the volume of Scripture, is the shortness of the time into which
all history is (or at any rate appears to be) compressed, by the
chronological statements, especially those of Genesis. The exodus of
the Jews is fixed by many considerations to about the fifteenth or
sixteenth century before our era. The period between the Flood and the
Exodus, according to the numbers of our English version, but a very
little exceeds a thousand years. Consequently, it has been usual to
regard Scripture as authoritatively laying it down that all mankind
sprang from a single pair within twenty-five or twenty-six centuries
of the Christian era, and therefore that all history, and not only
so, but all the changes by which the various races of men were formed,
by which languages developed into their numerous and diverse types, by
which civilization and art emerged and gradually perfected themselves,
are shut up within the narrow space of 2,500 or 2,600 years before
the birth of our Lord. Now this time is said with reason to be quite
insufficient. Egypt and Babylonia have histories, as settled kingdoms,
which reach back (according to the most moderate of modern critical
historians) to about the time at which the numbers of our English Bible
place the Deluge. Considerable diversities of language can be proved to
have existed at that date; markedly different physical types appear not
much subsequently; civilization in Egypt has, about the Pyramid period,
which few now place later than B.C. 2,450, an advanced character; the
arts exist nearly in the shape in which they were known in the country
at its most flourishing period. Clearly, a considerable space is wanted
anterior to the pyramid age for the gradual development of Egyptian
life into the condition which the monuments show to have been then
reached. This space the numbers of our English Bible do not allow.
Such is the difficulty. Now how is it to be met? In the first place,
candour should (I think) induce all those who urge it to let their
readers, or hearers, know that a special uncertainty attaches to the
numbers in question, from the fact that they are given differently in
the different ancient versions. We possess the Pentateuch in three very
ancient forms, in Hebrew, in the Greek version known as the Septuagint,
and in Samaritan. Our English numbers represent those of the Hebrew
text. The numbers of the Septuagint and the Samaritan version are
different. Those of the Samaritan version extend the period between
the Deluge and the birth of Abraham from the 292 years of the Hebrew
text to 942 years,--an addition of six centuries and a half--while
those of the Septuagint, according to some copies, give 1,072 years
as the interval, according to others 1,172 years, thus increasing the
period between the Deluge and Abraham by a space of nearly eight, or
nearly nine centuries. Now if the Greek, or even if the Samaritan,
numbers are the right ones, if they represent, that is, the original
text, it may be questioned whether anything more is wanted. It may be
questioned whether a term of from six to eight centuries is not enough
for the production of that state of things which we find existing in
Babylonia and in Egypt when the light of history first dawns upon them,
whether within that space might not have been produced such a state of
civilization, so much progress in art, such differences of physical
type, and such diversities of language as appear to have existed at
that period.
If, however, the ultimate verdict of calm reason, and rigid scientific
inquiry should be against this view, if more time seem to be absolutely
wanted for the development of settled government, of art, science,
language, ethnical diversities, varieties of physical type, and the
like, than even the enlarged chronology of the Septuagint allows, then
I should not be afraid to grant that the original record of Scripture
on this point may have been lost, and that, as it is certain that we
cannot possess the actual chronological scheme of Moses in more than
one of the three extant versions of his words which have come to us
with almost equal authority, so it is quite possible that we may not
posses his real scheme in any. Nothing in ancient MSS. is so liable to
corruption from the mistakes of copyists as the numbers; the original
mode of writing them appears in all countries of which we have any
knowledge to have been by signs, not very different from one another;
the absence of any context determining in favour of one number rather
than another, where the copy is blotted or faded, increases the chance
of error, and thus it happens that in almost all ancient works the
numbers are found to be deserving of very little reliance. Where they
to any extent check one another, they are generally self-contradictory;
where they do not, they are frequently in the highest degree improbable.
A second historical difficulty connected with Genesis was much
insisted upon by the late Baron Bunsen. The primitive Babylonian
kingdom is declared in the tenth chapter of Genesis to have been
Cushite. Baron Bunsen held that there were no Cushites out of
Africa, and that "an Asiatic Cush existed only in the imagination
of Biblical interpreters, and was the child of their despair."[68]
But an analysis of the earliest documents recovered from Babylonia
has shown that the primitive Babylonian people, that which raised
the first structures whereof any trace remains, in the country, and
whose buildings had gone to ruin in the days of Nebuchadnezzar,
was (at any rate to a large extent) Cushite, its vocabulary being
"undoubtedly Cushite or Ethiopian," and presenting numerous analogies
with those of the non-Semitic races of modern Abyssinia. Hence, modern
historical science, in the person of one of its best representatives,
M. Lenormant, commences now the history of the East with a "First
Cushite Empire," which it regards as dominant in Babylonia for several
centuries before the earliest Semitic Empire arose.[69]
A difficulty less noticed, yet one which was, in the state of our
historical knowledge a few years since, more real, may be found in the
narrative contained in the 14th chapter of Genesis with respect to the
invasion of Palestine in the time of Abraham by a number of kings from
the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. These kings act under the presidency
of a monarch, called Chedorlaomer (or Chedor-lagomer), who is stated to
be "king of Elam." Now till very recently there was no profane evidence
that Elam--which is not Persia, as many have supposed, but Elymaïs or
Susiana, the country between Babylonia and Persia--had ever been an
independent state, much less a powerful kingdom, and still less one
that at so remote a date could have exercised suzerainty over so many
and such important nations. But the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions
have shown that throughout almost the whole of the Assyrian period Elam
maintained herself as an independent state and one of considerable
military strength on the south-eastern borders of the empire; and
very recently[70] it has further been discovered that, according to
the Assyrian belief, an Elamitic king was strong enough to invade and
plunder Babylonia at a date, which expressed in our ordinary manner
would be B.C. 2,286, or somewhat earlier than the time commonly
assigned to Abraham. Further, the primitive Babylonian remains bear
traces of the extension of Elamitic influence into Babylonia at a
remote era; and the possibility of such distant military expeditions
at this far-off period of the world's history, receives illustration
at once from the epithet "Ravager of Syria," which is borne by a
Babylonian monarch of about this date, and also from the numerous
expeditions conducted not very much later by the Egyptian princes from
the valley of the Nile into Mesopotamia.
No other historical difficulties, so far as I know, present themselves
in the narrative of Genesis. Some attempts were made in Germany,
about thirty or forty years ago, to prove that the description of
Egypt contained in the latter portion of the book exhibited numerous
"mistakes and inaccuracies;" but the "mistakes and inaccuracies"
alleged were scarcely of an historical character, and the writers who
alleged them have been so triumphantly refuted by Hengstenberg, and
others, that the sceptical school has ceased to urge the point, and now
allows the entire truthfulness and accuracy of the whole account. Few
things are in truth more remarkable than the _complete_ harmony and
accordance which exist between the picture of ancient Egypt and the
ancient Egyptians, as drawn for us by Moses, and that portraiture of
them which is now obtainable from their own contemporary writings and
monuments.
With regard to the narrative contained in the last four books of the
Pentateuch, modern criticism has chiefly employed itself in objections
turning upon the numbers. The multiplication of the Israelites, as
related in Genesis and Exodus, has been declared to be utterly and
absolutely incredible. The sudden exodus from Egypt of a body of
two millions of persons in the way narrated has been pronounced an
impossibility. The subsistence of such a multitude, with their flocks
and herds, in the Desert of Tih for forty years, or even a single year,
has been said to be inconceivable. Many minor objections, turning
on the same point of numerical difficulty, have been urged, and the
conclusion has been drawn that the entire narrative of Exodus, Numbers,
Leviticus, and Deuteronomy is unhistorical--a romance drawn up at a
comparatively late period of the nation's history, having perhaps a
certain historic foundation, but in its details wholly and entirely
imaginary.[71]
Now, with respect to these objections, let it be observed, in the
first place, that they all turn upon the one point of number; and that
the numbers of the sacred texts are (as has been already observed)
exactly the part of it which is most liable to corruption and least to
be depended upon. So that if the difficulties of the multiplication,
as stated, of the exit from Egypt, the march, the passage of the Red
Sea, and the sojourn in the wilderness, were all allowed to be as
great as represented, it would be enough to reply that there may have
been a corruption of the numbers--the addition (say) of a cipher in
each case--and that the whole narrative would stand good, and the
difficulties disappear, if for "six hundred thousand that were men" in
Exodus xii. 37, we were to read 60,000, and so on--the entire exodus
being thus made one of 200,000 instead of two million souls. But this
mode of meeting the difficulty is not, perhaps, here the right one. The
numbers may be defended as they stand. In Germany the best critics,
including so subtle and little credulous a writer as Ewald, accept
them. They seem required by the general tenor of the whole narrative,
especially by the great unwillingness of the Egyptians to let the
people go, and by their power, within little more than a generation to
conquer and occupy Canaan. Assuming therefore the numbers to be sound,
to have come to us as they were delivered by Moses, let us inquire what
the great difficulties are of which so much has been made, and see if
they are really so insuperable.
In the first place, as to the multiplication in Egypt. Now here, before
we can form any judgment, two things have to be determined--"What was
the number of the Israelites when they entered Egypt," and "What was
the duration of their stay there?" What was their number when they
entered Egypt? We are commonly told, "seventy souls." Now, no doubt,
these words occur in Scripture, "All the souls of the house of Jacob,
which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten."[72] But, when we
come to look into details, we find first, that the seventy souls of
Jacob's descendants comprise only two women, the married daughters and
grand-daughters of Jacob not being mentioned, who yet, we are told,
followed the migrations of the tribe,[73] and no account being taken of
the wives of his sons and grandsons. Supplying these omissions, we have
for the family of Jacob as it entered Egypt, the number 267, instead
of the number seventy, or nearly four times the ordinary estimate. But
this is far from being all. The children of Israel entered Egypt with
their households, or retainers.[74] What the size of a patriarchal
household was we may gather from the history of Abraham, who had 318
trained servants born in his house, capable of active military service.
It has been well observed that "we shall scarcely find so many in a
clan of three thousand souls."[75] Jacob's retainers are likely to have
been more numerous rather than less numerous than those of Abraham; and
the conclusion of Kurtz, that they amounted to "several thousands"[76]
is therefore perfectly reasonable. It appears to me quite probable that
the tribe which took possession of the Land of Goshen on the invitation
of Joseph and Pharaoh was a body of five or six thousand persons.
Next, as to the duration of the sojourn in Egypt, the Hebrew text
lays it down very positively that it was 430 years.[77] The best MSS.
of the Septuagint agree. There was a tradition among the later Jews
which brought down the term to 215 years; but this tradition cannot
reasonably be set against the plain words of Exodus; and consequently
we must take 430 years as the duration of the sojourn.
Is it then, or is it not, conceivable, that under the circumstances
of the time and country, a tribe or clan of 5,000 persons may have
increased in 430 years to one of two millions? Here it has to be
remembered that there were two modes whereby they might increase, one
that of ordinary natural increase, the other by augmentation of the
number of their retainers. The natural tendency of population has been
shown by Mr. Malthus, to be to double itself, if unchecked, every 25
years.[78] The Israelites, having the land of Goshen, a large fertile
territory, capable of supporting a population of several millions,
assigned them, would be in a position where the checks on the natural
tendency, especially at first, would be very slight. Now, according
to the estimate of Mr. Malthus, a body of 5,000 persons increasing
without check, would have become more than two millions at the end of
225 years; a body of 267 persons would have exceeded the same amount
at the close of 325 years; and a body even of seventy persons would
have done the same at the expiration of 375 years; so that, except for
the operation of artificial checks, the family of Jacob, had it really
consisted of seventy persons only, would have become one of above two
millions fifty-five years before the time of the exodus. But, no doubt,
as the increase took place, the artificial checks, which keep down
the natural tendency of population, began to operate, and the result
was, that if the original immigrants were, as I have supposed, about
5,000, the actual rate of increase had been a doubling, not once each
twenty-five years, but once each forty-eight years, or not very much
beyond the rate which prevails in our own country at the present time.
If we add to this the consideration that the Israelites, being in a
very flourishing condition during the earlier portion of their sojourn
in Egypt, would naturally augment, by purchase, the number of their
households, and might even receive, by agreement, whole tribes into
their body, we shall not be surprised that at the end of the 430 years,
the clan had grown to be a nation of two million souls.
With respect to the difficulties of the exit of this large body of
persons from Egypt in the sudden way which the narrative in Exodus
seems to describe, they depend (I think) mainly on the broad and
general manner of description habitual to Oriental writers, who do not
trouble themselves with details, or with exceptions, but describe _in
the mass_, stating that to be done by all which was done by most, or
by those of most account; regarding a nation as concentrated in its
heads; and directing attention to the main events, to the neglect of
the various details into which they were broken up. A candid reader,
making fair allowance for these characteristics of Oriental style,
and for the brevity of the sacred narrative, will scarcely be much
troubled by the difficulties of the start and the march, as they
have been urged by some critics. It is certain migrations of tribes,
quite as large as that of Israel is said to have been, have from time
to time taken place in the east, and indeed in the west also. Such
migrations have frequently been sudden--the emigrants have started off
with their women, children, and all their possessions on a certain
day[79]--they have traversed enormous distances, much greater ones than
the Israelites traversed, and have finally settled themselves in new
abodes. That the Israelites made such a migration there cannot be a
doubt. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, all accepted the fact as certain.
Cavils as to their exact numbers, or as to the particular expressions
used in Exodus, do not touch the main fact, but show (if they show
anything) either that our ancient manuscripts are here and there
defective, or that an early Oriental historian does not write in the
exact and accurate style of a nineteenth-century occidental critic.
The difficulty which attaches to the subsistence of the Israelites
for forty years in the wilderness of Tih, concerns almost wholly the
sustenance of their flocks and herds, which are said to have been
numerous, and have been calculated at two million head of cattle. The
answer to this difficulty may be very brief. In the first place, we
are not told that the cattle did not very rapidly decrease; for no
mention is made of the people possessing any considerable number in
the later portion of the sojourn, until an enormous booty is captured
from the Midianites;[80] and in the second place, there is ample reason
to believe that the wilderness was anciently very much more fertile
than it is at present, and quite capable of furnishing pasturage to
flocks and herds of a large size. The recent explorations of Mr.
Tristram and Mr. Holland have placed this fact beyond a doubt, and have
shown that the Sinaitic peninsula, at any rate, was a "desert" merely
in comparison with the richly agricultural countries of Egypt and
Palestine.
Historical difficulties are scarcely alleged with respect to the
portion of the Biblical narrative which follows upon the sojourn in
the wilderness. The conquest of Canaan by the immigrant Israelites is
a fact too well attested to be denied; and the subsequent chequered
history of the race, as delivered to us in Judges and in the First
Book of Samuel, is for the most part too modest and unpretending an
account to tempt the assaults of sceptics. The exploits of Gideon and
Samson are viewed indeed with incredulity; but merely on the ground
that they are intrinsically improbable. It is not until we come to the
time of David and Solomon that any further difficulties, really of an
historical character, present themselves, and that an examination of
the difficulties by the light of historical documents becomes possible.
The sudden rise of the Israelites to power and greatness in the reign
of David, the grandeur, magnificence, and extent of the kingdom of
Solomon, and the entire collapse of the empire at his death appear to
some, not merely in themselves strange and improbable, but incompatible
with what is known from history of the condition of the neighbouring
countries. The little country of Palestine was placed midway between
the territories of two great and powerful monarchies, of which it may
be said, in a general way, that for a thousand years before the rise
of the Persians to power, they contested the sovereignty of the East.
Over-shadowed by the grand forms of Egypt and Assyria, how could Israel
(it may be asked) emerge from obscurity, how especially advance at
a bound from a dependent to a dominant position, asserting, and for
above fifty years maintaining, her place among the great ones of the
earth? We may answer, that, in the first place such a revolution has
numerous analogies in the history of the East, where the rapid rise of
petty states to greatness, the sudden conversion of an oppressed into a
dominant power, is the rule rather than the exception; where Babylon,
Media, Persia, Parthia, where the histories of Timur, Yenghis Khan,
Nadir Shah, all illustrate it. But further, in this particular case,
we can see not only a general analogy, but a fitness in the peculiar
circumstances of the time for the production of such a phenomenon as
that which Scripture places before us. The monumental evidence of the
two countries shows, that exactly at the time when the conquests of
David and the Empire of Solomon are placed, both Egypt and Assyria were
exceptionally weak. Egypt, after the time of Ramesses III. (ab. B.C.
1,200) ceased to be aggressive on the side of Syria, and continued
until the accession of Sheshonk or Shishak, (ab. B.C. 990) to be a
quiet and unwarlike power. Assyria, which, about B.C. 1,100, extended
her sway into the valley of the Orontes, and threatened Palestine with
subjection, passed under a cloud soon afterwards, and did not again
become a terror to Syria, till about B.C. 880. For a Jewish Empire to
arise it was necessary that Egypt and Assyria should be simultaneously
weak. Such simultaneous weakness is found for the hundred or hundred
and twenty years between B.C. 1,100 and B.C. 990. And exactly into this
interval fall the rise of the Jews to power under Saul and David, and
the establishment of their empire under Solomon.
Doubts were thrown a few years since, by an able writer, on the
expeditions of Shishak against Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and of Zerah,
the Ethiopian, against Asa, Rehoboam's grandson;[81] which, it was
suggested, might be mere embellishments of a history, otherwise tame
and uninteresting. The careful analysis which the inscription of
Shishak at Karnac has undergone at the hands of Mr. Stuart Poole,[82]
and Dr. Brugsch,[83] not to mention other scholars, and the evidence
thus furnished of the reality and the importance of his expedition into
Palestine, render the continuance of incredulity, as to the former of
these attacks, impossible. The analysis has thrown a flood of light
on what was previously obscure in the scriptural narrative. It has
shown that Shishak went up, not so much with any extensive scheme of
conquest, as to settle his _protegé_, Jeroboam, in his kingdom, where
he was in great danger from the Levitical and Canaanite towns not
being in his hands. These Shishak reduced and made over to Jeroboam,
thus giving him a firm hold on the northern kingdom. Having done
this, he was content to receive the mere submission of Rehoboam, and
allowed him to retain the southern kingdom, perhaps not wishing to make
Jeroboam too strong. It was the constant practice of the great monarchs
of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, to maintain, on dependent thrones, a
large number of petty princes, who were checks upon each other, and
could easily be dealt with, if they shewed any inclination to rebellion.
The expedition of Zerah has not yet received any distinct confirmation
from monuments. But the recent discovery that there reigned about
this time a king called _Azerch_-Amen in Ethiopia, has removed the
difficulties which attached to the name and the description of the
invader, and has indicated to the dispassionate and candid student,
that here, too, the Jewish historian had probably contemporary records
to guide him, and related real facts of history, not figments drawn
from his imagination.
A real historical difficulty meets us soon after this, in the sacred
narrative, in the invasion of the kingdom of Samaria, by Pul, who
is called a "king of Assyria," and is said to have put Menahem to a
tribute of a thousand talents of silver.[84] We possess the history
of Assyria for this period, apparently in a state of completeness;
and this history shows us no monarch at this time (or indeed at any
other time), bearing a name in the least resembling that of Pul. The
predecessor of Tiglath-pileser on the throne of Assyria, was a certain
Asshur-lush (or Asshur-likkis), whose predecessor was Asshur-dayan, who
followed on Shalmaneser III. It seems impossible that any one of these
kings can be Pul. Moreover, Assyria, in the time immediately preceding
the accession of Tiglath-pileser, instead of being a great, aggressive
power, capable of marching armies into Palestine, was in a depressed
state, troubled by frequent insurrections among her own subjects, and
quite incapable of sending out distant military expeditions. Thus "Pul,
king of Assyria," constitutes to the modern historical inquirer a real
difficulty--a difficulty which it has been proposed to meet in various
ways.