moral and religious distinct from historical inspiration—myth and allegory—the higher criticism—all ancient history unconfirmed by monuments untrustworthy—cyrus—old testament and monuments—jerusalem—tablet of tell-el-amarna—flinders petrie's exploration of pre-hebrew cities—ramses and pi-thom—first certain synchronism rehoboam—composite structure of old testament—elohist and jehovist—priests' code—canon driver—results—book of chronicles—methods of jewish historians—post-exilic references—tradition of esdras—nehemiah and ezra—foundation of modern judaism—different from pre-exilic—discovery of book of the law under josiah—deuteronomy—earliest sacred writings—conclusions—aristocratic and prophetic schools—triumph of pietism with exile—both compiled partly from old materials—crudeness and barbarism of parts—pre-abrahamic period clearly mythical—derived from chald?a—abraham—unhistoric character—his age—lot's wife—his double adventure with sarah—abraham to moses—sojourn in egypt—discordant chronology—josephus' quotation from manetho—small traces of egyptian influence—future life—legend of joseph—moses—osarsiph—life of moses full of fabulous legends—his birth—plagues of egypt—the exodus—colenso—contradictions and impossibilities—immoralities—massacres—joshua and the judges—barbarisms and absurdities—only safe conclusion no history before the monarchy—david and solomon—comparatively modern date.

in dealing with the historical portion of the old testament, it is important to keep clearly in view the distinction between the historical and the religious and moral elements which are contained in the collection of works comprised in it. it is quite open to any one to 210 hold that a certain moral and religious idea runs through the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude beginnings into pure and lofty views of an almighty god who created all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is open to him to call this inspiration, and to see it also in the series of influences and events by which the jews were moulded into a peculiar people, through whose instrumentality the three great monotheistic religions of the world, judaism, christianity, and mahometanism, superseded the older forms of polytheism.

with inspiration in this sense i have no quarrel, any more than i have with bishop temple's definition of "original impress," though possibly i might think "evolution" a more modest term to apply, with our limited faculties and knowledge, to that "unceasing purpose" which the poet tells us

"through the ages runs,

and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

but admitting this, i do not see how any candid man, who is at all acquainted with the results of modern science and of historical criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends, and traditions of rude and unscientific ages which have no pretension to be true statements, or real history.

after all this is only applying to the old, the same principles of interpretation as are applied to the new testament. if the theory of literal inspiration requires us to accept the manifest impossibilities of noah's deluge, why does it not equally compel us to believe 211 that there really was a certain rich man who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar named lazarus, and definite localities of a heaven and hell within speaking distance of one another, though separated by an impassable gulf. the assertion is made positively and without any reservation. there was a rich man; lazarus died, and was carried to abraham's bosom; and dives cried to abraham, who answered him in a detailed colloquy. but common sense steps in and says, all this never actually occurred, but was invented to illustrate by a parable the moral truth that it is wrong for the selfish rich to neglect the suffering poor.

why should not common sense equally step in, and say of the narrative of the garden of eden with its trees of knowledge and of life, that here is an obvious allegory, stating the problem which has perplexed so many generations of men, of the origin of evil, man's dual nature, and how to reconcile the fact of the existence of sin and suffering with the theory of a benevolent and omnipotent creator? or again, why hesitate to admit that the story of the deluge is not literal history, but a version of a chapter of an old chald?an solar epic, revised in a monotheistic sense, and used for the purpose of impressing the lesson that the ways of sin are ways of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety? this is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and what the most liberal and learned anglican divines of the present day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like canon driver, professor of hebrew at oxford, and canon cheyne, insisting on "the fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical and historical problems of the old testament." we hear a great deal 212 about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions try to represent it as something very obscure and unintelligible, spun from the inner consciousness of german pedants. but really there is nothing obscure about it. it is simply the criticism of common sense applied from a higher point of view, which embraces, not the immediate subject only, but all branches of human knowledge which are related to it. this new criticism bears the same relation to the old, as mommsen's history of rome does to the school-boy manuals which used to assume romulus and remus, numa and tarquin, as real men who lived and reigned just as certainly as julius c?sar and augustus, and who found nothing to stagger them in livy's speaking oxen.

this criticism has now been carried so far by the labours of a number of earnest and learned men in all the principal countries of europe for the last century, that it has become to a great extent one of the modern sciences, and although there are still differences as to details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of geology or biology. the conclusions of enlightened english divines like canons driver and cheyne are practically very nearly the same as those of foreign professors, like kuenen, welhausen, dillman, and renan, and any one who wishes to have any intelligent understanding of the hebrew bible must take them into consideration.

although the old testament does not carry history back nearly as far as the records of egypt and chald?a, still, when freed from the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their manners and customs, their first attempts to solve problems of science 213 and philosophy, and of their popular legends and traditions.

it is with these historical results only that i propose to deal, and this not in the way of minute criticism, but of the broad, common-sense aspects of the question, and in view of the salient facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of literature on the subject, of which it may be said, in the words of st. john's gospel, that if all that has been written were collected, "i suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books."

i may begin by referring to the extreme uncertainty that attaches to all ancient history unless it is confirmed by monuments, or by comparison with annals of other nations which have been so confirmed. the instance of cyrus is a most instructive one. here is one of the greatest conquerors the world has seen, and the founder of a mighty empire; who flourished at a comparatively recent period, and whose life and exploits are related by well-known historians, such as herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death; confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. the picture given of him is that of the son of a median princess by an obscure persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity, he is said to have been exposed in infancy and saved miraculously or marvellously; he incites the poor and hardy people of persia to revolt; defeats the medes, consolidates media and persia, conquers lydia and all asia minor; and finally, as the "servant of the most high god," and instrument of his vengeance on babylon, takes and destroys the cruel city of nebuchadnezzar, and allows 214 the jews to return from exile out of sympathy with their religion.

unexpectedly a tablet of cyrus himself turns up, and plays havoc alike with prophets and historians instead of being the son of an obscure persian father, he proves to be the legitimate descendant of a long line of elamite kings; instead of being a servant of the most high god, or even a zoroastrian, he appears as a devoted worshipper of the chald?an gods, assur, merodach, and nebo; so far from being an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of babylon, he enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last native king nabonidus. it is apparent from this and other records, that darius and not cyrus was the real founder of the persian empire. cyrus indeed founded a great empire, but it fell to pieces after the death of his son cambyses and the usurpation of the magi, and it was darius who, after years of hard fighting, suppressed revolts, really besieged and took babylon, and reconstituted the empire, which now for the first time became persian and zoroastrian.

such an example teaches us to regard with considerable doubt all history prior to the fifth or sixth century b.c. which is not confirmed by contemporary monuments. of such nations, egypt and chald?a (including in the latter term assyria) alone give us a series of annals, proved by monuments confirming native historians, which extend for some 4000 years back, from the commencement of what may be called the modern and scientific history of the greek period.

the historical portion of the old testament is singularly deficient in this essential point of confirmation 215 by monumental evidence. of hebrew inscriptions there are none except that of the time of hezekiah in the tunnel which brought water from the pool of siloam into the city; and the moabite stone, which confirms the narrative in 2 kings of the siege of rabbah by jehoshaphat and jehoram, and their repulse after the sacrifice of his eldest son in sight of the armies by the king of moab. both of these inscriptions are of comparatively modern date, and close to or within the period when contact with the assyrian empire removes all uncertainty as to the history of jud?a and israel under their later kings. the capture of jerusalem by david and the building of the temple there by solomon are doubtless historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional confirmation from monuments. there have been so many destructions and rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to what era the lower strata belong. it is apparent, moreover, from the egyptian tablets of tel-el-amarna, the city founded by the heretic king, amenophis iv., about 1500 b.c., that jerusalem was a well-known city and sacred shrine prior to the hebrew conquest, and even to the date of the exodus. professor sayce tells us that on one of these tablets is written, "the city of the mountain of jerusalem (or urasalim), the city of the temple of the god uras, whose name there is marra, the city of the king, which adjoins the locality of the men of keilah." uras was a babylonian deity, and marra is probably the aramaic mare, "lord," from which it may be conjectured that mount moriah received its name from the temple of uras which stood there.

some of the other tablets show that in the century before the exodus, jerusalem was occupied by a semi-independent 216 king, who claimed to have derived his authority from "the oracle of the mighty king," which is explained to mean a deity, though he acknowledged the superiority of egypt, which still retained the conquests of the eighteenth dynasty in palestine. this, however, relates not to the hebrews, but to the state of things prior to their invasion, when palestine was occupied by comparatively civilized races of amorites and canaanites, and studded with numerous fenced cities.

a glimpse at the later state of things, when those earlier nations and cities were overwhelmed by an invasion of a rude nomad race, as described in the books of joshua and judges, has been afforded quite recently by the exploration by mr. flinders petrie of a mound on the plain of southern jud?a, which he is disposed to identify with the ancient lachish. a section of this mound has been exposed by the action of a brook, and it shows, as in dr. schliemann's excavations on the supposed site of troy at hissarlik, several successive occupations. the lowest and earliest city was fortified by a wall of sun-burnt bricks, 28 feet 8 inches thick, and which still stands to a height of 21 feet. it shows signs of great antiquity, having been twice repaired, and a large accumulation of broken pottery was found both outside and within it.

this city, which petrie identifies with one of those amorite cities which were "walled up to heaven," had been taken and destroyed, and the wall had fallen into ruins. then, to use professor sayce's words, "came a period when the site was occupied by rude herdsmen, unskilled in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. their huts were built of mud and 217 rolled stones from the wady below, and resembled the wretched shanties of the half-savage bedouins, which we may still see on the outskirts of the holy land. they must have been inhabited by the invading israelitish tribes, who had overthrown the civilization which had long existed in the cities of canaan, and were still in a state of nomadic barbarism."

above this come newer walls, which had been built and repaired three or four times over by the jewish kings, one of the later rebuildings being a massive brick wall 25 feet thick, with a glacis of large blocks of polished stone traced to a height of 40 feet, which petrie refers to the reign of manasseh. then comes a destruction, probably by the assyrians under sennacherib, and then other buildings of minor importance, the latest being those of a colony of greeks, who were swept away before the age of alexander the great.

this discovery is of first-rate importance as regards the early history of the hebrews, and especially as to their relations with egypt, their sojourn there, and the exodus. if abraham really came from ur of chald?a, the seat of a very old civilization; and if his descendants really lived for 400 years or longer in egypt, mixed up a good deal with the native population, and for a great part of the time treated with favour, and occupying, if the legend of joseph be true, the highest posts in the land; and if they really left egypt, as described in the exodus, laden with the spoils of the egyptians, and led by moses, a priest of heliopolis skilled in all the lore of that ancient temple, it is inconceivable that in a single generation they should have sunk to such a level as that of the half-savage bedouins, as indicated by petrie's 218 researches. and yet who else could have been the barbarians whose inroad destroyed the walled city of the amorites; and how well does this condition of rude savagery correspond with the bloodthirsty massacres, and the crude superstitions, which meet us at every turn in the traditions of the period between the departure from egypt and the establishment of a monarchy, which have been used by the compilers of the books of exodus, joshua, and judges?

if we are ever to know anything beyond legend and conjecture as to this obscure period, it is to the pick and the spade that we must look for certain information, and the exploration of mounds of ruined cities must either confirm or modify petrie's inference as to the extreme rudeness of the nomad tribes who broke in upon the civilized inhabitants of older races.

another exploration by mr. flinders petrie, that of the ruins of pi-thom and ramses, gives a certain amount of monumental confirmation to the statement in exodus i. 2, that during the captivity of the israelites in egypt they were employed as slaves by ramses ii. in building two treasure cities, ramses and pi-thom. some wall-paintings show slaves or forced labourers, of a jewish cast of countenance, working at the brick walls under the sticks of taskmasters.

the first certain synchronism, however, between the egyptian monuments and jewish history is afforded by the capture of jerusalem by shishak in the reign of rehoboam in the year 974 b.c. among the wall-paintings in the temple at thebes commemorating the triumphs of this campaign of shishak, is a portrait of a captive with jewish features, inscribed yuten-malek. this has been read "king of the jews," and taken to 219 be a portrait of rehoboam, but it is more probable that it means "kingdom of the jews," and that the portrait is one representative of the country conquered. in any case this gives us the first absolutely certain date in old testament history. from this time downwards there is no reason to doubt that annals substantially correct, of successive kings of judah and israel, were kept, and after the reign of ahaz, when the great assyrian empire appeared on the scene, we have a full confirmation, from the assyrian monuments, of the principal events recorded in the book of kings. in fact, we may say that from the foundation of the jewish monarchy by saul and david, we are fairly in the stream of history, but that for everything prior to about 1000 b.c. we have to grope our way almost entirely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the old testament itself.

the first point evidently is to have some clear idea of what this old testament really consists of. until the recent era of scientific criticism, it was assumed to constitute, in effect, one volume, the earlier chapters of which were written by moses, and the later ones by a continuance of the same divine inspiration, which made the bible from genesis to chronicles one consistent and infallible whole, in which it was impossible that there should be any error or contradiction. such a theory could not stand a moment's investigation in the free light of reason. it is only necessary to read the two first chapters of genesis to see that the book is of a composite structure, made up of different and inconsistent elements. we have only to include in the first chapter the two first verses printed in the second chapter, and to write the original hebrew word "elohim" for "god," 220 and "yahve" or jehovah for "lord god," to see this at a glance.

the two accounts of the creation of the heaven and earth, of animal and vegetable life, and of man, are quite different. in the first man is created last, male and female, in the image of god, with dominion over all the previous forms of matter and of life, which have been created for his benefit. in the second man is formed from the dust of the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens and earth and of the vegetable world, and subsequently all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air are formed out of the ground, and brought to adam to name, while, last of all, woman is made from a rib taken from adam to be an helpmeet for him.

the two narratives, elohistic and jehovistic, distinguished both by the different names of god, and by a number of other peculiarities, run almost side by side through a great part of the earlier portion of the old testament, presenting often flagrant contradictions.

thus lamech, the father of noah, is represented in one as a descendant of cain, in the other of seth. canaan is in one the grandson of adam, in the other the grandson of noah. the elohist says that noah took two of each sort of living things, a male and a female, into the ark; the jehovist that he took seven pairs of clean, and single pairs of unclean animals.

the difference between these narratives, the elohistic and jehovistic, is, however, only the first and most obvious instance of the composite character of the pentateuch. these narratives are distinguished from one another by a number of minute peculiarities of language and expressions, and they are both embedded 221 in a much larger mass of matter which relates mainly to the sacrificial and ceremonial system of the israelites, and to the position, privileges, and functions of the priests and priestly caste of levites. this is commonly known as the "priests' code," and a great deal of it is obviously of late date, having relation to practices and ceremonies which had gradually grown up after the foundation of the temple at jerusalem. a vast amount of erudition has been expended in the minute analysis of these different documents by learned scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject. i shall not attempt to enter upon it, but content myself with taking the main results from canon driver, both because he is thoroughly competent from his knowledge of the latest foreign criticism and from his position as professor of hebrew, and because he cannot be suspected of any adverse leaning to the old orthodox views. in fact he is a strenuous advocate of the inspiration of the bible, taken in the larger sense of a religious and moral purpose underlying the often mistaken and conflicting statements of fallible writers.

the conclusions at which he arrives, in common with a great majority of competent critics in all countries, are—

1. that the old orthodox belief that the pentateuch is one work written by moses is quite untenable.

2. that the pentateuch and book of joshua have been formed by the combination of different layers of narrative, each marked by characteristic features of its own.

3. that the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which are the oldest portion of the collection, have nothing archaic in their style, but belong to the golden 222 period of hebrew literature, the date assigned to them by most critics being not earlier than the eighth or ninth century b.c., though of course they may be founded partly on older legends and traditions; and, on the other hand, they contain many passages which could only have been introduced by some post-exilic editor.

4. that deuteronomy, which is placed almost unanimously by critics in the reign of either josiah or manasseh, is absolutely inconsistent in many respects with the priests' code, and apparently of earlier date, before the priestly system had crystallized into such a definite code of minute regulations, as we find it in the later days of jewish history after the exile.

5. there is a difference of opinion, however, in respect to the date of the priests' code, kuenen, wellhausen, and graf holding it to be post-deuteronomic, and probably committed to writing during the period from the beginning of the exile to the time of nehemiah, while dillman assigns the main body to about 800 b.c., though admitting that additions may have been made as late as the time of ezra.

being concerned mainly with the historical question, i shall not attempt to pursue this higher criticism further, but content myself with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad conclusions of common-sense, stand out as guiding pillars in the mass of details. taking these in ascending order of time, they seem to me to be—

1. the book of chronicles.

2. the foundation of modern judaism as described in the books of ezra and nehemiah.

3. the discovery of the book of the law or deuteronomy in the reign of josiah.

223 the book of chronicles is important because we know its date, viz. about 300 b.c., and to a great extent the materials from which it was compiled, viz. the books of samuel and kings. we have thus an object-lesson as to the way in which a hebrew writer, as late as 300 b.c., or nearly 300 years after the exile, composed history and treated the earlier records. it is totally different from the method of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a "scissors and paste" method. that is to say, he makes excerpts from the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his own; and, in canon driver's words, "does not scruple to omit what is not required for his purpose, and in fact treats his authorities with considerable freedom." he also does not scruple to put in the mouth of david and other historical characters of the olden time, speeches which, from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary, are evidently of his own age and composition.

if this was the method of a writer as late as 300 b.c., whose work was afterwards received as canonical, two things are evident. first, that the canon of the earlier books of the old testament could not have been then fixed and invested with the same sacred authority as we find to be the case two or three centuries later, when the thora, or book of moses and the prophets, was regarded very much as the moslems regard the koran, as an inspired volume which it was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. this late date for fixing the canon of the books of the old testament is confirmed by canon cheyne's learned and exhaustive work on the psalter, in which he shows that a great majority of the 224 psalms, attributed to david, were written in the time of the maccabees, and that there are only one or two doubtful cases in which it can be plausibly contended that any of the psalms are pre-exilic.

secondly, that if a writer, as late as 300 b.c., could employ this method, and get his work accepted as a part of the sacred canon, a writer who lived earlier, say any time between the chronicler and the foundation of the jewish monarchy, might probably adopt the same methods. if the chronicler put a speech of his own composition into the mouth of david, the deuteronomist might well do so in the case of moses. according to the ideas of the age and country, this would not be considered to be what we moderns would call literary forgery, but rather a legitimate and praiseworthy means of giving authority to good precepts and sentiments.

a perfect illustration of this which i have called the "scissors and paste" method, is afforded by the first two chapters of genesis, and the way in which the elohistic and jehovistic narratives are so strangely interblended throughout the pentateuch. no attempt is made to blend the two narratives into one harmonious and consistent whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, are placed together without any attempt to explain away the evident contradictions. clearly the same hand could not have written both narratives, and the compilation must have been made by some subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been made until after the exile. thus in leviticus xxvi. we find, "i will scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste," and "they 225 that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' land." and in deuteronomy xxix., "and the lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is to this day." even in genesis, which professes to be the earliest book, we find (xii. 6), "and the canaanite was then in the land." this could not have been written until the memory of the canaanite had become a tradition of a remote past, and this could not have been until after the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity, for we find from the books of ezra and nehemiah that the canaanites were then still in the land, and the jewish leaders, and even priests and levites, were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives.

the apocryphal book of esdras contains a legend that the sacred books of the law having been lost or destroyed when jerusalem was taken by nebuchadnezzar, they were re-written miraculously by ezra dictating to five ready writers at once in a wonderfully short time. this is a counterpart of the legend of the septuagint being a translation of the hebrew text into greek, made by seventy different translators, whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. this legend, in the case of the septuagint, is based on an historical fact that there really was a greek translation of the hebrew sacred books made by order of ptolemy philadelphus; and it may well be that the legend of esdras contains some reminiscence of an actual fact, that a new and complete edition of the old writings was made and stamped with a sacred character among the other reforms introduced by ezra.

these reforms, and the condition of the jewish 226 people after the return from the captivity, as disclosed by the books of nehemiah and ezra, afford what i call the second guiding pillar, in our attempt to trace backwards the course of jewish history. these books were indeed not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most critics think, by the same hand as chronicles; but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded, which relate, not to a remote antiquity, but to a comparatively recent period after the use of writing had become general. they constitute in fact the dividing line between ancient and modern judaism, and show us the origin of the latter.

modern judaism, that is, the religious and social life of the jewish people, since they fairly entered into the current of modern history, has been marked by many strong and characteristic peculiarities. they have been zealously and almost fanatically attached to the idea of one supreme god, jehovah, with whom they had a special covenant inherited from abraham, and whose will, in regard to all religious rites and ceremonies and social usages, was conveyed to them in a sacred book containing the inspired writings of moses and the prophets. this led them to consider themselves a peculiar people, and to regard all other nations with aversion, as being idolaters and unclean, feelings which were returned by the rest of the world, so that they stood alone, hating and being hated. no force or persuasion were required in order to prevent them from lapsing into idolatry or intermarrying with heathen women. on the contrary, they were inspired to the most heroic efforts, and ready to endure the severest sufferings and martyrdom for the pure faith. the 227 belief in the sacred character of their ancient writings gradually crystallized into a faith as absolute as that of the moslems in the koran; a canon was formed, and although, as we have seen in the case of the chronicles and psalms, some time must have elapsed before this sacred character was fully recognized, it ended in a theory of the literal inspiration of every word of the old testament down even to the commas and vowel points, and the establishment of learned schools of scribes and pharisees, whose literary labours were concentrated on expounding the text in synagogues, and writing volumes of talmudic commentaries.

now during the period preceding the exile all this was very different. so far from being zealous for one supreme god, jehovah was long recognized only as a tribal or national god, one among the many gods of surrounding nations. when the idea of a supreme deity, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bullocks and rams, was at length elaborated by the later prophets, it received but scant acceptance. the great majority of the kings and people, both of judah and israel, were always ready to lapse into idolatry, worship strange gods, golden calves, and brazen serpents, and flock to the alluring rites of baal and astarte, in groves and high places. they were also always ready to intermarry freely with heathen wives, and to form political alliances with heathen nations. there is no trace of the religious and social repulsion towards other races which forms such a marked trait in modern judaism. nor, as we shall see presently, is there any evidence, prior to the reign of josiah, of anything like a sacred book or code of divine laws, universally known and accepted. the books of nehemiah and ezra 228 afford invaluable evidence of the time and manner in which this modern judaism was stamped upon the character of the people after the return from exile. we are told that when ezra came to jerusalem from babylon, armed with a decree of artaxerxes, he was scandalized at finding that nearly all the jews, including the principal nobles and many priests and levites, had intermarried with the daughters of the people of the land, "of the canaanites, hittites, perizzites, jebusites, ammonites, moabites, egyptians, and amorites." backed by nehemiah, the cup-bearer and favourite of artaxerxes, who had been appointed governor of jerusalem, he persuaded or compelled the jews to put away these wives and their children, and to separate themselves as a peculiar and exclusive people from other nations.

it was a cruel act, characteristic of the fanatical spirit of priestly domination, which never hesitates to trample on the natural affections and the laws of charity and mercy, but it was the means of crystallizing the jewish race into a mould so rigid, that it defied wars, persecutions, and all dissolving influences, and preserved the idea of monotheism to grow up into the world-wide religions of christianity and mahometanism, so true is it that evolution works out its results by unexpected means often opposed to what seem like the best instincts of human nature.

what is important, however, for the present object is, to observe that clearly at this date the population of the holy land must have consisted mainly of the descendants of the old races, who had been conquered but not exterminated by the israelites. such a sentence as, "for the canaanites were then in the land," could 229 not have been written till long after the time when the jews were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives. nor does it seem possible that codes, such as those of leviticus, numbers, and the priests' code, could have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by moses under divine inspiration, when the rulers, nobles, and even priests and levites acted in such apparent ignorance of them. in fact we are told in nehemiah that ezra read and explained the book of the law, whatever that may have included, to the people, who apparently had no previous knowledge of it.

by far the most important landmark, however, in the history of the old testament, is afforded by the account in 2 kings xxii. and xxiii. of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple in the eighteenth year of the reign of josiah. it says that shaphan the scribe, having been sent by the king to hilkiah the high priest, to obtain an account of the silver collected from the people for the repairs of the temple, hilkiah told him that he had "found the book of the law in the house of the lord." shaphan brought it to the king and read it to him; whereupon josiah, in great consternation at finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being confirmed in his fears by huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account given in 2 kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. we read of vessels consecrated to baal and to the host of heaven in the temple itself, and of horses and chariots of the sun at its entrance; of idolatrous priests who had been ordained by the kings of judah to burn incense "unto baal, to the sun, and 230 to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven"; and of high places close to jerusalem, with groves, images, and altars, which had been built by solomon to ashtaroth, the goddess of the sidonians, chemosh the god of the moabites, and milcom the god of the ammonites, and had apparently remained undisturbed and places of popular worship ever since the time of solomon.

on any ordinary principles of criticism it is impossible to doubt that, if this narrative is correct, there could have been no previous book of the law in existence, and generally recognized as a sacred volume written by divine inspiration. when even such a great and wise king as solomon could establish such a system of idolatry, and pious kings like hezekiah, and josiah during the first eighteen years of his reign, could allow it to continue, there could have been no knowledge that it was in direct contravention of the most essential precepts of a sacred law dictated by jehovah to moses. it is generally admitted by critics that the book of the law discovered by hilkiah was deuteronomy, or rather perhaps an earlier or shorter original of the deuteronomy which has come down to us, and which had already been re-edited with additions after the exile. the title "deuteronomy," which might seem to imply that it was a supplement to an earlier law, is taken, like the other headings of the books of the old testament in our bible, from the septuagint version, and in the original hebrew the heading is "the book of the law." the internal evidence points also to deuteronomy, as placing the threats of punishment and promises of reward mainly on moral grounds, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah, who lived shortly 231 before the discovery of the book by hilkiah. and it is apparent that when deuteronomy was written, the priests' code, which forms such an important part of the other books of the pentateuch, could not have been known, as so many of the ceremonial rites and usages are clearly inconsistent with it.

it is not to be inferred that there were no writings in existence before the reign of josiah. doubtless annals had been kept of the principal events of each reign from the foundation of the monarchy, and many of the old legends and traditions of the race had been collected and reduced to writing during the period from solomon to the later kings.

the priests' code also, though of later date in its complete form, was doubtless not an invention of any single priest, but a compilation of usages, some of which had long existed, while others had grown up in connection with the second temple after the return from exile. so also the civil and social legislation was not a code promulgated, like the code napoleon, by any one monarch or high priest, but a compilation from usages and precedents which had come to be received as having an established authority. but what is plainly inconsistent with the account of the discovery of the book of the law in the reign of josiah, is the supposition that there had been, in long previous existence, a collection of sacred books, recognized as a bible or work of divine inspiration, as the old testament came to be among the jews of the first or second century b.c.

it is to be observed that among early nations, such historical annals and legislative enactments never form the first stratum of a sacred literature, which consists invariably of hymns, prayers, ceremonial rites, and 232 astronomical or astrological myths. thus the rig veda of the hindoos, the early portions of the vendedad of the iranians, the book of the dead of the egyptians, and the penitential psalms and invocations of the chald?ans formed the oldest sacred books, about which codes and commentaries, and in some cases historical allusions and biographies, gradually accumulated, though never attaining to quite an equal authority.

there is abundant internal evidence in the books of the old testament which profess to be older than the reign of josiah, to show that they are in great part, at any rate, of later compilation, and could not have been recognized as the sacred thora or bible of the nation. to take a single instance, that of solomon. is it conceivable that this greatest and wisest of kings, who had held personal commune with jehovah, and who knew everything down to the hyssop on the wall, could have been ignorant of such a sacred book if it had been in existence? and if he had known it, or even the decalogue, is it conceivable that he should have totally ignored its first and fundamental precepts, "thou shalt have no other gods but me," and "thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? could uxoriousness, divided among 700 wives, have turned the heart of such a monarch so completely as to make him worship ashtaroth and milcom, and build high places for chemosh and moloch? and could he have done this without the opposition, and apparently with the approval, of the priests and the people? and again, could these high places and altars and vessels dedicated to baal and the host of heaven have been allowed to remain in the temple, down to the eighteenth year of josiah, under a succession of kings several of whom 233 were reputed to be pious servants of jehovah? and the idolatrous tendencies of the ten tribes of israel, who formed the majority of the hebrew race, and had a common history and traditions, are even more apparent.

in the speeches put into the mouth of solomon in 1 kings, in which reference is made to "statutes and commandments spoken by jehovah by the hand of moses," there is abundant evidence that their composition must be assigned to a much later date. they are full of references to the captivity in a foreign land and return from exile (1 kings viii. 46—53, and ix. 6—9). similar references to the exile are found throughout the book of kings, and even in books of the pentateuch which profess to be written by moses. if such a code of sacred writings had been in existence in the time of josiah, instead of rending his clothes in dismay when shaphan brought him the book of the law found by hilkiah, he would have said, "why this is only a different version of what we know already."

on the whole the evidence points to this conclusion. the idea of a one supreme god who was a spirit, while all other gods were mere idols made by men's hands; who created and ruled all things in heaven and earth; and who loved justice and mercy rather than the blood of rams and bullocks, was slowly evolved from the crude conceptions of a jealous, vindictive, and cruel anthropomorphic local god, by the prophets and best minds of israel after it had settled down under the monarchy into a civilized and cultured state. it appears for the first time distinctly in isaiah and amos, and was never popular with the majority of the kings and upper classes, or with the mass of the nation until the exile, 234 but it gradually gained ground during the calamities of the later days, when assyrian armies were threatening destruction. a strong opposition arose in the later reigns between the aristocracy, who looked on the situation from a political point of view and trusted to armies and alliances, and what may be called the pietist or evangelical party of the prophets, who took a purely religious view of matters, and considered the misfortunes of the country as a consequence of its sins, to be averted only by repentance and divine interposition.

it was a natural, and under the circumstances of the age and country quite a justifiable proceeding on the part of the prophetic school to endeavour to stamp their views with divine authority, and recommend them for acceptance as coming from moses, the traditional deliverer of israel from egypt. for this purpose no doubt numerous materials existed in the form of legends, traditions, customs, and old records, and very probably some of those had been collected and reduced to writing, like the sagas of the old norsemen, though without any idea of collecting them into a sacred volume.

the first attempt in this direction was made in the reign of josiah, and it had only a partial success, as we find the nation "doing evil in the sight of the lord," that is, relapsing into the old idolatrous practices, in the reigns of his three next successors, jehoiachin, jehoiachim, and zedechiah. but the crowning calamity of the capture of jerusalem by nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy years' exile, seems to have crushed out the old aristocratic and national party, and converted all the leading minds among the jews of the captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the essence 235 of the question was the religious one, and that the only hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to the worship of jehovah and the covenant between him and his chosen people. prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes, and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longer room for itinerant and unofficial missionaries. under such circumstances the religion, after the return from the exile, crystallized rapidly into definite forms. creeds, rituals, and sacred books were multiplied down to the third century b.c. or later, when the canon was closed with the books of chronicles and daniel and the later psalms, and the era began of commentaries on the text of a koran or bible, every word of which was held to be infallibly inspired.

the different crystals in solution have now united into one large crystal of fixed form, and henceforward we are in the full age of talmudism and pharisaism.

it is not to be supposed, however, that the books which thus came to be considered sacred were the inventions of priests and scribes of this later age. doubtless they were based to a great extent on old traditions, legends, and written annals and records, compiled perhaps in the reigns of solomon and his successors, but based themselves on still older materials. the very crudeness of many of the representations, and the barbarism of manners, point to an early origin. it is impossible to conceive any contemporary of isaiah, or of the cultured court of solomon, describing the almighty ruler of the universe as showing his hinder part to moses, or sewing skins to clothe adam and eve; and the conception of a jealous and vindictive jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners of 236 war, women and children, must be far removed from that of a god who loved justice and mercy. these crude, impossible, and immoral representations must have existed in the form of sagas during the early and semi-barbarous stage of the people of israel, and become so rooted in the popular mind that they could not be neglected when authors of later ages came to fix the old traditions in writing, and religious reformers to use them in endeavouring to enforce higher views and a purer morality. it is from this jungle of old legends and traditions, written and re-written, edited and re-edited, many times over, to suit the ideas of various stages of advancing civilization, that we have to pick out as we best can what is really historical, prior to the foundation of the monarchy, from which time downwards we doubtless have more or less authentic annals, and meet with confirmations from egyptian and assyrian history.

the first figure which arrests our attention in the old testament as possibly historical, is that of abraham. prior to him everything is plainly myth and legend. we have two accounts of the creation of the universe and of man in genesis, contradictory with one another, and each hopelessly inconsistent with the best established conclusions of astronomy, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. then follow ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on the average 847 years each, and correspond manifestly with the ten reigns of gods or demi-gods in the chald?an mythology; while side by side with this genealogy is a fragment of one which is entirely different, mentioning seven only of the ten patriarchs, and tracing the descent of enoch and noah from adam through cain instead of through seth.

237 then comes the deluge with all the flagrant impossibilities which have been pointed out in a preceding chapter; the building of the tower of babel, with the dispersion of mankind and confusion of languages, equally opposed to the most certain conclusions of history, ethnology, and philology. the descent from noah to abraham is then traced through ten other patriarchs, whose ages average 394 years each, and similar genealogies are given for the descendants of the other two sons of noah, ham and japheth. it is evident that these genealogies are not history but ethnology, and that of a very rude and primitive description, by a writer with imperfect knowledge and a limited range of vision. a great majority of the primitive races of the world, such as the negroes and the mongolians, are omitted altogether, and semitic canaan is coupled with turanian hittite as a descendant not of shem but of ham. it is unnecessary to go into details, for when we find such an instance as that canaan begat sidon his first-born, it is evident that this does not mean that two such men really lived, but is an oriental way of stating that the ph?nicians were of the same race as the canaanites, and that sidon was their earliest sea-port on the shore of the mediterranean.

the whole of this biblical literature prior to abraham is clearly myth and legend, and not history; and whoever will compare it dispassionately with the much older chald?an myths and legends known to us from berosus and the tablets, can hardly doubt that it is taken mainly from this source, revised at a later date, in a monotheistic sense. whole passages are simply altered by writing "god" for "gods," and pruning off or toning down grotesque and revolting incidents. to 238 give a single instance, where the chald?an solar epic of izdubar, in the chapter on the passage of the sun through the rainy sign of aquarius, which describes the deluge, says that "the gods smelt the sweet savour of the sacrifice offered by hasisadra on emerging from the ark, and flocked like flies about the altar," genesis says simply that "the lord smelled a sweet savour"; and where the mixture of a divine and animal nature in man is symbolized in the chald?an legend by bel cutting off his own head and kneading the clay with the blood into the first man, the jehovist narrative in genesis ii. says, that "the lord god formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." but when we arrive at abraham we feel as if we might be treading on really historical ground. there is the universal tradition of the hebrew race that he was their ancestor, and his figure is very like what in the unchanging east may be met with to the present day. we seem to see the dignified sheik sitting at the door of his tent dispensing hospitality, raiding with his retainers on the rear of a retreating army and capturing booty, and much exercised by domestic difficulties between the women of his household. surely this is an historical figure. but when we look closer, doubts and difficulties appear. in the first place the name "abram" suggests that of an eponymous ancestor, like shem for the semites, or canaan for the canaanites. abram, sayce tells us, is the babylonian abu-ramer or "exalted father," a name much more likely to be given to a mythical ancestor than to an actual man. this is rendered more probable by the fact that, as we have already seen, the genealogy of abraham traced upwards consists mainly of eponyms: 239 while those which radiate from him downwards are of the same character. thus two of his sons by keturah are jokshan and midian; and sheba, dedan, and assurim are among his descendants. again, abraham is said to have lived for 175 years, and to have had a son by sarah when she was ninety-nine and he one hundred; and a large family by keturah, whom he married after sarah's death. figures such as these are a sure test that legend has taken the place of authentic history.

another circumstance which tells strongly against the historical character of abraham is his connection with lot, and the legend of lot's wife. the history of this legend is a curious one. for many centuries, in fact down to quite modern times, the volcanic phenomena of the dead sea were appealed to as convincing confirmations of the account in genesis of the destruction of sodom and gomorrha, and hundreds of pious pilgrims saw, touched, and tasted the identical pillar of salt into which lot's wife was changed. it is now certain that the volcanic eruptions were of an earlier geological age, and that the story of lot's wife is owing to the disintegration of a stratum of salt marl, which weathers away under the action of wind and rain into columnar masses, like those described by lyell in a similar formation in catalonia. innumerable travellers and pilgrims from early christian times down to the seventeenth century returned from palestine testifying that they had seen lot's wife, and this was appealed to by theologians as a convincing proof of the truth of the scripture narrative. some saw her big, some little, some upright, and some prostrate, according to the state of disintegration of the pillars pointed out by the 240 guides, which change their form rapidly under the influence of the weather, but no doubt was entertained as to the attestation of the miracle. it turns out, however, to be one of those geological myths of precisely the same nature as that which attributed the devil's dyke near brighton to an arrested attempt of the evil one to cut a trench through the south downs, so as to let in the sea and drown the weald. the episode of lot and his daughters is also clearly a myth to account for the aversion of the hebrews to races so closely akin to them as the moabites and ammonites, and it could hardly have originated until after the date of the book of ruth, which shows no trace of such a racial aversion.

many of the events recorded of abraham's life, though not so wildly extravagant as those attributed to noah, are still clearly unhistorical. that a woman getting on towards one hundred years old should be so beautiful that her husband passes her off for his sister, fearing that, if known to be his wife, the king would kill him in order to take her into his harem, does not seem to be very probable. but when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred twice over to the same man, once at the court of pharaoh and again at that of abimelech; and a third time to his son isaac, at the same place, gerar, and to the same king abimelech, the improbability becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. nor is it very consistent with the character of the pious patriarch, the father of the chosen people, to have told such lies, and apparently connived at his wife's prostitution, so that he could save his own skin, and grow rich on the "sheep and oxen, asses, manservants, maidservants, and camels" given him by the king on the supposition that he was sarah's brother.

241 nor can we take as authentic history, abraham talking with the lord, and holding a sort of dutch auction with him, in which he beats down from fifty to ten the number of righteous men who, if found in sodom, are to save it from destruction.

on the whole, i do not see that there is anything in the account of abraham and his times which we can safely assume to be historical, except the general fact that the hebrews were descended from a semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of ur in lower chald?a probably about the time, and possibly in consequence, of the elamite conquest, about 2200 b.c., which set in motion so many wars, revolutions, and migrations in western asia.

the chronology from abraham to moses is hopelessly confused. if abraham is really an historical character, his synchronism with chedorlaomer or kudur-lagomer, the elamite king of chald?a, must be admitted, which fixes his date at about 2200 b.c. again, if the narrative of the exodus is historical, it is generally agreed that it took place in the reign of menepthah, or about 1320 b.c. the interval between abraham and moses therefore must have been about 900 years. but if we take the genealogies as authentic history, jacob, in whose time the hebrews went into egypt, was abraham's grandson, and moses, under whom they left it, was the son of jochebed, who was the granddaughter of levi, the son of jacob, who was a man advanced in life when he came to egypt. the genealogies therefore do not allow of more than five generations, or, at a high average for each, about 200 years for this interval between abraham and moses.

the tradition respecting this seems to have been 242 already very confused when genesis was compiled, for we find in chap. xv. vers. 15, 16, the lord saying to abraham, that his descendants shall come back to palestine and possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried in a good old age"; while only one verse before it is said, "thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for four hundred years."

even if 400 years were allowed for the sojourn of the hebrews in egypt, it would not extend the interval between moses and abraham to more than 500 years, or 400 years less than is required by the synchronism with chedorlaomer. it is needless to say that neither in the fourth or in any other generation did the descendants of abraham "possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates."

there is no period of jewish history so obscure as that of the sojourn in egypt. the long date is based entirely on the distinct statement in genesis xii., that the sojourning of the children of israel was 430 years, and other statements that it was 400 years, both of which are hopelessly inconsistent with the genealogies. genealogies are perhaps more likely to be preserved accurately by oral tradition than dates and figures, which oriental races generally deal with in a very arbitrary way. but there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting either date as historical. there is no mention of any specific event during the sojourn of the israelites in egypt between their advent in the time of joseph and the exodus, except their oppression by 243 a new king who knew not joseph, and the building of the treasure cities, pi-thom and ramses, by their forced labour. the latter fact may be taken as probably true from the monuments discovered by mr. flinders petrie; and if so, it occurred in the reign of ramses ii. but there is no other confirmation, from egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from manetho by josephus, which describes how the unclean people and lepers were oppressed; how they revolted under the leadership of a priest of hieropolis, who changed his name from osarphis to moyses; how they fortified avaris and called in help from the expelled hyksos settled at jerusalem; how the egyptian king and his army retreated before them into ethiopia without striking a blow; and the revolters ruled egypt for thirteen years, killing the sacred animals and desecrating the temples; and how, at the end of this period, the king and his son returned with a great army, defeated the rebels and shepherds with great slaughter, and pursued them to the bounds of syria.

this account is evidently very different from that of exodus, and does not itself read very like real history, nor is there anything in the egyptian monuments to confirm it, but rather the reverse. menepthah certainly reigned many years after he was said to have been drowned in the red sea, and his power and that of his immediate successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of suzerainty over palestine and southern syria. it is said that the egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but this is distinctly untrue, for manetho records events such as the conquest of egypt by the hyksos without a battle, 244 and the retreat of menepthah into ethiopia for thirteen years before the impure rebels, which were much more disgraceful than would have been the destruction of a pursuing force of chariots by the returning tide of the red sea.

the question therefore of the sojourn of the israelites in egypt and the exodus has to be considered solely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the books of the old testament. the long period of 430 years is open to grave objections. it is inconceivable that a people who had lived for four centuries in an old and highly-civilized empire, for part of the time at any rate on equal or superior terms under the king who "knew joseph"; and who appear to have been so much intermixed with the native egyptians as to have been borrowing from them as neighbours before their flight, should have carried away with them so little of egyptian manners and relics. beyond a few rites and ceremonies, and a certain tendency to revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing to show that the hebrews had ever been in contact with egyptian civilization. this is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the egyptian people. temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the decalogue down to the comparatively late period of ecclesiastes, where solomon the wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." even down to the 245 christian era the sadducees, who were the conservative aristocracy who stood on the old ways and on the law of moses, and from whose ranks most of the high priests were taken, were opposed to the newfangled pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection. how completely foreign the idea was to the jewish mind is apparent from the writings of the prophets and the book of job, where the obvious solution of the problem why goodness was not always rewarded and wickedness punished, afforded by the theory of a judgment after death and future life, was never even hinted at by job or his friends, however hardly they might be pressed in argument.

if the sojourn in egypt really lasted for 430 years, it must have embraced many of the greatest events in egyptian history. the descendants of jacob must have witnessed a long period of the rule of the hyksos, and lived through the desolating thirty years' war by which these foreign conquerors were gradually driven back by the native armies of upper egypt. they must have been close to the scene of the final campaigns, the siege of avaris, and the expulsion of the hyksos. they must have been subjects of ahmes, thotmes, and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed up the fugitive hyksos, and carried the conquering arms of egypt not only over palestine and syria, but up to the euphrates and tigris, and over nearly the whole of western asia. they must have witnessed the decline of this empire, the growth of the hittites, and the half-century of wars waged between them and the egyptians in palestine and syria.

the victory of ramses ii. at kadesh and the epic poem of pentaur must have been known to the 246 generation before the exodus as signal events. and if there is any truth in the account quoted by josephus, they must have been aware that they did not fly from egypt as a body of fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors who for thirteen years had held egypt up to ethiopia in subjection. and yet of all these memorable events there is not the slightest trace in the hebrew annals which have come down to us.

an even greater difficulty is to understand how, if the children of israel had lived for anything like 400 years in such a civilized empire as egypt, they could have emerged from it in such a plane of low civilization, or rather of ferocious savagery and crude superstitions as are shown by the books of the old testament, where they burst like a host of red indians on the settlements and cities of the amorites, and other more advanced nations of palestine. the discoveries at lachish already referred to show that their civilization could not have exceeded that of the rudest bedouins, and their myths and legends are so similar to those of the north american indians as to show that they must have originated in a very similar stage of mental development.

if we adopt the short date of the genealogies we are equally confronted by difficulties. if the exodus occurred in the reign of menepthah, 180 years back from that date would take us, not to the hyksos dynasty where alone it would have been possible for joseph to be a vizier, and for a semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed in egypt, but into the midst of the great and glorious eighteenth dynasty who had expelled the hyksos, and carried the dominion of egypt to the euphrates. nor would there have been time for 247 the seventy souls, who we are told were all of the family of jacob who migrated into egypt, to have increased in three generations into a nation numerous enough to alarm the egyptians, and conquer the canaanites.

the legend of joseph is very touching and beautiful, but it may just as well be a novel as history, and this suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the episode of potiphar's wife is almost verbatim the same as one of the chapters of the egyptian novel of the two brothers. nor does it seem likely that such a seven years' famine and such a momentous change as the conversion of all the land of egypt from freehold into a tenure held from the king subject to payment of a rent of one-fifth of the gross produce, should have left no trace in the records. again, the age of 110 years assigned to joseph, and 147 to his father, are a sufficient proof that we are not upon strictly historical ground; and on the whole this narrative does not go far, in the absence of any confirmation from monuments, to assist us in fixing dates, or enabling us to form any consistent idea of the real conditions of the sojourn of the people of israel in egypt. it places them on far too high a level of civilization at first, to have fallen to such a low one as we find depicted in the books of exodus, joshua, and judges. further excavations in the mounds of ruined cities in jud?a and palestine, like those of schliemann on the sites of troy and mycen?, can alone give us anything like certain facts as to the real condition of the hebrew tribes who destroyed the older walled cities of the comparatively civilized amorites and canaanites. if the conclusion of mr. flinders petrie from the section of the mound 248 of lachish, as to the extremely rude condition of the tribes who built the second town of mud-huts on the ruins of the amorite city, should be confirmed, it would go far to negative the idea that the accounts of their having been trained in an advanced code of mosaic legislation, can have any historical foundation.

we come next to moses. it is difficult to refuse an historical character to a personage who has been accepted by uniform tradition as the chief who led the israelites out of egypt, and as the great legislator who laid the foundations of the religious and civil institutions of the peculiar people. and if the passage from manetho is correctly quoted by josephus, and was really taken from contemporary egyptian annals, and is not a later version of the account in the pentateuch modified to suit egyptian prejudices, moses is clearly identified with osarsiph the priest of hieropolis, who abandoned the worship of the old gods, and headed the revolt of the unclean people, which probably meant the heretics. it may be conjectured that this may have had some connection with the great religious revolution of the heretic king of tel-el-amarna, which for a time displaced the national gods, worshipped in the form of sacred animals and symbolic statues, by an approach to monotheism under the image of the winged solar disc. such a reform must have had many adherents to have survived as the state religion for two or three reigns, and must have left a large number of so-called heretics when the nation returned to its ancient faith; and it is quite intelligible that some of the more enlightened priests should have assimilated to it the doctrine of one supreme god, which was always at the bottom of the 249 religious metaphysics of the earliest ages in egypt, and was probably preserved as an esoteric doctrine in the priestly colleges. this, however, must remain purely a conjecture, and we must look for anything specific in regard to moses exclusively to the old testament.

and here we are at once assailed by formidable difficulties. as long as we confine ourselves to general views it may be accepted as historical that the israelites really came out of egypt under a great leader and legislator; but when we come to details, and to the events connected with moses, and to a great extent supposed to have been written by him or taken from his journals, they are for the most part more wildly and hopelessly impossible than anything related of the earlier patriarchs, abraham and joseph. the story of his preservation in infancy is a variation of the myth common to so many nations, of an infant hero or god, whose life is sought by a wicked king, and who is miraculously saved. we find it in the myths of khrishna, buddha, cyrus, romulus, and others, and in the inscription by sargon i. of accade on his own tablet; he states himself to have been saved in an ark floated on the river euphrates, just as moses was on the nile. when grown up he is represented first as the adopted son of pharaoh's daughter, and then as a shepherd in the wilderness of midian talking with the lord in a fiery bush, who for the first time communicates his real name of jehovah, which he says was not known to abraham, isaac, or jacob, although constantly used by them, and although men began to call him by that name in the time of enos, adam's grandson. at jehovah's command 250 moses throws his rod on the ground, when it becomes a serpent from which he flies, and when he takes it up by the tail it becomes a rod again; and as a farther sign his hand is changed from sound to leprous as white as snow, and back again to sound, in a minute or two of time.

on returning to egypt moses is represented as going ten times into the presence of pharaoh demanding of him to let the hebrews depart, and inflicting on egypt a succession of plagues, each one more than sufficient to have convinced the king of the futility of opposing such supernatural powers, and to have made him only too anxious to get rid of the hebrews from the land at any price. what could have been the condition of egypt, if for seven days "the streams, the rivers, the ponds and pools, and even the water in the vessels of wood and of stone, through all the land of egypt," had been really turned into blood? and what sort of magicians must they have been who could do the same with their enchantments?

the whole account of these plagues has distinctly the air of being an historical romance rather than real history. those repeated interviews accompanied by taunts and reproaches of moses, the representative of an oppressed race of slaves, in the august presence of a pharaoh who, like the inca of peru or the mikado of japan, was half monarch and half deity, are totally inconsistent with all we know of egyptian usage. the son and successor of the splendid ramses ii., who has been called the louis xiv. of egyptian history, would certainly, after the first interview and miracle, either have recognized the supernatural power which it was useless to resist, or ordered moses to instant execution. 251 it is remarkable also how the series of plagues reproduce the natural features of the egyptian seasons. recent travellers tell us how at the end of the dry season when the nile is at its lowest, and the adjacent plains are arid and lifeless, suddenly one morning at sunrise they see the river apparently turned into blood. it is the phenomenon of the red nile, which is caused by the first flush of the abyssinian flood, coming from banks of red marl. after a few days the real rise commences, the nile resumes its usual colour, percolates through its banks, fills the tanks and ponds, and finally overflows and saturates the dusty plains. the first signal of the renewal of life is the croaking of innumerable frogs, and soon the plains are alive with flies, gnats, and all manner of creeping and hopping insects, as if the dust had been turned into lice. then after the inundation subsides come the other plagues which in the summer and autumn seasons frequently afflict the young crops and the inhabitants—local hail-storms, locusts, murrain among the cattle, boils and other sicknesses while the stagnant waters are drying up. it reads like what some rider haggard of the court of solomon might have written in working up the tales of travellers and old popular traditions into an historical romance of the deliverance of israel from egypt.

when we come to the exodus the impossibilities of the narrative are even more obvious. the robust common-sense of bishop colenso, sharpened by a mathematical education, has reduced many of these to the convincing test of arithmetic. the host of israelites who left egypt is said to have comprised 603,550 fighting men above the age of twenty; exclusive of the levites and of a mixed multitude who followed. this 252 implies a total population of at least 2,500,000, who are said to have wandered about for forty years in the desert of sinai, one of the most arid wildernesses in the world, destitute alike of water, arable soil, and pasture, and where a bedouin tribe of even 600 souls would find it difficult to exist. they are said to have been miraculously fed during these forty years on manna, a sweetish, gummy exudation from the scanty foliage of certain prickly desert plants, which is described as being "as small as the hoar frost," and as being so imbued with sabbatarian principles, as to keep fresh only for the day it is gathered during the week, but for two days if gathered on a friday, so as to prevent the necessity of doing any work on the sabbath.

bishop colenso points out with irresistible force the obvious impossibilities in regard to food, water, fuel, sanitation, transport, and other matters, which was involved in the supposition that a population, half as large as that of london, wandered about under tents from camp to camp for forty years in a desert. no attempt has ever been made to refute him, except by vague suppositions that the deserts of sinai and arabia may then have been in a very different condition, and capable of supporting a large population. but this is impossible in the present geological age and under existing geographical conditions. these deserts form part of the great rainless zone of the earth between the north tropical and south temperate zones, where cultivation is only possible when the means of irrigation are afforded by lakes, rivers, or melting snow. but there are none of these in the deserts of sinai and northern arabia, and therefore no water and no vegetation sufficient to support any population. no army has ever 253 invaded egypt from asia, or asia from egypt, except by the short route adjoining the mediterranean between pelusium and jaffa, and with the command of the sea and assistance of trains to carry supplies and water. and the account in exodus itself confirms this, for both food and water are stated to have been supplied miraculously, and there is no mention made of anything but the present arid and uninhabited desert in the various encampments and marches. in fact, the bible constantly dwells on the inhospitable character of the "howling wilderness," where there was neither grass nor water. accordingly reconcilers have been reduced to the supposition that ciphers may have been added by copyists, and that the real number may have been 6000, or even, as some writers think, 600. but this is inconsistent with the detailed numeration by twelve separate tribes, which works out to the same figure of 603,550 fighting men for the total number. nor is it consistent with the undoubted fact that the hebrews did evacuate egypt in sufficient numbers and sufficiently armed to burst through the frontiers, and capture the walled cities of considerable nations like the amorites and canaanites, who had been long settled in the country. the narrative of manetho, quoted by josephus, seems much more like real history; that the hebrews formed part of an army, which, after having held lower egypt for thirteen years, was finally defeated, and retreated by the usual military route across the short part of the desert from pelusium to palestine, the hebrews, for some reason, branching off, and taking to a bedouin life on the outskirts of the desert and cultivated land, just as many bedouin tribes live a semi-nomad life in the same regions at the present day.

254 apart from statistics, however, the books of the pentateuch ascribed to moses are full of the most flagrant contradictions and absurdities. it is evident that, instead of being the production of some one contemporary writer, they have been compiled and edited, probably many times over, by what i have called the "scissors and paste method," of clipping out extracts from old documents and traditions, and piecing them together in juxtaposition or succession, without regard to their being contradictory or repetitions.

thus in exodus xxxiii. 20, god says to moses: "thou canst not see my face and live; for there shall no man see me and live"; and accordingly he shows moses only his "back parts"; while in ver. 11 in the very same chapter we read, "and the lord spoke unto moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." again in exodus xxiv. the lord says to moses, "that he alone shall come near the lord" (ver. 2), while in vers. 9—11 of the same chapter, we are told that "moses, aaron, nadab, and abihu, and seventy of the elders of israel went up; and they saw the god of israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone," and although they saw god, were none the worse for it, but survived and "did eat and drink." is it possible to believe that these excessively crude representations of the deity, and these flagrant inconsistencies, were all written at the same time, by the same hand, and that the hand of a man who, if not a holy inspired prophet, was at any rate an educated and learned ex-priest of hieropolis, skilled in all the knowledge of the egyptians?

the contradictions in the ideas and precepts of morality and religion are even more startling. these 255 oscillate between the two extremes of the conception of the later prophets of a one supreme god, who loves justice and mercy better than sacrifice, and that of a ferocious and vindictive tribal god, whose appetite for human blood is as insatiable as that of the war-god of the mexicans. thus we have, on the one hand, the commandment, "thou shalt do no murder," and on the other, the injunction to commit indiscriminate massacres. a single instance may suffice. the "book of the law of moses" is quoted in 2 kings xiv. as saying, "the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin." in numbers xxxi., moses, the "meekest of mankind," is represented as extremely wroth with the captains who, having warred against midian at the lord's command, had only slaughtered the males, and taken the women of midian and their little ones captives; and he commands them to "kill every male among the little ones, and every woman that hath known man by lying with him; but all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

these midianites, be it remembered, being the people whose high priest jethro had hospitably received moses when he fled for his life from egypt, and gave him his daughter as a wife, by whom he had children who were half midianites, so that if the zealous phinehas was right in slaying the hebrew who had married a midianite woman, moses himself deserved the same fate.

the same injunction of indiscriminate massacre in order to escape the jealous wrath of an offended jehovah is repeated, over and over again, in joshua and judges, and even as late as after the foundation 256 of the monarchy, we find samuel telling saul in the name of the lord of hosts, to "go and smite amalek, and utterly destroy them, slaying both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," and denouncing saul, and hewing agag in pieces before the lord, because this savage injunction had not been literally obeyed. even under david, the man after the lord's own heart, we find him torturing to death the prisoners taken at the fall of rabbah, and giving up seven of the sons of saul to the gibeonites to be sacrificed before the lord as human victims. it is one of the strangest contradictions of human nature that such atrocious violations of the moral sense should have been received for so many centuries as a divine revelation, rather than as instances of what may be more appropriately called "devil worship."

nor is it a less singular proof of the power of cherished prepossessions that such a medley of the sublime religious ideas and lofty poetry of the prophetic ages, with such a mass of puerile and absurd legends, such obvious contradictions, and such a number of passages obviously dating from a later period, should be received by many men of intelligence, even to the present day, as the work of a single contemporary writer, the inspired prophet moses.

when we pass from the pentateuch to the succeeding books of joshua and of judges the same remarks apply. the falling of the walls of jericho at the sound of the trumpet, and the defeat of an army of 135,000 men of midian and amalek with a slaughter of 120,000, by 300 men under gideon, armed with pitchers and trumpets, are on a par with the wandering of 2,500,000 israelites in the desert for forty years, fed with manna 257 of the size of hoar-frost. the moral atmosphere also continues to be that of red indians down to the time of david, for we read of nothing but murders and massacres, sometimes of other races, sometimes of one tribe by another; while the actions selected for special commendation are like those of jael, who drove a nail into the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she had invited into her tent; or of jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter as an offering to the lord in obedience to a vow. this barbarous state of manners is confirmed by flinders petrie's discoveries at the supposed site of lachish, which show the ruins of a walled city of the amorites, built upon by the mud hovels of a race as rude as the rudest bedouins who now wander on the edge of the arabian desert.

the only safe conclusion seems to be that authentic annals of jewish history only begin with the monarchy, and that everything prior to david and solomon, or possibly saul and samuel, consists of myth, legend, and oral tradition, so inextricably blended, and so mixed up with successive later additions, as to give no certain information as to events or dates.

all that it is safe to assume is, that in a general way the hebrews were originally a semitic tribe who migrated from chald?a into palestine and thence into egypt, where they remained for an uncertain time and were oppressed by the national dynasty which expelled the hyksos; that they left egypt probably in the reign of menepthah, and as a consequence of the rebellion recorded by manetho; that they then lived for an unknown time as wandering bedouins on the frontier of palestine in a state of very rude barbarism; and finally burst in like a horde of aztecs on the older and more 258 civilized toltecs of mexico. for a long period after this, perhaps for 200 or 300 years, they lived in a state of chronic warfare with one another, and with their neighbours, massacring and being massacred with the alternate vicissitudes of war, but with the same rudeness and ferocity of superstitions and manners. gradually, however, they advanced in civilization, and something of a national feeling arose, which led to a partial consolidation under priests, and a more complete one under kings.

the first king, saul, was opposed by priestly influence and defeated and slain in battle, but a captain of condottieri, david, arose, a man of great energy and military genius, who gradually formed a standing army and conquered province after province, until at his death he left to his successor, solomon, an empire extending from the frontier of egypt to damascus, and from the red sea almost to the mediterranean.

this kingdom commanded two of the great commercial routes between the east and west, the caravan route between tyre and babylon, via damascus and tadmor, and the route from tyre to the terminus at ezion-gebir, of the sea-routes to arabia, africa, and india. solomon entered into close commercial relations with tyre, and during his long and splendid reign, jerusalem blossomed rapidly into a wealthy and a cultured city, and the surrounding cities and districts shared in the general prosperity. the greatness of the kingdom did not last long, for the revolt of the ten tribes and the growth of other powers soon reduced jud?a and samaria to political insignificance; but jerusalem, down to the time of its final destruction by nebuchadnezzar, i.e. for a period of some 400 years 259 after solomon, never seems to have lost its character of a considerable and civilized city. it is evident from the later prophets that it was the seat of a good deal of wealth and luxury, for their invectives are, to a great extent, what we should call at the present day, socialist denunciations of the oppression of the poor by the rich, land-grabbing by the powerful, and extravagance of dress by the ladies of fashion. there were hereditary nobles, organized colleges of priests and scribes, and no doubt there was a certain amount of intellectual life and literary activity. but of a sacred book there is no trace until the discovery of one in the temple in the reign of josiah; and the peculiar tenets of modern judaism had no real hold on the mass of the people until after the return from exile and the reforms of ezra and nehemiah.

the history, therefore, contained in the old testament is comparatively modern. there is nothing which can be relied on as authentic in regard to events and dates prior to the establishment of the monarchy, and even the wildest myths and the most impossible legends do not carry us back within 2000 years of the time when we have genuine historical annals attested by monuments both in egypt and chald?a.