THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Moral and Religious distinct from Historical Inspiration--Myth
and Allegory--The Higher Criticism--All Ancient History
unconfirmed by Monuments untrustworthy--Cyrus--Old Testament
and Monuments--Jerusalem--Tablet of Tell-el-Amarna--Flinders
Petrie's Exploration of Pre-Hebrew Cities--Ramses and
Pi-thom--First certain Synchronism Rehoboam--Composite
Structure of Old Testament--Elohist and Jehovist--Priests'
Code--Canon Driver--Results--Book of Chronicles--Methods
of Jewish Historians--Post-Exilic References--Tradition
of Esdras--Nehemiah and Ezra--Foundation of Modern
Judaism--Different from Pre-Exilic--Discovery of Book
of the Law under Josiah--Deuteronomy--Earliest Sacred
Writings--Conclusions--Aristocratic and Prophetic
Schools--Triumph of Pietism with Exile--Both compiled
partly from Old Materials--Crudeness and Barbarism of
Parts--Pre-Abrahamic Period clearly mythical--Derived from
Chaldæa--Abraham--Unhistoric Character--His Age--Lot's
Wife--His double Adventure with Sarah--Abraham to
Moses--Sojourn in Egypt--Discordant Chronology--Josephus'
Quotation from Manetho--Small Traces of Egyptian
Influence--Future Life--Legend of Joseph--Moses--Osarsiph--Life
of Moses full of Fabulous Legends--His Birth--Plagues
of Egypt--The Exodus--Colenso--Contradictions and
Impossibilities--Immoralities--Massacres--Joshua and the
Judges--Barbarisms and Absurdities--Only safe Conclusion no
History before the Monarchy--David and Solomon--Comparatively
Modern Date.
In dealing with the historical portion of the Old Testament, it
is important to keep clearly in view the distinction between the
historical and the religious and moral elements which are contained
in the collection of works comprised in it. It is quite open to any
one to hold that a certain moral and religious idea runs through
the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude
beginnings into pure and lofty views of an Almighty God who created
all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of
bulls and rams. It is open to him to call this inspiration, and to
see it also in the series of influences and events by which the Jews
were moulded into a peculiar people, through whose instrumentality
the three great Monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism,
Christianity, and Mahometanism, superseded the older forms of
polytheism.
With inspiration in this sense I have no quarrel, any more than I
have with Bishop Temple's definition of "original impress," though
possibly I might think "Evolution" a more modest term to apply, with
our limited faculties and knowledge, to that "unceasing purpose"
which the poet tells us
"Through the ages runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
But admitting this, I do not see how any candid man, who is at all
acquainted with the results of modern science and of historical
criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was
gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends,
and traditions of rude and unscientific ages which have no pretension
to be true statements, or real history.
After all this is only applying to the Old, the same principles
of interpretation as are applied to the New Testament. If the
theory of literal inspiration requires us to accept the manifest
impossibilities of Noah's Deluge, why does it not equally compel
us to believe that there really was a certain rich man who fared
sumptuously every day, a beggar named Lazarus, and definite
localities of a Heaven and Hell within speaking distance of one
another, though separated by an impassable gulf. The assertion is
made positively and without any reservation. There _was_ a rich man;
Lazarus _died, and was carried to Abraham's bosom_; and Dives _cried_
to Abraham, who _answered him in a detailed colloquy_. But common
sense steps in and says, all this never actually occurred, but was
invented to illustrate by a parable the moral truth that it is wrong
for the selfish rich to neglect the suffering poor.
Why should not common sense equally step in, and say of the narrative
of the Garden of Eden with its trees of Knowledge and of Life,
that here is an obvious allegory, stating the problem which has
perplexed so many generations of men, of the origin of evil, man's
dual nature, and how to reconcile the _fact_ of the existence of
sin and suffering with the _theory_ of a benevolent and omnipotent
Creator? Or again, why hesitate to admit that the story of the
Deluge is not literal history, but a version of a chapter of an old
Chaldæan solar epic, revised in a monotheistic sense, and used for
the purpose of impressing the lesson that the ways of sin are ways
of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety?
This is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and
what the most liberal and learned Anglican Divines of the present
day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like Canon Driver,
Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and Canon Cheyne, insisting on "the
fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical
and historical problems of the Old Testament." We hear a great deal
about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions
try to represent it as something very obscure and unintelligible,
spun from the inner consciousness of German pedants. But really there
is nothing obscure about it. It is simply the criticism of common
sense applied from a higher point of view, which embraces, not the
immediate subject only, but all branches of human knowledge which are
related to it. This new criticism bears the same relation to the old,
as Mommsen's _History of Rome_ does to the school-boy manuals which
used to assume Romulus and Remus, Numa and Tarquin, as real men who
lived and reigned just as certainly as Julius Cæsar and Augustus, and
who found nothing to stagger them in Livy's speaking oxen.
This criticism has now been carried so far by the labours of a number
of earnest and learned men in all the principal countries of Europe
for the last century, that it has become to a great extent one of
the modern sciences, and although there are still differences as to
details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of
Geology or Biology. The conclusions of enlightened English divines
like Canons Driver and Cheyne are practically very nearly the same
as those of foreign professors, like Kuenen, Welhausen, Dillman, and
Renan, and any one who wishes to have any intelligent understanding
of the Hebrew Bible must take them into consideration.
Although the Old Testament does not carry history back nearly as
far as the records of Egypt and Chaldæa, still, when freed from
the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting
picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their manners
and customs, their first attempts to solve problems of science and
philosophy, and of their popular legends and traditions.
It is with these historical results only that I propose to deal,
and this not in the way of minute criticism, but of the broad,
common-sense aspects of the question, and in view of the salient
facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of
literature on the subject, of which it may be said, in the words of
St. John's Gospel, that if all that has been written were collected,
"I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books."
I may begin by referring to the extreme uncertainty that attaches
to all ancient history unless it is confirmed by monuments, or by
comparison with annals of other nations which have been so confirmed.
The instance of Cyrus is a most instructive one. Here is one of
the greatest conquerors the world has seen, and the founder of a
mighty Empire; who flourished at a comparatively recent period, and
whose life and exploits are related by well-known historians, such
as Herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death;
confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of
Hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. The picture
given of him is that of the son of a Median princess by an obscure
Persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity,
he is said to have been exposed in infancy and saved miraculously
or marvellously; he incites the poor and hardy people of Persia to
revolt; defeats the Medes, consolidates Media and Persia, conquers
Lydia and all Asia Minor; and finally, as the "servant of the most
High God," and instrument of his vengeance on Babylon, takes and
destroys the cruel city of Nebuchadnezzar, and allows the Jews to
return from exile out of sympathy with their religion.
Unexpectedly a tablet of Cyrus himself turns up, and plays havoc
alike with prophets and historians Instead of being the son of an
obscure Persian father, he proves to be the legitimate descendant of
a long line of Elamite kings; instead of being a servant of the most
High God, or even a Zoroastrian, he appears as a devoted worshipper
of the Chaldæan gods, Assur, Merodach, and Nebo; so far from being
an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of Babylon, he
enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people
as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last
native king Nabonidus. It is apparent from this and other records,
that Darius and not Cyrus was the real founder of the Persian Empire.
Cyrus indeed founded a great Empire, but it fell to pieces after the
death of his son Cambyses and the usurpation of the Magi, and it was
Darius who, after years of hard fighting, suppressed revolts, really
besieged and took Babylon, and reconstituted the Empire, which now
for the first time became Persian and Zoroastrian.
Such an example teaches us to regard with considerable doubt all
history prior to the fifth or sixth century B.C. which is not
confirmed by contemporary monuments. Of such nations, Egypt and
Chaldæa (including in the latter term Assyria) alone give us a series
of annals, proved by monuments confirming native historians, which
extend for some 4000 years back, from the commencement of what may be
called the modern and scientific history of the Greek period.
The historical portion of the Old Testament is singularly deficient
in this essential point of confirmation by monumental evidence.
Of Hebrew inscriptions there are none except that of the time of
Hezekiah in the tunnel which brought water from the Pool of Siloam
into the city; and the Moabite stone, which confirms the narrative in
2 Kings of the siege of Rabbah by Jehoshaphat and Jehoram, and their
repulse after the sacrifice of his eldest son in sight of the armies
by the King of Moab. Both of these inscriptions are of comparatively
modern date, and close to or within the period when contact with the
Assyrian Empire removes all uncertainty as to the history of Judæa
and Israel under their later kings. The capture of Jerusalem by
David and the building of the Temple there by Solomon are doubtless
historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional
confirmation from monuments. There have been so many destructions and
rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to
what era the lower strata belong. It is apparent, moreover, from the
Egyptian tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, the city founded by the heretic
king, Amenophis IV., about 1500 B.C., that Jerusalem was a well-known
city and sacred shrine prior to the Hebrew conquest, and even to
the date of the Exodus. Professor Sayce tells us that on one of
these tablets is written, "The city of the mountain of Jerusalem (or
Urasalim), the City of the temple of the God Uras, whose name there
is Marra, the City of the King, which adjoins the locality of the men
of Keilah." Uras was a Babylonian deity, and Marra is probably the
Aramaic Mare, "lord," from which it may be conjectured that Mount
Moriah received its name from the Temple of Uras which stood there.
Some of the other tablets show that in the century before the Exodus,
Jerusalem was occupied by a semi-independent king, who claimed to
have derived his authority from "the oracle of the mighty King,"
which is explained to mean a deity, though he acknowledged the
superiority of Egypt, which still retained the conquests of the
eighteenth dynasty in Palestine. This, however, relates not to the
Hebrews, but to the state of things prior to their invasion, when
Palestine was occupied by comparatively civilized races of Amorites
and Canaanites, and studded with numerous fenced cities.
A glimpse at the later state of things, when those earlier nations
and cities were overwhelmed by an invasion of a rude nomad race, as
described in the Books of Joshua and Judges, has been afforded quite
recently by the exploration by Mr. Flinders Petrie of a mound on the
plain of Southern Judæa, which he is disposed to identify with the
ancient Lachish. A section of this mound has been exposed by the
action of a brook, and it shows, as in Dr. Schliemann's excavations
on the supposed site of Troy at Hissarlik, several successive
occupations. The lowest and earliest city was fortified by a wall of
sun-burnt bricks, 28 feet 8 inches thick, and which still stands to
a height of 21 feet. It shows signs of great antiquity, having been
twice repaired, and a large accumulation of broken pottery was found
both outside and within it.
This city, which Petrie identifies with one of those Amorite cities
which were "walled up to heaven," had been taken and destroyed, and
the wall had fallen into ruins. Then, to use Professor Sayce's words,
"came a period when the site was occupied by rude herdsmen, unskilled
in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. Their
huts were built of mud and rolled stones from the Wady below, and
resembled the wretched shanties of the half-savage Bedouins, which we
may still see on the outskirts of the Holy Land. They must have been
inhabited by the invading Israelitish tribes, who had overthrown the
civilization which had long existed in the cities of Canaan, and were
still in a state of nomadic barbarism."
Above this come newer walls, which had been built and repaired three
or four times over by the Jewish kings, one of the later rebuildings
being a massive brick wall 25 feet thick, with a glacis of large
blocks of polished stone traced to a height of 40 feet, which Petrie
refers to the reign of Manasseh. Then comes a destruction, probably
by the Assyrians under Sennacherib, and then other buildings of minor
importance, the latest being those of a colony of Greeks, who were
swept away before the age of Alexander the Great.
This discovery is of first-rate importance as regards the early
history of the Hebrews, and especially as to their relations with
Egypt, their sojourn there, and the Exodus. If Abraham really came
from Ur of Chaldæa, the seat of a very old civilization; and if his
descendants really lived for 400 years or longer in Egypt, mixed
up a good deal with the native population, and for a great part
of the time treated with favour, and occupying, if the legend of
Joseph be true, the highest posts in the land; and if they really
left Egypt, as described in the Exodus, laden with the spoils of
the Egyptians, and led by Moses, a priest of Heliopolis skilled in
all the lore of that ancient temple, it is inconceivable that in a
single generation they should have sunk to such a level as that of
the half-savage Bedouins, as indicated by Petrie's researches. And
yet who else could have been the barbarians whose inroad destroyed
the walled city of the Amorites; and how well does this condition of
rude savagery correspond with the bloodthirsty massacres, and the
crude superstitions, which meet us at every turn in the traditions
of the period between the departure from Egypt and the establishment
of a monarchy, which have been used by the compilers of the Books of
Exodus, Joshua, and Judges?
If we are ever to know anything beyond legend and conjecture as to
this obscure period, it is to the pick and the spade that we must
look for certain information, and the exploration of mounds of ruined
cities must either confirm or modify Petrie's inference as to the
extreme rudeness of the nomad tribes who broke in upon the civilized
inhabitants of older races.
Another exploration by Mr. Flinders Petrie, that of the ruins of
Pi-thom and Ramses, gives a certain amount of monumental confirmation
to the statement in Exodus i. 2, that during the captivity of the
Israelites in Egypt they were employed as slaves by Ramses II. in
building two treasure cities, Ramses and Pi-thom. Some wall-paintings
show slaves or forced labourers, of a Jewish cast of countenance,
working at the brick walls under the sticks of taskmasters.
The first certain synchronism, however, between the Egyptian
monuments and Jewish history is afforded by the capture of Jerusalem
by Shishak in the reign of Rehoboam in the year 974 B.C. Among the
wall-paintings in the temple at Thebes commemorating the triumphs
of this campaign of Shishak, is a portrait of a captive with Jewish
features, inscribed Yuten-Malek. This has been read "King of the
Jews," and taken to be a portrait of Rehoboam, but it is more
probable that it means "Kingdom of the Jews," and that the portrait
is one representative of the country conquered. In any case this
gives us the first absolutely certain date in Old Testament history.
From this time downwards there is no reason to doubt that annals
substantially correct, of successive kings of Judah and Israel, were
kept, and after the reign of Ahaz, when the great Assyrian Empire
appeared on the scene, we have a full confirmation, from the Assyrian
monuments, of the principal events recorded in the Book of Kings. In
fact, we may say that from the foundation of the Jewish Monarchy by
Saul and David, we are fairly in the stream of history, but that for
everything prior to about 1000 B.C. we have to grope our way almost
entirely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the Old
Testament itself.
The first point evidently is to have some clear idea of what this
Old Testament really consists of. Until the recent era of scientific
criticism, it was assumed to constitute, in effect, one volume,
the earlier chapters of which were written by Moses, and the later
ones by a continuance of the same Divine inspiration, which made
the Bible from Genesis to Chronicles one consistent and infallible
whole, in which it was impossible that there should be any error or
contradiction. Such a theory could not stand a moment's investigation
in the free light of reason. It is only necessary to read the two
first chapters of Genesis to see that the book is of a composite
structure, made up of different and inconsistent elements. We have
only to include in the first chapter the two first verses printed in
the second chapter, and to write the original Hebrew word "Elohim"
for "God," and "Yahve" or Jehovah for "Lord God," to see this at a
glance.
The two accounts of the creation of the heaven and earth, of animal
and vegetable life, and of man, are quite different. In the first Man
is created last, male and female, in the image of God, with dominion
over all the previous forms of matter and of life, which have been
created for his benefit. In the second Man is formed from the dust of
the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens and earth and
of the vegetable world, and subsequently all the beasts of the field
and fowls of the air are formed out of the ground, and brought to
Adam to name, while, last of all, woman is made from a rib taken from
Adam to be an helpmeet for him.
The two narratives, Elohistic and Jehovistic, distinguished both by
the different names of God, and by a number of other peculiarities,
run almost side by side through a great part of the earlier portion
of the Old Testament, presenting often flagrant contradictions.
Thus Lamech, the father of Noah, is represented in one as a
descendant of Cain, in the other of Seth. Canaan is in one the
grandson of Adam, in the other the grandson of Noah. The Elohist
says that Noah took two of each sort of living things, a male and a
female, into the ark; the Jehovist that he took seven pairs of clean,
and single pairs of unclean animals.
The difference between these narratives, the Elohistic and
Jehovistic, is, however, only the first and most obvious instance
of the composite character of the Pentateuch. These narratives are
distinguished from one another by a number of minute peculiarities
of language and expressions, and they are both embedded in a much
larger mass of matter which relates mainly to the sacrificial and
ceremonial system of the Israelites, and to the position, privileges,
and functions of the priests and priestly caste of Levites. This is
commonly known as the "Priests' Code," and a great deal of it is
obviously of late date, having relation to practices and ceremonies
which had gradually grown up after the foundation of the Temple at
Jerusalem. A vast amount of erudition has been expended in the minute
analysis of these different documents by learned scholars who have
devoted their lives to the subject. I shall not attempt to enter
upon it, but content myself with taking the main results from Canon
Driver, both because he is thoroughly competent from his knowledge
of the latest foreign criticism and from his position as Professor
of Hebrew, and because he cannot be suspected of any adverse leaning
to the old orthodox views. In fact he is a strenuous advocate of the
inspiration of the Bible, taken in the larger sense of a religious
and moral purpose underlying the often mistaken and conflicting
statements of fallible writers.
The conclusions at which he arrives, in common with a great majority
of competent critics in all countries, are--
1. That the old orthodox belief that the Pentateuch is one work
written by Moses is quite untenable.
2. That the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua have been formed by the
combination of different _layers_ of narrative, each marked by
characteristic features of its own.
3. That the Elohistic and Jehovistic narratives, which are the oldest
portion of the collection, have nothing archaic in their style, but
belong to the golden period of Hebrew literature, the date assigned
to them by most critics being not earlier than the eighth or ninth
century B.C., though of course they may be founded partly on older
legends and traditions; and, on the other hand, they contain many
passages which could only have been introduced by some post-exilic
editor.
4. That Deuteronomy, which is placed almost unanimously by critics in
the reign of either Josiah or Manasseh, is absolutely inconsistent in
many respects with the Priests' Code, and apparently of earlier date,
before the priestly system had crystallized into such a definite code
of minute regulations, as we find it in the later days of Jewish
history after the Exile.
5. There is a difference of opinion, however, in respect to the date
of the Priests' Code, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Graf holding it to
be post-Deuteronomic, and probably committed to writing during the
period from the beginning of the exile to the time of Nehemiah, while
Dillman assigns the main body to about 800 B.C., though admitting
that additions may have been made as late as the time of Ezra.
Being concerned mainly with the historical question, I shall not
attempt to pursue this higher criticism further, but content myself
with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad
conclusions of common-sense, stand out as guiding pillars in the mass
of details. Taking these in ascending order of time, they seem to me
to be--
1. The Book of Chronicles.
2. The foundation of modern Judaism as described in the Books of Ezra
and Nehemiah.
3. The discovery of the Book of the Law or Deuteronomy in the reign
of Josiah.
The Book of Chronicles is important because we know its date, viz.
about 300 B.C., and to a great extent the materials from which it
was compiled, viz. the Books of Samuel and Kings. We have thus an
object-lesson as to the way in which a Hebrew writer, as late as
300 B.C., or nearly 300 years after the exile, composed history and
treated the earlier records. It is totally different from the method
of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a
"scissors and paste" method. That is to say, he makes excerpts from
the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and
without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his
own; and, in Canon Driver's words, "does not scruple to omit what is
not required for his purpose, and in fact treats his authorities with
considerable freedom." He also does not scruple to put in the mouth
of David and other historical characters of the olden time, speeches
which, from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary, are evidently of
his own age and composition.
If this was the method of a writer as late as 300 B.C., whose work
was afterwards received as canonical, two things are evident. First,
that the canon of the earlier Books of the Old Testament could not
have been then fixed and invested with the same sacred authority
as we find to be the case two or three centuries later, when the
Thora, or Book of Moses and the Prophets, was regarded very much as
the Moslems regard the Koran, as an inspired volume which it was
impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. This late date for fixing
the canon of the Books of the Old Testament is confirmed by Canon
Cheyne's learned and exhaustive work on the Psalter, in which he
shows that a great majority of the Psalms, attributed to David, were
written in the time of the Maccabees, and that there are only one or
two doubtful cases in which it can be plausibly contended that any of
the Psalms are pre-exilic.
Secondly, that if a writer, as late as 300 B.C., could employ this
method, and get his work accepted as a part of the Sacred Canon, a
writer who lived earlier, say any time between the Chronicler and
the foundation of the Jewish Monarchy, might probably adopt the same
methods. If the Chronicler put a speech of his own composition into
the mouth of David, the Deuteronomist might well do so in the case
of Moses. According to the ideas of the age and country, this would
not be considered to be what we moderns would call literary forgery,
but rather a legitimate and praiseworthy means of giving authority to
good precepts and sentiments.
A perfect illustration of this which I have called the "scissors and
paste" method, is afforded by the first two chapters of Genesis,
and the way in which the Elohistic and Jehovistic narratives are
so strangely interblended throughout the Pentateuch. No attempt is
made to blend the two narratives into one harmonious and consistent
whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and sometimes from the
other, are placed together without any attempt to explain away the
evident contradictions. Clearly the same hand could not have written
both narratives, and the compilation must have been made by some
subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that
the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been
made until after the Exile. Thus in Leviticus xxvi. we find, "I will
scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and
your cities waste," and "they that are left of you shall pine away
in their iniquity in your enemies' land." And in Deuteronomy xxix.,
"And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath,
and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is
to this day." Even in Genesis, which professes to be the earliest
Book, we find (xii. 6), "and the Canaanite was then in the land."
This could not have been written until the memory of the Canaanite
had become a tradition of a remote past, and this could not have been
until after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity, for
we find from the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah that the Canaanites were
then still in the land, and the Jewish leaders, and even priests and
Levites, were intermarrying freely with Canaanite wives.
The Apocryphal Book of Esdras contains a legend that the sacred books
of the Law having been lost or destroyed when Jerusalem was taken by
Nebuchadnezzar, they were re-written miraculously by Ezra dictating
to five ready writers at once in a wonderfully short time. This is a
counterpart of the legend of the Septuagint being a translation of
the Hebrew text into Greek, made by seventy different translators,
whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. This
legend, in the case of the Septuagint, is based on an historical fact
that there really was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Sacred Books
made by order of Ptolemy _Philadelphus_; and it may well be that the
legend of Esdras contains some reminiscence of an actual fact, that
a new and complete edition of the old writings was made and stamped
with a sacred character among the other reforms introduced by Ezra.
These reforms, and the condition of the Jewish people after the
return from the Captivity, as disclosed by the Books of Nehemiah and
Ezra, afford what I call the second guiding pillar, in our attempt to
trace backwards the course of Jewish history. These books were indeed
not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most
critics think, by the same hand as Chronicles; but there is no reason
to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded,
which relate, not to a remote antiquity, but to a comparatively
recent period after the use of writing had become general. They
constitute in fact the dividing line between ancient and modern
Judaism, and show us the origin of the latter.
Modern Judaism, that is, the religious and social life of the Jewish
people, since they fairly entered into the current of modern history,
has been marked by many strong and characteristic peculiarities.
They have been zealously and almost fanatically attached to the idea
of one Supreme God, Jehovah, with whom they had a special covenant
inherited from Abraham, and whose will, in regard to all religious
rites and ceremonies and social usages, was conveyed to them in
a sacred book containing the inspired writings of Moses and the
Prophets. This led them to consider themselves a peculiar people,
and to regard all other nations with aversion, as being idolaters
and unclean, feelings which were returned by the rest of the world,
so that they stood alone, hating and being hated. No force or
persuasion were required in order to prevent them from lapsing into
idolatry or intermarrying with heathen women. On the contrary, they
were inspired to the most heroic efforts, and ready to endure the
severest sufferings and martyrdom for the pure faith. The belief in
the sacred character of their ancient writings gradually crystallized
into a faith as absolute as that of the Moslems in the Koran; a
canon was formed, and although, as we have seen in the case of the
Chronicles and Psalms, some time must have elapsed before this sacred
character was fully recognized, it ended in a theory of the literal
inspiration of every word of the Old Testament down even to the
commas and vowel points, and the establishment of learned schools of
Scribes and Pharisees, whose literary labours were concentrated on
expounding the text in synagogues, and writing volumes of Talmudic
commentaries.
Now during the period preceding the Exile all this was very
different. So far from being zealous for one Supreme God, Jehovah was
long recognized only as a tribal or national god, one among the many
gods of surrounding nations. When the idea of a Supreme Deity, who
loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bullocks and rams,
was at length elaborated by the later prophets, it received but scant
acceptance. The great majority of the kings and people, both of Judah
and Israel, were always ready to lapse into idolatry, worship strange
gods, golden calves, and brazen serpents, and flock to the alluring
rites of Baal and Astarte, in groves and high places. They were also
always ready to intermarry freely with heathen wives, and to form
political alliances with heathen nations. There is no trace of the
religious and social repulsion towards other races which forms such
a marked trait in modern Judaism. Nor, as we shall see presently, is
there any evidence, prior to the reign of Josiah, of anything like a
sacred book or code of divine laws, universally known and accepted.
The Books of Nehemiah and Ezra afford invaluable evidence of the
time and manner in which this modern Judaism was stamped upon the
character of the people after the return from exile. We are told
that when Ezra came to Jerusalem from Babylon, armed with a decree
of Artaxerxes, he was scandalized at finding that nearly all the
Jews, including the principal nobles and many priests and Levites,
had intermarried with the daughters of the people of the land, "of
the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites,
Egyptians, and Amorites." Backed by Nehemiah, the cup-bearer
and favourite of Artaxerxes, who had been appointed governor of
Jerusalem, he persuaded or compelled the Jews to put away these wives
and their children, and to separate themselves as a peculiar and
exclusive people from other nations.
It was a cruel act, characteristic of the fanatical spirit of
priestly domination, which never hesitates to trample on the natural
affections and the laws of charity and mercy, but it was the means of
crystallizing the Jewish race into a mould so rigid, that it defied
wars, persecutions, and all dissolving influences, and preserved
the idea of Monotheism to grow up into the world-wide religions of
Christianity and Mahometanism, So true is it that evolution works out
its results by unexpected means often opposed to what seem like the
best instincts of human nature.
What is important, however, for the present object is, to observe
that clearly at this date the population of the Holy Land must have
consisted mainly of the descendants of the old races, who had been
conquered but not exterminated by the Israelites. Such a sentence
as, "for the Canaanites were then in the land," could not have been
written till long after the time when the Jews were intermarrying
freely with Canaanite wives. Nor does it seem possible that codes,
such as those of Leviticus, Numbers, and the Priests' Code, could
have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by
Moses under Divine inspiration, when the rulers, nobles, and even
priests and Levites acted in such apparent ignorance of them. In fact
we are told in Nehemiah that Ezra read and explained the Book of the
Law, whatever that may have included, to the people, who apparently
had no previous knowledge of it.
By far the most important landmark, however, in the history of the
Old Testament, is afforded by the account in 2 Kings xxii. and
xxiii. of the discovery of the Book of the Law in the Temple in the
eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah. It says that Shaphan the
scribe, having been sent by the king to Hilkiah the high priest, to
obtain an account of the silver collected from the people for the
repairs of the Temple, Hilkiah told him that he had "found the Book
of the Law in the house of the Lord." Shaphan brought it to the king
and read it to him; whereupon Josiah, in great consternation at
finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that
such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being
confirmed in his fears by Huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take
stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account
given in 2 Kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. We
read of vessels consecrated to Baal and to the host of heaven in the
Temple itself, and of horses and chariots of the Sun at its entrance;
of idolatrous priests who had been ordained by the kings of Judah to
burn incense "unto Baal, to the Sun, and to the Moon, and to the
planets, and to all the host of heaven"; and of high places close
to Jerusalem, with groves, images, and altars, which had been built
by Solomon to Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the
god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites, and had
apparently remained undisturbed and places of popular worship ever
since the time of Solomon.
On any ordinary principles of criticism it is impossible to doubt
that, if this narrative is correct, there could have been no previous
Book of the Law in existence, and generally recognized as a sacred
volume written by Divine inspiration. When even such a great and
wise king as Solomon could establish such a system of idolatry, and
pious kings like Hezekiah, and Josiah during the first eighteen
years of his reign, could allow it to continue, there could have
been no knowledge that it was in direct contravention of the most
essential precepts of a sacred law dictated by Jehovah to Moses. It
is generally admitted by critics that the Book of the Law discovered
by Hilkiah was Deuteronomy, or rather perhaps an earlier or shorter
original of the Deuteronomy which has come down to us, and which had
already been re-edited with additions after the Exile. The title
"Deuteronomy," which might seem to imply that it was a supplement
to an earlier law, is taken, like the other headings of the books
of the Old Testament in our Bible, from the Septuagint version, and
in the original Hebrew the heading is "the Book of the Law." The
internal evidence points also to Deuteronomy, as placing the threats
of punishment and promises of reward mainly on moral grounds, and in
the spirit of the later prophets, such as Isaiah, who lived shortly
before the discovery of the book by Hilkiah. And it is apparent that
when Deuteronomy was written, the Priests' Code, which forms such an
important part of the other books of the Pentateuch, could not have
been known, as so many of the ceremonial rites and usages are clearly
inconsistent with it.
It is not to be inferred that there were no writings in existence
before the reign of Josiah. Doubtless annals had been kept of the
principal events of each reign from the foundation of the monarchy,
and many of the old legends and traditions of the race had been
collected and reduced to writing during the period from Solomon to
the later kings.
The Priests' Code also, though of later date in its complete
form, was doubtless not an invention of any single priest, but a
compilation of usages, some of which had long existed, while others
had grown up in connection with the Second Temple after the return
from exile. So also the civil and social legislation was not a code
promulgated, like the Code Napoleon, by any one monarch or high
priest, but a compilation from usages and precedents which had come
to be received as having an established authority. But what is
plainly inconsistent with the account of the discovery of the Book
of the Law in the reign of Josiah, is the supposition that there
had been, in long previous existence, a collection of sacred books,
recognized as a Bible or work of Divine inspiration, as the Old
Testament came to be among the Jews of the first or second century
B.C.
It is to be observed that among early nations, such historical annals
and legislative enactments never form the first stratum of a sacred
literature, which consists invariably of hymns, prayers, ceremonial
rites, and astronomical or astrological myths. Thus the Rig Veda of
the Hindoos, the early portions of the Vendedad of the Iranians, the
Book of the Dead of the Egyptians, and the penitential psalms and
invocations of the Chaldæans formed the oldest sacred books, about
which codes and commentaries, and in some cases historical allusions
and biographies, gradually accumulated, though never attaining to
quite an equal authority.
There is abundant internal evidence in the books of the Old Testament
which profess to be older than the reign of Josiah, to show that
they are in great part, at any rate, of later compilation, and could
not have been recognized as the sacred Thora or Bible of the nation.
To take a single instance, that of Solomon. Is it conceivable that
this greatest and wisest of kings, who had held personal commune
with Jehovah, and who knew everything down to the hyssop on the
wall, could have been ignorant of such a sacred book if it had
been in existence? And if he had known it, or even the Decalogue,
is it conceivable that he should have totally ignored its first
and fundamental precepts, "Thou shalt have no other gods but me,"
and "thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? Could
uxoriousness, divided among 700 wives, have turned the heart of such
a monarch so completely as to make him worship Ashtaroth and Milcom,
and build high places for Chemosh and Moloch? And could he have done
this without the opposition, and apparently with the approval, of
the priests and the people? And again, could these high places and
altars and vessels dedicated to Baal and the host of heaven have
been allowed to remain in the Temple, down to the eighteenth year of
Josiah, Under a succession of kings several of whom were reputed to
be pious servants of Jehovah? And the idolatrous tendencies of the
ten tribes of Israel, who formed the majority of the Hebrew race, and
had a common history and traditions, are even more apparent.
In the speeches put into the mouth of Solomon in 1 Kings, in which
reference is made to "statutes and commandments spoken by Jehovah by
the hand of Moses," there is abundant evidence that their composition
must be assigned to a much later date. They are full of references to
the captivity in a foreign land and return from exile (1 Kings viii.
46--53, and ix. 6--9). Similar references to the Exile are found
throughout the Book of Kings, and even in Books of the Pentateuch
which profess to be written by Moses. If such a code of sacred
writings had been in existence in the time of Josiah, instead of
rending his clothes in dismay when Shaphan brought him the Book of
the Law found by Hilkiah, he would have said, "Why this is only a
different version of what we know already."
On the whole the evidence points to this conclusion. The idea of a
one Supreme God who was a Spirit, while all other gods were mere
idols made by men's hands; who created and ruled all things in heaven
and earth; and who loved justice and mercy rather than the blood of
rams and bullocks, was slowly evolved from the crude conceptions of
a jealous, vindictive, and cruel anthropomorphic local god, by the
prophets and best minds of Israel after it had settled down under
the Monarchy into a civilized and cultured state. It appears for the
first time distinctly in Isaiah and Amos, and was never popular with
the majority of the kings and upper classes, or with the mass of the
nation until the Exile, but it gradually gained ground during the
calamities of the later days, when Assyrian armies were threatening
destruction. A strong opposition arose in the later reigns between
the aristocracy, who looked on the situation from a political
point of view and trusted to armies and alliances, and what may be
called the pietist or evangelical party of the prophets, who took
a purely religious view of matters, and considered the misfortunes
of the country as a consequence of its sins, to be averted only by
repentance and Divine interposition.
It was a natural, and under the circumstances of the age and country
quite a justifiable proceeding on the part of the prophetic school to
endeavour to stamp their views with Divine authority, and recommend
them for acceptance as coming from Moses, the traditional deliverer
of Israel from Egypt. For this purpose no doubt numerous materials
existed in the form of legends, traditions, customs, and old records,
and very probably some of those had been collected and reduced to
writing, like the Sagas of the old Norsemen, though without any idea
of collecting them into a sacred volume.
The first attempt in this direction was made in the reign of Josiah,
and it had only a partial success, as we find the nation "doing
evil in the sight of the Lord," that is, relapsing into the old
idolatrous practices, in the reigns of his three next successors,
Jehoiachin, Jehoiachim, and Zedechiah. But the crowning calamity of
the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy years'
exile, seems to have crushed out the old aristocratic and national
party, and converted all the leading minds among the Jews of the
Captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the
essence of the question was the religious one, and that the only
hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to
the worship of Jehovah and the Covenant between him and his chosen
people. Prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes,
and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longer room for
itinerant and unofficial missionaries. Under such circumstances the
religion, after the return from the Exile, crystallized rapidly into
definite forms. Creeds, rituals, and sacred books were multiplied
down to the third century B.C. or later, when the canon was closed
with the Books of Chronicles and Daniel and the later Psalms, and the
era began of commentaries on the text of a Koran or Bible, every word
of which was held to be infallibly inspired.
The different crystals in solution have now united into one large
crystal of fixed form, and henceforward we are in the full age of
Talmudism and Pharisaism.
It is not to be supposed, however, that the books which thus came
to be considered sacred were the inventions of priests and scribes
of this later age. Doubtless they were based to a great extent on
old traditions, legends, and written annals and records, compiled
perhaps in the reigns of Solomon and his successors, but based
themselves on still older materials. The very crudeness of many of
the representations, and the barbarism of manners, point to an early
origin. It is impossible to conceive any contemporary of Isaiah, or
of the cultured court of Solomon, describing the Almighty ruler of
the universe as showing his hinder part to Moses, or sewing skins to
clothe Adam and Eve; and the conception of a jealous and vindictive
Jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners of
war, women and children, must be far removed from that of a God
who loved justice and mercy. These crude, impossible, and immoral
representations must have existed in the form of Sagas during the
early and semi-barbarous stage of the people of Israel, and become
so rooted in the popular mind that they could not be neglected when
authors of later ages came to fix the old traditions in writing, and
religious reformers to use them in endeavouring to enforce higher
views and a purer morality. It is from this jungle of old legends and
traditions, written and re-written, edited and re-edited, many times
over, to suit the ideas of various stages of advancing civilization,
that we have to pick out as we best can what is really historical,
prior to the foundation of the Monarchy, from which time downwards
we doubtless have more or less authentic annals, and meet with
confirmations from Egyptian and Assyrian history.
The first figure which arrests our attention in the Old Testament as
possibly historical, is that of Abraham. Prior to him everything is
plainly myth and legend. We have two accounts of the creation of the
universe and of man in Genesis, contradictory with one another, and
each hopelessly inconsistent with the best established conclusions
of astronomy, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. Then follow
ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on the average 847 years each,
and correspond manifestly with the ten reigns of gods or demi-gods
in the Chaldæan mythology; while side by side with this genealogy is
a fragment of one which is entirely different, mentioning seven only
of the ten patriarchs, and tracing the descent of Enoch and Noah from
Adam through Cain instead of through Seth.
Then comes the Deluge with all the flagrant impossibilities which
have been pointed out in a preceding chapter; the building of
the Tower of Babel, with the dispersion of mankind and confusion
of languages, equally opposed to the most certain conclusions of
history, ethnology, and philology. The descent from Noah to Abraham
is then traced through ten other patriarchs, whose ages average 394
years each, and similar genealogies are given for the descendants of
the other two sons of Noah, Ham and Japheth. It is evident that these
genealogies are not history but ethnology, and that of a very rude
and primitive description, by a writer with imperfect knowledge and
a limited range of vision. A great majority of the primitive races
of the world, such as the Negroes and the Mongolians, are omitted
altogether, and Semitic Canaan is coupled with Turanian Hittite as
a descendant not of Shem but of Ham. It is unnecessary to go into
details, for when we find such an instance as that Canaan begat
Sidon his first-born, it is evident that this does not mean that two
such men really lived, but is an Oriental way of stating that the
Phoenicians were of the same race as the Canaanites, and that Sidon
was their earliest sea-port on the shore of the Mediterranean.
The whole of this Biblical literature prior to Abraham is clearly
myth and legend, and not history; and whoever will compare it
dispassionately with the much older Chaldæan myths and legends known
to us from Berosus and the tablets, can hardly doubt that it is taken
mainly from this source, revised at a later date, in a monotheistic
sense. Whole passages are simply altered by writing "God" for "gods,"
and pruning off or toning down grotesque and revolting incidents. To
give a single instance, where the Chaldæan solar epic of Izdubar,
in the chapter on the passage of the sun through the rainy sign of
Aquarius, which describes the Deluge, says that "the gods smelt the
sweet savour of the sacrifice offered by Hasisadra on emerging from
the ark, and flocked like flies about the altar," Genesis says simply
that "the Lord smelled a sweet savour"; and where the mixture of a
divine and animal nature in man is symbolized in the Chaldæan legend
by Bel cutting off his own head and kneading the clay with the blood
into the first man, the Jehovist narrative in Genesis ii. says, that
"the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life." But when we arrive at Abraham
we feel as if we might be treading on really historical ground. There
is the universal tradition of the Hebrew race that he was their
ancestor, and his figure is very like what in the unchanging East
may be met with to the present day. We seem to see the dignified
sheik sitting at the door of his tent dispensing hospitality, raiding
with his retainers on the rear of a retreating army and capturing
booty, and much exercised by domestic difficulties between the women
of his household. Surely this is an historical figure. But when we
look closer, doubts and difficulties appear. In the first place the
name "Abram" suggests that of an eponymous ancestor, like Shem for
the Semites, or Canaan for the Canaanites. Abram, Sayce tells us,
is the Babylonian Abu-ramer or "exalted father," a name much more
likely to be given to a mythical ancestor than to an actual man.
This is rendered more probable by the fact that, as we have already
seen, the genealogy of Abraham traced upwards consists mainly of
eponyms: while those which radiate from him downwards are of the
same character. Thus two of his sons by Keturah are Jokshan and
Midian; and Sheba, Dedan, and Assurim are among his descendants.
Again, Abraham is said to have lived for 175 years, and to have had a
son by Sarah when she was ninety-nine and he one hundred; and a large
family by Keturah, whom he married after Sarah's death. Figures such
as these are a sure test that legend has taken the place of authentic
history.
Another circumstance which tells strongly against the historical
character of Abraham is his connection with Lot, and the legend of
Lot's wife. The history of this legend is a curious one. For many
centuries, in fact down to quite modern times, the volcanic phenomena
of the Dead Sea were appealed to as convincing confirmations of the
account in Genesis of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, and
hundreds of pious pilgrims saw, touched, and tasted the identical
pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was changed. It is now certain
that the volcanic eruptions were of an earlier geological age, and
that the story of Lot's wife is owing to the disintegration of a
stratum of salt marl, which weathers away under the action of wind
and rain into columnar masses, like those described by Lyell in a
similar formation in Catalonia. Innumerable travellers and pilgrims
from early Christian times down to the seventeenth century returned
from Palestine testifying that they had seen Lot's wife, and this was
appealed to by theologians as a convincing proof of the truth of the
Scripture narrative. Some saw her big, some little, some upright,
and some prostrate, according to the state of disintegration of the
pillars pointed out by the guides, which change their form rapidly
under the influence of the weather, but no doubt was entertained as
to the attestation of the miracle. It turns out, however, to be one
of those geological myths of precisely the same nature as that which
attributed the Devil's Dyke near Brighton to an arrested attempt of
the Evil One to cut a trench through the South Downs, so as to let
in the sea and drown the Weald. The episode of Lot and his daughters
is also clearly a myth to account for the aversion of the Hebrews
to races so closely akin to them as the Moabites and Ammonites, and
it could hardly have originated until after the date of the Book of
Ruth, which shows no trace of such a racial aversion.
Many of the events recorded of Abraham's life, though not so
wildly extravagant as those attributed to Noah, are still clearly
unhistorical. That a woman getting on towards one hundred years
old should be so beautiful that her husband passes her off for his
sister, fearing that, if known to be his wife, the king would kill
him in order to take her into his harem, does not seem to be very
probable. But when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred
twice over to the same man, once at the court of Pharaoh and again
at that of Abimelech; and a third time to his son Isaac, at the same
place, Gerar, and to the same king Abimelech, the improbability
becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. Nor is
it very consistent with the character of the pious patriarch, the
father of the chosen people, to have told such lies, and apparently
connived at his wife's prostitution, so that he could save his own
skin, and grow rich on the "sheep and oxen, asses, manservants,
maidservants, and camels" given him by the king on the supposition
that he was Sarah's brother.
Nor can we take as authentic history, Abraham talking with the Lord,
and holding a sort of Dutch auction with him, in which he beats down
from fifty to ten the number of righteous men who, if found in Sodom,
are to save it from destruction.
On the whole, I do not see that there is anything in the account of
Abraham and his times which we can safely assume to be historical,
except the general fact that the Hebrews were descended from a
Semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of Ur in Lower
Chaldæa probably about the time, and possibly in consequence, of the
Elamite conquest, about 2200 B.C., which set in motion so many wars,
revolutions, and migrations in Western Asia.
The chronology from Abraham to Moses is hopelessly confused. If
Abraham is really an historical character, his synchronism with
Chedorlaomer or Kudur-lagomer, the Elamite King of Chaldæa, must
be admitted, which fixes his date at about 2200 B.C. Again, if the
narrative of the Exodus is historical, it is generally agreed that
it took place in the reign of Menepthah, or about 1320 B.C. The
interval between Abraham and Moses therefore must have been about 900
years. But if we take the genealogies as authentic history, Jacob, in
whose time the Hebrews went into Egypt, was Abraham's grandson, and
Moses, under whom they left it, was the son of Jochebed, who was the
granddaughter of Levi, the son of Jacob, who was a man advanced in
life when he came to Egypt. The genealogies therefore do not allow of
more than five generations, or, at a high average for each, about 200
years for this interval between Abraham and Moses.
The tradition respecting this seems to have been already very
confused when Genesis was compiled, for we find in chap. xv. vers.
15, 16, the Lord saying to Abraham, that his descendants shall come
back to Palestine and possess the whole country from the river of
Egypt to the river Euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after
Abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried in a good
old age"; while only one verse before it is said, "thy seed shall be
a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and
they shall afflict them for four hundred years."
Even if 400 years were allowed for the sojourn of the Hebrews in
Egypt, it would not extend the interval between Moses and Abraham
to more than 500 years, or 400 years less than is required by the
synchronism with Chedorlaomer. It is needless to say that neither in
the fourth or in any other generation did the descendants of Abraham
"possess the whole country from the river of Egypt to the river
Euphrates."
There is no period of Jewish history so obscure as that of the
sojourn in Egypt. The long date is based entirely on the distinct
statement in Genesis xii., that the sojourning of the children of
Israel was 430 years, and other statements that it was 400 years,
both of which are hopelessly inconsistent with the genealogies.
Genealogies are perhaps more likely to be preserved accurately by
oral tradition than dates and figures, which Oriental races generally
deal with in a very arbitrary way. But there are serious difficulties
in the way of accepting either date as historical. There is no
mention of any specific event during the sojourn of the Israelites
in Egypt between their advent in the time of Joseph and the Exodus,
except their oppression by a new king who knew not Joseph, and
the building of the treasure cities, Pi-thom and Ramses, by their
forced labour. The latter fact may be taken as probably true from the
monuments discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie; and if so, it occurred
in the reign of Ramses II. But there is no other confirmation, from
Egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the
Pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from Manetho by
Josephus, which describes how the unclean people and lepers were
oppressed; how they revolted under the leadership of a priest of
Hieropolis, who changed his name from Osarphis to Moyses; how they
fortified Avaris and called in help from the expelled Hyksos settled
at Jerusalem; how the Egyptian king and his army retreated before
them into Ethiopia without striking a blow; and the revolters ruled
Egypt for thirteen years, killing the sacred animals and desecrating
the temples; and how, at the end of this period, the king and his son
returned with a great army, defeated the rebels and shepherds with
great slaughter, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria.
This account is evidently very different from that of Exodus, and
does not itself read very like real history, nor is there anything
in the Egyptian monuments to confirm it, but rather the reverse.
Menepthah certainly reigned many years after he was said to have
been drowned in the Red Sea, and his power and that of his immediate
successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of
suzerainty over Palestine and Southern Syria. It is said that the
Egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but
this is distinctly untrue, for Manetho records events such as the
conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos without a battle, and the retreat of
Menepthah into Ethiopia for thirteen years before the impure rebels,
which were much more disgraceful than would have been the destruction
of a pursuing force of chariots by the returning tide of the Red Sea.
The question therefore of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt
and the Exodus has to be considered solely by the light of the
internal evidence afforded by the books of the Old Testament.
The long period of 430 years is open to grave objections. It is
inconceivable that a people who had lived for four centuries in an
old and highly-civilized empire, for part of the time at any rate on
equal or superior terms under the king who "knew Joseph"; and who
appear to have been so much intermixed with the native Egyptians as
to have been borrowing from them as neighbours before their flight,
should have carried away with them so little of Egyptian manners and
relics. Beyond a few rites and ceremonies, and a certain tendency to
revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing
to show that the Hebrews had ever been in contact with Egyptian
civilization. This is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in
a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which
were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the Egyptian
people. Temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his
posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to
practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the Decalogue down to
the comparatively late period of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon the
wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." Even down to the
Christian era the Sadducees, who were the conservative aristocracy
who stood on the old ways and on the law of Moses, and from whose
ranks most of the high priests were taken, were opposed to the
newfangled Pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection. How completely
foreign the idea was to the Jewish mind is apparent from the writings
of the Prophets and the Book of Job, where the obvious solution of
the problem why goodness was not always rewarded and wickedness
punished, afforded by the theory of a judgment after death and future
life, was never even hinted at by Job or his friends, however hardly
they might be pressed in argument.
If the sojourn in Egypt really lasted for 430 years, it must have
embraced many of the greatest events in Egyptian history. The
descendants of Jacob must have witnessed a long period of the rule
of the Hyksos, and lived through the desolating thirty years' war
by which these foreign conquerors were gradually driven back by
the native armies of Upper Egypt. They must have been close to the
scene of the final campaigns, the siege of Avaris, and the expulsion
of the Hyksos. They must have been subjects of Ahmes, Thotmes,
and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed
up the fugitive Hyksos, and carried the conquering arms of Egypt
not only over Palestine and Syria, but up to the Euphrates and
Tigris, and over nearly the whole of Western Asia. They must have
witnessed the decline of this empire, the growth of the Hittites,
and the half-century of wars waged between them and the Egyptians in
Palestine and Syria.
The victory of Ramses II. at Kadesh and the epic poem of Pentaur
must have been known to the generation before the Exodus as signal
events. And if there is any truth in the account quoted by Josephus,
they must have been aware that they did not fly from Egypt as a body
of fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors who for thirteen years
had held Egypt up to Ethiopia in subjection. And yet of all these
memorable events there is not the slightest trace in the Hebrew
annals which have come down to us.
An even greater difficulty is to understand how, if the children of
Israel had lived for anything like 400 years in such a civilized
empire as Egypt, they could have emerged from it in such a plane
of low civilization, or rather of ferocious savagery and crude
superstitions as are shown by the books of the Old Testament, where
they burst like a host of Red Indians on the settlements and cities
of the Amorites, and other more advanced nations of Palestine.
The discoveries at Lachish already referred to show that their
civilization could not have exceeded that of the rudest Bedouins, and
their myths and legends are so similar to those of the North American
Indians as to show that they must have originated in a very similar
stage of mental development.
If we adopt the short date of the genealogies we are equally
confronted by difficulties. If the Exodus occurred in the reign of
Menepthah, 180 years back from that date would take us, not to the
Hyksos dynasty where alone it would have been possible for Joseph
to be a vizier, and for a Semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed
in Egypt, but into the midst of the great and glorious eighteenth
dynasty who had expelled the Hyksos, and carried the dominion of
Egypt to the Euphrates. Nor would there have been time for the
seventy souls, who we are told were all of the family of Jacob who
migrated into Egypt, to have increased in three generations into
a nation numerous enough to alarm the Egyptians, and conquer the
Canaanites.
The legend of Joseph is very touching and beautiful, but it may just
as well be a novel as history, and this suspicion is strengthened
by the fact that the episode of Potiphar's wife is almost verbatim
the same as one of the chapters of the Egyptian novel of the _Two
Brothers_. Nor does it seem likely that such a seven years' famine
and such a momentous change as the conversion of all the land of
Egypt from freehold into a tenure held from the king subject to
payment of a rent of one-fifth of the gross produce, should have
left no trace in the records. Again, the age of 110 years assigned
to Joseph, and 147 to his father, are a sufficient proof that we are
not upon strictly historical ground; and on the whole this narrative
does not go far, in the absence of any confirmation from monuments,
to assist us in fixing dates, or enabling us to form any consistent
idea of the real conditions of the sojourn of the people of Israel
in Egypt. It places them on far too high a level of civilization
at first, to have fallen to such a low one as we find depicted in
the Books of Exodus, Joshua, and Judges. Further excavations in
the mounds of ruined cities in Judæa and Palestine, like those
of Schliemann on the sites of Troy and Mycenæ, can alone give us
anything like certain facts as to the real condition of the Hebrew
tribes who destroyed the older walled cities of the comparatively
civilized Amorites and Canaanites. If the conclusion of Mr. Flinders
Petrie from the section of the mound of Lachish, as to the extremely
rude condition of the tribes who built the second town of mud-huts on
the ruins of the Amorite city, should be confirmed, it would go far
to negative the idea that the accounts of their having been trained
in an advanced code of Mosaic legislation, can have any historical
foundation.
We come next to Moses. It is difficult to refuse an historical
character to a personage who has been accepted by uniform tradition
as the chief who led the Israelites out of Egypt, and as the great
legislator who laid the foundations of the religious and civil
institutions of the peculiar people. And if the passage from
Manetho is correctly quoted by Josephus, and was really taken from
contemporary Egyptian annals, and is not a later version of the
account in the Pentateuch modified to suit Egyptian prejudices,
Moses is clearly identified with Osarsiph the priest of Hieropolis,
who abandoned the worship of the old gods, and headed the revolt of
the unclean people, which probably meant the heretics. It may be
conjectured that this may have had some connection with the great
religious revolution of the heretic king of Tel-el-Amarna, which
for a time displaced the national gods, worshipped in the form of
sacred animals and symbolic statues, by an approach to Monotheism
under the image of the winged solar disc. Such a reform must have
had many adherents to have survived as the State religion for two or
three reigns, and must have left a large number of so-called heretics
when the nation returned to its ancient faith; and it is quite
intelligible that some of the more enlightened priests should have
assimilated to it the doctrine of one Supreme God, which was always
at the bottom of the religious metaphysics of the earliest ages in
Egypt, and was probably preserved as an esoteric doctrine in the
priestly colleges. This, however, must remain purely a conjecture,
and we must look for anything specific in regard to Moses exclusively
to the Old Testament.
And here we are at once assailed by formidable difficulties. As
long as we confine ourselves to general views it may be accepted as
historical that the Israelites really came out of Egypt under a great
leader and legislator; but when we come to details, and to the events
connected with Moses, and to a great extent supposed to have been
written by him or taken from his journals, they are for the most part
more wildly and hopelessly impossible than anything related of the
earlier patriarchs, Abraham and Joseph. The story of his preservation
in infancy is a variation of the myth common to so many nations, of
an infant hero or god, whose life is sought by a wicked king, and who
is miraculously saved. We find it in the myths of Khrishna, Buddha,
Cyrus, Romulus, and others, and in the inscription by Sargon I. of
Accade on his own tablet; he states himself to have been saved in an
ark floated on the river Euphrates, just as Moses was on the Nile.
When grown up he is represented first as the adopted son of Pharaoh's
daughter, and then as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian talking
with the Lord in a fiery bush, who for the first time communicates
his real name of Jehovah, which he says was not known to Abraham,
Isaac, or Jacob, although constantly used by them, and although men
began to call him by that name in the time of Enos, Adam's grandson.
At Jehovah's command Moses throws his rod on the ground, when it
becomes a serpent from which he flies, and when he takes it up by
the tail it becomes a rod again; and as a farther sign his hand is
changed from sound to leprous as white as snow, and back again to
sound, in a minute or two of time.
On returning to Egypt Moses is represented as going ten times into
the presence of Pharaoh demanding of him to let the Hebrews depart,
and inflicting on Egypt a succession of plagues, each one more than
sufficient to have convinced the king of the futility of opposing
such supernatural powers, and to have made him only too anxious to
get rid of the Hebrews from the land at any price. What could have
been the condition of Egypt, if for seven days "the streams, the
rivers, the ponds and pools, and even the water in the vessels of
wood and of stone, through all the land of Egypt," had been really
turned into blood? And what sort of magicians must they have been who
could do the same with their enchantments?
The whole account of these plagues has distinctly the air of being
an historical romance rather than real history. Those repeated
interviews accompanied by taunts and reproaches of Moses, the
representative of an oppressed race of slaves, in the august presence
of a Pharaoh who, like the Inca of Peru or the Mikado of Japan,
was half monarch and half deity, are totally inconsistent with all
we know of Egyptian usage. The son and successor of the splendid
Ramses II., who has been called the Louis XIV. of Egyptian history,
would certainly, after the first interview and miracle, either have
recognized the supernatural power which it was useless to resist,
or ordered Moses to instant execution. It is remarkable also how
the series of plagues reproduce the natural features of the Egyptian
seasons. Recent travellers tell us how at the end of the dry season
when the Nile is at its lowest, and the adjacent plains are arid
and lifeless, suddenly one morning at sunrise they see the river
apparently turned into blood. It is the phenomenon of the red Nile,
which is caused by the first flush of the Abyssinian flood, coming
from banks of red marl. After a few days the real rise commences, the
Nile resumes its usual colour, percolates through its banks, fills
the tanks and ponds, and finally overflows and saturates the dusty
plains. The first signal of the renewal of life is the croaking of
innumerable frogs, and soon the plains are alive with flies, gnats,
and all manner of creeping and hopping insects, as if the dust had
been turned into lice. Then after the inundation subsides come the
other plagues which in the summer and autumn seasons frequently
afflict the young crops and the inhabitants--local hail-storms,
locusts, murrain among the cattle, boils and other sicknesses while
the stagnant waters are drying up. It reads like what some Rider
Haggard of the Court of Solomon might have written in working up the
tales of travellers and old popular traditions into an historical
romance of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt.
When we come to the Exodus the impossibilities of the narrative
are even more obvious. The robust common-sense of Bishop Colenso,
sharpened by a mathematical education, has reduced many of these to
the convincing test of arithmetic. The host of Israelites who left
Egypt is said to have comprised 603,550 fighting men above the age
of twenty; exclusive of the Levites and of a mixed multitude who
followed. This implies a total population of at least 2,500,000,
who are said to have wandered about for forty years in the desert
of Sinai, one of the most arid wildernesses in the world, destitute
alike of water, arable soil, and pasture, and where a Bedouin tribe
of even 600 souls would find it difficult to exist. They are said
to have been miraculously fed during these forty years on manna, a
sweetish, gummy exudation from the scanty foliage of certain prickly
desert plants, which is described as being "as small as the hoar
frost," and as being so imbued with Sabbatarian principles, as to
keep fresh only for the day it is gathered during the week, but for
two days if gathered on a Friday, so as to prevent the necessity of
doing any work on the Sabbath.
Bishop Colenso points out with irresistible force the obvious
impossibilities in regard to food, water, fuel, sanitation,
transport, and other matters, which was involved in the supposition
that a population, half as large as that of London, wandered about
under tents from camp to camp for forty years in a desert. No attempt
has ever been made to refute him, except by vague suppositions
that the deserts of Sinai and Arabia may then have been in a very
different condition, and capable of supporting a large population.
But this is impossible in the present geological age and under
existing geographical conditions. These deserts form part of the
great rainless zone of the earth between the north tropical and south
temperate zones, where cultivation is only possible when the means
of irrigation are afforded by lakes, rivers, or melting snow. But
there are none of these in the deserts of Sinai and Northern Arabia,
and therefore no water and no vegetation sufficient to support any
population. No army has ever invaded Egypt from Asia, or Asia
from Egypt, except by the short route adjoining the Mediterranean
between Pelusium and Jaffa, and with the command of the sea and
assistance of trains to carry supplies and water. And the account
in Exodus itself confirms this, for both food and water are stated
to have been supplied miraculously, and there is no mention made of
anything but the present arid and uninhabited desert in the various
encampments and marches. In fact, the Bible constantly dwells on the
inhospitable character of the "howling wilderness," where there was
neither grass nor water. Accordingly reconcilers have been reduced
to the supposition that ciphers may have been added by copyists, and
that the real number may have been 6000, or even, as some writers
think, 600. But this is inconsistent with the detailed numeration
by twelve separate tribes, which works out to the same figure of
603,550 fighting men for the total number. Nor is it consistent with
the undoubted fact that the Hebrews did evacuate Egypt in sufficient
numbers and sufficiently armed to burst through the frontiers,
and capture the walled cities of considerable nations like the
Amorites and Canaanites, who had been long settled in the country.
The narrative of Manetho, quoted by Josephus, seems much more like
real history; that the Hebrews formed part of an army, which, after
having held Lower Egypt for thirteen years, was finally defeated,
and retreated by the usual military route across the short part of
the desert from Pelusium to Palestine, the Hebrews, for some reason,
branching off, and taking to a Bedouin life on the outskirts of
the desert and cultivated land, just as many Bedouin tribes live a
semi-nomad life in the same regions at the present day.
Apart from statistics, however, the Books of the Pentateuch
ascribed to Moses are full of the most flagrant contradictions and
absurdities. It is evident that, instead of being the production of
some one contemporary writer, they have been compiled and edited,
probably many times over, by what I have called the "scissors and
paste method," of clipping out extracts from old documents and
traditions, and piecing them together in juxtaposition or succession,
without regard to their being contradictory or repetitions.
Thus in Exodus xxxiii. 20, God says to Moses: "Thou canst not see
my face and live; for there shall no man see me and live"; and
accordingly he shows Moses only his "back parts"; while in ver. 11 in
the very same chapter we read, "And the Lord spoke unto Moses face
to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." Again in Exodus xxiv.
the Lord says to Moses, "that he alone shall come near the Lord"
(ver. 2), while in vers. 9--11 of the same chapter, we are told
that "Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Israel went up; and they saw the God of Israel, and there was under
his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone," and although
they saw God, were none the worse for it, but survived and "did eat
and drink." Is it possible to believe that these excessively crude
representations of the Deity, and these flagrant inconsistencies,
were all written at the same time, by the same hand, and that the
hand of a man who, if not a holy inspired prophet, was at any rate
an educated and learned ex-priest of Hieropolis, skilled in all the
knowledge of the Egyptians?
The contradictions in the ideas and precepts of morality and religion
are even more startling. These oscillate between the two extremes of
the conception of the later prophets of a one Supreme God, who loves
justice and mercy better than sacrifice, and that of a ferocious
and vindictive tribal god, whose appetite for human blood is as
insatiable as that of the war-god of the Mexicans. Thus we have, on
the one hand, the commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder," and on the
other, the injunction to commit indiscriminate massacres. A single
instance may suffice. The "Book of the Law of Moses" is quoted in 2
Kings xiv. as saying, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the
children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall be
put to death for his own sin." In Numbers xxxi., Moses, the "meekest
of mankind," is represented as extremely wroth with the captains
who, having warred against Midian at the Lord's command, had only
slaughtered the males, and taken the women of Midian and their little
ones captives; and he commands them to "kill every male among the
little ones, and every woman that hath known man by lying with him;
but all the women children that have not known man by lying with him,
keep alive for yourselves."
These Midianites, be it remembered, being the people whose high
priest Jethro had hospitably received Moses when he fled for his
life from Egypt, and gave him his daughter as a wife, by whom he had
children who were half Midianites, so that if the zealous Phinehas
was right in slaying the Hebrew who had married a Midianite woman,
Moses himself deserved the same fate.
The same injunction of indiscriminate massacre in order to escape
the jealous wrath of an offended Jehovah is repeated, over and
over again, in Joshua and Judges, and even as late as after the
foundation of the Monarchy, we find Samuel telling Saul in the
name of the Lord of Hosts, to "go and smite Amalek, and utterly
destroy them, slaying both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox
and sheep, camel and ass," and denouncing Saul, and hewing Agag in
pieces before the Lord, because this savage injunction had not been
literally obeyed. Even under David, the man after the Lord's own
heart, we find him torturing to death the prisoners taken at the fall
of Rabbah, and giving up seven of the sons of Saul to the Gibeonites
to be sacrificed before the Lord as human victims. It is one of
the strangest contradictions of human nature that such atrocious
violations of the moral sense should have been received for so many
centuries as a divine revelation, rather than as instances of what
may be more appropriately called "devil worship."
Nor is it a less singular proof of the power of cherished
prepossessions that such a medley of the sublime religious ideas and
lofty poetry of the prophetic ages, with such a mass of puerile and
absurd legends, such obvious contradictions, and such a number of
passages obviously dating from a later period, should be received by
many men of intelligence, even to the present day, as the work of a
single contemporary writer, the inspired prophet Moses.
When we pass from the Pentateuch to the succeeding Books of Joshua
and of Judges the same remarks apply. The falling of the walls of
Jericho at the sound of the trumpet, and the defeat of an army of
135,000 men of Midian and Amalek with a slaughter of 120,000, by 300
men under Gideon, armed with pitchers and trumpets, are on a par with
the wandering of 2,500,000 Israelites in the desert for forty years,
fed with manna of the size of hoar-frost. The moral atmosphere also
continues to be that of Red Indians down to the time of David, for
we read of nothing but murders and massacres, sometimes of other
races, sometimes of one tribe by another; while the actions selected
for special commendation are like those of Jael, who drove a nail
into the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she had invited into her
tent; or of Jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter as an offering to
the Lord in obedience to a vow. This barbarous state of manners is
confirmed by Flinders Petrie's discoveries at the supposed site of
Lachish, which show the ruins of a walled city of the Amorites, built
upon by the mud hovels of a race as rude as the rudest Bedouins who
now wander on the edge of the Arabian desert.
The only safe conclusion seems to be that authentic annals of Jewish
history only begin with the Monarchy, and that everything prior to
David and Solomon, or possibly Saul and Samuel, consists of myth,
legend, and oral tradition, so inextricably blended, and so mixed up
with successive later additions, as to give no certain information as
to events or dates.
All that it is safe to assume is, that in a general way the Hebrews
were originally a Semitic tribe who migrated from Chaldæa into
Palestine and thence into Egypt, where they remained for an uncertain
time and were oppressed by the national dynasty which expelled the
Hyksos; that they left Egypt probably in the reign of Menepthah, and
as a consequence of the rebellion recorded by Manetho; that they then
lived for an unknown time as wandering Bedouins on the frontier of
Palestine in a state of very rude barbarism; and finally burst in
like a horde of Aztecs on the older and more civilized Toltecs of
Mexico. For a long period after this, perhaps for 200 or 300 years,
they lived in a state of chronic warfare with one another, and with
their neighbours, massacring and being massacred with the alternate
vicissitudes of war, but with the same rudeness and ferocity of
superstitions and manners. Gradually, however, they advanced in
civilization, and something of a national feeling arose, which led to
a partial consolidation under priests, and a more complete one under
kings.
The first king, Saul, was opposed by priestly influence and defeated
and slain in battle, but a captain of condottieri, David, arose,
a man of great energy and military genius, who gradually formed a
standing army and conquered province after province, until at his
death he left to his successor, Solomon, an empire extending from the
frontier of Egypt to Damascus, and from the Red Sea almost to the
Mediterranean.
This kingdom commanded two of the great commercial routes between
the East and West, the caravan route between Tyre and Babylon, _viâ_
Damascus and Tadmor, and the route from Tyre to the terminus at
Ezion-Gebir, of the sea-routes to Arabia, Africa, and India. Solomon
entered into close commercial relations with Tyre, and during his
long and splendid reign, Jerusalem blossomed rapidly into a wealthy
and a cultured city, and the surrounding cities and districts shared
in the general prosperity. The greatness of the kingdom did not
last long, for the revolt of the ten tribes and the growth of other
powers soon reduced Judæa and Samaria to political insignificance;
but Jerusalem, down to the time of its final destruction by
Nebuchadnezzar, _i.e._ for a period of some 400 years after Solomon,
never seems to have lost its character of a considerable and
civilized city. It is evident from the later prophets that it was
the seat of a good deal of wealth and luxury, for their invectives
are, to a great extent, what we should call at the present day,
Socialist denunciations of the oppression of the poor by the rich,
land-grabbing by the powerful, and extravagance of dress by the
ladies of fashion. There were hereditary nobles, organized colleges
of priests and scribes, and no doubt there was a certain amount of
intellectual life and literary activity. But of a sacred book there
is no trace until the discovery of one in the Temple in the reign of
Josiah; and the peculiar tenets of modern Judaism had no real hold
on the mass of the people until after the return from Exile and the
reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The history, therefore, contained in the Old Testament is
comparatively modern. There is nothing which can be relied on as
authentic in regard to events and dates prior to the establishment
of the Monarchy, and even the wildest myths and the most impossible
legends do not carry us back within 2000 years of the time when we
have genuine historical annals attested by monuments both in Egypt
and Chaldæa.
PART II.
EVIDENCE FROM SCIENCE.
CHAPTER VIII.
GEOLOGY AND PALÆONTOLOGY.
Proved by Contemporary Monuments--As in History--Summary
of Historical Evidence--Geological Evidence of
Human Periods--Neolithic Period--Palæolithic or
Quaternary--Tertiary--Secondary and Older Periods--The
Recent or Post-Glacial Period--Lake-Villages--Bronze
Age--Kitchen-Middens--Scandinavian Peat-mosses--Neolithic
Remains comparatively Modern--Definition of Post-Glacial
Period--Its Duration--Mellard Read's Estimate--Submerged
Forests--Changes in Physical Geography--Huxley--Objections from
America--Niagara--Quaternary Period--Immense Antiquity--Presence
of Man throughout--First Glacial Period--Scandinavian
and Laurentian Ice-caps--Immense Extent--Mass of
_Débris_--Elevation and Depression--In Britain--Inter-Glacial
and Second Glacial Periods--Antiquity measured by Changes of
Land--Lyell's Estimate--Glacial _Débris_ and Loess--Recent
Erosion--Bournemouth--Evans--Prestwich--Wealden Ridge and
Southern Drift--Contain Human Implements--Evidence from New
World--California.
We have now to take leave of historical records and fall back on the
exact sciences for further traces of human origins. Our guides are
still contemporary records, but these are no longer stately tombs
and temples, massive pyramids and written inscriptions. Instead
of these we have flint implements, incised bones, and a few rare
specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to
be deciphered by skilled experts in their respective departments of
science.
Still these records tell their tale as conclusively as any
hieroglyphic or cuneiform writings in Egyptian manuscripts or on
Babylonian cylinders. The celt, the knife, the lance and arrow-heads,
and other weapons and implements, can be traced in an uninterrupted
progressive series from the oldest and rudest palæolithic specimens,
up to the highly-finished ones of polished stone, and through these
into the age of metals, and into historic times and the actual
implements of existing savage races. It is impossible to doubt that
one of the palæolithic celts from St. Acheul or St. Prest is as truly
a work of the human hand, guided by human intelligence, as a modern
axe; and that an arrow-head from Moustier or Kent's Cavern is no more
an elf-bolt, or a _lusus naturæ_, than is a Winchester rifle.
Before entering on this new line of investigation, it may be well to
sum up briefly the evidence as to the starting-point from history and
tradition. The commencement of the strictly historical period takes
us back certainly for 6000 and in all probability for 7000 years in
Egypt, and certainly for 5000 and probably for 6000 or 7000 years in
Chaldæa. In each case we find populous cities, important temples and
public works, writing and other advanced arts and industries, and all
the signs of an old civilization already existing. Other nations also
evidently then existed with whom these ancient empires had relations
of war and of commerce, though the annals of even the oldest of them,
such as China, do not carry us back further than from 4000 to 5000
years.
Traditions do not add much to our information from monuments, and
fade rapidly away into myths and legends. The oldest and most
authentic, those of Egypt, simply confirm the inference of great
antiquity for its civilization prior to Menes, but give no clue as
to its origin. They neither trace it up to the stone age, which we
know existed in the valley of the Nile, nor refer it to any foreign
source. The Egyptian people thought themselves autochthonous, and
attributed their arts, industries, and sciences to the inventions
of native gods, or demi-gods, who reigned like mortal kings, in a
remote and fabulous antiquity. We can gather nothing therefore from
tradition that would enable us to add even 1000 years with certainty
to the date of Menes; while from the high state of civilization
which had been evolved prior to his accession, from the primitive
conditions of the stone period whose remains are found at Cairo and
Thebes, we might fairly add 10,000 or 20,000 years to his date of
5004 years _B.C._, as a matter of probable conjecture for the first
dawn of historical civilization. In any case we shall be well within
the mark if we take 10,000 years as our first unit, or standard
of chronological measurement, with which to start in our further
researches, as we do with terrestrial standards in gauging the
distances of suns and stars.
It may be well also to supplement this statement of the historical
standard by a brief review of the previous geological periods through
which evidences of man's existence can be traced. Immediately behind
the historic age lies the recent period during which the existing
fauna and flora, climate and configuration of seas and lands, have
undergone no material change. It is characterized generally as the
neolithic period, in which we find polished stone superseding the
older and ruder forms of chipped stone, and passing itself into the
copper, bronze, and iron ages of early history. It may also be called
the recent or post-glacial period, for it coincides with the final
disappearance of the last great glaciation, and the establishment of
conditions of climate resembling those of the present day.
Behind this again comes the quaternary or pleistocene period, so
called from its fauna, which, although containing extinct species,
shows along with them many existing forms, some of which have
migrated and some remain. This also may be called the glacial period,
for although the commencement, termination, and different phases of
the two great glaciations and intermediate inter-glacial periods
cannot be exactly defined, and hard-and-fast lines drawn between the
later pliocene at one end and the post-glacial at the other, there
is no doubt that in a general way the quaternary and glacial periods
coincide, and that the changes of climate were to a considerable
extent the cause of the changes of flora and fauna.
Behind the quaternary comes in the tertiary, with its three great
divisions of Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene, each containing numerous
subdivisions, and all showing a progressive advance in forms of
life, from older and more generalized types towards newer and more
specialized ones, and a constant approach towards genera and species
now existing. Behind the tertiary comes the secondary period, into
which it is unnecessary to enter for the present purpose, for all
is different, and even mammalian life is only known to be present
in a few forms of small and feeble marsupials. Nor is it necessary
to enter on any detailed consideration of the Eocene or earlier
tertiary, for the types of mammalian life are so different from those
of later periods, that it cannot be supposed that any animal so
highly organized as man had then come into existence. The utmost we
can suppose is that, as in the case of the horse, some ancestral form
from which the quadrumana and man may possibly have been developed
may be found. But up to the present time nothing has been found
in the Eocene more nearly approaching such a missing link than an
ancient form of lemur; and it is not until we get into the Miocene
that any evidence presents itself that man, or some near ancestor of
man, may possibly have existed.[8]
[8] Since this was written the scientific world has been startled
by the discovery announced by Professor Ameghino in the lower
tertiary, supposed to be Eocene, of Patagonia, of numerous small
monkeys of the American type of cebidæ, affording evidence of
the existence of anthropoid primates at this extremely early
date.--Lydekker in _Natural Science_ for April 1892. He adds,
"Perhaps still more noteworthy are the signs of affinity
exhibited by these early primates to the extinct South American
protopytheridæ. The latter are clearly related to the aberrant
ungulate typotherium of the South American tertiaries, which
appears to be allied on the one hand to the extinct toxodon, and
on the other to the rodents. If substantiated, such an unexpected
relationship as that of the American primates to the toxodonts
will materially modify some of our present views as to the mutual
relationships of mammals." And I may add, throw a flood of light
on the question of the "Missing Link," and the development of man
and the quadrumana from a common ancestral type.
My present object being not to write a book on geology, but on
human origins, I shall not attempt to trace back the geological
evidence beyond the Miocene, or to enter on any details of the later
periods, except so far as they bear on what may be called geological
chronology, _i.e._ on the probable dates which may be assigned to the
first appearance and subsequent evolution of the human race going
back from historical times.
Beginning with the recent or post-glacial period, the Swiss and
Italian lake-villages supply clear evidence of the progress of man
in Western Europe through the neolithic into the historical period.
They afford us an unbroken series of substantially the same state of
society, existing down to the time of the Romans, for a great many
centuries back of communities living in lake-villages built upon
piles, like the villages in Thrace described by Herodotus, or those
of the present day in New Guinea. Some of these have been occupied
continuously, so that the _débris_ of different ages are stored in
consecutive order like geological strata, and afford an unerring
test of their relative antiquity. It is clear that many of those
lake-villages were founded in the age of stone, and passed through
that of bronze into the age of iron. The oldest settlements belong to
the neolithic age, and contain polished stone implements and pottery,
but they show a state of civilization not yet very far advanced.
The inhabitants were only just emerging from the hunting into the
pastoral stage. They lived principally on the produce of the chase,
the bones of the stag and wild boar being very plentiful, while those
of ox and sheep are rare. Agriculture and the cereals seem to have
been unknown, though stores of acorns and hazel nuts were found which
had been roasted for food.
By degrees the bones of wild animals become scarce, and those of ox
and sheep common, showing that the pastoral stage had been reached;
and the goat, pig, and horse were added to the list of domestic
animals--the dog being included from the first, and the horse only at
a later period. Agriculture follows next in order, and considerable
proficiency was attained, barley and wheat being staple articles of
food, and apples, pears, and other fruit being stored for winter
consumption. Flax also was grown, and the arts of spinning and
weaving were introduced, so that clothing, instead of being confined
to skins, was made of coarse linen and woollen stuffs.
The most important advance, however, in the arts of civilization is
afforded by the introduction of metals. These begin to appear about
the middle of the neolithic period, at first very sparingly, and
in a few districts such as Spain, Upper Italy, and Hungary, where
native copper was found and was hammered into shapes modelled on the
old stone implements; but as a general rule, and in all the later
settlements, bronze, in new and improved shapes, supersedes stone
and copper. For the most part these bronze implements seem to have
been obtained by foreign commerce from the Phoenicians, Etruscans,
and other nations bordering on the Mediterranean, though in some
cases they were cast on the spot from native or imported ores. The
existence of bronze, however, must go back to a far greater antiquity
than the time when the neolithic people of Europe obtained their
first supplies from Phoenician traders. Bronze, as we have seen in a
former chapter, is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin, and the
hardest and most serviceable alloy is only to be obtained by mixing
the two in a certain definite proportion. Now it is to be noted, that
nearly all the prehistoric bronze found in Europe is an alloy in this
definite proportion. Clearly all this bronze, or the art of making
it, must have originated from some common centre.
All this, however, is very conjectural, and all that can be concluded
from it is, that any indications as to the antiquity of man derived
from the bronze age as known to us in Europe, hardly carry us back
to dates as remote as those furnished by the monuments of Egypt
and Chaldæa. Indeed, there are no facts certainly known to us from
remains of the bronze age in Europe that imply a greater antiquity
than 1500 or possibly 2000 years B.C., a date at which bronze had
undoubtedly been already known in Egypt and the East for many
centuries.
The neolithic period which preceded that of metals is of longer
duration, but still comparatively recent. Attempts have been made
to measure it by a sort of natural chronometer in the case of the
lake-villages, by comparing the amount of silting up since the
villages were built with the known rate of silting up since Roman
times. The calculations vary very much, and can only be taken as
approximative; but the oldest dates assigned do not exceed 5000
B.C., and most of them are not more than 2000 or 3000 B.C. It must
be remembered however that the foundation of a lake-village on piles
implies a long antecedent neolithic period, to have arrived at a
stage of civilization which made the construction of such villages
possible.
This civilization coincides wonderfully with that of the primitive
Aryans as shown by linguistic palæontology. The discussion as to
the origin of the Aryans has thrown a great deal of light on this
question, and has gone far to dispel the old notion that they
radiated from some centre in Asia, and overran Europe in successive
waves. On the contrary, all the evidence and all the best authorities
point to their having occupied, when we first get traces of them,
pretty much the same districts of the great plain of Northern Europe
and Southern Russia as we now find them in, and developed there their
distinct dialects and nationalities; while the words common to all or
nearly all the Aryan families point to their having been pastoral
nomads, in a state of civilization very like that of the earlier
lake-villagers, before this separation took place.
The Scandinavian kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, carry us further
back into this early neolithic period. The shell-mounds which
are found in great numbers along the Baltic shore of Denmark are
often of great size. They are formed of an accumulation of shells
of oysters, mussels, and other shell-fish, bones of wild animals,
birds, and fish, all of existing species, with numerous implements of
flint or bone, and occasional fragments of coarse pottery. They are
decidedly more archaic than the lake-dwellings, showing a much ruder
civilization of savages living like the Fuegians of the present day,
in scanty tribes on the sea-shore, supported mainly by shell-fish,
supplemented by the chase of wild animals.
The dog was their only domestic animal, and their only arts the
fabrication of rude pottery and implements of stone and bone, unless
it can be inferred from the occasional presence of bones of cod and
other deep-sea fish, that they possessed some form of boat or canoe,
and had hooks and lines or nets. These mounds must have taken an
enormous time to accumulate, for they are very numerous, and often
of great bulk, some of them being 1000 feet long, 200 feet wide, and
ten feet thick. How long such masses must have taken to accumulate
must be apparent when we consider that the state of civilization
implies a very scanty population. It has been calculated that if the
neolithic population of Denmark required as many square miles for
its support as the similar existing populations of Greenland and
Patagonia, their total number could not have exceeded 1000, and
each mound must have been the accumulation of perhaps two or three
families. Ancient, however, as these mounds must be, they are clearly
neolithic. They are sharply distinguished from the far older remains
of the palæolithic period by the knowledge, however rude, of pottery
and polished stone, and still more by the fauna, which is entirely
recent, and from which the extinct animals of the quaternary period
have disappeared; while the position of the mounds shows that only
slight geological changes, such as are now going on, have occurred
since they were accumulated. Similar mounds, on even a larger scale,
occur on the sea-coasts of various districts in Europe and America,
but they afford no indication of their date beyond that of great
antiquity.
The peat-mosses of Denmark have been appealed to as affording
something like a conjectural date for the early neolithic period
in that country. These are formed in hollows of the glacial drift,
which have been small lakes or ponds in the midst of forests, into
which trees have fallen, and which have become gradually converted
into peat by the growth of marsh plants. It is clearly established
that there have been three successive ages of forest growth, the
upper one of beech, below it one of oak, and lowest of all one of
fir. The implements and relics found in the beech stratum are all
modern, those in the oak stratum are of the later neolithic and
bronze ages, and those in the lowest, or fir-horizon, are earlier and
ruder neolithic, resembling those found in the older lake-villages
and shell-mounds. Now beech has been the characteristic forest tree
of Denmark certainly since the Roman period, or for 2000 years, and
no one can say for how much longer. If the speculations as to the
origin of the Aryan race in Northern Europe are correct, it must have
been for very much longer, as the word for beech is common to so
many of the dialects into which the primitive Aryan language became
divided. The stages of oaks and firs must equally have been of long
duration, and the different stages could only have been brought about
by slow secular variations of climate during the post-glacial period.
Still this affords no reliable information as to specific dates, and
we can only take Steenstrup's calculation of from 4000 to 16,000
years for the formation of some of these peat-bogs as a very vague
estimate, and this only carries us back to a time when Egypt and
Chaldæa must have been already densely peopled, and far advanced in
civilization.
On the whole, it seems that the neolithic arrow-heads found in
Egypt, and the fragments of pottery brought up by borings through
the deposits of the Nile, are the oldest certain human relics of the
neolithic age which have yet been discovered, and these do not carry
us back further than a possible date of 15,000 or 20,000 years B.C.
Nor is there any certainty that any of the neolithic remains found
in the newer deposits of rivers and the upper strata of caves go
further, or even so far back as these relics of an Egyptian stone
period. All that the evidence really shows is, that while the
neolithic period must have lasted for a long time as compared with
historical standards, its duration is almost infinitesimally small
as compared with that of the preceding palæolithic period. Thus in
Kent's Cavern neolithic remains are only found in a small surface
layer of black earth from three to twelve inches thick; while below
this, palæolithic implements and a quaternary fauna occur in an
upper stalagmite one to three feet thick, below it in red cave earth
five to six feet thick; then in a lower stalagmite in places ten or
twelve feet thick, and below it again in a breccia three or four feet
thick. This is confirmed by the evidence of all the caves explored in
all parts of the world, which uniformly show any neolithic remains
confined to a superficial layer of a few inches with many feet of
palæolithic strata below them. And river-drifts in the same manner
show neolithic remains confined to the alluvia and peat-beds of
existing streams, while palæolithic remains occur during the whole
series of deposits while these rivers were excavating their present
valleys. If we say feet for inches, or twelve for one, we shall be
well within the mark in estimating the comparative duration of the
palæolithic and neolithic periods, as measured by the thickness
of their deposits in caves and river-drifts; and as we shall see
hereafter, other geological evidence from elevations and depressions,
denudations and depositions, point to even a higher figure.
In going back from the neolithic into the palæolithic period, we
are confronted by the difficulty to which I have already referred,
of there being no hard-and-fast lines by which geological eras are
clearly separated from one another. Zoologically there seems to be
a very decided break between the recent and the quaternary. The
instances are rare and doubtful in which we can see any trace of the
remains of palæolithic man, and of the fauna of extinct animals,
passing gradually into those of neolithic and recent times. But
geologically there is no such abrupt break. We cannot draw a line
at the culmination of the last great glaciation and say, here the
glacial period ends and the post-glacial begins. Nor can we say of
any definite period or horizon, this is glacial and this recent.
A great number of palæolithic remains and of quaternary fossils are
undoubtedly post-glacial in the sense of being found in deposits
which have accumulated since the last great glaciers and ice-caps
began to retreat. Existing valleys have been excavated to a great
extent since the present rivers, swollen by the melting snows and
torrential rains of this period of the latest glacial retreat,
superseded old lines of drainage, and began to wear down the surface
of the earth into its present aspect. This phase is more properly
included in the term glacial, for both the coming on and the
disappearance of the periods of intense cold are as much part of the
phenomenon as their _maximum_ culmination, and very probably occupied
much longer intervals of time. In like manner, we cannot positively
say when this post-glacial period ended and the recent began. Not, I
should say, until the exceptional effects of the last great glacial
period had finally disappeared, and the climate, geographical
conditions, and fauna had assumed nearly or entirely the modern
conditions in which we find them at the commencement of history.
And this may have been different in different countries, for local
conditions might make the glacial period commence sooner and continue
later in some districts than in others. Thus in North America, where
the glaciation was more intense, and the ice-cap extended some ten
degrees further south than in Europe, it might well be that it was
later in retreating and disappearing. The elevation of the Laurentian
highlands into the region of perpetual snow was evidently one main
factor of the American ice-cap, just as that of Scandinavia was of
that of Europe, and it by no means follows that their depression
was simultaneous. It would be unwise, for instance, to take the time
occupied in cutting back the Niagara gorge by a river which only
began to run at some stage of the post-glacial period, as an absolute
test of the duration of that period all over the world. Indeed, the
glacial period cannot be said to have ended and the post-glacial
begun at the present day in Greenland, if the disappearance of the
ice-cap over very extensive regions is to be taken as the test.
Any approximation to the duration of the post-glacial period in any
given locality can only be obtained by defining its commencement with
the first deposits which lie above the latest glacial drift, and
measuring the amount of work done since.
This has been done very carefully by the officers of the Geological
Survey and other eminent authorities in England and Scotland, and the
result clearly shows that since the last glaciation left the country
buried in a thick mantle of boulder-clay and drift, such an amount of
denudation, and such movements of elevation and depression have taken
place, as must have required a great lapse of time. The most complete
attempt at an estimate of this time is that made by Mr. Mellard Read
of the Geological Survey, from the changes proved to have occurred in
the Mersey valley.
In this case it is shown that the valley, almost in its present
dimensions, must have been first carved out of an uniform plain of
glacial drift and upper boulder-clay by sub-aërial denudation; then
that a depression let the sea into the valley and accumulated a
series of estuarine clays and silts; then an elevation raised the
whole into a plain on which grew an extensive forest of oak rooted
in the clays; this again must have subsided and let in the sea for a
second time, which must have remained long enough to leave a large
estuarine deposit, and finally the whole must have been raised to
the present level before historical times. The phenomenon of the
submerged forest is a very general one, being traced along almost all
the sea-coasts of Western Europe, where shelving shores and sheltered
bays favour the preservation of patches of this primæval forest.
It testifies to a considerable amount of elevation and subsequent
depression, for its remains can be traced below low-water mark, and
are occasionally dredged up far out to sea, and stately oaks could
not have flourished unless more or less continental conditions had
prevailed.
It is evident that in this age of forests the German Ocean must
have been dry land, and the continent of Europe must have extended
beyond the Orkneys and Hebrides, probably to the hundred fathom
line. Such movements of elevation and depression, so far as we know
anything of them, are extremely slow. There has been no change in
the fords of rivers in Britain since Roman times, and the spit
connecting St. Michael's Mount with Cornwall was dry at ebb and
covered at flood as at the present day, when the British carted
their tin across it to trade with the Phoenicians 2500 years ago.
Mr. Read goes into elaborate calculations based on the time required
for these geological changes, and arrives at the conclusion that
they point to a date of not less than 50,000 or 60,000 years ago
for the commencement of the post-glacial period. These calculations
are disputed, but it seems certain that several multiples of the
historical standard of say 10,000 years, must be required to
measure the period since the glacial age finally disappeared,
and the earth, with its existing fauna, climate, and geographical
conditions, came fairly into view. This is confirmed by the great
changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and
water since the quaternary period. Huxley, in an article on the
Aryan question, points out that in recent times four great separate
bodies of water--the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, and
Lake Balkash--occupied the southern end of the vast plains which
extend from the Arctic Sea to the highlands of the Balkan peninsula,
of Asia Minor, of Persia and Afghanistan, and of the high plateaux
of Central Asia, as far as the Altai. But he says, "This state of
things is comparatively modern. At no very distant period the land
of Asia Minor was continuous with that of Europe, across the present
site of the Bosphorus, forming a barrier several hundred feet high,
which dammed up the waters of the Black Sea. A vast extent of Eastern
Europe and of west-central Asia thus became one vast Ponto-Aralian
Mediterranean, into which the largest rivers of Europe and Asia,
the Danube, Volga, Oxus, and Jaxartes, discharged their waters, and
which sent its overflow northwards through the present basin of the
Obi." The time necessary for such changes goes far to confirm Mellard
Read's estimate for the long duration of the recent or post-glacial
period.
In fact, all the evidence from the Old World goes to confirm the
long duration of the post-glacial period, and the immensely greater
antiquity of the glacial period taken as a whole. It is only from
the New World that any serious arguments are forthcoming to abridge
those periods, or rather the post-glacial period, for that alone is
affected by the facts adduced. It is said that recent measurements
of the recession of the Falls of Niagara show, that instead of
requiring 35,000 years, as estimated by Lyell, to cut back the gorge
of seven miles from Kingston to the Falls, 10,000 years at the
outside would have been amply sufficient; and that this is confirmed
by the gorges of other rivers, such as that of the Mississippi at St.
Paul's. The evidence is not conclusive, for it depends on the rate
of erosion going on for the last twenty or thirty years, which may
obviously give a different result from the true average, and in fact
older estimates, based on longer periods, gave the rate adopted by
Lyell. But if we admit the accuracy of the modern estimates, it does
not affect the total duration of the glacial period, but simply that
of a late phase of the post-glacial, when the ice-cap which covered
North America to a depth often of 2000 or 3000 feet, had melted away
and shrunk back 400 miles from its original southern boundary, so as
to admit of the waters of the great lakes finding an outlet to the
north-east instead of by the old drainage to the south. Nothing is
more likely than that, as the great Laurentian ice-cap of America was
deeper and extended further than the Scandinavian ice-cap of Europe,
it may have taken longer to melt the larger accumulation of ice,
and thus postponed the establishment of post-glacial conditions and
river-drainage to a later period than in the warmer and more insular
climate of Europe. It is a matter of everyday observation, that the
larger a snowball is the longer it takes to melt, and that when the
mass is large it requires a long time to make it disappear even after
mild weather has set in.
The only other argument for a short glacial period is drawn from the
rate of advance of the glaciers in Greenland, which is shown to be
much more rapid than that of the glaciers of Switzerland, from which
former calculations had been made. But obviously the rate at which
the fronts of glaciers advance when forced by a mass of continental
ice down fiords on a steep descending gradient, into a deep sea,
where the front is floated off in icebergs, affords no clue as to
that of an ice-cap spread, with a front of 1000 miles, over half a
continent, retarded by friction, and surmounting mountain chains 3000
feet high. Nor does the rate of advance afford the slightest clue
to the time during which the ice-cap may have remained stationary,
alternately advanced and retreated, and finally disappeared.[9]
[9] The following is the latest pronouncement on the subject from
a well-known American geologist:--
"Students of the Ice Age will read with interest a paper by
Mr. N. S. Shaler on the antiquity of the last glacial period,
submitted to the Boston Society of Natural History, and printed
in the latest instalment of the Society's Proceedings. Mr. Shaler
differs decidedly from those geologists who suppose that the end
of the glacial period is probably not very remote from our own
day. One of the strongest of his arguments is derived from the
distribution of the vegetation, which in America has regained
possession, by migration, of the glaciated district. We must
conceive, he points out, that as the ice retreated and gradually
disappeared from the surface, a considerable time elapsed before
existing forests attained their organization. He assumes as
certain that the black walnut and the pignut hickory, between
Western Minnesota and the Atlantic coast, have advanced, on the
average, a distance of 400 miles north of the ancient ice front
to which their ancestors were driven by the presence of the
glacial sheet. For several reasons he believes that the northward
progress of these forms must have been due mainly, not to the
action of streams or tornadoes, but to the natural spread of the
seed from the extremities of boughs, and to the carriage of the
seed by rodents. But allowing for every conceivable method of
transportation, he argues that a period of ten or even twenty
thousand years is wholly inadequate to account for the present
distribution of these large-seeded trees. If they occurred only
sporadically in the northernmost part of the field they occupy,
their implantation might be regarded as due to chance action. The
fact, however, that they extend from the Atlantic to Minnesota
indicates that the advance was accomplished by causes of a
general and continuous nature."