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ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
ON THE
PENTATEUCH:
A Comprehensive Summary of Bishop Colenso’s Argu
ment,
cally
Proving that the Pentateuch is not Histori
True; and that it was composed by several
WRITERS, THE EARLIEST OF WHOM LIVED IN THE TIME OF
\
Samuel, from 1100 to 1060 B. C., and the latest in
time of Jeremiah, from 641 to 624 B. C.
the
PREFACE.
The author of the book of which this pamphlet is an ab
stract is not an Infidel, but a Bishop of the Church of England,
having charge of the Diocese of Natal, in South Africa. While
engaged in the translation of the Scriptures into the Zulu tongue,
with the aid of intelligent natives, he was brought face to face
with questions which in former days had caused him some uneasi
ness, but with respect to which he had been enabled to satisfy his
mind sufficiently for practical purposes, as a Christian minister,
by means of the specious explanations given in most commenta
ries on the Bible, and had settled down into a willing acquies
cence in the general truth of the narrative of the Old Testament,
whatever difficulties might still hang about particular parts of it.
�ii
PREFACE.
But while translating the story of the Flood, a simple-minded but
intelligent native, with the docility of a child but the reasoning
powers of mature age, looked up and asked: “ Is all that true ?
Do you really believe that all the beasts, birds, and creeping
things, from hot countries and cold, came thus by pairs and en
tered Noah’s ark ? And did Noah gather food for them all; for
the beasts and birds of prey as well as the rest ? ” The Bishop
had recently acquired sufficient knowledge of geology to know
that a universal Deluge, such as is described in Genesis, could not
have taken place. So his heart answered in the words of the
Prophet, “ Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord ? ”
(Zech, xiii., 3.) He dared not do so, but gave the brother such a
reply as satisfied him for the time, without throwing any dis
credit upon the general veracity of the Bible history. But being
driven to search more deeply into these questions, the Bishop
wrote to a friend in England to send him the best books on both
sides of the question of the credibility of the Mosaic history. His
friend sent him the works of Ewald and Kurtz, the former in
German and the latter in an English translation. Laying Ewald
on the shelf, he studied Kurtz, who maintained with great zeal
and ability tho historical accuracy of the Pentateuch. He then
grappled with Ewald, who maintained an opposite view. The
result of the Bishop’s study, with the aid of a few other German
books, appeared in the first volume of his work issued in 1862,
followed soon after by four more volumes. The books met with
a very large sale in England. The first two volumes only aro
published as yet in this country. Perhaps the demand would not
encourage the republication of the complete set. A great deal
of the work is made up of apology, much more of answers to
orthodox expositors and critics who have attempted to explain the
very difficulties which presented themselves to the inquiring mind
of the author, and a large part of the last three volumes consists
of elaborate criticism, and a presentation of various portions of
the Pentateuch attributed to the different writers thereof. In
this Abstract all those portions are passed by, the object being to
compress into the smallest practicable compass the gist of the
whole argument. Should the reader wish to see what can be said
in answer to the very criticisms which Colenso makes, he will find
it fairly presented and candidly considered by the author in his
complete work.
�VOL. I.
INCREDIBLE NARRATIVES OF THE PENTATEUCH.
In Vol. I. Bishop Colenso shows, by means of a number of
prominent instances, that the books of the Pentateuch contain, in
their own account of the story which they profess to relate, such
remarkable contradictions, and involve such plain impossibilities,
that they cannot be regarded as true narratives of actual histori
cal matters of fact. Passing over the many difficulties which ex
ist in the earlier parts of the history, he begins at once with the
account of the Exodus.
THE FAMILY OF JUDAH.
Judah was forty-two years old when he went down with Jacob
into Egypt, being three years older than his brother Joseph, who
was then thirty-nine. For “Joseph was thirty years old when
he stood before Pharaoh ” (G. xli. 46) ; and from that time nine
years elapsed (seven of plenty and two of famine) before Jacob
came down into Egypt. Judah was born in the fourth year of
Jacob’s double marriage (G. xxix. 35), being the fourth of the
seven children of Leah born in seven years; and Joseph was born
of Rachel in the seventh year (G. xxx. 24, 26; xxi. 41). In these
forty-two years of Judah’s life the following events are recorded
in G. xxxviii.:
He grows up, marries, and has three sons. The eldest grows
up, marries, and dies. The second son marries his brother’s widow
and dies. The third son, after waiting to grow to maturity, de
clines to marry the widow. The widow then deceives Judah him
self, and bears him twins—Pharez and Zarah. One of these twins
grows up and has two sons—Hezron and Hamul—born to him be
fore Jacob goes down into Egypt.
ALL THE PEOPLE AT THE DOOR OF THE TABERNACLE.
Moses, at the command of Jehovah, gathered “ all the congre
gation together unto the door of the tabernacle.” (L. viii. 1-4.)
�4
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
By “ all the congregation ” is meant the whole body of the peo
ple, or at all events the main body of adult males in the prime
of life, as is shown by numerous texts where the expression is
used. (E. xvi. 2; L. xxiv. 14 ; N. i. 18.) In Jo. viii. 35, the
women and children are included. The mass of the male adults
must have numbered more than the number of warriors, which is
nowhere fixed at less than 600,000. Now the whole width of the
tabernacle was only eighteen feet, as may be gathered from E.
xxvi., so that a close column of 600,000 men covering this front,
allowing two feet in width and eighteen inches in depth for each
full-grown man, would have reached back nearly twenty miles ;
or if the column covered the whole width of the court, which was
ninety feet, it would have extended back nearly four miles. The
whole court of the tabernacle comprised not more than 1,692
square yards, after deducting the area of the tabernacle itself,
which covered 108 square yards, and therefore could have held only
5,000 people closely packed. The ministering Levites “ from thirty
to fifty years old ” numbered 8,580 (N. iv. 48); even they, conse
quently, could not all have stood within the court.
MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
“ These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel.”
(D.i. 1.)
“ And Moses called all Israel and said unto them.” (D. v. 1.)
“ There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which
Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the
women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conver
sant among them.” (Jo. viii. 35.)
How was it possible to do this before at least 2,000,000 people ?
Could Moses or Joshua, as actual eye-witnesses, have expressed
themselves in such extravagant language ? Surely not.
EXTENT OF THE CAMP AND DUTIES OF THE PRIESTS.
The camp of the Israelites must have been at least a mile and
a half in diameter. This would be allowing to each person on
the average a space three times the size of a coffin for a fullgrown man. The ashes, offal, and refuse of the sacrifices would
therefore have to be carried by the priest in person a distance of
three-quarters of a mile “ without the camp, unto a clean place."
tL. iv. 11, 12.) There were only three priests, namely, Aaron,
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
5
Eleazer, and Ithamar, to do all this work for 2,000,000 people.
All the wood and water would have to be brought into this im
mense camp from the outside. Where could the supplies have
been got while the camp was under Sinai, in a desert, for nearly
twelve months together ? How could so great a camp have been
kept clean ?
But how huge does the difficulty become if we take the more
reasonable dimensions of twelve miles square for this camp ; that
is, about the size of London ! Imagine at least half a million of
men having to go out daily a distance of six miles and back, to
the suburbs, for the common necessities of nature, as the law
directed.
TWO NUMBERINGS SIX MONTHS APART ; EXACT COINCIDENCE.
In E. xxx. 11-13, Jehovah commanded Moses to take a census
of the children of -Israel, and in doing it to collect half a shekel
of the sanctuary as atonement money. This expression “ shekel
of the sanctuary ” is put into the mouth of Jehovah six or seven
months before the tabernacle was made. In E. xxxviii. 26, we
read of such a tribute being paid, but nothing is there said of any
census being taken, only the number of those who paid, from twenty
years old and upward, was 603,550 men. In N. i. 1-46, more than
six months after this occasion, an account of an actual census is
given, but no atonement money is mentioned. If in the first in
stance a census was taken, but accidentally omitted to be men
tioned, and in the second instance the tribute was paid but
accidentally omitted likewise, it is nevertheless surprising that the
number of adult males should have been identically the same
(603,550) on both occasions, six months apart.
THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS.
The Israelites at their exodus were provided with tents (E. xvi.
16), in which they undoubtedly encamped and dwelt. They did
not dwell in tents in Egypt, but in “ houses ” with “ doors,” “ side
posts,” and “ lintels.” These tents must have been made either
of hair or of skin (E. xxvi. 7, 14, xxxvi. 14, 19)—more probably
of the latter—and were therefore much heavier than the modern
canvas tents. At least 200,000 were required to accommodate
2,000,000 people. Supposing they took these tents from Egypt,
how did they carry them in their hurried march to the Red Sea ?
�6
ABSTRACT OF COeENSO
The people had burdens enough without them. They had to
carry their kneading troughs with the dough uflleavened, their
clothes, their cooking utensils, couches, infants, aged and infirm
persons, and food enough, for at least a month’s use, or until
manna was provided for them in the wilderness, which was “ on
the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure out
of the land of Egypt” (E. xvi. 1.). One of these tents, with its
poles, pegs, etc , would be a load for a single ox, so that they
would have needed 200,000 oxen to carry the tents. But oxen
are not usually trained to carry goods on their backs, and will
not do so without training.
THE ISRAELITES ARMED.
“ The children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of
Egypt.” (E. xiii. 18.)
The marginal reading for “ harnessed ” is “ by five in rank.”
But as this would make of the 600,000 men a column sixty-eight
miles long, this translation only increases the difficulty, as it
would have taken several days to have started them all off. The
Hebrew word is elsewhere rendered “ armed,” or “ in battle array.”
Certainly about a month after the exodus the Israelites “ discom
fited ” the Amalekites “ with the edge of the sword.” (E. xvii.
13.) Hence they somehow possessed arms. And yet this army
of 600,000 had become so debased by long servitude that they
could not strike a single blow for liberty in Egypt, but could only
weakly wail and murmur against Moses, saying, “ It had been
better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in
the wilderness! ”
INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER.
The whole population of Israel were instructed in one single
day to keep the passover, and actually did keep it. (E. xii.) At
the first notice of any such feast, Jehovah said, “ I will pass
through the land of Egypt this night.” The passover was to be
killed “ at even ” on the same day that Moses received the com
mand. The women were at the same time ordered to borrow
jewels of their neighbors, the Egyptians. After midnight of the
same day the Israelites received notice to start for the wilderness.
No one was to go out of his house till morning, when they were
to take their hurried flight with their cattle and herds. How
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
7
could 2,000,000 people, scattered about over a wide district as they
must have been with their cattle and* herds, have gotten ready
and taken a simultaneous hurried flight at twelve hours’ notice ?
MARCH OUT OF EGYPT.
The Israelites, with their flocks and herds, reached the Red
Sea, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles over a sandy desert
in three days ! Marching fifty abreast, the able-bodied warri
ors alone would have filled up the road for seven miles, and the
whole multitude would have made a column twenty-two miles long,
so that the last of the body could not have been started until the
front had advanced that distance—more than two days’ journey
for such a mixed company. Then the sheep and cattle must have
formed another vast column, covering a much greater tract of
ground in proportion to their number. Upon what did these two
millions of sheep and oxen feed in the journey to the Red Sea
over a desert region, sandy, gravelly, and stony alternately ?
How did the people manage with the sick and infirm, and espe
cially with the 750 births that must have taken place in the three
days’ march ?
THE SHEEP AND CATTLE IN THE WILDERNESS.
The Israelites undoubtedly had flocks and herds of cattle.
(E. xxxiv. 3.)^ They sojourned nearly a year before Sinai, where
there was no feed for cattle; and the wilderness in which
they sojourned nearly forty years is now and was then a desert.
(D. xxxii. 10; viii. 15.) The cattle surely did not subsist on
manna !
EXTENT AND POPULATION OF THE LAND OF CANAAN.
The extent of land occupied by the Israelites in the time of
Joshua was about 11,000 square miles, or 7,000,000 acres—a little
larger than the State of Vermont. The number of Israelites was
not less than 2,000,000. This limited, mountainous, and by no
means fertile area of country, therefore, had to subsist these 2,000,000 people, and prior to their occupation of it had subsisted “ seven
nations greater and mightier ” than the Israelitish nation itself.
(D. vii, 1.)
�8
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
FECUNDITY OF THE HEBREW MOTHERS.
“ All the first-born males from a month old and upwards, of
those that were numbered, were 22,273.” (N. iii. 43.) The lowest
computation of the whole number of the people at that time is
2,000,000. The number of males would be 1,000,000. Dividing
the latter number by the number of first born gives 44, which
would be the average number of boys in each family, or about
88 children by each mother. Or, if where the first born were
females the males were not counted, the number of children by
each mother would be reduced to 44.
PRODIGIOUS INCREASE IN FOUR GENERATIONS.
The number of the children of Israel who went into Egypt
was 70 (E. i. 5). They sojourned in Egypt 215 years. It could
not have been 430 years, as would appear from E. xii. 40. The
marginal chronology makes the period 215 years, and there were
only four generations to the exodus, namely, Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (E. vi. 16, 18, 20). How could these people have
increased in 215 years from 70 souls so as to number 600,000 war
riors ? It would have required an average number of 46 children
to each father. The 12 sons of Jacob had between them only 53
sons. At this rate of increase, in the fourth generation there
would have been only 6,311 males, provided they were all living
at the time of the exodus, instead of 1,000,000. If we add the
fifth generation, who would be mostly children, the total number
of males would not have exceeded 28,465.
EXTRAORDINARY INCREASE OF THE DANITES.
Dan in the first generation had but one son (G. xlvi. 23), and
yet in the fourth generation his descendants had increased to
62,700 warriors (N. ii. 26), or 64,400 (N. xxvi. 43). Each of his
sons and grandsons must have had about 80 children of both
sexes. On the other hand, the Levites increased the number of
“ males from a month old and upwards ” during the 38 years in
the wilderness only from 22,000 to 23,000 (N. iii. 39, xxvi. 62)
and the tribe of Manasseh during the same time increased from
32,200 (N. i. 35) to 52,700 (xxvi. 34).
IMPOSSIBLE DUTIES OF THE PRIESTS.
Aaron and his two sons were the only priests during Aaron’s
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
9
ifetime. They had to make all the burnt offerings on a single
11 tar nine feet square (E. xxxvii. 1), besides attending to other
priestly duties for 2,000,000 people. At the birth of every child,
both a burnt offering and a sin offering had to be made. The
number of births must be reckoned at least 250 a day, for
which consequently 500 sacrifices would have to be offered daily
-—an impossible duty to be performed by three priests. For poor
women pigeons were accepted instead of lambs. If half of
them offered pigeons, and only one instead of two, it would have
required 90,000 pigeons annually for this purpose alone. Where
did they get the pigeons ? How could they have had them at all
under Sinai ? There were thirteen cities where the presence of
these three priests was required (Jo. xxi. 19). The three priests
had to eat a large portion of the burnt offerings (N. xviii. 10) and
,all the' sin offerings—250 pigeons a day—more than 80 for each
priest.
IMPOSSIBLE SACRIFICES AT THE PASSOVER.
In keeping the second passover under Sinai, 150,000 lambs
must have been killed, i. e., one for each family (E. xii. 3, 4). The
Lecites slew them, and the three priests had to sprinkle the
blood from their hands (1 Chr. xxx. 16, xxxv. 11). The killing
had to be done “ between two evenings ” (E. xii. 6), and the
sprinkling had to be done in about two hours. The kifiing must
have been done in the .court of the tabernacle (L. i. 3, 5, xvii.
2-6). The area of the court could have held but 5,000 people at
most. Here the lambs had to be sacrificed at the rate of 1,250 a
minute, and each of the three priests had to sprinkle the blood of
more than 400 lambs every minute for two hours.
INCREDIBLE SLAUGHTER.
The number of warriors of the Israelites, as recorded at the
exodus, was 600,000 (E. xii. 37); subsequently it was 603,530
(E. xxxviii. 25-28), and at the end of their wanderings it was
601,730 (N. xxvi. 51). But in 2 Chr. xiii. 3 Abijah, king of Judah,
brings 400,000 men against Jeroboam, king of Israel, with
800,000, and “ there fell down slain of Israel 500,000 chosen men ”
(®. 17). On another occasion, Pekah, king of Israel, slew of Ju
dah in one day 120,000 valiant men (2 Chr. xxviii. 6.)
�10
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
UNPARALLELED PRODIGY OF VALOR.
Among other prodigies of valor, 12,000 Israelites are recorded
in. N. xxxi. as slaying all the male Midis nites, taking captive all
the females and children, seizing all their cattle and flocks, num
bering 808,000 head, taking all their goods and burning all their
cities, without the loss of a single man. Then they killed all the
women and children except 32,000 virgins, whom they kept for
themselves. There would seem to have been at least 80,000
females in the aggregate, of whom 48,000 were killed, besides
(say) 20,000 boys. The number of men slaughtered must have
been about 48,000. Each Israelite therefore must have killed four
men in battle, carried off eight captive women and children, and
driven home sixty-seven head of cattle. And then after reaching
home, as a pastime, by command of Moses, he had to murder six
of his captive women and children in cold blood.
II
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES.
In vol. II. Bishop Colenso devotes a preface and a first chapter
to the maintenance of the criticisms of vol. I. He shows that it
is impossible to apply any system of reduction to the exaggerated
numbers given in every part of the Pentateuch, without encoun
tering difficulties and contradictions quite as- formidable as those
presented by him. He then proceeds to investigate the question
of the real origin, age, and authorship of the different portions of
the Pentateuch and other early books of the Bible, and makes the
following points :
CONTRADICTORY STORY OF THE CREATION AND DELUGE.
The cosmogony of the 2d chapter of Genesis is contradictory
to that of chapter 1 in six particulars, the chief of which is, that
in the first chapter the birds and beasts are created before man,
and in the second after man. Again, in the first account Adam
find Eve are created together, completing the work of creation,
and in the second man is first made, then the beasts and birds,
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
11
and lastly woman. It is therefore apparent that the two accountg
were written by different men j and this is corroborated by the
use of the name Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) in chapter 2, while
in chapter 1 it is simply God (Elohim).
A similar criticism is applied to the story of the flood, which
is evidently composed by two different writers, one making Noah
take into the ark animals of every kind, including clean beasts,
by twos (G. vii. 8, 9), and the other making him take in the clean
beasts by sevens (v. 2, 5). In this story, as in that of tne cre
ation, one writer uses the name of God simply, and the other
Lord God.
ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC WRITERS.
The book of Genesis bears evidence throughout of being the
work of two different writers, one of whom is distinguished by
the constant use of the word Elohim (translated “ God ”), and the
other by the admixture with it of the name Jehovah (translated
“ Lord ”). The Elohistic passages, taken together, form a very
tolerably connected whole, only interrupted here and there by a
break caused apparently by the Jehovistic writer having removed
some part of the Elohistic narrative, replacing it, perhaps, by one
of his own. Thus there are two contradictory accounts of the
creation and of the deluge intermingled.
THE PENTATEUCH COMPOSED EONG AFTER MOSES’S DEATn.
The books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses in
the inscriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or anywhere else, except
in our modern translations. They must have been composed
at a later age than that of Moses or Joshua, as is shown by nu
merous passages that speak of places and things by names that
were not known nor given till long after the death of these men.
For example, Gilgal, mentioned in D. xi. 30, was not given as the
name of that place till after the entrance into Canaan (Jo. v. 9).
Lan, mentioned in G. xiv. 14, was not so called till long after the
time of Moses (Jo. xix. 47). In G xxxvi. 31, the beginning of
the reign of kings over Israel is spoken of historically, an event
which did not occur before the time of Samuel.
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA WRITTEN IN DAVID’S LIFETIME.
In Josh. x. 12-14, the miracle of the sun and moon standing
�12
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
still is recorded, and in verse 13 these words are found: “Is not
this written in the Book ci Jasher?” Now, in 2 Sam. i. 18, we
read that David “ hade them teach the children of .Tudah the use
of the bow. Behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.” The
natural inference is, that this book was written not earlier than
the time of David, and the above passage in the bcok of Joshua
was written of course after that.
THE BOOKS OE KINGS WRITTEN AS LATE AS 561 B. C.
The Books of Kings seem to have been written as late, at least,
as 561 B. C., because in 2 Kings xxv. 27-30, mention is made of
Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, taking Jehoiachin, king of
Judah, out of prison, and feeding him “ all the days of his life.”
Evil-merodach came to the throne 561 B. C., and reigned two
years.
THE CHRONICLES WRITTEN ABOUT 400 B. C.
The author of the Books of Chronicles was probably a priest
or Levite, who wrote about 400 B. C. or nearly 200 years after
the captivity, and 650 years after David came to the throne.
These books go over the same grounds as the books of Samuel
and Kings, and often in the very same words. The Chronicles
are very inaccurate, and often contradictory to Samuel and Kings.
In 1 Chr. iii. 19-21, we have the following genealogy : Zerubbabel, Hananiah, Pelatiah; so that the Book was written after the
birth of Zerubbabfel’s grandson, and Zerubbabel was the leader
of the expedition which returned to Jerusalem after the decree
of Cyrus, 536 B. C.
EZRA AND NEHEMIAH WRITTEN AFTER 456 B. C.
The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah were, of course, written
after 456 B. C., when Ezra arrived at Jerusalem. Nehemiah’s
last act of reformation was in 409 B. C., and yet in Neh. xii. 11,
we have given the genealogy of Jaddua, who was high priest in
Alexander’s time, 332 B. C.
FIRST INTRODUCTION OF THE NAME JEHOVAH.
In E. vi. 2-8, God says to Moses: “ By my name Jehovah was
I not known to them ” (the patriarchs), and yet the name Jehovah,
translated Lord, is repeatedly used in the book of Genesis.’ If
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
13
the name originated in the days of Moses, he certainly would
not, in writing the story of the Pentateuch, have put it into the
mouths of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (G. xiv. 22,
xxvi. 22, xxviii. 16), much less into that of a heathen man,
Abimelech (xxvi. 28). The contradiction is explained by the fact
that two different writers were concerned in composing the nar
rative, one of whom, in speaking of God, uses the name Elohim,
and the other the name Jehovah. The ground-work of the Pen
tateuch (and but a small portion of it, as the Bishop proposes to
show hereafter) was composed before the name Jehovah had been
familiar.
SAMUEL PKOBABLY THE ELOHISTIC WRITEH.
During and after the time of Samuel, we observe in the books
known by his name a gradually increasing partiality for the use
of names compounded with Jehovah (jo or iah), while there is
no instance of the kind throughout the Book of Judges, which
contains numerous names compounded with Elohim (el). In the
first seven chapters of the first Book of Samuel we find the follow
ing names compounded with Elohim : A^kanah, A'Zihu, Eli, Sam
uel, Ele&zex; while we meet with but one name compounded with
Jehovah, viz : Joshua (vi. 18). But this name evidently belongs to
a man living considerably later than the time of Samuel, for the
passage reads, “ which stone remaineth unto this day in the field
of Joshua.” Then we read in viii. 1, 2, “ When Samuel was old,
he made his sons judges over Israel; now the name of his first
born was Joel, and the name of his second AbzoA.” It is remark
able that his first-born son should be named Joel, a contraction
of the compound name Jehovah and Elohim. In 1 Chr. vi. 28,
we are told that the name of Samuel’s eldest son was Vashni.
From this it would seem that the name was afterwards changed
to Joel. In the subsequent chapters there is a gradual increase
of names compounded with Jehovah.
In the Elohistic portions of the Book of Genesis, in some
of which a multitude of names occur, and many of them com
pounded with Elohim, in the form of El, there is not a single
one compounded with Jehovah, in the form either of the prefix
Jeho or Jo, or the termination jah, both of which were so com
monly employed in the later times. The name Jehovah is first
�14
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
introduced by the Elohistic writer in Ex. vi. 3, as a,new name for
the God of Israel.
From these and other evidences adduced, Bishop Colenso con
cludes with some degree of confidence that Samuel was the Elo
histic writer of the Pentateuch, and that the Jehovistic writer
must have written not earlier than the latter part of David’s life,
when the name of Jehovah had become quite common, and n^#ies
began to be compounded with it freely. The narrative being
written from 300 to 400 years after the death of Moses, could not,
therefore, have been historically true, but may have been intended
as a series of parables, based on legendary facts, somo of which,
perhaps, had been recorded from time to time in a roll deposited
in the temple archives, to which access was occasionally had by
the priests.
[Note.—Sir Isaac Newton, in. his “Observations upon the
Prophecies,” etc., concludes that Samuel put the books of Moses
and Joshua into the form now extant, inserting into the book of
Genesis (xxxvi. 31-39) the race of the kings of Edom.]
Ill
THE AUTHOR OF DEUTERONOMY.
In vol. III., Bishop Colenso presents in great detail arguments
to prove that the book of Deuteronomy was written by a differ
ent hand from that or those which wrote the rest of the Penta
teuch. No attentive reader of the Bible, he says, can have failed
to remark the striking difference which exists between the stylo
and contents of Deuteronomy and those of the other books gen
erally of the Pentateuch. Deuteronomy forms the living portion,
the sum and substanee, of the whole Pentateuch. When wo
speak of the “ law of Moses,” we speak of Deuteronomy. In tho
New Testament Deuteronomy is frequently quoted with emphasis
as the law of Moses.
The principal proofs of a different authorship of this book are
as follows :
1. Each writer distinctly professes to give the identical com
mandments as spoken (E. xx. 11) or written (D. v. 22) by Jehovah ;
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
15
W each assigns an entirely different reason for the observance
of the Sabbath. In Exodus it is because God rested on the seventh
day ; in Deuteronomy it is because he brought the Israelites out of
E^ypt “through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm.”
It is remarkable that the Deuteronomist should ignore the reason
assigned in Exodus.
2. In the other books of the Pentateuch, the priests are always
styled the “ sons of Aaron” (L. i. 5, 7, 8, 11, ii. 2, iii. 2, xiii. 2 ; N.
x. 8; comp. L. xxi. 21), and never the “ sons of Levi.” In
Deuteronomy they are always called “ sons of Levi, or “ Levitcs
(D. xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1, xxi. 5, xxiv. 8, xxvii. 9, xxxi. 9 ; comp,
xviii. 1, 5), and never “ sons of Aaron.”
3. The Deuteronomist, in using the word “ law,” invariably re
fers to the whole law (D. i. 5, iv. 8, 44, xvii. 11, 18, 19, xxvii. 3, 8,
26) ; the other books almost always use the words with reference
to particular laws (E. xii. 49 ; L. vi. 9, 14, 25, vii. 1, 7, 11, 37).
4. The Deuteronomist confines all sacrifices to one place
“ which Jehovah would choose,” “ to put his name there” (D. xii.
5, 11, 14, 18, 21, 26); the other books say nothing about this, but
expressly imply the contrary (E. xx. 24).
5. The Deuteronomist, though he strictly enjoins the observ
ance of the other three great leasts, and the Passover (xvi. 1—1 <),
makes no mention whatever of the Feast of Trumpets (L. xxiii.
23-25, N. xxix. 1-6), or the Day of Atonement (L. xxiii. 26-32,
N. xxix. 7-11), on each of which days it was expressly ordered
that the people should “ do no servile work,” but should hold “ a
holy convocation.” The directions in N. xxix are supposed to
have been laid down by Jehovah only a few weeks previous to
the address of Moses in Deuteronomy ; yet here in making a final
summary of duties, as he is represented as doing, he omits all
mention of those two important days, upon which the same stress
is laid in L. xxiii. as on the other three great feasts, and for the
neglect of which death was threatened as a punishment.
6. In D. viii. 4, xxix. 5, and elsewhere, mention is made of
clothing which lasted the Israelites forty years without waxing old
upon them. No mention is made in the older narrative of this
miraculous provision of clothing.
7. In D. ix. 18, Moses says he “fell down before the Lord as
at the first forty days and nights,” and fasted as he had done also
at the first (®. 9). According to the older story, he fasted only
�16
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
when he went up the second time—not the first (E. xxiv. 18,
xxxiv. 28).
8. In E. xviii. 25, 26, we read that Moses chose able men out
of all Israel, and made them judges over the people. This was
just before the giving of the law at Sinai. In D. i. 6-18, the ap
pointment of these same officers is made to take place nearly
twelve months after the giving of the law, when the Israelites
are just about to leave Horeb (v. 6). In E. xix. we find that the
giving of the law was in the third month after the de
parture from Egypt. The Israelites took their departure from
Sinai in the second month of the second year (N. x. 11), and this
was the time referred to in D. i. when these judges were appoint
ed (®. 6, 9).
9. In D. x. 1-5, mention is made of the ark being prepared as
a receptacle of the table of the laws before Moses goes up into
the mount. The older narrative says nothing about an ark being
prepared beforehand for the tables (E. xxxiv. 29). It is only
after comiug down with the second set of tables that Moses sum
mons the wise-hearted (E. xxxv. 10-12) to “come and make all
that the Lord hath commanded, the tabernacle, his tent and his
covering, etc., the ark,” etc. The tabernacle is constantly men
tioned in the three middle books of the Pentateuch, but is never
once named in Deuteronomy until the announcement to Moses in
xxxi. 14, 15, that he should die. And this passage is shown to be
an interpolation, with several others at the close of the book.
10. In D. x. 8, we read, “At that time the Lord separated the
tribe of Levi,” i. e., after the death of Aaron (®. 6). In N. iii. 5,
6, 7, the separation is made to take place in Aaron’s lifetime.
11. The Deuteronomist lays great stress on the duty of being
charitable and hospitable to the Levite, placing him in the same
category as the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and treat
ing him as a sort of mendicant when sojourning within the gates,
thus ignoring the fact that the children of Levi were entitled to
one-tenth in Israel for an inheritance (N. xviii. 21). Not a word
is said about the Levites having any divine right to demand or at
least to accept the payment of tithes from the people, according
to the provisions supposed to have been made by Jehovah him
self in N. xviii. 21. The Deuteronomist makes Moses speak of
the Levite as an object of charity only a few months after the pro
mulgation of this law in Numbers about the Levites’ inheritance.
�ON THE PENTATEUCH
17
Not a trace of poverty in regard to the Levites is found in the
first four books. Under the later kings we have unmistakable
indications of the poverty of the priests.
12. In D. xiv. 19, every creeping thing that flieth is declared
unclean, and is forbidden to be eaten. In L. xi. 21-23, every
creeping thing that flieth is allowed to be eatea, and four forms
of locusts are mentioned.
13. Numerous expressions common throughout the first four
books are never employed by the Deuteronomist, and vice versa.
Bishop Colenso ciles thirty-three expressions in Deuteronomy,
each of which is found on an average eight times in that book,
but not one of which is found even once in the other four books.
In Deuteronomy the expression “ the Lord thy God,” or “ the
Lord our God,” occurs with remarkable frequency ; but it is very
rarely found in the other books.
WHEN WAS DEUTERONOMY WRITTEN, AND BY WHOM?
1. The author of Deuteronomy must have lived after the other
writers of the Pentateuch, since he refers throughout to passages
in the story of the exodus recorded in the other books, and refers
directly, in xxiv. 8, to the laws about leprosy given in Leviticus.
If, therefore, the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions of the Penta
teuch were written not earlier than the times of Samuel, David,
and Solomon, it is plain that the Deuteronomist must have lived
no earlier, but probably later than the time of Solomon.
2. The phrase “ sons of Levi ” and “ Levites,” always used by
the Deuteronomist, is invariably used by Jeremiah and the other
later prophets (Jer. xxxiii. 18, 21, 22 ; Ezek. xliii. 19, xliv. 15,
xlviii. 13 ; Mai. iii. 3. Comp. Mai. ii, 4, 8). The Deuteronomist,
like Jeremiah, uses the word “ law ” in the singular only in speak
ing of the whole law (Jer. ii. 8, vi. 19, viii. 8, ix. 13). The Deuter
onomist confines all sacrifices to the place where “ Jehovah would
place his name so Jeremiah speaks repeatedly of Jerusalem or
the temple as a place called by Jehovah’s name (vii. 10, 11, 14,
30, xxv. 29). Numerous other expressions are used by the Deu
teronomist in common with the ) iter Biblical writers only. Out
of thirty-three expressions, each of which occurs on an average
eight times in Deuteronomy, but not one of which is found in
the other books of the Pentateuch, seventeen are found repeated
with more or less frequency in Jeremiah, and many of the others
�18
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
or their representatives are partially repeated in his prophecies,
Expressions do occasionally occur in the other books of the Pen
tateuch which are peculiar to Deuteronomy ; but it is possible, if
not probable, that the writer of the latter book may have inter
polated those few passages.
3. The Deuteronomist, in xvii. 2-7, expresses strong abhor
rence of all manner of idolatry, and especially of the worship of
the “ sun or moon, or any of the host of heaven,” the first in
timation of which worship is found in the reign of Josiah’s father,
Manasseh (2 K. xxi. 3, 5).
4. That the book of Deuteronomy was written after the time
of Samuel is shown by the fact that the laws referring to the
kingdom seem not to have been known to Samuel (1 S. viii. 6-18),
nor to the later writer of Samuel’s doings. In S. xii. 17-19, he
charges it upon the people as a great sin that they had desired a
king.
5. The mention of the kingdom in D. xvii. 14-18, with the
distinct reference to the dangers likely to arise to the State from
the king multiplying to himself “ wives,” “ silver,” “ gold,” and
“ horses,” implies that the book was written after the age of Sol
omon ; and this is confirmed by the frequent reference to the
place which Jehovah would choose, i. e., Jerusalem and the
temple.
6. The tabernacle, so frequently spoken of in the three middle
books of the Pentateuch, but never once named by the Deuteron
omist till near the close of the book, in an interpolated passage,
had long since passed away in Jeremiah’s time.
7. That the book was written after the captivity of the ten
tribes, in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s reign, is evident from the
fact that the sorrows of that event are referred to as matters well
known and things of the past (D. iv. 25-28).
8. In 2 K. xxii. and xxiii. we find an account of the dis
covery of the “ book of the law in the house of the Lord,” in
the eighteenth year of King Josiah, which caused a great sensa
tion. Where conld this book have been hidden for eight centu
ries ? Could it have escaped the notice of David, Solomon, and
others ? Can we resist the suspicion that the writing of the book
and the placing of it where it was found were pretty nearly con
temporaneous ? Shaphan, the scribe, read the book before the
king, and appears to have read all the words of it. Again the
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
19
next day the king himself read in the ears of the people “ all the
words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house
of the Lord.” The name “ book of the covenant ” cannot well
apply to all the Pentateuch, though it may apply to the book of
Deuteronomy, or to the chief portion of it, since we find it written
in D. xxix. 1, “ These are the words of the covenant.”
9. The whole description of the nature and effect of the words
contained in the book shows that it must have been the book of
Deuteronomy. A reform took place in regard to idolatrous prac
tices immediately after the discovery of this book. Never before
was such a passover held as in that same year; but we have no
sign whatever of another such passover being held, even by
Josiah. Perhaps after a time the young king also became aware
of the real facts of the case, and his zeal may have been dampened
by the discovery.
10. In that age and time of Jewish debasement, when the law
book as it then existed was not well suited to the present necessi
ties of the people, Jeremiah or any other seer may have considered
himself justified in summoning up the spirit of the older law in
a powerful address adapted to the pressing circumstances of the
times, putting words into the mouth of the departed lawgiver,
Moses, to reinforce the laws by solemn prophetical utterances.
The intention may have been to put down by force the gross idol
atries which abounded in the kingdom, through the influence of
a disguised prophecy upon the mind of a well-meaning king.
11. The book of Deuteronomy must have been written after
the great spread among the tribes of Canaan of the worship of
the sun and moon and host of heaven (D. iv. 19). It seems to
have been first generally practised in Judah in the reign of Manasseh, the father of Josiah (2 K. xxi. 3, 5 ; 2 Chr. xxxiii. 3).
Manasseh’s grandfather Ahaz may have introduced it, as appears
from a comparison of 2 K. xxiii. 12 ; but it probably was not
much practised, and it certainly was not adopted by his son
Hezekiah. In Manasseh’s reign, however, it seems to have
flourished.
12. It must have been written before the time of Josiah’s
reformation, since the words ascribed to Huldah the prophetess,
in D. xxii. 15-20, refer to it; for she says, “ All the words of this
book wherein the king hath read shall be fulfilled.” She was
probably in the secret, and shared the hope of a great reforma-
�20
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
tion, and there is little doubt that the “ book of the law ” was the
direct cause of that reformation. The whole theocratic state was
in imminent danger from the idolatrous practices that were pre
vailing. So the Deuteronomist laid down a new set of laws in
the name of Moses, and gave a new and firmer foundation to the
theocratic state. The attempted reformation was not, however,
successful, except to secure temple service at Jerusalem. That
introduced dead formalism, which existed until the Israelitish
nation became extinct.
13. It can scarcely be doubted, therefore, that it was written
either in the latter part of Manasseh’s reign or the early part of
Josiah’s. If it was written in the latter part of Manasseh’s reign,
the author must have lived, and probably have died, without see
ing the result of his labor—without betraying his secret; or, if
he lived j^Hl the disclosure of it, it is difficult to account for his
long silence with respect to its existence, which was maintained
during seventeen years of Josiah’s reign, when the king’s docile
piety and youth would have encouraged the production of such
a book if it really existed, and there was such imperative necessity
for that reformation to be begun as soon as possible, with a view
to which the book was written. Thus it seems most reasonable
to suppose that the book was in process of composition during
the first seventeen years of Josiah’s reign, when the youth of the
prince and his willingness to follow the teachings of the prophets
around him gave every encouragement for such an attempt being
made to bring about the great change that was needed.
14. Jeremiah lived in that very age, and began to prophesy
in the thirteenth year of Josiah, four or five years before this
book was found.
IMMORAL COMMANDS OP DEUTERONOMY.
Bishop Colenso is glad to know that such commands as these,
taken from this book, are at variance with God's law :
1. Excluding from the congregation of the Lord persons mu
tilated in helpless infancy, while those by whose agency the act
in question was encouraged or perhaps performed are allowed
free access to the sanctuary.
2. Excluding in like manner the innocent base-born child,
but taking no account of the vicious parent.
3. Commanding the stubborn, rebellious son to be stoned to
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
21
death, when, oftentimes the father and mother, who by their bad
example had corrupted, or by their faulty training had ruined
their child, deserved rather to suffer punishment.
4. Ordering that any city of any distant people with whom
Israel might be at war should first be summoned to surrender,
and if it should refuse to make peace on condition of all its in
habitants becoming tributary and doing service to Israel, it should
then be besieged and every male thereof should be put to the
sword; while of the cities which Israel was to inherit they were
to save nothing that breathed, lest they should become corrupted
by their idolatries and abominations.
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.
In vol. IV., after a long preface devoted to answers to objections
made to positions taken and supported in the previous volumes,
Bishop Colenso proceeds to make a critical comparison of the
Elohistic and Jehovistic passages in the first eleven chapters of
Genesis, to show that they were composed by two distinct writers.
The author then attacks the scientific and historical truthful
ness of the Scripture cosmogony, making the following points-:
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION.
Despite all the criticisms of the word “create,” the plain
meaning of the first verse in Genesis is, that in the beginning of
the six days, as the first act of that continuous six days’ work
about six thousand years ago, according to the Biblical chronolo
gy, God created the heaven and the earth. But geology teaches
that the earth had existed millions of years before, and was brought
into its present form by continual changes through a long succes
sion of ages, during which enormous periods innumerable varieties
of animal and vegetable life abounded, from a time beyond all pow
er of calculation. So, also, God is represented as completing the
work of creation in six literal days, and resting upon and sancti
fying the seventh. In E. xx. 11, it is expressly said that “ in six
days God made the heaven and the earth, and all that in them is.”
�22
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
That they were not indefinite periods of time is further shown by
the setting of two great lights in the firmament on the fourth day,
to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light
from the darkness. If the first three days were indefinite days,
why is the same word in the Hebrew used for that portion of the
twenty-four hours which the sun rules over ? Is the sense of the
word day, from the fourth day onward, to be considered different
from that of the same word as used prior thereto?
THE ORDER OF CREATION.
The order of creation in Genesis is, first plants, then fish, then
fowls, then cattle and reptiles, and lastly man. Geology shows
that in the different ages plants and animals of all kinds appeared
together at the same time on the earth; so that they were not
successively created, as the Bible says, first all the plants, and then
dll the fish, etc.
CHAOS.
Genesis represents the earth as “ without form and void,” in a
state of utter chaos and confusion, and wrapped in darkness, im
mediately before the races of plants and animals now existing on
its face were created. Geology proves that the earth had existed
generally just as now, with the same kind of animal and vegeta
ble life as now, long before the six thousand years implied in the
Bible story, and that no sudden convulsion took place at that time
by which they might have been destroyed, so as to give occasion
for a new creation.
THE SUN AND MOON CREATED ON THE FOURTH DAY.
It is a mere evasion of the plain meaning of words to say that
God meant the sun and moon to appear first only on the fourth
day, although they had been long before created—appear, that is,
to the earth, when, however, according to the story, there was as.
yet no living creature on its face to see them I The writer uses
the same Hebrew word “ made ” as he had used before when he
says God made the firmament, and which he afterwards uses when
he says God made the animals.
THE FIRMAMENT OF WATERS.
The dividing of the waters below the firmament from the
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
23
waters above it was founded upon the idea that the sky was an
expanse, a spread-out surface, and that the upper waters dropped
rain.
WHAT DID BEASTS OE PREY EAT ?
To every animal God gave every green herb for meat. The
question arises, how were the beasts of prey to be supported, since
their teeth, stomachs, and bodily form were not adapted for eating
herbs ? But in fact geology teaches that ravenous creatures
preyed on their fellow creatures, and lived on flesh, in all ages of
the world’s past history, just exactly as they do now. Besides, al
most all fishes are carnivorous.
THE ZENDAVESTA STORY OF CREATION.
The account of the creation in Genesis corresponds with that
of the Zendavesta, which was composed near the same locality.
According to the latter, the universe was created in six periods of
time by Ormuzd, in the following order : 1. The heaven and the
terrestrial light between heaven and earth ; 2. The water; 3. The
earth ; 4. The trees and plants ; 5. Animals ; 6. Man ; whereupon
the Creator rested and connected the Divine origin of the festivals
with these periods of creation. The Persian tradition is substan
tially the same, showing that the story of Genesis had the same
origin. It is an ancient myth.
ADAM FORMED OF DUST.
“And the Lord God formed man (Adam) of the dust of the
ground” (Adamha). A play upon words.
THE RIVERS EUPHRATES, TIGRIS, NILE, AND INDUS UNITED.
The four rivers of Eden are made to unite in one. One of
these rivers is the Euphrates, and there is but little doubt that the
Hiddekel and the Gihon, as Josephus says, are the Tigris and Nile
respectively, and Pison probably the Indus.
DEATH THREATENED FOR DISOBEDIENCE.
“ In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
How could the first man understand what death was ? He had
not seen it.
NAMING OF THE ANIMALS.
Man was created before the other animals (the fishes excepted)
�24
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
according to the second chapter, and they were brought to Adam
to be named. How could the white bear of the frozen zone and
the humming bird of the tropics have met in one spot to be
named, and then dispersed again ?
WAS EDEN THE CENTRE OF CREATION ?
Was there only one centre of creation? Were all reptiles,
fishes, and insects, as well as all plants, created in Eden only, and
thence scattered to the ends of the earth ?—the Indian corn, for
instance, which was not known in the eastern hemisphere until
after the discovery of America ?
ORIGIN OF THE DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES.
It is even now an open scientific question whether the Austra
lian savage, the African negro, the American Indian, and the Cau
casian are all descendants of a first pair.
WOMAN MADE OUT OF A RIB.
The making of the woman out of the man’s rib is thought by
some to convey an idea of the intimate relationship, sacredness,
and indissolubility of the conjugal state. The Greenlanders
believe that the first woman was fashioned out of the man’s
thumb I
THE CUNNING SERPENT.
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the
field.” It is the Jehovistic interpolator who writes this passage.
Here is the origin of evil, in a speaking serpent.
THE SERPENT CRAWLING AND EATING DUST.
“ Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shall thou eat.”
Here the serpent is represented as degraded and debased from
what it was originally. But geology shows that it was the same
kind of creature before man existed on the earth. As to the ser
pent’s eating dust, it is a falsehood founded on the scantiness of
its food. As to the enmity between the woman’s seed and the
serpent, it is not true. A snake is held in great respect among
the Zulus. It was an emblem of healing wisdom among the
Greeks, and a symbol of eternity to the Phoenicians.
PAIN IN CHILDBIRTH.
Pain to the woman in childbirth, and the subjection of woman
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
25
to her husband, are fancies in the imagination of the Hebrew
writer. The subjection of the female to the male is not peculiar
to man amongst animals; and in tropical countries childbirth is
attended with little more pain and disturbance than the birth of
a beast.
CURSING THE GROUND.
“ Cursed is the ground for thy sake.” Geology shows no signs
of any such curse. Thorns and briers were as plentiful in the
primeval world as now ; and a life of toil and exertion is far more
healthful and ennobling than one of indolence and inactivity.
RETURNING TO DUST.
“ Till thou return unto the ground, for out of it thou wast
taken.” Geology shows that living creatures died long before.
“For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” This
would imply that Ada'm was not punished by death for his sin.
Death of the body was regarded by the ancient writers as the
end of all. No mention is made of the immortality of the soul.
PERSIAN STORY OF THE FIRST PAIR.
The Persian myth is similar to that of the Hebrews. The
first couple, Meshia and Meshiana, lived originally in purity and
innocence. Perpetual happiness was promised to them by the
Creator. An evil demon (Dev) came to them in the form of a
serpent, and gave them fruit of a wonderful tree, which imparted
immortality. Consequently they fell and forfeited the eternal
happiness for which they were destined. They killed beasts and
clothed themselves; they built houses, but paid not their debt of
gratitude to the Deity, and the evil demon obtained still more
perfect power over their minds.
CHINESE STORY OF HIE FALL.
The Chinese have their age of virtue, when Nature furnished
abundant food, and man lived peacefully, surrounded by all the
beasts, not knowing what it meant to do good or evil, and not
subject to disease or death. But partly by an undue thirst for
knowledge, and partly by increasing sensuality and the seduction
of woman, he fell. Passion and lust ruled his mind, war with
the animals began, and all Nature stood inimically arrayed
against him.
�26
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
PARADISE OF THE GREEKS.
The Greeks had their Paradise or Elysium—their garden of
Hesperides, with its golden apples, in the islands of the blessed,
guarded by ever-watchful serpents.
SACRED MOUNTAIN- OF THE HINDOOS.
The Hindoos have their sacred mountain, Meru, in which no
sinful man can exist. It is perpetually clothed in the golden
rays of the sun, guarded by dreadful dragons, adorned by celes
tial plants, and watered by four rivers, which separate and flow
in four directions.
WHO WAS TO KILL CAIN ?
Cain is made to say, “ Every one that findeth me shall slay
me.” The only man on the face of the earth was Adam; Seth
was not yet born.
cain’s descendants favored.
The introduction of cattle-keeping, music, and smithery is
ascribed to the descendants of Cain, on whom the curse had
been pronounced I
LONGEVITY IN PREHISTORIC TIMES.
The great longevity of ancient times is common to the tra
ditions of all nations. As soon as we come down to historical
times we see no more of these great ages.
SONS OF GOD AND DAUGHTERS OF MEN.
“ The sons of God saw the daughters of men.” This is bor
rowed from foreign or heathen sources. See Book of Enoch—
an acknowledged forgery.
ANCIENT GIANTS.
“ There were giants in the earth in those days.” The belief in
races of giants was universal among the ancients, but that the
stature of the human race was really the same generally in those
days as now, is shown by the remains discovered in ancient tombs
and pyramids.
STORY OF THE DELUGE.
In the story of the deluge the ark is made to rest on the
highest summit of Ararat, and remain there seventy-three or
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
27
seventy-four days after the waters had retired from the earth.
At this elevation of 17,00u feet—1,000 feet higher than Mont
Blanc, and 3,000 feet above the region of perpetual snow—all the
inhabitants of the ark must have frozen to death. Many other
difficulties are presented and discussed, and in conclusion Colenso
says that geology absolutely disproves the story.
WAS IT A PARTIAL DELUGE?
1. The difficulty of worms and snails crawling into the ark
from some large terrestrial basin in western Asia, is just as great as
from distant parts of the earth. One small brook would have been
a barrier to further progress. Nor could Noah have provided for
the wild carnivorous animals—the lion, leopard, eagle, vulture,
etc. And what need to crowd the ark with birds which could
easily have escaped beyond the boundaries of the inundation ?
2. The language of the Bible is too sweeping. God says,
“ Every living substance that I have made will I destroy from
off the face of the earth.” (G. vii. 4.)
3. One volcanic region, forty miles by twenty, in the provinces
of Auvergne and Languedoc, in France, contains deposits of sco
ria and lava extending over many miles, and in some places from
fifty to one hundred feet deep, which must have taken many
thousands of years to accumulate, and which have certainly not
been submerged during at least eighteen thousand years past.
4. In all the diluvian deposits no trace of human remains has
ever been found.
CHALDEAN STORY OE THE DELUGE.
Many heathen nations have traditions concerning a universal
deluge. There is a Chaldean story of Xisthurus building an immense ship, 3,000 by 1,200 feet, loading it with provisions, enter
ing it with his family and all species of quadrupeds, birds, and
reptiles, and sailing toward Armenia. When the rain ceased he
sent out birds to ascertain the condition of the earth. Twice
they returned—the second time with mud on their feet. The
third time they returned no more. By this time the ship had
grounded on the side of an Armenian mountain, whereupon Xis
thurus and his family left it, erected an altar, and offered sacri
fices to the gods. Pieces of bitumen and timber, ostensibly taken
from the ship, were in later times chiefly used as amulets.
�28
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
GENERATIONS OE NOAH.
In G. x. the generations of Noah are enumerated. The nations
of Eastern Asia are not enumerated at all, though the writer
seems to have had some vague notion of the existence of distant
families (». 30).
IDENTITY OF LANGUAGE OF THE HEBREWS AND CANAANITES.
The fact that the patriarchs and Hebrews could converse with
the surrounding nations shows that their language was common,
and the indications are that the vernacular language of the
Canaanites was substantially the same as that of the Hebrews.
The language was radically the same from the earliest times.
THE HEBREW LANGUAGE, WHENCE DERIVED.
Whence was the Hebrew language derived ? The fact that
the Pentateuch was written in pure Hebrew appears to be strong
if not positive proof of its having been written at a much later
period of their national history than the exodus, or at a time
when the language of Canaan had become, after several genera
tions, the common tongue of the invading Hebrews, as well as of
the heathen tribes which they drove out, and ■which they were
unwilling to acknowledge as brethren. We never read of any in
terpreter between the Hebrews and the Philistines.
THE DISPERSION OF TONGUES.
The story of the dispersion of tongues is connected by the
Jehovistic writer with the famous unfinished temple of*Belus, of
which probably some wonderful reports had reached him, in
whatever age he may have lived. The derivation of the name
Babel from the Hebrew word meaning confound, which seems to
be the connecting point between the story and the tower of
Babel, is altogether incorrect, the literal meaning of the word
being house, or court, or gate of Bel.
REMARKABLE INCREASE IN FOUR HUNDRED YEARS.
In Abraham’s time, not four hundred years after the deluge,
the descendants of Noah’s three sons, none of whom had a child
before the deluge, had so multiplied that four kingdoms are men
tioned as engaging in war against five other kingdoms (G. xv.
1, 2). Besides these there are a multitude of other nations named
�ON THE PENTATEUCH,
29
in the same chapter, some of which had attained a high state of
civilization.
COMPLETE CHANGE OE PHYSICAL CHARACTER.
Moreover, in this short interval we find the most marked dif
ferences of physiognomy stamped on the different races, as shown
on the ancient monuments of Egypt. There was a completo
change of form, color, and general physical character, which
seem not to have been modified during the four thousand years
since.
NOAH’S VNDVTIFUL PROGENY.
Noah, and all the rest of Abraham’s ancestors after Noah,
were still living, as appears from the following record:
Noah
Sliem .
Arphaxad, born
Salah,
“
Eber,
“
Peleg,
“
Rmi,
“
Serug,
“
Nahor,
“
Terah,
“
Abraham, “
Isaac,
“
Jacob,
“
.
.
’2
37
67
101
131
163
193
222
292
392
452
.
died
“
years after, died
<<
“
“
Cl.
“
cc
“
cc
“
Cl
“
Cf
“
Cl
“
14
“
Cl
“
.
350 years after the flood.
cl
CC
502
cc
cc
404
cc
cc
470
cc
cc
351
cc
cc
340
cc
cc
370
cc
cc
393
cc
cc
341
«
u
427
cc
cc
467
cc
cc
572
cc
cc
599
And yet we do not find the slightest intimation that Abraham,
Isaac, or Jacob paid any kind of reverence or attention to their
illustrious ancestors.
ABRAHAM’S INCREDULITY ABOUT HAVING A SON.
Abraham laughed when told that a son should be born to him
that was a hundred years old ; and yet there were actually living
those ancestors of his from one hundred and seventy to five hun
dred and eighty years old at the time. Shein was one hundred
years old two years after the deluge, when he begat Arphaxad,
and he lived thereafter five hundred years, and begat sons and
daughters.
�30
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
SILENCE OF THE REST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ABOUT EDEN,
THE FALL, AND THE DELUGE.
The fact that nowhere in the other books of the Old Testa
ment is found any reference to the story in Genesis of the crea
tion, or the fall of man, or the deluge, except in Isaiah liv. 9
(where the waters of Noah are mentioned), and Ezek. xiv. 14-20
(where the name of Noah is mentioned), is easy of explanation if
the writer of these stories lived in the latter part of David’s reign.
THE BOOK OF ENOCH.
In an appendix to vol. IV. the book of Enoch is examined.
The Bishop says there is no doubt that the book is a fiction. Ac
cording to Archbishop Laurence, it was composed within about
fifty years immediately preceding the birth of Christ. From it
most of the language of the New Testament, in which the judg
ment of the last day is described, appears to have been directly de
rived. It is full of such expressions and sentences as these : “ Day
of judgment.” “ Judgment which shall last forever.” “ Lowest
depths of fire in torment.” “Ancient of Days upon the throne of
his glory.” “ The book of the living was opened in his presence.”
“ Valley burning with fire.” “Fetters of iron without weight.”
“ Furnace of burning fire.” “ The word of his wrath shall de
stroy all the sinners and all the ungodly, who shall perish at his
presence.” “ Trouble shall seize upon them when they shall be
hold this son of woman sitting upon the throne of his glory.’’
“ They shall fix their hopes on this son of man, shall pray to him
and petition for mercy. Then shall the Lord of spirits hasten to
expel them from his presence. Their faces shall be full of confu
sion, and their faces shall darkness cover. The angels shall take
them to punishment that vengeance may be inflicted on those
who have opposed his children and his elect. . . . But the saints
and the elect shall be safe in that day. . . . The Lord of spirits
shall remain over them, and with his son of man shall they dwell,
eat, lie down, and rise up forever and ever.”
BOOK OF JOSHUA.
Vol. V. opens with an examination of the book of Joshua
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
31
after which the Bishop endeavors to separate the different por
tions of the different writers of the Pentateuch and the book of
Joshua, and to fix their exact age. The larger portion of the book
of Joshua, he believes, is due to the Deuteronomist, who must
consequently have lived at all events after the days of Moses,
since the death and burial of Moses are recorded in D. xxxiv.
The argument proceeds as follows :
THE DEUTERONOMIST.
Numerous expressions common to Deuteronomy and Joshua
occur nowhere else in the Pentateuch. These Deuteronomistic
formulas do not occur throughout the whole of the book of Joshua,
but only in certain portions of it; in the remaining parts of the
book, in which we find none of these formulas, we meet again
with the peculiar phrases of the old writers of the Pentateuch
which are never used by the Deuteronomist. The original lan
guage has been retouched and blended with that of the Deuter
onomist. The same also is true of the other four books ; there
is plain evidence that the Deuteronomist has revised and retouched
the manuscript before he added to it the sum and substance of the
law of the book of Deuteronomy. More than half of the book of
Joshua, especially of the historical and hortatory matter, consists
of interpolations by the Deuteronomist.
RESEARCHES OF HUPFIELD AND EOEnMER.
The author gives a summary of the researches of Hupfield
and Boehmer, exhibiting the Elohistic passages in Genesis, and
showing great unanimity as the result of three independent re
searches. They all agree substantially, except in regard to four
genealogical sections.
ELOHISTIC AND JEnOVISTIC PECULIARITIES.
There are more than one hundred different formulas or expres
sions, each of which occurs on an average more than ten times in
Genesis, but only in those portions of it which remain when the
Elohistic parts are removed. Some of them occur three times in
one verse. On the other hand, the Eloliistic portions in their
turn exhibit their own phraseology, which is never repeated in
the Jehovistic parts. Thus, only the Jehovistic portions contain
such expressions as “ lift up the eyes and see “ lift up the voice
and weep •” “ fall on the neck and weep ; ” “ find favor in the eyes
�32
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
of;” “ see the face of; ” “run to meet,” etc.; and such words as
“ sin,” “ swear,” “ steal,” “ smite,” “ slay,” “ fear,” “ hate,” “ com
fort,” “ embrace,” “ kiss,” and even “ love.”
SIMPLICITY OF TIIE ELOHIST.
The Elohist appears to have had more correct views of the
nature of the Divine Being and of his paternal relations to mankind, and less gloomy views of man’s nature and the prospects of
the human race. According to him, “ God saw everything that
he had made, and behold it was very good.” But the Jehovist
speaks of the earth as corrupt and filled with violence. The lat
ter has a deep sense of sin and its consequences. The former
knows nothing about the Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit, the
wily serpent, or the fall of man ; it is only the Jehovist who mul
tiplies curses upon the earth and pains of child-birth as the bitter
consequences of our first parents’ sin. The Jehovist gives all the
darkest parts of the histories of indvidual life, such as the drunk
enness of Noah, the presumption of the Babel builders, the great
selfishness of Lot, the uncleanness of Sodom, the wickedness of
Onan, etc. All those stories of impurity which make so many of
the passages of Genesis totally unfit to be read in public or in the
family are due to the Jehovist. The original Elohittic writer
presents the character of the three patriarchs substantially with
out a flaw. It is the Jehovist who lowers them.
INTERPOLATIONS IN THE JEHOVISTIO NARRATIVE.
We have seen that there are interpolations in the original
Elohistio narrative. We also find similar interpolations in differ
ent portions of the non-Elohistic matter itself. The non-Elohistic matter consists of the contributions of three or four different
■writers. For instance, chapter xiv. has no relation with any other
part of Genesis. It brings Abraham before us in the. character of
a warlike Sheik, with 318 trained servants. But in the subse
quent account of his going to Gerar (chap. xx.). where Abimelech
takes his wife from him, Abraham is afraid of his life, and prac
tises deceit, showing plainly that he could have had no such im
mense band of trained servants with him. lie had routed the
combined forces of Eastern kings, and needed not therefore, to
have ieared the power of the petty Prince of Gerar. This
chapter contains four times the expression, “God most high,”
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
33
which occurs nowhere else in the Pentateuch, and only three
times besides in the Bible—namely, in the Psalms.
THE DEUTERONOMIST AN EDITOR.
The later writer or Deuteronomist was not the compiler, but
the editor of the Pentateuch and book of Joshua, which he inter
polated throughout and enlarged, especially by the addition of
the book of Deuteronomy. The interpolated passages for the
most part seem to have been inserted for the purpose of quicken
ing the history with a deeper spiritual meaning and stirring more
effectually the reader’s heart with words of religious life and
earnestness. To this editor Colenso ascribes sixty-three verses
entire of Genesis, and many more fragmentary notes.
FIRST AND SECOND ELOHIST.
About three-fourths of Genesis remain after removing the
parts due to the second Jehovist and Deuteronomist. This threefourths is so homogeneous in style that it is almost impossible to
distingush the difference in style between the different sections
of it except in one respect. There is a second Elohistic writer
who uses decidedly Jehovistic formulas, though he has abstained
from the use of the name Jehovah (Lord). But though it is diffi
cult to separate the parts due to these two writers, Colenso has
endeavored to do it. According to the critics there arc five wri
ters of the Pentateuch—namely, the Elohist, the Elohist number
two, the Jehovist, the Jehovist number two, and the Deuterono
mist. But Colenso thinks Elohist number two is the same as the
Jehovist, only at an earlier period of his life. In his earliest at
tempts at interpolation he was perhaps somewhat stiff in style,
which stiffness he overcame in his later years. Therefore the two
may be identical.
HOW THE JEHOVIST REGARDED THE ELOHISTIC NARRATIVE.
It has been already shown in vol. II. that the first chapter of
Genesis was written by the same hand which wrote Exodus
v. 2-7, revealing the name of Jehovah to Moses. The Elohistic
writer not having used that name until he used it in the above
passage, intended to be understood that the name was unknown
among men till then. Now if Moses himself really recorded that
fact is it possible that other writers of his time would have dared
to contradict it by interpolations ? It is incredible. The interpo-
�34
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
lations must have been made at a later age by a writer who knew
that the original record was not historically true, and therefore
ventured to interpolate the name Jehovah. He must have known
that the original narrative was a work of the imagination, and
therefore that it was not necessary to adhere to the older state
ment.
AGE OF THE ELOHIST.
1. There is an air of primitive simplicity pervading the whole
Elohistic story. The style is grave, prosaic, and unadorned.
There is no instance of a story of indecency; crimes of violence
are mentioned, but none of an indecent character.
2. According to the Elohist mankind first lived on vegetable
food, and were not allowed to eat animals until after the flood.
3. In the Elohistic narrative there is no mention made of houses.
The ark is the only exception, but the details of if—the dimensions,
the door, the window, the roof, the stories—are given by the Jehovistic writer.
4. The Elohist makes no mention of sacrifices, priests, or tithes.
5. In G. xlviii. 5, 13, 14, Ephraim is set before Manasseh, though
the latter was the first born, and both are reckoned as tribes of Is
rael. “As Reuben and Simeon they shall be mine.” Now Manasseh
was the most prominent among the Northern tribes until shortly
before the time of Samuel, through its hero, Gideon (Jud. vi. 15).
Hence the composition of Genesis cannot be assigned at an earlier
period than about fifty years before Samuel, the time of Jephthah,
nor later than the time of David, shortly after Samuel.
6., In S. xxxv. 11, God promises Jacob that “a nation and a
company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of
thy loins,” No reference is made to his desccendants forming, as
they did, two nations, Judah and Israel; but a nation is spoken of
There is no enmity whatever implied in the Elohistic narrative
between Joseph and his brethren. The children of Israel are
plainly united in one body.
7. There is no enmity existing betweenEsau and Jacob—i. e.,
Edom and Israel; so that the narrative must have been written
before the feeling between them became bitter, as recorded in 2
S. viii. 14. This brings the date to a time not later than Samuel.
8. “ These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel” (G. xxxvi. 31)
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
35
—meaning of course, all Israel, which restricts the time to that
of Saul, David, and Solomon, the first three kings. But as the
signs of a more primitive civilization in the narrative forbid our
assigning it to the age of Solomon, or even the latter part of
David’s reign, we must refer it to the early part or the time of
Samuel, when “ all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his ax, and his
mattock and when “ in the day of battle there was neither
sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were
with Saul and Jonathan ” (1 S. xiii. 20, 23),
9. The Elohist lays great stress on Hebron, in the land of
Canaan, where the field of Machpelah lay, as the resting place of
the bones of the Patriarchs. David, by Divine command, was di
rected (2 S. ii. 1) to make Hebron the centre of his power or seat
of Government. He reigned in Hebron over Judah seven
and a half years, and then in Jerusalem thirty-three years over
Israel and Judah (2 S. v. 5). After this Hebron disappears from
history altogether, except that Absalom begins his rebellion by
asking leave to go and pay a vow unto the Lord in Hebron (2 S.
xv. 7), and there sets up his kingdom (y. 10). It would seem highly
improbable that all this importance should be ascribed to Hebron
if the writer wrote after the first few years of David’s reign, when
he had captured the fortress of Zion and made Jerusalem his royal
city (2 S. v. 6, 7).
10. Samuel lived three years after the anointment of David,
and must have been aware of his valiant acts ; and his hopes seem
to have been centred in David after he had utterly despaired of
Saul. He may have advised David to go to Hebron, and may have
written the passages before us with a view to that event. Samuel,
having most likely a band of young men under his training, had to
provide instruction for them as a school of prophets. They had
no Bible, no body of Divinity; and what is more likely than that
he should have done his best to prepare such a narrative ?
AGE OF THE JEHOVIST.
1. The style of the Jehovist seems to be freer and easier than
that of the second Elohist, thereby indicating a later authorship.
2. Extended geographical knowledge is exhibited, pointing to
a later age than Samuel (G. ii. 11-14 and x.), when the people had
�36
ABSTRACT OF COLENSO
passed out of the mere agricultural condition in which they were
living in the time of Samuel, and had begun to have freer inter
course with surrounding nations and more especially with the
maritime people of Tyre and Sidon.
3. Indications of advanced civilization and even luxury are
found in the Jehovistic portions (G. ii. 11, 12). Instruments of
music and working in brass and iron are spoken of (iv. 21, 22),
whereas in Saul’s time “ there was no smith found throughout all
the land of Israel ” (1 S. xiii. 19).
4. Considerable acquaintance with Egyptian affairs and cus
toms is exhibited (xxxix. 20, xliii. 32, xlvi. 34, xlvii. 26, 1. 3).
5. Jacob is recorded as building himself a house (xxxiii. 17).
The details of Noah’s ark are similar to the directions for the
tabernacle. There are indications of artistic skill of every kind
which can scarcely have existed before the age of Solomon, and
which in fact never was indigenous, but belonged to the Tyrian
builders and other artisans engaged in the erection of the temple.
6. The hatred of Esau by Jacob is spoken of. In 2 K. viii. 2022, we read of Edom revolting from under the hand of Judah.
The prophecy in G. xxv. 23, that “ the elder shall serve the
younger,” seems to have had its fulfilment in the latter part of
David’s reign, when Edom was crushed and did remain a servant
to his younger brother Israel during the remainder of David’s
reign. But Edom recovered its independence at the beginning of
Solomon’s reign.
7. This w'ould also explain another phenomenon in connection
with this matter which we observe in the Jehovistic portion of
Genesis—viz., the reconciliation of Esau and Jacob, and the gen
erous conduct described in the narrative of chapter xxxviii.
8. The result remains that the Jehovistic sections of G. xxvii.
40, etc. referring to Esau, cannot have been written till after Da
vid’s death, but were probably composed at the very beginning of
Solomon’s reign, when Edom had long been serving his brother
and had just thrown off the yoke.
9. The Jehovist lays almost as much stress on Beer
sheba as the Elohist does on Hebron. Both Abraham and Isaac
dig a well at Beersheba and acquire the right of possession in
connection vi-ith a solemn covenant made with the Philistine king;
whereas, according to the Elohist, each of the three patriarchs
�ON THE PENTATEUCH.
37
lived solely at Hebron—at least after Abraham’s acquisition of
property there. And the Jehovist also in various places takes
account of their having lived there at some time in their lives.
10. In the days of David and Solomon the Israelitish territory
extended from Dan to Beersheba. The great stress laid on Beer
sheba therefore seems to point to the time of David and Solomon.
The phrase “from Dan even to Beersheba” is first used in Jud.
xx. 1, and in 1 S. iii. 20, narratives written, no doubt, in this age.
It is afterwards repeated.
AGES OF THE DIFFERENT WRITERS.
The result of Colenso’s researches is to fix the age3 of the dif
ferent writers, with the names of distinguished cotemporary
prophets, as follows :
Elohist, . . 1100—1060 B. C., cotemporary prophet, Samuel
2d Elohist,
Jehovist, )f 1AAA 1A1A
1060-1010
“
“
“
Nathan.
2d Jehovist, 1035
“
“
“
Gad.
Deuteronomist, 641—624
“
“
“ Jeremiah.
Samuel may have begun the Elohistic story, and left it unfin
ished in the hands of his disciples, Nathan and Gad, whom we
may fairly suppose to have been thrown under his auspices.
PHOENICIAN ORIGIN OF THE NAME JEHOVAn.
The name Jehovah the author traces to the Phoenicians. They
no doubt practiced substantially the same religion and spoke the
same language as the Israelites. Most decisive proof is given of
this by the series of Phoenician inscriptions lately published by
the authorities of the British Museum. The great Phoenician
Deity was the Sun, the male principle, while the Moon was re
garded as the symbol of the co-operating recipient powers of na
ture, the female principle. The Sun was worshipped under a
variety of names, among others that of Baal (Lord) and Adonis
(my Lord). But there was one name more augu-t and mysterious,
employed chiefly at the great feast of the harvest, and expressed
both by Christian and heathen writers by the very same Greek
letters, by which they express also the mysterious Hebrew name.
Thus there must have been a very close resemblance between the
two names, and accordingly we find Phoenician names compound-
�38
ABSTRACT OF C0LEN.50
ed with Jah exactly as Hebrew. It is preposterous to suppose
that the Phoenicians derived their names from the Hebrews.
It is not necessary to suppose that the Elohist invented the
name of Jehovah for his people. Samuel probably finding the
tribes, the northern especially, already in possession of the name,
adopted it as the name of the God of Israel. Afterwards the
Deuteronomist breathed new life into the dead letter of the law.
Meanwhile the people generally practised idolatry, even in the
reign of David and Solomon. Jehosophat, Asa, Ahaziah, and
Amaziah worshipped Jehovah (JHVH) on the high places, who
was the Baal of Israel. There is no censure of the kings for al
lowing this idolatry by the writer of the books of Samuel and
Kings. Yet all this while the great prophets of Israel were striv
ing with their stolid and perverse countrymen, to raise their
minds to higher views of the Divine nature, and nobler concep
tions of the meaning of that name they were daily profaning.
CORRUPT WORSHIP OF JEHOVAH.
The worship of Jehovah being introduced among the Hebrews
was long continued among them, as regards the great mass of the
people, in the same low form in which it existed among the Ca
naanite tribes, and was only gradually purified from its grosser
pollutions by the long continued efforts of those great prophets
whom God raised up for the purpose from time to time in differ
ent ages, aided no doubt in this work by the powerful national
calamities which befell them, and probably also in some measure by
their coming in contact during the time of their captivity with
those divine truths which were taught in the Zroasterian religion.
In fact, the state of Israel may be compared with that which, in
the view of many ardent Protestants, exists even now in Catholic
communities. The people in such cases worship the same God as
the Protestants; they call themselves Christians, servants of the
same Lord, yet there is much in their religion which Protestant
travelers regard as profound idolatry, and denounce as gross
abominations.
�THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
By W. H. B.
Very erroneous ideas prevail in regard to the magnitude of the nation
and country of the Jews, and their importance in history. Most maps
of ancient Palestine assign far too much territory to that nation. They
make the greatest length of the country from 160 to 17-5 miles, and its
greatest breadth from 70 to 90, inclosing an area of from 10,000 to
12,000 square miles—a little larger than the State of Vermont. They
not only include the entire Mediterranean coast for 160 miles, but a
considerable mountain tract on the north, above Dan, and a portion of
the desert on the south, below Beersheba, besides running the eastern
boundary out too far. Moreover, they lengthen the distances in every
direction. From Dan to Beersheba, the extreme northern and southern
towns, the distance on Mitchell’s map is 165 miles, and on Colton’s, 150;
but on a map accompanying “Biblical Researches in Palestine,” by
Edward Robinson, D. D., which is one of the most recent and elaborate,
and will doubtless be accepted as the best authority, the distance is only
128 miles.
Now, the Israelites were never able to drive out the Canaanites from
the choicest portion of the country—the Mediterranean coast—nor even
from most parts of the interior. (Judges i. 16-31 ; 1 Kings ix. 20, 21.) The
Phenicians, a powerful maritime people, occupied the northern portion
of the coast, and the Philistines the southern ; between these the Jebusites, or some other people, held control, so that the Israelites were
excluded from any part of the Mediterranean shore. The map of their
country must therefore undergo a reduction of a strip on the west at
least 10 miles wide by 160 long, or 1,600 square miles. A further reduc
tion must be made of about 400 square miles for the Dead Sea and Lake
of Tiberias. This leaves at most 9,000 square miles by Colton’s map.
But on this map the extreme length of the country is 175 miles ; which
is 47 miles too great; for the whole dominion of the Jews extended only
from Dan to Beersheba, which Dr. Robinson places only 128 mi es apart.
We must therefore make a further reduction of an area about 47 by 60
miles, or 2,800 square miles. Then we must take off a slice on the east,
at least 10 miles broad by 60 long, or 600 square miles. Thus we reduce
the area of Colton’s map, from 11,000 square miles, to 5,600—a little
less than the State of Connectidlit.
But now if we subtract from this what was wilderness and desert,
and also what was at no time inhabited and controlled by the Israelites,
we further reduce their habitable territory about one-lialf. The land of
�40
THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
Canaan being nearly all mountainous, and bounded on the south and east
by a vast desert which encroached upon the borders of the country, a
great part of it was barren wilderness. Nor did but one-fifth of the Is
raelites (two and a half tribes) occupy the country east of the Jordan
which was almost equal in extent to that on the west, the proper land of
promise. The eastern half, therefore, must have been but thinly popu
lated by the two and a half tribes, who were only able to maintain a
precarious foothold against the bordering enemies. So then it is not
probable that the Israelites actually inhabited and governed at any time,
a territory of more than 3,000 square miles, or not much if any larger
than the little State of Delaware. At all events, it can hardly be doubted
that Delaware contains more good land than the whole country of the
Jews ever did.
The promise to Abraham in Gen. xv. 18, is “from the river of Egypt
to the river Euphrates.” But the Jewish possessions never reached the
Nile by 200 miles. In Ex. xxxiii. 31, the promise is renewed, but the
river of Egypt is not named. The boundaries are “from the Red Sea
to the Sea of the Philistines (the Mediterranean), and from the desert to
the river.” By “the river ” was doubtless meant the Euphrates; and
assuming that by “ the desert ” was meant the eastern boundary (though
Canaan was bounded on the south also by the same great desert, which
reached to the Red Sea), we have in this promise a territory 600 miles
long by an average of about 180 broad, making an area of about 100.000
square miles, or ten times as much as the Jews ever could claim, and
nearly one-half of it uninhabitable. So then the promise was never ful
filled, for the Israelites were confined to a very small central portion of
their land of promise, and whether they occupied 3,000 or 12,000 square
miles in the period of their greatest power, the fact is not to be disputed
that their country was a very small one.
What was the physical character of the land of Canaan ? It is de
scribed in the Pentateuch as a “ land flowing with milk and honey.”
Such it may have seemed to the Israelites after wandering forty years
through the frightful desert of Sinai and Edom, where but for the
miraculous supply of food and water, every soul of them would have per
ished. But what was there in Canaan to warrant so extravagant an enco
mium 2 Surely there are no signs there now of its ever having been even
a fertile country. Modern travelers all agree that it is very barren and
desolate. How could it be otherwise 2 It is a country of rocks and
mountains, and is bounded on two sides by a vast desert.
Lamartine describes the journey from Bethany to Jericho as singularly
toilsome and melancholy—neither houses nor cultivation, mountains
without a shrub, immense rocks split bjitime, pinnacles tinged with colors
like those of an extinct volcano. “ From the summit of these hills, as
far as the eye can reach, wo see only black chains, conical or broken peaks,
a boundless labyrinth of passes rent through the mountains, and those
�THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
41
ravines lying in perfect and perpetual stillness, without a stream, with
out a wild animal, without even a flower, the relics of a convulsed land,
with waves of stone.” (Vol. II., p. 146.)
But lest it may be thought that these dismal features arc due to modern
degeneracy, let us take the testimony of an early Christian father, St.
Jerome, who lived a long time in Bethlehem, four miles south of Jeru
salem. In the year 414 he wrote to Dardanus thus :—
“ I beg of those who assert that the Jewish people after coming out of
Egypt took possession of this, country (which to us, by the passion and
resurrection of our Saviour has become truly the land of promise), to
show us w]iat this people possessed. Their whole dominions extended
only from Dan to Beersheba, hardly 160 Roman miles in length (147 geo
graphical miles). The Scriptures give no more to David and Solomon,
except what they acquired by alliance, after conquest......... Iam ashamed
to say what is the breadth of the land of promise, lest I should thereby
give the pagans occasion to blaspheme. It is but 47 miles (42 geograph
ical m:les) from Joppa to our little town of Bethlehem, beyond which,
all is a frightful desert.” (Vol. II., p. 605.)
Elsewhere he describes the country as the refuse and rubbish of nature.
He says that from Jerusalem to Bethlehem there is nothing but stones,
and in the summer the inhabitants can scarcely get water to drink.
In the year 1847, Lieut. Lynch, of the U. S. Navy, was sent to explore
the river Jordan and the Dead Sea. He and his party with great diffi
culty crossed the country from Acre to the lake of Tiberias, with trucks
drawn by camels. The only roads from time immemorial were mule
paths. Frequent detours had to be made, and they were compelled ac
tually to make some portions of their road. Even then the last declivity
could not be overcome, until all hands turned out and hauled the boats
and baggage down the steep places ; and many times it seemed as if, like
the ancient herd of swine, they would all rush precipitately into the sea.
Over three days were required to make the journey, which, in a straight
line would be only 27 miles. For the first few miles they passed over a
pretty fertile plain, but this was the ancient Phenician country, which
the Jews never conquered. The rest of the route was mountainous and
rocky, with not a tree visible, nor a house outside the little walled vil
lages. (pp. 135 to 152.)
. Arriving at the ancient sea of Galilee, they purchased the only boat
owned there (Letter to the Secretary of State). On this insignificant body
of water, 12 miles long by 7 wide, all the commerce of the Jews was
carried on, except in the reign of Solomon, when they had the use of
a port on the Red Sea. From thence, the party proceeded down the
Jordan; some in boats, the rest by land. They had to clear out old
channels, make new ones, and sometimes, trusting in Providence, they
plunged with headlong velocity down appalling descents. On the third
morning the frame boat was smashed and abandoned. The metallic boats
which they had provided for this perilous voyage were the only kind that
�42
THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
would survive. They plunged down twenty-seven threatening rapids,
besides many smaller ones in their passage from the lake to the Dead
Sea, a distance of 200 miles by the crooked Jordan, but only 56 in a
straight line. The fall in the whole distance is 654 feet. The width of
the river, Lieut. Lynch says, was 75 feet; but as this was at the time of
the flood, it must have been much less at low water. Other travelers
say it is only 40 feet wide. Even as it was, their boat, drawing only eight
inches of water, grounded in mid-channel, showing how very shallow
the river must have been in summer. A bridge spanning the stream with
a single pointed Saracenic arch is described by Lieut. Lynch, and a draw
ing of it is given by the Rev. Mr. Tristram in his “ Land of Israel ” (Lon
don, 1865) Through this single arch the waters have rushed for centu
ries, and still the bridge endures. Such is the famous Jordan—a narrow,
shallow, crooked, impetuous mountain stream.
In a book entitled “ The Holy Land, Syria,” etc., by David Roberts,
R. A. (London, 1855), the valley of the Jordan is thus described:—
“A large portion of the valley of the Jordan has been from the earliest
time almost a desert But in the northern part, the great number of rivu
lets which descend from the mountains on both sides, produce in many
places a luxuriant growth of wild herbage. So too in the southern part, ,
where similar rivulets exist, as around Jericho, there is even an exuber
ant fertility; but those rivulets seldom reach the Jordan, and have no
effect on the middle of the Ghor. The mountains on each side are rug
ged and desolate; the western cliffs overhanging the valley at an eleva
tion of 1,000 or 1,200 feet, while the eastern mountains fall back in rano-es
of from 2,000 to 2,500 feet.”
From the mouth of the Jordan to Jerusalem, the elevation is 3,927 feet.
The distance in a straight line on Robinson’s map is 16 miles. From the
nearest point on the Dead Sea it is 12 1-2 miles. An air-line railroad,
therefore, from the mouth of the river to Jeru alem would require an
average grade of 245 feet to the mile; and from the nearest point on the
Dead Sea, 314 feet to the mile. The length of the route would have to
be more than doubled or trebled to make a railroad practicable. From
Jerusalem to Yafa, the nearest practicable point on the Mediterranean,
is 33 miles in a direct line. As Jerusalem is 2,610 feet higher than the
sea level, the average grade of an air-line railroad between the two places
would be about 80 feet per mile. Should the time ever come when a
railroad would be required from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan,
via Jerusalem, the question might arise, which would be the most prac
ticable—the heavy grades required, or a tunnel from ten to twenty miles
long, and from one to two thousand feet below the site of the holy city.
What -was the size of ancient Jerusalem? We know pretty nearly
what it is now, and how many inhabitants it contains. It is three-quar
ters of a mile long, by a half a mile wide, and its population is not more
than 11,500 {Biblical Researches, Vol. I., p. 421), a large proportion of
whom are drawn thither by the renowned sanctity of the place. Dr.
�THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
43
Robinson measured the wall of the city, and found it to be only 12,978
feet in circumference, or nearly two and a half miles. (Vol. I., p. 268.)
In a book entitled “An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusa
lem,’’ by James Fergusson (London, 1847), a diagram is given of the
walls of ancient and modern Jerusalem, from which it appears that the
greatest length of the city was at no time more than 6C00 feet, or a little
more than a mile, and its greatest width about three-quarters of a mile;
while the real Jerusalem of old was but a little more than a quarter that
size. The author gives the area of the different walled inclosures as
follows (p. 52): —
■ Area of the old city. ------ 513,000 yards.
That of the city of David, . 213,000
Partial Total,
-.................................... 756,000
That inclosed by the wrall of Agrippa,
- 1,456,000
Grand total, -----2,212,000
With these measurements Mr. Fergusson undertakes to estimate the
probable population o: the ancient city, as follows:—
“ If we allow the inhabitants of the first named cities fifty yards to
each individual, and that one-half of the new city was inhabited at the
rate of one person to each one hundred yards, this will give a permanent
population of 23,000 souls. If on the other hand we allow only thirtythree yards to each of the old cities, and admit that the whole of the new
was as densely populated as London; or allowing one hundred yards to
each inhabitant, we obtain 37,000 souls for the whole—which I do not
think it at all probable that Jerusalem ever could have contained as a
permanent population.”
In another part of the book (p. 47) he says :—
“If we were to trust Josephus, he would have us believe that Jerusa
lem contained at one time, or could contain, two and a half or three
millions of souls, and that at the siege of Titus, 1,100,000 perished by
famine and the sword; 97,000 were taken captive, and 40,000 allowed by
Titus to go free.”
In order to show the gross exaggeration of these numbers, he cites the
fact that the army of Titus did not exceed, altogether, 30,000, and that
Josephus himself enumerates the fighting men of the city at 23,400,
which would give a population something under 100,000. But even this
he believes to be an exaggeration. For says he :—
“ In all the sallies it cannot be discovered that at any time the Jews
could bring into the field 10,000 men, if so many.............. Titus inclosed
the city with a line four and one half miles in extent, which, with his j
small army, was so weak a disposition that a small body of the Jews
could easily have broken through it; but they never seem to have had
numbers sufficient to be able to attempt it.”
The author guesses that the Jews might have mustered at the begin
ning of the seige about 10,000 men, and that the city might have con
tained altogether about 40,000 inhabitants, permanent and transient, in
�44
THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
a space which in no other city in the world could accommodate 30,000
souls. But the wall of Agrippa was built, as this same author states,
twelve or thirteen years after the crucifixion ; hence prior to that time
the area of Jerusalem was only 756.000 yards, and it was capable of con
taining only 23,000 inhabitants at most, but probably never did contain
more than 15,000.
Now Jerusalem was the chief city of the Jews, and the greatest extent
of territory occupied by that nation does not now contain more than
200,000 inhabitants, if as many. Allowing to Jerusalem, in the period of
the greatest prosperity of the Jews, a population of even 20,000, is it at
all probable that the whole country could have contained anything like
even the lowest estimate to be gathered from the Scripture record? In
1 Chr. xxi. 5, 6, we read that the number of “ men that drew the sword ”
of Israel and Judah, amounted to 1,570,000, not counting the tribes of
Levi and Benjamin. In 2 Samuel xxiv. 9, the number given at the same
census is 1,300,000, and no omission is mentioned. Assuming the larger
number to be correct, and adding only one-eighth for the two tribes of
Levi and Benjamin, which may have been the smallest, we have 1,766,000
fighting men. This would give, at the rate of one fighting man to four
inhabitants, a total population of over 7,000,000 souls. But if we adopt
a more reasonable ratio, of one to six, we have a population of over
10,500,000 souls. And then we omit the aliens. These numbered 153,600
working men only two years later (2 Chr. ii 17), and the total alien
population, therefore, must have been about 500,000, which, added to the
census, would make the total population from 7,500,000 to 11,000,000, or
more. Can any intelligent man believe that a mountainous, barren coun
try, no larger than Connecticut, without commerce, without manufactures,
without the mechanical arts, without civilization, ever did, or could sub
sist even two millions of people ? Much less can it be believed that it
subsisted “ seven nations greater and mightier than the Israeliti'li nation
itself” (Deut. vii. 1), i. e., not less than 14,000,000.
That the Jews were a very barbarous people is undeniable. Assuming
as true, the account of their remarkable battle with the Midianites prior
to their entrance into Canaan, the wholesale slaughter of men, women
and children was an act peculiar only to a savage people. Who but a
barbarian chief could have commanded the murder in cold blood by
the returning victors, of all their captive women and children, save
32,000 virgins whom they were to keep alive for themselves I
Again, on taking the town of Jericho, they massacred all its inhabi
tants, saving only the harlot Rahab, who by falsehood and treachery had
betrayed her own people.
Sometime afterwards a civil war broke out among the Israelites them
selves, in which the tribe of Benjamin was almost, exterminated, leaving
only 600 males; whereupon the people, unwilling that one of their tribes
should be annihilated, fell upon and sacked a whole city of another of
�THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
45
their tribes, killing all its inhabitants except the virgins whom they gave
for wives to the survivors of the tribe of Benjamin. The Benjamites
lost in that battle 26,100 men, and their adversaries 40,030. (Judges xx.
15, 21, 25, 81.) The latter, however, not content with slaughtering all
the Benjamites but 600, proceeded to their towns and slew every man,
woman and child of the tribe. These must have numbered at least
80,000 ; so that the whole number killed in the three days of fraticidal
warfare was not less than 146,000.
Slavery necessarily makes a people barbarous. Not only were the
Israelites a nation of slaves, according to their own record, but after
their entry into Canaan, they were six times reduced to bondage in their
own land of promise. During a period of 281 years, they were in slavery
111 years, viz :—
Under the King of Mesopotamia, - 8 years. (Judges, iii. 8.)
iii. 14.)
- 18 (C
Under the-King of Moab,
( “
iv. 3.)
- 20 cc
Under the King of Canaan,
( “
vi. 1.)
7 cc
Under the Midianites,
( “
x. 8.)
- 18
In Gilead,
( “
- 40 :c
Under the Philistines,
( “ xiii. 1.)
That the Jews were far behind their surrounding neighbors in civili
zation is shown by the fact that in the first battle they fought under their
first king, Saul. they had in the whole army “neither sword nor spear
in the hand of any of the people,” except Saul and Jonathan. (1 Samuel
xiii. 22.) Nor was any “smith found throughout all the land of Israel”
(.r 19), but “ all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen
cvo-y man his share, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock.” (v.
20.) This was 404 years after the exodus, and only 75 years prior to the
building of Solomon's temple. Their weapons of war were those of the
rudest savage. David used a sling to kill Goliath, showing that he had
not yet learned the use of more civilized weapons; not even the bow,
which he afterwards caused to be taught to liis people. (2 Samuel i. 18.)
As another evidence of the barbarism of the Jews, when David resolved
to build a house for himself, he had no native artisans, but had to send to
Hiram, King of Tyre, for masons and carpenters. (2 Samuel v. 11.)
Even the wood itself had to be brought from Tyre. It would seem that
even in those days, as now, the mountains of Canaan were destitute of
trees—a sure sign of a sterile country. The wood of course had to be
carried over land. Wheel-carriages were unknown to the Israelites, ex
cept in the form of chariots of iron used by their enemies, which pre
vented Judah, even with the help of the Lord, from driving out .the
inhabitants of the valleys. (Judges i 19.) David captured 1,000 chariots
in about the 16th year of his reign, of which he preserved only 100,
disabling all the horses. (1 Chr. xviii. 3.) Prior to this event neither
chariots nor horses had been used by the Israelites, nor was much use
made of them by the subsequent kings. Oxen and asses were their
�46
THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
beasts of burden; camels were rare even long after Solomon’s reign.
How then was the wood brought from Tyre over the mountains, unless
it was carried on the backs of oxen or asses, or dragged along the
ground ?
The national wealth seems to have increased prodigiously in David’s
reign—chiefly from spoils—but the amount is manifestly greatly exag
gerated. Among his spoils was the crown of the King of Rabbah, the
weight of which was a talent of gold (2 Samuel xii. 30) ; i. e., 93 3-4
pounds avoirdupois—a pretty heavy burden for a royal head. At the
beginning of his reign, David had not even iron with which to forge
weapons of war or implements of agriculture, and yet after forty years
it is said that he left to his son Solomon, for the temple; 3,000 talents
of gold and 7,000 of silver. (1 Chr. xxix. 4.) Now a talent of gold,
according to the “ table of weights and money ” in the Bible, pub
lished by the American Bible Society, is equal to 5,4647. 5s 8 1-27.,
or §26,447 ; and a talent of silver is equal to 3417. 10s. 4 1-27., or
§1,653. The amount of gold and silver, therefore, which David con
tributed was equal to §90,912,000. But this is not all. The chiefs,
princes, captains, and rulers over the King’s work gave 5,000 talents, and
10,000 drachms of gold, and 10,000 talents of silver (v. 7),—equal to
§153,845,000. So that the total sum of gold and silver contributed by
David and his chiefs was §244,757,000, besides precious stones and an
incredible quantity of brass and iron. Can it be believed that David and
his men acquired such riches that they were able to make these enormous
contributions ?
In the reign of Solomon gold and silver continued to pour in so that
he was able to buy a fleet of ships in the Red Sea, of Hiram, King of
Tyre, and these ships brought him from Ophir 450 talents of gold, as we
read in 2 Chr. viii. 18—equal to about §12,000,000—though in 1 Kings ix.
28, the amount given is 420 talents, or about §800,000 less. Again, we
read in 1 Kings x. 14, that the weight of gold that came to him in. one
year was 666 talents—equal to about §18.000,000. And yet this same
monarch, who “exceeded all the Kings of the earth for riches ” (v. 23),
had neither wood, nor skilled workmen to build his palace and temple,
but bought the wood and hired the artisans of the King of Tyre. (2 Chr.
ii. 3-10 ; 1 Kings v 6-12.) The laborers erffployed in the Temple were all
the strangers in the land, numbering 153,000, of whom 3,600 were made
overseers. (2 Chr. ii. 17, 18.) Over these were set 550 Jewish overseers
according to 1 Kings ix. 33, or 250 according to 2 Chr. viii. 10. With
this great number of wkmen Solomon was seven years in building this
celebrated Temple, which was only 110 feet long, 36 wide, and 55 high.
(1 Kings vi. 2.) How many a modern church edifice exceeds in size
Solomon’s great Temple .' But there were additions to the house. First,
there was a porch at one end 36 feet by 18 (r. 3). This porch is said, in
2 Chr. iii. 4, to have been 220 feet high, or four times the height of the
�THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
47
house! But as nothing is said about the hight of it in Kings, we may
assume that the chronicler made a mistake in his figures in this case, as
he has so frequently done in others. Then there were added to the walls
of the house outside chambers, nine feet high, and from nine to thirteen
feet broad, in three tiers, making a hight of 27 feet. But even with
these additions, the temple was not remarkable for size, and the story
that 150,000 laborers were employed seven years in its construction, is
incredible.
So, too, as regards the amount of the precious metals said to have been
used in the building of the Temple, it is fabulous. And yet the amount
that David and his chiefs contributed was but a seventeenth part of what
David promised, namely, 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 of silver,
(1 Chr., xxii, 14)—equal to $4,297,700,000, or twice our national debt.
The gold alone would weigh 9,375,000 pounds, or 4,347 tons—enough to
have built the walls two feet thick of that metal; and the silver, being ten
times that weight, would have filled the temple three-quarters full.
On the death of Solomon a division took place among the tribes, the
kingdom was torn asunder and divided into two small provinces, called
Judah and Israel ; two and a half tribes composing the former, and nine
and a half the latter. A religious war broke out between the two king
doms, and while it was going on the kings of Assyria came down upon
the nine and a half tribes and carried them away captive. The captives
never returned, nor can any one to this day tell where they were dis
persed. The small remnant of the Jews soon after became a prey to
conquerors and were carried captive to Babylon. The captivity of the
two and a half tribes took place 588 years B. C., and was practically an
end of the Jewish nation. They were slaves in Babylon and its vicinity,
till 536 years B. C. (Ezra i. 1-6), a period of 52 (not 70) years, when they
were released by Cyrus and allowed to return to Judea. But it appears
that less than 50,000 returned. (Ezra ii. 64, 65.) These, no doubt, were
of the poorer class, the wealthier remaining in Babylon, and contribut
ing alms for the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple.
The amount contributed, according to Ezra ii 68, 69, was 61,000 drachms
of gold, and 5000 pounds of silver—equal in the aggregate to about
$110,000; but according to Nehemiah vii. 70, 72, it was 41,000 drachms of
gold and 4,200 pounds of silver—equal to 'about $290,000. Whichever
was the correct amount, it was not a 600th part of what David and his
men contributed for the first temple.*
About eighty years later, further contributions were made, amounting
* These two chapters, Ezra ii. and Nehemiah vii. are almost exactly alike, the
whole of the former being’ repeated in the latter, with slight variations. Both give
the names of the families that returned, and the number of each. They agree in
making the whole number 42,360, besides 7,337 servants ; but on casting up the sep
arate numbers, the whole sum in Ezra is 29,818 ; and in Nehemiah 31,089. Again,
on comparing the two chapters verse by verse, we find twenty-seven discrepancies in
figures, and thirty in names.
�48
THE NATION AND COUNTRY OF THE JEWS.
to nearly $1,000,000 (only a 60th part of what David and his men gave),
and sent by Ezra with a guard of about 1.750 men from Babylon to Jeru
salem. (Ezra viii.) But the effort to re-establish the Jewish nation proved
futile. Though they.were permitted in some degree to establish their
superstitious religious rites in their former country, they were ever af
terwards the subjects of other powers, until their final dispersion at the
siege of Jerusalem, by Titus, A. D. 70. For half a century after its
destruction, says Dr. Robinson, there is no mention of Jerusalem in his
tory ; and even until the time of Constantine its history presents little
more than a blank. (Vol. I., pp. 367, 371.)
Such was the insignificance of the Jews as a people, that the historical
monuments preceding the time of Alexander the Great, who died 323
years B. C., make not the slightest mention of any Jewish transaction.
The writings of Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus,
and Xenophon, all of whom visited remote countries, contain no mention
of the Jews whatever. Neither Homer, the cotemporary of Solomon,
nor Aristotle, the correspondent of Alexander, makes any mention c-f
them. The story of Josephus, that Alexander visited Jerusalem, ha
been proved to be a fabrication. Alexander’s historians say nothin"
about it. He did pass through the coast of Palestine, and the only,
sistance he encountered was at Gaza, which was garrisoned by Persiahi
(TVyttenbacKs Opuscula, Vol. II., pp. 416, 421.)
Soon after the death of Alexander, the Jews first came into notic-*
under Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and some of their books were collected at
the new-built city of Alexandria. But they remained an obscure people,
so much so that when Christ was crucified in the province of Judea under
the Roman government, no record of the event seems to have been r 'gistered in the archives of that great empire; for if any had been, it
would doubtless have heen preserved, at least for 300 years, and pro
duced by the Emperor Constantine, the first royal pagan convert to Chris
tianity, in his oration before the council of Nicaea, A D. 326, on the evi
dences of the Christian religion.
Persecution has probably made the Jews in modern times more numer
ous than they ever were as an ancient nation. Little reliance can be
placed upon their early history, which is entirely unsupported by cot1
porary records. The story of their origin is doubtless fabulous. It is
more probable that they were at first a wandering tribe of Bedouin Arabs
who got possession of the sterile portion of Palestine, and held it until
it was pretty thoroughly ruined. At all events it is clear that their im
portance has been unduly magnified.
���
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Abstract of Colenso on the Pentateuch: a comprehensive summary of Bishop Colenso's argument, proving that the Pentateuch is not historically true; and that it was composed by several writers, the earliest of whom lived in the time of Samuel, from 1100 to 1060 B. C., and the latest in the time of Jeremiah, from 641 to 624 B. C.
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Colenso, John William
Description
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Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: 48 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "A comprehensive summary of Bishop Colenso's argument, proving that the Pentateuch is not historically true; and that it was composed by several writers, the earliest of whom lived in the time of Samuel, from 1100 to 1060 B.C., and the latest in the time of Jeremiah, from 641 to 624 B.C. To which is appended an essay on the nation and country of the Jews." Date of publication from KVK.
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[sold by American News Company]
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[1871]
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CT26
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Judaism
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Burr, William Henry (ed)
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Bible. O.T. Joshua
Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Conway Tracts
Jews
Judaism
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CT ftg
THE PENTATEUCH
AND BOOK OF
JOSHUA
IN FACE OF
THE SCIENCE AND MORAL SENSE
OF OUR AGE.
By a PHYSICIAN.
PART VI.
“Zufallige Geschichtswahrheiten konnen der Beweis von nothwendigen
Vemunftswahrheiten nie werden ’’—Contingent historical truths can never be
demonstration of necessary rational truths.—Lessing.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS
SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
ECAUSE of the sins of the people, or because he
has failed to sanctify Jehovah in some signal
way at Meribah, Moses, as we have seen, is not only
refused permission to enter the promised land, but is
even informed that he is to die on this (the east) side
of Jordan. The death of Moses follows hard on the
intimation given, and Jehovah then, according to our
text, addresses Joshua, saying:—“Moses my servant
is dead; now therefore arise; go over this Jordan,
thou, and all the people, unto the land which I do
give them, from the wilderness unto Lebanon, the
great river Euphrates, and the great sea toward the
going down of the sun. Be strong and of good
courage, for Jehovah thy God is with thee whither
soever thou goest.” Encouraging words as well as
commands, which, we may presume, Joshua will not
be slack to obey ?
He forthwith orders his officers to bid the people
get ready for an advance by preparing victuals ; for
*
within three days, says he, ye are to pass the Jordan
and go in to possess the land that was promised to
your fathers. He then reminds the Reubenites,
Gadites, and half-tribe of Manasseh of their engage
ment to aid in the war, until their brethren were
settled in the territories beyond, as they themselves
had been put in possession of lands on this (the east)
side of Jordan. As a preliminary to entering on the
great enterprise before him, however, Joshua, not
relying entirely on Jehovah’s promises, as it might
* Th.e writer forgets that manna is still the only food of the
people, and that it stank forthwith if more was gathered than
sufficed for each day’s consumption.
�442
Joshua.
seem, is anxious to have some information of his own
as to the state of preparedness for resistance or other
wise of the people about to be invaded ?
He sends two men across the river to spy and view
the land, “ even Jericho,” the walled town that blocks
the way, and must be taken before further advance
into the country can be made. Stealing into the
town, but not unobserved, as it by and by appears, the
spies take up their quarters with a certain Rahab, a
harlot, probably surmising that from such as she
they might obtain information of the kind they
sought. They are soon inquired after by the King
of Jericho, however, who sends to Rahab, desiring her
to bring forth the men who had entered her house,
they having come, as was believed, to spy out the
land.
Joshua’s men must have been in great peril of their
lives, needlessly exposed, surely, had Jehovah’s
assurance to Joshua, that he and his were to have
the land, been trusted home. But, engaged in the
godly business of smoothing the way for the con
quest, they will be duly cared for by Rahab the
harlot ?
By who but she; for what was to be expected of
a harlot ? Traitress to her people, as she had already
proved false to all that best becomes her sex, instead
of delivering up the spies to the ruler, like a true
woman, she makes terms with them for herself and
her kindred in case she conceals them, and favours
their escape, having given them the information they
sought, as we shall see. She therefore hides the spies
until nightfall, pledges her word to the King’s mes
sengers that the men had left her house, and putting
the searchers on a false scent as to the way they had
taken, she enables them to get back to the camp in
safety.
The writer of the story before us is at the pains to
find something like an apology for Rahab’s treason to
her townsfolk in the words he puts into her mouth ?
�Israel passes Jordan.
443
He shows her familiar with the history of the invaders,
even from the time of their Egyptian bondage, and
makes her tell the spies of the “ terror because of
these things” that had fallen on her people, “ the
hearts of all melting within them, and nothing more
of courage remaining in any man, for Jehovah your
God,” she continues, “is God in heaven above and in
earth beneath.” The writer, it would seem, could
not resist an occasion, even through the mouth of an
idolatrous harlot, to glorify Jehovah his God ; of whom,
nevertheless, the woman Rahab could never have
heard, for the all-sufficient reason that he was not
known among the Israelites themselves by the name
now used until ages after the reputed days of
Joshua.
Rahab, then, has made terms with the spies in
return for their safety and the intelligence she has
given them. Her house is to be known by a certain
sign when the invaders have become masters of
the town, and all belonging to her are to be safe
whilst the indiscriminate slaughter in preparation for
the other inhabitants is proceeding ?
As the houses of the Israelites in Egypt were to be
known to the destroying angel by the blood on the
lintels and door-posts, so is the house of Rahab to be
distinguished by a scarlet cord hung from a window,
red being a colour with which a certain mystical and
sanctifying influence was connected by many of the
peoples of antiquity. The images of their gods—
those of Dionysus in particular, as we know—were
painted red; the figures of the Chaldsean deities on the
wall were “ portrayed in vermilion ” (Ezek. xxiii. 14) ;
and we have seen a scarlet string cast into the fire as
part of the rite in preparing the water of purification
from the ashes of the red heifer.
Breaking up from Shittim, in Moab, where they
were encamped, the Israelites come to the banks of
the Jordan, the priests, the Levites, as said (—but
ages before the existence of a levitical priesthood—),
�444
Joshua.
bearing the Ark of the Covenant, leading the way.
“ And now,” says Jehovah to Joshua, “ will I begin to
magnify thee in the sight of Israel, that they may
know that as I was with Moses so I will be with thee.”
Prom such a preamble we may be prepared for some
miraculous interposition of the tutelary God ?
Which follows forthwith, and is of the same sort
as that vouchsafed to Moses, when he and his fugi
tives had the Red Sea before them, and were enabled
to pass dry-shod through its bed. Joshua and the Is
raelites are now said to cross the swollen Jordan with
out wetting their feet! “ And it came to pass,” says
the narrator, ignoringthe statical law, pre-ordained of
the true God, which makes the thing impossible, “ that
as soon as the feet of the priests which bare the Ark
were dipped in the brim of the water—for Jordan
overfloweth his banks all the time of harvest—that
the waters which came down from above stood and
rose up upon an heap, and those that went down
towards the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed
and were cut off, and the people passed over right
against Jericho.”
Joshua would have this remarkable incident re
corded by a memorial monument ?
He orders a man of each of the twelve tribes to
shoulder a stone from the midst of Jordan, to be “ a
memorial to the children of Israel for ever.” As to
the way in which these stones are to be disposed of,
however, there is, unhappily, discrepancy in the record.
By one text (iv. 3), they are ordered to be carried to
Gilgal, the place where the people pitched for the
night, after passing the river; by another (iv. 9),
they are to be set up in the midst of Jordan where
the feet of the priests stood that bare the Ark ; “ and
they are there,” says the record, “unto this day.”
'The stones, however, would have proved no very
•conspicuous monument plunged in the waters of the
Jordan. Set up in Gilgal, they would certainly have
better served the end proposed. Anyhow, the stones
�Records of the Passage,
445
are presumed to be visible, for the text goes on to
say : “ When your children shall ask their fathers in
time to come, saying: What mean these stones ?
Then ye shall say : Israel came over this Jordan on
dry land; for Jehovah your God dried up the waters
of Jordan, as he did the waters of the Red Sea, until
we were gone over; that all the people of the earth
might know the hand of Jehovah that it is mighty.”
Miracles—in other words, contraventions of the
order or laws of Nature—were to the Jews of old, as
they have still been to the ignorant among other
peoples, the great vouchers for the Being and Power
of God. To the man of science and liberal culture, on
the contrary, a miracle, defined as above, would now
prove an insurmountable obstacle instead of a help
to belief in the existence of God. God, to him, is
Order and Law—not discord and disarray. The tales
of miracles met with in all the writings held sacred or
inspired, whether of Jew or Gentile, are certain de
monstrations of their source in the mind of man in
his stake of ignorance and non-age : AS putting God
IN CONTRADICTION WITH HIMSELF, MIRACLES ARE AT ONCE
IMPOSSIBLE AND ABSURD.
The stones, set up in Gilgal, were “ to serve for a
memorial to the children of Israel for ever ” ?
Alas for the eternity implied in the words ! There
is now no trace of the stones, any more than there is
of the people who set them up, save as scattered rem
nants in far-away countries—the people to whom the
promise of possession in perpetuity of a land that
flowed with milk and honey was so emphatically and
so repeatedly made.
Facts from which we conclude ?
That the statements are neither from God nor from
any of the far-seeing among men, his only oracles,
but from presumptuous, short-sighted, and mistaken
priests, who lived in relatively recent times compared
with those about which they write.
More than this ?
�446
Joshua.
That the repetitions, contradictions, and confusion
so conspicuous in the Book of Joshua make it plain
that its compiler had a variety of documents before
him, from which, and doubtless also from floating
myth and oral tradition, with small amount of critical
or editorial tact, he put together the disjointed nar
rative that engages us.
Yet more ?
That the constant recurrence of the phrase, unto
this day, assures us that the writer is discoursing of
events reputed to have happened in ages long gone
by. To refer to one, and perchance to dispose of the
first of the miracles brought in to . magnify Joshua
and show the might of Jehovah’s hand, we by and
by come upon a few words which show us that the
Israelites might have crossed the Jordan without any
arrest or drying up of its waters, though not without
wetting their feet; for we learn that when the spies
escape from Jericho they take their way “to Jordan
unto the fordsand we have notices besides, in other
parts of the Hebrew history, of the river having been
repeatedly crossed in after-times in the ordinary way
by fording.
Safely over Jordan, the Israelites will, of course,
leave the enemy no time to prepare for resistance ?
So might we have imagined ; but instead of ad
vancing at once, and laying siege to Jericho, we are
told that “ at this time ” Joshua receives orders from
Jehovah to make him sharp knives, or knives of
flint, and circumcise the children of Israel—“ the
second time,” says the text—a needless and not very
feasible procedure, if the words be taken as they
stand. But they cannot be so understood. The rite
of initiation which is said to have been practised
during the Egyptian bondage—a more than question
able statement—it is now said has been utterly neg
lected since the epoch of the Exodus. All the men
born during the forty years’ wandering in the wilder
ness are therefore without the distinguishing sign of
�Orders to Joshua.
447
their election, and must by all means be furnished
with it before the business of despoiling, driving out,
and slaying the enemies of Jehovah, now in posses
sion of the promised land, can be begun. The time
chosen for the ceremony, however, seems as little
opportune as the speed with which it is accomplished
is extraordinary.
How may this be ?
The invaders are but just entered into the enemy’s
country, and have a walled town before and a deep
and swollen river behind them—a dangerous strate
gical position, which Joshua, we must presume, was
too good a soldier not to understand. He will, there
fore, we may expect, like Moses on various occasions,
remonstrate with Jehovah; show the danger to which
he is exposed by the order, and beg him to recall
it. But Joshua seems never to have felt himself on
the same familiar footing with his God as Moses, and
offers no remonstrance. Having crossed the Jordan
on the 10th of Nisan, he proceeds immediately,
according to the record, to circumcise the males
among the children of Israel who had been born
within the last forty years.
The number of able-bodied men having been found
nearly the same as when the census took place at
Sinai, the time required to do so must have been
considerable ?
The operation in question is one of some nicety,
not to be done off-hand in a hurry ; and were the
amputation the affair of a moment the subsequent
dressing would take time. A simple arithmetical
calculation shows conclusively that it could not have
been accomplished between the 10th and the 14th of
the month Nisan, when the Feast of the Passover
is said to have been kept, and the people, therefore,
are presumed to be healed, and able to move about.
Were five minutes allowed in each case, and the
operator tasked to work twelve hours every day
during six days of the week, the time required to
�448
Joshua.
operate on something over 600,000 men would be
thirteen years and more ! By miraculous interposi
tion only, therefore, could the business have been
got through in the three days between the 10th and
14th Nisan ; and even then, another miracle would
have been wanted to heal the people in so short a
space of time. The circumcising done somehow,
however, as said, Jehovah speaks to Joshua, and
says :—
“ This day have I rolled away the reproach of
Egypt from off you.”
Can we as reasonable men believe that such words
ever came from God ?
We have already had occasion to say that God
cannot be conceived as speaking save through the
mouth of man. He, therefore, we conclude, was
mistaken who said that God spoke ; as he too erred
who imagined that the Egyptians bore about them a
badge of reproach in that which has now been cut off
in Israel, or that God’s handiwork can be amended
fey any interference of man. Bar from symbolising
their superiority over other peoples, the initiatory rite
of the Jews is persistent testimony to the essentially
sensual character of the religious system they inherit
from their forefathers; worshippers as they were of
the nature God under a certain symbol, frequently
characterised as the abomination in their writings, and
against the display of which, as we apprehend it, in
the Temple, we find several of the more modern
prophets loud in their denunciations.
We have practices analogous in some sort to the
Jewish rite, though with less of meaning, among
races we characterise as savage, whilst we are wont
to think of the ancient Israelites as the elect of God,
and continue to take them for our masters in religion ?
Setting the religious aspect of circumcision aside,
we see savages in some quarters of the globe knock
ing out a front tooth or two, cutting off a joint from
one of their fingers, or slitting their nether lip, and
�Apparition to 'Joshua.
449
distending it with a bung, by way of improving them
selves, doubtless, and “ rolling away the reproach ”
of a neighbouring tribe who have no such notable
mode of showing their superiority to the rest of
barbarous humanity.
The flint knife, enjoined in the marginal reading of
our English version, is remarkable ?
And not uninteresting from an arch geological point
of view, as pointing to times when tools of bronze and
iron were still unknown; to times when a certain sanc
tity was attached to stones; when they were set up
under trees as emblems of the Generative Power, when
they were thought to be possessed of sense, and were
even worshipped as Gods, and when the only
*
cutting instruments owned by man were flints and
agates chipped or ground to an edge. The early God
of Israel would not have his altar built of dressed
stones ; it must be of unhewn blocks : “ If ye lift up
a tool upon it, ye have polluted it.”
Here we encounter another of those strange and
meaningless interruptions of the narrative, of which
we have had more than one instance already ?
Having been informed that the Passover was
observed on the 14th of Nisan, and that the manna
ceased as soon as the children of Israel began to eat
of the fruits of the land of Canaan, we are told
that “ it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho,
that he lifted up his eyes, and behold there stood a
man over against him, with his sword drawn in his
hand; and Joshua said to him: Art thou for us or
for our adversaries ? And he said: Nay; but as
Captain of the host of Jehovah am I now come.
And Joshua fell on his face on the earth and did wor
ship, and said : What saith my Lord unto his servant ?
And the Captain of Jehovah’s host said unto Joshua :
* “And Joshua took a great stone and set it up under an
oak, and said to the people : Behold, this stone shall be a
witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord
which he spake unto us.”—Joshua, xxiv. 26, 27.
�450
Joshua.
Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place
whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did
so.”
This on the face of it is no very important informa
tion ; neither is the act required of such significance
as to have needed so august a presence as the Captain
of Jehovah’s host to make it ?
Surely it is not; for one foot’s breadth of earth is
as holy as another ; and the only difference between
the shod and unshod foot is that one rests on dressed
and the other on undressed hide. The mere intima
tion that the speaker was the “ Captain of Jehovah’s
host,” moreover, must have left Joshua in the dark
as to the purport of the visit paid him ; the indefinite
“ Nay ” of the visitor to his challenge leaving it
open to question which side the Captain of the host
was to take in the impending engagement before
Jericho. Gilgal, however, was one of the oldest and
for long among the most renowned of their holy places
to the children of Israel. The apparition and intima
tion may therefore have been contrived by the writer
to illustrate the antiquity and peculiar sanctity of
the site; or it may have been introduced as a parallel
to the vision vouchsafed to Moses in the burning
bush on Mount Horeb when he was ordered to take
off his shoes, the ground on which he stood being
holy. The Captain of Jehovah’s host, to conclude,
bears a highly suspicious likeness to one of the
Amschaspands of the Zoroastrian system, and may
help to confirm us in our persuasion that the writing
before us must be referred to times posterior to the
Babylonian captivity.
Resuming the thread of the story, we are informed
that Jericho is at length laid siege to and closely shut
up—none coming out, none going in—and that
Jehovah himself condescends to give certain new
and hitherto unheard-of orders for the conduct of
the siege. For six successive days the besiegers are
to compass the city once on each day, the priests bear-
�Jericho taken and Cherem.
451
ing the Ark and blowing on the sacred trumpets of
rams’ horns as they march; but on the seventh
day—violation of the Sabbath, by the way, and
giving us to know that the Commandment to keep
it holy could not yet have been known—on the
seventh day they are to compass it as many as seven
times, and the blasts on the ram’s horn trumpets are
to be louder than ever. At the proper moment
Joshua is to stretch out his hand with his spear, the
priests are to blow their best, and the people are to
shout with a loud voice, on which the walls will fall
down and the city will be won !
Such a mode of taking Jericho could hardly have
been contemplated by Joshua when he sent out the
spies and confirmed the compact made with Rahab ;
any information he may have had from her through
them being turned to no account. All, however, is
done according to superior orders ?
And the result follows: The rams’ horns are
lustily blown ; Joshua raises his spear; the people
shout; the walls tumble down; and the Israelites
walk into Jericho without striking a blow.
The inhabitants, innocent of all offence, thus
miraculously thrown on the mercy of the invaders,
will, we may presume, be ordered by Jehovah to be
mercifully dealt with ?
Coming commissioned by their God, as they im
agined, to spoil and to slay, mercy in the early
Israelitish wars was a thing unknown. On the con
trary, the city had been proclaimed Cherem to Jehovah,
and we know what that implies : Every living thing
within it must be put to death, and every lifeless
thing consumed by fire. “ The city,” says the leader,
“ shall be devoted, even it and all that are therein, to
Jehovah; only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and
those that are with her in the house, because she hid
the messengers that we sent.” “ And,” proceeds
the story, “ they utterly destroyed all that was in the
city, both men and women, young and old ; ox, sheep,
�452
'Joshua.
and ass.” All that breathed were put to the sword,
and the city, with all it contained, was burned to the
ground ; “ only the silver and the gold, and the vessels
of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the
house of Jehovah.”
Not content with burning Jericho to the ground,
Joshua, for no conceivable reason, would never have
it rise from its ruins. “ Cursed be the man before
Jehovah,” says he, “ that riseth up and buildeth
Jericho ; be shall lay the foundation thereof in his
first-born, and in his youngest shall he set up the
gates of it.”
But Jericho, had it ever been ruined, must by
and by have been rebuilt, notwithstanding Joshua’s
curse; for David desires the messengers he had sent
to congratulate Nahum on his accession to the throne
of Ammon, but who having been mistaken for spies
had been ill-used by the Ammonites, to tarry at
Jericho until the signs of the disgrace put upon them
had disappeared. 11 Tarry at Jericho until your
beards be grown, and then return,” are the words of
King David (II. Samuel, x. 5). At a much later
period in the history of Israel, indeed, and to make
matters tally with Joshua’s denunciation, it may be
supposed, we learn that in the reign of Ahab, more
than five centuries after the age of Joshua, “ Hiel
built Jericho, and laid the foundation thereof in
Aborim, his first-born, and set up the gate thereof
in his youngest son, Segub (I. Kings, xvi. 34).
The interdict assigned to Joshua is, therefore, from
one who lived during or after the reign of King Ahab.
Jericho is ruined, then, but faith is kept with
Rahab ?
She, her father’s household, and all that she had,
it is said, were saved alive, “because she hid the
messengers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho; and
she dwelleth in Israel unto this day.”
Were the text to be taken quite literally, Rahab
would appear to have been very long lived ?
�Achan Transgresses.
453
Rahab may possibly be here used in a generic
sense :—Rahab and her daughters dwell among our
selves even unto tTiis- day !
When a town was declared to be Cherem, or
devoted, it was of course unlawful for individuals to
appropriate any part of the spoil ?
All then belonged exclusively to Jehovah ; in other
words, what was not put to death and burnt came to
the priesthood; and, that no one might trespass
through ignorance, Joshua has been particular in
warning the people against theft—the unpardonable
sin, in such a case :—“ Keep ye in anywise from the
thing that is devoted, lest ye make yourselves
devoted,” says he, and so implicate the camp of
Israel and trouble it. But Achan, the son of Carmi,
has been imprudent enough to take of the devoted
thing, and the anger of Jehovah is kindled against
Israel.
Achan’s transgression of the law of Cherem be
comes known in rather a roundabout way ?
Proceeding with his work of conquest, not witting
that aught has been done amiss, Joshua sends out
spies to take the measure of the next town that lay in
the way—Ai by name. The spies return and report
the place of little strength, and its defenders few ; a
body of two or three thousand men, say they, would
suffice to smite it. So a corps of three thousand is
told off for the duty. But they behave ill; they flee
before the men of Ai, six-and-thirty of them are slain,
and the rest are chased from before the gate of the
town unto Shibarim; “ wherefore the hearts of the
people melted and became as water.”
Joshua takes this much to heart ?
He rends his clothes, falls on his face before the
Ark, with the Elders of Israel puts dust upon his
head, and says :—“Alas, 0 Jehovah God ! wherefore
hast thou at all brought this people over Jordan to
deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy
us ? Would to God we bad been content and dwelt
�454
'Joshua.
on the other side Jordan ! 0 Jehovah ! what shall I
say when Israel turneth their backs before their
enemies? For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants
of the land shall hear of it, and shall environ us
round and cut off our name from the earth; and what
wilt thou do for thy name, the mighty ?” (De Wette.)
This is surely not a becoming address on the part
of Joshua; reproachful as it is to Jehovah and
unworthy of himself as leader of the host. Instead of
owning that his men had been seized with a panic
fear, or that he had erred in sending an inadequate
force against Ai, he throws the blame of the defeat
upon his God, and even threatens him with the evil
constructions of the Canaanites for having led his
elect into difficulties. But Jehovah comes to the
foolish mortal’s aid, though addressing him in terms
more brusque than we have been wont to find applied
to Moses when he has ventured to ask his God what
the Egyptians would think of him did he not carry
his people triumphantly through their troubles:—
“ Get thee up,” says Jehovah ; “ wherefore liest thou
thus upon thy face ? Israel hath sinned ; they have
taken of the accursed [devoted] thing, and have also
stolen and put it among their own stuff.”
Jehovah is made by the writer to look sharply
after his interests—he will have nothing that should
be his appropriated by another; he even knows
where the things purloined have been bestowed. So
he is reported as saying farther to Joshua:—“Up,
sanctify the people; for thus saith Jehovah, the God
of Israel: There is an accursed [devoted] thing in
the midst of thee, O Israel; therefore the children of
Israel could not stand before their enemies, because
they were accursed ; neither will I be with you any
more except ye destroy the accursed from among
you. And it shall be that he that is taken with the
accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all
that he hath.”
A little leaven leavens the lump, indeed ; but were
�Achats Punishment.
455
one thief among thousands to make cowards of the
rest, there would, we trow, be little courage in any
army that ever took the field, whether in ancient or
modern times. The virtuous Israelites, however, who
had never, in a body, borrowed silver and gold, and
fine raiment from the Egyptians, at the instigation of
their God, as they say, must now be purged of the
offender who had taken to himself of the devoted
thing. But why Jehovah, who is cognisant of the
theft, should not also have instantly pointed out the
thief, does not appear. Lots are the means adopted
for finding him out; and though we know that the
lot is as likely to fall on the innocent as on the guilty,
inasmuch as a miracle was now required, so is it forth
coming, and Achan the son of Carmi, the delinquent,
is taken.
His guilt divulged, Joshua addresses the culprit ?
In a speech that begins in a fine fatherly spirit, but
does not so end assuredly: “My son,” says Joshua,
“ give, I pray thee, glory to Jehovah, God of Israel I
Make confession unto Him, and tell me now what
thou hast done ?” To which the unhappy Achan
replies most penitently now that he is known for the
thief: “ Indeed I have sinned, and thus have I done.
When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonian
garment and two hundred shekels of silver and a
wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I took
them, and they are hid in the earth in the midst of my
tent.” And there, sure enough, as Jehovah had indi
cated, the stolen things are found “ among the other
stuff.” “And Joshua and all Israel with him,” continues
the record, “ took Achan and the gold, and the silver,
and the garment, and his sons and his daughters, and
his oxen and his asses and his sheep, and his tent,
and all that he had, and they brought them to the
Valley of Achor, and all Israel stoned them with
stones, and burned them with fire after they had
stoned them with stones. So Jehovah turned from
the fierceness of his anger.”
�45 6
Joshua.
The story here must surely be apocryphal,—in
vented for a purpose ?
It has every appearance of being so at all events ;
yet may it have an old tradition for its root. The
God of the early Israelites was by no means the God
of their later descendants, the Jews. He was a
jealous, revengeful, partial being, never to be ap
proached empty-handed, only to be appeased by the
sacrifice of life through the shedding of blood, and
not to be defrauded of his share of the spoil. The
tale, however, may have been invented as a pendant
to the story of Phinehas, when he slew Zimri and
Cozbi at a blow, and so stayed the pestilence that was
making such havoc in the camp. Or it may have
been devised to terrify the people against all privy
appropriation of aught especially that was held by
prescriptive right to belong to the priesthood.
Achan is the sole offender; but we find that he
alone is not made to suffer for his crime ?
In old and barbarous times, as among some savage
or half-civilised communities in the present day, all
that belonged to the house were held answerable for
the act of its head—wives, sons, daughters, cattle,
goods and chattels—all that breathed died, and all
that had value was burned or confiscated, in case the
penalty for the deed done were death.
And wholesale sacrifices of the kind were required
by Jehovah, God of Israel ?
So says the record : “ Joshua and all Israel took
Achan and all that belonged to him unto the valley of
Achor, and the leader addressing the offender, said to
him: Why hast thou troubled us ? Jehovah shall
trouble thee this day. And Israel stoned him with
stones and burned them with fire ; so Jehovah turned
from the fierceness of his anger.”
What are we in these days to think of the tales of
such horrors ?
We are to see them for what they are: libels on
humanity, blasphemies against the Supreme. Their
�Ai to be Taken.
457
writers may have thought that their God Jehovah re
quired silver and gold, and brass and iron, and the
blood of the innocent as well as the guilty to appease
his anger; but we who live in this 19th century of
the Christian era know that God, the Ineffable
Supreme, requires nothing of us but love of him and
love of our neighbour, in other words, obedience to
his laws and deed towards our neighbour as we would
have deed from him to us. Let the writings before
us therefore be seen for what they are—records of a
barbarous age, delivered by unenlightened men, and
unworthy longer to be looked on as the word of God
or as means available for the education and improve
ment of the world. The mention of the Babylo
nian garment might assure us that so much of the
tale as refers to it, must at all events be of modern
date ; for a horde escaped from slavery and but just
setting foot on the southern confines of Palestine,
after long wandering in the wilderness, could have
known nothing of Babylonian garments ; and we
may be well assured that the tents and hamlets of
the Amorites were as little familiar with shekels of
silver and wedges of gold in the days of Joshua as he
and his warriors could possibly have been. These
are all particulars added to colour a tale of late in
vention that most certainly can form no part of the
true word of God to man.
The town of Ai, however, stands in the way, and
must be taken; and Jehovah, not trusting as yet en
tirely to the military genius of Joshua, though the
Captain of his own choice, proceeds to give him par
ticular instructions as to how he is to set about the
business :—“Take all the people ofwar with thee,” says
Jehovah, “ and arise; go up to Ai; see, I have given
into thy hand the King and his people, the city and
the land; and thou shalt do to Ai and her King
as thou didst to Jericho and her King; only the
spoil thereof and the cattle thereof shall ye take for
a prey to yourselves. Lay thee an ambush for the city
�45 8
Joshua.
behind it.” And this Joshua proceeds to do; he sends
30,000 mighty men of valour away by night to lie
in ambush and attack the city from behind, whilst he
himself with 5,000 more will make a feint of attack
ing it in front. “And it shall come to pass,” says he,
“ that when they come out against us we will flee before
them, and they will follow after usseeing which
the 30,000 men in ambush are to show themselves and
seize on the city; “for Jehovah your God,” continues
the tale, “ will deliver it into your hand ; and when ye
have taken the city, ye shall set it on fire: according
to the commandment of Jehovah shall ye do.”
Jehovah, portrayed ruthless as ever, appears even
to have been on the field in person upon this occasion ?
Like the Gods of other ancient peoples, he of the
Israelites is presumed to be there to help his friends
and discomfit their enemies. Venus, in the Iliad,
shields Paris when in danger, and favours the Tro
jans ; Pallas has Achilles and the Greeks under her
protection ; and so in the Jahvehiad is Jehovah with
the Israelites in the fight before Ai. The men of the
feint on this side the city take to flight when attacked ;
the defenders pursue; and now, says Jehovah to
Joshua, “ Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand
toward Ai, and I will give it into thy hand.” Joshua
brandishes his spear, the ambush of 30,000 arise (an
ambuscade of 30,000 men !), march into Ai, set it
on fire as commanded, smite the inhabitants from
behind, as its defenders are now smitten by Joshua
and his party in front, and the day is won. “ They
let none of them escape ; Joshua drew not his hand
back wherewith he stretched out the spear until he
had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. And
all that fell on that day, both of men and women,
were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai, but
they took the King alive, and brought him to Joshua.”
The cattle and spoil are appropriated by Israel, and
the town is burnt and made “ a heap of desolation
unto this day.” The unoffending Chief of Ai, to con-
�Ai Destroyed.
4-59
elude the bloody business, is hanged on a tree until
sun-down (in other words, he is crucified as a sacri
fice to the sun-god), when his body is cast before the
gate of what was the city of his people, and a heap of
stones is raised over it that “ remaineth unto this
day.”
So much for Ai, its King, and its people, thus
dealt with in furtherance of Jehovah’s promise to the
forefathers of Israel to give them a laud that flowed
with milk and honey. Would not Blood and Tears, to
judge from the tales before us, have been better
■chosen words ? Let the reader refer to the sieges of
Jericho and Ai as first acts in the drama of getting
possession of the covenanted land, and answer
bravely to his own conscience whether they would or
not.
And what are we as reasonable, merciful, and
responsible men, with the details of such atrocities
before us, to think of those theologians of the present
age who persist in forcing the writings of a barbarous
people upon us as the source—sole source, moreover
—whence passably becoming ideas of God and his
dealings with the world are to be derived ?
As reasonable and not utterly benighted men we
are to think and feel assured that they are altogether
unreasonable, and are living in a state either of wilful
or unconscious blindness,
*
. After his triumphs at Jericho and Ai, Joshua builds
an altar of whole stones, as said, to Jehovah, God
of Israel—Jahveh-Elohe-Israel—on which burnt-offer
ings and peace-offerings are presented, and on the
stones of which it is composed a copy of the Law of
Moses is engraved, not a word of all that Moses com
manded being omitted in the writing, or in the reading
aloud to the people which followed ?
* Well may Strauss have said: “How many of the laity
understand the Bible ?—how many of the clergy understand
it 1—how many of them are willing to understand it ?”
�460
J
’ oshua.
This, in part at least, is somewhat extraordinaryintelligence—circumstance, matter, time, and place
considered; for the altar is set up on Mount Ebal,
and all that passes by the name of Law of Moses could
scarcely have been engraved on its twelve unhewn
stones. But Mount Ebal is in Samaria, some days
march away for an army operating in Canaan with its
base at Gilgal; and it is now quite certain that no
thing was known among the Israelites under the title
of Law of Moses until the reign of Hezekiah, seven
hundred years after the days of Joshua, according to
the usual reckoning.
Seeing the difficulty of engraving the whole of the
Pentateuch or Thora on twelve rough stones, Bible
harmonists have said that it was the abstract of theLaw comprised in the book of Deuteronomy which
Joshua carved on the stones ?
An assumption, however, by which the difficulty isnot got over ; for every competent and candid critic
now knows that Deuteronomy is among the most
modern of the five so-called books of Moses, and that
the bulk of the book, with the exception of a few
verses met with here and there copied from Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers, does not date from days
farther back than the reign of Josiah.
Others of the inhabitants of Canaan are now said
to take alarm at the terrible doings of the Israelites ?
The Kings of the Amorites, Hittites, Canaanites,
and other septs dwelling on this or the western side
of Jordan, hearing of what has been done to Jericho
and Ai, band themselves together and prepare to resist
the invaders. But the people of Gibeon, nearer the
scene of action, stricken with a panic fear, as it seems,
and despairing of any effectual resistance, go otherwise
to work, and succeed by guile in binding Joshua and
the princes of Israel by an oath to spare their lives.
A deputation present themselves in the camp, and
make show of having come from afar: the sacks and
wine-skins they have with them being old and rent,
�The Gibeonites.
461
their clothes patched, their shoes clouted, and the
bread they still possess, “ though taken hot from the
oven when they set out,” as they say, being now
“ dry and mouldy.” Joshua inquires of them who
they are, and from whence they come ? From a far
country, say they in reply; and having, like Rahab
the harlot, heard of the great fame of Jehovah the
<3 od of Israel, and all he had done for his people in
Egypt, against Sihon, King of Heshbon, and Og,
King of Bashan, against the Amorites beyond Jordan,
and doubtless also against the people of Jericho and
Ai, they had come their long journey to entreat the
leader of the dreaded host to enter into a league of
amity with them.
Joshua falls into the snare F
“ Because he had not asked counsel at the mouth
of Jehovah,” says the text, “ he made peace with them
and let them live, all the princes of the congregation
swearing to the league.” Had he but taken counsel
of the mouth of Jehovah, as he ought to have done,
he would have been better advised: instead of en
gaging to let them live, he would doubtless have
found himself authorised to deal with them in another
fashion. Commanded to hold them Cherem, as in
other instances, he would have been enjoined to slay
and despoil, instead of simply enslaving and putting
them to tribute. All that breathed—men and women,
old and young—would then have been put to death,
and the silver and gold, the brass and iron they pos
sessed been paid into the treasury of the God !
Joshua and the Israelites, of course, soon discover
that they have been imposed upon—that the footsore
and ragged deputation came from no far-off country,
but verily from the cities of Gibeon, Cephirah,
Beeroth, and Kirjath-Jearim, all close at hand ?
The people, therefore, murmur against Joshua and.
their chiefs : they would much have preferred putting
the Gibeonites to the sword, and appropriating their
spoil; “ but they smote them not, because of the oath
�462
'Joshua.
of the princes,” and are pacified by having them made
hewers of wood and drawers of water to the congre
gation of Israel. Joshua, we need not doubt, rates
the deputation soundly for having deceived him, thev
pleading in excuse the rumour gone abroad that
Jehovah the God of Israel had commanded his ser
vant Moses to give his people all the land for a pos
session, and to destroy all its native inhabitants from
before them. Joshua therefore keeps the hands of
the children of Israel from the throats of the Gibeonites ; but, as the story says, “ he made them hewers
of wood and drawers of water for the congregation
and for the altar of Jehovah in the place which he
should choose, even unto this day.”
How may this be interpreted ?
The hierodouli or slaves of the Temple, built by
King Solomon—if it were not perchance of the second
Temple, built by the remnant that returned from
their captivity in Babylon—on Mount Moriah, in the
city of Jerusalem, are turned by the writer into
Gibeonites subdued by Joshua.
The Gibeonites have made peace with Joshua then,
but the Kings or chiefs of the cantons, their neigh
bours, threaten them for having come to terms with
the invader ?
Five of these Kings gather their fighting men
together, and make war on Gibeon for its selfish
desertion of the common cause. But Gibeon sends
to Joshua at Gilgal, entreating for speedy succour and
assistance ; all the Kings of the Amorites that dwell
on the mountains being now gathered, as they say,
against them. Joshua is not slow to obey the
summons of his new allies. He moves at once from
Gilgal in the night; falls suddenly on the host of the
five confederates, discomfits them, and slays them
with a great slaughter. But he has not been
without a powerful ally of another kind than the
dastardly Gibeonites to aid in the work of destruc
tion, for “ Jehovah,” as we learn, “ cast down great
�Still-stand of the Sun.
463'
stones from Heaven upon them, so that there were
more that died with hail-stones than the children
of Israel slew with the sword.” More than this,
and still more marvellous, it is here we read that
Joshua, addressing Jehovah, says, in the sight of
Israel, “ Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and
thou moon in the Valley of Ajalon. And the sun
stood still in the midst of Heaven, and hasted not
his going down a whole day.” The moon, too,
although her light could not have been wanted in face
of the sun, paused, it is said, in her course, whilst the
chosen seed avenged themselves on their enemies.
“ And there was no day like that before or after it,
that Jehovah hearkened to the voice of a man ; for
Jehovah fought for Israel.” We have so often had
occasion to differ from the writer that for once we
rejoice to find ourselves in accord with him : there
certainly never was, and never will, “ until chaos come
again,” be a day like that which saw the sun stand
still in Heaven, and haste not his going down for a
whole day at the word of a man !
Had the writer been content with his hail-stones of
Jehovah—in other words, his great hail-stones—it
would not have been difficult to admit that such a
contingency as a hail-storm occurring in the course of
a skirmish in Judea was well within the limits of
possibility, but the standing still of the sun and moon
in Heaven, in other words, the arrest of the earth in
its revolution, to give Israel the better opportunity to
slaughter the Amorites, takes the tale entirely out of
the pale of belief. Such an occurrence, as against
Mature, i.e., against God, is an absolute impossibility.
The narrator himself, indeed, must have had mis
givings as to the credibility and reception of his
story, for he seeks either to bolster it up, or to shift
the responsibility for its truth from his own to
another’s shoulders, appealing as he does to an
inaccessible source as his authority. “ Is not this
written,” says he, “ in the Sepher Haijashar ? ”—the
�464
Joshua.
Book of the Just, now lost to us. Reference to such
a document shows that the writer drew from an older
source than is the text in which we have his tale,
a document, however, that certainly did not date
so far back as the days of Joshua, inasmuch as we
learn elsewhere (II. Samuel, i. 17 and seq.) that it
is from the Sepher Haijashar that the touching
lament, put into the mouth of David for Saul and
Jonathan, is derived. The Book of Joshua, conse
quently, could not have been compiled and put
together in the indifferent fashion in which it meets
us until after the reign of David, second King of
Israel.
This tale of the standing still of the sun and moon
in their apparent course must surely be one of the
parts of the Old Testament which, in face of the
science of our age, has failed to find apologists ?
So might we have expected. Nevertheless, at
tempts have not only been made to explain away but
even to defend the statement, and in the physical
impossibility implied to find an illustration of the
power—we do not know that any one has ventured to
add: of the goodness and mercy of God. But early
indoctrination still makes men incompetent to see
things as they are, and lets them of the power to dis
tinguish between what is no more than contingent
statement and that which is absolute or necessary truth.
Blind sentiment then takes the lead of open-eyed in
telligence, and blank absurdity and hideous cruelty
are seen in the disguise of wisdom and beneficence.
*
* It is not a little extraordinary that so bold a thinker
and, in matters of science, so well-informed a man as Spinoza
should have been tempted to offer a natural explanation of
the myth relating the still-stand of the sun and moon at the
word of Joshua. He says (assuming it as a fact that the day
light lasted longer than usual) that Joshua and those about
him, ignorant of the true cause of the longer continuance of
the light they witnessed, believed that the sun stood still on
the day in question. They never thought of referring it to
�Hanging before the Sun.
4.65
With the great ally he had, or thought he had, in
his God Jehovah, Joshua could not fail to put the five
Kings of the Amorites, in alliance against Gibeon, to
the rout ?
They are defeated, as matter of course, with signal
slaughter of their peoples, they themselves only
escaping immediate death by hiding in a cave at
Makkedah. This being told to Joshua, he, to make
sure of his prey yet not to interrupt the pursuit and
slaughter, orders great stones to be rolled to the
mouth of the cave, and a guard set over it. “ Pursue
after your enemies and smite them,” says he; “ suffer
them not to enter into their cities; for Jehovah your
God hath delivered them into your hand.” The
triumph complete, Joshua and the men of war return
to the camp at Makkedah, and—vce victis!—it is now
the turn of the chiefs who are hidden in the cave :—
“ Bring forth those five Kings unto me out of the
cave,” says Joshua. Calling his officers about him,
he bids them put their feet on the necks of the pros
trate chiefs, and assures them that if they continue
strong and of good courage, thus will Jehovah aid
them to do to all against whom they fight. But this
is not yet the end; for Joshua, continues the record,
inspired by Jehovah, and with his own hand, we may
presume, even as Samuel did to Agag, “ smote them
and slew them, and hanged them on five trees until
the going down of the sun.” The dead bodies were
then taken down and thrown into the cave wherein,
having sought a refuge, they now found a grave ; its
mouth, to conclude, being stopped up with great
stones, “which remain unto this day.”
Such hangings up before the sun, or until the going
down of the sun, so frequently mentioned in the Heany less obvious cause, such as the ice and hail which then filled
the air, and might have given rise to a higher refractive power in
the atmosphere than usual.—Tr. Theol. Polit., ch. it, p. 60, of
the English version.
�466
"Joshua.
brew Scriptures, must be presumed to have a special
significance ?
That they have, cannot be doubted, and that they
were sacrificial is scarcely questionable. The trees on
which the suspensions took place were crucifixes, and
the attitude of the victim was that which appears to
have been assumed by the Semitic peoples generally
in the act of adoration. At the dedication of the
Temple, for instance, Solomon, it is said, “ stood
before the altar of Jehovah and spread forth his hands
towards heaven and said: -Jehovah, God of Israel,
there is no God like thee,” &c.; and when he had
made an end of “ praying all this prayer and suppli
cation unto Jehovah, he arose from kneeling on his
knees with his hands spread up to heaven ” (1 Kings,
viii. 22 and 54). Those stretchings out of the arms,
again, with or without the Hod of God in his hand, of
which we read so frequently in connection with the
mythical history of Moses, must have had the same
significance—they implied prayer and adoration.
Moses stretches out his hand when he divides the
flood of the Red Sea and when he draws water from
the rock, but most notably of all when he gains the
victory over Amalek. Waited on by Aaron and Hur,
he has ascended the hill that overlooks the field;
“and it was seen,” says the text,-“that when Moses
held up his hands, that Israel prevailed, and when
he let down his hands, that Amalek prevailed. .But
Moses’ hands were heavy, and they took a stone and
put it under him, and he sat thereon ; and Aaron and
Hur stayed uv his hands, the one on the one side, the
other on the other side, until the going down of the sun.
And Joshua discomfited Amalek.” (Ex.xvii.) The rude
Figure in the woodcut on the next page, after a Votive
Tablet of Hicembalis, King of Massylia and Numidia,
to his Deity the Sun-God Baal—older in all likelihood
than anything we have in the Hebrew Scriptures—is
in the very attitude of the victim on the accursed
tree as well as of Moses and Solomon in the act of
�'Joshua Victorious.
467
prayer, and is surely not a little interesting when
seen in connection with the great Catholic Christian
symbol of medieeval and modern times.
*
Joshua, to whom the idea of mercy appears to have
been unknown—as, indeed, it would have been out
of season, acting as he does under orders from Jeho
vah to smite and not to spare—never pauses now in
his career of conquest over the tribes standing in the
* The rude and very ancient tablet figured above was
brought by Sir Grenville Temple, in 1833, from Magrawa,
the site of a Lybo-Phcenician settlement in the Beylik of
Tunis, and is described and figured in the Trans, of the Royal
Asiatic Society for 1834. The inscription in the Phoenician
character has been deciphered by Gesenius : Scripturse L111guaeque Phoenicia Monumenta, 4to, Lips. 1837, and is to the
following effect:—Domino Baali Solari, Rege Eterno, qui
exaudivit preces Hicembalis : “To the Sun-God Baal, Eternal
King, who heard the prayers of Hicembalis. ”
�468
Joshua.
way of the chosen seed, their enemies only because
Occupants of the soil on which they had been born,
and their title-deeds no other than indentures from
God when he gave them power to subdue and make
it fruitful ?
He advances from one victory to another, according
to the record, might his only rule of right.
And the countenance and aid of Jehovah ?
So he or the writer who uses the sacred name may
have imagined ; but enlightened humanity knows no
thing of God’s countenance or favour save with deeds
in conformity with his eternal laws—with those in
special which proclaim the sacredness of human life,
and forbid appropriation by force or fraud of aught
that is another’s.
But the Canaanites, it has been said, were a wicked
race, and so were disinherited, as they deserved ?
Of the state of civilisation and morals among the
Canaanites we know little; and that little not always
in their favour. But they were farther advanced in
the arts of life, as it seems, than the horde that in
vaded them. They were settled denizens on the land
of their birth, not wandering nomads like the Is
raelites ; they dwelt in walled towns, associated as
independent petty republics, and lived in peace or at
war with one another as interest or passion prompted.
If perchance they were not entirely moral in their
generation, and their religion was stained with what
we now look on as indecency, and with blood, what,
it is fair to ask, were the Israelites who came up
against them ? Let the reader refer to the chapters
of the book of Exodus in which so many command
ments with a social bearing find expression; and, if
he have it not already, let him thence acquire the
formation that will enable him to answer the
question.
Favour or no favour, Joshua is a daring leader, and
his warriors are braver, more numerous, better armed,
or better led than their opponents, so that he takes in
�Hazor is Cherem.
469
succession Makkeda’n, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon,
and Hebron, and does to each and. all of them as he
had done to Jericho and Ai, putting the men, women,
and children to the sword, and appropriating their
spoil, utterly destroying all that breathed, “as Jeho
vah the God of Israel commanded” (x. 40).
So many of the cities of the level land, or land, of
Canaan, and their territories thus subdued, Joshua
turns his attention to the Perizzite, the Hittite, the
Jebusite, and the Canaanite which dwell in the more
mountainous districts. Jabin, King of Hazor, had, in
fact, allied himself with the clans just named, and
“ come up against Israel with much people, even as
the sand on the sea-shore in multitude, with horses
and chariots very many.” .But Jehovah, as on other
occasions, bids Joshua not to fear them, for “to-mor
row, about this time, I will deliver them all slain be
fore Israel, and thou shalt hough their horses and
burn their chariots with fire.”
Israel, with such assistance, prevails ?
Of course!—Jehovah delivers all into the hands
of his ruthless favourites : Jabin and his confederates
are smitten until none of them remain ; “ Joshua did
unto them as Jehovah hade him : he houghed their
horses and burnt their chariots with fire.” Hazor, the
leading place in this unsuccessful stand against the
invaders, is particularly mentioned as suffering sum
mary chastisement. Taken by assault, we may pre
sume, Jabin the King of Hazor, and all the souls
therein, are smitten with the sword, none of them
being left to breathe, and the town itself with all
within it is burnt to ashes. Hazor, in a word, had been
made Gherem; and we are already familiar with the
terrible significance of this word. The other cities
confederate with Hazor are also taken ; but they are
not burned down; the victors content themselves
with slaying their inhabitants and appropriating the
spoil. “There was not a city,” says the record, “that
made peace with the children of Israel, save the
�Joshua.
Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all the others
they took in battle for it was of Jehovah to harden
their hearts that they should come against Israel in
battle that they might have no favour, but be utterly
destroyed as Jehovah commanded Moses”—that is
to say, they were led to their destruction by Jehovah
himself.
There is the saying of a heathen writer, that God
first makes mad those he would ruin; but in the
book, every word of which is still received by so
many among the most civilised peoples of the earth
as inspired by God, we should scarcely have expected
to find the Supreme Creator presented as leading men
to their destruction. Let us think for a moment of
God hardening the hearts of the Canaanites to
oppose their invaders, and commanding the indiscri
minate slaughter of men and women, with the par
ticular houghing of horses and burning of war chariots
with fire 1
Had the book been truly inspired by God it would
most assuredly have contained no such command
ments. Do we, however, accept the definition of
inspiration given by one of the few consistently pious,
thoroughly competent, and candid biblical critics of
our day as: “ The expression of man’s religious consci
ousness;” and that of “ God’s promises of the land of
Canaan to the Israelites,” as : “ the spontaneous consci
ousness of the writer and his nation,”* we come to a
'
much better understanding of the text than when it
is seen as the result of any immediate intimation or
inspiration from God. It is, indeed, and can by no
possibility be more than a picture by the writer of
his God Jehovah, and the destinies of his people.
God, most assuredly, no more hardened the hearts of
the Canaanites to resist Israel than he hardened the
heart of Pharaoh, in older times, when refusing to let
Israel go; and he no more ordered the children of
* S. Davidson, D.D. Introd, to Study of the Old Testa
ment, I., p. 440 et seq.
�Joshua a Myth.
i
Israel to go in, slay and take possession in Canaan,
than he inspires a neighbouring people of our own
day to covet certain lands that border the Rhine, and
another to desiderate the domains of the Sultan,
whilst he inclines the hearts of the Teuton and Turk
to hold their own. It was the want of elbow-room
and the need they felt for escape from the nomad to
the settled state that drove the Hebrew of old to cast
longing eyes on the better watered and more fertile
lands of Canaan, and led him on, with arms in his
hand, prepared to slay where liberty to settle was
denied. The story of the invasion of Palestine by
the children of Israel, as we have it, is a poem, its
historical foundations, in all likelihood, no broader
than those of “ The Tale of Troy divine.” Myth and
legend, largely as they pervade every part of the
early Hebrew story, are so conspicuous in Joshua that
an astrological and allegorical meaning has even been
connected with the whole of the book. Jericho, it
has been said, may be the Moon-city, Rahab the
Moon-goddess (Rahab, increase, from the waxing of
the Moon through the first half of her orbit), and
Joshua himself another Hercules or Sun-god, point
edly referred to as a Beth-schemite or of the House of
the Sun (Ha-Schem, the Sun, a name of the Hebrew
god), of whose birth and descent, further than that he
was the son of Nun [the fish), we have no information,
though we are told that his death and burial took
place at Timnath-Heres—eclipse of the Sun, or the
obscurity that follows his setting.
*
Some considerable time, we must presume, was
spent in these wars of conquest and spoliation of
Joshua ?
Five or six years, according to the usual reckoning,
but this is merely conjectural, and though Joshua
is said to have taken “ the whole land and given it
* See Drummond, CE dipus Judaicus, 4to., London. Re
printed, 8vo., London, 1868. Higgins, Anacalepsis, 2 vols.,
4to., London; and Nork, Biblische Mythologie, II., 226.
�47 2
Joshua.
for an inheritance to Israel,” so that at length “ the
land rested from war ” (xi. 23), we by and by learn
that “ there yet remained very much land to be
possessed” (xiii. 1); a statement which, doubtless,
approaches the truth more closely than the one first
made. Many towns and districts were very certainly
never subdued in Joshua’s time, nor, indeed, for long
after: “As for the Jebusites, the children of Judah
could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell
with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this
day—a statement that must date from some con
siderable time after the reign of David. Neither
would it seem did Ephraim slay and drive out the
Canaanites from the lands allotted to them, in the
manner first described : “ They drove not out the
Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites
dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and
serve under tribute.”
With the land thus partially subdued, Joshua
nevertheless proceeds to the difficult task of dividing
it among the victors according to their tribes ?
To avoid dispute, apparently, and charges of par
tiality, he has recourse to lots, and gives an engage
ment as from Jehovah that the peoples still in
possession should in due season be driven out. The
tribe of Levi, alone, is to have none of the land as an
inheritance, “the sacrifices of Jehovah, God of Israel,
made by fine, are their inheritancethey are, how
ever, to have certain cities, situated in the territories
of the other tribes, for dwelling-places. The ad
mission but just made that there still remained much
land to be possessed, and that the slaying and driving
out had by no means been so complete as reported,
now finds confirmation in the statement that “ the
five Lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites north of
them—the A vites, the Gib bites, all Lebanon, and the
Sidonians”—as well as certain other tribes more cen
trally situated,—the Geshurites, Maachathites, and
Jebusites, had not only not been slain or driven out,
�Natives not Driven out.
473
but had not as yet been even molested ; they continued
to dwell among the Hebrews of old, as they did in
the days of the Jewish writer of the age of Josiah
(xiii. 13). The veni, vidi, vici of the Book of Joshua
is thus found, after all, to be an empty boast.
On the above showing there is obvious discrepancy
in the accounts we have of the doings of Joshua ?
The discrepancy is endless. The country could
■evidently have been overrun and subdued to a very
• limited extent only. Instead of being exterminated,
the native populations remained in most parts even
numerically superior to the Israelites. But the
natives, graziers here, agriculturists there, divided
among themselves doubtless, and quarrelling at times,
must still have been unused to war on any great
scale. Their assailants, the Israelites, on the con
trary, are represented as soldiers trained and armed
for battle, acting as invaders in a body under a single
leader, and superior through discipline to any oppo
sition that could be offered them. There was, there
fore, no necessity for the indiscriminate slaughter
paraded by the Jewish annalists for the purpose of
magnifying Jehovah and his people Israel.
The vast multitude said to have left Egypt and
made to toil so long in the wilderness, disappear
soon after Joshua comes upon the stage ?
After the questionable Census in the plains of
Moab, we hear no more of the six hundred thousand
and odd able-bodied men, from twenty years of age
and upwards, armed for war. The force in the field
under Joshua, though greatly exaggerated in numbers,
doubtless, is a comparatively compact body, more
easily handled than any larger mass, but still, we may
imagine, more than sufficient to make resistance use
less on the part of the Canaanites. They could, in
fact, have seen nothing for it, in the majority of
instances, but submission; a course to which they
may have been the more easily reconciled when they
found that the invaders were of their own kindred,
�474
Joshua.
spoke the same or a dialect of the same language,,
followed the same social usages, and with little
difference observed the same religious rites as them
selves. The Hebrews and Canaanites were in truth,
as we have seen, scions of the same Semitic stock,
and intermingling freely through the whole of theearlier and by much the longer period of their history
—each taking the sons and daughters of the other as
husbands and wives—they became amalgamated at
length into the people whom we finally know as the
Israelites, or, in a more restricted sense, as the Jews.
Such a conclusion, however, does not tally with
the gist of the general history ?
It must be true none the less ; for though Jehovah
is pledged by the writers of the Hebrew records to
drive out the native populations before his elect—the
children of Jacob, the wily—as the pledge was never
redeemed, so need we have no misgivings in conclud
ing that it never came from God, among whose
eternal ordinances, as we read them in the book of
Nature, it has no place.
What then becomes of the many stringent enact
ments so frequently repeated, from the mythical days
of Abraham and Sarah downwards, against taking
daughters of the soil to wife F
As we see that these were all against the customs
of the country, and were never observed by high or
low until after the Captivity, we conclude that they
are the product of the very latest legislation. They
belong, in fact, to times when the Jehovistic religious
party had got the upper hand in the state, and the
bigotry and intolerance that spring up whenever men
in power imagine themselves the favourites of heaven,
their views alone agreeable to God, and all who differ
from them as no better than accursed, had ripened
into a system.
There is particular as well as general discrepancy,
also, as regards the districts and cities said to have
been conquered by Joshua ?
�Hebron and Debir.
^7$
Hebron, for instance, is said in one place to have
been taken and smitten with the edge of the sword,
and the king and all the souls therein so utterlydestroyed that not one was left alive (x. 36). But
in another place Caleb says to Joshua, “ Now, there
fore, give me this mountain, Hebron, where Jehovah
spoke in that day, how the Anakims were there and
the cities great and fenced. If so be that Jehovah
will be with me, then I will drive them out as Jehovah
said. And Joshua blessed Caleb and gave him
Hebron for an inheritance.” Hebron consequently
had not been captured, neither had its inhabitants
been exterminated in the manner declared. By-andbye, indeed, we are told that Caleb drives out the
three Anakims, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai from
Hebron (xiv. 12) ; but at a later period in the story,
we learn that “ After the death of Joshua the children
of Judah went up to Hebron, fought against the
Canaanites who dwelt there, and slew the three
Anakims, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai (Judges i. 9))
who had all already been first put to the sword by
Joshua, and then driven out by Caleb !
*
Much the same story is told of Debir as of Hebron ?
Joshua and all Israel with him, it is-said, fought
against Debir; took it; smote it with the edge of
the sword, and utterly destroyed all that breathed—
“as he had done to Hebron, so did he to Debir”
(x. 38). But immediately afterwards we find that
Caleb, after clearing his possession, Hebron, of the
Anakim, goes up against Debir, and makes proclama
tion that whosoever takes the city, to him will he
give his daughter Achsah to wife ; and that Othniel,
the son of Kenaz, succeeds, and is rewarded in the
terms of the proclamation (xiv. 16-17). But then
we have Othniel as the Hero and Achsah as the prize
in connection with the city of Kirjath-Sepher—called
* Comp. De Wette: Introd, to 0. T. by Th. Parker, II.,
165, and seq.
�47 6
Joshua.
Debir of old, says the writer, in times posterior to the
death of Joshua (Judges i. 11-13).
From these and the numerous other contradictory
and obviously mythical statements of the book of
Joshua we conclude ?
First, that the book is a compilation from frag
ments, mainly traditional, and in many cases purely
mythical; and second, that we have the writings of two
—if not of three or more—different individuals jum
bled together. Besides the information proper to the
book itself, there are many allusions to particulars
with which we are already familiar in writings that
have gone before, as well as with others, in works
more sober in their tenour and more reliable as
authorities, that come after it. References to the
plagues of Egypt and the wonders done in that
country are put into the mouths of Rahab and the
Gibeonites; the passage of the Jordan is plainly a
parallel to the passage of the Red Sea, and needless,
inasmuch as the river is fordable ; Moses is the hero
of the legislation and Joshua the hero of the con
quest of the promised land; Moses had a wonder
working rod, and Joshua has a wonder-working
spear; Jehovah appears to Moses in the burning
bush, and the Captain of Jehovah’s host appears to
Joshua, and in the very words used to Moses bids
him loose his shoe from off his foot, the ground he
stands on being holy; and, to conclude, the death
and burial of Joshua at Timnath Heres in the dark
bears some analogy to the mysterious death of Moses
on Mount Nebo.
Beside the general distribution of lands to the
tribes, there are a few particular allotments to distin
guished individuals ?
We have seen Caleb put in possession of Hebron,
and we now learn that the sons of Aaron, the priests,
are handsomely endowed ; they have no fewer than
thirteen cities assigned them. But, as the sons were
only two, we are at a loss to imagine what use they
�Reuben and Gad Retire.
477
could have made of so munificent a gift : they could
not have occupied thirteen cities, and in the days
referred to there was no letting and sub-letting;
possessions were for individuals and their families,
and the transmission of property only took place by
sale or inheritance among the members of each
several tribe. Such an anachronism as the present
ment of thirteen cities to the priesthood can scarcely
be conceived possible even at a date so remote as the
age of Solomon ; the statement before us, therefore,
we must conclude, was made after the reign of that
*
sovereign.
And now, continues the text, “ Jehovah
gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give
to their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt
therein, and Jehovah gave them rest round about
. . . and there failed not aught of any good thing
which Jehovah had spoken unto the house of Israel
—all came to pass ” (xxi. 43-45).
This must be a note supplied by a late hand,
ignoring much of what had been said before ?
It has every appearance of being so, standing as it
does in flagrant contradiction with the statements we
have but just had made that there still remained much
land to be taken in and possessed; that the children
of Judah could never drive the Jebusites out of their
city, nor the sons of Manasseh expel the Canaanites
from the district assigned them, &c. Neither, indeed,
were the Geshurites ever got rid of, but continued, the
text tells us, “ to dwell among the Ephraimites unto
this day,” i.e., unto the day when the writer lived,
some time assuredly, longer or shorter, after the
reign of Solomon.
The tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe
of Manasseh, which have kept their word to Moses
that they would aid the other tribes, their brethren,
in the conquest of the promised land, now take their
See Kuehnen. Hist, critique de l’ancien Testament, Tr. de
l’Hollandais, T. I., p. 330, 8vo, Paris, 1866.
�4-7 8
Joshua.
leave, and set out in return to their own territory
beyond Jordan, with the blessing of Joshua and
a, charge that they should diligently keep the com
mandments and observe the law which Moses the
servant of Jehovah had given them ?
They depart, and having come to the banks of the
Jordan in the land of Canaan they are minded, it is
said, to build an altar, “ a great altar to see to,”
according to the text.
This was piously intended, doubtless, and in thank
fulness to their God who had so marvellously
befriended them and their brethren in their great
enterprise ?
So might we conclude; but, strange to say, it is
taken as a mortal offence by the ten tribes they had
just left; “ the whole congregation of Israel, it is
said, gathered themselves together at Shiloh to go
up to war against them.”
This seems extraordinary ?
So would it be assuredly, could anything of the
kind have occurred at the Early period of Hebrew
history assumed. Then, and for long ages after,
there were numerous holy-places, with rude altars of
earth and unhewn stones, scattered over the country,
at Hebron, Beth-El, Beer-Sheba, Gilgal, Sechem,
Siloh, Lachish, Dan, &c., dedicated to the Hebrew
God or Gods—El, Elohim, Isra-El, or by whatever
other name known, under whatever form represented,
at all of which sacrifices could be duly and lawfully
offered. The ire of the congregation of Israel, how
ever, ceases to strike us as extraordinary when the
writing is referred to post-exilic times, when the only
shrine to which oblations could be lawfully brought
was the one on Mount Zion, and the only God to be
addressed without sin was Jehovah, God of the
reformed religious party in the kingdom of Judah.
The story, if it be more than a myth, if it have any
historical foundation at all, must refer to an episode
in the rivalry between Judah and Israel, in the days
�Early Religious Differences.
qyg
-of Jeroboam, or still later, but here relegated to the
remote age of Joshua and the Epoch of the Conquest.
The congregation of Israel (Judah) expostulate
with Reuben and Gad (Israel or Ephraim) before
proceeding to extremities and coming to blows with
them ?
They send Phinehas, distinguished as we already
know by the 'murder of Zimri and Cozbi, so much
approved of by Jehovah, if the record may be trusted,
and with him ten princes of the tribes. Coming up
with the sons of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, at
Gilead, they say:—“What trespass is this that ye
have committed against the God of Israel ” [Jehovah,
the God of Judah, being here to be understood] “ in
that ye have builded you an altar ? If the land of
your possession be unclean, then pass ye over into
the land of the possession of Jehovah, wherein
Jehovah’s tabernacle [Temple on Mount Zion, to be
understood] dwelleth; but rebel not against us in
building you an altar beside [in addition to] the
altar of Jehovah our God.”
The Reubenites and Gadites will be much amazed
at this interference with the custom of their fathers—
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and themselves, of setting up
an altar whenever and wherever they were minded
so to do ?
That they must have been taken aback there can
be little question, and we should find them saying so,
assuredly, had we the true account of the incident
out of which, we must presume, the story of the text
to have arisen; but we have it not, we have only the
travestied Jehovistic narrative, in which the parties
inculpated are made to say:—“God, God Jehovah
[Judah’s God] knoweth, and Isra-El [Ephraim’s God]
shall know, if this has come to pass through falling
away from Jehovah or rebelling against him, may
there be no help for us this day ! If we have built
us an altar to turn from following Jehovah, or to
offer burnt-offerings or thank-offerings thereon, may
�480
Joshua.
Jehovah avenge it! And if we have not rather done
this to the end, that in time to come when your
children say to our children, ‘What have ye in
common with Jehovah, seeing that Jehovah hath
made Jordan the boundary between us and you—ye
have no part in Jehovah.’ . . . Therefore, said we,
we shall build an altar, neither for burnt-offerings
nor for sacrifice, but for a witness between us and
you, and between your generations and our genera
tions after us that we do service to Jehovah, and
come to him with our burnt-offerings, our sacrifices,
and our thank-offerings, so that your children shall
not in time to come say to our children, ‘ Ye have
no part in Jehovah.’ Far be it from us, therefore,
say we, this day to fall away from Jehovah by build
ing an altar for burnt-offerings and meat-offerings,
and sacrifices, other than the altar of Jehovah our
[the word should be your] God that stands before
his dwelling-place ” [the Temple of Jerusalem to be
understood].
The account here is not only tautological and
extremely prolix in the original, but, when closely
scanned, is seen to be at variance with other parts of
the Hebrew Scriptures ?
Hardly to be understood either without the com
ment here supplied in some small measure by the
few words within brackets. Explanation more at
large is found when note is taken of the two great
religious parties, Elohists and Jehovists, into which
the Hebrew people came to be divided subsequently
to the reign of Solomon. Of these the Elohists repre
sent the Catholics, the Jehovists the Protestants, of
modern times. The Elohists “stand fast on the
ancient ways,” have their strength in the kingdom
of Israel or Ephraim, and they possess numerous
altars or holy places ; the Jehovists, more advanced,
have their stronghold in Judah, with the Temple on
Mount Zion as the only shrine or holy place they
acknowledge. The Elohists, in a word, abide by the
�Early Religious Differences.
481
worship of the old Hebrew God El Elohe Israel, and
continue to sacrifice to him under the semblance of
the Bull. The Jehovists, again, having attained to
the conception of the Oneness and Omnipresence of
Deity, had abandoned the Idea that God could be
presented under any similitude, but inconsistently
maintained that he could only be lawfully addressed
at his Shrine on Mount Zion. Reuben and Gad, w©
see, do not deny that they had built an altar; but
they are made by the Jewish writer to belie them
selves, and say that it was not intended for burntofferings nor for sacrifice, but for a witness between
them and their brethren. Altars, however, were
never built save for sacrifice, it was the Cairn or Heap
of stones, and upon occasion the single stone pillar
under a tree or by a well, that was the proper
memorial monument. The text but just quoted, in its
inconsistencies and its statements at variance with
all we know of use and wont among the early He
brews, shows unmistakable signs of late writing and
of yet later editorial manipulation in the transparent
purpose it presents to set Jehovah above El EloheIsra-El.
The religious difference between the two sections
of the Hebrew people may possibly have lain at the
root of the fatal disruption that turned into two the
single kingdom conquered by David and ruled over
through the greater part of his life by Solomon ?
There may be some truth in this. United, Judah
and. Ephraim might, as it seems, have made head
against either Egypt or Assyria, operating so far from
home, and have even held their own, under a com
petent leader, in the hilly and easily-defended country
of Northern Palestine against Chaldea. But divided,
hating each other with the blind and deadly hate that
is .engendered of religious difference, and often at war
with one another, they became in succession the easy
prey of even the least powerful of their enemies.
If Reuben and Gad had built, or were minded to
�482
Joshua.
build, an altar at all, it could therefore only be for
sacrifice and oblation; and their offence lay in this,
that it was not to Jehovah, but to the God El-EloheIsrael, Chiun, or Chamos, whose Tabernacle, Image,
and Star had been borne by them and their fathers
in the wilderness for forty years, according to the
prophet Amos (v.), that they were about to bring
their offerings ?
In the olden time there was not only no restriction
as to the building of altars for sacrifice, but every
facility was given for their erection. Jehovah [the
name should here be Elohim] orders Moses to say to
the children of Israel, “ An altar of earth thou shalt
make unto me, and shalt offer thereon thy burntofferings.” It was only when the Temple of Jeru
salem had been built, and proclaimed by the Jehovistic
or Jewish party, the sole shrine at which their God
Jehovah could be worshipped, that the building else
where of an altar for sacrifice and oblation came to be
regarded as a trespass of such magnitude that it could
only be atoned for by bloodshed. The Hebrew people
of the age of Joshua must not be seen as the Israelites
of Jeroboam and his successors of the age of the writer,
setting up altars and bringing offerings to a Golden
Calf as the God who had brought them out of their
Egyptian bondage; they must be paraded as obser
vant of the Law of Moses, eight centuries before it
was even imagined to be in existence, and nine cen
turies before the second Temple of Jehovah, God of
Judah, had been built!
Phinehas the priest and the other delegates ex
press themselves satisfied with the disavowal they
receive from Reuben and Gad of any purpose on their
part to raise an independent altar ?
They say: “ This day we perceive that Jehovah is
among us. Because ye have not committed this
trespass, ye have delivered the children of Israel out
of the hand of Jehovah.” The children of Israel,
it is said in continuation, “blessed God, and did not
�Early Religious Differences.
483
go up in battle array to desolate the land wherein
Reuben and Gad had their possessions and they, it
ia added, called the altar they had built “ Ed—
W&ness that Jehovah is God.”*
The words which speak in this place of the “ deli
very of the children of Israel out of the hand of
Jehovah ” must have a special significance?
The writer would, doubtless, persuade his country
men and co-religionists that all departure from the
so-called Law of Moses—which had been brought to
light, we may suppose, a short while before his time
—and any sacrifice offered at a shrine other than the
Temple of Jerusalem, would bring Jehovah down upon
them with war or pestilence for their presumption.
He would have them believe that his God Jehovah
would not be slow, through the instrumentality of
such a zealot as Phinehas, or by war or pestilence to
make them smart for daring to worship God in any
but the prescribed, though it were, perchance, the an
* It is with great diffidence that we venture to differ from
so accomplished a Biblical scholar as Professor Kuehnen in
our interpretation of this curious episode in Hebrew history.
Referring to Joshua xxi., Professor Kuehnen says :—“How
we see Israel zealous for the unity of worship ! What—build
an altar outside of Shilo, the holy place I This were indeed a
sin of the gravest complexion, which the parties inculpated
make haste to explain away as they best can. The great
thing in the writer’s mind is to have the calf of Jehovah
centered at Shilo, and allowed at no other place.” But we
are persuaded that it is Judah that is here zealous against
Ephraim, after the disruption of the kingdom. The question,
in our opinion, is not about having an altar anywhere save at
Shilo, but of having an altar anywhere save at Jerusalem. The
narrative in the text Professor Kuehnen believes to be derived
from the document he styles ‘ The Book of the Origins and,
as he refers the composition of this book to no more ancient a
date than the reign of Solomon, we see that the history may
very well refer to times by no means so remote as those of
Joshua. In the shape in which we have the tale, it is pro
bably from the pen of a Jewish writer, who lived not earlier
than the reign of Josiah, and is an indifferent invention—ad
majorem Jehova gloriam! The text is confused, tautological,
�484
Joshua.
tique way, and even the way of their immediate
fathers and of most of themselves.
The Jehovists were the Iconoclasts of the days of
Josiah and a few of his successors. They were the
men who ruined the High-places, broke in pieces the
stone columns, and slew the priests of Baal, burnt the
wooden pillars of Aschera, pulled down the booths of
the infamous Kadeschim, destroyed the brazen Ser
pent—said to be that which Moses set up on a pole
in the wilderness—made a bonfire of the Chariot of the
Sun that stood in the porch of the Temple, and so on.
They present themselves in almost all things as pro
totypes of the early reformers of modern times, who
were not always content with breaking in pieces the
images and wrecking the altars, but did not hold
their hands from the solemn piles in which what they
styled The Idolatry had been carried on.
With the departure of Reuben and Grad to their
possessions beyond Jordan, “ a long time after Je
hovah had given rest to Israel,” according to the
and bears obvious marks of editorial manipulation; but the
burden of the narrative assimilates itself perfectly with the
state of things existing between Judah and Ephraim in days
subsequent to the age of Solomon. It is not uninteresting
to note that the site of the ed or witness altar spoken of
appears to have been recently discovered in the course of the
Ordnance Survey of Palestine, proceeding at this time. There
is, it seems, a remarkable lofty white peak visible from the
modern Jericho, twenty miles distant, projecting like a
bastion, and closing the valley of the Jordan. From the
summit of this peak there is a magnificent and very extensive
view. Accessible on the north side only, the surveying party
there obtained the name, Tal’at abu Ayd—the ascent leading
to Ayd. The lofty peak in question, conspicuous in days
when writing had become familiar to the Jews as it had been
from time immemorial, was probably in want of a history,
and has been supplied with one by the writer of the Book of
Joshua. The times with which we have ventured to connect
the narrative of the 22nd chapter of Joshua implies our per
suasion that the tale has reference to incidents much later
than any that can be referred to the days of the mythical suc
cessor of the still more mythical Moses.
�Joshuas Parting Address.
485
text, Joshua, now far stricken in years, calls the
Elders of Israel around him ?
And reminds them, in imitation of Moses, when he
had the notice that he was to die, of all Jehovah had
done for them. Modestly passing over his own
achievements, he speaks of the partition he had made
among them by lot, not only of the lands overrun and
possessed, but of those of the peoples which still
remained to be conquered and taken in. But he
informs them that they have only to be of good
courage, to do all that is ordained in the book of the
Law, to serve none of the gods of the native tribes
among whom they settled, and particularly to contract
no marriages with their women ; the Jewish writer
showing himself as well aware, in his day, as we are
in ours, of the power of the female propaganda in
securing outward conformity, at all events, if not
always inward assent, to the religious dogmas and
rites which are the fashion of the age.
But if they failed to follow the advice now given
them ?
Then should they smart for it: “Do ye in any
wise go back and cleave to the remnants of the
nations left among you,” says the text, “making
marriages with them and they with you; know for a
certainty that Jehovah your God will no more drive
out any of these nations from before you, but they
shall be snares and traps unto you, scourges in your
sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from
off the land. It shall come to pass that as all good
things are come upon you which were promised, so
shall Jehovah bring upon you all evil things. When
ye have transgressed the covenant of Jehovah and
have gone and served other gods, then shall the
anger of Jehovah be kindled against you, and ye
shall perish quickly from off the good land which he
hath given you” (xxiii. adfinf.
This has a great look of prophecy after the event ?
There can be little question of its being so in
�486
'Joshua.
reality. God as Immanent Cause, In All and Of All
that Is, cannot be jealous of other gods, for there are
none such; and God neither favours nor is angry, in
any human sense, with act of man or event that comes
to pass. Such language is the effect of anthropomorphosing God and supposing him possessed of
human appetites, passions, and prejudices — a sin
that must be charged against the writers of the
Hebrew Scriptures, above all others. In the texts
just quoted we see iteration of the old system of con
tract or bargain between Jehovah and his people,
upon which we have observed already; and in the
warnings against serving other gods we have fresh
assurance that Jehovah was believed by the Jews
to be but one among many gods, and not a little
j ealous of their power.
Joshua continues his parting address ?
Or rather we have another writer beginning it for
him anew and varying it in particulars here and there.
The first oration, which breaks off at the end of
chapter xxiii., is continued at the 14th verse of the
24th chapter, and in terms that are not a little
remarkable, the usual interpretation put upon the
Hebrew Scriptures considered. “Now, therefore,”
says the writer, “ fear Jehovah and serve him in sin
cerity and in truth, and put away the Gods which
your fathers served on the other side of the stream
[the JordanJ and in Egypt, and serve ye Jehovah.
And if it seem not good unto you to serve Jehovah,
then choose you this day whom ye will serve,—
whether the Gods which your fathers served on the
other side of the stream, or the Gods of the Amoritps
in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house
we will serve Jehovah.”
Joshua therefore gives the people their choice of
the God or Gods they would serve ; and in what is said
incidentally we now learn that Jehovah was not the God
who was served either in Egypt or beyond Jordan,
the proper boundary between the Divinities of one
�Which of the Gods will ye Serve ?
48 7
Pantheon and Those of another. We discover at
length, and at the very end of our task that Jehovah
could have had nothing to do with freeing the Israel
ites from their Egyptian bondage; but that it was verily
the God whose similitude was presented by Aaron to
the wanderers in the guise of the Bull-Calf, who had led
them out of captivity. The writer of the Book of
Joshua, plainly enough, has no idea of God as One and
One only ; he recognises a multiplicity of Gods with
Jehovah his own God among the number. All we
have had in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy, therefore, about Jehovah as the
God of Israel, his apparitions to Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Moses, his personal communications and
immediate commandments to the chiefs of the chosen
seed, &c., &c., vanish into nothing. We have, in a
word, no Records of the distant ages and strange
doings referred to in the Pentateuch, but Poems by
writers who lived, as we believe, for the most part
after the Babylonian Captivity.
To Joshua’s proposition as to the God they would
serve the people answer and say ?
“ God forbid that we should forsake Jehovah to
serve other Gods; for Jehovah is he that brought
us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, and
did great wonders in our sight, and preserved us
all the way wherein we went and among all the
people through whom we passed.”
This does not tally exactly with what Joshua has
but just been made to say, and with very much
besides that we have had already; for Aaron the
priest has presented them with a Golden Calf as the
God that brought them out of Egypt, and Jehovah
has not only broken out on the people for their backslidings on numerous occasions and slain them by
thousands with the sword and pestilence, but has
inflicted forty years of wandering in the wilderness,
and, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, has
killed off all of adult years who had left Egypt.
�4-8 8
J
’ oshua.
How, then, should we now have the people speaking
of Jehovah as their God, of the wonders they had
seen, and the care that had been taken of them in
their journeyings ?
It were very hard to say, could we not with the
most perfect assurance refer the writing we have
before us to a very late period in the history of the
Hebrew people, and even divine the motive that led
to its composition.
Joshua does not receive the people’s ready accept
ance of the new God Jehovah in place of their own
and their fathers old Gods without a warning ?
“Ye cannot serve Jehovah,” says he, “ for he is a
holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive
your trangressions nor your sins. If ye forsake
Jehovah and serve other Gods he will turn and do
you hurt, and consume you after he hath done you
good.”
The people are not frightened by these somewhat
formidable assurances ?
They say: “ Nay, but we will serve Jehovah,” on
which Joshua tells them that now they are witnesses
against themselves, that they have chosen Jehovah
to serve him. So he makes a covenant with the
people and writes the words of it in a book; takes a
great stone and sets it up under a tree and says :
11 Behold this stone shall be a witness to us; for it
hath heard (/) all the words of Jehovah which he spake
unto us. It shall therefore be a witness unto you
that ye deny not your God”—Jehovah, the God just
chosen, understood.
By which procedure we see that Joshua, or the
modern writer who is using his name, had not got
beyond the old religious notions of his forefathers.
He sets up a stone pillar, symbol of the life-giving
power, under the shade of a living tree, so long an
object of worship with man escaping from the merely
animal into the more properly human or speculative
sphere of existence. It is not unimportant to observe
�Conclusion.
489
that the stone is referred to as having heard all the
words spoken. It was not only the Symbol of the
God, therefore, but the God himself—Deity at once,
and Deity’s dwelling-place. The Book in which
Joshua is said to have written what is called “ The
Law of God ” has not come down to us ?
The Book we have, which passes under the name
of Joshua, contains little or nothing that has not an
immediate bearing on the conquests and partition of
the promised land, and so cannot be that now referred
to. If it ever existed, and it may very well never
have had being out of the imagination of the histo
rian of Joshua’s deeds of spoliation and slaughter, it
has perished in the wreck of ages.
Having done his work, Joshua has now only to be
gathered to his fathers ?
He dies, it is said, at the advanced age of one hun
dred and ten years, and is buried on the borders of
his inheritance in Timnath-Heres, as we have already
had occasion to learn.
We have anticipated almost all that need be said
of the age and authorship of the Book of Joshua.
That it is of relatively modern composition, there can
be no doubt; and from the repeated references we
find to late incidents in Hebrew history, we see that
he whose name it bears could not have been its
author. It is, in fact, a sort of appendix to Deutero
nomy, and the style and peculiar forms of expression
show, almost beyond question, that the writer of
Deuteronomy was, in great part at least, the writer
of Joshua also, although it bears many marks of sub
sequent editorial manipulation. Both Elohist and
Jehovist documents appear in the text. The Book
of Judges has furnished the compiler with several of
his statements, and in this has left our modern har
monists with a crop of contradictions that have
sorely taxed their ingenuity to reconcile with the
�49°
'Joshua.
accredited idea of inspiration. A few of these we
have had occasion to notice in the course of our com
mentary. The mention of Jerusalem, which occurs
oftener than once, would of itself suffice to take the
writing out of the age whose history it details; for
Jerusalem was Jebus until the reign of David; and
the obvious reference made, in more places than one,
to the sufferings that befal a city in a state of siege,
and the miseries that wait on exile, point unequivocably to the invasion of the Chaldeans and the Baby
lonian captivity. The Book of Joshua, therefore, in
its present shape, cannot be of older date than the
age of Manasseh. Speaking of the first twelve
chapters of the Book, containing the tale of the in
vasion of the land of Canaan, Professor Kuehnen
gives it as the result of his inquiries, that “ the
author cannot be regarded as an entirely credible
historian.” Dr. Davidson, having determined the
time of the Deute ronomist as falling in the reign of
Manasseh, and ascribing, as he does, Deuteronomy
and Joshua to one and the same compiler, concludes
that the Book before us was compiled during the
reign of that monarch.
«
C. W. BEY.NELL, PBINTEB, LITTLE PULTENEY STBEET, HAYMABKET.
��
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The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua in face of the science and moral sense of our age. Part VI
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Willis, Robert
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Judaism
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Bible. O.T. Joshua
Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Conway Tracts
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Text
THE PENTATEUCH
AND BOOK OF
JOSHUA
IN FACE OF
THE SCIENCE AND MORAL SENSE
OF OUR AGE.
By a PHYSICIAN.
“ Zufallige Geschichtswahrheiten konnen der Beweis von nothwendigen
Vernunftswahrheiten nie werden.”—“ Contingent historical statements can
never be vouchers for necessary intellectual truths.”—Lessing.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1875.
Price. Sixpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�THE
PENTATEUCH
AND BOOK OP
JOSHUA.
INTRODUCTION.
ITH every wish to find the Bible all it is
commonly said to be, against the per
suasions of earlier years, and near the end of a
long life, the writer feels bound to own that a
somewhat careful study of so much of the Hebrew
Scriptures as falls within the limits of the Penta
teuch and Book of Joshua leaves him with the
conviction that this portion of the Bible, at least,
is not any Word of God, gives no true account of
God’s dealings with the world, and enjoins little
or nothing that is calculated to edify or to raise
man in the scale of his proper humanity. On
the contrary, and passing for the moment the
incongruities, contradictions, and impossibilities
in which it abounds, Ideas of the Supreme are
everywhere encountered that were derogatory to
man, and averments made that gainsay know
ledge and reason, whilst misdeeds are commanded
and condoned that outrage humanity, and shock
�vi
Introduction.
the moral sense of our age. The Bible, however,,
is scarcely read without a foregone conclusion in
respect of its origin and import; still more
rarely is it perused with the amount of general,
scientific, historical, and archaeological lore that
are indispensable to a right understanding of its
text—truths which have led a late lamented great
biblical critic to ask: How many even of the
educated Laity understand the Bible—how many
of the Clergy understand—how many of them are
willing to understand it ?
*
I.
It is long, however, since it was definitely
shown that the Pentateuch, so persistently as
cribed to Moses, could neither have been written
by him nor by any one of his presumed age, but
must be the work of men who lived long—very
long—after the great mythical leader and legisla
tor;! and it maybe confidently maintained that all
subsequent critical inquiry by the competent and
candid, has not only substantiated, but has greatly
enlarged the scope and significance of this con
clusion. Writing, in the proper sense of the
word, appears not to have been practised by the
Jews in times so relatively recent as the days of
David. The Hebrew word for ink is of Persian
derivation, and the art of writing on prepared
sheep and goat skins among them dates from no
more remote an age than that of the Babylonian
captivity. The very character in which all the
Hebrew writing we possess has reached us, is
* Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube.
f Spinoza, Tract. Theologico-Politicus, 4to, Hamb., 16/0.
Eng. version, 8vo, Lond., 1868.
�Introduction.
vii
Chaldsean, and only came into use after the Exile.
A few slabs and pillars rudely cut in Intaglio,
and in a more ancient character, are all we possess
from which an idea can be formed of the kind of
writing that was practised in the earlier ages of
their existence by the Semitic tribes inhabiting
Western Asia.
How long the legends, which enter so largely
into the constitution of the Hebrew writings
proper, floated among the people before they
were reduced to writing, it is impossible to say ;
but the date at which they acquired the shape in
which they have reached us, is now hardly doubt
ful. These writings have, in fact, been brought
ever near and nearer to times concerning which
we have something like reliable records, whilst
the events of which theyspeak and the personages
who figure in them, so long regarded as historical
realities, are seen in the same measure to resolve
themselves into phantoms, with no more of sub
stance or reality than the dreams of the poet or
the visions of the Seer.
II.
Every addition of late years made to our know
ledge of the early history of mankind seems to
make it more and more certain that though we
seem to have so much, yet have we in reality
less of reliable information about the Hebrews in
the earlier periods of their existence than of
many others among the nations of antiquity.
The pious people who in person or by delegate
are at the present moment so busy excavating in
Palestine and Babylonia with a view to demon
strate the divine origin and historical truth of
�Vlll
Introduction.
the Hebrew Scriptures, seem verily to be pur
suing their work to their own discomfiture. It
is the reverse of the picture they would show
that mostly appears. All the evidences of cul
ture and civilisation brought to light of late from
the ruined cities of Asia Minor prove their
inhabitants to have been well advanced in polity,
and the arts of life, in mechanics, engineering,
and the rudiments of astronomical science, whilst
the Israelites were still wandering Nomads in
search of settled homes; nor, save in music, have
they yet distinguished themselves otherwise
than as petty traders and magnificent money
dealers. Some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures,
the most important of all in their far-reaching
after influence, lose their presumed character of
Revelations from God entirely, and appear to be
derived from the same source as the mythical
tales of the Babylonians;—source whence, in
the days of the Captivity, the sons of Israel
obtained the whole of the narratives that figure
in the earlier parts of the Book of Genesis.
The Garden in Eden, the Tree of Life, the Ser
pent, the Flood and the Ark, and much besides,
turn out to be neither history nor original
Revelation from Jehovah to the Jews, but stories
found among neighbours, their superiors in war
at all times as they were also in letters, until,
after contact with their conquerors and teachers,
the great lyrical and rhapsodical writers called
prophets,—the Isaiahs, Jeremiahs, Micahs, and
others,—appeared in the late days of the Kings.
�Introduction.
ix
III.
The Individuals, again, the personages with
whom through their names we are made so
familiar in the Bible story of patriarchal times,
turn out, under the light supplied by critical
inquiry, to be nothing more than mythical per
sonifications. Abraham, who comes from Ur of the
Chaldees, is discovered to be a NAME never borne
by any individual, but a generic Title applicable,
if applicable at all, to God, the Universal Father.
He is the Rock, as Sarah his wife is the Cavern,
whence the Hebrew people sprang. Abraham is,
in fact, a word of like significance with the
Dyaus, Zeus, and Deus of the Aryan race. He is
the Heaven-God, the active principle in nature,
as Sarah is the Heaven-Goddess, the passive
principle; the pair being parents of the laughing
Isaac (Istzack the laugher), wedded to Rebekah
(Fruitfulness), counterparts of the ’'HeXtos and
Ika of the Greeks.
Jacob, the Son of Isaac, so distinguished a
figure in the Hebrew story, like Abraham, is also
the embodiment of a name, fitted with a character
in correspondence with its import. Jacob is the
heel-holder, the tripper up, as he is made the
deceiver of his blind old father, the filcher of the
blessing and superseder of his brother. He is
another, yet a counterpart of Abraham, “ the
friend of God; ” nay, he is more than Abraham ;
for after a wrestling bout with his Deity he is
complimented with his name, and instead of Jacob
is called Israel, being thereafter always spoken of
as the Father of the Israelites.
Moses and Aaron, in like manner, are personi
fications of names in consonance with incidents
�X
Introduction.
attached to their legendary history ;—that of
Moses, which is believed to be old, being plainly
enough connected with his fabled rescue from the
water, that of Aaron, which is certainly modern,
' from the office assigned him about the Altar and
Ark of the Covenant (pns Ahrun.) The very
latest researches, however, have given us a Baby
lonian Moses, Sargon by name, who may very
possibly be the original of the Hebrew leader.
Sargon, it is said, was by his mother placed in a
cradle of rushes daubed with bitumen, and
launched on the Euphrates, but was rescued
by a water-carrier, and by him brought up as
his son.
*
IV.
What the absolute age of these names and the
personages they are assumed to represent, may
be, is questionable; but of this we are well
assured, that of the Jacob-legend there is not a
trace to be found until we come down to postDavidic times ; the latest researches of a critical
kind seeming to show that the whole series of
legends in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
figure, are products of days posterior to the
secession of Israel from Judah. It was after this
disastrous event, and when the States were waging
an internecine war, that the scribes of the two
great religious as well as political parties into
which the country had split—the Elohists and
Jehovists—took to tampering with each other’s re
cords, and their poets to producing those wonderful
lyrics laudatory of their God and themselves, on
the one hand, and those libellous tales of rape
* Smith, ‘ Assyrian Discoveries,’p. 224, 8vo, Load., 1875.
I
�Introduction.
xi
snurder, and arson, in disparagement of their
■enemies on the other.
*
Then it was that El, Bel, Baal, or Isra-El—
other forms of El, chief God of the Hebrews in
the olden time—was set up under the form of the
Bull by the Israelites at Shechem and Dan, in
the kingdom of Ephraim, and Jehovah, the latest
■conception of Deity by the Jewish priesthood,
was established as Supreme God, with his sole
lawful shrine at Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.
Under what material form Jehovah was repre
sented we are left in doubt; everything that
would have satisfactorily informed us on the
subject having been expunged from the record,
although enough remains incidentally scattered
through the Scriptures, to satisfy us that neither
was this God without his similitude, and that
the interdict against making an image of their
Deity must therefore be one of the latest pro
ducts of the Jewish legislation.
V.
The exodus from Egypt under the conditions
and in the proportions specified we have shown
to be physically impossible; and, recognising no
interruption of the laws of nature, which we hold
to be the laws of God, we have referred all the
miracles in which Jehovah is made to glorify him
self, and to show how far he exceeds the Gods of
Egypt in power, together with the dramatic pas
sages between Moses and Pharaoh as prologues to
that event, to the realm of legendary myth.
* Vide Bernstein on the Origin of the Legends of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob ; one of Mr. Scott’s Series of Papers ; a
striking production, but held by competent judges to push
matters to excess. •
�xii
Introduction.
VI.
The Decalogue, still so persistently assigned to
the remote age of Moses, even by advanced
Biblical critics, we have spoken of as an eclectic
summary, the product of much more modern
times, emanating as surely from Mount Zion in
the City of Jerusalem, in the peaceful days of
Hezekiah in all likelihood, as it most certainly
did not come viva voce from God on Mount Sinai
“ all on a quake.” The accompaniments of the
assumed delivery thence, as described, suffice of
themselves to relegate the story to the limbo of
the mythical.
VII.
That the conquest and settlement of the Land
of Canaan, to conclude, were not effected at the
time and in the manner set forth in some parts of
the Book of Joshua, appears plainly enough on
the face of that incongruous and contradictory
document itself; and more and more persuaded
as we are of the relatively modern composition
of the Pentateuch, we grow more and more sus
picious that the accounts we have of the feats
of Joshua are after models found in the history
of the Babylonian Empire. The chronicles lately
deciphered of the doings of more than one of the
Kings of Babylon and Assyria; the vast numbers
slain; the extraordinary amount of the booty
collected; the tale of the woman made captive,
&c.; may very well have served as prototypes
from which the writer of Joshua drew, having
made himself master during his captivity of the
cuneiform inscriptions that still abound.
*
* Vide Smith, Op. cit.
�Introduction.
xiii
VIII.
The history of the Children of Israel, therefore,
as it is delivered in the Pentateuch, is, in truth,
nothing more than the mythical tale of a barba
rous people, steeped in sensuality, superstition,
ignorance, and cruelty; their God a demon delight
ing in blood, requiring the first-born of man and
beast to be sent to him in the smoke of the altar
as his most acceptable oblation, and having a lamb
supplied him night and morning throughout the
year by way of food ! Among a people with such
conceptions of Deity and such a Cult, with ances
tors like Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Rebekah,
and with heroes and heroines having the stamp of
the Eleazars and Deborahs, the Samsons, Judiths,
Jaels, Jephthas, and, coming down to the really
historical times of David and Solomon, what
could have been the character of the religious,
moral and social usages and principles that pre
vailed ? The question suggests the only possible
reply. Yet, strange to say, the blood-stained
annals and barbarous lives of this extraordinary
people have been taken by the modern world as
the foundation of its religious ideas, and as fit
introduction to its moral conceptions.
IX.
But shall we, living in this nineteenth century
of the era from which we date, continue to look
to a source of the kind for such knowledge of the
Being and Attributes of God as may be attained
by man; for guidance in the service that might
be acceptable to the Supreme, and in the conduct
that were becoming in our dealings with one
another? Shall we, who think of God as All
�XIV
Introduction.
Pervading Cause, persist in viewing the Book as
his revealed word and will, which tells of the
Earth created in six days, and of its fashioner,
like a foredone workman, “resting on the seventh
day and hallowing it,” when we know most posi
tively that the Earth was not created in six days,
necessarily conclude that God never rests, and
believe that to him all days must be hallowed
alike ? Shall we, with the better knowledge
we possess, go on putting into the hands of our
children the book that narrates how God came
down from heaven to walk in his Garden in the cool
of the Evening, and at sundry other times, to ascer
tain how things were going on below; how he
cursed the creatures he had made in his own
image, as said; repented him of what he had
done in creating man at all, and brought a flood
of water on the Earth to drown all that breathed ?
Shall we, who measure our distance from the Sun
and the fixed Stars, calculate their masses, weigh
them as in a balance, analyse their light, and
thereby learn that they all are Units in One
Stupendous Whole, continue to look with respect
on tales that tell of the arrest of the Sun and
Moon in their apparent path through heaven, to
the end that a barbarous horde may have light
effectually to exterminate the unoffending people,
they have come—by God’s command, too, as said
-—to plunder and to murder ? It were surely time
to quit us of such worse than childish folly.
Reflection and candour alike compel us to say
that the teachings of the Pentateuch, in almost
every particular, have to be set aside if we would
escape erroneous conceptions of nature and of
almost all that civilised man associates with the
�Introduction.
xv
name of God and Religion. If the Bible is to be
continued as one of the instruments available in
the education of our children, it should be care
fully weeded of so much that is false and offen
sive, and be used in a negative rather than a
positive sense as a means of instruction; the un
worthy behaviour of Abraham and Isaac with
their wives, and of Jacob and Rebekah with the
father and husband, among other instances, being
pointed out as examples religiously to be shunned;
the recommendation we find in the New Tes
tament, “ Not to give heed to Jewish fables ”
(Titus i. 14), being at all times steadily kept
in view.
X.
As hitherto apprehended, Religion can be said
to have brought nothing but misery on the
world at large. Deeds of a dye that shock
humanity have been committed from first to last
in its name, and unreason has still been seen in
the seat of reason so often as aught presumed to
be due to God has come into question. Of old
it said:—“ If thy brother, thy son, or thy
daughter, the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend
that is as thine own soul, entice thee saying ;—
Let us go and serve other Gods [t.e., differ from
thee in thy creed and would have thee follow
their’s], thou shalt not consent to him nor
hearken to him; neither shalt thou spare him,
but thou shalt surely kill him; thy hand shall
be first upon him, afterwards the hands of all
the people, and thou shalt stone him with stones
that he die.” In later days it has excavated the
dungeon, built the torture-chamber and furnished
�xvi
Introduction.
it with the rack, lighted the slow fire about the
stake to consume, drenched the battle-field with
blood, and driven into exile from their home and
country the best and noblest of their kind.
XI.
Yet is the Religious Sense as certainly an
element in the constitution of man as his bodily
frame. But emotional in its nature it is Blind,
and requires association with those other emo
tional and intellectual faculties proper to man
from which it has hitherto been dissevered,
before it can conduce to good and advantageous
issues. Happily the world is slowly emerging
from its dream about the Jews being the chosen
people of God and the medium of his oracles to
mankind. The Hebrew Scriptures are now
known to be but one among many other books
to which a divine original, and sacred character
is ascribed by the peoples among whom they
took shape. The Sole Revelation which God
ever made he still makes to man; and this the
truly educated have at length begun to see lies
open for perusal by all of cultured mind in the
Book of Nature, from which alone can we, with
out fear of being led astray, know aught of what
God is, of that wherein the Providential order
of the world consists, and of that which is
required of us as agents responsible to God
through our fellow-men for our deeds. “ Ancient
creeds and time-honoured formulas,” says a great
writer, “ are yielding as much to internal pres
sure as to external assault. The expansion of
knowledge is loosening the very earth clutched
by the roots of creeds and churches. Science is
�Introduction.
xvii
penetrating everywhere, and slowly changing
men’s conceptions of the world and of man’s
destiny. Some considerable thinkers are there
fore of opinion that Religion has played its part
in the evolution of humanity, whilst others—
and I hold with these—believe that it has still a
part to play, and will continue to regulate the
evolution. To do so, however, it must express
the highest thought of the time. It must not
attempt to imprison the mind, nor force on our
acceptance, as explanations of the Universe,
dogmas which were originally the childish
guesses at truth by barbarous tribes. It must
no longer put forward principles which are
unintelligible and incredible, nor make their
unintelligibility a source of glory, and a belief
in them a higher virtue than belief in demon
stration. Instead of proclaiming the nothing
ness of this life, the worthlessness of human
love, and the impotence of the human mind, it
will proclaim the supreme importance of this
life, the supreme value of human love, and the
grandeur of the human intellect.”*
With every word of this who in the present
day will not sympathise ? But the Religious
Sense, as we have but just said, is blind, and
cannot be trusted to regulate, the evolution of
humanity. On the contrary, Religion, as com
monly understood, must itself consent to regula
tion, and descend to a lower place than it has
hitherto held in our Western civilisation. As
represented in the most powerful of all the
formulated systems in which it has yet been
G-. H. Lewes’s ‘.Problems of Life and Mind.’ Vol. I.
�xviii
Introduction.
seen, religion shows itself at the present
moment antagonistic to the peace of the State
and the Family, as well as to all Evolution—it
gives Discord a seat at the home-hearth, and
would stem the tide of human progress if it
could ; and it is more than questionable whether
there exists any other system that would not be
disposed to do as much, and to lead the evolu
tion on to some devious or narrow way ending
in a preserve of its own. But Religion is not,
in fact, as in these later ages it has been made,
the prime factor in the moral life of man.
Justice, mercy, truthfulness, integrity, reverence,
and steadfastness—the moral element in human
nature, in a word, outcome of the higher emo
tional powers in blended action with enlightened
understanding, are of far more moment in the
aggregate life of humanity than any conceivable
form of religious belief and observance. The
Idea of God is the GOAL, not the starting point,
in the evolution of mankind, and only presents
itself in a guise that can be held worthy of its
object in societies the most advanced in moral
and intellectual development. Then, but not till
then, comes the conclusion that the sole yet all
sufficing service that can be rendered to God by
man is study of his laws, which are the laws of
Nature; as obedience to their behests is the sum
of man’s duties to God, to himself, and to his
kind. It would indeed be well could an end now
be made of the folly men commit when they
personify God, endow him with feelings and
passions after the pattern of their own, and
attach significance and a literal meaning to
Eastern tales, the product of rude and ignorant
�Introduction.
xix
ages of the world. It were surely good did men
now acknowledge that God, ubiquitous essence,
in and over all, never spoke in human speech to
man ; was never jealous of other Gods, for there
be none such; never cursed the creature who had
come into being in conformity with his laws, nor
the ground that fed him ; never repented of
aught that was as it was through him, and never,
in abnegation of his universal fatherhood, elected
one among the nations that people the earth to
be his own and the medium of his oracles to the
rest of mankind.
XII.
The works of De Wette, Vatke, Von Bohlen,
Kuenen, Colenso, Davidson, and Kalisch, to name
a few among a number we have read, following
in the wake of Spinoza, Astruc, Simon, Eichhorn,
and others, have gone far to exhaust what may
be spoken of as the criticism of the letter and
structure of the Bible. That several hands have
had part in the composition of this wonderful
book ; that the text as it stands is the product
of dissimiliar minds; was written at various
times in different ages, and has been derived
from different and often discrepant sources—
mythical, legendary, and documentary,—is no
longer doubtful, but a demonstrated fact. Bern
stein, moreover, if his conclusions stand the test
of criticism, will have farther shown the very
free play the writers of the Pentateuch have
sometimes given to their inventive faculties.
In suggesting grounds for some of the tales,
and pointing to historical personages poorly
disguised under slightly altered names, he will
�XX
Introduction.
also have fixed beyond the possibility of question,
as it seems, the date at which certain parts of the
Bible commonly believed to be among the oldest,
were actually written; and this, it may almost be
needless to say, is not the mythical age of the
Patriarchs and Moses, of which so little or rather
nothing is known, but the really historical times
of Solomon and the Kings. Bernstein might
thus in a sense be said to have done for the part
of the Old Testament, to which we refer, what
F. C. Baur and the Tubingen School have done
for the New. In his hands Jehovist and Elohist
present themselves as Judahite and Ephraimite;
and even as in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts
of the New Testament we find records of the
differences between Petrinists and Paulinists, so,
in the Old, instead of the word of God, we have
but evidence of the conflicting views and hostile
feelings of the followers of El-Elijon, Belitan or
Baal, and Jahveh.
XIII.
Among ourselves Biblical criticism, in any
acceptable sense of the term, can scarcely be said
to have existed until the present day. We had
Commentaries and Expositions of the Scrip
tures, indeed, in almost endless succession from
after the middle of the last to the middle of
the present century; but these were all more
or less alike, and after the same rigidly orthodox
and uncritical pattern : the Jews were the chosen
people of God, the vessels of his word and will
to the world; the Pentateuch was the work of
Moses, who had the Ten Commandments direct
from the mouth of God, and written besides with
�xxi
Introduction.
his finger on two tables of stone—and there an
End; Doubt was sin; Question was Atheism;
and as for criticism there was, there could be
none. But the Spirit of Time and of Progress
Sitzend am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Wirkend der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid,
*
had been at work all the while, and found a voice
at length from an unexpected quarter in the able
Textual Criticism of the Pentateuch and Book
of Joshua by no less a personage than a dignitary
in the Church, the Bishop of Natal.
XIV.
Though not without something like a herald
of its coming, in the volume entitled ‘ Essays and
Reviews/ Dr. Colenso’s book fell like a thunder
bolt from a clear sky among his clerical brethren,
and took the laity at large, aroused to something
like an interest in the matters discussed, not a
little by surprise. “ Replies ” to the criticisms
of the Bishop by clergymen were not wanting, as
matter of course. But these were found less satis
factory to the more intelligent of the laity than
their authors imagined they would prove. This
element in the outside world had outgrown its
relish for the old style of Scriptural Exposition,
and was not satisfied with the assurance that the
Bishop of Natal’s objections were not new and
had all been answered long ago. They desired
to see something like a demonstration of the truth
* Sitting at Time’s murmuring loom,
Weaving the living garb of God.
C
�xxii
Introduction.
that this was so, and were minded that a work
so ably and conscientiously composed should be
met by arguments of a bettter kind than unsup
ported assertion, evasion, and abuse.
Accordingly, at the suggestion of alate Speaker
of the House of Commons, the Right Hon. J. E.
Denison, and after consultation with the Arch
bishop of York, a Committee of gentlemen,
Dignitaries and others of scholarly attainments
in the Church, was formed for the purpose of inves
tigating and satisfactorily replying to the matters
called in question,—and these amounted to
nothing less, in fact, than the Inspiration and
Historical Truth of the Sacred Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament, and their consonance
as formulated Word of God with the Word of
God as announced in the truths of Science and
the religious and moral consciousness of educated
man. Such, at all events, was the great and
worthy object which it was understood Mr.
Denison had in view when he broached the sub
ject of an exhaustive Commentary to the Clergy
of his Church. “ It seemed to him,” says Mr.
Cook, the writer of the Preface to the first
volume of ‘The Speaker’s Commentary,’ when
at length it made its appearance, “ that in the
midst of much controversy about the Bible, there
was a want of some Commentary in which the
latest information might be made accessible to
men of ordinary culture. It seemed desirable
that every educated man should have access to
some work which might enable him to under
stand what the original Scriptures really say and
mean, and in which he might find an explanation
of any difficulties which his own mind might
�Introduction.
xxiii
suggest, as well as of any new objections raised
against a particular book or passage.
“ Although the difficulties of such an under
taking were very great, it seemed right to make
the attempt to meet a want which all confessed
to exist, and the Archbishop accordingly under
took to form a Company of Divines, who, by a
judicious distribution of labour amongst them,
might expound, each, the portion of Scripture
for which his studies might best have fitted him.”
XV.
This is all clear and to the point: we were to
be furnished with a simple, truthful interpreta
tion of the Bible by able men, from the point of
view supplied by the latest and most advanced
critics and scholars of the day, in consonance with
the science and moral sense of the age. But wherein
the great difficulties hinted at, though not more
particularly specified, consisted, and whence the
long delay of seven years (!) that intervened
between the conception and the execution of the
project, the writer of the preface does not say.
A Company of learned Divines had been formed,
•ample funds had been subscribed, an eminent
publisher had been engaged, and by him carte
blanche was given to the foreign bookseller in
particular to supply the parties engaged, “ to
expound the portion of Scripture for which their
studies might best have fitted them,” with all
they required in the shape of literature. How
can we doubt that these gentlemen went to work
with a will ? They were to have liberal pay,
they had been furnished with books in abun
dance, and the opportunity to distinguish them
�xxiv
Introduction.
selves in the interesting field of Biblical criticism
lay before them. But time flew by—a year, two
years, four, six, seven years ! elapsed, and all this
while the public at large had no intimation,
through their work, of what the learned men
were about. Not a line in the shape of Note or
Comment to help men of “ ordinary culture ” to
understand the Scriptures of the Jews had seen
the light in all that time. But rumours were
rife of great and even unsurmountable difficul
ties having arisen in the course of the projected
enterprise. Nor was the nature of these kept
altogether from the public ear. The workers
specially engaged had discovered, one after
another, as was said, that the task they had
undertaken could not conscientiously be carried
out to the issue they had believed possible when
they undertook it. They had been led by the
hands of their Dutch, and German, and English
brethren, to “ the tree that grew in the midst of
the garden,” they had seen that the fruit it bore
“ was pleasant to the sight,” and was “ fruit to be
desired to make men wise.” They had “ put forth
them hands, taken of the fruit, and eaten,” and
lo ! “ their eyes were opened and they knew that
they were naked.”
When they now met one another and the “ Com
pany,” their superiors, in conclave, it was not as
Marcus Tullius tells us he thought the Haruspices
of his day could only meet, to laugh, but with
grave looks and bated breath. Colenso and
the free critics were not after all the men of straw
they had been supposed to be, and not to be slain
with lathen swords and pointless spears; they
were rather found like the “ well-greaved Greeks ”
�Introduction.
xxv
in panoply of proof, their line compact and as
little assailable as it seemed on the flanks as in
front. For awhile—a long while, therefore, there
must have appeared nothing for it but retreat
from an untenable position,—or, could it have
been the bolder and nobler alternative that pre
sented itself, and gave the pause—“ to speak
truth and shame the Devil,” as the saying goes ?
If this were ever contemplated it certainly has
not been followed. And yet there was a great
opportunity for the Clergy of the Anglican
Church to show themselves as exponents of the
Bible on at least as high a level as their con
tinental Protestant brethren. Mr. Cook in his
preface acknowledges the want of a real Commen
tary ; but he and his colleagues have not given
it. Retreat from the position forced on them,
perchance, rather than willingly assumed, must
have been the contemplated course. Silence
breaks no bones, it is said?, and the “ Speaker and
his Commentary” would perhaps pass out of
mind and be relegated to the limbo of things for
gotten. But the thought of retreat—if it ever
were a thought—was vain. The outside world
grew clamorous for its 1 Commentary,’ and some
thing must be done to satisfy it. The “ conscience
that makes cowards of us all ” had procured a
respite of seven years, indeed, but the business
must be faced at last. If the workers first en
gaged had disqualified themselves through the
pains they had taken to execute their task in the
best possible way, the way, too, that was held
desirable ; and as they in entering on it had be
lieved it could be done, but as they had been
brought to see that it could not truthfully and
�x±vi
Introduction,
without reservation be accomplished, others might
be found who took a different view of the matter.
There were orthodox as well as heterodox com
mentators in plenty—there were Hengstenbergs
as well as Hupfelds, Delitzsches as wellasColensos.
Why not take them for guides? Or if even the
least liberal of these were too outspoken for our in
sular orthodoxy, why not fall back on the good
old-fashioned English style of the Browns and
Henrys, the Doyleys and Mants, and give expla
nations by simple iteration of the text, discover
harmony amid discord, and congruity in discre
pancy ; to say nothing of so much that could
safely be referred to the inscrutable will of God7
and that passed the power of human comprehen
sion ? The workers first selected could not be
suffered to make victims of themselves, and have
their names enrolled beside those:—.
Die thoricht g’nug ihr voiles Herz nicht wahrten,—
Dem Pobel ihr Gefiihl, ihr Schauen offenbarten,
[Und die] man hat von je gekreutzigt und verbrannt.
*
They would too obviously be acting under the
segis of Hierarchs of the Church who would be
compromised with them, of Dignitaries who
had no taste for martyrdom, and who doubtless
thought “of the fish, and the leeks and the
onions, the cucumbers, the melons, and the garlick, which they did eat freely in Egypt.” Of
others, also, conscientious enough in their ortho
* Who have been fools enough not to keep their minds tc>
themselves, but to the people have revealed their hearts,
their thoughts, and for their pains have hitherto been crucified,
and burned.
�Introduction.
xxvii
doxy, having minds cast in a believing mould,
unfamiliar with the fruit of the tree that grew
in the midst of the garden, who did not see why
the sworn and salaried officers of a system should
be held bound to say aught in disparagement of
the grounds on which it rested, and who could
not be persuaded that there was not a perfectly
legitimate and even proper way of escaping from
the dilemma in which they had become involved
by the strike among their workmen.
Many and anxious, we must conceive, were the
consultations that now were held, deep and long
the discussions as to what had best be done, that
followed. It was even thought, as reported, that
Escape from the dead-lock might be found through
Counsel out of doors, as there was none within ;
a suggestion which led to an interview with a
late lamented Dean, not one of “ The Company
for he having eaten of the fruit of the marvellous
tree in years gone by, and spoken somewhat freely
of the Patriarchs, was held too /ar acZ-van ecZ for
such Society. But from this liberal writer came
little comfort. He is said rather to have en
joyed the difficulty in which his learned brethren
had become involved, he even chuckled over their
distress; but assured them he could help them
with no advice; it was their business, not his,
and they must get through the work they had
undertaken as they best could.
To proceed, indeed, was matter of necessity :
a Commentary and Exposition must be forth
coming ; but why need it be of the kind that
was contemplated by the Speaker ? It might be
of a sort that would satisfy the many and such
as had no misgivings ; and the few—the doubters
�xxviii
Introduction.
and such as were dissatisfied—might be left to
their doubts and dissatisfaction. A dangerous
course as concerns the future, though meeting
the most pressing want of the hour; for reac
tion inevitably follows, and the recoil is not
always comparable to the gentle lapping of the
summer sea, but sometimes comes like the up
heaval wave laden with destruction.
XVI.
The work, then, had to be gone on with, and
a fresh staff of workers to be found; and this,
not without difficulty nor without a second
secession in more than one instance, by report at
the time, was at length got together. But such
must have been the obstacles still encountered,
we must needs surmise, that before any real
progress could be made, seven years had passed
away! for it was at the end only of this long
period of incubation that the first instalment of
the ‘ Speaker’s Commentary ’ saw the light.
XVII.
And here we avail ourselves of the appre
ciation of the work by a distinguished conti
nental Biblical critic and scholar, Dr. A. Kuenen,
Professor of Theology in the University of
*
Leyden.
After premising that much is to be
learned from the work, especially by laymen, for
whose benefit it was written; that the composers
of it are learned men, and farther—yet hardly
•in keeping with what he goes on to say—that
* See Three Notices of the ‘Speaker’s Commentary’ from
the Dutch of A. Kuenen, by J. Muir, D.C.L., one of Mr.
Scott’s Series of Papers.
�Introduction.
xxix
they have shown an able apprehension of what
they had to do, he continues : “ But they lack
one thing; and this vitiates the whole. They
are not free. The apologetic aim of the work is
never lost sight of, and constantly operates to
disturb the course of the enquiry. It is, in one
word, Science such as serves a purpose that is
here put before us. The writers place them
selves in opposition to the Critics of the Penta
teuch, depreciate their arguments, make sport
in the well-known childish manner of their
mutual differences, and try to refute them with
reasonings which they themselves in any other
case would reject as utterly insufficient or regard
as unworthy of notice. None of them sins in
this respect so navvely and grossly (sterk) as Dr.
Harold Browne, the Bishop of Ely. But they
are miserable, far-fetched, and unnatural suppo
sitions to which he treats us...............Dogmatical
considerations have clouded the understanding
and exegetical perception of this apologist, and on
fitting occasions his fellow-labourers do not fall
short of him in this respect. If I am not deceived,
this ‘Commentary,’ entirely against the inten
tions of those who planned it, will, before all
things, have powerfully contributed to make
Biblical criticism indigenous in England.”
With the work of so thorough a critic and
accomplished scholar as Dr. Colenso, and the
excellent Introduction to the Study of the Old
Testament of such a Hebraist as Dr. Samuel
Davidson (to name but two among several others),
at command, it cannot fairly be said that Bibli
cal criticism had not already become indigenous
among us. It was, indeed, well established, though
�XXX
Introduction.
rare, but all the more firmly rooted from having
grown in the light of freedom, truthfulness, and
competence; and though ignored by the Clergy
at large, who shut their eyes to it themselves and
denounce it from their pulpits as impiety, it is by
no means without its influence among us.
“ When, after reading the Introductions to the
several Books and the Notes to the ‘Speaker’s
Commentary,’ ” continues Dr. Kuenen, “ I reflect
how much time, labour, and money have been
expended on the writing and printing of this
work, I receive a painful impression. Here
learned theologians, and such, too, as are high
dignitaries in the Church, come forward as instructors of the participators in their religious belief,
and all that these learn from them they must
afterwards unlearn. Many faults in the autho
rised version, indeed, are amended, and points of
an archaeological and geographical nature are
illustrated. But such is not the question here.
The point of importance is this : Do the contri
butors to the work make their learning subser
vient to the diffusion of a sound [i.e., a truthful
and reasonable] method of estimating the Bible ?
The reverse is the fact. They regard it as their
duty to maintain that which appears to them to
be the sound [i.e., the orthodox] view, and to reject
all more reasonable conceptions as unbelieving
and sacrilegious. Now and then, indeed, the
truth is too powerful for them, and they find
themselves forced to give up the correctness of
the Biblical narrative, but the concessions form
the exception. As a rule, the traditional view is
maintained, even in cases where it may be said
to be absolutely untenable ; and then the diffi-
�Introduction.
xxxi
culti.es are either passed over in silence or are not
recognised in their real force, or are answered
with childish arguments. But it will one day
become manifest that that which the adverse
critics already know must before long become
known to all, and that it is fearless criticism
alone which opens up the access to Israel’s sanc
tuaries. Magna est veritas et prcevalebit.”
XVIII.
So far Dr. Kuenen, the studied moderation of
whose adverse criticism is conspicuous. But the
Doctor is still a theologian, although a Liberal
one, It is habit and the prospect he enjoys from
his Professor’s Chair that enable him to speak of
fearless criticism of the Record the Israelites have
left of themselves in their Pentateuch and his
torical books as opening up the access to any
sanctuary. We who write here as Physician,
as Naturalist, cannot see the matter in the same
light as Dr. Kuenen; and do not scruple to avow
that the purpose of the Exposition which followsis to aid, in so far as this is possible, in disabusing
the public mind of the false conceptions it enter
tains of so much of the Bible as falls within the
Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua; to which
portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, we would
have it understood, is our criticism intended to
apply. We are behind none in our apprecia
tion of the beauties that abound in many
parts of the writings of the Lyrists and Rhapsodists of Israel'—though neither are we blind to
their blemishes—but we deny in toto that we have
either in these, in the so-called Five Books of
Moses, or in the historical writings that precede
�xxxii
Introduction.
the Psalms, any true account of God’s govern
ment of the world. We are even bold enough
to believe that he who accompanies us through
our exposition will scarcely fail, however reluc
tantly, to arrive at the same conclusion.
XIX.
The laity of this country, we believe, were
really looking for a perfectly truthful and autho
ritative exposition of the Bible, of the Hebrew
Scriptures especially; and a great opportunity
undoubtedly presented itself for the production of
such a work; but it has not only been neglected :
it may even be said to have been abused. The
most cursory perusal of so much of the ‘ Speaker’s
Commentary ’ as applies to the Pentateuch and
Book of Joshua, will enable any one possessed of
the mere Alphabet of Biblical criticism to see that
the writers do but “ keep their promise to the
ear and break it to the hope.” The intelligent
inquirer will gain from them none but the most
unsatisfactory responses to his most pressing
questions,—if perchance he finds response at all
—and the ignorant be only confirmed in his
ignorance, his errors, and his superstitions. The
views of the great liberal enlightened critics of
the Continent and our own country, men of
unblemished lives, the purest piety and ripest
scholarship, are scarcely noticed, the conclusions
of science ignored, and the moral blemishes
passed by unheeded, whilst nothing absolutely is
ever said that will help men of “ ordinary cul
ture ” to know more of what the “ original Scrip
tures really say and mean ” than the text itself
supplies. Iteration of a proposition in other
�Introduction.
xxxiii
terms is no demonstration of its meaning or its
truth; and where the exposition is not simply of
the old-fashioned orthodox and now untenable
character, it is hardly ever of a kind that will
enable the reader to see the matter referred to
in any more reasonable and acceptable light.
XX.
Dr. Kuenen in this notice of the first and
second volumes of the ‘New Commentary’ gives
a few examples of the perfunctory way in which
the Speaker’s Exegetes proceed in their work ;
*
and we, too, had got together some samples of the
chaff they present so carefully sifted from the grain
of truth and common sense, for illustration in this
direction. But they would be out of place here.
We, however, add below, the very First and One
among the Last of Bishop Harold Browne’s com
ments to Genesis, by way of justification of aught
we have said that seems disrespectful.f
* Vide Three Criticisms, &c., already quoted.
t Gen. i. 1. In the beginning. ‘Not “ first in order,” but
“ in the beginning of all things,” says the Bishop. ‘ The
same expression is used in John i. 1, of the existence of
the “ Word of God :” “In the beginning was the Word.”
The one passage illustrates the other, though it is partly
by the contrast of thoughts. The Word was when the
world was created.’ The reader may be left to make what
he can out of such a style of exposition ; for how the
mystical assertion of the Neo-platonic author of the Fourth
Gospel that “ In the beginning was the Word,” should be
brought in to throw light on the simple statement of the
writer of Genesis, that God in the beginning created the
heaven and the earth, passes our faculty of understanding.
Was the note introduced for any end but to give Dr.
�xxxiv
Introduction.
XXI.
The Exposition of the Pentateuch and Book of
Joshua that follows, it may be needless to say, is
conceived in a totally different spirit from that
which has guided the writers of the ‘ Speaker’s
Commentary.’ Holding that “ suppression of the
truth is near akin to assertion of the false]’ and
that truth can never be dangerous save to error,
Harold Browne an opportunity of showing at the very
cutset the out-and-out orthodox flag under which he was
enlisted I
Gen. xlvii. 8, 9. “ And Pharaoh said unto Jacob :
How old art thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh : The
days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and
thirty years.” To the words
Pilgrimage, the Bishop
appends this gloss, 1 Literally my sojournings.’ ‘Pharaoh
asked of the days of the years of his life ; he replies by
speaking of the days of the years of his pilgrimage. Some
have thought that he called his life a pilgrimage because
he was a nomad, a wanderer in lands not his own ; but in
reality the patriarchs spoke of life as a pilgrimage or
sojourning, because they sought another country, that is
a heavenly. Earth was not their home, but their journey
homewards.’ Now the Bishop of Ely—when he wrote, the
Bishop of Winchester now (for orthodoxy unflinching
brings preferment)—knows full well that the patriarchs
never spoke of their lives in any such sense. They had
no idea of any state of existence after the present life ;
and when in later days the children of Israel, after con
tact as slaves with a people entertaining an idea of the
kind, did attain to it, the place to which they went
after death was not thought of as a heavenly home
of light and love and joy, but a dark and dismal pit
under the earth, called Scheol, whence the Hell of the
modern world, peopled by Satan and his angels, and fur
nished with its burning lake of brimstone and other
appliances as a place of punishment for the wicked. Was
it not in some sort the Bishop’s duty to inform his readers
of so much ?
�Introduction.
xxxv
we have not hesitated to give expression to the
views that are most adverse to the idea of the
Divine Original of the Hebrew Scriptures, and
of the Israelites, in the earlier periods of their
history at all events, as worthy recipients of the
oracles of God. So much progress had been
made in Comparative Mythology and the Science
of Religion of late years, that it did not appear
so difficult to us to discover what “ the original
Scriptures really say and mean,” as it seems to
have done to the writer of the Preface to the
‘ Speaker’s Commentary.’ Unfettered by foregone
conclusions, having subscribed no Articles, and
sworn allegiance to no system of doctrine, but
under the guidance of such lights as the somewhat
miscellaneous reading we have indulged in has
supplied, we have striven to give -a thoroughly
truthful exposition of so much of the Bible as
has come under our scrutiny ; the result being, as
the tenor of this Introduction will already have
made manifest, that this extraordinary Book is
but one among a number of other Books held
sacred by the followers of the several religious
systems of which they are the exponents; that
though its literary merits may be more, it has no
higher title to be held a Revelation from God
than any one of these; that its contents are not
always of a kind calculated to raise our estimate
of the people among whom it took its rise, or to
prove beneficial to ourselves, and that it enun
ciates no such Ideas of God and his providential
government of the world as can be accepted by
civilised man.
�xxxvi
Introduction.
XXII.
The world of to-day does, in truth, stand in
need of more than the ablest and most outspoken
exposition of any Book expressing the Religious
Ideas, the Social Usages, and the Guesses at
Scientific Truth of a bygone age. It is waiting for
a Bible of its Own Day,—a great Intellectual
Survey of Nature, Nature’s Laws and Nature’s
God, as Revealed in the Universe of things
apprehended by the Mind of Man. Veniat, veniat,
cito veniatI
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY-STREET, HAYMARKET, V>'.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua in face of the science and moral sense of our age
Creator
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Willis, Robert
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: xxxvi p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. This is the Introduction of a work originally published in several parts. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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1875
Identifier
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CT143
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua in face of the science and moral sense of our age), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Subject
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Bible
Bible. O.T. Joshua
Bible. O.T. Pentateuch
Conway Tracts