Human Origins

ablet of Tell-el-Amarna-Flinders Petrie's Exploration of Pre-Hebrew Cities-Ramses and Pi-thom-First certain Synchronism Rehoboam-Composite Structure of Old Testament-Elohist and Jehovist-Priests' Code

d?a-Abraham-Unhistoric Character-His Age-Lot's Wife-His double Adventure with Sarah-Abraham to Moses-Sojourn in Egypt-Discordant Chronology-Josephus' Quotation from Manetho-Small Traces of Egyptian Influence-Future Life-Legend of Joseph-Moses-Osarsiph-Life of Moses full

moral and religious idea runs through the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude beginnings into pure and lofty views of an Almighty God who created all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. It is open to him to call this

nition of "original impress," though possibly I might think "Evolution" a more modest term to ap

h the a

n are widened with the

rical criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of

ain rich man who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar named Lazarus, and definite localities of a Heaven and Hell within speaking distance of one another, though separated by an impassable gulf. The assertion is made positively and without any reservation. There was a rich man; Lazarus died, and

son that the ways of sin are ways of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety? This is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and what the most liberal and learned Anglican Divines of the present day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and Canon Cheyne, insisting on "the fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical and historical problems of the Old Testament." We hear a great deal about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions try to represent it as something very obscure a

es, and although there are still differences as to details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of Geology or Biology. The conclusions of enlightened English divines like Canons Driver and Cheyne are pr

the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their ma

the question, and in view of the salient facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of literature on the subject, of which it may be said

loits are related by well-known historians, such as Herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death; confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of Hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. The picture given of him is that of the son of a Median princess by an obscure Persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity, he is said to have been exposed in

, Assur, Merodach, and Nebo; so far from being an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of Babylon, he enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last native king Nabonidus. It is apparent from this and other records, that Darius and not Cyrus was the rea

monuments. Of such nations, Egypt and Chald?a (including in the latter term Assyria) alone give us a series of annals, proved by monuments confirming nat

od when contact with the Assyrian Empire removes all uncertainty as to the history of Jud?a and Israel under their later kings. The capture of Jerusalem by David and the building of the Temple there by Solomon are doubtless historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional confirmation from monuments. There have been so many destructions and rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to what era the lower strata belong. It is apparent, moreover, from the Egyptian tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, the city founded by the heretic king, Amenophis IV.

ing," which is explained to mean a deity, though he acknowledged the superiority of Egypt, which still retained the conquests of the eighteenth dynasty in Palestine. This, however, relates not to

of Southern Jud?a, which he is disposed to identify with the ancient Lachish. A section of this mound has been exposed by the action of a brook, and it shows, as in Dr. Schliemann's excavations on the supposed site of Troy at Hissarlik, several successive occupations. The lowe

cupied by rude herdsmen, unskilled in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. Their huts were built of mud and rolled stones from the Wady below, and resembled the wretched shanties of the half-savage Bedouins, which we may

ick, with a glacis of large blocks of polished stone traced to a height of 40 feet, which Petrie refers to the reign of Manasseh. Then comes a destruction, probably by the Ass

occupying, if the legend of Joseph be true, the highest posts in the land; and if they really left Egypt, as described in the Exodus, laden with the spoils of the Egyptians, and led by Moses, a priest of Heliopolis skilled in all the lore of that ancient temple, it is inconceivable that in a single generation they should have sunk to such a level as that of the half-savage Bedouins, as indicated by Petrie's researches. And ye

hat we must look for certain information, and the exploration of mounds of ruined cities must either confirm or modify Pe

Exodus i. 2, that during the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt they were employed as slaves by Ramses II. in building two treasure cities, Ramses and

of Rehoboam, but it is more probable that it means "Kingdom of the Jews," and that the portrait is one representative of the country conquered. In any case this gives us the first absolutely certain date in Old Testament history. From this time downwards there is no reason to doubt that annals substantially correct, of successive kings of Judah and Israel, were kept, and after the reign of Ahaz, when the great Assyrian Empir

tion, which made the Bible from Genesis to Chronicles one consistent and infallible whole, in which it was impossible that there should be any error or contradiction. Such a theory could not stand a moment's investigation in the free light of reason. It is only necessary to read the two first chapters of Genesis

the previous forms of matter and of life, which have been created for his benefit. In the second Man is formed from the dust of the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens and earth and of the vegetable w

f God, and by a number of other peculiarities, run almost side by side through a great pa

he grandson of Adam, in the other the grandson of Noah. The Elohist says that Noah took two of each sort of living thing

the priests and priestly caste of Levites. This is commonly known as the "Priests' Code," and a great deal of it is obviously of late date, having relation to practices and ceremonies which had gradually grown up after the foundation of the Temple at Jerusalem. A vast amount of erudition has been expended in the minute analysis of these different documents by learned scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject. I shall not attempt to enter upon it, but content my

in common with a great majority of co

hat the Pentateuch is one work wr

rmed by the combination of different layers of narrati

eriod of Hebrew literature, the date assigned to them by most critics being not earlier than the eighth or ninth century b.c., though of course they may be foun

inconsistent in many respects with the Priests' Code, and apparently of earlier date, before the priestly system had cryst

be post-Deuteronomic, and probably committed to writing during the period from the beginning of the exile to the time of Nehemiah, w

but content myself with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad conclusions of common-sense,

ook of C

Judaism as described in th

ok of the Law or Deuterono

er records. It is totally different from the method of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a "scissors and paste" method. That is to say, he makes excerpts from the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his own; and, in Canon Dr

three centuries later, when the Thora, or Book of Moses and the Prophets, was regarded very much as the Moslems regard the Koran, as an inspired volume which it was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. This late date for fixing the canon of the Books of the Old Testament is confirmed by Cano

n of the Jewish Monarchy, might probably adopt the same methods. If the Chronicler put a speech of his own composition into the mouth of David, the Deuteronomist might well do so in the case of Moses. According to

compilation must have been made by some subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been made until after the Exile. Thus in Leviticus xxvi. we find, "I will scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste," and "they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' land." And in Deuteronomy xxix., "And the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into

egend of the Septuagint being a translation of the Hebrew text into Greek, made by seventy different translators, whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. This legend, in the case of the Septuagint, is based on an historical fact that there really was a Greek translation o

history. These books were indeed not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most critics think, by the same hand as Chronicles; but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded

consider themselves a peculiar people, and to regard all other nations with aversion, as being idolaters and unclean, feelings which were returned by the rest of the world, so that they stood alone, hating and being hated. No force or persuasion were required in order to prevent them from lapsing into idolatry or intermarrying with heathen women. On the contrary, they were inspired to the most heroic efforts, and ready to endure the severest sufferings and martyrdom for the pure faith. The belief in the sacred character of their ancient writings gradually

in groves and high places. They were also always ready to intermarry freely with heathen wives, and to form political alliances with heathen nations. There is no trace of the religious and social repulsion towards other races which forms such a marked trait in modern Judaism. Nor, as we shall see presently, is there any evidence, prior to the reign of Josiah, of anything like a sacred book or code of divine laws, universally known and accepted. The Books of Nehemiah and Ezra afford invaluable evidence of the time and manner in which this modern Judaism was stamped upon the character of the people after the return from exile. We a

e means of crystallizing the Jewish race into a mould so rigid, that it defied wars, persecutions, and all dissolving influences, and preserved the idea of Monotheism to grow up into the wor

in the land," could not have been written till long after the time when the Jews were intermarrying freely with Canaanite wives. Nor does it seem possible that codes, such as those of Leviticus, Numbers, and the Priests' Code, could have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by Mo

to the king and read it to him; whereupon Josiah, in great consternation at finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being confirmed in his fears by Huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account given in 2 Kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. We read of vessels consecrated to Baal and to the host of heaven in the Temple itself, and of horses and chariots

pts of a sacred law dictated by Jehovah to Moses. It is generally admitted by critics that the Book of the Law discovered by Hilkiah was Deuteronomy, or rather perhaps an earlier or shorter original of the Deuteronomy which has come down to us, and which had already been re-edited with additions after the Exile. The title "Deuteronomy," which might seem to imply that it was a supplement to an earlier law, is taken, like the other headings of the books of the Old Testament in our Bible, from the Septuagint version, and in the original Hebrew

been kept of the principal events of each reign from the foundation of the monarchy, and many of the old legends an

ivil and social legislation was not a code promulgated, like the Code Napoleon, by any one monarch or high priest, but a compilation from usages and precedents which had come to be received as having an established authority. But what is plainly inconsistent with the account of the dis

and astronomical or astrological myths. Thus the Rig Veda of the Hindoos, the early portions of the Vendedad of the Iranians, the Book of the Dead of the Egyptians, and the penitential psalms and invocations of

sacred book if it had been in existence? And if he had known it, or even the Decalogue, is it conceivable that he should have totally ignored its first and fundamental precepts, "Thou shalt have no other gods but me," and "thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? Could uxoriousness, divided among 700 wives, have turned the heart of such a monarch so completely as to make him worship Ashtaroth and Milcom, and build high places for Chemosh and Moloch? And could he have done this without the oppos

of references to the captivity in a foreign land and return from exile (1 Kings viii. 46-53, and ix. 6-9). Similar references to the Exile are found throughout the Book of Kings, and even in Books of the Pentateuch which profess to be written by Moses. If suc

and best minds of Israel after it had settled down under the Monarchy into a civilized and cultured state. It appears for the first time distinctly in Isaiah and Amos, and was never popular with the majority of the kings and upper classes, or with the mass of the nation until the Exile, but it gradually gained ground during the calamities of the later days, when Assyrian armies were threatening destruction. A s

d recommend them for acceptance as coming from Moses, the traditional deliverer of Israel from Egypt. For this purpose no doubt numerous materials existed in the form of legends, traditions, cust

l party, and converted all the leading minds among the Jews of the Captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the essence of the question was the religious one, and that the only hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to the worship of Jehovah and the Covenant between him and his chosen people. Prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes, and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longe

nto one large crystal of fixed form, and henceforwar

ng the Almighty ruler of the universe as showing his hinder part to Moses, or sewing skins to clothe Adam and Eve; and the conception of a jealous and vindictive Jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners of war, women and children, must be far removed from that of a God who loved justice and mercy. These crude, impossible, and immoral representations must have existed in the form of Sagas during the early and semi-barbarous stage of the people of Israel, and become so rooted in the popular mind that they could not be neglected when authors of late

ther, and each hopelessly inconsistent with the best established conclusions of astronomy, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. Then follow ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on the average 847 years each, and correspond manifestly with the ten reigns of god

nealogies are given for the descendants of the other two sons of Noah, Ham and Japheth. It is evident that these genealogies are not history but ethnology, and that of a very rude and primitive description, by a writer with imperfect knowledge and a limited range of vision. A great majority of the primitive races of the world, such as the Negroes and the Mongolians, are omitted altogether, and Semitic Canaan is coupl

re in man is symbolized in the Chald?an legend by Bel cutting off his own head and kneading the clay with the blood into the first man, the Jehovist narrative in Genesis ii. says, that "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." But when we arrive at Abraham we feel as if we might be treading on really historical ground. There is the universal tradition of the Hebrew race that he was their ancestor, and his figure is very like what in the unchanging East may be met with to the present day. We seem to see the dignified sheik sitting at the door of his tent dispensing hospitality, raiding with his retainers on the rear of a retreating army and capturing booty, and much exercised by domestic difficulties between the women of his household. Surely this is an historical figure. But when we look closer, doubts and difficulties appear.

disintegration of a stratum of salt marl, which weathers away under the action of wind and rain into columnar masses, like those described by Lyell in a similar formation in Catalonia. Innumerable travellers and pilgrims from early Christian times down to the seventeenth century returned from Palestine testifying that they had seen Lot's wife, and this was appealed to by theologians as a convincing proof of the truth of the Scripture narrative. Some saw her big, some little, some upright, and some prostrate, according to the state of disintegration of the pillars pointed out by the guides, which change their form rapidly under the influe

em, does not seem to be very probable. But when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred twice over to the same man, once at the court of Pharaoh and again at that of Abimelech; and a third time to his son Isaac, at the same place, Gerar, and to the same king Abimelech, the improbability becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. Nor

a sort of Dutch auction with him, in which he beats down from fifty to ten the

ral fact that the Hebrews were descended from a Semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of Ur in Lower Chald?a probably about the time,

erally agreed that it took place in the reign of Menepthah, or about 1320 b.c. The interval between Abraham and Moses therefore must have been about 900 years. But if we take the genealogies as authentic history, Jacob, in whose time the Hebrews went into Egypt, was Abraham's grandson, and Moses, under whom

ome back to Palestine and possess the whole country from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after Abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried i

re than 500 years, or 400 years less than is required by the synchronism with Chedorlaomer. It is needless to say that neither in the fo

vent during the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt between their advent in the time of Joseph and the Exodus, except their oppression by a new king who knew not Joseph, and the building of the treasure cities, Pi-thom and Ramses, by their forced labour. The latter fact may be taken as probably true from the monuments discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie; and if so, it occurred in the reign of Ramses II. But there is no other confirmation, from Egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the Pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from Manetho by Josephus, which describes how the unclean p

nd his power and that of his immediate successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of suzerainty over Palestine and Southern Syria. It is said that the Egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but this is distinctly untrue, for Manetho records ev

ies, and a certain tendency to revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing to show that the Hebrews had ever been in contact with Egyptian civilization. This is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the Egyptian people. Temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the Decalogue down to the comparatively late period of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon the wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device

iven back by the native armies of Upper Egypt. They must have been close to the scene of the final campaigns, the siege of Avaris, and the expulsion of the Hyksos. They must have been subjects of Ahmes, Thotmes, and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed up the fugitive Hyksos, and carried

the account quoted by Josephus, they must have been aware that they did not fly from Egypt as a body of fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors who for thirteen ye

d crude superstitions as are shown by the books of the Old Testament, where they burst like a host of Red Indians on the settlements and cities of the Amorites, and other more advanced nations of Palestine. The discoveries at Lachish already referred to

ssible for Joseph to be a vizier, and for a Semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed in Egypt, but into the midst of the great and glorious eighteenth dynasty who had expelled the Hyksos, and carried the dominion of Egypt to the Euphrates. No

and 147 to his father, are a sufficient proof that we are not upon strictly historical ground; and on the whole this narrative does not go far, in the absence of any confirmation from monuments, to assist us in fixing dates, or enabling us to form any consistent idea of the real conditions of the sojourn of the people of Israel in Egypt. It places them on far too high a level of civilization at first, to have fallen to such a low one as we find depicted in the Books of Exodus, Joshua, and Judges. Further excavations in the mounds of ruined cities in Jud?a and Palestine, like those of Schliemann o

the priest of Hieropolis, who abandoned the worship of the old gods, and headed the revolt of the unclean people, which probably meant the heretics. It may be conjectured that this may have had some connection with the great religious revolution of the heretic king of Tel-el-Amarna, which for a time displaced the national gods, worshipped in the form of sacred animals and symbolic statues, by an approach to Monotheism under the image of the winged solar disc. Such a reform must have had many adherents to have survived as the State religion for two or

cy is a variation of the myth common to so many nations, of an infant hero or god, whose life is sought by a wicked king, and who is miraculously saved. We find it in the myths of Khrishna, Buddha, Cyrus, Romulus, and others, and in the inscription by Sargon I. of Accade on his own tablet; he states himself to have been saved in an ark floated on the river Euphrates, just as Moses was on the Nile. When grown up he is represented first as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, and then as a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian talking with the Lord

ing of the futility of opposing such supernatural powers, and to have made him only too anxious to get rid of the Hebrews from the land at any price. What could have been the condition of Egypt, if for seven days "the streams, the rivers

nstant execution. It is remarkable also how the series of plagues reproduce the natural features of the Egyptian seasons. Recent travellers tell us how at the end of the dry season when the Nile is at its lowest, and the adjacent plains are arid and lifeless, suddenly one morning at sunrise they see the river apparently turned into blood. It is the phenomenon of the red Nile, which is caused by the first flush of the Abyssinian flood, coming from banks of red marl. After a few days the real rise commences, the Nile resumes its usual colour, percolates through its banks, fills the tanks and ponds, and finally overflows and saturates the dusty plains. The first signal of the

itude who followed. This implies a total population of at least 2,500,000, who are said to have wandered about for forty years in the desert of Sinai, one of the most arid wildernesses in the world, destitute alike of water, arable soil, and pasture, and where a Bedouin tribe of even 600 souls would find it difficult to exist. They are said to have been miraculously fed during these f

d therefore no water and no vegetation sufficient to support any population. No army has ever invaded Egypt from Asia, or Asia from Egypt, except by the short route adjoining the Mediterranean between Pelusium and Jaffa, and with the command of the sea and assistance of trains to carry supplies and water. And the account in Exodus itself confirms this, for both food and water are stated to have been supplied miraculously, and there is no mention made of anything but the present arid and uninhabited desert in the various encampments and marches. In fact, the Bible constantly dwells on the inhospitable character of the "howling wilderness," where there was neither grass nor water. Accordingly reconcilers have been reduced to the supposition that ciphers may have been added by copyists, and that the real number may have been 6000, or even, as some writers think, 600. But this is inconsistent with the detailed numer

ing the production of some one contemporary writer, they have been compiled and edited, probably many times over, by what I have called the "scissors and paste method," of c

alone shall come near the Lord" (ver. 2), while in vers. 9-11 of the same chapter, we are told that "Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up; and they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone," and although they saw God, were none the worse for it, but survived and "did

nd, the commandment, "Thou shalt do no murder," and on the other, the injunction to commit indiscriminate massacres. A single instance may suffice. The "Book of the Law of Moses" is quoted in 2 Kings xiv. as saying, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin." In Numbers xxxi., Moses, the "meekest of mankind," is

r his life from Egypt, and gave him his daughter as a wife, by whom he had children who were half Midianites, so that if th

man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," and denouncing Saul, and hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord, because this savage injunction had not been literally obeyed. Even under David, the man after the Lord's own heart, we find him torturing to death the prisoners taken at the fall of Rabbah, and giving up seven of th

hetic ages, with such a mass of puerile and absurd legends, such obvious contradictions, and such a number of passages obviously dating from a later pe

y years, fed with manna of the size of hoar-frost. The moral atmosphere also continues to be that of Red Indians down to the time of David, for we read of nothing but murders and massacres, sometimes of other races, sometimes of one tribe by another; while the actions selected for special commendation are like those of Jael, who drove a nail into the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she had in

ything prior to David and Solomon, or possibly Saul and Samuel, consists of myth, legend, and oral tradition, so inextri

rebellion recorded by Manetho; that they then lived for an unknown time as wandering Bedouins on the frontier of Palestine in a state of very rude barbarism; and finally burst in like a horde of Aztecs on the older and more civilized Toltecs of Mexico. For a long period after this, perhaps for 200 or 300 years, they lived in a state of chronic warfare with on

n of great energy and military genius, who gradually formed a standing army and conquered province after province, until at his death he l

ng, for the revolt of the ten tribes and the growth of other powers soon reduced Jud?a and Samaria to political insignificance; but Jerusalem, down to the time of its final destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, i.e. for a period of some 400 years after Solomon, never seems to have lost its character of a considerable and civilized city. It is evident from the later prophets that it was the seat of a good deal of wealth and luxury, for their invectives are, to a great extent, what we should call at the present day, Socialist denunciations of

n regard to events and dates prior to the establishment of the Monarchy, and even the wildest myths and the most impossible legends do

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