MOSES AND THE PROPHETS.
In the foregoing chapters we have found, that we have great need of
God's teaching; that he has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the
way of life; that the gospel preached by him and his apostles has proved
itself the power of God, by saving men from their sins; and that this
gospel is truly recorded in the New Testament. From these facts, already
settled, we proceed, according to our plan of investigation, to examine
those which may be more obscure; to examine the Old Testament by the
light of the New.
The great majority of Jews and Christians have always believed, that the
world was in as great need of God's teaching before the coming of Christ
as it has been since; that God did put his words into the mouths of
certain persons, called prophets; and that he caused them to tell them
truly to their neighbors; that he enabled these prophets to make
predictions of future events beyond the skill of man to calculate, and
to do miracles which the power of man could not perform, as proofs that
they spake the Word of God; that he caused them truly to record in
writing a great many of these revelations, and so much of the history of
the times in which, and of the people to whom, they were given, as was
needful for a right understanding of them; that he has so managed
matters since, as that these revelations and narratives have been
faithfully preserved in the books of the Old Testament; that we are
bound to believe these revelations to be true, not because we can
otherwise demonstrate their truth, but because God, who can not lie,
has declared it; and that we are bound to do the things they command,
not merely because we see them to be right, but because God commands us.
It is needful to consider the divine authority of the Old Testament
distinctly from that of the New, not only because it is a distinct
subject in itself, and because our plan of investigation leads us
backward from the known and established fact of the divine authority of
the New Testament to the discovery or disproof of the like character in
the Old; but because a great many persons admit, in words at least, that
Christ was a teacher sent from God, who, either in so many words, or in
effect, deny the divine authority of the Old Testament. Some of the
modern Rationalists have revived the creed of the Gnostics of the first
century--that the Hebrew Jehovah was a being of very different character
from the Deity revealed by Jesus Christ. They will extol to the skies
the world-wide benevolence, compassion and kindness of the gospel of
Christ, in contrast with the alleged national pride, bigotry, and
exclusiveness of the Hebrew prophets. Others are desirous of appearing
remarkably candid in bestowing on the Old Testament a liberal
commendation as a collection of religious tracts of merely human origin,
and of various degrees of merit; some of them of extraordinary literary
excellence, well suited to the infancy of the human intellect, and
highly useful in their time in raising men from fetichism and idolatry
to the worship of one God; but which, containing many errors along with
this grand truth, have been set aside by the more perfect teachings of
Christ and his apostles, much in the same way as the old Ptolemaic
astronomy was displaced by the discoveries of Newton. Others still are
willing to acknowledge the Old Testament as inspired, provided we will
allow Shakespeare and the Koran to be inspired also. Besides all these,
there are several scores of scholars anxious to conceal its nakedness
under theories of inspiration made and trimmed in a great many styles,
but all cut from the same doctrine, to wit, that God revealed his truth
aright to Moses and the prophets, but they went wrong in the telling of
it. Now, all these notions are refuted by the fact, that God is the
Author of the Bible.
When we say that God is the Author of the Bible, and that it carries
with it a divine authority because it is the Word of God, we do not mean
that God is the Author of every saying in it, and that every sentiment
recorded in it is God's mind, any more than we mean to make D'Aubigne
responsible for every sentiment of priests, popes and monks which he has
faithfully recorded in his History of the Reformation. On the contrary,
we find, in the very beginning of the Bible, a very full expression of
the devil's sentiments recorded in the devil's own words--_Ye shall not
surely die_--and they are not one whit less devilish and lying, though
recorded in the Bible, than when expounded by any modern Universalist
preacher. But we mean that it is very true that the devil was the
preacher of that first Universalist sermon: and that God thought it
needful to let mankind know the shape of the doctrine, the character of
the preacher, and the consequences of listening to error; and therefore
directed Moses to record it truly for the information of all whom it may
concern. So there are many other sayings of wicked men, and even of good
men, recorded in the Bible, which are very false; but the Bible gives a
true record of them, by God's direction, that we may not be ignorant of
Satan's devices.
Nor, when we say that God directed the prophets what to write, and how
to write it, so that they did not go wrong in the writing of his word,
do we mean that he also so guided every piece of their behavior, as that
they never went wrong in doing their own actions; nor that the sins of
the saints, recorded in the Bible, are anything the less sinful for
being recorded there, or for being performed by men who ought to have
known better. There is not a perfect man upon the earth, that doeth
good, and sinneth not. If the Bible had left the faults of its writers
undiscovered it would not have been a true history. But these very
writers of the Bible tell us their own transgressions, under the
direction of the Spirit of God; a thing writers in general are very shy
about. Moses tells us how he spake unadvisedly with his lips, and was
punished for it. David's penitential psalms record the bitter tears he
wept over his transgression; tears which could not wash out the sentence
against the man after God's own heart--_the sword shall never depart
from thy house_. An overburdened people, a rotten court, a falling
empire, continual strife, a family of scolding women, and a foolish
son--might have been considered sufficient marks of God's displeasure,
without causing the wisest of men to pen, and publish to the world, such
a minute record of his madness, folly and misery, as we find in
Ecclesiastes. But these shipwrecked mariners were divinely directed to
pile up the sad memorials of their errors on the reefs where they were
wrecked, as beacons of warning to all inexperienced voyagers on life's
treacherous sea. The light-house is built by the same authority as the
custom-house, and is even more necessary.
Now let us take note of the objects of our investigation. We are not in
search of the literary beauty or poetic inspiration of the Bible; but we
inquire by what right does it command our obedience? Nor are we about to
inquire whether, when we have tried the Bible at the tribunal of our
reason, we shall give it a diploma to commend it to the patronage of
other critics; but whether it comes to us attested by such evidence of
being the Word of God, that our reason shall reverently bow down before
it as a higher authority, and seek light from it by which to judge of
all spiritual and moral matters.
Attempts are continually made to confuse these great questions, by
concessions of the literary excellence of the Bible, on the part of
those who deny its divine authority. For instance, one of the modern
oracles of infidelity says, and his admirers incessantly repeat the
grand discovery: "The writings of the Prophets contain nothing above the
reach of the human faculties. Here are noble and spirit-stirring appeals
to men's conscience, patriotism, honor and religion; beautiful poetic
descriptions, odes, hymns, expressions of faith almost beyond praise.
But the mark of human infirmity is on them all, and proofs or signs of
miraculous inspiration are not found in them."[120]
But what do the toiling millions of earth care about beautiful poetic
descriptions of a heaven and a hell that have no reality? Or what does
it signify to you or me, reader, that the Bible raises its head far
above the other cedars of earthly literature? If its top reaches not to
heaven, can it make a ladder long enough to carry us there? The Bible
contains predictions beyond the reach of the human faculties, as we have
fully proved. These predictions at least are from God, and have no mark
of human infirmity on them.
It does not at all meet this question to grant that the Bible is
inspired, just as every work of genius is inspired; nor to profess that
they believe the Bible to be from God, just as every pure and holy
thought, and every good work, proceed from him. When the assertors of
the divine authority of the Bible speak of it as inspired, they mean
that it is so as no other book is; and when they speak of it as coming
from God, they mean that it does not come simply as a gift of God's
bounty, as the soldier's land-warrant comes from the government; but
that it comes like the laws of Congress, carrying authority with it to
command our obedience.
We feel no interest whatever in the discussion of an inspiration, "like
God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews,
Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or
perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the
solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use
could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and
holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if
it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is that
everything good in any book, person or thing, is inspired? Milton and
Shakespeare, and Bacon and the Canticles, the Apocalypse and the Sermon
on the Mount, and the Eighth Chapter of the Romans are all inspired. How
much inspiration they respectively contain must be gathered from their
results."[123]
This liberal grant of inspiration, alike to Moses and Mohammed, to
Christ and to Shakespeare, is evidently a denial of divine authority to
any of them. If Hamlet, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Koran, are
all of a like divine authority, or all alike without any, it is merely a
matter of taste whether I worship at Niblo's or the Tabernacle, or keep
a harem in my house or a prayer-meeting. Most men, however, find it hard
to believe that Christ and Mohammed taught exactly the same religion, or
that the church and the theater are precisely equal and alike in their
influences on the heart and life; and so they reject several of these
inspired men, and cleave to the one they like best. Whereas, if this
theory be true, they ought not to act in such a disrespectful way toward
any inspired man; but ought to attend the church, the theater and the
harem with equal regularity, and serve God, Mammon and Belial with
equal diligence.
"Oh," it is replied, "they are not all inspired in the same degree. It
does not follow that because Byron, and Shakespeare, and Paul are all
inspired, that their writings will produce exactly the same results, or
that they are alike suitable for every constitution and temper. How much
inspiration they severally possess must be determined by their results.
The tree is known by its fruits; and experience is the price of truth."
But truth may be bought too dear. I am sick and need some medicine, but
know not exactly what kind, or how much to take. "Here," says my
Rationalist friend, "is a whole drug store for you. Every drawer, and
pot, and bottle is full of medicine. Help yourself." But, my good sir,
how am I to know what kind will suit me? There are poisons here, as well
as medicines; and I can not tell the difference between arsenic and
calomel. One of my neighbors died the other day from swallowing oxalic
acid instead of Glauber's salts. Be kind enough to put the poisons on
one shelf, and the medicines on the other, or, at least, to label them,
so that I may know which to choose and which to refuse. "Oh," says my
Rationalist friend, "this distinction between medicines and poisons is
all an antiquated, vulgar prejudice. What you call poisons are really
medicines. Medical virtue is not confined to the few specifics
recognized by the Homeopathics, the Regular Faculty, or the
Hydropathics, but is as extensive as the world. Everything on earth has
a medical virtue; but how much, and of what sort, must be determined by
experience. In fact, you must try for yourself whether any particular
drug will kill you, or cure you. So here is the whole drug store to
begin your cure with." A valuable gift, truly! "In the day we eat
thereof, our eyes will be opened, and we shall be as gods, knowing good
and evil." I think, reader, you and I will let somebody else try that
experiment.
"Why should men throw away their common sense, and swallow everything as
inspired?" says another friend of the Rationalistic school. "God has
given us reason to discern between good and evil, and commanded us to
use it. _Prove the spirits, whether they be of God._ _I spake as to wise
men._ _Judge ye what I say_, is the language of Scripture. The right of
private judgment is the inalienable inheritance of Protestants. I am for
examining the Bible according to the principles of reason and truth.
'That only is to be regarded as true and valid which is matter of
personal conviction.' The Old Testament is in many places contrary to my
convictions of truth and reason. I find that it consists of a great
variety of treatises of various degrees of merit. Even in the same book
it presents often strange contrasts--sublime moral precepts on one page;
on the next, solemn requirements of frivolous ceremonies, utterly
unworthy of God; or solemn narrations of miraculous interferences with
the established course of nature, which, taken literally, are absolutely
incredible. The judicious reader must therefore discriminate between
those divine precepts of morality which were infused into the minds of
the Hebrew sages, and those Jewish prejudices which their education and
character inclined them to regard as equally important; and he must
divest the narrative of facts as they actually occurred, from the
national legends and traditions which the compilers of the Pentateuch
added to adorn the history."
This, it will be seen, at once raises another and very important
question, namely: By what standard are the writings of the Old Testament
to be judged? Or rather it settles the question by taking it for
granted, that every inquirer is to judge them according to his own
notions of reason and truth. But this does not help me out of my
difficulty; for it supposes me already to possess the knowledge, and
the virtue, which a revelation from God is needed to communicate. If I
am able, by my own reason, to construct a perfect standard of morals to
judge the Bible by, what need have I for the Bible revelation? And if I
have the right to refuse obedience to any commands I may judge frivolous
or unreasonable, before I know whether they came from God or not, and am
bound to obey only those which agree with my notions of right, what
authority has the law of God? A revelation from God which should submit
its truths to be judged by the ignorance, and its commands by the
inclinations, of sinful men, would by that very submission declare its
worthlessness. The use of a divine revelation is either to tell us some
truth of which we are ignorant, or to enjoin some duty to which we are
disinclined.
Besides, it is not possible to make any such dissection of the moral
precepts of the Bible, from the miraculous history which forms their
skeleton, as will leave them either truth or authority. It is the
miraculous history that gives sanction to the divine morality, and
without it the ten commandments would have no more hold on any man's
conscience than the wise saws which Poor Richard says. Take, for
instance, one of the first and most important of the Bible
moralities--the sacredness of marriage--which is wholly based upon a
narrative of events utterly unparalleled; and, if judged by the usual
course of nature, perfectly incredible. The original difference in the
formation of man and woman, and God's making at first one man and one
woman, and joining them together with his blessing, constitute the
reasons, and consecrate the pledge of marriage. "_For this cause shall a
man leave his father and mother_--although the claims of the parental
relation are very strong--_and cleave to his wife_--with whom it may be
he has but a few weeks' acquaintance--_and they two shall be one flesh_.
_What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder._" But
if the cause had no existence, save in the brain of some antediluvian
novel-writer, and God did not so unite them, the consequence is only a
notion also, and any man may leave his wife whenever he likes.
By far the most incredible narrative in the Bible is contained in the
first verse: "_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth._"
All the other miracles recorded in it sink into familiarity compared
with this stupendous display of the supernatural. To the believer of
this first great miracle none of its subsequent narratives can seem
incredible. But it is precisely upon this unexampled and incredible
narrative that the whole structure of Bible morality is built. If this
extraordinary narrative be rejected as false, all the moral precepts of
the Bible are not worth a feather. The morality of the Bible, then,
stands or falls with its history of God's supernatural works among men.
It has been argued, that no amount of testimony can authenticate
accounts of miracles; since a miracle, being a violation of the laws of
nature, is contradicted by an unalterable experience, but only supported
by fallible human testimony.
But every step of this sophism is in error. A miracle can not be proven
to be any more a violation of the laws of nature, than the existence of
the nature regulated by laws. It may be more unusual, but not more
supernatural. The restoration of life to a dead man is no greater
violation of the laws of nature than the first bestowal of life on dead
matter. Were the resurrections as common as childbirths nobody would
consider them violations of the laws of nature.
Moreover, our knowledge of the laws of nature is not based upon my
experience, or yours, but upon the testimony of our teachers; which, so
far from being uniform and invariable as to the supremacy of the
commonplace in nature, is perfectly conclusive as to the repeated
occurrence of the miraculous. The miracles of Scripture are better
authenticated than the facts of science.
Scientific men talk a great deal of nonsense about the laws of nature,
as if they were the only agents known in this world. But every man knows
that he himself possesses the power to control the laws of nature, by
bringing a higher law to arrest a lower; as when the power of vegetation
arrests the law of gravitation, and sends the drop of rain which had
trickled down the outside of the bark of the pine, climbing up again a
hundred feet; or as when the power of animal life converts a hundred
weight of grass into a leg of mutton; or as when the power of the human
intellect transforms a pound of zinc into telegrams, or a ton of niter
and sulphur into death and destruction. Now if man can thus control and
use the laws of nature for human purposes, why can not the God who made
him so cunning do as much? Aye, and as much more as God is greater than
man?
But we are told that no testimony can prove that any wonderful work has
been wrought by God. "No testimony can reach to the supernatural;
testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only
prove an extraordinary, and perhaps inexplicable, phenomenon or
occurrence; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent
on the previous belief or assumption of the parties."[124]
But when Christ said, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then
the kingdom of God is come unto you;" or when he said, at the grave of
Lazarus, to Martha, "Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe
thou shouldest see the glory of God?" can we not believe our Lord's
testimony, that he cast out devils, and raised the dead, by the direct
intervention of God? He appeals to his miracles as evidences of his
divine authority: "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear
witness of me." "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But
if I do though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know
and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him."[125] Now I demand
to know whether this testimony of our Lord is not to be believed? And
whether he does not directly claim to work miracles by the immediate
power of God? The testimony of the man whom God authenticates, by
enabling him to do such miracles as those of Moses and of Christ, is
conclusive as to the power by which they are wrought. So you read in
Exodus iii. that God commissioned Moses to work miracles as signs of his
divine commission, and seals of his testimony recorded in the Bible.
If we proceed now to examine the facts of this history, it is evident,
that neither your reason or mine, nor our personal convictions, can be
any rule of what is true and valid. The most that reason can say about
history is, that the story seems probable; but so does any well-written
novel; or that it is improbable; but truth is often stranger than
fiction; and every genuine history relates wonderful events. Neither
does our personal knowledge enable us to tell what was the original
historical fact, how much was added by the Hebrew prejudices of Moses,
and which are the legends with which it was afterward adorned; for
neither you nor I were there to see. Nor can any two of those critics,
who have undertaken to divide the facts from the fables according to
their personal convictions of what is true and valid, agree upon any
common principle of gleaning, or in gathering in their results. And if
they could, the crop would not be worth barn-room; for the only
conclusion in which they seem at all likely to agree is, that the story
of creation in the beginning of the Book is a myth, like one of Ovid's
Metamorphoses; and that the prophecy of the resurrection, at the end, is
another; and that there are a great many legends in the middle. Now, if
so, why winnow such chaff?
But while the Jewish people exist as a distinct race, it is impossible
rationally to deny some extraordinary origin of their extraordinary
character and customs; and the Bible is the only history which pretends
to tell it. The utter failure of Rationalistic criticism to give any
rational account of the facts which must be admitted to account for the
existence of the Jews as a distinct people, is ludicrously apparent in
the attempts generally made to explain the miraculous narratives of the
Bible. The tree of good and evil was a poisonous plant, like the poison
oak, or the machineal tree, under which our first parents fell asleep,
and dreamed about the temptation, and the fall. The shining face of
Moses was the natural effect of electricity. Zechariah's vision was the
smoke of the lamps of the golden candlestick in the temple. The wise men
of the East were some peddlers who presented toys to the child Jesus;
and the star which went before, their servant carrying a torch. The
angels who ministered to Christ in his temptation were a caravan bearing
provisions. The transfiguration was an electric storm. The plagues of
Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, and the miracles of the desert, were
merely natural phenomena, dextrously used by Moses and Aaron to suit
their purpose.
It is alleged that these enthusiastic patriots, full of the
superstitions of an early age, which attributed all prodigies to God,
and placed all heroes under his guidance, succeeded by their fiery
eloquence in inspiring their captive countrymen with the love of
liberty; and had political dexterity enough to create a faction in their
favor in the Egypt cabinet. Then taking advantage of a fortunate
succession of calamities arising from natural causes--such as an
extraordinary rising of the Nile, in consequence of which it was more
deeply colored than usual with the red mud of Nubia, and overflowed the
country to a greater extent than usual, leaving on its retreat numerous
ponds, which, of course, bred swarms of frogs and gnats, and raised
malaria, spreading various sicknesses over the land, both to man and
beast; a devastating visit of locusts, the well-known scourge of Africa;
a remarkable thunder-storm, accompanied with hail, causing great havoc
of growing crops, as such hail-storms always do; followed by the
chamsin, or dust-storm from the desert, darkening the air with clouds of
dust and sand; and by an extraordinary mortality, the natural result of
these various causes--they persuaded the superstitious Egyptians that
these calamities were tokens of the displeasure of the God of the
Hebrews, and improved the opportunity to escape, while the resources of
the Egyptians were exhausted, and their minds confounded by these
various misfortunes. Leading them to that part of the Red Sea south of
Suez, where a succession of shoals stretch across from the Egyptian to
the Arabian side, they crossed safely at low water, while the Egyptian
army perished by the rising of the tide; and the Israelites betaking
themselves to a wandering, pastoral life in the wilderness of Arabia,
lived, as the Bedouins do at this day, on the milk of their flocks and
the manna which was spontaneously produced by the tamarisk trees of
Sinai; where they remained until they had framed a civil and religious
code, and whence they prosecuted their conquests in various directions
for fifty years, until their invasion of Palestine. This is the sum of
what, with various modifications, Rationalist writers and preachers
present us, as the genuine historic basis of the Mosaic narrative.
It really does seem to have been very fortunate for the Israelites that
so many misfortunes should happen to fall upon their oppressors, all in
one season, and just at the time that men of such cleverness as Moses
and Aaron were among them; and that the Egyptians should luckily have
imbibed the superstition, that all nature was under the direction of a
Supreme Moral Governor, who was able and willing to wield all the
elements for the punishment of oppressors.
It was also very lucky for these poor, overworked, and oppressed
slaves--the class which in all other ages and countries suffers most
from hard times--that they should have escaped unhurt by these
calamities; for if they had suffered by them as well as the Egyptians,
they could not have persuaded them that God favored Israel.
Here one can not but wonder that these learned Egyptians, whose colleges
of priests were planted on the banks of the Nile, and who had made the
climate, soil, and productions of their native land their constant
study, should have been so ignorant of these natural causes of the
plagues--so easily discovered nowadays by anybody who makes a summer
trip to Egypt--as to be terrified into emancipating their slaves by a
stormy season. Just imagine to yourself a couple of abolitionist
lecturers proceeding to Lexington and commanding the slaveholders of
Kentucky to liberate their slaves immediately, on pain of the Ohio being
muddy during high water, and the swamps of the river-bottom being full
of frogs and musquitoes! But this interpretation does not reach the
climax of absurdity till our Rationalist Punch, by way of signalizing
his deliverance from Egyptian bondage, makes Pharaoh and his army forget
that the tide ebbs and flows in the Red Sea, raises the tide over a
shoal faster than cavalry could gallop from it, gathers an annual crop
of twenty millions of bushels of manna from the thorn-bushes of Sinai,
and feeds three millions of men, women, and children for forty years
upon purgative medicine!!!
"We must then give up the problem as insoluble; for if reason be
insufficient to give authority to the Bible, and criticism fails to
discover its truth, how are we to know that it possesses either?"
Just as you would discover the truth of any other history, or the
authority of any other law. You do not say, "The tale of the successive
swellings of the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Dan--three times in a
fortnight, in February, 1781, immediately after the American army had
retreated across these rivers, preventing Cornwallis and the British
forces from crossing till the little handful of weary and famished
patriots had escaped--savors of the marvelous and leans so much toward
the superstition of a special providence, that it must be rejected as
not historical." You inquire if there be sufficient testimony to the
fact. You do not say, "The Revised Statutes present internal evidence of
being a collection of political tracts by various authors, written at
different times, differing also in style, and of various degrees of
merit, many of them contrary to my inmost personal convictions;
therefore I can not acknowledge them as true and valid." You simply ask
if this be a true copy of the laws passed by the legislature and signed
by the governor? Our inquiry about the truth of the history, and the
authority of the laws of the Bible, must be of the same kind--an inquiry
after testimony. Is this Book genuine or a forgery? Is it a true history
or a lying romance? Have we any testimony on the subject?
But it is alleged that the Book contains in itself evidence of having
been written in an unscientific age, and in an unhistorical manner; and,
particularly, that its statements of the creation of the world, and of
mankind, only six thousand years ago, are refuted by the discoveries of
geology; which show us, that the world is many millions of years old,
and that man has been on this world at least one hundred thousand years.
In support of this last assertion, geologists refer to the remains of
the lake dwellings in Switzerland; to skeletons of men found in caves,
with bones of animals now extinct; to flint tools and weapons found in
gravel beds, said to be of remote antiquity; to bones found deep in the
Mississippi bottom; and to the monuments of Egypt.
In replying to this objection, we have first to say that we have
elsewhere, in this volume, shown that the Bible nowhere alleges that
God created the earth only six thousand years ago, but in many places
emphatically affirms the contrary.
In the second place, as to the antiquity of man, the Bible nowhere says,
that Adam was the first human being whom God created; nor that he and
his posterity were the only intelligent beings occupying this world
before our tenancy of it; nor that we are even now the exclusive
occupants. On the contrary, it makes very distinct allusions to other
races, capable of assuming serpentine, swinish, and human bodies, and of
meddling disastrously in earthly affairs in former times; though, as it
does not profess to teach us truths which do not concern us, it gives us
no narration of the creation or history of pre-Adamite animals or men.
But there is no more ground of objection against the Bible for
neglecting to give us a history of pre-Adamite men, if there were such
men, than for neglecting to describe the pre-Adamite animals, or the
coal measures, or the nebulæ, or the climate, soil, population, and
politics of Jupiter. The Bible has one great object--to teach men how to
be holy and happy; and it can not be shown that the chronicles of the
pre-Adamites, if they kept chronicles of their alleged savage state,
would help us in the acquisition of holiness.
No discoveries, then, which geologists may make of pre-Adamite races of
men, can at all affect the credit of Moses' account of the creation of
Adam, and of the history of his family. They may fill museums, if they
please, with their flint arrow-heads and axes, they may pile up pyramids
of stone mortars, they may perhaps some day discover an old-world bronze
railroad, and bronze-clad or copper-bottomed steamboats, they may
produce pre-Adamic electric, aeronautic engines, and magnetic sewing
machines, or bone needles, we care not which; and we will admire them,
and confess that they are very curious, and perhaps very old; but
unless they can show that Adam was descended from these old-world
folks, we have no biblical quarrel with them. Like Moses, we will let
them rest in peace.
But we would remark, thirdly, that no such discoveries have yet been
made. No human bone, implement, or monument, has yet been discovered
which can be proved to be more ancient than Adam, or nearly so ancient.
There is not a single indisputable fact to show, that any of the tools,
bones, or monuments; alleged in this discussion, is of any specific date
whatever, save that the Danish bogs came down to the date of the Danish
invasion of Ireland in the eleventh century; the burnt corn of the Swiss
lake dwellings was probably that which Julius Cæsar describes the
Helvetians as burning preparatory to their invasion of Gaul; and the
monuments of Egypt, for which Bunsen claimed twenty thousand years, are
now acknowledged by the best Egyptologists to reach not quite to 3000 B.
C. As to the bone found at the base of the bluff at Memphis, it was not
found _in situ_, and probably was washed out of some Indian grave at the
top, and buried in the _debris_. The Abbeville skull[126] _had a fresh
tooth in it_, for which thirty-five thousand years was claimed, until
examination by a competent committee exposed the deception. Where there
is a good paying demand for pre-Adamite skulls, there will always be a
good supply. Dr. Dowler calculates the age of a skeleton of an Indian,
found at the depth of sixteen feet in digging the gas works at New
Orleans, at fifty thousand years; while the U. S. Coast Surveying
Department show that the whole Delta is not more than four thousand four
hundred years old.
These gross errors, which affront our common sense, wherever we are able
to test geological calculations, fill us with mistrust of their
allegations of evidence, which, from the nature of the case, we can not
test.
Of this class is the discovery of human bones in caves containing the
bones of cave bears, rhinocerii, mammoths, and other extinct animals.
The argument is that man and these animals lived at the same time. Very
well, what time was that? There is no evidence to show that it was a
hundred thousand years ago. The Siberian hunters fed their dogs on the
flesh of a mammoth they found frozen in mud bluffs at the mouth of the
Lena, and its hair and wool are now in the museum of St. Petersburg. Dr.
Warren's _mastodon giganteus_ had some bushels of pine and maple twigs,
in excellent preservation, in its stomach, when exhumed in Orange
County, New York; and you may see for yourself the vegetable fiber found
in its teeth in his museum in Boston.[127] Does any one believe that the
vegetable fiber and maple twigs have kept their shape one hundred
thousand years? The mammoth found in the ditch of the Tezcucoco road
must have fallen in after the Incas had dug that ditch. The Indians have
a tradition that their fathers hunted a huge deer with a hand on his
face, which slept leaning against the trees. And there is good
geological reason for believing that the final extinction of the
mammoth, the European rhinoceros, and their contemporaries, was caused
by the change of climate in Northern Europe, Asia, and America, caused
by the elevation of these northern lands, which has been going on since
the tenth century, and which, about three centuries ago, closed the
Polar Sea, rendering Greenland uninhabitable. The juxtaposition, then,
of the bones of man and extinct animals is no proof of the remote
antiquity of either. And no proof has been made from the nature or depth
of the overlying deposits.
The shape, size, and general character of the skulls alleged to be of
such remote antiquity give no countenance to the theory of man's brutal
origin; which is the great thing to be gained by giving him a remote
antiquity. The Enghis skull is in no way inferior to many good modern
Indian skulls; and the man of Mentone stood six feet one in his stocking
soles (if he wore stockings), having a good John Bull head between his
shoulders, with a facial angle equal to that of Generals Grant or Von
Moltke; and in fact being a fine old Gallic gentleman, all of the good
old times.
Geologists, however, lay stress on the cumulative character of the
evidence they produce; owning that no single fact is conclusive, but
claiming that credence should be given to the accumulation of facts. But
no accumulation of ciphers will amount to anything. All the alleged
facts are found to be fatally defective either in authenticity or
definiteness. No multitude of doubts can assure us of the certainty of a
fact or assertion. The evidence for the pre-Adamite antiquity of man is
only a gathering of facts doubtful, and wholly indeterminate, without
any element of proof of remote antiquity.[128]
But there is a source of evidence of the most undeniable character, to
which we may appeal for a decision of the subject. The law of population
is as certain as any other law of nature; and it tends to the regular
increase of mankind. Population tends to double itself every twenty-five
years, as we see in the United States. In less favored countries the
rate is not so rapid. In Europe it doubles every fifty years; and
nowhere in less than two centuries. And the result is, that if the human
race had existed on this earth under existing laws of nature, as the
evolutionists allege, for one hundred thousand years, not only must they
have multiplied until their bones would have covered the earth, and
filled the sea, but, as Sir John Herschel shows, they would have formed
a vertical column, having for its base the whole surface of the earth,
and for its height three thousand six hundred and seventy-four times the
sun's distance from the earth![129]
The existing population of the globe corresponds pretty well to the
natural increase of three pairs in forty centuries, which is something
near to the Bible chronology. The laws of population, then, inexorably
refuse the indefinite, or even the remote antiquity of mankind, and
vindicate Moses as a writer of truthful history.
The alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch have been adduced as
testimony that it could not have been written till long after the time
of Moses. These alleged anachronisms are generally the insertion of a
modern name of a city instead of the ancient name, or an explanatory
addition which would not have been necessary in the days of Moses. Now
if all these cases could be proved, they would at most only show that
the scribes who copied the manuscripts in later ages had inserted these
explanatory changes or additions, under proper authority. Everybody's
common sense will tell him, that Moses did not narrate his own death in
the last chapter of Deuteronomy; but it is none the less true though
Joshua, or some other prophet, added that postscript.
But Hengstenberg has[130] examined these alleged anachronisms in detail,
and shown that the objectors allow themselves to interpolate into the
text a meaning of their own in order to show the inaccuracy of the
Bible. For instance, Genesis xii. 6, "The Canaanite was then in the
land," they maintain could only be written after the Canaanites had been
driven out. They interpolate _still_, which is not in the text. But they
entirely mistake the meaning of the passage, which refers to an earlier
statement of the same fact, chapter x. 15, to show that Abraham, the
heir of the promise, came as a stranger and a pilgrim to a land
preoccupied by a powerful people, who are again mentioned, chapter xiii.
7, for the purpose of showing how Lot and Abraham came to be so crowded
as to separate.
Another of the prominent instances is the name of the ancient city of
Hebron, which, in the book of Joshua, is said to have been anciently
called Kirjath-arba. But Numbers xiii. 22, which states that Hebron was
built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, and was the residence of Ahiman,
Sheshai, and Talmai, the sons of Anak, shows that the writer was well
acquainted with the history of the place, and Genesis xxxv. 27 shows
that Hebron was the first name, and that it had two other names added to
it, both after the time of Abraham, since Mamre was his contemporary,
and the Anakim lived centuries later. This may stand for a specimen of
the alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch.
But now comes Bishop Colenso with his slate and pencil to demonstrate to
us that, no matter who wrote it, or by what external authority it is
commended, the Pentateuch is so full of arithmetical errors, and of
impossible narratives, in its accounts of common affairs, as well as in
its miraculous stories, that not only is it not the Word of God, but
that it is not even a truthful history, and stands self-convicted of
being a collection of fables. Of course, if that can be proved, there is
an end of the matter, though it would still seem strange that it should
have been left for the bishop to discover Moses' ignorance of
arithmetic, and of camp-life among the Arabs. Nevertheless the very
novelty of a bishop assaulting the Bible in such a style has secured
for him a large number of readers, many of them ignorant enough to
believe his assertions, though too indolent to test his calculations, or
even to read the passages he criticises. This renders some notice of his
criticisms necessary according to our plan of considering objections
according to their popularity, rather than according to their merit.
For, on examining the bishop's objections to the Bible, they are all
found to arise from want of science, want of sense, or ignorance of
Scripture--an inability to read the Scriptures in their original Hebrew,
or even to cite them correctly in English. In some criticisms he
contrives to compile these three kind of blunders into a single chapter,
making a mosaic of very amusing reading indeed.
Of course we can only give specimens of his peculiar style of attack on
the Bible; for to expose all his blunders would require some volumes as
large as his own. But we shall select illustrative instances of the
bishop's blunders from each of the departments indicated above.
As a specimen of the bishop's blunders in science, let us take the first
which he offers--his attempt to convict Moses of a contradiction to
geology in his account of the deluge.
Bishop Colenso declares that the Bible teaches that the deluge was
universal, and that this is contradicted, among other things, by certain
geological discoveries, in Auvergne, of volcanic cones of light cinders,
which would have been swept away by any such flood.
Aye, if they had only been there at that time! But Eli de Beaumont, a
learned geologist, not convicted of so many blunders as the bishop,
alleges that the whole of the system of Teanarus, including the
elevation of Stromboli, and Ætna, has been formed since the catastrophe
of the principal Alps; and that the volcanoes of Auvergne and the
Vivarrus are of post-Adamic origin.[131] So the bishop's geology does
not contradict what he thinks the Bible says after all. On the contrary,
so far from geology contradicting a universal deluge, the best
geologists speak of every part of the earth having been repeatedly under
the sea, and they collect its fossils on the tops of the mountains.
But the bishop ought to know that hundreds of years ago, before geology
was born, some of the most learned bishops and theologians of his own
Church, as well as some of the chief scholars of the dissenters,
following the most learned of the Hebrew rabbis, did not believe that
the Bible taught that the deluge was universal. For instance, Bishop
Stillingfleet, in his great work, _Origines Sacra_, says: "I can not see
any urgent necessity from the Scriptures to assert that the flood did
spread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the
ark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the
Scriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind, but from thence
follows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to
the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole
earth was peopled before the flood; which I despair of ever seeing
proved." Matthew Poole says: "Where was the need of overwhelming those
regions of the earth in which there were no human beings? It would be
highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the
deluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It is
indeed not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limits
of Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects
of the punishment, inflicted upon men alone, applied to those places in
which there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief that
not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with
water, still the deluge would be universal; because the extirpation took
effect upon all the part of the globe then inhabited."
Nor does the language of the Bible necessarily convey the idea that the
whole surface of the globe was covered with water. Dathe, professor of
Hebrew (in his _Opuscala ad Crisin_, edited by Rosenmuller, 1795), says:
"Interpreters do not agree whether the deluge inundated the whole earth
or only the regions then inhabited. I adopt the latter opinion. The
phrase _all_ does not prove the inundation to have been universal. It
appears that in many places _kol_ is to be understood as limited to the
thing or place spoken of. Hence all the animals introduced into the ark
were only those of the region inundated."
But the most literal rendering of the language of Moses does not
necessitate our belief that when he says that the waters covered the
whole earth, _arets_, he meant the whole globe. The common Bible meaning
of this word is land, country, or region, as the perpetually recurring
phrases, the land, _arets_, of Havilah, the land of Nod, the land of
Ethiopia, the land of Goshen, the land of Egypt, the land of Canaan,
which occurs three hundred and ninety times, may convince every reader
beyond the possibility of mistake. How now, from this word being used by
Moses, could this learned bishop conclude that he necessarily meant to
describe the globe? Moses says, "The waters prevailed upon and covered
the whole country." The bishop translates, "covered the whole globe;"
evidently in order to make Moses commit a blunder.
But reference is made to the expression, "All the high hills under the
whole heavens were covered;" which the bishop will have it meant all the
mountains under the moon.
But the popular use of the word "heavens," in Moses' day, had as little
reference to universal space, as the word earth, or land, had to the
whole globe. It meant simply the visible heavens over any place; and its
extent was defined by the extent of the earth those visible heavens
covered. Thus Moses himself defines it, Deuteronomy iv. 32: "Ask from
the one side of heaven unto the other." Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thy
heaven over thee shall be as brass." Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day I
will begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the
whole heaven." And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds of
heaven," "the fowls of heaven," refer to the optical heavens. Such is
the meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him,
as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Moses
copies Noah's log-book.
The geologist adds his testimony to the existing evidences of the recent
submergence of a large region of Persia and Turkey around the Caspian
Sea, and its subsequent elevation. But it is no part of our business to
show in what way God produced the deluge. Geology shows us, however,
that the submergence of parts of the earth beneath the sea, and their
subsequent elevation, is the most common of all geological phenomena;
almost all existing continents and islands having been submerged.
The bishop is as far behind the age in his astronomy as in his geology.
He blindly follows the Infidels of the last century in their attack on
Joshua's miracle, arresting the sun and moon, as inconsistent with their
science; which taught the immobility of the sun and moon, it seems, and
was entirely ignorant of the modern discovery of the grand motions of
the fixed stars, including our sun, and of the dependence of all the
planets, including our earth and moon, upon that grand motion for the
motive power of their revolutions.[132]
One wonders from what college the bishop came out ignorant of facts
known to the boys of American common schools.
A great many of the bishop's blunders are occasioned by want of sense.
The process is very simple. The sacred history is very brief. Only the
headings of things are recorded. Much must be supplied by the common
sense of the reader. The manners of the East are very different from
ours. Three thousand years have greatly changed the face of the country.
Ignore all this, and interpret the Pentateuch as though it consisted of
the letters of Our Own Correspondent, and you will find difficulties on
every page. Such is the style of Colenso's criticism. Assume that Moses
gives a full and complete chronicle of all events which have happened
since the creation, and then dispute the recorded facts because it can
easily be shown he omitted many.
But the bishop has not the honor of discovering this method, or of
founding this school of criticism. We have heard village critics of the
loom and the forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, and
the Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acuteness and
penetration. With what _eclat_ has our village critic unhorsed the
itinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became of the forks belonging
to the nine and twenty knives which Ezra brought back from Babylon? but
was, alas! himself routed in the moment of triumph by the inquiry as to
the sex of the odd clean beasts of Noah's sevens. How often has our
village blacksmith critic requested a sermon upon the genealogy of
Melchizedek, which the minister agreed to furnish when our blacksmith
could tell him the foundry which manufactured Tubal Cain's hammer and
anvil. Lot's wife, the witch of Endor, Jonah's whale, the sundial of
Ahaz, and the population of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, together
with the bodies in which the angels dined with Abraham. Did the loaves
and fishes miraculously multiply in numbers, or increase in size? Where
did the angel get the flour to bake the cake for Elijah? Did our Lord
catch the fish by net, or by miracle, which he used in the Lord's Dinner
on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But _the_ question--which we marvel
beyond measure that the bishop overlooks--always was, Where did Cain
get his wife? This is the fundamental question for such critics. The
difficulty, it will be perceived, lies across the very threshold of the
history. How did he stumble over it without record of his misadventure?
It recurs, however, on every page. If the bishop will only answer that
question, and introduce us politely to Cain's wife, I will engage that
she will answer most of these other difficult questions. Had Seth a
wife? How could Noah and his three sons build a ship larger than the
Great Eastern? We can imagine the roars of laughter with which the
bigger school-boys will greet the serious exhibition of their old tests
of dullness, in a printed book, and by a learned bishop, as objections
to the inspiration of the Bible. But the bishop does actually devote
Chapter V. to the impossibility of Moses addressing all Israel; Chapter
VI. to the extent of the camp compared with the priest's duties; Chapter
XX. to the grave difficulty of the three priestly families consuming the
offerings of some millions of people; which surely to a bishop of the
Church of England should not be an unparalleled feat. Such chapters
enable us to appreciate the mental caliber of our critic, and excuse us
from argument with a man incapable of interpreting popular phrases. He
would prove the associated press dispatches all a myth, because it is
impossible for the House of Commons to appear at the bar of the House of
Lords--six hundred men to stand on four square yards of floor; for
McClellan to address the Army of the Potomac, which extended along a
line of thirty miles; for Grant and Sherman--two men--to capture
Vicksburg and thirty thousand prisoners! Manifestly impossible.
The most specious of all the sophistry spread over the volume is that
contained in the Seventeenth Chapter, regarding the increase of Jacob's
family, of seventy persons, to a nation of two or three millions, in
Egypt, during the two hundred and fifteen years to which he confines the
bondage. But it is only another case of Cain's wife. The Pentateuch
gives us the list of Jacob's children and their wives, but makes no
formal mention in that place of their servants and retainers. These, in
Abraham's times, amounted to three hundred fencible men, or a population
of fifteen hundred; who would have increased in Jacob's time to several
thousands, capable of defending the border land of Goshen against the
marauding Bedouin. And this population could easily increase to the
three millions of the Exodus, at the same ratio in which the population
of the United States is now increasing; so that it is a mere superfluity
of naughtiness for the bishop to deny what the sacred historian so
emphatically asserts: "That the people were fruitful, and increased
abundantly, and multiplied, and the land was filled with them." But the
bishop utterly ignores the people of the _clan_, and taking his slate
and pencil ciphers out the impossibility of Jacob's _family_ amounting
to so many. And yet it is not impossible that in the four hundred and
thirty years which the sacred historian so precisely asserts as the
period of their sojourn in Egypt, Exodus xii. 40, the family alone might
have multiplied as fast as the family of the famous Jonathan Edwards,
which, in a hundred years after his death, numbered two thousand souls.
Peter Cartwright, the venerable Methodist minister, celebrated his
eighty-seventh birthday on the first of September, 1871, at Pleasant
Plains, Sangamon County, Illinois, surrounded by one hundred and twenty
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now, if this family of
two persons could so increase in eighty-seven years, why could not
Jacob's family, of seventy persons, increase in equal ratio? In that
case, even in the two hundred and fifteen years to which the bishop
limits the sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites would have amounted to over
eight millions. If it be objected that this was a case of special
blessing, we answer that the Israelites are expressly asserted to have
been specially and wonderfully multiplied. There is, therefore, no
improbability in Moses' numbers.
The bishop ascribes to Moses another of his own blunders; this time,
however, in reading his Bible in plain English, which correctly
translates the Hebrew--Exodus xiii. 2. The Lord commands Moses and
Israel to "Sanctify to him every male that openeth the womb, both of man
and beast," from the time of the death of the first-born of the
Egyptians. The impropriety of _ex post facto_ legislation, the reason
assigned for this law, and the grammatical meaning of the language in
the present tense, all combine to show that the law is prospective; and
the number of the first-born, twenty-two thousand two hundred and
seventy-five, afterward given in Numbers, shows plainly that this is the
meaning, being about the proper increase of thirteen months. But the
bishop strangely blunders into the notion that this is the number of all
the first-born of Israel; only about one in forty-five or fifty, and
therefore argues against the historical veracity of the Pentateuch. A
good many of the bishop's blunders arise in this way from misreading his
Bible.
He makes another blunder of this kind, and as usual charges it on Moses,
in his misreading of Leviticus xxiii. 40, as if directing Israel to make
booths of palm branches and willows at the feast of tabernacles, instead
of bearing the palms of victory in triumph into the temple of God. The
son of the chief rabbi of London ridicules the bishop's Hebrew
scholarship here, saying that any Jewish child could have set him right;
but had he read even his English translation carefully he need not have
blundered here.
In connection with the subject of the numbers of the people we notice
his tacit assumption--that Moses records everything necessary for a
statistical table--in his criticisms on the numbers of the Danites and
Levites, Chapters XVIII. and XVI.; and on Judah's family, Chapter II.
He takes it for granted that because the Exodus took place in the
lifetime of the fourth generation of some of the sons of Jacob,
therefore there were none but four generations born in the two hundred
and fifteen years to which he confines the bondage, and none but those
whose names are recorded. This is a blunder of the same sort as if he
should mistake the list of the British peerage for a census of all the
families of Great Britain, and calculate the average duration of human
life by the ages of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. But here
we have a wonderful instance of the providence which often makes
objectors refute themselves. The chapter on Judah's family (II.) shows
that in forty-two years Judah had grandchildren ten or twelve years old;
as many Syrians, Persians, and Hindoos have at this day. But if six
generations could thus be born in Syria, or India, in a century, why not
in Egypt? And 1 Chronicles vii. 20, 21 enumerates ten generations of the
sons of Ephraim; giving ample opportunity for the biblical increase.
Another set of the bishop's blunders is occasioned by his utter
ignorance of camp-life, especially among the Arabs. In Chapter VIII. he
assumes that all the people had tents, and the bishop orders them made
of leather. But he concludes they could not possibly get them, nor if
they had them could they carry them. By and by he provides them with two
millions of cattle, however; and it is likely each of them had a skin,
and was able to carry it for a while, while the Hebrews dwelt in the
booths of the encampments they still commemorate in the feast of
tabernacles. But the word "tents" is the common phrase for any kind of
shelter in Scripture, including even houses in the expression, "To your
tents, O Israel," used in the days of David.
In Chapter IX. he discusses the probability of their obtaining arms in
Egypt. A week with one of the Union armies would show him how speedily
freedmen can provide themselves with arms and learn tactics; and a
short residence in Ireland would teach him the utter impossibility of
preventing a discontented people from arming themselves even with
firearms; much more when every grove furnished artillery. He protests
that all Egypt could not furnish lambs enough for the passover; because
in Natal an acre will only graze one sheep, forgetting that Moses was
not raising sheep in Natal, but in the best of the land of Goshen,
which, if as fertile as the county of Dorset in England, would easily
keep five millions of sheep.
In Chapter X. he insists on the impossibility of giving warning of the
passover, and subsequent march, in one day, to a population as large as
London, scattered over two or three counties. Has he forgotten the
straws carried over all Ireland in one night, and the Chupatties of the
Indian Mutiny? The negro insurrection of Charleston was known by the
negroes of Louisiana two days before their masters received the
intelligence by mail. Critics know little of the power of the love of
freedom. But there is no reason for the bishop's supposition that all
the preparations for leaving were made in one day, save his own mistake
of the Hebrew of Exodus xii. 12, as referring to the night of the day on
which God spake to Moses, instead of the night of the day of which he
was speaking, as the slightest reflection on the context shows.
In Chapter XI. the bishop assumes the functions of Major-General, and
masses his army--rank, and file, wagon train, hospital, commissariat,
contrabands, droves of cattle, and camp followers--into a mass of fifty
front and twenty-two miles long. Very naturally he gets into a
tremendous jam, out of which we have no intention of extricating him;
merely remarking that bishops do not make good generals, and that Arab
Sheikhs do not march in that way. They scatter themselves and their
cattle over the whole country for forty or fifty miles, and have no
confusion; and attend moreover to Moses' sanitary camp regulations, in
their several encampments.
In Chapter XII. he exerts himself to starve the cattle for want of
pasture and water; garbling Moses' account of the wilderness for that
purpose, Deuteronomy viii. 15, "Beware that thou forget not Jehovah, thy
God, who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, wherein
were fiery serpents, and scorpions, _where there was no water_." Here he
stops, as if this was all that referred to the subject. But when we turn
to the passage, we find that he omits the most material part of the
speech. For Moses goes on to say, in the hearing of all Israel, who
could certainly have contradicted him had the fact not been well known
to them, "Who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint." Moses'
account is quite self-consistent, and the bishop's garbling of it is
dishonest. There were districts of Arabia so dry and sterile that but
for this miraculous supply both men and beasts had perished; but the
greater part of the country was simply uninhabited pasture land,
sufficiently productive even now to support several Arab tribes; and
much better wooded and watered then. The monuments of Egypt abundantly
testify the number and power of its shepherd kings, who pastured their
flocks upon it in their successive invasions of Egypt.
The bishop says, Chapter XIII., that the climax of inconsistencies
between facts and figures is reached when we come to the notice by the
Lord to Israel, contained in Exodus xxiii. 29, "I will not drive them,
the Canaanites, out from before thee in one year, lest the land become
desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee." The
argument is that a population of two millions was assigned to a
territory of only eleven thousand square miles; and consequently would
be more dense than the population of the agricultural region of England,
where there is no danger of wild beasts multiplying.
But the objection is again based on a blunder, and a garbling of the
text of Scripture. Had the bishop done himself and his readers the
justice to complete the passage which he has half cited, by inserting
the next two verses, he could have read verse thirty-one: "And I will
set thy bounds from the Red Sea even to the Sea of the Philistines, and
from the desert unto the river," _i. e._, the Euphrates, as other
passages show, Genesis xv. 18. That is to say, a territory five hundred
miles long by one hundred miles broad, or fifty thousand square miles,
was to be occupied by two millions of people. That is about the present
population, and all travelers testify that three-fourths of it lies
desolate. Prof. Porter saw seventy deserted towns and villages in Bashan
alone. But for the rifle and gunpowder the wild beasts would now
overpower the inhabitants.
By a wonderful providence, contemporaneously with these attacks, the
Lord has raised up an army of scholars, travelers, and archæologists,
whose explorations illustrate the Bible in a remarkable manner, throwing
new light upon its history, poetry, and prophecy. It is refreshing to
turn from the cavils of ignorant criticism to the clear light of
discovered facts and imperishable monuments.
The Bible history has recently received a wonderful amount of
illustration and confirmation from the researches of scholars and
discoverers amid the ruins of Egypt, Persia, and Assyria; completely
exploding the theory that this history was a comparatively recent
composition, written long after the events which it records, and
betraying its want of genuineness by the anachronisms and errors of
description of historical and natural events with which it abounds.
Wherever it differed from the statements of any Greek, or other heathen
historian, it was forthwith alleged that Moses was wrong, and the
profane author was right; and for a long time nobody could bring any
evidence on the other side, because there were no contemporary records;
the oldest heathen historian being a thousand years later than Moses.
But by some strange inspiration, the Lord set a multitude of explorers
to work upon the monuments of Egypt, deciphering the hieroglyphics which
had so long puzzled the world, digging into the mounds which had for
centuries covered the ruined palaces and cities of Persia and Assyria,
and bringing to Europe ship-loads of recovered statues, marbles,
cylinders, mummies, obelisks, papyrii, covered with all manner of
pictures and inscriptions, civil, religious, and political, contemporary
with the Bible history, and setting the best scholars of Europe to
decipher and translate them. They are only, as yet, in the middle of
their labors, but already so much has been discovered as to warrant the
assertion that before they have finished they will furnish full
corroboration of all the great outlines of Old Testament history.
Egypt was the first to come forward in furnishing her quota of
commentary to the corroboration of the Books of Moses. Hengstenberg's
_Egypt and the Books of Moses_, Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, and
Osburn's _Monumental History of Egypt_, furnish almost a commentary upon
Moses' account of Egyptian affairs, confirming every biblical allusion
to Egypt as historically correct, and revealing to us even the natural
causes of the seven years high Nile and plenteous harvests; in the
overflow of the great central lake in Nubia wearing away the embankment;
and of the seven years subsequent low Nile and famine, by the drought
consequent on this immense drainage. The very titles of Joseph as,
"Director of the Full and Empty Irrigating Canals," "Steward of the
Granaries," etc. etc., are still to be read on his tomb at
Sakkarah,[133] and much more of the same sort.
F. Newman ridicules the Bible narrative of Shishak's expedition against
Rehoboam as a mere fictitious embellishment of an otherwise tame
narrative;[134] but Egyptologists, like Stuart, Poole, and Brugsch, have
examined the inscription of Shishak, at Karnak, and allege that it fully
corroborates the Scripture history.[135]
Some of the most obscure portions of the Bible, which have long been
stumbling-blocks to commentators and historians, are now thus
illuminated by the light of modern discoveries of monuments and
inscriptions found in the ruins of the ancient cities of Persia and
Assyria, upon which they in turn cast such light as to enable the
discoveries of Layard and Rawlinson to assume an intelligible coherency.
The tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis, written a thousand years
before Herodotus or Manetho, and which Rationalistic commentators were
so long "unable to verify by their own consciousness," and which were
therefore consigned to the realm of mythology, are now acknowledged by
the first scholars and discoverers to stand at the head of the page of
reliable history, and to form the basis of all scientific ethnography.