says Dana "is four times this."

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 23
the day, by giving the visible sign, — the mercu
ry stands at — 20 degrees. Such is the method.
The next stage of progress, the third day,
is indicated by two grand strokes of the pen
cil or pen. First the formation of the conti
nents, accompanied by the withdrawal of the
ocean to its bed; a process now well known to
have preceded all further development. The
cooling earth wrinkled its huge folds and
reared the oldest mountain chains. Here ob
serve the method. This new order of things
— the change — is stated once for all, and, with
this brief announcement, dismissed; although
the process continued through succeeding ages
usually reckoned 'as millions of years. The
first continents were, comparatively speak
ing, meagre strips of land. In North America
the chief original nucleus, the oldest known
rocks, (" not the absolute oldest," Le Conte)
lay in the British Provinces, with the outlying
Adirondacks, part of the Appalachian line, isl
ands in New England, patches in Nova Sco
tia and New Brunswick, a Pacific coast range
in Mexico, and various detached areas in the
Mississippi basin west, as the Black Hills of
Dakota. The European Continent was chiefly
an archipelago as late as the Devonian era
(Dana). But since their first emergence the
continents have been enlarging and the moun-

24 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
tains rising — the Eocky mountains not less
than eleven thousand feet in the Tertiary age ;
and the period of comparative rest seems not
to have been reached till since the great glacial
epoch. But the narrative has done with it in
the first and final announcement."
The other event of this third day was the in
troduction of vegetable life. The fragile na
ture of plants, and especially of the earliest,
taken in connection with the vast vicissitudes
since those remotest eras, is a good reason
why they are not found in proper form so far
back as the narrative requires. But the sci
entific probability, if not certainty, of their
existence antecedent, as a'whole, to that of
animal life, appears from the facts (1) that " a
18 Thus, Le Conte affirms that the end of the Cretaceous
was "pre-eminently a time of continent-making," there
occurring at that time " a bodily upheaval of the whole
western half of the [American] continent, by which the
great interior sea which previously divided America into
two continents was abolished, and the continent became
one." So also "tne end of the Jurassic had been pre
eminently a time of mountain-making" ("Geology," p.
475). Dana carries out this last point in detail (" Geol."
p. 754) by estimating (on the basis of forty-eight millions
of years from the beginning of the Silurian period to the
present) that the interval from the beginning of the Pri
mordial "to the upUfts and metamorphism of the Green
mountains was 20,000,000 years and to the completion of
the Alleghanies 36,000,000."

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 25
temperature admitting of the existence of veg
etation would have been reached, in the pro
cess of refrigeration, before that of animal life :"
(2) that animals require plants for food, find
ing no nutriment in inorganic matter; (3) and
still more positively from the immense amount
of graphite with its carbon and of iron ore far
down in the Laurentian rocks, (and in Europe
anthracite,) implying former vegetable life."
So say the geologists. As the earliest vege
tables appear to have been sea-weeds, their
relics could not be expected in any more de
fined condition.
Here we meet one of the few, at first sight,
serious difficulties. The writer describes the
whole vegetable world, including "the herb
yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit."
But we find by exploration that these belong
mostly to a very late period of the geological
history, some of them not long antedating the
human race. How is this? The answer is
very simple. Just as in the case of the con
tinents, and later in regard to the forms of
animal life, the writer despatches the whole
19 Dana, "Geology," p. 157. Le Conte, "Geology," p.
274. Geike, "Geology," p. 639. Geike says, "Dr. Sterry
Hunt has caUed attention to these [iron] ores as proving
the precipitation of iron by decomposing vegetation on a
more gigantic scale than at any subsequent geological
epoch."

26 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
subject with one stroke. Since he will no; re
cur to the fact, he describes in its complete
ness that of which he now narrates the in
ception, 'and so dismisses it finally. This is
his method.
But for a long time after the simpler forms
of vegetation were possible, the geologist has
shown us that the atmosphere and the earth's
surface were in a very diflerent condition from
their present state, and wholly unfitted for the
present forms of animal life. Not only must
the higher temperature have filled the air
constantly with a vast amount of watery.
Viipor, wrapping it (to use the figure of
Le Conte,) as in a double blanket, and mak
ing of it a great conservatory or forcing hot
house, but it was loaded with all the carbon
that is now embedded in the coal formation
and the marble and limestone rocks, the chlo
rine and sulphurous acids of the various chlo
rides and sulphurets and sulphurs of the earth's
surface — " an atmosphere," says Sterry Hunt
"charged with acid gasses, and of immense
density.'"'" The fourth day's work is characterized by
the eventful fact that at length the light of
the heavenly bodies found its way through
and shone upon the earth. This again is but
20 Lecture before the Eoyal Institution of London, 1867

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 27
the striking sign of vast intervening but
undescribed changes, that had taken place
on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere.
It was a gradual process, for which it is not
easy to assign the exact and definite location
in order of time; some placing it (with Miller,
apparently) after the Carboniferous, others
better (with Dawson) after the Laurentian,
itself an era of immense duration." But
evidently it must have preceded any except
the lowest forms of animal life; and hence
the place it occupies in the narrative conforms
in gen eral to the kno wn order of n ature. Th eir
emergence as signs marking off the appointed
seasons, the "days" and the "years," was, as
has been said, the setting up of the great
world's clock, which has not varied the
hundred thousandth of a second, some have
claimed, in 2000 years.'"'
But we hurry on. The graphic pen-stroke
that opens the fifth day's work gives us the
21 "It is probable that the Archean era is longer than
aU the rest of the recorded history of the earth put to
gether" (Le Conte, "Geology," p. 274).
12 Mr. E. A. Proctor however says that " the resistance of
the tidal wave acts as a break constagjtly retarding the
earth's turning motion, though so slowly that fifteen hun
dred million years would be required to lengthen the ter
restrial day by one fuU houn" ("The Great Pyramid,"
p. 209, note).

28 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
waters bringing forth abundantly, — "swarm-
ing" with living creatures. The earliest life
was a long marine era, and the geologist, Le
Conte, unconsciously echoes 'the very words
of the Scripture when he says that the " early
seas literally swarmed with living beings,"
beginning iu the Cambriam, — and that 10,074
species have been found in the Silurian rocks
alone. Sea life was the first main exhibition.
And a mighty exhibition it was. For follow
ing close upon these Silurian species, and in
fact beginning there, came the vast outburst
of fishes that fill the Old Eed Sandstone, or
Devonian, so full.
But " the winged creature," says the narra
tive, was to fly "over the face" (Hebrew) of
heaven. And in this same Devonian series
they begin with the ephemeris — Platephemera
antiqua — of five inches spread of wings, and
two other species of neuroptera, expanding
in the Carboniferous into a dozen other known
species, one with a seven inch spread, and
culminating in the Jurassic and onward, with
those many kinds of monstrous winged crea
tures. Pterosaurs or flying lizards — some of
them extending their wings twenty-five feet
from tip to tip, and well-nigh darkening the
face of the sky — followed at length or accom
panied by the true bird with feathers — ^the

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 29
archaeopteryx, also of the Jurassic, and by
numerous species in the Cretaceous. '^'
But still another mark of this wonderful era
were the great monsters of sea and land —
^T\^ — the " stretched out " creatures. A sin
gular description; and a marvellous fulfil
ment does science record. Huge reptiles and
amphibians, in vast variety. The world of
fers, at the present time, of living species, not
more than six species fifteen feet in length,
the largest of them not longer than twenty-
five ; but then, from the Carboniferous through
the Cretaceous periods, not less than one hun
dred and seventy-five known species, rang
ing from twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, to eighty
feet in length, and one — the titanosaur of the
Jurassic — a hundred feet in length and at
least thirty feet in height, and possibly even
this excelled by the atlantosaurus.'^ How the
earth must have groaned with the tread of
these huge and multitudinous monsters, while
the face of the sky was shadowed by the
screaming pterosaurs, and the waters had
23 Sixteen species discovered in 1871 and 1872 by Marsh
in New Jersey and Kansas, two of them of gigantic size.
Sir John Lubbock, in 1881, adheres to the belief that
"some of the footsteps on the [eaiUer] Triassic rocks are
those of birds." "Inaugural Address to the British As
sociation," Sept. 27, 1881.
« Sir J. Lubbock, "Inaugural Address," Sept. 1881.

30 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
long teemed with marine life. Could three
short, bold sketches of the pen more admira
bly characterize the grand obvious features
ofthe ages from the Cambrian to the Eocene?
And now the sixth day, like the third, has
its double achievement. First came " the
cattle, beast of the earth and creeping thing '
— the popular description of the domestic ani
mals, the larger wild beasts, and the great
indefinite multitude of smaller creatures, pict
uresquely described as " creeping " or moving
over this great globe. Why need I dwell on
that magnificent fauna which followed the
abrupt disappearance of the great reptiles
and amphibians and marked the period of
the Eocene and onward, as the well-known
" age of mammals." It would be a thrice-told
tale to enumerate the wonderful exhibition
of the Meiocene, for example, beside which
the whole fauna of modern India "pales in
comparison " ; for there we find seven species
of elephants, five of rhinoceros, four of hippo
potamus, three of the horse tribe, the terrible
deinotherium and their associates, — although
it is only close upon the time of man's ap
pearing that we find his faithful companions,
the sheep, the ox, the goat and the dog. The
characterization of the period from the reptil
ian to the human is striking and admirable.

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 31
And at the close of all, — according to both
the records, — comes man himself, and, ac
cording to both alike, he came to "have do
minion" over the beast of the earth, the fish
of the sea, and the fowl of the air. In other
words, from his first discovered and rudest
vestiges, at the remotest periods, wherever
we meet him, he is a man, with a capacious
skull and a stalwart form, with weapons and
implements, the hunter of the reindeer, mam
moth, musk-sheep and woolly rhinoceros, and
elsewhere, and perhaps later, buried in his
skin-robe with ornaments of shells and per
forated teeth, with his red war paint, ^° and
use of fire, and, while living side by side with
the mammoth, carving on a plate of ivory
the likeness of his huge contemporary; — a
man with all the essential qualities of a man,
though far away from the radiating point of
the race — and no doubt degraded by the far-
off wanderings.
Now, in glancing back over these two rec
ords, in the book and in the rocks, which I
have thus summarily sketched, one may well
25 So thinks Dawson. "Nature and the Bible," p. 164.
It was red oxide of iron. This occupant of the cave of
Mentone was the contemporary of the cave-bear, and re
garded by LyeU as "palaeolithic," — although others ex
press doubt, chiefly, it would seem, because of the progress
indicated.

32 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
ask how it was possible with a few grand
pictorial strokes so distinctly, so vividly and
so intelligibly through all time, for the book
to have delineated, ages ago, in consecutive
order, the great procession of Nature from her
inception to her consummation. How we are
constrained to come at length, and to lay be
side this early coherent narrative the scattered
discoveries and deductions of a great multitude
of acute and exploring minds, and to bring
their discoveries and deductions into coherence
along the unbroken line of the ancient outline
sketch. And it is of no account if some minor
or exceptional detail is not reported. There
IS no room nor reason for such things in our
square-inch map.
See, then, the sources of the history of this
universe as they lie in a continuous series,
confirmed by all the latest research in at least
the following particulars :
1. Nature and its parts had a beginning.
So, certainly, science shows of all the parts;
and in regard to the whole, it leads us up step
by step by progressive approach and points
us to the beginning of all. "The whole course
and tendency of Nature so far as science now
makes out," says your Professor Young, "points
backward to a beginning." And he speaks not
only for such men as Tait, Thompson, Clerk

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 33
Maxwell, and Helmholtz, but in the name of
reason herself.
2. That all Nature is one great coherent sys
tem. On this point the latest science speaks
in even more and more emphatic terms.
3. That there was once a chaotic condition
in which no life existed nor was possible.
4. That the fitting up of this world was a
progressive work.
5. That light was antecedent to and inde
pendent of the sun's performing its function
for the earth.
6. That the earth was once sheeted with an
envelope of waters, " nearly or quite univer
sal," and the heavens with vapors.
7. That there came a time when continents
and seas began to form.
8. That vegetation next appeared anterior
to animal life.
9. That only at an advanced period in the
earth's progress did the heavenly bodies per
form for it their present functions.
10. That the early, if not earliest animal
life, was an immense sea-life.
11. That winged creatures follow, strikingly
conspicuous. 12. That an age of huge reptiles and am
phibians — sea and land monsters, — followed
or accompanied.

34 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
13. That after this came the great mamma
lian movement, as we call it.
14. That man was the greatest and last
step of the creative work.
15. That he made his appearance with his
peculiar and human faculties, lord and master
of the animal world.
To appreciate the marvellous character of
this account, I need not lay beside it the
fragmentary hints from Babylon, the absurd
ities of Hindoo, Egyptian, Chaldean cosmog
ony, or even the utterances of Hesiod. We
may turn to classic antiquity in her bloom,
and see the best she could say by an Augustan
poet: "Once, sea and earth, and sky that covers aU,
One face of nature were iu all the globe,
Which men caU chaos, rude and formless mass, —
Nothing but inert weight; discordant seeds
Of jarring things were all together heaped.
No sun was yielding to the world his light,
No growing moon renewed her youthful boms.
Nor hung the earth in circumambient air.
Balanced by its own weight; nor did the sea
Stretch out its arms along the distant coasts.
Where'er was earth, was also sea and air.
Thus faithless was the earth, pathless the wave,
And dark the air; its own fixedform belonged to none,
Bach thing resisted each; iu every part
Cold fought with hot, and moist with dry,
And soft with hard, the heavy with the light."

THE EARLIEST COSMOGONY. 35
Much of all this, whether called poetry or
not, it will be seen, is sheer nonsense. The
sequel avoids the same confusion only by con
fining itself to an imaginative picture of the
earth's surface and surroundings — including
however an actual division of sky and earth
into five zones, — closing indeed with man the
"ruler of the rest." Yet man's history is in
doubt, — ' ' whether fi-om seed divine
Formed by the maker of a better world.
Or the new earth just severed from the sky
Eetained some seed of kindred heaven, which,
Mix'd with water from the stream, Prometheus
Formed to the likeness ofthe mighty gods."
And yet before this shallow account of what
is called the origin of the world saw the light,
there had been for nigh fifty years beyond the
Tiber, within a mile of the palace where Ovid
waited on Augustus, a colony of captives in
whose homes undoubtedly there lay copies of
the Hebrew manuscript which more than a
thousand years had been proclaiming to men
the short, clear, simple story ofthe order ofthe
creation— the great primal source of history.

LECTURE SECOND.
EAKLT MAN.
It will be observed that nothing in the first
chapter of the Pentateuch is decisive for or
against the theory of evolution. No utter
ance therein contained informs us whether
the production of all these various occupants
of the earth and seas was a direct or mediate
process. If there is a statement conflicting
with the evolution theory in its extent, it is
to be found rather in the second chapter, at
the creation of woman. We need not be pre
cipitate in dealing with the subject. The
scientific objections to the theory, in its ex
treme form, have always seemed to me even
more insuperable than the scriptural ones.
It is not necessary to have spent one's life in
collecting or exploring all the facts of natural
history to understand the force of the reason
ing employed upon these facts. It is com
petent for any clear-headed thinker to say
whether that reasoning is sound or unsound.

EARLY MAN. 37
One can readily admit what has long been
known, the fact of very great varieties exist
ing in any species — varieties often suddenly
produced and yet permanent, as in the otter
breed of sheep and the Niata cattle. But
they are, so far as has yet been shown, how
ever great their deviation, kept within such
limits as not altogether to lose their normal
character. Perhaps no greater range of vari
ation is found than in the hundred and fifty
races of dogs, more or less, from Spitz and poo
dle to bull-dog, St Bernard and Newfoundland.
Yet in quality and character, however devious
in detail, they are evermore unmistakably dogs.
The theory of a gradual evolution requires
an infinity of time which astronomers find
themselves less and less able to grant, while
its common accompaniment of natural selec
tion as the sufficient explanation has been
often shown to be, in Mivart's words, "a
puerile hypothesis" and encounters the ob
stinate facts of species like the globigerina
and the terebratula caput serpentis remaining
unchanged from the Cretaceous to the present
time, and the lingula even from the Cambrian,'
together with the universal absence of the al
leged connecting links from genus to genus;
1 St. George Mivart, "Contemporary Eeview," 1880, p.
37. Am. Eeprint.

38 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
as it encounters, on the other hand, the
startling abruptness of the entrance of many
a new and multitudinous species, not ac
counted for by any supposed loss of inter
mediate strata, as in the unbroken geological
transition from the Silurian to the Devonian,
and from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary; and
the theory of evolution per saltum also fails of
showing a connecting relation and scarcely
differs from a direct creation ; while considered
merely as natural unfoldings, both alike break
down before the moral nature — the reason and
will — which forms the huge hiatus, the im
passable gulf, between the animals in their
highest estate and man in his lowest. While
we may patiently and candidly examine all
evidence, nothing can well be more futile, it
seems to me, than what Mr. Huxley was
pleased to call a " demonstrative evidence," '
drawn from finding some six entirely distinct
species of the horse tribe extending from the
Orobippus of the Eocene — about the size of
a fox, — to the modern horse, by assuming
from certain similarities, particularly of the
hoof, attended with very considerable differ
ences, that the one certainly sprang from the
other. The transition process is precisely
what remains to be proved. It is like the
2 Lecture in New York. Sept. 22, 1876.

EARLY MAN. 39
case of finding a half-dime, a dime, a double
dime, a quarter, a half-dollar and a dollar
with even an identity of composition and
great similarity of external formation, and
declaring that therefore the dollar is "de
monstrated" to have been evolved from the
half-dime. If ever the theory can be fairly shown to be
a fact, we will cheerfully accept it, and adjust
our difficulties to it — none of which however
appear in the first chapter of Genesis. Let us
be careful not to resist evidence. But thus
far, " not proven " must clearly be the verdict.
Meanwhile we have in the Pentateuch a
connected, though greatly abridged, account
of the condition and institutions of primeval
and primitive man, long the sole knowledge,
but now beginning to be supplemented and
confirmed by fragmentary disclosures of ar
cheology. Let us look at this narrative and
its confirmations.
(1. ) What was the locality ofhis earliest hab
itation? Our narrative presents us with a first
and a second point of departure for the human
race — the second substantially the same with
the first. What was that ? No doubt inde
finite confusion has been thrown over this
question, in some cases perhaps not unwil
lingly. A class of writers have been more

40 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
than ready to convert this, with all its sur
roundings, into a myth. And so the place has
been rnade impossible by thrusting in among
the rivers, the Nile and the Ganges or Indus,
and among the countries, Ethiopia and India.
One Christian writer would help out the con
fusion by adding to the Nile and the Ganges
the fabulous " ocean-river" ofthe Greek class
ics as their common bond. For the Pishon no
less than seventeen streams or bodies of water
have been suggested, and for the Gihon not
less than eighteen. Among them thus far we
do not find included the Mississippi or the Am
azon, — although we do find the Jordan and
the Danube. Some would escape the whole
difficulty by affirming a probable transforma
tion of the earth's surface at the Deluge; while
others simply affirm it to be an insoluble ques
tion. It must be handled cautiously.
Still it must be seen that the Biblical ac
count of the Garden of Eden has all the traits
of an exact geographical description, endea
voring to set forth the place by recognizable
facts — the general region, the rivers that pro
ceeded from that region, the countries they wa
tered, and the productions of those countries,
even to the particular quality ofthe gold there
found, that it is "good." Now the first of
these rivers is unquestionably the Euphrates,

EARLY MAN. 41
and the region of its rise is a well known and
settled fact. The second, the Tigris, is almost
equally beyond question, and its chief sources
are within a few miles of the Euphrates — 2000
paces, says Delitzsch (Comment in loco). The
general region is thus somewhat definitely and
positively settled; and here are the two great
est rivers of the country. Now midway be
tween two principal sources of the Euphrates,
ten miles from each, rises the third great river
of the region, the modern Araxes, called by
the Persians, Jichoon-ar-Ras, which Reland,
Rosenmiiller, Von Raumer, Kurtz — (and De
litzsch doubtfully') with good reason iden
tify with the Gihon. The old difficulty — that
this river encompasses the land of Gush and
that Cush must be Ethiopia, — has passed away.
Modern research has found an ancient Cushite
race in this very region. Gesenius was obliged
unwillingly to extend Cush from Ethiopia into
Arabia, and Robinson to make it the immense
region reaching from " Assyria on the N. E.
through Eastern Arabia into Africa" Raw-
linson at length' showed a remarkable connec-
' He says of the theory which would include the Phasis,
the Araxes or Oxus, among the rivers, and identify Havilah
with Colchis, "It is a possibility which Kurtz and Bunsen
rightly regard as relatively the most admissible "—al
though he finally surrenders the question as insoluble.
¦• Eawlinson, "Herodotus," i. 353.

42 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
tion between the Cushites of Ethiopia and the
early inhabitants of Babylonia; Lenormant
accepts it as a "proved" fact' that there was
a race of Cushites on the lower Euphrates and
Tigris, Kushites of Babylon, before the Chal
dean occupants ; and Maspero' lays it down as
settled that three principle Cushite peoples
established themselves around the Persian
Gulf The first, called Cossseans or Kisseans,
by classic authors, settled on the mountain
region that extends to the east of the Tigris ;
the second spread along the lower Tigris and
Euphrates ; the third occupied the southern re
gions of the Persian Gulf, which it left for the
coast of the Mediterranean.' The first of these
would occupy the land compassed by the Gihon
or Araxes, and there remains but the fourth
5 " Chaldean Magic," pp. 337-347.
' "Histoire Ancienne," p. 147.
' Dr. A. Wieseler (Zeitschrift ftir Kirklische Wissen
schaft, 1882, p. 3) finds Cush in the highlands of the Cau
casus north of the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris.
" For this use of the term I have adduced two grounds; (1)
that the Kas in Caucasus, which corresponds to Cush,
(comp. also the mountains of Casius) etymologically among
the Scythians according to Pliny ("Nat. Hist." vi. 17j
and Bopp iu J. Grimm, ("Hist, of the Ger. Lang." p.
234,) signifies a rocky mountain; and (2) that the Indian
Caucasus is stiU called Hindu-Cush. So the clearer and
obscurer expressions, Kash and Kush are interchanged
with each other, a fact which can be confirmed by those
Indoscythian legends."

EARLY MAN. 43
great river to find. Many have made that
fourth river Pishon, the old Phasis, now Rion,
which flows from the Caucasus into the eastern
end ofthe Black Sea. But perhaps more prob
able (though lacking any traceable connection
of name) is the far larger and nearer stream
the Kizil Irmak, or ancient Halys, the southern
sources of which are on the western slope of
the Karabel mountains, that separate the
springs of the river from those of the Eu
phrates, at a spot seventy miles E. N. E. from
Sivas.' Now, as Reland long ago showed,
(followed by Rosenmiiller,) the Hebrew " Hav-
8 Chesney's "Euphrates aud Tigris," i. 3. It should be
added that nearly all who advocate the situation of Eden
in Armenia fix upon the Phasis for the Pison, with a simi
larity of name indeed, but with great difficulties in regard
to the smaller size and far greater distance of the stream.
The transfer of a name in the lapse of ages is no impossible
thing, as is seen in the name of the wilderness of Paran,
which now seems to survive only in Wady Feiran at a very
considerable distance from the wilderness which it once
designated. Were it not for the remoteness and smaller
size of the Phasis, this would have, in the similarity of the
name, a claim to be considered the Pison which no other
stream presents. In failing to find such a resemblance in
the Halys or Kizil Irmak, which makes the doubtful point,
one encounters only the same difficulty in regard to name
which besets all the other suppositions, while the /ac< cor
responds. So far as I am aware. Col. Chesuey was the first
to suggest the Halys instead of the Phasis. It is the prac
tical suggestion of a skilful British engineer who had ex-

44 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
ilah" is, in its consonant elements, shghtly
transposed, the same as Colchis — the latter
having the Greek termination added. Colchis
lay at .the eastern end of the Black Sea, ex
tending somewhat indefinitely toward the
south. It was the land of " the golden fleSce "
and, according to Strabo (I. 45) had great
riches of " gold and silver." If we might (with
Onkelos, the Jerusalem Targum, the LXX., the
Vulgate, Flirst and others) identify the Hebrew
shoham with the emerald or green beryl, and
what is perhaps more doubtful (though main
tained by the later Rabbins, by Bochart and
Fiirst) the " bdellium " [n^ia] with the pearl,
the case would be still stronger, inasmuch as
Pliny, Solinus and Diodorus Siculiis declare
that the emerald abounded in that region and
the pearl fishery is mentioned in the Periplus
as existing on the coast of Colchis.' Round
this region on the south flows the Kizil Irmak,
till after a course of seven hundred miles it en
ters the Black Sea. In this region ancient sil
ver mines are known to exist for a distance of
two hundred miles, from Madeh to Yuzgat
and perhaps Divrigi. And though in the un-
plored the general region in two successive expeditions, and
has therefore some great advantages over the speculations
of men who have never visited the country.
9 Ib, i. 279, 280.

EARLY MAN, 45
explored condition of the country now it is not
easy to fix upon any considerable traces of the
more precious metal, yet its existence in that
region is indicated alike by early fable, ancient
historians, and modern testimony."
In this great plateau of Armenia, within a
radius of some ninety miles, there thus rise
the four great rivers ofthe whole region, flow
ing respectively to the north-east, the east,
the south and the south-east, 1600, 1150, 1000
and 700 miles, all springing from the various
rivulets which form the water-supply, "the
river-system " (Kurtz), the system of water
courses, the collective inj of the region."
11 lb. pp. 276-9. Most of the speculations of modern
German scholars on the locality of Havilah are made val
ueless for the sober expositor by their assumption that this
narrative is a saga, and that Havilah may be sought at
random in India or elsewhere, — or as Friedrich Delitzsch
puts it, in Utopia. This latter writer, in accordance with
his theory, would find it in that part of the Syrian desert
bordering on the Euphrates and extending from the Per
sian Gulf northward as far as Babylon. A part of the
region, he says, is at present called Ard el-h^Ut, or land
of downs ("Das Paradies," p. 59). It has commonly been
asserted that this Havilah is necessarily identical with that
of ch. X. 7, 29, XXV. 18, 1 Sam. xv. 7, 1 Chron. i. 9. For
reasons to the contrary, see " Keil's Commentary " in loco.
II For the use of this word (in the plural) to designate
waters (translated "floods") see Jonah ii. 3, Ps. xxiv. 2.
The Hebrew had no such combination as "river-system.''
Thus Wetstein in DeUtsch's Genesis, (and after him Fried-

46 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
We may not give special weight to the
fond tradition, still cherished in the valleys
of Central Armenia, that Eden extended from
the northern part of the pashalik of Mosul to
a point not far north of Erzeroom, to Tocat
in the west and somewhat beyond lake Van
in the east;'^ nor to the tradition, still living
at Harpoot, that paradise was on the adjacent
plain;" nor to the name Paradise-mountain
(Edenis-Mta) that still lingers on a lofty peak
in the Caucasus above the sources ofthe Rion."
But in all the learned confusion that has been
cast over this subject, we can at least say that
it is possible to find a local habitation for the
Scripture site, somewhat clearly, by two cer
tain landmarks — the sources of the Tigris and
Euphrates — with a reasonable conformity to
the description in other respects, in a tract
of country (the highlands of Armenia) which,
in the words of Col. Chesney, confirmed by him
rich Delitzsch) dweUs on the necessary oriental notion of
watering a garden, that it was by a multitude of Uttle rills,
countless Uttle streams running in every direction. In
deed any other conception of the formation of four great
rivers from the same inj in a hilly region such as that
where the Tigris and Euphrates originate is out of
question. 12 Chesney, i. p. 267.
13 H. N. Wheeler, "Letters from Eden," pp. 15, 16.
" Freshfield, "Central Caucasus," p. 277.

EARLY MAN. 47
in detail, " owing to the variety of its surface,
climate and temperature, is adapted for the
growth of almost every tree that is pleasant
to the sight or good for food."" And what
ever difficulties of detail may attend this lo
cation fixed upon by Reland, Rosenm'uller,
Kurtz, Bunsen and others, it has a tangible
basis, avoids all "mythical" and self-contra
dictory elements, meets no insuperable objec
tions, and finds various confirmations. And
somewhere in this region of Armenia eastward,
perhaps on the southern slope of the Taurus,
though some would prefer a somewhat more
southerlj' site, it certainly is not unscript-
ural to find the home of our first parents,
as well as (in this general region) of the se
cond set of progenitors of the race. "The
mention of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates,"
says Kurtz, " points to this [the highlands of
Armenia] beyond the possibility of a doubt."
And Friedrich Delitzsch who in his elabo
rate investigation would fix upon a region in
Babylonia just north of Babylon, does so on
the basis that " as to the Tigris and Euphrates
no doubt is possible."" Others (Calvin, Bochart,
IS Chesney's "Euphrates and Tigris," i. 270.
16 " Wo lag das Paradies," p. 11. Friedrich DeUtzsch
effectually demolishes what he calls " Paradise in Utopia"
— I. c, all those theories which introduce impossible com
binations (such as the Nile, Ganges, Indus), in a discussion

48 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
etc.) would find it still farther south, below
the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates. But
whether higher or lower, all sober exposition
of twenty pages. But when he reaches the "Paradise in
Armenia," he dispatches it in four pages, and with argu
ments of slender force, chiefly the difficulty of finding
Cush and Havilah, and secondly of deriving the four
streams fcom one. He shows, as others have done, that
the South Babylonia Paradise is probably unsupportable,
inasmuch as a very large part of the present delta has
oeen formed even in historic times. His argument in be
half of his own theory is perhaps more ingenious than
convincing. The difficulty, dwelt upon by Delitzsch and others, of
one "river" dividing into these four great rivers, is geo
graphically and hydrostatically insuperable. It is how
ever easily solved if by "river" in the first instance we
understand water-supply, river-system, streams coUective-
ly. Delitzsch would find the garden of Eden in Babylonia
between the Euphrates and Tigris where they approach
each other nearest. His view of the one river divided
into four is that the Euphrates is the one, aud that this,
supplying a canal or arm (Pallikopas) which leads from
the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, also the Shatt en-Nil,
another branch which returns again into the Euphrates,
and to some extent sending water through canals to the
Tigris, meets the problem of the one and the four. One
is compelled to feel that with all his German ingenuity
and exhibition of learning, his argument labors in every
direction, ahke in his identification of streams, names,
and to some degree countries and their productions— as
when, e. g,, he would find the shoham in the cornelian.
He has done good service in exploding the "Utopian"
theory aud in showing that the delta, so to caU it, of the
Euphrates is of more recent origin.

EARLY MAN, 49
must fix upon the neighborhood of these streams
— and according to the narrative, apparently
toward their sources.
Now toward this region in general. Western
Asia, or as some would say. Western Central
Asia, various confirmatory indications point,
for the cradle of the race. It must be ad
mitted that it is easier to find objections than
proofs in reference to any definite place. But
the general region along the Tigris and Eu
phrates is settled by the narrative. Here in
the neighboring Caucasus is found the central
and highest form of the human species; radi
ating from around the elevated central region
of Asia, says Quatrefages, we find the three
fundamental types of humanity, the black
man, the yellow man and the white man."
And Guyot has well shown how, as we recede
from this general Asiatic centre in every direc
tion, the tendency is manifest towards a more
or less complete deviation from the best perfec
tion of the human face and form ;" Brunton in
the interests of ethnology would look towards
the neighborhood of the mouth of the Eu
phrates ;" Friedrich Delitzsch for reasons partly
geographical and largely speculative, to the re-
" "Natural History of Man," p. 51.
18 "The Earth and Man."
'8 "The Bible and Science," p. 363.

¦50 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
gion around Babylon. So too, linguistic affini
ties lead us back toward this general region as
the representative and radiating centre of the
languages of the world. In reference to some
ofthe languages, as, e. g., the Arj'an, the several
lines of divergence towards the south-east,
south, south-west, north-west and west are as
distinct as the diverging lines of the ancient
glaciers- of North America. Towards western
Asia — indeed towards this same region — point
the great Semitic group ; and if in other cases
the indications are less defined they still com
port with such an original home.
In western Asia seems to have been the
original home of the domestic animals. Of
thirty-five species of these that may be called
cosmopolitan, — man's attendants, — not less
than thirty-one appear to have been natives
of Central Asia or Northern Africa.™ So also
of grains. The six-rowed barley of the Greeks,
Romans, and Egyptians, and the Egyptian
wheat, point to the great plains of Western
Asia as the locality whence they came."
When in the Swiss lake-dwellings of the
so-called Neolithic age we find two kinds
of barley, three of wheat, and two of millet,
together with the pig, the goat and cattle,
20 SouthaU's "Eecent Origin of Man,'' p. 43.
21 "British Quarterly."

EARLY MAN, 51
these domestic animals and cultivated cereals
make their first appearance en masse, not
one by one; implying that the, villagers ar
rived with flocks and herds and seeds. Mean
while the earliest traceable inhabitants of
Chaldea, the originators of the arrow-headed
alphabet, though found on the plain, bear the
name " Accadian," which means mountaineers,
and their alphabet itself, in the character of
its signs, indicates as the original home of the
writing a more northern region with a very
different fauna and flora, where the lion and
the other great carnivora of the feline race
were unknown, while the bear and the wolf
were common animals.''* Among the earliest
traces of man in Europe we find an oyster-
shell from the Red Sea at Thayngen grotto
near Schaffhausen, and fragments of the neph
rite of Asia in a paleolithic cave at Chaleux,
France, connecting them all with either an
Asiatic origin or relationship. And it has
been observed, in the same line, that when
in Europe we reach the time of bronze im
plements, swords, axes, spear-heads, razors,
knives, — these, however widely dispersed, by
their unity of design and form indicate a
community of origin. And from this gen
eral locality how easy to discern the historic
22 Lenormant, "Chaldean Magic," p. 359.

52 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
track of the migrations of the tribes to their
distant homes, and, in part, to account for
their line of march towards the severals points
of the compass.
But in whfit condition was primeval man ?
The Scripture represents him as once in a
state of moral equilibrium, a friend of God.
And here the traditions of the nations, with
their golden age of innocence and happiness,
i-e-echo the statement. It belonged to the
Egyptians, Chinese, Hindoos, Greeks, Per
sians, Thibetians, and as Lenormant remarks,
" is found among all the nations of the Aryan
or Japhetic races, belonging to them prior to
their dispersion and being one of the points
in which their traditions place them most
expressly on a common basis with those of
the Semitic races, with those that find ex
pression in Genesis."*'' He calls it "one of
the universal traditions." But while innocent,
the Scripture consistently supposed man in a
state of moral immaturity and inexperience,
involving the danger and the fact of the fall.
In regard to early industrial condition, the
claims of the scriptures are moderate. Some
light employment among the trees that fur
nished his food was his earlier task, and his
first clothing of the simplest kind, like the
23 "Origines de I'Histoire, p. 58."

EARLY MAN. 53
grass or skin coverings of the rudest tribes at
present, or the skin robe of the old man of
Cromagnon. Here is no nonsense about the
" rivers fiowing with milk and with nectar,"
while "honey dripped from the trees." He
was to dress and keep the garden. His sons
are found in the simplest modes of rural life.
keeping flocks of the smaller animals, sheep
and goats, and tilling the soil. The arts in
their higher form came in only in the seventh
generation, with Jabal, Jubal and Tubal Cain
— of which more hereafter. Meanwhile notice
the sobriety and consistency of the narrative.
As to his intellectual condition there is an
equally noteworthy consistency. It is suffi
ciently manifest that a human being, however
mature in size and strength, entering on life
without experience, would require some im
mediate and preternatural knowledge as a
substitute for experience; otherwise he would
be like the new-born infant in capacity to
care for himself, and the day of his creation
might easily have been the day of his dissolu
tion. His very faculty of sight would be
misleading, and all his muscular powers un
manageable. While therefore the scripture
consistently and necessarily ascribes to him a
precocious intelligence and some linguistic
development, as exhibited in fitly giving

54 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
names to the animal world and in recogniz
ing the contrast of his own solitude, there is
a clear intimation of his practical inexperience
in his being directed hy his Creator to make
the clothing of skins, and perhaps also in the
absence of all surprise in Eve's listening to the
speech of one in the form of a serpent.
The scripture thus makes a fully consistent
picture, — of one in the balance of the moral
nature, with Augustine's "posse peccare et
posse non peccare," yet without the formed
character which will make the security ofthe
ransomed; and, intellectually, of one entirely
destitute of the industrial arts and scientific
attainments, but with a mental capacity full-
grown. Nor is there in my judgment any
thing to discredit this Biblical account in the
various researches in the history of the race,
but the contrary. It has become customary
enough to assume with Lubbock and others,
as an axiom, that man started as a low savage,
even if not an animal, yet little above the
animals. That he actually started not indeed
with the arts, but with a high capacity for
their rapid development, may appear in the
sequel. It is a singular process of reasoning to take
the distant outcasts of the race, tribes that
wandered far away from the native home and

EARLY MAN. 55
had been subjected to all the depressing and
degrading influences attendant, and to 'insist
that ihey are representatives of that native
home. History shows that there is not only
such a thing as progress, but such a thing
as degradation. And modern researches are
more and more pointing us back to a centre
of early light, intellectual and moral, and
bringing to distinct recognition the fact that
the greater the distance in space, if not in
time, from the central seat, as a rule, the
greater the depression. How unequal has
the human race, in its highest attainments,
shown itself, unless preserved by a superna
tural grace subduing its own innate seeds of
corruption and destruction, to maintain its
high attainments, and how certainly has come
the descent and fall! The old empires all are
startling illustrations. It remains to be shown,
if it can be shown, that aside from the presence
of a supernatural revelation and preserving
influence, there is such a thing as permanent
progress of the human race. All history
thus far goes to indicate that if the human
mind is an active thing it may also be a de- ,
structive thing, aud in the long run human
depravity overtakes and overthrows human
culture, and worries down human refinement.
Every new expansion of archaeological in-

56 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
quiry seems tending to give new emphasis
to this solemn lesson of all history.
It is one of the latest and growing theories
of philologists to regard the old polytheisms
of Egypt, Greece, and India as the corruptions
of an older monotheism. And a great orient
alist informs us that the one thing which a
a comparative study of religions places in the
clearest light, is the inevitable decay to which
religion is exposed." It has become one of the
astounding revelations of modern times to see
how far, far back of all consecutive history
many of the arts and forms of civilization
stand out before us, as it were full-grown.
The great cities of Babylonia in ruins reveal a
surprising early development. The stupen
dous works of Egypt burst upon us without
a known history. Her whole sculpture is a
decadence. We gaze upon the green diorite
statue of Cephrenes (or Shafra), and we say it
is certainly a portrait, — and how wonderfully
superior to the formal statuary of later times.
We gaze upon the still older wooden image
of the village hded or sheikh, so wonderfully
life-like, and we say here is something far
better yet. And when we look upon the two
older ones of Nefert and Ra-hotep from May-
'¦i Max Miiller, "Chips from a German Workshop."
Preface xxii.

EARLY MAN. 57
doom, " the oldest statues in the world," we
say these are the best of all. Equally re
markable that oldest picture in the world, of
the pasturing geese from the tomb of Nefermat,
as compared with later Egyptian paintings,
so-called. So again we look at the early development
of the Aryan races in comparative proximity
to their early home, the Sanscrit speaking race,
the Persians, and the Greeks, and we cannot
fail to contrast their condition with that of
their kindred, the long wandering Celtic and
other tribes that were driven to the distant
west. We witness the Caftre language appar
ently descending into the Hottentot, and that
still further falling into the Bushman. We
find men, e. g., the Tasmanians, living on an
island without the knowledge of canoes that
must have brought them thither." Or take a
still more remarkable and recent instance. In
1866, Dr. W. A. Marten made a journey to
Honan in China, on purpose to visit a Jewish
colony, one of many supposed to have existed
formerly in the empire. This at Honan has
long been known to the Christian world, hav
ing been discovered by Father Ricci in the
17th century, and claiming to have entered
China as early as the Dynasty of Han. Dr.
26 Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," p. 450.

58 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
Marten found a remnant of 3000 to 4000 com
pletely demoralized and even unjudaized. A
solitary stone marked the place of their syna
gogue, on which an inscription commemorat
ed its erection, about a. d. 1183. They had
copies of the law and the prophets, of which
no man was able to read one word. With a
rabbi, the father of one of Dr. Marten's visitors,
had perished, forty years before, the last vestige
of acquaintance with the sacred tongue. They
have no knowledge of their tribe pedigree,
keep no register, and now never assemble in
a congregation. They remember the names of
the feasts of Tabernacles and of unleavened
bread as practised by a former generation, and
have lately abandoned circumcision. One of
them had lately became a Buddhist priest,
another had a heathen wife. The living gen
eration had pulled dowii their synagogue and
sold its stones and timber to obtain relief for
their bodily wants, and the large tablet that
once adorned its entrance, bearing in gilded
Chinese characters the name " Israel," now
belongs to a Mohammedan mosque. The only
distinctive mark that is left them is the cus
tom of picking the sinews out ofthe flesh they
eat — commemorative of Jacob's conflict with
the angel.** « "The Chinese," pp. 295-7. Harpers, 1881.

EARLY MAN. 59
The Veddas of Ceylon, now savages of the
most debased type, are degenerate descendants
of the tribe who brought Aryan civilization to
Hindustan. "More than half their words,"
says Max Miiller, are corruptions of the Sans
crit; " they may possibly prove in language, if
not in blood, the distant cousins of Plato,
Goethe and Newton."*'
Now, with such specific illustrations before
us, and with our eyes upon the singular col
lapses of great nations, as in Egypt, Greece
and Italy, where printing and especially Chris
tianity had not found their way, or the latter
had lost its power, how can we for an instant
maintain that savagism was necessarily the
primitive, rather than derivative state of man.
I anticipate that more and more the process
of research may indicate that in fact it was
not so, and that the standard of ancient hu
manity is no more to be sought in the caves
of Neanderthal, Liege, Mentone, or Furfooz,
than that of modern civilization in the Bush
man, the Australian, the Terra del Fuegian or
the Sioux Indian. Physical degradation also
accompanies' the moral and intellectual.*'
What now were the early institutions of
man ? Here we may glory in our Pentateuch
2' Geike's "Hours with the Bible," i. p. 165.
28 On this subject see Argyll's "Primeval Man," p. 155

60 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
The second chapter of Genesis has well been
called the most momentous of records. In its
announcement of man's early institutions —
its provision for his fullest destiny — it shines
out on this dark world like the flash of light
through chaos. There is nothing like it.
Two great institutions, founded upon his deep
est wants and nearest relationships, were to
have been the guaranty of his well-being, and
are now the hope ofhis future.
The first was that of marriage and the fam
ily, as defined in that great original law of
monogamy, which in its first perfect form was
issued in paradise. Was there ever an utterance
like it, except in the New Testament exempli
fication of it ? Woman taken from the side
of man to indicate identity, intimacy, sym
pathy, dependence, to call for tenderness,
shelter, protection — the two to be bound to
gether as one, in an indissoluble bond, above
that which binds any and all other earthly
relationships — " one flesh," " bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh." Herein lies the cradle
of the home, and the empire of woman. When
was ever such a picture drawn except in that
same holy book — as when the apostle finds
in the relation of Christ and his church, in
the supreme self-sacrifice on the one hand
and the profound love and devotion on the

EARLY MAN. 61
other, an unfolding of the symbol of marriage.
It is a sublime, a divine, conception (Eph. v.
25-33). How on the one hand do the true
marriages that are "made in heaven," and on
the other the polygamies and the divorces
that are made in hell, flash their sacred or
their lurid light over the grandeur of God's
primal institution for man. And it will be
observed that when polygamy creeps into
history, it is first as the doing of the Cainite
race, and, in the patriarchal line, as the off
spring either of a want of faith in God, or of
fraud, and as the germ of family trouble. And
it is also to be observed how futile must be
all attempts to raise or maintain the position
of woman except on that divine and primeval
basis. All history shows that the race was
made for wedlock. It also shows that, whether
in or out of wedlock, woman is and must be
from her constitution the weaker and the
dependent, and in a fight for ascendency the
weaker must go to the wall. It shows, too,
if it shows anything, how vain is the hope
of a radical improvement of the human con
dition by external arrangements that leave
the human spirit unchanged, full of its self
ishness, malignity and brutality. A swine in
a garden is none the less a swine. And when
we look upon the awful separations and hor-

62 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
rible relations that human sinfulness creates
so continually between the nearest of relatives
and friends, sown in guilt and reaped in crime,
we are brought back to the obvious fact that
the only adequate remedy for the wrongs of
woman is a return to the divine ideal of the
true relationship. No crusade of blind com
plaints and reproaches will eradicate the cause
of complaint. No scramble for man's functions
— whereby she becomes not masculine but man
nish — will make the woman content. No acts
of legislation will carry happiness into a dis
cordant home, or protect the victim from the
destroyer. But just so far as the great law
of paradise is restored and realized, just so
far will come — as has been coming — all needed
outward reform, founded on the inner spirit
that alone will make the law a life and a
fact. All observation and all history lend
their sanction to this divine original institu
tion. In the formation of the woman we find
the greatest apparent scriptural obstacle to the
theory of evolution. Mr. T. L. Brunton admits
this to be so; "If we are to take the words
of the Bible as an accurate account of the crea
tion of woman, I do not see how we are to
reconcile it with the doctrine of evolution."*'
The details of the narrative at this point are
29 Brunton's "Bible aud Science," p. 353.

EARLY MAN. 63
SO brief and so obscure that it is easy for any
man to ask questions that no man can answer.
We cannot say with certainty that the JJ^V was
a rib. The word elsewhere designates more
nearly a side, as of a mountain, the tabernacle,
an altar, the heavens, as a door, a side chamber,
the side of a man; — perhaps in two passages
(I Kings vi. 15-^16; vii. 3) the beams of a build
ing, in no case clearly the human rib. But
if not this, what then ? Was it some portion
of the frame originally added for the purpose
of being removed ? We can -only say that it
was one of similar portions remaining, (ni?^s
plural.) Some" have gone so far as to accept
the theory of the Talmud, the Targums aud
Maimonedes, of an original androgyous man,
afterwards separated into man and woman —
a construction which forces the narrative out
of shape ; for God took the yW and " made it
into a woman." If we understand this to be
in all respects a literal and objective state
ment, we still have, remarkably sustained
from the first, the law that now prevails
through all life — that, as Huxley would say,
the living protoplasm comes from living pro-
toplean — life from previous life, the woman
comes from the man.
Nor can we with Brunton call this " a par-
so Lenormant, apparently, "Origines," p. 58.

64 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
able." For the account bears as fully the as
pect of a narrative as any other portion of
the Pentateuch, and to admit such a deviation
would throw us upon an ocean of uncertainties.
Delitzsch" approaches nearer an admissible
hypothesis when he intimates that it may be
a " symbolical " narrative.
But there is perhaps a possible solution for
those who seek it, growing out of the recorded
fact that the man was cast into a " deep sleep"
(nD^nn) before the formation of the woman.
And we may possibly compare the similar
state of nOT"in in the fifteenth chapter of Gen-
sis (v. 12), in which Abram received the com
munications of God, and apparently had the
vision of the pillar of smoke and flame pass
ing between the divided victims and symbol
izing the covenant of God with him. It may
be thought possible to understand that Adam's
sleep in like manner continued and the follow
ing transaction was the vision in that sleep
whereby God signified to him the indissoluble
union with the wife. But even in this case
there remains the fact asserted not only here,
but in 1 Tim. ii. 13, that "Adam was first
formed, then Eve." And in accepting the fact
we accept no greater difficulty than the evo
lutionist here encounters, nor so great ; for in
31 "0. T. His." p. 23.

EARLY MAN. 65
God's agency, deliberately establishing the re
lations of the sexes, we have an intelligent
plan and cause, and a rational end in view,
from the beginning; whereas that great un
changed, perpetual and substantially equal
relation of sex that runs through not only
the human race but all the countless races of
the earth, is one of the problems before which
any theory of evolution that excludes a grand
preliminary plan and a mighty governing
power, only betrays its helplessness and
puerility. It is one of the insoluble pro
blems for any form of development hypoth
esis that excludes the final cause and the
First Cause.
The other signal institution of primeval man,
which met him apparently at his origin, was
that institution which lies at the foundation
of all outer worship of God and all organized
beneficence towards man, the bulwark of so
ciety, the supplement ofthe home, the univer
sal refiner and civilizer, the guaranty of social
order and friendly relationship, the institution
whereby all other human institutions are pre
served and made effective — the seventh sacred
(lay. It is difficult to see any propriety in un
derstanding the narrative of its establishment
as a prolepsis, or any cogency in the reasons
rendered for thus forcing the narrative. It

66 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
clearly is recorded as a part ofthe preparation
of the world for man. Man's whole nature,
physical, intellectual, social, moral and spir
itual, has been proved over and over to coin
cide with the Saviour's declaration, " the Sab
bath was made for man." The whole record
is consistent with itself For besides the in
dications of the week usually recounted from
the Pentateuch, as repeatedly occurring in the
narrative of the fiood, the time of circum
cision, the weeks or heptades of Jacob's court
ship, the seven days of Joseph's mourning, we
find the complete or sacred number in God's
assurance to Cain of a " sevenfold vengeance,"
as well as in Lamech's " seventy-and-seven-
fold," and even incorporated into the Hebrew
language in the term for swearing, which is to
" seven oneself" It is hard even to beheve
that when Cain and Abel came with their sac
rifices, apparently at the same time, and that
time "the end of days," this end of days was
other than the sacred seventh day. That the
nations in their dispersion and moral deterio
ration should have lost the observance, as very
likely had the Hebrews during the slavery of
Egypt, was to have been expected. And yet
there are indications enough of the wide dif
fusion of this hebdomadal division of time to
connect themselves in a very striking way

EARLY MAN, 67
with the primeval appointment. Bunsen af
firms a seven days division for astrological
purposes in China to be of proved antiquity ;°*
it was known to the ancestors of the Hindoos ;*'
and would seem to have been known in ancient
Egypt, as well as a period of ten days. How
extensively it can be traced among the nor
thern nations of Europe is a field for fur
ther inquiry. But at Athens the sections of
Prytanes, apparently as early as the time of
Cleisthenes, held office seven days at a time;
and one of the very latest results of oriental
research is the positive statement by Geo.
Smith, Sayce and others, that from a very
early period — before the migration of Abram —
the Accadians of Babylonia and Chaldea had
the seven-day week and the sacred Sabbath,'*
32 "Egypt's Place in History," iu. p. 290.
33 Dr. Burgess in "Bibliotheca Sacra," Oct. 1858.
34 Mr. Eichard A. Proctor, who has devoted a large
amount of space, in his recent volume on the "Great
Pyramid," to the advocacy of the theory that week origin
ated from halving the lunation and then halving that half,
naively remarks, after his prolonged discussion, that "a
more careful study of her [the moon's] motions suggests
the division of the lunar month into six periods of five
days each rather than into four periods of seven days
each." If he had said that not only a "careful study"
but perpetual observation would sooner suggest the one
first than the second, he would have been quite safe. See
the "Great Pyramid," p. 272.

68 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
wherein no work should be done. The at
tempt to explain this wide-spread arrangement
as a subdivision of a lunar month is not sus
tained by the planetary names given to the
days ; and meets the obvious difficulty that the
week is not an aliquot part of a lunation — the
latter being twenty-nine and a half days, of
which by far the nearest proximate division
would be the very close division of ten-day
periods, which also prevailed in Egypt."
And the institution of that form of worship
which took the shape of sacrifice, after the
fall, " at the end of days," stands singularly
confirmed in its survival through all times and
almost all races of the earth. So that it is of
little moment whether we view it as a direct
divine appointment or an instinctive impulse
ofthe human soul; for the amazing tenacity
with which it has clung to the race in all its
wanderings, bears testimony to its inherent
necessity to primeval fallen man, and confirms
its early origin.
The narrative of the first sin too, has not
only a consistency that grows on the contem
plation, but offers the ouly solution ofthe dim
traditions of the distant past. It has been not
uncommon to question the fitness of the pro
's Sayce, "Chaldean Genesis," pp. 89, 308. George
Smith, " Chaldean Discoveries, " p. 12.

EARLY MAN. 69
hibition as a test of obedience, as though out
of keeping with the magnitude ofthe occasion.
But a moment's reflection shows that not only
could the principle of a genuine obedience be
tested as well in that mode as any other, but,
what is more important, that some such me
thod was the only one in keeping with the
circumstances of the narrative, and further yet,
the only method practicable in those simplest
conditions of early life. All the complicated
relations of advanced civilization and even of
society were wanting. Here were two persons
in a garden of nature. Fraud, theft, adultery,
arson, robbery, were impossible, murder as
yet inconceivable, all overt acts of cruelty, if
not impossible, yet without a possible motive.
What other form of test could or can well be
devised than just such as that adopted, standing
thus related to their actual life and condition.
To a profounder reflection it carries on its face
the stamp of verisimilitude, and those more
striking devices which the objection would re
quire, would, in their inconsistency, brand the
narrative as untrue. And while in some as
pects mystery must hang over any speculation
on the modes of the first human sin, our nar
rative offers perhaps all the help that can be
given when it traces the source of the seduc
tion to an outer influence, distinctly explained

70 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
in the New Testament,^'' as "that old serpent
which is called the devil and Satan," and when
it couples with the persuasions ofthe appetite
the specious inducement of a higher good —
"ye shall be as gods" — and a pressure applied
to the more emotional ofthe pair. And while
the real agent is thus identified with Satan, I
see — in accordance with a narrative which de
scribed all as it appeared — no fair mode of es
caping from the recognition of the actual ob
jective appearance of a serpent, chosen for the
reason suggested in the narrative, the subtlety
of the movement that comes and goes so
stealthily and so unexpectedly, and the asso
ciation thereby awakened. The one grave ob
jection, that this is the concession of a mirac
ulous transaction for the purpose of deception,
is perhaps sufficiently answered by saying
that to them it was no miracle, — for there was
no adequate knowledge of a settled course of
nature, — but an ordinary phenomenon.
I stand the more firmly by this view, from
the striking confirmation which is found
in the ancient and wide-spread traditions
of the east, pointing definitely to precisely
such a transaction. We not only find the
sacred tree that gave immortality — the Indian
Kalpanksham, the Persian Hom, the Arab
" Eev. xii. 9; xx. 2; John viii. 44.

EARLY MAN. 71
Tuba, the Greek Lotus, the tree in the coffin at
Warka, and Babylon named "the place ofthe
tree of life;"" we also find the ruin of the
race connected with the eating from a tree,
in the Edda of the north, in the Zendavesta,
and in the legend of Thibet, and a deceiver
also appears, who is in some cases the ser
pent." Indeed the serpent figures largely in
traditions, in Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Phenicia
and elsewhere, as the enemy of the gods.
The confirmation becomes more definite
and singular still. We find not only a Baby
lonian cylinder of the 9th century b. c, show
ing the sacred tree with attendant figures and
eagle-headed guardians, and another cylinder
showing the sacred tree with "attendant
Cherubim;" but we find another early Baby
lonian cylinder with sacred tree showing fruit,
a seated human figure on each side, each with
a hand extended towards it, and a serpent be
hind the one whose hand is nearest to the
fruit;'' a vase from Cyprus of the 6th or 7th
century b. c, (now in the Metropolitan Mu
seum of N. Y.) from the branches of which
hang two large clusters of fruit, while a great
3' Geike, "Hours with the Bible," pp. 116-7.
38 Ib. p. 119.
39 Smith's "Chaldaische Genesis," ed. Friedrich De
Utzsch, pp. 98, 87.

72 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
serpent approaches and prepares to seize one
of them with his mouth ; a famous sarcophagus
in the Capitoline Museum shows, near Titan,
son of lapetus, who performs his work as
moulder or designer, a man and woman
standing nude at the foot of a tree from
which the man makes the gesture of gath
ering the fruit; a bas-relief laid in the wall
of the garden of Villa Albani at Rome pre
sents the same group, with a serpent twined
around the trunk of the tree under the shade
of which the two mortals stand."" All these are
the distant echoes of the scripture record,
drawing their significance from that simple
story of which the same sacred volume offers
also the solution. " In all antiquity the ser
pent was the symbol of cunning, baseness
and seduction.*'
For the promise of the tempter was fulfilled
like those of later tempters,
" That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ears.
And break it to our hope."
They did indeed "know good and evil," the
one as lost, and the other as fatally found.
And thus, too, emerges the force and sym
bolism of the doom pronounced upon the real
* Lenormant, "Origines," pp. 92-4.
*i Tuch, "Genesis," p. 84.

EARLY MAN, 73
tempter — for against him was it aimed. It
involved no change in the animal, the reptile,
whose change from an erect to a prone posi
tion and motion would have involved a
change in every muscle, bone, process and
organ of the body, — a re-creation, — but it
was a curse in symbolic form. A serpent's
form thou hast assumed, a serpent's doom and
destiny shall be thine; thy career shall be that
of a wretched crawler and dirt eater, inflict
ing with thy poison a dangerous, and possibly
fatal, wound upon the woman's seed, but re
ceiving in turn a crushing blow from the seed
of the woman, and especially from that chosen
seed who was revealed "that he might de
stroy the works of the devil," and who in
token of that ascendency and dominion so
often ejected Satan's agents from the demoni
acs of Palestine.
Ejected now from that home of innocence
and from the tree of life, that sacramental
tree, — which like the sacred bread and wine
could symbolize but not give immortal life,
and of which the eating were now a profana
tion till man stands again by its side on the
banks ofthe river of life, — he began his ex
perience of that threatened death of which
all history bears witness, and of which the
essential fact was never so well expressed as

74 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
by Augustine when he said, "death of the
body is the separation of the body from the
soul, but death of the soul is separation of the
soul from God." For in this fruitful central
germ is all sin and all resultant woe. Then
and thus all the moral faculties work abnor
mally, falsely, and therefore, wretchedly.
And so that death showed itself first in the
sense of shame; then in the shrinking from
God's presence ; then in crimination, the one
ofthe other and of God; unfolding still further
in the fearful utterance that announced all
the pain, anxiety and woe that gather over
woman's lot in connection with her offspring,
and with the frequent tyranny of the husband
taking the place of the normal and loving
protection and dependence, and in the per
version of man's toil from its normal pleasant
ness to be a drudgery, wearing and uncertain
in the process, and bitterly disappointing in
its best earthly hopes and fruits, and ending
in the physical decease which, though not the
primary gravamen of the threatened death, is
yet its sad and fitting symbol. And how
soon all this horror for the man and the wo
man and the world culminated in the first
fratricide. How the history of the murderer
down through all time was delineated in that
titanic and terrible figure, which represents

EARLY MAN, 75
the earth as opening her mouth to receive the
blood of the victim and hurling back from
that open mouth a curse upon the criminal.
And in the remorse and terror that weighed
him down and chased him through the land
of " wandering," haunted by the presence of
God and the threatening spectral hand of man,
and that made him build his fenced city or
stronghold, like some mediaeval robber's cas
tle, we read by anticipation the vivid pictures
of the masters of tragedy and romance, in
some Macbeth or Sykes, or the facts of actual
occurrence as in the Knapps and Crownin-
shields of real life. Meanwhile in the trials
and sorrows that have embittered the social
life of the race, in the burdens and anxieties
that have poisoned their labor, in the crimes
and woes that have filled the earth and as
sailed the heavens with their cries and groans,
and in the thick and heavy clouds that have
hung over human prospects further back than
the dawnings of human history, we read the
substantial verity of the sweeping curse pro
nounced upon the progenitors of our race —
the ancient anathema travelling downward
through the centuries, till it meets one who
comes up "alone with dyed garments," but
" travelling in the greatness of his strength,
speaking in righteousness and mighty to save."

LECTURE THIRD.

THE EABLT ABIS.

A NOTEWORTHY feature of our advanced civi
lization is the unconsciousness with which we
inherit a vast mass of things — utensils, usages
and methods — the discovery or invention of
each one of which has been a great stride in
human life and achievement. We justly glory
over our modern inventions, many of which,
such as photographic, electric, and steam ap
paratus, began in the application of the sim
plest principles, at first in a modest way, and
which waited almost to our day for that first
rude application. It is with profound surprise
that we walk through soine collection of an
cient relics, as in the museum at Naples, and
see there anticipated so many things, such as
dentist's implements and the like, which, we
had supposed, belonged only to modern times;
or, that in still more ancient collections, like
that of the Boulak Museum in Cairo, we look
upon a modern fish-hook, the children's dolls

THE EARLY ARTS. 11
and playthings, the paraphernalia of ladies'
toilets, or the superb jewelry of an ancient
queen. But far more remarkable are the
commoner inheritances from the past, so iden
tified with our daily life that we never think
of their origination. Yet those were bold men
who first ventured upon many an article of
our food, and to the last degree ingenious men
who first devised a multitude of processes con
nected with its preparation. The grinding
of grain, the use of leaven, and a thousand
things connected with the sustenance of life,
whence came they ? So with the commonest
appliances; a nail, a screw, a pulley, a lamp,
a pair of scissors, a chair, a table, a kettle, a
chimney, the forging of metals, the making
of glass, were in some sense grander inven
tions than the steam engine and its contem
poraries, because they enter so closely into
all the daily round and comfort of living of
all men.
It is interesting to see how the oldest men
tion or implication ,of many of the great
conveniences and processes of common life is
found in the sacred record. And here the
narrative is not only self-consistent, but is
abundantly sustained by the remotest investi
gations of the latest time.
The brevity of an ancient narrative often re-

78 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
veals only by suggestion or implication. The
first clear indication of primeval implements
is to be found in the coats of skins. For, the
sewing of the fig-leaves, as we gather from
the use of the word isn and its equivalents
^sn and ^SD, was not necessarily more than
tying them or making them in any way ad
here together. But the preparation of the
skins involves, to say no more, the use of
cutting instruments. And it is noticeable
that here the suggestion is by implication
ascribed to the Creator, in the statement that
"the Lord God did make coats of skins and
clothed them." Simple as is the flint knife —
simplest of all effective instruments — the first
invention of it /or the hour of need might well
be ascribed to a God-given sagacity. And its
invention may equally well be traced to the
origin of the human race, inasmuch as all,
even the rudest tribes of men in all ages, have
been found in possession of sharp implements
of flint or other hard stone. They occur no
less among the relics of paleolithic races and
Swiss lake-dwellers of Western Europe than
among the North American Indians and their
predecessors the mound-builders, and in the
lowest stratum at Hissarlik, two unknown
ages earlier than the Troy of Homer; and
in Egypt deep below the ground in a well

THE EARLY ARTS. 79
near Cairo have been found flakes of flint
evidently fashioned by the hand of man.
With them enter the first faint traces of
human presence on the face of the earth.
The stone age has but recently passed away
from among the Esquimaux, and it prevailed
over the world till the inventions of the higher
races have entered. The fact is suggestive, and
might possibly be explained as the result of the
same permanent necessities and constant inge
nuity, or more easily, when we see the same
style of chipping away the flint all over the
world, as the result of an earliest, common in
heritance. Thus there is, it is said, a noticeably
close resemblance between 'the palaeolithic
implements in the post-glacial terraces of
Trenton, N. J., and those of the gravel beds
of northern France and southern England.
But we are led to another still more remark
able inquiry, that concerning the early use
of fire, as perhaps involved in the narrative.
To say nothing of the tilling of the earth by
Cain, even though perhaps not for the cereals
but for roots and garden vegetables, as nat
urally if not necessarily supplemented by the
use of fire, yet the sacrifice of Abel, "the first
lings of the flock and of their fat,'' involves,
unless the offering stands isolated from all else
of the kind in the Bible and the history of the

80 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
nations, a consumption by fire. And it is
noticeable that even in the previous narrative
an apparently archaic word, properly designa
ting the " licking ' of fire occurs in the phrase
"the flame of a sword," annn t:n^ (Gen. iii. 24).
The long-matured and skilful application of
fire is of course involved in the forgiug pro
cesses of Tubal Cain at a later period, and the
first distinct mention is found in connection
with the burnt offerings of Noah. A mo
ment's reflection, while it shows the moment-
ousness of the discovery, shows also the singular
improbability of that discovery being made by
any being however intelligent anterior to all
Knowledge or conception of its uses, and much
more the improbability that it should have be
come the common possession of all the remotest
races, unless by some such community of in
heritance and therefore early origin. Yet no
race on the earth has been found destitute of
it, although it is asserted (by Lubbock and
others) that some races have not the power to
produce it. Lubbock, after referring to some
three alleged exceptions, is constrained to say,
" It cannot be satisfactorily proved that there
is at present or has been in historical times any
race of men entirely ignorant of fire. It is at
least certain that as far back as the earliest
S'wiss lake-dwellings fire was well known in

THE EARLY ARTS. 81
Europe."' This is not all. While it has been
common to admit that in the so-called palaeo
lithic period of Europe, fire was probably
known, but "there is no evidence of it,"* it
seems that this last statement can hardly be
made. Indeed a sharp distinction between
palaeolithic and neolithic man is becoming for
various reasons more difficult to maintain. It
will hardly answer to draw the line on the
ground of progress attained; for that begs the
question at issue.' The paleontological test
founded on the presence or disappearance of
extinct animals seems on some accounts fairest.

1 "Prehistoric Times," p. 560.
2 Winchell, "Preadamite Man," p. 415.
3 Archibald Geike, though earnestly maintaining a
long lapse of time in Britain for the palaeolithic period
("Ice Age," p. 504) aud a sharp dividing line between
its relics and those of the neolithic age (p. 496), yet
informs us iu his later work ("Geology," 1882, p.
903) that the nature or shape of the implement can
not be always a satisfactory proof of antiquity. "We
must judge of it by the circumstances under which, it is
found. The student may profitably consult Dr. Arthur
Mitchell's Past in the Present for the warnings it contains
as to the danger of deciding upon the antiquity of an im
plement merely from its rudeness." And Dr. J. W. Daw
son remarks ("Origin of the World," 1877, p. 278) that
"Wilson, Southall, and other writers have accumulated
so many examples of this that I think the distinction of
Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages must now be given up by
all investigators who possess ordinary judgment."

82 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
This as proposed by Lartet makes (for France)
the oldest period of the cave-men the time of
the cave-bear, the next of the mammoth and
woolly rhinoceros, then that of the reindeer,
and last ofthe aurochs. Lubbock so far agrees
as to make the earliest period that of the cave-
bear, mammoth and rhinoceros.* But at Mas-
sat ashes and charcoal were found not only in
connection with the bones of the bear and
other animals, but with a likeness of the
cave-bear himself drawn upon a stone." So
at Aurignac, which Lartet regards as "reach
ing back to the highest antiquity of man,"
in conjunction with the bear, mammoth, and
rhinoceros were found marks of fire." It has
been found in large quantities in the valley
of Vezere,' which however may be later. Con
nect with these facts that ancient legend con
cerning Prometheus, which declares the great
ness ofthe boon, the source, and the strangeness
of its procurement, and all these indications
concur with the supposition of its communica
tion to the first family. In the same direction
lies the statement ofthe Phenician cosmogony
¦• "Prehistoric Times," p. 2.
' SouthaU, "Eecent Origin of Men," p. 208. Quatre
fages, "Human Species," p. 146.
6 Lubbock, lb. p. 320.
' Quatrefages, "Human Species," p. 320, 145.

THE EARLY ARTS. 83
which reckons as descendants of Genos and
Genea (Cain and Caina), three brothers, Light,
Fire and Flame.'
In the same direction lies the brief an
nouncement concerning the occupations of
Cain and Abel, the one a cultivator of the
soil, the other a raiser of the small cattle, sheep
and goats (rsv). The two simplest of all oc
cupations, our narrative informs us, began
thus early. It is in keeping with Living
stone's observation after his long experience
among the African tribes,that it is out of the
question for human beings to maintain life by
dependence simply on the unaided products
of nature. The origin of these employments
lies beyond the verge of all other history. The
Scripture account thoroughly accords with all
we know of early life. The Swiss Lake-dwellers
had their various grains and domestic animals.
Several writers have endeavored to show that
the men of the stone age in France and Suabia
had their domestic animals, horses and rein
deer. It is, perhaps, an open question. But
it would seem to be no question that agricul
ture and cattle breeding marked the earliest
progress in Europe beyond the life of hunting
and fishing.
We would not venture far in speculating —
3 Lenormant, "Les Origines," p. 20P.

84 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
though almost compelled to raise the inquiry
— what utensils are necessarily supposed in
this early keeping of goats, as always, for their
milk. But we are reminded at once how an
cient and well-nigh universal has been some
kind of pottery, however rude. It abundantly
marks the sites of " all ancient habitations," as
well as the chief resorts ofthe Indian tribes, the
mound-builders' settlements, the Celtic towns,
and the old Lake-dwellings.' It was found
in the valley of Massat with the remains of
fire and of the cave-bear ; at Nabrigas where
the, bear's skull-bone was pierced by an arrow,
and at Vergisson in connection with four ex
tinct species of animals.
Furthermore, we are told that Cain built a
city. The word, by its origin and frequent
early use, designates no more than an enclos
ure for defensive purposes, a wall or ditch,
either or both, surrounding a dwelling or clus
ter of dwellings. We may understand a rude
structure far simpler aud less elaborate than
the mound-builders' strongholds on the Miami
and in Northern Ohio, and in size at most a
hamlet or encampment rather than a modern
town. For we may remember that in early
Judah there were one hundred and twenty-
four " cities," and in Canaan thirty-one royal
- Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," p. 237.

THE EARLY ARTS, 85
" cities," that even the city of David was orig
inally but a citadel on Zion. Homer's Troy,
at least the fortified part, the. city proper, ap
pears to have been but a hill fortress with an
area scarcely two hundred feet by three hun
dred, not half so large as the fortified hill
top of the old Egyptian miners in Wady Ma-
garah." The city {yf) in Isaiah i. 8, is ap
parently but a watch-tower. We may therefore
imagine simply an enbankment or stockade,
within which the terror-stricken criminal en
deavored to quell his fears and secure his
safety, as in later days the Pequot chief Sas-
sacus retreated within his stronghold to shel
ter himself from the avenger of blood.
The next clear indications of progress that
occur in the sacred record, are found in a re
markable outburst in a singularly gifted family,
Lamech and his sons, Jubal, Jabal and Tubal
Cain. It occurs naturally enough after the
lapse of some generations, and in the Cainite
liiie,^the men of this world. The develop
ment is so surprising that some have en
deavored (like Buttmann) to remit it wholly
into the region of myths, and to regard the
three as gods, early worshipped by the He
brews ; others (as Ewald) would find three great
classes into which the civilization of that age
'0 About 660 by 260 feet.

86 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
was divided; and Lenormant would regard
them as ethnic personifications of the great
human races, Tubal standing for the Tibareni
and the Chalybes. It is difficult to read such
statements into the text. But the progress re
corded is very great; it follows in the line of
him who founded the first city or permanent
place of habitation, and is attended with
circumstances of luxury, sensuality, boastful-
ness and ferocity which give a striking air of
verisimilitude to this brief opening into the
oldest civilization of the human race.
In the possession of Jabal we find tents
and cattle, — these last no longer the smaller
animals, the sheep and goats of Abel's time,
but the larger cattle also, constituting together
already, as in later times, a great oriental for
tune. The tents in which they dwelt to care
for their flocks and herds set before us, as al
ready mature, no doubt, the art of spinning
and weaving the goats'-hair cloth which from
time immemorial has formed the black oriental
tent, and, by natural inference, of converting
the wool of the sheep into clothing. And the
picture of life thus given would correspond in
good m'easure to the life of Abraham and Isaac
in after times, when they had their home in
Palestine, rich in flocks and herds, with more
or less settled places of abode, yet moving

THE EARLY ARTS, 87
about with facility as necessity or convenience
might require. Historically the arts of spin
ning and weaving reach back beyond all oth
er records. The neolithic men of the Swiss
lakes present us with cloth for clothing and
nets for fishing.
Jubal appears as the ancestor of those who
handle the stringed and wind instruments.
And it is remarkable how far back in antiquity
we encounter musical instruments, and that
too in great variety. We cannot find their
origin, but they, meet us in the full stream.
The Assyrian sculptures, being mostly hunting
and battle scenes, give us more meagre dis
closures, although we find the harp at their
feasts, and when the king goes forth from Susa
to receive his prisoners, he does it to the sound
ofthe harp and the double pipe. But Egypt
furnishes both the oldest and most abundant
exhibition. " Paintings on the tombs of the
earliest times" " exhibit their fondness for in
strumental music, which blossomed out into a
singular variety of instruments. They had
their drums, their tambourines of three kinds,
clappers, cymbals and trumpets, flutes of reed,
wood, bone and ivory, single pipes with three
and with four holes, double pipes, and stringed
instruments of much greater variety in form
11 Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," i. pp. 83, 126.

88 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH,
and number of strings than are in modern use.
There were guitars of two or three different
shapes, lyres of diverse forms, standing and
portable, harps of still greater variety, some
of them in shape almost like the Irish harp,
with thirteen different numbers of strings
varying from four to twenty-two. Thus " the
harp and the organ,'' that is, the stringed and
the wind instruments of music, antedate all
other history than that of the Pentateuch.
Among the far-off tribes of the Stone Age,
as it is called, we find less of artistic turn in
any form, and for reasons which I shall dwell
upon more in the sequel. Bones pierced with
holes for whistles are the sole representa
tives that we find of the musical tendency.
The incipient artistic turn showed itself more
in other forms — in the pictures of the cave-
bear, ofthe reindeer, of two reindeers fighting,
of a fish, of the mammoth "etched upon his
own ivory" so as to be perfectly recognizable,
all of the earliest, rudest times. What other
arts, implements, and habits of these times
are indicated, whether rites of burial, rehg
ious observances and the like — I will not dis
cuss, it not being essential to my purpose,
and the facts as yet too uncertain.
But at this point let me enter two impor
tant caveats, (1) that the non-discovery of

THE EARLY ARTS. 89
certain objects, especially in scattered caves,
is no proof that they did not exist, and (2)
that the condition of things in these remote
places is no safe criterion even of the state
of society from which they might have been
detached. Unsettled tribes, and even distant
colonists, leave behind far more than they
carry. Take a striking instance. The Plymouth
settlers in 1620 brought with them no means
of fishing, neither seines nor hooks, and for
eighteen months they suffered greatly for
the want of them." For three or four years
(till March 1623 or 1624) they had no cattle,
and then but four were imported. In May
1627, they had but one cow and two goats for
each thirteen persons; and the first recorded
introduction of sheep, five in number, was in
1630. Horses must have been many years
later. And most singular of all, though glass
windows were introduced into England in
1180, yet 460' years later Edward Winslow
was writing to George Morton in England,
"Bring paper and linseed oil for your win
dows."" Oiled paper to keep out the cold of
a New England winter ! They brought with
them, ofcourse, almost nojewelry, no paintings
12 Young's "Chronicles ofthe Pilgrims," p. 171.
13 lb. p. 237.

90 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
or works of art, no organ nor instruments of
music — and the like. Now about the year
1852 I happened to be in Plymouth, Mas
sachusetts, when in the construction of a
drain or sewer some bones of those who died
in the first year of the settlement were dug
up. Suppose that the objects found with
them, or that could have been found for
many years afterwards, had been taken as
a criterion of the state of the arts and the con
dition of society in England whence they
had come so directly across the ocean-^how
illogical and false the inferences.
The third of this family group, Tubal
Cain, was "an instructor of every artificer
in brass and iron," or as most modern schol
ars render it, substantially, a "forger of all
tools (or implements,) of brass and iron."
Here we strike the origin of metallurgy, es
pecially the working of brass — or rather
bronze or copper — and iron. The bronze or
copper comes first in the order of mention,
as it appears to have come first in the order
of use. Indeed it is noteworthy that early
researches bring us very little of pure copper ;
but the main supply of metallic implements
is of bronze, a compound of copper and tin.
Copper is comparatively fusible and malleable,
and is found in combinations much more

THE EARLY ARTS. 91
manageable than iron, and is far more
abundant in the region of Armenia and the
neighboring countries. It is still a product of
Armenia, being exported in large quantities,
a characteristic product of Cyprus, to which
it gives name, and is found iu the region of
Sinai. Almost as far back as we can trace
anything, we can trace the mining of copper.
In the neighborhood of the copper slag-heaps
at Wady Magarah, is inscribed on the cliff
the oldest known carved name of a monarch,
Snefru of Egypt, who wrought these mines
before the Great Pyramid was built. And
the oldest description of the mining process
is that graphic picture in the twenty-eighth
chapter of Job —
" Surely there is a vein for silver
And a place for gold where they fine it.
Iron is taken out of the earth.
And brass is molten out ofthe stone," etc.
So early was copper and bronze forged in
the East that we cannot discern the prelim
inary stages. In this country we can trace
apparently the transition period with the
old mound builders. Until recently, copper
was found in those ancient works only in
its native state, as it had been brought from
the mines of Lake Superior and shaped into

92 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
hatchets or other forms by hammering, — the
process being betrayed by the lamination.
The art of fusing it was supposed not to
have been attained. But we seem of late to
have found the transition. For in Wiscon
sin there have lately been discovered certain
copper implements (chisels) which are de
clared by practical founders to have been
cast in a mould." This stage of transition
has not been recognized in the old world
— unless at Hissarlik. Schliemann found
there in the two strata older than his Troy,
pins of copper much harder than that of com
merce, which, it is conjectured, may owe its
hardness to a natural alloy of rhodium, such
as was ascertained to have caused a similar
hardness in the weapons of the Peruvian
Incas and in certain weapons discovered at
Lake Superior." In what he considers the
Troy stratum the metal was bronze. The
proportion of tin varied from four to nearly
nine per cent. Bronze was one of the abun
dant alloys of ancient Cyprus. Bronzes are
found at Babylon and Nineveh, in which the
proportion of tin is ten and eleven per cent.,
but in a bell fourteen — indicating a skilful
adjustment. So in the bronzes of Mycenae
i4 "HistorioalColleotionsof Wisconsin," vol. vii., p. 101.
16 Schliemann's "Ilios,"p. 251, 738.

THE EARLY ARTS. 93
a much larger proportion of tin occurs in the
armor than in the domestic utensils, some of
which are almost pure copper. Loftus found
what he calls brass ornaments (more likely
bronze) in the mounds of Erech (Warka),
and at tell Sifr a singular variety and quan
tity of copper articles in a copper-smith's
shop, where even the dross from his castings
indicated his forge near at hand. The date
was pronounced by Sir Henry Rawlinson to
be about 1500 b. c. Bronze abounds in
Egypt from the earliest times, a cast cylin
der bearing the name of Pepi of the sixth dy
nasty. This would carry us still further back
— according to Mariette 2200 years, accord
ing to Brugsch 1700, and according to Birch
more than 500. In other words, however
far back of the confines of all recorded history
except this Pentateuch we go, we encounter
bronze coming down from beyond in compar
ative abundance as one of the very earliest
forms of metallurgy, and in the very regions
to which it is assigned, and where it is still
to be found. But the tin with which it is al
loyed furnishes at the same time indications
of an enterprise and traffic quite notewor
thy, inasmuch as the nearest known points of
its production are Burmah in Asia, Bohemia,
Sardinia, Siberia and Spain in Europe. Capt.

94 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Burton however, is said to have found it in
Midian. Of iron, too. Tubal Cain was the forger.
Here again is a congruity to known circum
stances. Iron is one of the metals of Armenia.
There are mines of it in Kurdistan, — the
mountains of Tyari, and the valley of Ber-
wari. But its use among the nations gener
ally was later and scantier than that of copper
and bronze. There is no trace of it in pre
historic Troy and Mycenae; nor in Cyprus.
Among the Accadians it is said to have been
a precious metal. Og, king of Bashan, had
his bed of iron. It was the latest metal of
prehistoric man in Europe. Only in the re
gion of Asia referred to does it appear early
to any extent. At Nimroud in one room
Layard found scale armor of iron, almost de
composed with rust, but enough left to fill
two or three baskets. A perfect helmet was
also found, and other armor of iron and of
copper, and iron inlaid with copper, — helmets
of various shapes, that fell to pieces as soon
as exposed. He also found iron swords, dag
gers, shields, spear and arrow heads, the head
of a hatchet, and specimens of bronze cast
over iron. These bring us nearest in place if
not in time to Tubal Cain. For except in one
cas^,' neither iron nor steel is actually met with

THE EARLY ARTS. 95
among the antiquities of Egypt; although
steel is thought to be clearly delineated in the
pictures. That one exception is quite remark
able. It was communicated to me by Dr.
Grant Bey of Cairo, first orally, then in writ
ing, as follows: "In 1837 Mr. Hill, in the
employ of Col. Vyse, discovered a fragment
of iron in an inner point near the mouth of
the southern air channel of the great pyramid.
It was sent to the British Museum with three
certificates signed by Hill, Perring, Andrews
and Mash, to the effect that the iron had been
left in the point between two stones during
the building of the pyramid, and could not
have been inserted afterward. Col. Vyse
also thought he perceived the remains of an
iron fastening in the chamber containing
the sideboard" in the great temple of AboU
Simbel." But this remarkable family had other ac
complishments. For from the mouth of La
mech we hear the earliest poetry in the world's
history, the triple Semitic distich in which he
le Mr. Birch, in the last edition of Wilkinson, mentions
a few other small objects of iron, of which the age is more
undefined : a falchion blade under a sphinx at Kamao, the
blade of an adze, and iron wires sustaining the core of a
broken bronze statue — the latter of the age of the Eames-
sids. (VoL ii. p. 251.)

96 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
commemorates his murderous exploit and his
ferocious spirit to his two wives.
"Adah and ZUlah, hear my voice,
Wives oi Lamech, listen to my speech:
For I have slain a man for my wound,
And a young man for my hurt:
If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold,
Truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold."
It has been conjectured by many to have
been prompted by his son's invention of me
tallic weapons; and as it was a sword-song, so
was it a blood-song, an utterance of " titanic
insolence '' and ferocity. It well illustrates how
polygamy and cruelty, lust and fierceness go
hand in hand, and how the antediluvian
chivalry that could name its women, "Shade"
and " Beauty" and " Pleasantness," and sing to
them poetic strains, could summon them to
witness its ruthless revenge. In it lay already
the expression of the spirit that soon filled the
world with violence, and called imperatively
for that later edict of God, " Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
Its temper suggests the later epic hero, "acer,
impiger, iracundus," and the awful butchery,
which, when one reflects for a moment, is seen
to reign through even so famous a poem as
the Iliad. In its outer form this is the sim
plest of poetry. For the poetic form may

THE EARLY ARTS. 97
consist in a balancing of movement, which
is measure; of sound, which is rhyme and
sometimes also alliteration; or a balancing
of thoughts antithetically, synthetically or
synonymously, as here. Since poetry, too,
antedates all history, since it stands allied to
music, and so often, as in the Egyptian song
of the Pentaur, it is the voicing of daring
personal exploits, so here, in connection with
this simplest fragment, we have all the condi
tions of historic verisimilitude for the origin
of this incipient Odyssey. Here ends the
catalogue of antediluvian art with a note
worthy silence. Not a word of painting,
which had practically no existence in Moses'
day," nor of sculpture, nor of architecture, or
any of the sights that would have impressed
the senses of a dweller in Babylon or Nineveh.
17 i< We may say it is ouly by some abuse of terms that
we can speak of Egyptian painting at all. No people have
spread more color upon stone and wood than the Egyp
tians, none have had a more true instinct for color har
mony; but yet they never attempted to express by the
gradation of tone, by the juxtaposition or superposition
of tints, the real aspects of the surfaces which present
themselves to our eyes, aspects which are unceasingly
modified by the amount of light or shadow, by distance
and the state of the atmosphere. They used not the least
glimmering of what we call chiaroscuro or of aerial per
spective." Perrot and Ohipiez, "Hist, of Art in Ancient
Egypt," ii. p. 331.

98 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
And from this early scene of worldly devel-j
opment, but of profligacy and violence, which
explains so much of subsequent history, we
turn with pleasure to that revival in the house
of Seth which apparently furnishes the clue to
the " sons of God " before the flood.
The next stage of art indicated in the his
tory is in many ways remarkable. It is made,
supposable only by the condition of things al
ready described, the progress previously re
corded. I refer to the construction of the ark.
Now, the essential facts concerning the del
uge and the rescue of one pious family from
destruction I take it to be settled, if any thing
historical or traditional can be settled, by the
loint testimony ofthe human race. They seem
to have been branded into the memory of the
human family in all parts ofthe world. I will
not weary you with even a summary recital
of this traditional knowledge, which has beeu
so often set in array, and which comes from Eu
rope, Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of
the ocean." It is inexplicable, except on two
suppositions, the substantial unity of these
races, with this one great central knowledge,
so far at least as to have descended from one
contemporaneous stock, and the stupendous na-
18 A good survey of them is found in DeUtzsch's
Genesis.

THE EARLY ARTS. 99
ture of the historic fact which in all their wan
derings aud their elevation or degradation they
never could shake ofi'from their recollection. I
may add a third noticeable consideration, that
when we take all these various traditions and
sift from them their palpable absurdities and
their local colorings, we can frame from them
all a narrative that lies side by side with
this sober and consistent Bible histfirj'. The
substance of the universal story, when thus
sifted, is this: a wicked' world destroyed by a
flood for its wickedness; a righteous man and
his family, together with pairs of animals, pre
served in an ark; the ark resting on a moun
tain ; birds sent out to ascertain the condition
of the earth ; an altar built and sacrifices of
fered. These details are sometimes much
abridged, and as often greatly expanded. The
birds in the Chaldean legend of Berosus go
three times. In some accounts the dove,
the vulture and the raven figure ; in Michuacan
their place is taken by the raven and the hum
ming-bird. The vedas associate with Manu
seven other holy sages, and the traditions even
of the Fiji Islands give the number of the
saved as eight. Not to dwell on these and
other traits of resemblance or difference, the
point I have in view is the construction ofthe
ark — a very remarkable record. It supposes

100 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
a skill and resources which can be accounted
for only by the facts already related, this
early and extraordinary development handed
down from father to son, and increasing all the
more rapidly by reason of longevity, till Noah
could carry out eftectively the Divine instruc
tions. See, however, the sobriety and verisi
militude of the narrative, which, granting the
fundamental fact, in all its details of time and
circumstance conforms to the exigencies, to an
extent which of itself might almost fill the
hour of this lecture. It assigns indeed a long
time of expectation aud of preparation, under
stood by one great body of commentators to
be the one hundred and twenty years of Gen
esis vi. It was an enormous undertaking,
demanding all the cutting instruments and
metallic implements already invented. Obr
serve the material, as congruous to the region
as was the shittim or acacia wood of the tab
ernacle to the region of Sinai. The "gopher"
wood of the ark is admitted to be pitch- wood,
therefore light a,nd comparatively easy of
working. Lexicographers, from the similarity
of the consonant elements, incHne to suggest
specifically the cypress. Now the cypress
abounds throughout Asia Minor, and Fresh-
field" mentions the cypress and the fir as con-
19 Preshfield's "Caucasus," pp. 230, 253, 254, 275, 322.

THE EARLY ARTS. 101
stituting a prominent part of the forests far
up in the mountains of Caucasus. It grows
to the height of one hundred and twenty feet.
Nothing could be more suitable. The pine also
abounds in these regions. The immense pine
forests on the sources of the Rion or Phasis
are among the few distinct statements of
Freshfield; while Thielmann mentions the
pines that half conceal the ravines ofthe Kura
on the eastern slope, and the timber that is
floated down the Koissu river to the Caspian
sea. The cypress or the pine would have fur
nished the pitch for the caulking; or if we
suppose the pitch to be bitumen — as it prob
ably was not — we are reminded of the exten
sive petroleum works now carried on at Buku
on the Caspian, and of the bitumen springs
still flowing at Is on the Euphrates. And the
olive tree of which the dove brought a fresh-
plucked leaf, grows also in Armenia, and is
found on the south side of Mount Ararat at
its foot. But the most remarkable, and equally
consistent thing, is the architecture of the
building; a ship with three successive cabins
divided into compartments and " light to [the
distance of] a cubit above " or from above, which
permits us to conceive of a row of openings
under the eaves, high aboye the range of the
waters, for light and ventilation. The ark is

102 HISTORY IN TIIE PENTATEUCH.
not launched, observe, but built on dry land —
possibly on some height where the pine or cy
press grew, and the waters may have "risen
fifteen cubits " before it floated — whence it is
gradually raised and "lifted," till it "walked
(ipn) on the face of the waters." But let us
observe more carefully its remarkable dimen
sions. For while the Chaldean legend of
Berosus gives us the impossible length of five
furlongs and the breadth of two, and even ac
cording to the Babylonian tablet, if we may
trust the figures, long given as doubtful, the
size would be — reckoning the Egyptian cubit
of 20.7 inches*"— 1035 in length and 103^ feet
each in breadth and height. The last of these
dimensions — to say nothing of the length —
shows the wildness of the statement. But by
the same standard the dimensions given in
the Pentateuch would be 517 feet in length
by 86:^ width and 51f in height. Now the
largest vessel of modern times, built by the
nation that is mistress of the seas, after the
most approved standard of naval architecture,
was the Great Eastern. The interval of time
between that first recorded vessel and this of
the present generation is at least more than
20 Such is the result of measurements according to Gen.
Sir Henry James. Notes on the "Great Pyramid," pp. 9
seq. , .

THE EARLY ARTS. 103
4000 years. But we reach this extraordinary
result, that«the width of the ark was just 3^
feet more than that of the Great Eastern, and
its height ^\ feet less — while its length, being
162 feet less, would tell yet further for its
strength and safety as a seaworthy craft.
The manufacture of wine is the next recorded
fact of progress. This again is far the oldest
mention of a process, that of making and us
ing fermented drinks, which is nearly if not
absolutely universal. And inasmuch as Noah
the husbandman "planted a vineyard," the ex
tent and plan of the planting would render it
probable that the practice was older than Noah.
It is, however, not every region of the earth
that offers the vine for that purpose. A great
variety of fermented drinks have existed, such
as at least seven kinds of beer, made from
malt, maize, millet, milk, cava, rice, rye, and
several kinds of wine, as they are called, made
from the apple, pear, sugar cane, from the
agave in a large part of Asia, and from the
palm far more extensively than from the
vine, as in Chili, India, the Pacific Isles and
all of Africa. But in Armenia none of thesi;
resorts were called for. Its fertile soil, abound
ing in other fruits, yields an abundant supply
of grapes.*' So also does the whole neighbor-
21 Chesney, "Euphrates and Tigris," i. p. 97.

104 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
ing region of Georgia, and Thielmann found
excellent wine among the valleys of the Cau
casus.** The earliest record of the wine man
ufacture thus refers it to its legitimate sur
roundings. The wine of Armenia and the
neighboring regions is said to be still as un
fortunate in its influences as in the days of
Noah. The most noteworthy account of any early
architectural enterprise is found in the tower
of Babel. This again is localized in its appropri
ate place, the region of Shinar or Babylonia.
There seems to be in the writer's mind a clear
reminiscence of Egypt, when he speaks of sub
stitutes for " stone " and "mortar." The im
mense structures of Egypt were of limestone
and sandstone, joined by a mortar that has
not lost its binding power with the lapse of
ages. But had the writer implied a build
ing of kiln-burnt bricks in Egypt, he would
have intimated that of which no trace is to
be found in Egypt till Roman times. There
are indeed a few specimens of such ancient
brick in Egypt, but so few that for a long
time their existence was positively denied.
The old Egyptian bricks are all of sun-dried
clay mixed with straw. Nor is such a cement
as the sacred writer ascribes to this tower to
22 "Caucasus," i. pp. 88, 234.

THE EARLY ARTS. 105
be found in Egypt, nor, so far as I am aware,
in any region but one.*' But in this region
of Babylonia we meet all the circumstances.
¦ In the fountains at Kerkuk, Apcheron and
other places, one just outside the walls at
Nimroud, are abundant supplies of bitu
men,** which, when used as a cement, some
times becomes harder than the bricks it binds.
Here too has come down the use of bricks
" burnt to a burning," (Hebrew), so hard
that thousands of them show the name of
Nebuchadnezzar as distinct as if burnt yes
terday. Here also is that remarkable tower,
Birs NimrOud, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar on
the site of a more ancient unfinished building
.supposed to be the temple of Belus, and be
lieved by some (e. g., Schrader) to stand on the
spot where Babel was begun. But whatever
its history, the ruin, Birs Nimroud, composed
so largely of burnt brick laid in bitumen, com
memorates the mode of construction peculiar
to Babylonia. Indeed we can ascend almost
to the date of this tower of Babel. For we
have but to cross the Euphrates to the ruins
of Mugheir — Ur of the Chaldees — to find in
the basement of its temple this combina-
23 At Warka (Erech) a partial use of bitumem was made
with sun-dried bricks.
2< Layard, "Babylon and Nineveh," p. 202.

106 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
tion in its most primitive form. "The burnt
bricks are of a small size and inferior qual
ity, laid in bitumen, facing a solid mass of
sun-dried brick and forming a solid wall out
side of it, ten feet in thickness. Writing of an
antique cast appears on it, and the supposed
date is 2300 b. c, a little earlier than the time
commonly assigned to the building of the tower
of Babel.*'
We gain no further information or intima
tion of the advances in art, or in the art of
living, till we reach, by a long stride, the
time of Abraham, although this is more than
a thousand years anterior to any other authen
tic history. In his biography all is quite gen
eral till we find him in Egypt. Still as he
comes from Haran, but yet more remarkably
in Egypt and again in Palestine, we light ab
ruptly upon the institution of domestic slavery,
first in written history. He returned from
Egypt with man-servants and maid-servants,
and was afterwards able from his own retainers
to equip a band of three huudred and eighteen
armed men. We plunge here into the midst of
that institution that has so filled the history of
Africa. What advances, so-called, in the con
dition of society are involved in this fact, can
be best understood from the monuments of
25 Smith's "Dictionary ofthe Bible," i. p. 222.

THE EARLY ARTS. 107
Egypt, which exhibit such a remarkable and
complicated state of civilization as nothing
else could have satisfactorily demonstrated.
The Theban paintings show us slaves, both
white and black, in numbers, the latter even
holding the dish with hand reversed, as so oft
en at the present day.*' They were employed
within doors and without, in every mode of
ministry to the grandeur and luxury of their
masters. The pyramids bear perpetual witness
that enforced labor existed in Egypt long be
fore the timCjOf Abraham, while the old Ac
cadian code of Babylonia even legislated on
the treatment of slaves.*' So also the institu
tion of the harem, largely filled with foreign
women, in accordance with the narrative of
Sarah, was early in full operation in Egypt. **
But of the early use of that animal so indis
pensable in Egypt, the camel — which was one
of Pharaoh's presents to Abraham, but neither
then nor later was delineated on the monu
ments, — we should know nothing otherwise
than in this history, but for the corroborative
bones which Hekekian Bey found in his ex
cavations in the delta.*" And the remarkable
absence of this animal from all delineations
26 Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," i. p. 141.
27 Lenormant, "Chaldean Magic," p. 383.
28 Wilkinson, ii. p. 224.
29 Lyell's "Antiquity of Man," p. 36.

108 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
on the monuments is possibly to be explained
from their association with the afterwards
hated Hyksos, who may have brought them
from Asia, where their name originated, and
who were probably in power in Abraham's time.
It was when the patriarch went up out of
Egypt, that for the first time we read of a
man's being " rich in silver and gold," as he
was. In no other country do we so early find
evidence of gold in such abundance, and of
such skill in its manufacture. The gold found
in Assyria and Babylonia is later in date and
less in amount. Small and scanty gold and
silver ornaments occur at Mughier and Warka
in Chaldea. The gold of Cyprus is still later.
The treasures at Troy were of the Homeric
city, as is supposed, the previous strata yield
ing to Schliemann but three primitive gold
rings, an electrum brooch, and no silver, and
the lowest stratum only one small silver brooch
and one gilt copper knife. But Egypt seems
to have abounded in gold from the earliest
times, earlier perhaps than in silver. The gold
mines of Ethiopia have within a few years been
brought to light in the Bish^ree desert, eight
een days' journey south-east of Kom Ombos
on the Nile. Here are deep excavations in
the quaxtz rock, and ruins of miners' huts
which, however, may date only from the time-

THE EARLY ARTS. 109
of the Caliphs. But no traveller up the Nile
will have failed to see in the tombs of the
twelfth dynasty at Beni Hassan — where the
fluted Doric columns antedate by one or two
thousand years those of Greece — the picture
of the whole process of washing the ore, fusing
the metal with the help of the blow-pipe, mak
ing it into ornaments, weighing it in scales
peculiar to this use, together with the various
operations of the goldsmith. But this, though
older far than the Exodus, is not the earliest
indication. " The same mode of washing and
working it is figured on monuments of the
fourth dynasty,"'" and Mr. Birch informs us,
possibly in too sweeping terms, that the
nobles of that dynasty had each his own
gold-worker as well as glass-blower, potter,
tailor, baker and butler, his dancer, harpist
and singer." Any one who has seen but a
part of the Egyptian jewelry that is scat
tered in the museums of the world, and
especially the superb collection in the Bou
lak Museum, largely from the tomb of
queen Ah-hotep, the mother of Ahmes, will
need no commendation of the Egyptian jewel
er's skill, even to the art of imitating the em
erald, amethyst and lapis lazuli in glass.
30 Wilkinson, ii. p. 139.
31 Birch, "Histoiy of Egypt," p. 45.

110 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Nefert of Snefru's time wears her necklace of
rubies and emeralds. And the delicate cut
ting of hard stones, and even the cutting
upon a glass bead the name of Amun-m-het
of the 12th (or 18th) dynasty, explain where
the Hebrews could have learned the art of en
graving the twelve precious stones ofthe High
Priest's breast-plate with the names of the
tribes of Israel.'* The ear-rings and bracelets
sent to the bride of Isaac are the oldest writ
ten mention of the practice that is older than
all other history, as is proved by the second
stratum of Hissarlik and the sculptures and
relics of Nineveh, and older even than this
most ancient record, as is now known from
the monuments of Egypt.
Here too we find the earliest mention of
money transactions, and of their method.
For Abimelech pays Abraham a thousand of
silver" — a transaction more distinctly ex-
32 Exodus xxviii. 15-21. "Under the first Theban em
pire the Egyptians practiced the cutting of amethysts,
cornelians, garnets, jasper, lapis lazuli, green and white
feld-spar, obsidian, serpentine, steatite, rock crystal, red
quartz, ' sardonyx, etc. We do not know whether these
early workmen employed the lapidar}''s wheel, but we may
safely say that they produced some of the finest works of
the kind which are known to us." "History of Art, in
Ancient Egypt," Perrot and Chipiez. London, 1883, ii.
p. 288.
33 Gen. XX. 16, xxiii. 16.

THE EARLY ARTS. Ill
plained subsequently, when Abraham buys
the field and cave of Machpelah for four hun
dred shekels of silver, which, it is added, " he
weighed to Ephron, current money with the
merchant." These transactions bring out tiiree
points; (1) that in ancient iimes silver appears
to have been the money metal, gold being re
served more for ornament; (2) that for a long
period still money was not coined and stamped,
but weighed — the Lydians being among the
first to use coin, and that perhaps a thousand
years afterward ; (3) that even then the mer
chant, (nrio) the travelling tradesman was at his
business of exchange. Later, in the history
of Joseph, we encounter a whole caravan of
traders on their way to Egypt with various
commodities there in demand — spicery, balm
and myrrh, to which they add on the journey
the youthful slave. Of these commodities, the
first two, the ¦'iv and the ni<3J, Ebers thinks
he has found the very names in the Egyptian
tol and nekpat^ in close proximity, in the la
boratory at Edfu.
The business-like method of Abraham in his
traffic conforms to the careful reckonings so
abundant in Egypt, and to the existence of a
hundred Chaldean tablets filled with business
34 Ebers, " .ffigypten und die Biicher Moses," p. 290.

112 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Contracts, both before and after the time of
Abraham."^ To the same volume we are indebted for
our oldest written knowledge of the contrast
between the elaborate civilization of the Nile,
with its butlers and bakers and feastings, its
irrigation, its grain trade, its leavened bread,
its fine linen and dyed cloths, its embalming
of the dead, its defensive strongholds and
chariots and armies, on the one hand; and the
simpler life, partly tent-life of Palestine, with
its unleavened bread, its wells, pastures and
flocks, its earthen furnaces, its skin bottles,
its donkeys for burdens, its warlike mountain
tribes and its degraded wickedness by the
Dead Sea; and also the intermediate civiliza
tion of rural Mesopotamia, where the camel
and the kine predominated in the flocks and
herds, where though town life prevailed, the
daughter repaired to the well with the pitcher
on her shoulder, where there were teraphim,
and labor-wages, and marriage contracts and
wedding feasts, where the bride set forth with
her household stuff, and the family were ac
customed to " send her away with songs, with
tabret aud with harp."
So dependent indeed have we been upon
these ancient records for all that is consistent
35 Tompkins, "Times of Abraham," p. 36.

THE EARLY ARTS. 113
and coherent in our notions of this earlier state
of the race, that the mere omission of any cir
cumstance in this narrative has left a blank
in history, ordinarily not to be supplied. It
is a noticeable illustration that glass, whether
from the difficulty of its manufacture or its
extreme fragility, or from not belonging to
their condition of life in Egypt or perhaps
from being of far less utility than the stronger
and cheaper pottery, seems not to have found
its way among the Hebrews, and is never
mentioned in these old historic books, nor
found in the ruins of Palestine. And per
haps the simple omission was the occasion of
the belief prevalent till recently, that glass
was unknown, until it was accidentally dis
covered by some travelling Phenicians. I
remember two otherwise intelligent Scotch
clergymen in Rome, who still advocated this
exploded notion, one of whom concluded his ar
gument by saying, "You'll find no glass about
Solomon's temple." And yet not only are ob
jects of glass somewhat common among Egyp
tian relics, but the process of its manufacture
into bottles is delineated in the tombs of
Beni Hassan, and it is admitted to have been
older than the great Pyramid; while such
was the skill displayed in its manufacture,
that not only was it made into artificial pre-

114 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
cious stones, but figures were wrought into
glass in such wise that the pattern of the
surface passed in right lines through the sub
stance, and often so minutely exact that it
could be made out only by the use of a lens.
And thus it is that many a hiatus in our
knowledge comes from the reserve of this an
cient book. And while many a perplexity is
cleared up by its solitary voice, many others
remain unsolved for want of those few words,
or it may be the one word, that it does not
speak. Vainly do we sometimes wish, "0
that the word had been spoken." What light
it might so easily have cast on a multitude of
now difficult if not insoluble problems. For
we might address that ancient author not
with possible guesses once put to an exhumed
and shrivelled corpse, but to a once seen and
living witness,
"And hast thou walked about — how strange a story —
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago.
When the Memnonium was in all its glory
Aud time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces and piles stupendous?"
But though that witness must have been
an attendant at the dazzling court of the
great Rameses, no less than of the infatuated
Menephtha, the Sphinx itself could not be
more reticent of that mighty but boastful

THE EARLY ARTS. 115
name, though cut so deep on half the monu
ments of Egypt. For what had Moses in
common with Rameses? And why should
he commemorate that useless name ? In his
imperishable record the serene lawgiver will
hand down that tyrant's name neither to the
fame he so intensely coveted, nor to the in
famy he deserved. In all the compass of his
tory there cannot be found a more singular
case of reticence.

LECTURE FOURTH.
THE EABLY CONSANGUINITIES.
The books of Moses, as well as the remainder
of the Scriptures, seem to assert and assume
the unity of the race, and their common or
igin. This lies not alone in the statement,
that Eve was called by Adam the "mother
of all living," but also in the uniform tracing
of all branches and members of the human
family to the one ancestry; in the assumption
that the one fall affected in its consequences
all the race as the offspring of Adam ; and that
the redemption was and is for that one lost
race. The methods and tendencies of scientific
thought have in one respqct singularly changed
the aspect of this whole question within a
generation. It is like onr of the marvels of
modern magic. Forty yea.i'S-ago we were
obliged by laborious inductions and a wide
range of observations and historical researches
to show the possibility — then vehemently and

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 117
sturdily denied — that races so diverse could
have come from a common ancestry. Now
on the other side, this labor is taken off our
hands by the general concession, rather the
vigorous assertion, of the same type of think
ers and reasoners, that anything and all things
living may have descended from precisely the
same kind of living germ, — not to speak of
what lies still further back. It is, when we
consider its celerity, certainly one of the most
amazing flank-movements, and stupendous rev
olutions in the history of thought.
But as it may be doubted not only whether
this theory has been proved, but whether it
ever will or can be proved, we do not find
ourselves absolved from the necessity of glanc
ing, however briefly, at the lines of human
consanguinity from the beginning of the race.
Without resorting to any evolutionary hy
pothesis, we may allude independently to
the indications first, that the tribe of men
might have descended from one pair. This
ground was well canvassed, in the main, long
ago. It was well shown that the physical
differences now existing are no insuperable
objection. These were found to be in accord
ance with well-known facts of wider range.
Before the researches of Darwin had been
given to the public, so high an authority as

118 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Dr. Carpenter had announced as a well settled
fact of observation that among the domesti
cated races of quadrupeds the characters
most susceptible of variation are, stature, gen
eral conformation of the body, conformation, of
the skull, quantity, texture and color of the
hairy covering, physical character as shown in
the increase of intelligence and disappear
ance of some of the instinctive propensities.
These comprise summarily the whole cata
logue of diversities found in the human
species. In regard to the human race it has been
shown abundantly and historically (1) that each
of the external differences often ceases to be
characteristic. Thus the black color is found
not only in individuals, as the black Jews
of Portugal, but in tribes, as the Bicharis on
the Red Sea, whose hair and character are
perfectly Semitic; and the white color in
the brutalized descendants of certain exiled
Irish of Ulster whose features are almost of
the African type.' " There are negroes," says
Quatrefages, " whose prognathism is no more
marked than in whites, and whites in whom
it is very pronounced;" the quality of the
hair not being an invariable mark, nor the
shape of the section of the hair — whether
1 CabeU, "Unity of Mankind," p. 98.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 119
oval, circular, or cylindrical — a characteristic;
while other distinctive qualities of races often
shade into each other. Indeed Quatrefages
has abundantly shown that the limits of
variation in animals of the same species are
even greater than in man between the white
and the negro taken as extremes, and they
include color, anatomical character and ex
ternal form, even to the modifications of the
head.* (2) It has been shown that we can
frequently trace the history of great physical
changes, as in the Magyar of Hungary, un
questionably of the old Turanian or Tartar
stock, whose residence for a thousand years
in the fertile plains of Southern Europe, and
consequent changes of habits therewith, have
also changed the pyramidal skull into an ellip
tical one, and obliterated every physical trace
of their Tartar features; the Turks of Europe
and Western Asia modifying from the Cen
tral-Asia toward the European type; and
the physical degradation and transformation
wrought by even two centuries of hardship
and want in Sligo and northern Mayo in
Ireland.' (3) It also is found that often the
linguistic affinity is strongest where the phy
sical resemblance is slightest, and weakest
2 Quatrefages, "Human Species," p. 2.
3 Cabell, "Unity of Mankind," p. 99.

120 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
where this is strongest. An instance of the
former kind is found in the relation of the
Malayo-Polynesian and American races, and
of the latter kind in that of the Chinese and
Mongolian races. These fundamental points
have been abundantly proved. If it be ob
jected that the appearance of the negro is
too far back in history to allow time for the
establishment of such decided changes, the
negro appearing, it has been said, as early
as the sixth dynasty in Egypt, the reply is
obvious and easy, that changes are often rapid
and become permanent at once, especially
where the same influences continue; as the
Ancon breed of sheep sprang from a single
male in Massachusetts in 1791, and the Mau-
champ sheep in France in 1828, the hornless
oxen of Paraguay from a single male in 1770,
and the Niata cattle of South America which
are of comparatively recent origin, but per
manent. So the African race, once differen
tiated, might easily become permanent — es
pecially as the conditions remain. But Quat
refages declares that " the true negro did not
exist in Europe during the quaternary epoch."
No fossil skull belongs to the African or Mela
nesia type.*
¦• "Human Species," p. 292. The statement that "we
see negroes on the monuments iu the Sixth Dynasty"

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 121
The objection arising from the dispersion
of the race in primitive times across wide
expanses of ocean, has been abundantly an
swered by reference to known facts. Lyell,
for example, cites cases of island savages hav
ing drifted in their canoes from Wateoo to
Otaheite, 550 miles, from Ancorso to Samar,
800 miles, from Anaa, one of the Coral Isles,
to uninhabited islands, 600 miles, and from
Ulea to one of the Coral Isles, 1500 miles —
(SouthaU, "Eecent Origin," p. 26) is not quite accurate.
We do not see them depicted on the monuments till the
eighteenth dynasty. The first mention of ISahsi or ne
groes is found in an inscription at San by one Una, an
officer of Pepi of the Sixth Dynasty. He records, among
other things, his having levied an army of Nuhsi from
Aruret and other lands of Ethiopia. The inscription in
fuU is given in the "Eecords of the Past," vol. ii., trans
lated by S. Birch. The rendering "negroes" is accepted
also by Brugsch, ("History of Egypt," i. p. 119). Mr.
Birch, however, in his notes on Wilkinson's " Ancient
Egyptians" (London 1878) remarks (vol. i. p. 261) "the
Blacks were generally called Nahsi or revolters." This
definition naturally raises the question how far the color
is matter of inference, by reason of the provinces being
Ethiopian. The reign of Pepi was long subsequent to the
beginning of Egyptian history. Some 767 years are as
signed by Birch in his history to the first three dynasties,
and about 1000 years to the first six dynasties. This
allows a long time for race changes. Indeed there is no
absurdity in the suggestion that race tendencies might
have been transmitted from before the Deluge, by the
marriages of Noah's sons.

122 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
far enough to have gone from some parts of
Africa to South America or from Spain to the
Azores, and thence to North America.^ In
deed it seems now conceded that all the
Polynesians, from the Sandwich Islands to
New Zealand, from the Tonga Islands to Easter
Island, belong to the same race.^ In many
cases their traditions commemorate the. an
cient migrations.' How the communication
even with America could be and in part ac
tually was established has been abundantly
indicated by Quatrefages,' first in the north
west across Behring's Straits, divided midway
by the St. Lawrence Islands, or farther south
from Kamschatka to Alaska by the Aleutian
Islands, or even further south where the " cur
rent of Tessan" has frequently cast abandoned
junks on the coast of California ; also directly
across the main ocean — if not over the Pacific
from China, of which there seems to be evi
dence," yet certainly and repeatedly from Eu
rope — the Scandinavian appearing to have
landed on the eastern coast of North America
between Greenland and Long Island as many
as five times from the year 886 to the year
1007, beginning with Erick the Red and end-
^ Lyell's "Geology," Eleventh Ed. ii. 471-2.
6 Quatrefages, "Origin of Human Species," p. 188.
¦> lb. 192-8. 8 n, 199 etc. 9 lb. 204-7.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 123
ing with Thorfinn. So abundant and so
marked have been these evidences of migra
tion over the land and the sea that Sir Charles
Lyell early made, and left permanently on
record in his latest (eleventh) edition, this
remarkable utterance: "Were the whole of
mankind now cut off, with the exception of
one family, inhabiting the old or the new conti
nent, or Australia, or even some coral islet of
the Pacific, we might expect their descendants,
though they should never become more en
lightened than the Australians, the South Sea
Islanders or the Esquimaux, to spread in the
course of ages over the whole earth, diffused
partly by the tendency of the population to
increase in a limited district beyond the
means of subsistence, and partly by the acci
dental drifting of canoes by tides and currents
to distant shores.""
The objection arising from the number and
diversity of languages — reckoned at some 900
or more — has been met in part by the success
already achieved in tracing the connection of
certain tongues widely dispersed, as the Aryan
from India through the west of Europe, to
one common stock or family, and some of
these families to a still higher connection;
and the answer has been supplemented by
¦o LyeU's "Geology," ii- 474.

124 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the express views of many of the highest lin
guistic authorities, as Miiller and others, that
there is nothing in the present aspect of the
various languages of the earth to militate
against the common origin of the nations.
And if it be still objected that granting the
possibility of an original unity of speech, the
time supposed to have elapsed is insufficient
to explain the vast changes; the effectual
answer has been made, viz., that the rapidity
of linguistic changes varies immensely with
the circumstances and conditions of life,
whether under the existence of a written
and diffused literature, as for the last few
centuries of modern Europe, fixing its form,
or in a region where there is permanence of
residence and institutions, with settled and
centralizing domestic relations, as in ancient
Egypt and Palestine, — under both these con
ditions language becomes fixed and remains
long unchanged. But in a country and a
race undergoing great changes of location,
and diversity of experiences amounting to
revolutions, the linguistic changes are equally
great and rapid. Thus "in the ninth century
there existed in Europe no less than seven
Romance dialects, all descended from the
Latin and all formed after the downfall of
the Romam Empire, viz., the Italian, Walla-

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 125
chian, Rhetian, Proven 9al, Spanish, Portuguese,
French." In Italy the change was repeated.
For "the population of Rome in the year 1000
spoke a language quite diflerent from that
spoken in the time of Constantine, and equally
different from that of their descendants."'^
The general objections to the unity of the
race and their descent from a common an
cestor, thus disappear before knoion specific
facts. And there meets us on the positive
side, the following solid array of arguments
in support and illustration of the original re
cord, some of them the result only of late
researches: 1. Their agreement in all pathological and
physiological phenomena, subjects of the same
diseases and the same remedies; (2) their sim
ilarity of anatomical structure, such that the
surgeon educated in New York practises
boldly with no changes in Pekin or Aus
tralia; (3) similarity in the fundamental pow
ers and traits of mind — so that however de
graded any given race may be, intellectually
or morally, it has the germs of the highest
characteristics and capacity for the highest
attainments ; (4) similar limits to the duration
of life under similar circumstances; (5) the
same normal temperature of body and average
11 SouthaU, "Eecent Origin of Man," pp. 28, 29.

126 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
rate of pulsation ; (6) equal duration of preg
nancy; (7) unrestrained fruitfulness between
the various races;'* to which may be added
(8) the apparent radiation historically from
a common centre in Western Asia; (9) the
strong linguistic connections already indicated,
binding together races as far removed as from
India to Scotland and from Malacca to North
America; (10) the common traditions and
customs of the races, one of the most remark
able of which is the tradition of the Flood—
although by no means the only bond of con
nection of this kind. As this Biblical an
nouncement of the common descent of the
human family long antedated the researches
that confirm it, and practically over-rode the
proud exclusiveness of many of the nations —
the Egyptian lording it over the "vile Khetas"
and other tributaries, the Athenian distin
guishing himself from the barbarian, and the
Chinese from the outside barbarian — so il:
would appear that every fresh advance of in
vestigation in modern days tends to add to i;
new confirmation. The arguments for a Pre-
Adamite man have not seemed to me impor
tant enough to require discussion — in this
brief course — and they only make after all an
older Adam.
12 The seven points given above are from Delitzsch,
"Commentary on Genesis."

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 127
On taking leave of the first parents, the sa
cred narrative traces the line of Cain for some
generations before dropping it finally to ac
company thenceforth the line of Shem and
the "sons of God." A certain similarity in
these two lists, either in form or signification,
nas led a considerable number of writers to
maintain that they were originally the same,
and are to be regarded as variations of the
same tradition. But here, among other vin
dicators of the narrative, we find Lenormant,
who is free enough in his speculations, com
ing to the help of Keil and Delitzsch and
Kurtz, pointing out the marked differences
of real meaning connected with a partial re
semblance of form and sound. Thus the
Mehujael and the Mahalaleel mean, the one
the "smitten of God," the other "praise or
splendor of God " ; Cain and Cainan " acquisi
tion," and perhaps "smith," Methusael, and
Methuselah " man of desire " and "man of the
dart"; Irad and Jared "fugitive" and "de
scent" or "service"; and when the name is
the same, as Enoch " initiator," it is capable
of a wholly diverse application, the one being
the initiator of town life and of the secular arts,
the other of religious and spiritual life. While
etymologies are more than precarious in these
remote ages, we may use Lenormant's sug
gestion so far forth as to insist on the clear

128 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
differences which it has been attempted to
overlook and confound, and in the two iden
tical instances, Enoch and Lamech, to recog
nize the wellJknown law of identical names
passing down different branches of the same
family as well as in the same family line, — a
law so common in the Scriptures and out as
to require no special explanation or apology.
It may be added that as we know not when
the names were given, whether contempora
neously or subsequently, there is a possibility
which Delitzsch and Lenormant both suggest,
of a naming with reference to the exhibition
of a contrast throughout — a partail similarity
and real diversity.
When now we attempt to follow down
this second line of early consanguinity, the
Shemite, with its figures, we find ourselves at
once dealing with several extremely difficult
and complicated questions, on which in the
present state of our knowledge no man can
offer an absolute solution, but only suggestions
which look towards a solution, suggestions to
be made with all modesty.
These questions concern the relation of the
individuals to each other in the line of suc
cession; the length of life ascribed to them
respectively ; and the total duration thus in
dicated from the Creation to the Deluge.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 129
Reversing the order of these questions, there
meets us that of the length of time prior to
the Deluge, and thereby somewhat directly
the duration of man's history on the earth,
involved chiefly in this period. For the length
of time from the Christian era to the birth of
Abraham can be reckoned without any large
range of variation — perhaps 200 or 300 years ;
and the period from Abraham to Noah offers
us two Biblical Chronologies (Hebrew and
Septuagint) admitting, to some degree, pos
sible confirmatory or corrective collation with
semi-historic events. But the previous period
stands alone. No figures whatever are offered
from any source except the Pentateuch. And
the importance of the inquiry shows itself in
its bearing on the general question of the anti
quity of the human race. I propose to make
some modest and cautious suggestions bearing
on the inquiry.
To determine the antiquity ofthe race, then,
resort has been had to two sources of inquiry;
one, the figures ofthe Hebrew Scriptures, com
bined as well as practicable ; the other, certain
archaeological explorations, comparing the rel
ics of man found buried in the surface of the
earth with certain other (geological) phenom
ena and estimating the probable lapse of time
required for these phenomena to have taken

130 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
place. Both these processes are flexible and
give us, as will appear, variable results. The
Biblical figures are made by intelligent and
sober-minded men to vary some hundreds if
not thousands of years, according to the meth
od of treatment ; while the scientific figures, in
the hands of very eminent men, vary not by
hundreds or thousands, but by tens of thou
sands, hundreds of thousands, and, in some
estimates, millions of years" — a range that is
as wild as wide.
It is to be observed, however, that the scien
tific conjectures for the past few years have
been becoming more cautious and much more
moderate. Astronomers like Tait and others
are ceasing to allow the almost unlimited dur
ation for the present order of things demanded
by Darwin and Haeckel. The extreme anti
quity of certain attendant and determinative
phenomena is become, if not greatly re
duced, yet vigorously disputed until such
recent writers as Le Conte, while taking a
wide range up to a possible 100,000 on one
hand come down to 10,000 as the possible
limit on the other. And in detail, whereas
the actual association of human relics with
13 Le Conte from 10,000 to 100,000, Lubbock 100,000 to
240,000, Draper many hundred thousand years. Prof. Vivien
1,000,000, Dr. Hunt 9,000,000.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 131
those of the mammoth reindeer, cave-bear,
cave-lion, cave-hyena, etc., and the supposed
great antiquity of the latter, was one strong
point, it appears, at least by the concession of
Lubbock, Dawkins," and others, that the cave-
lion and hyena are not different from living
species, but driven/writer south, and the bear,
perhaps, not different from the brown bear of
Europe; and many circumstances since the
discovery of an entire mammoth frozen up
in Siberia so perfectly preserved that the
wolves, etc., ate up its flesh, and the fresh
ness of a great multitude of other remains,
— a reindeer-horn even emitting a fresh odor
when cut — have tended greatly to reduce the
probable time of the disappearance. Indeed
Winchell now remarks,'" "the contemporane
ousness of man with the extinct mammoth is
no more proof of man's high antiquity, than
the co-existence of the extinct Dodo and the
Dutch painter is proof that the Dutchman
lived a hundred thousand year ago." The
gravel and peat deposites covering the hu
man remains, and the adjacent erosions of
the streams, as in the Somme valley, are now
shown to have admitted of far more rapid form
ation than was formerly assigned to them. The
I'' Lubbock, p. 289 etc.
16 "Preadamite Man," p. 436.

132 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
vast remoteness of the glacial age — another
time-mark in reference to man — has been im
mensely reduced, with a tendency still in the
same direction ; Lyell having come down from
the date of 800,000 to 200,000 years, Croll from
240,000 to 80,000, while Dr. Andrews of Chi
cago endeavors to show that the glacial drift
of the Northwestern lakes is not older than
from 5,300 to 7,500. Southall and Prof Win
chell calculate its disappearance in Wiscon
sin at a little more than 6000 years ago.
Mr. Huxley in 1878 declared the evidence
of man prior to the drift to be " of a very dubi
ous character."" Meanwhile it has long been
seen that to talk of a stone age is to speak of
a time perfectly fluctuating, rather than of any
fixed or proximate date, inasmuch as the
stone age in one race is contemporaneous
with the silver and gold of another; thus
two hundred and fifty years ago it was all
stone age in North America, although 1000
years earlier the mound-builders were using
copper; and while all Europe and America
have been for these many centuries in the
height of the arts, the stone age until very
recently had not passed away from the Es
quimaux, if it has now. The time is merely
relative, and recently Prof Winchell has ex-
i« Cited in "New Englander," May, 1881.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 133
pressed the belief that in Europe it did not
go back further than 2500 or 3000 b. c."
While these variations and amazing reduc
tions have been going on in the interpretation
of the one record, questions have been also
raised in regard to the other, the Biblical, as to
the possibility of its expansion. No questions
could legitimately have been raised but for
certain striking phenomena attending the
numbers themselves. One of these is, as you
are well aware, a divergence of the Hebrew,
the Greek Septuagint and the Samaritan fig
ures, showing an intentional and systematic
set of changes, whereby the Samaritan makes
the time from Adam's creation to the flood
1307 years, the Hebrew 1656, the Greek 2262—
the difference to the time of Methuselah being
made between the last two, by the addition to one
or subtraction from the other of 100 years prior
to thebirthofthe son who isnamed as continuing
the line. Continued to the time of Abraham, it
makes a difference of about 1400 years. On
the whole, the predominant view has been to
accept the Hebrew as the true text. But it is
to be borne in mind that we have but one
Hebrew manuscript as old as the year 580 a. d.,
and that we in no case seem to get back of
a Masoretic revision; while the Septuagint
17 "Preadamite Man," p. 421.

184 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
represents a text which dates 250 years b. c,
Whatever the decision as to relative correct
ness, the phenomenon must raise questions
and doubts, as it shows somewhere the hand
of the emendator. In addition to this it is
noteworthy that we find just ten generations
from Adam to Noah as from Noah to Abra
ham — raising the question whether these may
not, as in Matthew's genealogy, have been in
tentionally equalized by omissions, perhaps in
the first series. We cannot make any special
account of Lenormant's attempt to convert the
whole idea of ten generations into a mythical
thing, by comparing traditions of the same
number, found by some forcing, among Chal
deans, Assyrians, Iranians, Indians and Egyp
tians, since these, so far as they have founda
tion, might be but an echo of the originally
known and here recorded fact. But so sound
a theological Avriter as Dr. Frederic Gardiner "
has endeavored to show from the method of
the Pentateuch genealogies themselves that
we may possibly understand this record thus;
as combining in its extreme brevity two facts in
one, viz., "the age in each case of commencing
paternity and the name of the particular son
by whom the lime was continued, he not being
necessarily the first sou, but born at any sub-
is "Bibliotheca Sacra," 1873, pp. 323, seq.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 135
sequent time during his father's life." This
theory would allow such an addition to the
chronology as to make, after deducting 100
years in each case for longevity and infirmity,
the extreme possible interval of time from the
Creation to the Deluge instead of 1656 to be
6499 years, and the same principle would add
some 500 years between Shem and Abraham."
In the complications and questions that hang
over the whole subject it may be well to
bear in mind the possibility of some such so
lution, should it be necessary. This is quite a
different principle of proceeding from the ar
bitrary decision of Bunsen*" that these patri
archal lives are merely epochs. Ernst de
Bunsen somewhat similarily answers that the
name of a person was given to a period*' — a
19 " Thus," he says, "Seth might have begun to be a fa
ther at 105, but might have actually begotten Enos (by whom
the line was continued) at any reasonable time during the
807 years which he afterwards lived; so that the true mean
ing in the text can be shown by a paraphrase running in
this wise; Seth lived 105 years and begat children among
whom was Enos; and Seth lived after his beginning to
beget children 807 years and begat both sons and daugh
ters. And all the days of Seth were 912 years." I must
refer you to his own discussion for the argument.
20 "Egypt's Place," iv. p. 395.
21 "Chronology ofthe Bible," p. 4. He maintains also
that " the sum total of the lives assigned to the patriarchs
has been shortened by the sum total of the years which

136 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
modification of Knobel's view, which finds in
Lamech and his sons ethnical personifications
or representations of races — and he would add
the whole of their lives without even deduct
ing for the time previous to paternity, and
reaches a total of 8225 years from Adam to
the Flood. These two views are so far forth
combined and varied by Rev. T. P. Crawford,
that he takes each first statement ("Adam
lived 130 years," "Seth lived 105 years") to be
the total life of each individual and supposes
the name afterwards in each instance ("All
the days of Adam " or Seth) to be used in a
family sense — of the special Adamite family
till the Sethite family ascendancy.** I do not
cite these theories to approve them, — although
for the theory that a name might represent
not a person but a race we certainly find war
rant in several of the names in Chapter X., (e.
g., Sidon, Canaan, Mizrain, Javan, Madai, etc.)
— but to show the possibilities of speculation
and explanation upon this abbreviated nar-
eaoh patriarch is recorded to have lived together with his
one recorded son," thus reducing an actual period of 8225
years, from Adam to the Flood, to 1656 years. His re
sult it will be observed is greater than that of Prof. Gar
diner, reached in a somewhat different way.
22 Winchell' s "Preadamites,'' p. 450. This gives the
same prolongation of time as the theory of Gardiner and
De Bunsen.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 137
rative. It is difficult, however, to find any
foundation for Lenormant's attempt to con
vert these lives into cyclical periods, on the
main hint that Enoch's life was 365 years.
Enough perhaps has been said to indicate that
we may well be cautious of pledging the
Scriptures to an absolute completely and rigid
chronology, till we learn further facts.
While making all allowance for possible exi
gencies, personally I do not as yet see valid
reason to adopt any view of the time of man's
existence very greatly in excess, if not of
Usher's, yet of Hale's Chronology, 5411 b. c.
I find that all definite records and distinct
traditions go up to a limited distance and stop
there, this side even of the date thus gained.
Thus the latest and most careful authorities.
Chinese investigators now find nothing solid
in the antiquity of China earlier than eleven
or twelve hundred b. c. ; we find no Iranic
civilization earlier than 1500 b. c, nor Indian
earlier than 1200. The Trojan epoch does not
probably reach further than 1200 to 1300
B. c, nor the subjacent cities than 2000. The
latest result in regard to Phenicia gives but
the sixteenth or seventeenth century b. c.
' Sayce and Lenormant place the beginning of
Assyria about 1500 b. c, and Smith and Le
normant the beginning of Babylon 2300 b. c.

138 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
In the case of Egypt one only ofthe prominent
Egyptologists, (Mariette Bey,) insists on find
ing no contemporaneous dynasties, but makes
all successive ; and his estimate of 5004 years
B. 0. to the accession of Menes, still falls
within the limits of Hale's Chronology, while
Poole's and Wilkinson's estimates subtract
more than 2000 years from Mariette's figures.
If it be replied that the Egyptian and Baby
lonian civilizations first present themselves in
a comparatively advanced condition, and there
fore suppose a vast preceding interval ; we ad
mit the fact, but question the inference, at
least in its extent. We affirm the striking
fact that Egypt comes before us with its pyra
mids and hieroglyphics, and Babylonia appar
ently with its four great cities and some de
gree of skill in the arts. But we maintain
that this condition of things in this region
best comports with the Biblical record as to
the early condition and progress of man, with
his attainment in the arts, and the longevity
that facilitated that progress by the contempo
rary accumulation of the fruits of ripened ex
perience. If we accept the Biblical antedilu
vian narrative as it stands, all eastern history
is no longer mysterious, but a simple and na
tural phenomenon. It is thoroughly consist
ent with itself and with all known facts. And

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 139
in this line a very striking coincidence is men
tioned, viz. : " Taking as a basis the annual
increase of population in France (which has
the best statistics for the past two hundred
years) at -g^ a year, six persons (say Shem,
Ham, and Japheth, with their wives) would in
crease-to 1,400,000,000 in 4211 years. But in
1863, the estimated population of the earth
was 1,400,000,000, and 4211 years would carry
us back from that time to 2348 b. c, the com
mon date of the Flood." *' And inasmuch as
man is always a constructor of permanent
memorials, marking in some way the earth's
surface, even in his rudest state, in all parts
of the world with his structures — dolmens,
mounds, stone circles, fortifications or enclos
ures, excavations, stone huts, and the like,
the direct and common sense inquiry is this:
if man has been upon the earth all these tens
or hundreds of thousands of years, where are
those clear marks of that long residence to be
found ? And echo answers, " Where ? "
But on this subject of the early consan
guinities as exhibited in the tenth of Genesis,
one point I have as yet barely touched, — the
extreme longevity of that antediluvian line,
which such writers as Bunsen and Lenormant
have pronounced intrinsically impossible,** and
23 "New Englander," May, 1881.
24 Bunsen, "Egypt's Place," iv. 395.

140 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
"inconsistent with the physiological condi
tions ofthe terrestrial life of man."*' We do
not accept any such arbitrary dictum as de
ciding the question. Nor do we meanwhile
recognize the practicability of escaping the
difficulty by supposing a shorter year, such
as a month. This would encounter the diffi
culty of making one patriarch a father at the
age of between five and six of our years ; and
is explicitly precluded by the narrative in the
very next chapter, which, while mentioning
what took place in the six hundredth and six
hundred and first years of Noah's life, gives
us also the reckoning of months in the year,
up to ten at least, and of days in the month
up to twenty-seven. We may content our
selves with the general principle announced
by Delitzsch, that " the duration of antedilu
vian life depended on circumstances and con
ditions of the earth which our present knowl
edge cannot reach." Not to suggest that
" climate, weather, and other natural condi
tions may have been quite different" and that
" life was much more simple and uniform," we
may emphasize the statement that "the after
effects of the condition of man in paradise
[destined for immortality] would not be im
mediately exhausted."
26 Lenormant, " Contemporary Eeview," April 1880.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 141
All assertions how long man could live un
der very different circumstances from those
which thousands of years of sin and self-abuse
have brought upon him are daring, if not wild.
They are as easy to make as they are impos
sible to prove. There is a respectable English
writer who has argued from time to time, I
believe in the "Athenaeum," that there is no
evidence of any life longer than one hundred
years. The question is one on which a man
dogmatizes, like this man, according to his
surroundings and observations.
Ask a man how long a tree will live. If
he looks only on a peach-tree, he might say
perhaps forty or fifty years; on a grove of
poplars or maples, possibly one hundred.
Show him the old elm on Boston Common
and its history, and he would say three hun
dred. Let him see the old yew in Fountains
Abbey, and he would say five hundred. Let
him look on the old olive-trees that stand at
the foot of Mount Olivet, and he would add
an indefinite number of centuries more. Take
him to the fallen Sequoia Gigantea of Cali
fornia, and Mr. Bowles would tell him that
the least possible age of one of these is one
thousand three hundred and eighty years,
and that the mean computation more than
doubles that amount. A little additional

142 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
knowledge would considerably change a
man's estimate of what is possible in the
life of a tree. Perhaps also of a man. Now
we must remember how surely all other
mechanisms than the living organism are
not only impaired, but ruined by misuse;
and moreover how even that organism often
breaks down, and not only so, but transmits
to the generations to come the effects of the
misuse, sometimes with accumulations, till
certain families are abridged of more than
half their life- time as compared with others,
and how we inherit the gouts and scrofulas
of European ancestry; we have but to con
sider how better medical and sanitary condi
tions have within our own knowledge consider
ably raised the average length of a generation ;
we have also but to consider what a constant
strain is put by most men if not by all men
upon the endurance of their vital powers by
various irregularities, carelessness, if not pos
itive abuse of their systems, and how these
causes have been in operation for ages upon
ages in succession, — and I think that instead
of wondering that the life, now reduced to a
century at the longest, might in the begin
ning, before all these long and terrible de
preciating influences had done their work of
ruin, have lasted indefinitely longer, we shall

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 143
rather say, it could hardly be otherwise. I
think that from our knowledge of the human
race in its present conditions no man is com
petent to say how long a life was " intrinsi
cally impossible."
But the most remarkable exhibition of the
early affinities is found in the genealogies of
the- tenth chapter of Genesis. It is a chapter
that has furnished the basis of a vast amount
of investigation and called forth a singular
amount of admiration, being, in Bunsen's lan
guage, " the most learned of all ancient docu
ments, and the most ancient among the
learned;" or, as Johannes Von Miiller puts
it, "history has its beginning in this table."
It is a theme not for a part of a lecture or a
lecture but, as it has been made, for a volume.
Nothing like it is to be found in ancient his
tory. And its antiquity is beyond anything
but conjecture. In view of all the circum
stances we need not be startled at Herder's
opinion that the central and original register
goes back to about the time of Peleg and
the region which he inhabited, in whose time
" the earth was divided," when the various
races were making their migrations, supple
mented, however, in particular lines by the la
ter additions, which come down, as Delitzsch
formerly suggested, to the time of Joshua.

144 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Thus, of the progeny of Japheth only two gen
erations are given, but of Shem six. And in
this the line of Heber is traced down to the
children of Peleg and Joktan, while of Aram
only one generation is mentioned. But the very
limitations and omissions in many directions
are indications of its extreme antiquity. Her
der well says, " The very poverty of this chart
is its security against being lost or interpo
lated," and " a pledge of its truth." *' Thus
the Chinese do not appear; for in the time of
Moses they had not apparently attained any
such prominence as to overcome the obscurity
of their distance. And in ascribing Chittim,
i. e., Cyprus (and the neighboring coast and
islands perhaps) to the line of Javan, or the
lonians, the writer disregards the Phenician col
onization as wholly subordinate to the original
Greek occupancy ofthe island as a whole, though
the name Chittim is perhaps preserved in the
Citium which was one of the chief Phenician
cities. Phenicia had not then risen to its com
mercial influence and power. Indeed the more
ancient condition of Phenicia is very distinctly
indicated in the absense of all allusion to Tyre,
its greatest though later mart, and the mention
only of the older Sidon as its representative.
Another indication of the same fact is found
28 Herder, "Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," i. 252, 250.

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 145
in the disappearance from all subsequent his
tory of some prominent branches of the lines.
Thus among the Shemite race, Eber and Elam
and Asshur can be traced distinctly in the
Hebrews, Elamites, Assyrians, Syrians; but
while Lud is questionable at least, Arphaxad
has wholly disappeared. So in other cases.
Meanwhile the striking character ofthe record
appears in the circumstance that in all the
instances in this branch on which modern
science can form a judgment, viz., three of
them, it fully coincides with the ancient regis
ter in pronouncing them Semitic. So too with
the Japhethic races, six in the enumeration, the
latest results coincide in affirming, in general,
the affiliation here first announced. It finds in
Javan, with its subdivisions, the Ionian race ;
in Gomer, the Cymri and allied tribes of vari
ous analogous names, corresponding to the Cel
tic race; in Madai the Medes; in Magog prob
nbly the Scj'thian tribes; in Tiras broadly the
Thracians ; in Tubal and Meshech probably the
Tibareni and Moschi, that long ago passed away
without literature or monuments. But the oth
ers are the chief races now thoroughly known
to be affiliated, — the common ancestors of the
Celts, the Germans, the Sclaves, the Greeks and
Romans, the Persians and Hindoos, the great In-
do-Germanic, Indo-European, or Aryan family.

146 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Similar in general, though perhaps less dis
tinct and complete are the results reached in
regard to the descendants of Ham. But here
as throughout the catalogue, the chief difficulty
lies in fact that these sources of history lie so
far back of all connected secular history, that
we lack the means to bridge the chasm.
But any fuller exposition or even comment
upon this remarkable record is precluded.
My end is subserved in calling special atten
tion to its character, and, above all, to its bond
of connection, the bond of universal consan
guinity. Nothing like it, as I have said, ap
pears in antiquity. On one of the W-alls at
Thebes, is an enumeration of certain nations
and tribes, indeed. But they are few, unre
lated, and recorded only as the conquests of
Rameses the Great. But here, in the words
of Dillmann, is " an exhibition of the ultimate
relationship of all the nations far and near,
outwardly and inwardly so diverse as the
weighty thought of this survey. Israel is but
one member of universal humanity. All men
and nations are of the same race, the same
value, and the same consideration, brethren and
-kindred. This Biblical consideration sets out
from the greatness and entirety of humanity,
before it turns itself to the history of an indi
vidual people, the people of God, and then at

THE EARLY CONSANGUINITIES. 147
length by the mouths of the prophets, points
forward to the end and ultimate goal of this
several history, the union of all nations in the
kingdom of God."
That great principle which the illustrious
Hungarian exile made his grand text as he
traversed this land in 1852 — the " Solidarity "
of the Nations — was enunciated thousands of
years earlier, and in a higher form, in the an
cient table of the nations, in the Pentateuch.

LECTURE FIFTH.
THE EAELY MOVEMENTS OF THE NATIONS.
Thb same record that affirms and traces the
original unity of the race, also gives us the
oldest and for a long period, yes even now,
the only account of its dispersion, its early
locations, migrations and movements. We
are in a track otherwise untrodden. It is
but recently that we have been able fully
to test the correctness and value of this an
cient source of information. A solitary state
ment indicates the tendency begun before the
Flood, in the wandering of Cain to a region
of which we have no further knowledge than
the fact. Some writers — even so respectable
and conservative an author as Dr. Dawson ' —
have dropped the suggestion that in some of
the older stone relics of Europe, and in case
of the larger men, like those of Cro-magnon
and Mentone, we may have remains of an
tediluvian times. In some cases the cave-
1 "Origin ofthe Earth," p. 299.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 149
dwellers appear to have been destroyed by
floods. Other writers (as Bunsen) have
called attention to the alleged fact that
neither the Chinese nor the Egyptians (al
most alone) have any tradition of the Del
uge.* In Egypt certainly this would not be
remarkable, when we consider the nature of
the old Egyptian inscriptions,— in no case his
torical or traditional. They delineate simply
current affairs, or are at most tables of royal
ancestry. But it is not strictly true either of
China or Egypt. China records a local deluge
at a time differently reckoned as 2062 or 2278
B. c' Egypt exhibits in the tomb of Seti I.
the record of a destruction of mankind by the
gods in all respects parallel to that of the
Pentateuch, except that it was not by a flood
— a fact well explained by the Abbe Vigoroux
thus, that "inasmuch as an inundation was for
them riches and life, they denied the tradi
tion; the race was destroyed in another mode,
and the inundation became to them the mark
that the anger of Ra was appeased."* All
speculations on antediluvian races, however,
are in the present state of our knowledge
superfluous. Nor will I pause to discuss the
2 "Egypt's Place," iii. 379.
3 Lenormant, "Orig." p. 383.
« Ib. p. 454.

150 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
question how that deluge was brought about ;
whether, according to the suggestion of Hugh
Miller and others, by the gradual subsidence
and emergence of a limited area in Asia Minor,
say with a radius of 400 miles from a center
near Mosul, and thus extending into the Eux-
ine, Caspian and Mediterranean, whereby the
inrushing waters would destroy the whole
race, not yet dispersed beyond that region;
or, with Dawson and others, by the great
and general submergence which followed
the glacial epoch, and, by general admis
sion, preceded the historical era, and of
which traces exist alike in North and South
America, in Asia and in Europe.'' Time may
possibly decide the question. Enough if we
may, after the flood, look in upon the disinte
grations and the crystallizations of the races,
in their formative condition and the compara
tive youth of the world. Nothing could be
more interesting than such a study were we
able to present it in full. But alas, the race,
like the individual, when it arrives at the
stage for such investigations, has so far re
ceded from its infantile condition as to have
lost the recollection of its infant experience
and history.
In the Pentateuch alone are we permitted
s Southall, "Eecent Origin of Man," pp. 210, 283, 287.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 151
to take such a survey, however limited. Let
us turn its unique pages and read what we
may in its brief hints.
The earliest post-diluvian indication of
national movement is found in the statement
(Gen. ix. 19), "These [Shem, Ham and Japheth]
are the three sons of Noah, and of them was
the whole earth overspread." Next comes
the announcement (Gen. x. 2) that one of
Eber's sons was named Peleg, "for in his days
the earth was divided." Here the simplest
interpretation is substantially that of Fiirst
who says that " here f^x stands for J^N ^ys\'<,
inhabitants of the earth." A part of the pro
cess, as actually begun, is narrated in the next
chapter in connection with the tower of Babel,
(Chap. xi.). Here we read first of a move
ment, probably not '¦from the east" but "east
ward" as it is admissible according both to
Gesenius and Ewald to render the phrase,
and as Tuch, Delitzsch, Knobel, Wright, Bun
sen and others agree (just as in Gen. xiii. 11;
iii. 24; xii. 8; ii. 8). It is viewed as east
ward from the writer's standpoint in Pales
tine, to whom the people of Mesopotamia were
"sons of the east" (Dillmann), or as it lay, if
southerly, also easterly from Armenia (Knobel).
The name of the land Shinar, lying eastward,
has been within these few years identified

152 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
(by Lenormant and Sayce) with the Sumir
of the Babylonian inscriptions, and is the old
est name, as well as the latest discovered.
From this region we are told God accom^
plished a still greater movement, — a scatter
ing "abroad upon the face of the earth" —
that which was foretokened in the narrative
of Noah and described in the " table of the
nations." The immediate occasion is given
as the confusion of tongues, whereby in a
supernatural way was precipitated the change
that in due time was sure to come through
natural causes. The separation, too, would
have been in process of time necessitated.
Indeed the movement to the land of Shinar
has the appearance of being the first step of
that inevitable movement which has been so
largely characteristic of early national life:
increase of population compelling diepersion,
— a swarming of the old hive followed by the
pressing and crowding of each last comer upon
the heels of its predecessor, till, as in the Aryan
movement westward, the Celts were arrested
only by the distant shores of the ocean and
the islands, and still pressed from behind ; or
as in this country the older occupants were
driven steadily southward.
In this process the distance of the journey-
in gs, the incessant changes and abandonments

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 153
of all accumulated property, and recedings
from the source of supply and from the radi
ating centers of progress, easily account for
the debased conditions of life under which
they are often found. Emigration, when in
cessant, uncorrected and unresisted, tends to
barbarism. Those tribes that earliest found
and retained their near and permanent abodes,
other things being equal, earliest developed
and best retained the highest forms of life
and art. Such was the case in Chaldea,
Babylonia, India, with their fertile and pro
ductive plains and mighty streams, and, above
all, Egypt with its marvellous position close
along the banks of its matchless river of clock
work overflow, and its wonderful facilities and
resources, and means of luxury, and also along
the eastern and northern parts of the Medi
terranean, where everything invited to com
merce, to invention and production — climate,
soil, minerals and harbors, especially in Phe
nicia with her two noble harbors in conve
nient nearness to the trade and civilization
of the more ancient East and to the new
products of the rising West. The tribes that
drove each other through the length of Europe,
through its grim forests and over its moun
tains, across its rushing streams, and through
its winter snows, never developed the higher

154 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
traits of human life till they too at last be
came stationary, and that was only after they
had nearly extinguished what may have been
the settled civilization of their earlier home.
Our celebrated table (Genesis x.) shows us
something of this process of dispersion, and
would show us still more, were we in a con
dition more fully to interpret it. But unfor
tunately it is ancient even beyond our reach.
Some things, however, stand out very distinct.
We have no indication in the Pentateuch
indeed what direction the race of Gomer
took. Ezekiel, however, brings them "from
the north quarter" (xxxviii. 2-6), and we can
only find them in the wide-spread names of
the Kimmerii, Cymri, and Cambri, in Crimea
and Cumberland, etc. But Javan or the loni
ans are distinctly relegated to " the isles," or
rather maritime regions (which the word in
cludes) "of the Gentiles," and the specifica
tions of the book include the Eolians (Eli-
shah), Tarshish (propably in Cilicia, though
some say Spain — Andalusia and Murcia), Cy
prus (Chittim) and perhaps the Rhodians,
(Dodanim or Rodanim), — to which is added,
to indicate their still wider dispersion, " every
one after his own tongue, after their families, in
their nations" (v. 5). Indeed the vast spread
and conspicuous historic influences and activ-

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 155
ity of the several Japhethic races, of which
Javan was foremost, was even more emphat
ically announced in the utterance of Noah,
"God shall enlarge — make wide room for —
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of
Shem " ; as wide room as from India, not only
to the western borders of Europe, but to the
western borders of America, and now back
again to the East, round the globe, and long
ago appropriating all the spiritual blessings
that dwelt in the tents of Shem. And whether
any choose to call this history or prophecy, it is
in either case alike distinct.
The direction early taken by the several
races is to a considerable extent indicated
only by assigning the name of the region to
the race. Thus Madai, Sidon, Mizraim re
spectively designate the Medes and Persians,
the Phenicians, and Egyptians. Here SiJon
represents the race of which it was the early
prominent seat of activity, being mentioned
in Joshua as already "great Sidon" (Josh.
xi. 8).
And in denominating Sidon "the firstborn
of Canaan," the narrative records the great
historic fact that at a period estimated (by
many) to be some four thousand years ago,
" a tribe speaking a Semitic tongue abandoned
the nomad habits of their ancestors, and build-

156 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
ing some rude huts beside a creek, sheltered
by an inland breakwater, took to the sea,
and called themselves 'Sidonians' or 'Fisher
men.' It was a memorable day for human
ity, when the first colonizing and commercial
power which the world had seen, launched its
rude craft tentatively on the Mediterranean.
On that day the arts and culture of the East
may be said to have set out on their journey
to the West, and the long process to have be
gun by which the sceptre was transferred from
the primeval ' river kingdoms ' to the republics
of the Inland Sea, and from these passed over
to the 'ocean empires' of modern times."' It
was far, far back — it may be five or seven
hundred years prior to the greatness of this
"Rock" city Tyre (1500 b. c.) which is known
neither to the Iliad nor the Odyssey — two
hundred years more than that earlier than
the occupation of Carthage. Nay, it is supposed
that even while Israel was in Egypt' the Si-
donian mariners, beginning to be crowded by
the early Greeks, their pupils and rivals, guided
by the pole-star, boldly struck out for the riches
of Spain, the tin of Britain and the amber of
the Baltic.
How remarkably this narrative antedates all
other historic knowledge and fills its gaps, ap-
' "Edinburgh Eevisw," Jan. 1882. lib.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 157
pears somewhat conspicuously in regard to
Mizraim or the Egyptians, who are here made
to radiate from this central stock in Asia
through Noah's son Ham. Now " the Egyp
tians themselves [ancient as they are] appear
to have lost the recollection of their origin."'
Diodorus would refer them to Ethiopia. But
the disclosures of the monuments make Ethi-
opia to have been colonized from Ugypt.' The
study of the early status and the language
brings us to this latest conclusion : "The Egyp
tian race in its ethnological characteristics is
connected with the white population of early
Asia : the Egyptian language by its grammat
ical form with the language called Semitic.""
Brugsch Bey declares it incontestably proven
that the Egyptians originated in Asia. "They
must have belonged to the great Caucasian
race. With some other nations apparently they
form a third branch of it, the Cushite, differ
ent in certain peculiarities from the branches
called Pelasgic and Semitic.'' As Maspero
expresses himself more fully: "While the
Egyptian language, sooner cultivated, was ar
rested in its development, the Semitic tongues
continued thus through long ages, so that if
there is evidently a relation of stock between
' Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 13. » lb. p. 14.
'» Ib. p. 16. " "Histoire d'Egypte," pp. 5, 6.

158 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the language of Egypt and those of Asia, the
relation is distant enough to leave to this
people a distant physiognomy.'* He calls it
" pro to-Semitic." This would bring them into
the relation indicated in the Pentateuch, early
emigrants from Asia and connected in lan
guage with at least the Canaanites, according
to the received views, including the Pheni
cians. I will not follow Maspero (after De
Rouge) in the designation of the several de
scendants or tribes of Mizraim to their respect
ive localities from the hieroglyphic records —
as when he makes the Ludim to be the Ronton
or Loudou, or Egyptians proper, Anamim the
Anou or inhabitants of On of the north (Heli-
opolis) and On of the south (Hermonthis),
Lehabim the Lybians, Natuphim No-Phtah
on the north of Memphis, the Pathrusim, the
Pa-to-res, midlanders between Memphis and
the first cataract.'' These may be considered
as too precarious, however striking.
Again the Canaanite tribes in other por
tions of the Pentateuch are located in detail,
and they are found scattered over the whole
region from Sidon to Gaza, and on the east to
the Ghor at an unknown point, Lasha. Here
we find our only distinct knowledge of a fam
ily of tribes — including the warlike Kheta or
12 "Histoire Ancienne," p. 17. " lb. p. 14.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS, 159
Hittites of the Egyptian monuments — once
numerous and powerful, who fought well for
their strongholds, till they were overpowered
Dy a mightier destiny, and disappeared with
out a vestige, unless it be found in the troglo
dyte caves of the south, in certain names not
yet displaced, and perhaps in the language
they may have imparted to the long tolerated
and afterward dominant Hebrew race, and in
certain few inscriptions about the Orentes, not
yet deciphered.
One of the most noteworthy statements of
this earliest record is that in regard to Nim
rod — so remote indeed that though identified
by George Smith with the Izdhubar of the
Babylonian tablets, the latter is by others
(Sayce and Lenormant) remanded to the
sphere of legends. He was a Cushite and
"the beginning of his kingdom was Babel
and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land
of Shinar. And out of that land he went
forth and builded Nineveh and the city of
Rehoboth and Calah and Resen between Nin
eveh and Calah, the same is a great city."
It is not my purpose to disentangle the con
struction and details of this brief and difficult
statement, but to notice the career of early
conquest and construction thus briefly indi
cated. This rearing of certain great cities in

160 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Shinar by a Hamitic, Cushite monarch who
also pushed his way into Asshur, which re
gion however was assigned to the family of
Shem, and from which Abram actually origi
nated — presents not only a record of early
national enterprise, but a mingling of nation
al elements, not disentangled till in very
recent times, and now perhaps but in part.
But thus much appears to be settled. The
name Shinar is the same with the Sumir of
the inscriptions, now revived in the name,
applied to the Sumirian language and race,
which is also by some identified with, and
by others distinguished from, the Accadian,
and belongs to a Scythian or Turanian race,
which seems by modern researches to have
preceded the Assyrian and Chaldean races
in these regions. They were the original
proprietors of the cuneiform alphabet. The
latest researches also show, by their side or
as their successors on this soil, a powerful
Cushite race as set forth in the sacred narra
tive.'* But at an early date it is also certain
that a Semitic race, represented by the in
scriptions in the Assyrian language, was
found on the soil of Chaldea, whom some
(Geo. Smith) have supposed to have mas-,
tered the earlier Turanians even before this
'" Maspero, "Histoire," p. 145.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 161
Cushite invasion. It is difficult to determine
relative dates. But the fundamental fact of
the record has emerged in recent times, that
the three great families, Shem, Ham and Ja
pheth, were early and strangely mingled on
this ancient territory. It was hinted at long
after by the Chaldean historian Berosus:
"There were at first a great number of men
of different races who had colonized to Chal
dea."" And this early mingling of races in
Chaldea in part accounts for the difficulties
that overhang the question of the so-called
" Semitic " tongues, which evidently were
spoken by some non-Semitic nations. The
complication would seem to have been in
creased or continued by subsequent proximi
ties or interniinglings of the Semitic and
Hamitic races, as in Palestine, Northern Af
rica, and perhaps in Arabia and Abyssinia'"
— the record in the first two cases being also
furnished in the Pentateuch. In the city
Accad remains a relic of the name by which
one portion of the early Turanian people and
their speech were known — Accadian; and
as some aver in its significance " mountain "
(as contrasted with Sumir, "plain") a remi
niscence of the mountainous region of Ar-
1* Tompkins, "Times of Abraham," p.' 7.
« Ib. p. 52.

162 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
menia which was their still earlier home.'
Let me only add that of the ancient Erech
we have the well-known primitive ruins in
the mounds of Warka.
It was from this land of Chaldea, south of
Babylonia, and from its ancient city of Ur,
now identified beyond reasonable doubt with
Mugheir, that the most eventful migration
took place that the world has seen — that of
Abram, the Hebrew. With him came up the
spiritual hopes and destinies of the nations.
It is not impossible that the aggressions of
Elam, of which the same record gives the
oldest information, may have enforced the
divine call "to get him forth." He followed
up the Euphrates by the route so common in
ancient times, the earliest known traveller
over that famous route, in preference to a
journey across the difficult western desert,
and for some unknown reason he paused in
Charran. The time appears from many in
dications to have been one of very general
unrest among the nations.' And while he was
in Charran, it has been shown that the host of
" Chedorlaomer and his tributaries must have
marched through to their distant conquests,"
and " Abram's eyes probably looked upon the
long array of Elam, Larsa, Shinar and Goiim,
1' Lenormant, "Chaldean Magic," p. 360.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 163
with which thirteen years later he was so
suddenly to be engaged in deadly conflict," "
We follow him next down through the land
of Syria over the great route, now first men
tioned in history, by Damascus, (also first
appearing here and represented in his stew
ard, Eliezer of Damascus), passing " through
the land," the oldest Palestinian traveller on
record, pausing at Sheehem at the plain or
rather the oaks of a place now emerging into
history, and again at a point between Bethel
and Ai, and so onward south. When the
famine finds him, he pushes on over that im
memorial route, now first indicated, through
the south country to Egypt, and gives us the
first historic glimpse of the civilization of
that mighty people. We find him, and after
ward his son, in the Negeb, or South country,
of which we know through them and through
those remarkable ruins and relics alone, that
it was once filled with cultivation and popu
lation. It had already received its geographic
name Negeb, which appears a little later as
" Nekeb " among the conquests of Thothmes
III. With him once more we stand at Bethel,
and with Lot we look from the sightly emi
nence east of Bethel over the land of Palestine,
and see the fertility ofthe tropical plain below,
in its wicked civilization. With Abram's eye
18 Tompkins, p. 58.

164 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
of faith we also look from the place where he
was, " northward and southward and eastward
and westward," over the land of distant prom
ise. The whole scene stands out before us,
by glimpses, in connection with this personal
history of those times; later described in the
same Pentateuch as " a good land, a land of
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that
spring out of the valleys and hills, a land
of wheat and barley and vines and fig-trees
and pomegranates, a land of oil olive and
honey " (Deut. viii. 7); now in Abraham's time
a pastoral country in great rneasure, sprinkled
with flocks and herds, and traversed already
by a great travelled route from north to south,
tending to Egypt, apparently with its stages
and halting places even then somewhat as
now. The whole scene is before our eyes.
Here and there as at Hebron, Sheehem, Jeru
salem, some tribe had made its central seat,
probably as yet with little show of fortifica
tion. Of one of these, Hebron, curiously
enough, we have the very date given, " seven
years older than Zoan of Egypt." The main
portion of the territory would seem to have
been otherwise then open for the unhindered
passage of a military force. But the chief
permanent population was apparently outside
the mountainous centre of Palestine — along

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 165
the coast around Sidon, in the Ghor where
were Hazezon Tamar and the cities of the plain
— Sodom being even a city with " a gate " —
beyond the Jordan from Ashteroth Karnaim
to Mt. Seir and El Paran, as well as about
Damascus north, and around Beersheba, in
Gerar and the region south of Palestine.
They could, as at Kirjath Arba, convey land
by regular sale " with the trees thereon."
Here and there the eye falls on oak or tere-
vinth groves, as at Sheehem, Mamre and El
Paran. Beersheba may have been as desti
tute of trees then as to-day ; for there Abram
planted a grove or a tree, — an act which
as clearly distinguishes him from the Arab
Sheikh of Dean Stanley, as did the wells
which he and Abimelech dug at Beersheba.
In this bird's-eye glimpse of the location of
the nations in Palestine, there comes before
us one remarkable character, — a veritable
priest of the Most High God, — one who, out
side the line of Abram had so kept alive the
sacred fire that Abram himself was blessed
by him and paid him tithes. It is a strange
ly suggestive apparition; without recorded
father or mother, beginning of priestly years
or end of days, he passes before us like a bird
darting through a lighted room, from the
dark into the dark again

166 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
In Abram's favorable reception in Egypt we
perhaps get a glimpse of the Asiatic relation
already begun in the conquest by the Hyksos
or Shepherd Kings of Egypt. For Brugsch
Bey now derives these Hyksos from Elam and
Media, averring that he has found the Egyp-
tain name of " Menti " applied to those locali
ties. The national departure had taken place
already. And if we suppose that the oppres
sive influences in their own neighboring home
had sent forth these singular adventurers to
Egypt, we can understand the sympathetic
bond which secured the patriarch an honorable
welcome in Egypt and a safe departure, though
rightly rebuked. The same tendency to Egypt
and kindly reception which is here narrated
is also illustrated in that famous picture of
the Asiatic company of thirty-seven Amu hon
orably received in the days of Osirtasen II.,
and whom Lepsius has perhaps rightly de
scribed as the "predecessors of the Hyksos,"
a " mighty Hyksos family who pray to be re
ceived into the blessed land, and whose de
scendants perhaps opened the gates of Egypt
to the Semitic conquerors allied to them by
race." " This could not have been relatively
many years — possibly two centuries — before
Abram's own reception.
19 Lepsius, "Letters from Egypt," p. 112.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS, 167
Meantime from the Egyptian side of this
migratory and predatory movement, Abram's
history once more carries us to the eastern
side, from whence the tribes were thus already
crowding on their neighbors. Some years
later — we know not how many — we find the
king of Elam and his confederates enforcing
a previous tribute upon the distant tribes of
Palestine. We will not pause to inquire
whether the name Chedorlaomer, can be iden
tified with Kudur-Mabuk, or Kudur-Lagamar,
as Mr. Tompkins still supposes. But of these
nations thus allied we find the king of Elam
now at the head, as the liege lord and master ;
for it was he whom the five cities of Palestine
had served for twelve years and against whom
they had now rebelled. Accordingly we find
it recorded in the annals of Assurbanipal, king
of Assyria, that only in his day had he, the
king of Assyria, by conquest of Elam brought
back from Susa an image of Nana which
an Elamite monarch (Kudur-nankhundi) had
carried off from Babylonia 1635 years before,
i. e., near three hundred years prior to Abram's
emigration. It had been a long-established
ascendancy and aggressiveness of Elam and at
length in Abram's time it had swept across
the desert into Syria and Palestine. With this
powerful Elamite king was now associated, as

168 HISTORY IN TIIE PENTATEUCH,
his inferior and ally only, the king of Shinar.
Arioch king of Ellasar was also of the com
pany. And, curiously enough, not only has
his capital city Larsa (now Senkereh on the
east of the Euphrates) been identified, but
Eriaku, the same with the Hebrew Arioch, is
found to be the son of Kudur-Mabuk and to
have dwelt in Larsa. The fourth of these
royal aggressors, Tidal king of "Goiim," is less
definitely localized either in the narrative or
the inscriptions, Guti or Gutium, both of which
sources favor the idea that his monarchy was
over less consolidated tribes to the north. But
in striking correspondence to and explanation
of this consecutive narrative, the inscriptions
disclose great expeditions of Kudur-Mabuk
and Arioch, with conquests in Syria, whereby
the former attained the title " lord of Martu "
i. e., of the god of the West; and Rawlinson,
Sayce and Lenormant all bring the date singu
larly close to the time of Abraham (Rawlinson
2100 b. c, Sayce 2000, Lenormant "approxi
mately to the time of Abraham."" This tale
of conquest might apply to the time twelve
years before when the valley kings were made
tributary, probably in the greater campaign
through Syria as well as Palestine. For in
the second campaign a more humiliating fate
awaited them.
20 Tompkins, "Times of Abraham," p. 180.

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS, 169
We follow these fighting nations this second
time as they come, evidently in force, over the
commercial and military track, ascending the
valley of the Euphrates and crossing it at Bir,
or more likely at Jerabolus, the ancient Car-
chemish, pushing south-westerly over the deep
valley of the Orontes at " the entrance of Ha
math " (twice mentioned in our Pentateuch) —
that ancient place where are found strange in
scriptions perhaps ofthe veritable Hittite race,
Passing by Damascus, out of our sight, they
emerge on the east side of Jordan in Bashan,
striking first the Rephaim at an unknown point,
then the Zuzim, — wholly lost to history — at
Ham, probably Hamitat, just east of the Dead
Sea, then Shaveh Kiriathaim, " the plain of the
two cities," now also lost out of knowledge un
less the name of the tribe of Emims be found
in the travels of Mohar, " Mat-amim," land of
Emim. Then we find them at Seir among
the Horites, the troglodytes. They had taken
what is since, and may have been then, the
great commercial route to Arabia. Still they
pushed on down along the route of the Ghor
to El Paran, not now definitely known, but " by
the wilderness." What was their aim here?
The old Egyptian mines, long wrought already?
We can only guess. But they returned by
Kadesh — whether the Ain Kades of Williams;

170 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the Ain el Weibeh of Robinson, or some still
unknown place. It was a long expedition,
and must have called for no little skill in the
arrangement, as well as vigor in the prose
cution. And now having cut off all the sur
rounding sources of help, they struck what
we may suppose were the rich cities of the
plain — for here, at a later date, in Jericho it
was that Achan hid his prize, the wedge of
gold and the goodly Babylonish garment or
mantle. They carried off the spoil. And
here the very geography and condition of the
region is put on record. It was a valley, and
bitumen pits were there — where bitumen still
is found — and a mountain region for the sur
vivors to escape.
When Abram joined himself to Aner and
Kshcol to retake his nephew Lot, by a sort of
poetic justice he was arming himself against
the aggressors that had oppressed his own
native land of Chaldea. And in his military
tactics, he showed himself worthy to have
been reared — as he was — in the midst of war
like times. From the opposite range of hills,
no doubt — ^the bold headlands of Naphtali,
south of lake Huleh, — he could, as he ap
proached, see the enemy resting in security
and carousing over his spoil. By an almost

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 171
Napoleonic promptness and skill he advanced
upon them in detachments, struck them by
night, and routed them beyond Damascus.
With this thorough discomfiture of the
former chief oriental monarch of the time, of
which, of course, no record ever will be found
in the boastful inscriptions of Babylonia or
Assyria, the public movements in and around
the old hive of the nations are left in silence
for many centuries. For although later in the
life of Abraham, and again through twenty
years of the life of Jacob, we are permitted to
look into the heart of Padan Aram, it is ex
clusively a vision of rural and family scenes,
without a reference to the monarchy or the
government, except as Laban asserts in one
instance a controlling custom of the country.
Not so meanwhile in other lands. We have
here the only narrative concerning the origin
of that race that have left their sole memen
toes in the forsaken ruins of Moab. Here also
the early days of that powerful race that once
warred upon Judea, pillaged her capital, by
the hand of its Edomite monarch, Herod,
struck at the life of the infant Jesus, and
left its weird city Petra to be discovered in
our own day in the cleft of the rocks, in ghast
ly desolation.
Here also alone are exhibited the great

172 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Arab race in their origin, their characteristics,
their early central location, and their long
and peculiar history. The sons of Ishmael
had their dwelling " from Havilah unto Shur
that is before Egypt as thou goest toward As
syria," — where we observe the distinct impli
cation of early travel and communication be
tween the two lands, — in the region where
the traveller now looks upon the sons of Ish
mael in their purest, almost primitive type.
The roving Bedouin to-day fulfils that mar
vellously descriptive prophetic utterance, " He
shall be a wild-ass man; his hand shall be
against every man and every man's hand
against him ; and he shall dwell in the pres
ence of his brethren." And from Havilah to
Shur you behold him to-day, as roving and
untamed as the wild ass, and dwelling in the
presence of his brethren. " Until to-day the
Ishmaelites are in undisturbed, free posses
sion of the great peninsula lying between
the Euphrates, the Isthmus of Suez and the
Red Sea, from whence they have spread over
wide districts in Northern Africa and South
ern Asia" (Delitzsch). Ishmael has also be
come, according to this prophetic utterance, a
great nation, and more than "twelve princes"
have sprung from his stock. "Every addi
tion to our knowledge, of Arabia and its

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 173
inhabitants," says Kalisch, "confirms more
strongly the Biblical statements. While they
have carried their arms beyond their native
lands, and ascended more than one hundred
thrones, they were never subjected to the Per
sian empire. The Assyrian and Babylonian
kings had a transitory power over small por
tions of their tribes. Here the ambition of
Alexander the Great and his successors re
ceived an insuperable check, and a Roman
expedition in the time of Augustus totally
failed. The Bedouins have remained essen
tially unaltered since the times of the He
brews and the Greeks." Is it not one hun
dred and twenty millions that speak the
Arabic tongue to-day?
Passing at a bound over some two hundred
years from Abraham's time, the Pentateuch
opens up another panorama of historic vision.
I will not pause to dwell upon the unfolding
of the one central people, and the sharp de
fining of the whole career and institutions
that have so ineffaceably stamped their in
tense nationality to the present day. Few
men consider what an irreparable loss to the
world's records would be the obliteration of
that long and eventful history from the
world's on-goings, or with what singular and
absolutely unparalleled definiteness it is given

174 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
US, from its incipient stages. And not only
as a clear record of a wonderful national
growth and source of moral illumination to
the world is it a Kvi^na ii dei, but meanwhile
how its pages beam with life, and what
strange personages walk across its scenes in
all their distinctness of delineation : the mighty
and majestic Father of the faithful, the wary
and versatile head of the twelve tribes, ripen
ing at last to venerableness and beauty, the
fleckless Joseph and the colossal law-giver,
— how they stand out like sunbeams on our
sight. And as we follow their journeyings we are
still enveloped with the movements of the
nations. We fall upon the line of early in
ternational trade at Dothan, where the Midi
anite or Ishmaelitish merchants are moving
towards luxurious Egypt with their camels,
bearing spices and balm and myrrh, perhaps
for the kitchen, the toilet, the medicine chest,
and the tomb, and where they pause by the
way to buy cheap a slave for the house of
"the Captain of the guard." In Egypt we
may not pause to look around upon the vivid
scenes of sumptuous court life here delineated,
ages before they emerged upon modern sight
from the tombs. But we get clear hints of
the great national movements of which we

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 175
are in search, — hints quite as significant as
would be more detailed statements. The ele
vation of a foreigner such as Joseph to a
high office, suggests the fact of Egypt being
then in the hands of foreign invaders, the
Hyksos; while the solicitude to provide the
Israelites a home in Goshen, remote from
the old native Egyptian population, and be
cause "every shepherd is an abomination to
the Egyptians," suggests the smouldering and
growing hatred of that dynasty, that only
waited for its time under Ahmes to drive
them forever from the land. The reiterated
intimation to the ten brethren, " Nay, ye are
spies ; to see the nakedness of the land ye are
come," hints at a growing sense of insecurity
and governmental suspicion, strongly aroused
and fully justified.
When at length, long after Joseph's death,
another king or dynasty arose which knew
not Joseph, we are reminded at once of that
native dynasty of Memphis to whom the event
ful story of Joseph with his relations at On
was unknown and certainly uncared for. And
when after the lapse of centuries, the children
of Israel are ground down with their labors on
the strongholds of Egypt, we are reminded of
that line of fortresses which Seti I. and Rameses
II. found it needful to string along the eastern

176 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
border of Egypt. For the intermediate con
quests of the great warrior, Thotmes III. had
long passed by, and Rameses, with all his boast
ing of victories, had roused enemies whom he
feared. And when the sceptre passed or was
to pass into the hands of the feeble Meneptha,
we can well understand those recorded appre
hensions " lest they [the Israelites] multiply,
and it come to pass that when there falleth
out any war they join also unto our enemies and
fight against us." We see also the explana^
tion of that great body of troops with which,
in its military but weakened condition, the
monarch found it needful to stand always
provided, and which at a day's warning was
in readiness to follow on the track of Israel.
The horsemen and chariots speak of a great
national change since the days of camels and
asses — since the time of Abraham. Possibly
also in the children of Israel's march out of
Egypt in orderly array, D''E«ipn, and in the di
vision on the march into thousands and hun
dreds with their captains (Num. xiv. 31) — into
regiments and companies with their regular
commanders, — we are to recognize an echo
of the military discipline that now filled the
once peaceful kingdom, as it does Germany
to-day, and that responded to the warlike
movements now thoroughly aroused and set-

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. Ill
ting toward the ultimately doomed country
which was to be the spoil of the nations.
And on the march of Israel we encounter a
changed state of affairs from the day when
not only did the fen brothers pass quietly
over the old caravan road, that even a solitary
woman had once attempted alone with her
child, Ishmael. For this great host were de
liberately turned toward the Red Sea instead
of the shorter way " through the land of the
Philistines " to Canaan, " lest peradventure the
people repent when they see war, and they re
turn to Egypt" (Ex. xiii. 17). The change
was great indeed. The powerful Amalekites
encounter them desperately on the way, al
though the Egyptian forces at the mines
seem not to have molested them, and vic
tory was gained for Israel only after a hard-
fought battle. Edom also bristled with war
like preparations and defiance. When the
misguided nation would have pushed their
way north from Kadesh, they were driven
back in great discomfiture by the Amale
kites; and who can tell but that the oldest
portion of the ruined fortresses on the top of
Meshrifeh may be part of the stronghold of
Zephath, or Sebaita "on the hill top," from
which these "Canaanites smote them even
unto Hormah." When at length the weary

178 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
journey had brought the nation by a circu
itous route upon the flank of the promised land,
even here were new and strange preparations.
Jericho was now enclosed with its walls. The
hills of Palestine were covered with strong
holds, and filled with fighting men. And ir,
was only after a long and bitter struggle of
conquest that the warrior Joshua rested on
his arms, and the blessings from Gerizim and
the curses from Ebal came swelling and thun
dering over the heads of the people as they
stood awe-stricken in the vale of Sheehem be
low ; and the nation had peace, although many
of its surrounding foes still remained to be
thorns in its side.
Thus striking in themselves, significant iu
their relations, and eventful in their issues, are
the national movements recorded in this an
cient history. We catch, not a glimpse, but
a clear and steady look into scenes and events
so far away as to be completely lost out of
sight. We gaze on the dead past and it comes
to life. It is as though through the vacant
space we point some great telescope toward a
seeming blank and there rises before us a new
unseen planet, not ofi'ering us a dreary range
of extinct volcanoes and waterless plains, but
filled with verdure and activity, with living
men and women engaged in all their daily

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF NATIONS. 179
round. Scenes of terror, of pathos and of joy;
the march of armies, the clash of arms, the
shout of the victor, and the cry of the van
quished; the voice of the bridegroom and the
lament of the widowed and the defiance of the
criminal; the stern command of the mighty
despot and the beating of the poor downtrod
den slave; the firm tread ofthe individual hero,
the quiet footfall of the moving caravans, the
tramp of the nations as they march to their
early and perhaps their later homes, the din
and bustle of a young world hurrying hither
and thither with struggle and confusion and
strife, come reverberating down the distant
centuries as clear and fresh, and yet as softened
too, as the mingled sounds from some village
below rise through the evening air to the ear
of the wanderer, as he pauses to listen on the
neighboring height.

LECTURE SIXTH.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS.

It would seem to be hundreds of years, and
yet it is less than forty, since even so good
a scholar as Prof Norton ' of Harvard College
could publish to the world his doubts, after
Gesenius and De Wette, whether the art of
alphabetical writing was known, or so far ad
vanced in the time of Moses as to admit of
his being the author of the Pentateuch. On
the contrary, the date of the discovery recedes
beyond all knowledge, and disappears in the
mist. In Egypt the cautious Wilkinson finds
the hieroglj'phic writing upwards of 2500 years
B. c, and passing into the hieratic about 2240
B. c. ; Lepsius, with larger numbers, speaks of
a "perfectly formed system and a universal
habit of writing between three and four thou
sand years before Christ." In Chaldea the
cuneiform inscriptions ascend to at least the
1 Norton's " Genuineness of the Gospels," vol. ii. Note
D., p. c. Second Ed., 1848.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS 181
time of King Lig-bagas, assigned by some
(H. C. Tomkins) to 2700, and by Sayce* to
about 3000 years before the Christian era. It
is mostly syllabic, and is considered to have
been derived from hieroglyphic signs of its
own. It is from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, di
rectly or through its hieratic form, as is now
generally conceded, that the Phenician and
thence the Grecian alphabet came — the al
phabet, properly so-called, of letters, fixed.
"M. de Rouge," says Maspero, "proved that
at the time when the Shepherds reigned in
Egypt, the Canaanites had selected, among
the forms of cursive writing, a certain num
ber of characters corresponding to the funda
mental sounds of their language. His dem
onstration, reproduced in Germany by Lauth,
Brugsch and Ebers, was considered decisive,
and the results have been generally accepted.
The Phenician alphabet is composed of twenty-
two letters, of whichT ^^een are so little changed
that we recognize at a glance their Egyptian
prototype, and the remainder ascend to the
hieratic type without violence to the laws
of probability." " This adaptation was the work
of a business people, and a stroke of commer-
2 "Chaldean Genesis," p. 24.
5 Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 600.

182 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
cial genius. " The Phenician alphabet," con
tinues Maspero, "first used in Canaan, became
modified according to localities, and formed
successively the Aramean, Palmyrene, and
Hebrew alphabets. Carried by the Sidonians
and Tyrians into the countries where com
merce led them, it became the common stock
from which were detached all [nearly all] the
alphabets of the known world from India and
Mongolia to Gaul and Spain" — not including
the extreme east and extreme west.
How early the Phenician or Canaanite —
which is of course the Hebrew — alphabet
was in use, we cannot tell. It was in use
"n Canaan, say the Egyptologists, during the
Hyksos dynasty. Nor can we say with ab
solute confidence how early any of the mat
ters contained in the earlier part of the Pen
tateuch were committed to writing. There is
not only ingenuity but weight in the sug
gestion of Herder* that such lists of names
as form the early genealogical tables carry
with them the necessity of writing to pre
serve them. He even suggests, and not with
out show of reason, that the very effort to
preserve such tables may have been the ne
cessity which led to the invention of early
writing. "If," says he, "alphabetic writing
* Herder's " Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," i. 254r-7.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 183
was ever to be invented, it must be brought
about by reason of something simple, some
thing very definite and very indispensable,
which could not be expressed by images.
Now names exhibit these very conditions;
and it is a fact that names and genealogi
cal registers constitute the earliest tradi
tions of the primeval world." He suggests
that the fifth chapter of Genesis may have
been, with its names and numbers, the first
tablet of thought in articulate sounds and
"transmitted through Noah to Shem, as the
meaning of the latter name might denote."
If we do not fully adopt this opinion, we may
recognize the seemingly insuperable necessity
that such a series of otherwise disconnected
words should be handed down by written
record. "These registers," Herder strikingly
remarks, "are the historical archives of the
Orientals, and the historical traditions are
the commentary." And in speaking of the
history before the Deluge he says, "it passes
obviously into a mere record of significant
names, genealogical records and family tra
ditions mingled together; and here too its
poverty is a pledge of its truth.""
If the Phenician alphabet was introduced
into Palestine only in the time of the Shepherd
s Tb. i. p. 254

184 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Kings of Egypt, it would appear that though
Abraham would have found it already there,
yet he did not learn it there; for he himself
came up from a land that had known the art
of writing some hundred years — five hundred,
if we were to adopt Sayce's date — earlier than
the earliest of those Kings [about 2200 b. c,
the beginning of the Shepherd reigns, accord
ing to Brugsch]. How far back in the line
of Abraham's ancestry written memorials of
the kind indicated may have existed, we can
hardly even conjecture. There is nothing in
credible in the supposition that writing may
have been an antediluvian invention, but some
things to favor it. Surely the general skill in
the arts would be in keeping with it ; the very
process of constructing a vessel five hundred
and seventeen feet long would imply some
species of notation ; and the genealogical tables,
with the definite numbers, in the fifth of Gen
esis, would seem almost to have necessitated
it. And a noticeable indication of evident
but fossihzed mistake in copying, (which how
ever would naturally have been limited to a
script like the Hebrew or Phenician,) is found
in Gen. iv. 18, where ?x^inp is changed at
once to ^K^'no.
And let me here remark in passing that the
admission of such ancient genealogies into

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 185
the Pentateuch is no more peculiar than the
admission of the much longer genealogies,
evidently from the tribal records, into the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Indeed the
similarity of the phenomena might indicate
similarity of origin and give color to the
suggestion of Herder that in the genealo
gies of Genesis v. we have the transcript
of an early recorded table.
It is not difficult to fix at once upon other
portions of the early history which have the
appearance of coming down from a far great
er antiquity than the time of Moses, substan
tially in their present form. Without seeking
for other possible instances in the preceding
narratives with their anai, XeydixEva, the mind
fixes at once on the account of the Deluge,
and that of Abraham's warlike expedition.
In the history of the Deluge, when one reads
not merely the steady announcement of defi
nite numbers, and that not alone in the di
mensions of the ark, the time of the rain and
of the prevalence of the water, and the height
of the water, the several intervals of waiting
and the age of Noah, but the reiterated, mi
nute and emphatic exactness, such as the six
hundredth year, second month, seventeenth
day of the month " in the bone of that day,"
the seventh month and seventeenth day of

186 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the month, tenth month and first day, six
hundred and first year, first month, first day,
second month, seven and twentieth day —
and still more all the marks of a personal
beholding and participation, as when the
waters increased and first " bare up the ark "
and " it was lifted up above the earth," then
the waters prevailed and increased " greatly,
greatly " till " the ark walked upon the face
of the waters," and still they prevailed " till all
the high hills under the whole heaven were
covered," and the mountains were covered —
then how the waters decreased, and in the
first day ofthe month "the tops ofthe moun
tains were seen;" then all the vivid minute
ness of detail, opening the window to send the
raven, and afterwards the dove, putting forth
his hand and pulling her in unto him, sending
her once more and on her return "fo, in her
mouth an olive-leaf fresh-plucked " — once more
removing the covering, looking, "and behold
the face of the ground was dry" — I say, in all
the exactness and minuteness of this pre-
Raphaelite painting, how can one fail to feel
the presence of a contemporary record, or, as
some have called it, a log-book. And further
more, when one considers the exactness of
statement in regard to such a multiplicity
of details, and contrasts the sobriety and con-

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 187
sistency of this simple narrative, with the
dimness, the inconsistencies and the extrava
gances of that multitude of traditional ac
counts of the Deluge that are found scattered
through every part of the world, it is not
easy to see how it could have been thus kept
in its integrity except as placed on record
at no distant date from the transactions so
carefully recorded.
So of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis
— when one looks at its wholly detached
completeness, at its several peculiarities of
diction and utterance, including its men
tion of Abraham as " the flebrew," and espe
cially at the double set of names whereby
terms which were obsolete in Moses' time are
explained by their later equivalents, coming
down, however, no further than his day, unless
in the case of Dan, — not difficult of explana
tion, — he cannot well dissent from Ewald's
statement that "all the indications tend to
show that this whole piece was written prior
to the time of Moses." ' These are specimens
of what may be freely admitted in many other
instances less noticeable, to whatever extent
clear indications may demand. Although
there is now a strong tendency to accept the
theory of certain leading minds, and recog-
' "Geschichte von Israel," vol. i, p. 80, Note.

188 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
nize an Elohist, two Jehovists, a Deuterono-
mist, and one, or more, "redactors," yet cer
tainly nothing can be more dreary and
bewildering than the attempt to harmonize
or even to tabulate the diversities in the as
signment of the respective contributions, from
the time of Astruc to that of Dillmann.
And here let it be observed that the accept
ance and incorporation of such earlier true
narratives into the history, no more militates
against the proper Mosaic authorship of that
history, than the introduction of large extracts
from Bradford or Morton, or other and later
sources of contemporary information, inter
feres with the proper authorship of a history
of the United States by Bancroft ; and when
this latter historian, recording with quotations
a condensed statement of the establishment
of Fort du Quesue (iv. 117) adds " where now
is Pittsburgh," he almost exactly imitates the
Hebrew historian, in Gen xiv. with a mere
substitution ofthe English idiom.'
' Thus Professor C. A. Briggs, who somewhat distinctly
assents to the general analysis of the Pentateuch and Josh
ua into four principal documents combined by a "redac
tor" or editor and compiler, makes this very decided
statement: "There is nothing in this variation of docu
ments as such to require that they should be successive
and separated by wide intervals, or that would prevent
their being nearly ^contemporaneous. There is nothing

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 189
It may also be added that very probably
the incorporation of earlier narratives explains
many characteristic forms of phraseology, and
will, as has been so often argued, in part ac
count for the diverse names of God which
appear conspicuously in the earlier part of
the Pentateuch. I say, in part. For so far
as appears, no theory that has been advanced
fully explains the facts. For after more than
three quarters of a century of the ablest and
most searching discussion, the following facts
are to be observed: (1) The lack of any
absolute or general agreement among the
anatomists of the Pentateuch as to the num
ber of parts of which it is formed; (2) still
less agreement in the assignment of the sev
eral portions to their supposed originals ; (3)
and no thoroughly self-consistent theory of
a supposed methodical combination of doc
uments in whatever mode, has yet been
in this distinction of documents as such that forces us to
abandon the Mosaic age as the time of their origin. The
fault of the supplementary and the crystallization hypoth
eses, is in their attempts to determine the order and fix
the time of the genesis of those various documents that
constitute our Pentateuch ^nd spread them over the various
periods of the history of Israel. The evidences on which
these theories are built, are exceedingly precarious."
"Pres. Eev." vol. iv. p. 100. To these faults he might
also add, with equal force, the attempt to determine pre
cisely the limits of the documents employed.

190 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
broached — unless it is some such "supple
mentary hypothesis" as virtually recognizes
one proper author. Without attempting here
the details of a volume or volumes, it is suf
ficient to say that all these theories, however
dexterously adjusted, break down in the ap
plication in some or all of the following
modes: (a) the actual presence and sometimes
preponderance in one alleged document of
terms pronounced characteristic of a different
one, as where the name of Jehovah prevails
over that of Elohim in an Elohistic passage,
especially in the later books ofthe Pentateuch ;
(&) the abrupt introduction of alleged charac
teristic words in narratives alleged to be of a
different origin (as Jehovah, Gen. vii. 16,
xvii. 1, and many other words and phrases) ;
(c) the continual abundant cross references of
each respective portion to statements con
tained in the other alleged class of documents
— as of the Elohistic to the Jehovistic, and
vice versa; {d) and finally, excessive and un
reasonable dissections and dismemberments
of closely connected passages, required in
order to make even this show of a case.*
8 Thus, Gen. xxxvii. has thirty verses which Davidson
(after Boehmer) divides into thirty-two fragments, and
Knobel into nine. Gen. xii. is analyzed by Davidson into
forty-two fragments, by Knobel into twenty-two, aud

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 191
And a man of sober judgment, while freely
admitting the use of other materials, yet when
he ponders the diverse and ever-changing hy
potheses, the conflicting results, and especially
the arbitrary devices by which they are largely
maintained, as well as the uses to which they
are applied, may be pardoned for questioning
whether the great body of these bold specula
tors are not more earnestly bent on establish
ing an ingenious theory than ascertaining the
very truth. For be it observed, we do not
dispute the use of previous material, by what
ever of several names designated, though we
may demur to the unwarranted inferences
from it, and the capricious minuteness of the
schemes that are erected upon it.
Nor, on the other hand, can we insist on
the opinion that the characteristic names of
God, for example, were in each and every
case selected in accordance with some con
scious plan. Doubtless in many instances a
by Dillmann (Knobel's editor in 1875) it is regarded as
chiefly by one writer with nine insertions, sometimes of a
verse and twice of two or three words only. Schrader
(in 1876) finds in ch. xlvii. some nine different portions,
although in two instances (vs. 11 and 27) they consist each
oitwo words from the Elohist, etc. Meanwhile and last oi
all Kuenen and Wellhausen come forward to reverse all
preceding dates and make the Elohistic portions later
than the Jehovistic.

192 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
definite reason existed for using (for example)
the name of Jehovah as the God of revelation
and of covenant. Thus we may, if we choose,
suppose, with Kalisch (on Genesis) and even
Knobel, that the change in Gen. ii. 4 from
Elohim to Jehovah-Elohim was made with
the design to indicate that the God of crea
tion was the revealed God of the Jews, Je
hovah. But the failure of any theory fairly
to explain all the cases brings us to the
no-theory that while the distinct accounts
already in existence may have suggested
diverse phraseology, yet, in the main, the
choice of the divine names was a matter of
unconscious influence, much like the selection
of the names of the Saviour, whether Christ
Jesus or Jesus Christ. *
Now the recognition of such things incor
porated in the Pentateuch in no way affects the
view that the law-giver, Moses, was directly or
indirectly the responsible author of the book
— unless it were shown that these embodied
documents were certainly later than his tirhe.
And this leads to the remark that the at
tempts to invalidate the traditional view" in
regard to the authorship of the Pentateuch
may all be characterized as efforts to set aside
the usual laws of evidence by evasions and
side-issues, — chiefly unwarranted inferences

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 193
or unfounded assertions. In other words, they
steadily divert the attention from the central
features of the case to a maze of minor discus
sions, either without bearing on the question
or unsupported by satisfactory proof We are
not to be diverted by a labyrinth of petty as
sumptions and ingenious, but arbitrary, sup
positions, from the great decisive features of
evidence, which, if they are as old as the hills,
are also as firm. The great principles of evi
dence cannot be set aside.
Now glancing rapidly over this whole field
— which is all I can do — when we look at the
history of the Pentateuch, we find it coming
to us from remote antiquity accredited as sub
stantially the work of Moses, in the same way
as ancient classic writers or Josephus — with
this remarkable difference, that the books of
Moses are embedded in the history and testi
mony and institutions of a whole nation. Nor
had any other authorship ever been thought of.
We find again that, so far as any claim is
put forth by the books themselves, it is for
this authorship in general. Deuteronomy ex
pressly claims throughout to be Moses' words,
and in xxxi. 9, 24-26 the principal part of it
(certainly xii.-xxvi.) is declared to have been
written by him. In four previous passages in
the Pentateuch (Ex. xviii. 14; xxiv. 4; xxxiv.

194 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
27; Num. xxxiii. 2) he is declared to have
committed certain things to writing. Aud
not only is the law of Leviticus again and
again introduced with the statement, "the
Lord spake unto Moses," where, too, as Pro
fessor Green well says, " the circumstances of
these enactments are inseparably united with
the historical narrative of the time," but in a
dozen places in Deuteronomy the speaker
Moses refers to previous enactments of Ex
odus, Leviticus, Numbers as given by him.^
To which may be added the important fact
that the essential and systematic unity of
the present Pentateuch as a composition is
affirmed by such analysts as Ewald, Tuch,
Knobel, Hupfeld, in the strongest terms, and
is too obvious to be disputed.
Again, the existence of a book in the hands
of the nation, a book called " the law," " the
law of Moses," " the book of the law," " the
book of the law by the hand of Moses " — all
the same — can be traced back — with quota
tions identifying it — from the New Testa
ment through Esdras, Maccabees, Ecclesias-
ticus, and, with more or less distinctness,
nearly all the several books of the Old Testa
ment up to Joshua.'" The references of this
» Stebbins, " Study of the Pentateuch," pp. 184-6.
i» Stebbins, ib. p. 83.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS, 195
kind to such a book can be enumerated by
the score, and the undoubted quotations from
and allusions to its contents, specifically, by
the hundred.
Such are the claims and testimonies. And
while they certainly do not assert in set terms
that every portion of these books was written
down by Moses or by his amanuensis, neither
is it necessary for us so to affirm. For while
we might well stand firm on the position of
Schultz, that Moses was both the Jehovist
and Deuteronomist, using the older Elohistic
records and composing the whole Pentateuch
except the concluding part of Deuteronomy
(and the glosses that have since crept in), we
might, if we chose, hold with Kurtz that the
most of Deuteronomy and large portions of
the Pentateuch being written by Moses in
person, the remainder was arranged and com
piled under his direction before entering the
promised land ; or perhaps we should occupy
no unwarrantable position if we held, with
Delitzsch formerly, that the completion of the
whole work, of which Deuteronomy and much
else were by the hand of Moses, was reserved
for one or more of his trusted associates, as
Eleazer the priest, and Joshua, who was, a
prophet, or, some one of the elders on whom
the spirit of God rested.

196 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
With this explanation I proceed to remark
succinctly, how the original and unbroken
testimony that Moses is responsible for the
Pentateuch is confirmed by all the internal in
dications of which the case naturally admits.
The peculiarities of its archaic diction, ex
hibiting, at least in parts of it, a marked dif
ference from the later books, except as those
quote or refer to this older book, have been
too often pointed out in detail, and too forci
bly asserted by scholars whose testimony is
not to be disputed (such as De Wette, Gesen
ius, Ewald, Delitzsch,") to require me to go
into details here.
In connection with these admitted marks
of antiquity — often, if you please, a higher
antiquity than the time of the Exodus and
Moses — we find the narrative tinged with lan
guage that belongs only to the influences and
circumstances of a residence in Egypt. The
ancient narrative of the deluge incorporates,
as given to us, the Egyptian N3ri for the ark.
The narrative of Moses' infancy and rescue,
has the same word, and three others of Egyp-
11 Thus Delitzsch writes in 1877 (" Preface to the Leviti
cal Priests," p. 10), "The so-called Elohistic language is
ancient throughout; there is no trace ofthe peculiar post-
exilic forms aud syntax." But this Elohistic portion is
that which it is now attempted to place after the exile.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 197
tian origin, together with the Egyptian phrase
"the lip of the river." A large number of
other words found in the papyri and on the
monuments cling to the book, in token of the
recent contact of its author with Egypt.
Again, the freshness and minuteness and
exactness of correspondence between this
nan-ative and the Egyptian antiquities of the
time, is incompatible with any considerable
interval between the Exodus and the compo
sition of the Egyptian period of this Hebrew
history. And here let me fall back on so great
an authority as that of R. S. Poole, deliberately
pronounced within three years. After speak
ing ofthe "extraordinary acuteness and skill"
with which German and Dutch critics have la
bored upon the Mosaic documents alone, "and
their result " " to reduce the date of the docu
ments, except a few fragments, many centu
ries,'' he proceeds to say that "the work has
been that of great literary critics, not archse-
ologists. The Egyptian documents emphati
cally call for a reconsideration of the whole
question of the date of the Pentateuch. It is
now certain that the narrative of the history
of Joseph, and the sojourn and exodus of the
Israelites, that is to say, the portion from
Genesis xxxix. to Exodus xv., so far as it re
lates to Egypt, is substantially not much later

198 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
than 1300 b. c. [about the time he assigns for
the Exodus], in other words was written while
the memory of the events was fresh. The mi
nute accuracy of the text is inconsistent with
any later date. It is not merely that it shows
knowledge of Egypt, but knowledge of Egypt
under the Ramessides and yet earlier. The
condition of the country, the chief cities of the
frontier, the composition of the army, are true
of the age of the Ramessides, and not true of
the Pharaohs contemporary with Solomon and
his successors." And after a long list of such
marked and striking congruities, Mr. Poole
proceeds, "These arguments have not failed
to strike foreign Egyptologists who have no
theological bias. These independent schol
ars, without actually formulating any view of
the date of the greater part of the Pentateuch,
appear uniformly to treat its text as an author
ity to be cited side by side with Egyptian
monuments. So Lepsius in his researches on
the date of the Exodus, and Brugsch in his dis
cussion of the route, Chabas in his paper on
Rameses and Pithom. Of course it would be
unfair to implicate any one of these scholars
in the inferences expressed above, but at the
same time it is impossible that they can, for in
stance, hold Kuenen's theories of the date of
the Pentateuch, so far as the part relating to

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 199
Egypt is concerned. They have taken the two
sets of documents, Hebrew and Egyptian, side
by side, and, in the working of the elaborate
problems, found everything consistent with ac
curacy on both sides; and of course accuracy
would not be maintained in a tradition handed
down through several centuries."'*
"If," proceeds the same writer, "the large
portion of the Pentateuch relating to the Egyp
tian period of Hebrew history, including as it
does Elohistic as well as Jehovistic sections,
is of the remote antiquity here claimed for it,
no one can doubt that the first four books
are substantially of the same age."
Again, the Pentateuch from the time of the
Exodus contains abundant contemporaneous
marks of the long wandering. It is sprinkled
with arrangements for a migratory nation on
its migrations. How prominent the legislation
for the march in all the details of the march,
and for the construction and transportation
of the movable tabernacle and for sanitary
matters on the way ! The minuteness of de
tails of these things, and of the census, and
the princes' offerings, is completely in keeping
and of necessity as exact directions given to
be exactly executed then and there, precisely
like some contract with all the specifications to
12 "Contemporary Eeview," March, 1879.

200 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
build a house — or as facts of contemporaneous
interest only; but, except as given for direct use
and contemporary record, so intolerably tedi
ous, that as a matter of later and distant his
tory it is, as Delitzsch truly remarks, " incon
ceivable " they should ever have been preserved
or invented, much less recorded and trans
mitted. The wood of which the tabernacle is to
be made is the shittim wood, the one prevalent
tree of the Sinaitic Wadies, and the only solid
tree of sufficient size to furnish the planks as
prescribed. The cypress of Palestine is not
there, nor the cedar, except in slight quan
tities for purification, — for a purpose like that
for which it was used in Egypt. The game
of the wilderness — like the chamois — is in
cluded among the clean animals of the Law.
Blunt in his " Undesigned Coincidences " has
mentioned several minute but almost con
cealed correspondences in regard to the fall
of Korah's company, the arrangement of the
tribes with reference to the tabernacle, and
the like, which could haye come only from a
participant in the journey.
Professor W. Robertson Smith does indeed
say that "the Pentateuch displays an exact
topographical knowledge of Palestine, but by
no means so exact a knowledge of the wilder
ness of wandering  Accordingly, the

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 201
patriarchal sites can still be set down on the
map with definiteness, but geographers are
still unable to assign with certainty the site
of Mt. Sinai, because the narrative has none
of that local color which the story of an eye
witness is sure to possess." But the simple
reason for the difference — so far as it exists —
is that fixed landmarks, circumstantial differ
ences, and permanent populations have in the
one case furnished means of identification, in
the other not. The threescore and ten palm
trees aud twelve wells of water at Elim are
local coloring enough. Sinai, we maintain,
can be identified by the features indicated in
the narrative, probably the wilderness of Sin,
and the place of crossing the Red Sea, the en
campment by the sea, perhaps Marah, possibly
the region of the quails. But as a general
thing there exists, whether in the Sinaitic
peninsula, or still more in the wilderness of
wandering, no heal coloring. It is in the wil
derness — as the traveller can testify — a mon
otonous waste, with no discernible landmarks
by which to describe, and, in the peninsula, a
maze of similar wadies running among rocks,
hills and mountains. There is, for the most
part, absolutely nothing by which specifically
to indicate them, except in the order and time
ofthe journey, and no local population to have

202 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
handed down the names or knowledge of them
in the absence of specified landmarks. The
objection misconceives the whole aspect of the
case. Again, a mark of the time of the composi
tion, or the time of Moses, is found in the pro
gressive adaptive legislation incorporated with
the more permanent matters. Thus it has often
been pointed out how, as emergencies arose on
the way, the earlier laws were modified to meet
the emergency, by supplementary legislation.
Mr. Stebbins affirms that in Deuteronomy there
are as many as sixty such amendments or mod
ifications of the laws as given in Exodus and
Numbers ; besides at least a dozen express ref
erences to the previous legislation of Moses.
At the time of the last residence at Kadesh,
just before the final departure for Canaan, we
have some express regulations with reference
to their entering that country to settle, and the
new circumstances ensuing. Still other regu
lations or modifications are made when the
Israelites had left the wilderness, and were
encamped by the Jordan. All bears the mark
of the long journey and the shifting exigen
cies. And, as has been wpll said, the difference
between the hopeful strain in which Moses ad
dresses Israel at the close of the original law
giving (Lev. xxvi.) and the sad, solemn and

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 203
monitory tone of the reminiscences and ex
hortations of Deuteronomy, is precisely that
which belonged to the different occasions and
the man.
Such, briefly indicated in merest outline,
are some of the constraining reasons why we
believe with the ancient Jewish church, ap
parently with the Saviour and the apostles,
and the whole Christian Church till the pres
ent century, that Moses was the responsible
author of their ancient records. The reasons
seem to us massive and conclusive. They
settle the question unless there are insuper
able reasons to the contrary. But we cheer
fully listen to whatever can be alleged against
this mass of evidence. It is precisely the
same kind of evidence, be it observed, on
which rests the authorship, not of one or
some, but all the writings of the past, just as
soon as the author and his contemporary gen
eration have passed away, with this mighty
difference, that our volume is incorporated, as
I have remarked, with the history, literature,
institutions and traditions of a great continu
ous nation from the very beginning, as no
other authorship ever has been or can be.
Be it remembered that the denial which —
unless for the most imperative necessity — re
jects the accredited authorship of the Penta-

204 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
teuch, in the same denial is dislodging the
foundations of literary history — and is a pro
cess to which no limits can be set.
And here — in the objections hitherto urged
— we do not seem to find anything which car
ries constraining force. We admit some diffi
culties which await solution. But they are
no more than are reasonably to be expected,
if so many. Some of the objections are as
sertions that cannot be maintained, others are
inferences that do not bind.
Indeed so rapid has been the succession and
to some degree so evanescent the force of the
objections raised that one hardly knows what
of them are still relied upon, so do the fash
ions change.
The old difficulties raised concerning the
art of writing, and from the alleged mistakes
of narrative concerning Egyptian customs have
long been buried deep out of sight.
The allegation that the relation of a miracle
proves the narrative to be a late tradition, rests
on the groundless assumption that there can
be no miracle.
The difficulty of receiving as the narrative
of a participant or contemporary the account
of the wandering, because of the impractica
bility of providing for such a multitude, would
indeed be insuperable but for the very circum-

THE- EARLY DOCUMENTS. 205
stances stated in the narrative, — including the
miraculous provision.
The objection from the presence of alleged
documents in the narrative long managed to
hide, under a vast multitude of details and a
cloud of mist, the very simple fact that the
presence of such documents in no way mili
tated against the final Mosaic authorship —
unless these documents contained anachron
isms, clear marks of later date.
The attempt to find such anachronisms has
proved so feeble as to be fairly pronounced a
failure. We have but to concede a few, a very
few instances of the slightest revision or of
explanatory glosses, such as were easily and
naturally incorporated with the text, and all
is clear. Indeed the few patches of this kind
betray themselves almost at once. Of plausi
ble anachronisms the list is of the scantiest.
The case of "Dan" mentioned in Genesis xiv.
is the strongest, but is easily explained in sev
eral ways, one of which is (with Ewald) that,
in keeping with the other explanatory names,
this also was inserted and the older name dis
placed. When Prof Robertson Smith still
insists on the case of " westward and south
ward " — literally sea- ward and negev-ward —
as expressions for this purpose that could only
be formed in Palestine, his application of the

206 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
fact is a norirsequitv/r. They were formed iu
Palestine, and there they were incorporated
with the Hebrew or Palestinian language in
which Abraham and afterward Moses found
them and used them. A few statements, such
as concerning the meekness of Moses, the eat
ing of manna till they came to the borders of
Canaan, and the size of an omer, and other sini
ilar parenthetical remarks, such as may be con
ceded to be by a later hand, and of course the
account of Moses' death — just as the date of
Bradford's death is subjoined to his own man
uscript account of the Plymouth Pilgrims and
their decease one after another — comprise the
main body of these difficulties. The allusion
to the kings reigning in Edom before any
reigned in Israel, some two similar passages
(Lev. xviii. 28, Deut. ii. 12), and a few expres
sions iu Deuteronomy may perhaps be added.
Now making the rather obvious supposition
of a few such easy and natural revisions and
glosses, and what weight does their presence
carry to detract from the great and funda
mental aspects of the authorship ? Of the nu
merical or arithmetical objections so carefully
collected and so confidently paraded some
twenty years ago, may we not as confidently
say that they were overwhelmed by aii ava
lanche of effectual refutations, proving in de-

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 207
tail an unwarrantable treatment of the nar
rative by arbitrary and often clearly false
limitations or expansions, and in case of real
difficulties by the equally arbitrary exclusion
of explanations perfectly fair and feasible?
Thus much in brief for the case as it has ex
isted until the most recent times,
But what shall be said of the latest form of
objection which has arisen after some nineteen
years or so — like another lunar cycle ? I mean
the theory of Kuenen as in part interpreted
by Prof Smith. For a general refutation of
that theory as advanced by this bright Scotch
Professor, in his main position that the dis
tinctive Priesthood of Aaron's sons and the rit
ual establishment of Levitical law did not exist
before the time of Ezra — I refer you to a discus
sion in the January number of the " Presbyte
rian Review" and elsewhere by an honored pro
fessor of this Theological Seminary, Dr. Green.
And in the demolition of that main position
of Robertson Smith, the theory ofthe master
Kuenen is also demolished. And how pre
tentious is the airy structure in its large prep
arations and in the perverse ingenuity of its
details. It was a bold man who as a prelim
inary breaking of the ground, undertook to
reverse the decision of the great host of his
critical predecessors and place the so-called

208 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
Jehovist earlier in time than the Elohist ; who
ventured openly to set up his "supposition
with respect to the Mosaic period" and his
"conception of historical development," as a
test, and on the strength of that supposition
remanded the Pentateuch to a later age ; who
dares to assert that the writers of the books
"fearlessly allowed themselves to be guided
in their statements by the wants of the pres
ent and the requirements of the future," "and
considered themselves exempt from all respon
sibility;" who after ruling out the historical
books as unhistorical and as only expressing
"tlve idea which was entertained of that his
tory in the eighth century," yet proceeds to
build up half a volume of Israel's history out
of these very repudiated sources; who, to rid
himself of the troublesome witness of Chron
icles, could summarily dismiss the Chronicler
as one who with all the traditional facts clearly
before him yet gave an entirely different ver
sion for his priestly ends; who can rest the
main weight of his central position on the
implied assumption that the violation of a
law, even the failure to mention a custom,
is evidence that no such law or custom ex
isted; and who can deliberately face all the
seeming impossibilities of the allegation that
priestly ordinances were made known and

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 209
imposed upon the Jewish nation now for the
first time by Ezra, and when modified by Nehe
miah or perhaps others, the fraud was quietly
palmed off upon the returned exiles as "the
laws of God by the hand of Moses" — and so
received without a remonstrance or a suspicion.
And when reinforced by all the labor and
ingenuity of Wellhausen the main features
of the case remain unchanged. And, as I be
lieve, it is only a question of a little time for
rallying to the defence, and we shall see this
airy fabric like its predecessors vanish into
thin air again. Already it is clearly shown
not only that even on Wellhausens own
ground of natural development, a defined
priestly service in connection with the Priest
hood would have been at the Exodus prompted
by the singular completeness of the then exist
ing priestly functions and religious ceremonies
of Egypt itself," but there are historic indica
tions, inseparable from the records ofthe region,
that a ritual was established by Moses on the
march and that it certainly existed prior to
the time of the exile." Furthermore the dictum
13 WUkinsou's "Ancient Egyptians," i. 259, seq., 311,
seq. '< See Exodus xxiv. 6; Deut. xxiii. 10; Ps. xcix; See also
Deut. xviii. 1, 2, in connection with Numbers xviii. 20, 23;
Deuteronomy being, by decision of this school of critics,
not later than Josiah's time.

210 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
that remonstrances for the non-observance of
a law or code prove its non-existence, breaks
down wherever it is applied, whether to the
morals of Israel in Isaiah and Ezekiel's time,
where it would show that the nation had no
knowledge even of such fundamental laws as
against murder, promiscuous adultery, rob
bery, fraud, and sin of every kind ; " and also
through most of the history of the New Tes
tament church when it would show that there
was no knowledge of law or gospel even on
the part of the Roman priesthood. Again,
this theory, comprising the position that Moses
framed no priestly ordinances and also that
David and Solomon composed no psalms nor
proverbs, involves the singular improbability
that what it terms " the Creative period "
(Moses' time) created nothing and that the
most active and fruitful periods produced
nothing, but that the time of abject depres
sion, general decadence and secondary ability
is the grat source of the magnificent Hebrew
literature." The theory would still further
16 Ezekiel xxii. 6-12; xxxiii. 26; Isaiah i. 10, 15, 21,
23, etc.
IS For this and other important suggestions in this para
graph I am indebted to the elaborate though condensed
article of Professor Hermann J. Strack on ' ' The Penta
teuch," in the last edition of Herzog's "Eeal-Encyklopadie.''
I have thought his article valuable enough to be added

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 211
stultify many of the provisions contained in
this "priest code," by making them to originate
at a time when the occasion for them had
passed centuries before. This would apply not
alone to the legislation for the march in gen
eral, but to such specific directions as those
concerning the Urim and Thummim which
Aaron was to bear (Ex. xxviii. 29, 30), and
which usage was previously extant in the time
of Ezra and Nehemiah (Neh. vii. 65 ; Ezra ii.
63); to the right of booty (Num. xxxi. 21-24);
to the original assignment of cities to the
Levites (Num. xxxv.); and to the ancient
ordinance of the jubilee year. Lev. xxv., in
volving the relations of these Levites (vs. 32,
33). Indeed the existence of the ritual code
not only appears from Deuteronomy (conceded
to be older than the exile) with its distinction
of clean and unclean (Deut. xii. 15), but some
of the permitted food of that code were char
acteristic animals of the wilderness (xiv. 5).
Further yet, the effort to trace the language
of the Pentateuchal priestly code to the time
of Ezekiel or later, has been vigorously retorted
by showing, as in the names of the four chief
(a part of it) as an Appendix to these Lectures. His argu
ment is the more noteworthy because he accepts the now
prevalent German theory of four principal documents and
one or more redactors.

212 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
colors of the priest code, that the language
of the former is plainly original and ancient,
in contrast to the Aramean and Arian forms
of the time of the Chronicles." And to crown
all the other inconsistencies ofthe theory comes
the pervasive moral monstrosity of a scheme
which would assign to Ezra and Nehemiah
a concerted" and successful plan to palm oft"
upon Israel a complexus of impostures ex
tending from Exodus to Kings and Chronicles ;
— the story of Moses' birth being but a myth,"
the story of the Law-giving at Sinai, "the
product of a poetic necessity," that mountain
being but the Olympus of the Hebrews, and
the process of centuries "being condensed
into a single thrilling moment for the sake
of a vivid impression,"*" the Decalogue be
longing perhaps to the time of Manasseh,
Deuteronomy a fabrication of the seventh cen
tury, all the historic setting of the Mosaic leg
islation a series of supplementary, carefully
adjusted traditions made by the scribes so as
to advance " with all the progressive require
ments of life '' ; Judges a " systematic general
ization, contradicted by facts whicTi we other
wise know"*'; Chronicles written to sustain
i' See this argument in Delitzsch's Preface to "The
Levitical Priests," p. 11, seq.
18 Wellhausen, "Encyc. Brit." xiii. 418.
19 76. p. 399. 20 /(,. p. 400. 21 Jb. p. 400.

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 213
the imposition, and Kings skilfully interpreted
and modified by these same ingenious and un
scrupulous men for the same purpose.
Add to all this that Ezra and Nehemiah
themselves, who are put forward as the chief
fabricators of this alleged new Levitical code,
present themselves in no such attitude, but
as restorers of the ancient service. Ezra
comes forward simply as " a ready scribe in
the law of Moses which the Lord God of Israel
had given" (Ez. vii. 6, 11) who "had pre
pared his heart to seek the law of the Lord
and do it." And when he read the law pub
licly to the people, it was " the book of the
law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded
Israel" (Neh. viii. 1), "The law which the
Lord had commanded Moses " (verse 14)
with specific references to the priest code
of Leviticus (viii. 9, comp. Lev. xxiii. 24;
also Neh. viii. 14, 15, 18, comp. Lev. xxiii.
40, 42, 36). And both Ezra and Nehe
miah make it the burden of their confes
sions that "from the days of their fathers
the people had been in a great trespass and
cast God's law behind their backs ' (Ez. ix.
6, 7, 10, Neh. ix. 26, 28, 29, 30, 34). Yet these
are the men who are declared to be the origi
nators of the Levitical code, and this is the
mountainous series of elaborate and System-

214 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
atic and monstrous impostures that we are
expected to receive on such shallow and self-
conflicting arguments as have been indicated.
Surely when such a structure as this goes
down, we can hardly say " great was the fall
of it " ; for however ingenious, not great was
the structure.
And now, gentlemen, I have completed the
pleasant task I have undertaken, — to set be
fore you in some degree the five books of
Moses as containing the sources of history.
It has been with me a labor of interest and
love to which I would have been glad to
devote more time and labor were it consistent
with other engagements. I have wished in
these days of cavil to emphasize the fact that
not only is our ancient Pentateuch not a book
to be ashamed of, but it is a book to glory in,
— with its wonderful elucidations of the whole
early condition of our globe and of our race,
with its own announcement of the most mo
mentous events and the most vital institu
tions, its clear unfolding of the germs of all
subsequent life, and its graphic delineations
of scenes and persons otherwise shrouded iu
mist or hidden behind an impenetrable veil.
It is the grandest of histories, _ the noblest
series of biographies, the divine germ of all

THE EARLY DOCUMENTS. 215
human institutions, the substructure of all re
ligious hopes, and the primal clue to all the
past and the future of our race. My discus
sion has, from its limits, necessarily been
suggestive, rather than exhaustive. But
should I have made any suggestion fruitful
of better results in any of your minds, if I
have even prompted you to some fresh inqui
ries along any portion of this broad and fruit
ful field, or stimulated any of you to broader
investigations or a profounder sacred scholar
ship, my best wishes will have been accom
plished. And though my discussion has dealt
largely with the secondary aspect of the vol
ume, it has not been in disparagement, but
in support, of its primary ends. And I cannot
in closing better express my views on this point
than in the words of a brilliant expositor :
" The Torah is the basis of the Old Testa
ment, and the Old Testament the preparation
for the religion of Redemption. What the
four gospels are to the New Testament, that
are the five books of the law to the Old
Testament. But not merely do" beginning
and beginning, but beginning and end of the
Old and New Testament canon, Genesis and
Apocalypse, run together like the ends of a
circle. The creation of the heavens and earth
on the first pages of Genesis corresponds to

216 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
the creation of the new heavens and the new
earth on the last page of Revelation. To the
first creation which had Adam for its end,
corresponds the new creation which takes the
second Adam for its beginning. Thus does
the Holy Scripture form a unity compacted
into itself, to show that not alone this or that
book, but the whole is a work of the Holy
Spirit. The Torah, with its shadow of good
things to come, is the root, the Apocalypse,
penetrating into the 'world to come,' is the
top. Take away the three first chapters of
Genesis from the Bible, and you take away
the terminus a quo; take away the last three
chapters of the Apocalypse, and you take
away the terminus ad quern." And now, with
many thanks for your kind attention, I take
my leave.

APPENDIX.

STEACK ON THE PENTATEUCH.
The following extract contains the more im
portant part of Prof. Hermann L. Strack's ar
ticle on the Pentateuch, in the last edition of
Herzog's "Eeal-Encytlopadie," Leipzig, 1882.
His criticisms on the theory of Wellhausen,
which close the extract, would not be suffi
ciently intelligible without his account of the
recent theories, which precedes it. We omit
his summary of the contents of the Pentateuch,
his "justification of the Criticism," and his brief
narrative of its history from the time of Astruc
tUI recent times — the latter topic being by this
time somewhat familiar. Strack's criticisms are
the more significant, because of his complete
sympathy with the "Higher Criticism." He
would find the unity of compilation rather in
the Hexateuch (including Joshua) than the Pen
tateuch. He classifies the principal theories as
three: the Fragment, Supplement, and Docu
ment theories. He expresses his sympathy with
the third, within the range of which, he says,
" there exist considerable differences of opinion,

218 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
relating less to the analysis than to the order
and age of the sources." '
He recounts the several names that have been
given to these documents thus: a. The first Elo
hist, the Ground-writing, Book of Origins, Ana
lytic Narrator, A., and (by Wellhausen) P. C.
(and 2). h. The second Elohist, the younger
Elohist, the third Narrator, the Theocratic Nar
rator, B. or North-IsraeUtish Narrator, C, and
(Wellhausen) E. c. The Jehovist, Supplementer,
Fourth Narrator, Prophetic Narrator, C, and
(WeUhausen) J. d. Deuteronomist, D.
Strack prefers Wellhausen's designation as
least objectionable, using, however, P. instead of
P. C. (priest code) and E.* instead of E. His
1 He affirms (as against Keil) that " Critics of all tenden
cies (Delitzsch, Wellhausen, etc.) are agreed upon the
necessity of a separation of the fundamental documents,
and, secondly, that in the analysis of very many sections
unanimity has been gained, either complete or in the
main. Thus in the first nine chapters of Genesis, Noldeke,
Dillmann and Wellhausen unanimously refer to the so-
called Elohist, i.-ii. 3a; v. (except ver. 29); vi. 9-22; vii. 11,
13-16a, 18-21, 24; viii. 1, 2a; 3b-5, 13a, 14^19; ix.. 1-17.
Differences exist in reference to five verses or parts of
verses. Noldeke and Dilhnann add vii. 6; NSldeke adds
vii. 22, where Dillmann assumes an interference by the
compiler (redactor), and Wellhausen is for rejection; vii. 23
is rejected by Neldeke and Wellhausen, while DiUmann
refers the second half-verse, but not with fuU confidence,
to the same document; of the first of the two half-Verses,
viii. 3a, 13b, which WeUhausen adds, DiUmann only says
it is 'probably' by the Jehovist." It wiU be observed
that the claim is cautious — for " very many sections," and
that the specification made is carefully chosen.

APPENDIX. 219
subsequent statements, which we give, will show
the latest phases of the discussion, the fluctua
tions and caprices of the theories, and the insur
mountable objections to the latest, most elabor
ate, and most ingenious of them. His blows
are the more telling because of his sympathy
with the "critical" process. He proceeds as
foUows:
THE MOST IMPORTANT OPINIONS AT PRESENT ADVOCATED.
a. Eb. Schrader, in the eighth edition of De
Wette's "Introduction to the Old Testament"
(Berlin, 1869), declares for a union of the Docu
ment and Supplement theories; holding that P.,
recognizable untU the end of the book of Joshua,
wrote in the beginning of David's reign, was
most certainly a priest, probably a Judean; that
E.*, traceable to I Kings ix. 28, probably a North-
Israelite, wrote soon after the separation of the
kingdoms, between 975 and 950; that probably
both made use of written materials; that J., also
belonging to the northern kingdom, between
825 and 800, combined in a free way the works
of P. and E.^i into a harmonious whole, making
many additions, partly from other written rec
ords (e. g., Ex. xxi.— xxiii.), partly from oral tra
ditions. The groundwork of Deuteronomy (iv.
44 to chap xxviii.) was composed not long before
the eighteenth year of Josiah by some one inti
mately related to Jeremiah, an inspired man,
who, after the destruction of the kingdom of
Judah, inserted his work into P., E.2, J. The

220 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
separation of the Thora, i. e., of the Pentateuch
in its present form, from the subsequent history,
did not take place before the end of the Baby
lonian captivity. It was publicly sanctioned at
the time of Ezra. Schrader even now holds fast
to his theory.
b. Th. Noldeke, in his investigations upon the
criticism of the Old Testament, proposed the fol
lowing view: P., E.", J. spring from the tenth
century, or before the ninth. E.* is extant only
in J.'s recasting. P. may not be the oldest
writing, but cannot be much younger than the
two others. The author of the part D., written
shortly before the reformation of Josiah, wrought
his work into the previously complete Haxateuch,
perhaps also separated the book of Joshua. From
information given me on the 20th of May, 1882,
in regard to Noldeke's present position on the
Pentateuch criticism, I infer the foUowing : Nol
deke has given up his attempt at identifying
the editor (redactor) with the writer of Deuter
onomy. He declares it impossible to separate
criticaUy the mass of the Pentateuch which re
mains after P. and D. are withdrawn from it.
He cannot accede to the opinion of Graf and
WeUhausen. In the law hterature no rectUinear
development can be recognized. He adheres to
the dependence of Ezekiel upon P. The writer
of Deuteronomy must at aU events have had be
fore him a law literature written in essentiaUy
the same style and often in the same phraseology
as that of the priest code.

APPENDIX. . 221
c. Aug. Dillmann wUl express his opinion con-
, secutively at the end of his revision of Knobel's
"Commentary on the Hexateuch." Prom his
present utterances we may infer the following:
Whether P, or E.* may claim pribrity of date is
a question. E.^, belonging to the bloom of the
prophetic life in the central tribes, is certainly
older than J., whose writing rests upon that of
E.* throughout, and is much more nearly related
to p. in time and spirit, the latter having been
composed shortly before Josiah's reform. P.,
E.*, and J. were wrought together by one edi
tor (before or after D.?). The narrative of Ne
hemiah, viii.-x., has reference to the whole Pen
tateuch. — For traces of post-exUe revision and
editing, see " Comm. on Ex. and Lev.," pp. viii.,
856 ff,, 620.— p., E.", and J. have very ancient
sources, especiaUy the legal contents; e. gr., E.
has received the Book of the Covenant, Ex. xx.,
xxii. to xxiii. 19; P. and J., in Lev. v. 1-6, 21, 26
(compare vi., vii. 17-26), make use of an older co
dex (" Law of Sinai ").
d. 1. Franz Delitzsch wrote as late as 1872,.
(Com. on Gen.), "The book of Deuteronomy
shows itself Mosaic, and must in the main be
recognized as Mosaic;" and "A man like Eleazar
the priest wrote the great work beginning with
N"I3 JTit^Kia into, which he put the covenant. A
second, like Joshua, who is a prophet and spoke
like a prophet or one of those D|'JpT upon whom
the spirit of Moses rested, found himself empow
ered to complete this work, and he embodied

222 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
with it the entire Deuteronomy, by which he had
formed himself. Thus originated the Thora, not
without the use of other written documents by
both narrators." Since 1876 Delitzsch, at first es
peciaUy influenced by Aug. Kayser, has modified
his Adews considerably, and in such a manner
that he has approached Graf and his disciples as
to the succession and analysis of the original
writings; but has quite difierently determined the
time of their production, and has earnestly de
clared himself against the conclusions which that
school draws in regard to the history, especiaUy
the reUgious history of Israel, as the result of
their critical investigations. Concerning E.s, I
find in DeUtzsch's writings only the foUowing ex
pression (Pent. -Grit. Stud., 1880, P. 338, f.)— " It is
probable that the book of the covenant, the laws
of the two tables and various narrations, belong
ing to the so-eaUed second Elohist, were already
interwoven with the Jehovistic work when Deut
eronomy originated and became attached to it."
Next in order DeUtzsch places J. D is ranked
after Solomon, but before Isaiah. Next is the
law of sanctification, i. e., especiaUy the code con
tained in Lev. xvu.— xxvi. Then comes P., the
youngest figure in the Legislation that refers
back to Moses, written before the exile, and be
fore Ezekiel. Delitzsch cites by way of comparison
the many records previous to the Canonical Gos
pels, and adds that " he is now firmly convinced
that the process of origin and growth by which
the Thora attained its final form, extends down to

APPENDIX. 223
the post-exilic epoch, and perhaps had not been
perfected at the time when the Samaritan Penta
teuch and the Greek translation came into ex
istence. So much the more firmly do we take
our stand upon the Mosaic origin and revealed
character of its (the Thora's) basis.''
e. J. Wellhausen's views: Even the Decalogue
is not Mosaic. The covenant book, Ex. xx. 22 to
ch. xxiii. 19, is " given to a people stationary and
perfectly accustomed to an agricultural life."
J. belongs " to the golden period of Hebrew Ht
erature, the time of the kings and prophets, pre
ceding the destruction of both IsraeUtish king
doms by the Assyrians." "It is worthy of note
that after the blessing of Balaam, J. suddenly
breaks off. Only in Num. xxv. 1-5 and Deut.
xxxiv. one might be incUned to find some trace
of this noble historic work, e. g., xxxiv, 7b.'' E.*
shows us a more progressive and fundamental
religiousness, and treats also of the subjugation
of Canaan. " Both sources have perhaps under
gone several enlarged editions and are combined
not as J.i and E.* but as J.' and E.' " D. com
posed shortly before the eighteenth year of
Josiah and at that time containing only chapters
xii.-xxvi., underwent, "not before the exUe," two
enlarged editions independent of one another.
The union of the two editions and the insertion of
the work thus composed into J. E.* took place
perhaps in immediate connection with the work on
Deuteronomy by which J. and E.* were blended
into J. E.* Lev. xvii. -xxvi., is a coUection of laws

224 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
which originated in the exile, between Ezekiel
and the priest code, but nearer Ezekiel, al
though not composed by him. It was embodied
into P. in a suitable form. The part of the Hex
ateuch remaining after the separation of J. E.'
and D. is later than the exUe, " does not bear the
character of strict unity," but is " a conglomerate,
as it were, of the work of an entire school."
Around a fundamental germ, Q., which was re
markable for its historic system, there have sprung
up (irrespective of earUer additions) " a number
of secondary and tertiary growths which in form
do not belong to it, but in material are perfectly
homogeneous; so that the whole maybe regarded,
not as a literary, but as an historic unity." The
legislation of the middle books (Ex. xxv.-xxxi.,
xxxv.-xl., Lev., Num. i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv. -xxxvi.,
with insignificant exceptions) ; standing in closest
relations with Q. in language and contents, as weU
as by direct references, is designated as a priest-
code. As originaUy belonging to Q. are proven
only: Ex. xxv. -xxix.. Lev. ix., x. 1-5, 12-15;
ch. xvi. Num. i. 1-16. i. 48 to ch. iii., ix. 15 to ch.
X. 28; chs. xvi. partly, xvu., xviu., xxv., 6-19; xxvi.
xxvii., xxxu., partly, xxxiii. 50 to ch. xxxvi. This
legislative and historical work, already inserted
into J. E.* D., was published and introduced by
Ezra in the year 444; " for there is no doubt that
the law of Ezra was the entire Pentateuch."
/. K. H. Graf, although he died July 16, 1869,
must be mentioned here on account of the great
influence which his main theory has exerted and

APPENDIX. 225
stUl exerts. He declared on the basis of his in
vestigations into the history of the cultus, that
the central legislation of the Pentateuch bore the
most unmistakable traces of a composition after
the exUe. The objections of Noldeke and Eiehm
convinced Graf that the fundamental writing
(Grundschrift) could not be divided in such a
manner. The result was, not that he withdrew
his assertion, but in a brief essay composed shortly
before his death, he declared that the whole so-
caUed fundamental writing was the product of an
age after the exile; that J. was composed in the
middle of the eighth century, or about the time
of Ahaz; D. shortly before the eighteenth year of
Josiah; the Deuteronomist (Inserter of D.), in the
first half of the exUe; P., after the exile, intro
duced by Ezra; insertion in J. D. soon after
Ezra. g. Ed. Eeuss says: "The Decalogue is perhaps
the very oldest piece of the written legislation, but
is not Mosaic." The covenant book belongs pre
sumably to the time of Jehoshaphat (See 2 Chron.
xvii. 7) ; the so-called second decalogue, Ex. xxxiv.
11 ff. is very near it in time; J., the book of sacred
lustory, embracing the fulfilment of the promises
by the possession of the promised land, composed
by an Israelite of the ten tribes in the second half
of the ninth century, before the destruction of the
Ephraimite kingdom, has at a later period been
so wrought together with the perhaps older E.'^
that a "separation is almost impossible." In the
eighteenth year of Josiah was brought to Ught

226 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
D. "an aUeged discovery of the priests." It had
been written immediately before this, with the
purpose of prescribing and establishing as state
law, "the fundamental principles of the theo
cratic constitution. " It consisted of Deuteronomy
v.-xxvi., xxvui. Between the first captivity and
the destruction of the state, D, was joined to J.
E.*, but not by the writer of D. The section Lev.
xvii. -xxvi. is not preserved in its ancient form, but
is interwoven with newer parts. The fundamen
tal part is younger than D., written after the time
of Ezekiel but before that of Ezra. The work
promulgated by Ezra in the year 444 was not
the entire Pentateuch, and was not brought fin
ished from Babylon by Ezra, but was written be
tween 458 and 444. The historic frame-work of
this composition, "a bare fiction" .... "dreams
of an impoverished race," was written by one
hand; the principal contents, however, are " a
coUection of laws from different sources." In the
time between Nehemiah and Alexander, the code
of Ezra, a number of special laws, and J. E.* D.
were joined to form one whole, with Uttle skiU
and less historic sense, inasmuch as the principle
was foUowed that nothing essential which was
then in existence should be lost. " The prophets
are to be recognized as older than the law and
the psalms as younger than both."
A discussion of aU the preceding characteristic
views is of course impossible in this place. We
wiU give here, at -first, a few general remarks j

APPENDIX. 227
then, a condensed discussion upon the methods
of treating the problems of Pentateuch criticism
which in their time have excited most attention;
and finaUy some observations upon the composi
tion of the Hexateuch, especiaUy the views of
WeUhausen and Schrader.
GENEBAL DETEBMININa PRINCIPLES.
a. Criticism must employ upon the Old Testa
ment efesentiaUy the same means and methods as
upon other productions of Hterature. Miracles
and prophecies, however, must not of themselves
be turned against the Old Testament to disprove
its authenticity and genuineness. Criticism ope
rates too much with the theory of ixiticinium post
eventum and of the incredibUity of miracles. The
Specific difference of the religion of the Old Tes
tament, its character as revelation, stands firmly
fixed in our belief; therefore we wiU not demand
that the rule of natural rectiUnear development
shall extend over aU the history of Israel.
b. Great precaution is necessary in drawing
arguments from the linguistic traits of a book or
section of the Old Testament. In the first place,
the old Hebrew literature preserved to us, is but
of smaU extent. In the second place, copyists
often unintentionaUy, no doubt, substituted for
the archaisms and other obscurities, expres
sions which seemed to them more natural and
clear. (For analogies compare the new edition
of Luther's Bible with the original pubUcation).
Thirdly : Upon the whole we may be justified in

228 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
pronouncing from diversity of style upon a differ
ence of authorship rather than of time. Fourthly :
Even if we find truth in the opinion that " The
Hebrew language is incapable of presenting one
and the same thought in various forms as most
European languages can do; that it is too re
stricted for this, is too clumsy in style ; that when
the thought has once found a correct expression
any change of form is by the spirit of the lan
guage prohibited; and it then passes as current
coin ": yet we cannot weU deny the possibUity that
the language of an author of special sphitual force
might vary at different epochs and in different
circumstances. c. A written code of law, especiaUy a rather
extensive one, may exist for a long time without
having a universal canonical acceptation, and
without being known beyond more or less nar
row circles.
d. If it is shown that an account or a statement
has been committed to writing in relatively late
time, we need not necessarily conclude that the
essential part of it had not been correctly hande.d
down or understood. Oral tradition has been
of value not to Talmudic Judaism for the first
time. Such laws especiaUy as have reference not
so much to the people as to the priesthood, may
have been preserved within the latter for a long
time by tradition. — More depends upon the cred-
ibUity of what is declared in the Pentateuch con
cerning history and legislation, than upon the
question how much of it Moses wrote.

APPENDIX. 229
e. In regard to the conclusions which are drawn
from the separate documents as to the character
of these documents, we must bear in mind that
each redactor has chosen out of the diflerent
sources what was best adapted to his own pur
poses, so that between the complete accounts there
has often been either no contradiction, or at least
much less than exists now when we compare the
incomplete accounts. Here we must mention, too,
that criticism, in its separation of documents, in
many places depends entirely or essentiaUy upon
the conception which it has formed of the char
acter of individual documents, on the basis of
other verses and sections which had been already
separated on account of their Unguistic quaUties.
/. Many differences in the legal portions of the
Pentateuch are avoided by observing the prin
ciple : Distinque tempora. One must discriminate
whether a law regards the time of Israel's sojourn
in the desert or its settlement in Canaan.
THE VIEW OF GEAP AND WELLHAUSEN.
a. The views of scholars as to the origin of the
Pentateuch, as the above comparison has shown,
differ in very many points. All differences, how
ever, are of little moment when compared with
the great opposition which Graf, Aug. Kayser,
Eeuss, Wellhausen and others have carried into
the ranks of the investigators. Up to this time
P. was regarded as the oldest original writing,
or at least one of the oldest, and was considered
as credible at least in its principal points. Up

230 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
to this time the view was prevalent that the Pen
tateuch, either in its present form or its separate
original writings, had been completed before the
exUe. The latest school admits that, of extant
written laws, the covenant-book alone existed in
ancient times; then come the purely historical
works E.^ and J. (or J. and E." or J. E.«); there
upon D. foUows, as first comprehensive law code;
then Ezekiel's Thora, Ez. xL-xlviu. then the law of
sanctification, and last of aU P. WeUhausen and
others think that the Pentateuch was completed
in the year 444; according to Graf, Kayser and
Eeuss only P., or even only the principal part of
P. was sanctioned in the above year.
The wide sweep of this arrangement becomes
apparent when we consider how whoUy different
from all previous notions, the course of IsraeUtish
history is presented by using the results of the
Graf- WeUhausen criticism. Here we wiU give
some intimations of this new drift, on the basis
of WeUhausen's spirited " History of Israel."
1. The place of worship. The historical and
prophetical books afford no trace of an exclusively
authorized sanctuary for Hebrew antiquity. The
denunciations of the prophets are not directed
against the places of worship or their number,
but against the false estimate of worship and the
abuses connected with it, (p. 23). The Jehovist
J. E.' sanctions the pluraUty of altars. The de
struction of Samaria favored efforts at centraliz
ation. D. demands local unity of worship, P. pre
supposes it and transfers it to antiquity by means

APPENDIX. 231
of the tabernacle of the covenant, which as a cen
tral sanctuary and as a depositary for the ark
can nowhere be found in historical tradition.
2. The sacrifices. According to J. E.', sacrifice
is an ante-Mosaic custom; according to P. it is
not. According to J. E." with whom the histori
cal and prophetical books harmonize, the impor
tant question concerns the person; according
to P. the technicalities of the sacrifice, as weU as
the when, where, and by whom, and also es
peciaUy the how (p. 53). P. introduces the sin-
offering and the expiatory sacrifice, of which no
trace can be found in the Old Testament before
Ezekiel (p. 75). By the centralization of worship
at Jerusalem, the harmony of sacrifice with the
natural occurrences of life was destroyed, and
sacrifices had lost their original character.
3. The same thing occurred with reference to
the festivals which originaUy celebrated the be
ginning (Easter) and the end (Pentecost) of har
vest, and the grape gathering, (Autumn). P.,
moreover, increases the number of festivals by
the great day of atonement which took its origin
from the fast-days of the exUe (p. 113). The
Sabbath year, too, and the year of jubUee were
not added untU late, i. e., in the coUection of laws
received and compiled by P. (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.)
4. Priests and Levites. In the oldest period
of Israel's history we do not find the distinction
between priests and laymen. Every one is al
lowed to kUl and sacrifice; priests by caUing of
ficiate only at greater reUgious servicea Accord-

232 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
ingly we find in the oldest parts of J. E.s no
mention of priests, no Aaron with Moses. In
hoary antiquity there was once a tribe Levi, but
it had already disappeared in the time of the
judges. Later on Levi is the official name of the
members of the priestly famUies; and out of
the Levites grew a spiritual tribe or rather a
caste by the name of Levi coUectively, which
hereditary priesthood, according to the repre
sentation of the later writers, from the time of
D. already existed in the beginning of IsraeUtish
history. According to Ezekiel xliv. only the Levites of
Jerusalem, the sons of Zadoc, are to remain
priests in the new Jerusalem ; the other Levites
are to be degraded into their servants, and
stripped of their priestly rights. According to
P. the Levites have never had the right of priest
hood, but only the sons of Aaron, who corre
spond to the sons of Zadoc. The keystone of the
sacred edifice which P. erects, is the high priest.
A figure of such incomparable importance is a
stranger to the remainder of the Old Testament.
The existence of a theocratic King by his side
cannot be conceived.
5. The inherited rights of the clergy. In an
tiquity the sacrifices were holy meals, to which
priests also were invited if perchance any one of
them were present. The owner of a sanctuary
employed priests for hire, but these had no legal
claims to certain fixed portions of meat. D. al
ready makes some demand of this nature (xviii.

APPENDIX. 233
3) ; P. demands much more (vii. 34). The things
set apart become legal income to the priests, and,
in addition, are doubled. The forty-eight Levite
towns are a fiction, for which the starting-point
lies perhaps in the conception of the future Is
rael imagined by Ezekiel,
A CRITICISM OP THESE THEORIES.
We wUl now give some contributions to a cor
rect estimate of this newest phase of Pentateuch
criticism. A portion of the remarks, foUowing
can perhaps be applied to other views also.
a. The Egyptians had in very early times a rich
hterature, and were a people greatly addicted to
writing. The Jews were always susceptible to
the influence of foreigners. Must they not have
begun to note down many things already in Egypt ?
Would not, especially Moses, the adopted son of
Pharaoh's daughter, the man educated in aU the
wisdom of the Egyptians, have described the
great deeds which God did through him ?
6. Egypt had a numerous and influential caste
of priests of different orders, dating from an
tiquity. So too Israel may be supposed to have
possessed a priesthood early, and not to have re
mained a thousand years without written laws
for its priests. We may very weU assume that
the priest Moses gave directions for a ritual
(Ex. xxiv. 6 ff.; Deut. xxxiu. 10; Ps. xcix. 6).
There is no want, indeed, of testimonies to the
early existence of a priestly, that is, a ritualistic,
Thora, which is recognized, not for the first time

234 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
after the exile. Deut. xxxiu. 10; Micah iu. 11;
Jer. xviii. 18; Ez. vii. 26; Zeph. iu. 4; Hosea ui.
4, show that there was a copious written Thora
of this kind (Bredenkamp, " Law and Prophets,''
pp. 36-40). Especially Deuteronomy, which,
whenever it may have been composed, was at
any rate in existence in the eighteenth year of
Josiah, is rich in passages testifying to this fact.
Comp. Deut. xviii. 2 (ii? laT "lEJ'SO) with Numbers
xviu., XX., xxiii. ff. ; further, Deuteronomy xxiv.
8, where in DRi^y it^Na there is a reference to a
priestly Thora upon leprosy, such a one as Ues
before us in Lev. xiii. 14. " Wherever Deuter
onomy contents itself with a general outline and
sketch of precepts which demand special or ad
ditional rules for practice, we may conclude that
the more special rules were already in exist
ence which it presupposes and to which it re
fers" (Delitzsch).
c. The new theory leaves the fundamental pe
riods of Israel's history without Hterature; no
laws or historical records of Moses, no psahns of
David, no proverbs of Solomon.
d. The fact that we find in the books after the
exUe more numerous and exact references to the
Pentateuch and its original writings than in those
before the exile, is to be accounted for by the
fact that with Ezra begins an entirely new pe
riod, that of the scribes. In the circumstance
that in the entire prophetic literature there is
wanting a demand even for inner hoUness, there
Hes " a grave admonition to deal cautiously with

APPENDIX. 235
the non-appearance of certain thoughts in par
ticular books," as Baudissin once well remarked.
e. The theory of Graf and Wellhausen not only
supplants God as a factor in the history of Israel,
but must often have recourse abundantly to the
very precarious assumption of the presence of
fictions. /. A main reUance of the representatives of
the newest school is a conclusion to the non
existence of a certain law from the neglect of its
observance. This conclusion, however, by no
means carries absolute weight of conviction.
Comp. e. g., Jer. xvi. 6 with Deut. xiv. 1. When
we reflect upon the corruption of the priests,
whose essential duty was to teach (complaints
of the prophets, e. g., Jer. xxvu. 7 ff. ; Micah iu.
11; Zeph. iii. 4; Isa. often) we shaU quite readUy
perceive that "the transmitted laws remained
lying in the temple's archives, instead of govern
ing the life of the people" (Bredenkamp, p. 200).
g. Partly from a critical, partly from an exe
getical, point of view, the writings of the Old
Testament often experience violent treatment to
make them harmonize with the recent construc
tion of history. In proof of this a few examples
are enough.
a. Pentateuch. The book of covenant. Ex
odus XX., xxiv., XXV., according to WeUhausen
("Hist," p. 30 ff.) sanctions the Uberty to sacri
fice everywhere. The command -\i^^ DIpDH-^a
^DtyTlS "l''^T^? he satisfies himself to explain thus :
"That means nothing more than that they did

236 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
not like (!) to consider a spot where the inter
course between heaven and earth took place as
a spot arbitrarily chosen, but regarded it as
somehow (!) selected by Deity itself for this ser
vice." The actual truth is that this passage for
bids to choose the place of sacrifice according to
mere human choice; and that it does not indeed
exclude a plurality of authorized places of sac
rifice at the same time, whUe it neither presup
poses nor demands them. And the command,
likewise contained in the covenant book, to ap
pear three times annuaUy before Jehovah (Ex.
xxiii. 17) certainly points decisively to a centrali
zation. Compare DeUtzsch, "Stud.," 1880, pp.
64, 341, 562, f.; Bredenkamp, pp. 129, 139.
With WeUhausen's conclusions from Deuteron
omy xxxiii. 8-11, pp. 138-140, compare Breden
kamp, pp. 173-180.
/S. According to WeUhausen, the historical
books have undergone numerous revisions and
reconstructions, by which ideas of later times
were always introduced .... "retouches to ex
plain and to obviate difficulties. The whole an
cient tradition is covered with these as with a
Judaistic digestive-fluid," (p. 290). The whole
historic treatment in the book of Kings is a pious
Pragmatik, historicaUy inadmissible, (p. 136). On
p. 299 we read that "In Kings from time to time
a new prophet is put forward who utters himself
in the spirit of D. and the language of Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, and then disappears;" and on p.
302, " The anonymous prophets, i. 20, who are all

APPENDIX. 237
afterwards coUectively inserted for the purpose
of a detaUed vaticinium ex evenlu, because Israel
itish history is never complete without this appen
dage." A particularly unfavorable judgment is
passed upon Chronicles: e. g,, p. 219, "Where the
chronicles run paraUel with the other canonico-
historical books, they contain no enrichment, but
merely a coloring of tradition through time-serv
ing-motives," p. 631. " Therefore in Chronicles
there can be no mention of a tradition from before
theexUe";p. 129, •"Artificial Genealogies." More
favorable. and yet critical is DUlmann's view of
Chronicles in this enoyclopsedia (III., pp. 223,
224). The narration Neh. viii.-x. is wrongly in
terpreted to mean that in the year 444, the Pen
tateuch, tUl then unknown, was published and
solemnly introduced by Ezra. (Thus Well
hausen, Graf and others.) The picture which
the entire tradition beginning with the book
Ezra-Nehemiah gives us of Ezra, does not har
monize with the picture drawn by the modern
Pentateuch criticism. (Cf. DeUtzsch's "Papers
for Lutheran Theology," XXXVIII., 1877, pp. 445-
60. ) In order to set aside a proof for the hereditar-
iness of the priesthood among the descendants
of Aaron, Wellhausen must falsely conclude from
1 Sam. ii. 27 ff. that " Zadoc was the founder of an
absolutely new Hue " ; he is permitted to be neither
priest nor even Levite; the divine threat, however,
is not directed against Eli's entire father's house but
only against his own family. WeUhausen says (p.
26), " Hezekiah is said even then to have made an.

238 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
attempt to abolish the places of sacrifice outside
of Jerusalem, which however passed by without
leaving any traces, and is therefore of a doubtful
character." But according to p. 28 the reforma
tion of Josiah would hardly have pervaded the
people had it not been for the exUe following;
therefore, even according to Wellhausen, want of
success furnishes no ca,use for doubt.
y. The prophets. Here too the criticism is
not wanting in procedures which are at least
hazardous. Thus x-i3, Amos iv. 13, Jer. iv. 5, is
said not to be originaUy there (Wellh. p. 349).
Joel is regarded by almost aU the foUowers of the
Graf-hypothesis as a post-exUe writer, etc. The
cases of exegetical violence are numerous and im
portant. They faU to see that law and prophecy
have two entirely different purposes. The differ
ence between the priest code and the prophets
is sweUed out into an irreconcUable contradiction.
They do not regard the moral character of the rit
ual law, do not consider that P. knows only of a sin
and trespass-offering for those transgressions
known as sins of weakness (Cf. Bredenkamp, p. 56,
57). The prophets do not oppose alawfulmanner of
sacrifice but the practice of the people. Breden
kamp rightly demands that a discrimination should
be made between the utterances of the prophets
of the northern kingdom and those of the king
dom of Juda on account of their difference of cir
cumstances : In the northern kingdom the warfare
is waged more against what is heathenish in wor
ship; in the southern against what is but the out-

APPENDIX. 239
ward form of worship. On the passages in the
prophets against the sacrifices, compare K. Marti's
"Yearbooks for Prot. Theol.," VI., 1880, pp. 308-
323; upon Amos v. 21^27 see Bredenkamp, pp.
83-90 ; upon Jer. vii. 21 ff. id., 108-112. Although
not a consideration convincing to every one, yet
it deserves to be mentioned that by this modern
criticism upon P., God is brought into contradic
tion with himself: what the older prophets con
demned, became after the exile Israel's law and
the basis of the later discourses of the prophets.
S. The Poetical Books. The book of Job is de
clared to have been written after the time of Jer
emiah, e. g., by Wellhausen, ace. to Bleek, Intr. p.
543, note. W. Eobt. Smith Old Test. 381. Cer
tainly Job i. 5 does not suit the new construction
of the history of sacrifices. WeUhausen's judg
ment upon the psalms (among other places in p.
507, note) is this: "The question is, not whether
there were any psalms written after the exUe, but
whether there were any written before it." If
Psalm xl. 7 ("Sacrifice and offering thou didst
not desire ") was written before the exUe then the
sin-offering was mentioned even before Ezekiel
(against Wellhausen, p. 75, and Smend on Ezek.
xl. 39) ; but if — what we do not believe — the Psalm
was written after the exUe, the quite simUar utter
ances, Amos v., Jer. vii., do not exclude the exist
ence of a law of sacrifices at an earlier period.
Comp. Bredenk., pp. 59-68, or W. H. Green,
Presbyt. Eev. 1882, Jan. No., 142-3.
h. The addition of the priest code. P. contains

240 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
a series of laws which after the exUe were aim
less and impracticable. Urim and Thummim, Ex.
xxviii. 30; Lev. viii. 8; Num. xxvii. 21. Comp.
Ezra u. 63; Neh. vii. 65. Year of jubUee, Lev.
xxv. 8 ff. Levite towns. Num. xxxv. 1 ff. Law of
booty. Num. xxxi. 25 ff. In P. are designated
those services only, which the Levites were to
render during their journey through the desert;
for their residence in the holy land no express
provision was made. Such a fiction, as Bre
denkamp has already observed, would be most
wonderful. Quite a lively discussion is now carried on
concerning the relation of P, especiaUy the law
of sanctification, to Ezekiel (H. G., Dillmann's S.)
Careful comparison of phUological usage shows
that Ezekiel is dependent upon H. G. and P, and
not the contrary; Compare the references of
D. Hoffmann, Magazine for Judaistic Science
(1879, 210-215), which Smend in his Comm. upon
Ezek. p. xxv. -xxviii. has not noticed, perhaps has
not been able to notice. Essential differences
exist between Ezekiel and P. E. g. Ezek. (xl. 18
ff.) appoints numbers and kinds of sacrifices for
the several days of the year quite different from
P. (See Smend's Tables, p. 377). A priest might
perhaps change the wording of the law; but it is
inconceivable that any one, after the time of
Ezekiel, and especially in a period which clings
entirely to the written word, could introduce,
without encountering the slightest opposition, a
new unknown, anonymous production, essentiaUy

APPENDIX. 241
diverging from the law of the prophets which
claimed divine authority. Especial weight is
laid upon the assertion that D. recognized no
difference between priests and Levites; that aU
Levites were authorized to officiate as priests;
that in Ezek. xHv. 5 ff. the degradation of the
Levites to be temple-servants and the right of
the descendants of Zadoc only to the priesthood
were enjoined; that P. presupposed the injunc
tion of Ezek. always to have existed, in which
only the venerable ancient name (sons of Aaron)
was put in place of the historical name (sons of
Zadoc), in order to keep up the appearance of
the Mosaic, time, (WeUh. p. 128). But the as
sertion is a false one, that Ezekiel was the first
who made any difference between priests and
Levites. With Zerubbabel and Joshua there re
turned (ace. to Ezra u. 36 ff.; Neh. vii. 43) 4289
priests but only 341 (Neh. 360) Levites; a num
ber of Levites so smaU certainly not because
they feared the degradation threatened by Ezek
iel, but because the position of the Levites even
before the exile had been a subordinate one.
Prom Ezra u. 63 we see that the possession of
the fuU right of priesthood was rigidly connected
with the proved fact of belonging to the priestly
tribe. Ezekiel himself presupposes the differ
ence between priest and Levite as self-evident,
xl. 45 ff.; xiii. 13; xlHi. 19.
We can conclusively show that many laws of
the priest code are older than Deuteronomy.
The assertion that the command (Lev. xvu. Iff),

242 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
to sacrifice at the ark of the covenant only, is post-
deuteronomic, or indeed post-exUic is, as DUl
mann severely but justly characterized it, di
rectly repugnant to common sense. (Comm.
upon Ex. Lev. p. 535), Comp. Deut. xii. 15;
XV. 22. The command must have been given
during the wandering in the desert. Delitzsch
(Stud. 1880. No. u. p. 65), remarks that " among
the nomads butchering is an infrequent and al
ways festive occurrence. These people Hve mostly
upon vegetables. Such was the case with Is]*ael.
Flesh was a rarity in the first, and even in the
fortieth year of their wanderings. The tabernacle
was, in fact, more a place of revelation than of
sacrifice. On account of the difficulty of procur
ing animals for sacrifice, the kiUing of animals
for famUy use may have been proportionately
infrequent; so much the more practicable was
the law. Lev. xvii., which, from the idolatrous
tendencies of the people convincingly shows it
self to be a preventive law. Comp. Bredenkamp
1 p. 129 ff., 132 ff. From a comparison of Deut. xiv.
3-20 with Lev. xi. 2-23 we draw the confident con
clusion that the originality is not on the side of Deu
teronomy, but that Deuteronomy has drawn either
directly from Lev. xi. (Ewald, Knoble, Eiehm,
perhaps rightly) or from the original accord
ing to which Lev. xi. was shaped, (DiUmann).
K. Marti, (Yearbook for Prot. Theol., 1880,
p. 328, 331), gives us some conclusive evidence
to prove that D. even in its language (e. g., iv.
16-18), and in the matter of the narration (i. 23;

APPENDIX. 243
X. 1, 2, 22), sometimes shows dependence upon
P (Q).
Yet we must consider the language of P. As
we have previously remarked, undoubtedly many
archaisms have disappeared from the texts of the
Hebrew Bible in the course of time, and have
been replaced by later expressions; and this
modernizing of the language has taken place
in different books in very different degrees on
account of their varying modes of usage. Con
clusions therefore in regard to the time of com
position on linguistic grounds can be drawn only
to a limited extent, namely in such wise that one
may specify a period as probably the latest, with
out excluding an essentiaUy earlier origin. It is
therefore, to be noted that V. Eyssel's careful
but not definitive labor, " De Elohistse ( =P.) Pen-
tateuchici sermone" (Leipsic, 1878, p. 12), has
arrived at results which are incompatible with
the composition of P. after the exUe. We wUl
mention here also the small but instructive com
position of Delitzsch concerning the Elohistic de
signations of color (Mag. for Luth. Theol. 1878,
pp. 590, 596; previously in English in the "Le
vitical Priest " by Curtiss).
i. Annexation of Deuteronomy. According to
Graf's school and also many other Old Testament
critics, Deuteronomy was composed shortly be
fore the reform of Josiah. Weighty reasons
oppose this view. In the first place, the ac
count of its discovery. The high priest Hil
kiah said to Shaphan, (II Kings xxu. 8), " I have

244 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
found Ihe book of law in the house of Jehovah.''
Therefore the book found, i. e., the contents were
not only known to him; but in his opinion, must
be known to others also. The book was found
in the house of Jehovah, where was its natural
and designated place, (Deut. xxxi. 26). That, on
the occasion perhaps of the cleaning of the holy
of hoHes it was laid into a chamber of the tem
ple and found there on the occasion of exten
sive repairs, is a supposition quite obvious and
thoroughly valid; since the assumption of a forg
ery as we shall presently see, is impossible. The
question as to the contents of the book found,
will be answered very differently according to
the position which the person who answers,
occupies in regard to the criticism of the Pen
tateuch, at least in regard to the fundamental
material of Deuteronomy. For from Deut. xxviii.
the words of the prophetess Hulda are explained,
and from the contents of Deuteronomy Josiah's
reform is explained. Let us suppose that the
words of the king (II Kings xxxii. 13), " because
our fathers have not hearkened to the words of
this book,'' are a bold composition of the writer of
the Book of Kings, and let us suppose further
that the great impression which the book imme
diately made upon the king, had been caused by
the powerful testimony of God's spirit, and the
king had no motive to inquire after the origin
and the author of a writing so remarkable — ^yet
how shall we explain the fact that the book found
such a reception, so sudden, universal, and free

APPENDIX. 245
from opposition. An external attestation must
have accompanied. Hilkiah ? Immediately after
the new construction of Israel's history, the demand
of D. to give to Levites of the province, i. e., to
the priests of the local sanctuaries, equal priestly
rights with themselves at Jerusalem, must have
been very unwelcome to the priests at Jerusalem.
Nevertheless Hilkiah and the priests at Jerusa
lem make no opposition, raise not the least ques
tion, yes, they even assist in enforcing the new
found law; and this is conclusive evidence that
there already resided in the law-book when it
was found an irresistible authority. We may
fairly doubt whether those mighty phrases "his
torically-inadmissible criterion" and "pious prag
matik '' can make void aU the testimonies, which
the decision pronounced in the Book of Kings
upon the rulers of Juda and Israel give to the
earlier validity at least of the laws of Deuteronomy.
Isaiah xix. 19, " In that day shaU there be an
altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt
and a pUlar at the border thereof to the Lord."
" Isaiah," say most of the later critics, and last
W. Eobertson Smith (O. T. P. 354), "could not
bring a forbidden symbol, e. g., a Mazzeba, into
connection with Jehovah. This passage gives
us a superior limit for the date of the code of
Deuteronomy. Isaiah cannot have known the
code. But in Deut. xvi. 21, 22 only idolatrous
Mazzeboth, such as are worshipped, are forbidden;
and this law is in harmony with the passages ad
mitted to be old (Ex. xxiu. 24; xxxiv., 13. Comp.

246 HISTORY IN THE PENTATEUCH.
also Lev. xxvi. 1). Moses himself erected twelve
Mazzeboth at the altar, Ex. xxiv. 4: and so even
from this point of view we gain the undoubted
right to find in the proceedings of Hezekiah, (2
Kings xviii. 4) a recognition of the demand for a
central sanctuary which, it has been pretended,
was put forth much later, as late as the last quar
ter of the seventh century. Herein is a recogni
tion of the law of Deuteronomy.
As the origin of P. in the time after the exUe
would be inconceivable, so Deuteronomy contains
much that by no means harmonizes with the sup
position that this book was written in the time of
Josiah. D. speaks in friendly terms of Egypt,
(xxiii. 8). HowdifferentIsaiahxxx.lff.,xxx.l; Jer.
ii. 18, 36. D. speaks in a friendly way of Edom,
xxui. 8, and utters harsh words against Moab and
Ammon. Just the opposite are God's words in
Jeremiah's mouth, xIik. 17, 18; xlviu. 47; xHx. 6;
Compare in regard to Edom, Joel iv. 19 ; Obad. ;
Isa. Ixiii. 1-6. Of what use in Josiah's time would
be the laws on the extermination of the Canaanites,
(Deut. XX. 16-18) and the Amalekites (xxv. 17-19)
and those on subjugation (xx. 10-15) and war
(xx. 19-20). How can the law of Kings ch. xvii.
have originated so late ?
k. WhUe WeUhausen and his foUowers find the
code of Ezra identical with the entire Pentateuch
(with the exception of a few glosses, perhaps
added later), Graf, Kayser, Eeuss and others
take the view that Ezra has inserted only P.
or its principal part. They thus avoid many

APPENDIX. 247
rocks upon which his ship springs a leak. In
place of these, other reefs endanger them. We
will mention at least two of these here. If Ezra
introduced only P. which, as is said, contradicts
D. violently, we must assume for D. a time of
concealinent after the exile, which is improbable
and cannot be proven. The Samaritans can
hardly have received the Pent, later than Nehe
miah's time. (Josephus Archseol. xi. 7, 8. Comp.
Neh. xiu. 28.)
Strack closes his article with the analysis of
the Pentateuch by WeUhausen and by Schrader.
We omit these, as weU as his copious references
to the Hterature of this subject.

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