Jacob's Jewish dexterity in misleading his eyeless father, and overreaching his treacherous uncle. As little are you likely to ascribe to the high and dignified Sarah the weakness of Rebekah in supporting her son in his disingenuous conduct towards her husband. So precise and exact, indeed, are these and other individualities, that the careful student could take out each trait of character, were the wholes reduced into their component parts, and the parts thrown confusedly together, and say, 'This feature belongs to Abraham, and this to Hagar, and this to Ishmael, and this to Joseph.' If there is truth in the substance of these statements, then these pictures were painted from the life, and being painted from the life, with all the detailed attributes of personal, domestic, and social qualities, they must in the main have been painted during the existence of the personages in question. Consequently, in their own day, writing was in existence and in use. Only by the pen could those features have been seized and fixed. Only by the pen could those separate individualities have been preserved. Only by the pen could they have been transmitted into the hands of Moses. Had they had their birth in tradition only, they would have partaken of its misty and confounding obscurities. Had they been handed down by tradition only, they would have lost at least a great part of the unity of their separate wholes, and the sharpness of their distinctive qualities. Objects seen through tradition, blend, if they do not lose themselves, in its clouds. There are, moreover, parts of those most ancient writings, which tradition could have neither invented, retained, nor transmitted. Such a part is the thirty-sixth chapter of the book of Genesis, in which is given an outline of Esau and his descendants through many generations. Such a part is the great register of nations, set forth in the tenth chapter of the same most ancient and priceless work. Such a part, again, is the thirty-third chapter of the book of Numbers, in which are detailed the stations or resting-places of the children of Israel in the Wilderness. The historical character of these three documents may be readily sustained against all objections. In the attributes of historical reality and reliableness, they surpass, they leave at an immeasurable distance, all other of our ancient writings. Those minute and exact particulars avouch the hand of the contemporary and the pen of the writer. They are not the barren names of a Manethonian list of kings. They are not the disjecta membra, the venturous words of a mythological fancy. They are consecutive details of a separate whole, complete as well as exact in themselves, and capable of being combined, as combined they have been, as elements in a consecutive outline of the times to which they severally refer. Wearing this character, they are not traditions, nor the offspring of tradition, but historical documents; documents which Moses found in existence, and which, with many others, he interwove in the texture of his history. There are indubitable evidences of the very early existence, not to say the prevalent use, of the art of writing, which being of the most conclusive and satisfactory kind, may suffice for conviction with every candid mind, and dispense with all others. Yet others exist. Thus speaks Ewald of the prevalence of writing among the Israelites in the days of Moses! As to what regards the Mosaic period, the most various recollections, yes, recollections from the earliest times, concur in this, namely, that then writing was already in use. The two tables of stone, on which the ten commandments were engraved, according to all the testimonies, are, as will afterwards be proved, to be referred back to Moses himself. But since beyond a question cutting letters in a hard substance was not the commencement of writing, but implies as a preliminary something more than the writing down of a few words, so of necessity this incontestably historical reality presupposes a wide prevalence of the art of writing among the more cultivated part of the entire people. While now the most ancient writer of these historical documents expressly ascribes to Moses the writing down of the ten commandments, as well as an entire book of the law, on a small scale (Exod. xxiv. 4, 7), so, according to the earliest of these most ancient records, the primæval chronicle of the journeying in the Wilderness came from the hand of Moses (Numb. xxxiii. 2). And these are facts which imply the general existence and extensive employment of writing in the Biblical account of the Mosaic laws. But if in the age of Moses, writing was thus prevalent, its origin among the Hebrews must be dated far back. Writing, in primitive ages, is an art of slow growth. Presupposing the existence of considerable and varied culture, both of a material kind, and in the intellect of a people, it could arise only after many generations of individual and national improvement, and when once practised by a few, would make its way into use among the more cultivated only by gradual and tardy steps. The progress from picture writing, or hieroglyphics, to alphabetical writing, such as legal documents suppose, is more lengthened than the reader can well conceive, unless he has for himself traced the several steps. The whole of that progress must have been gone through ere engraving was made use of in legislative documents; and writing was employed to perpetuate the substance of a code. Of the space of time that progress supposes we have no measure, and shrink from affecting a precision of which the subject does not admit; but we incur no responsibility in declaring that centuries must have elapsed between the first rudiments of the art, and such a degree of excellence as the facts imply. Such skill, however, could hardly have been gained during the depressing and denationalizing period of Egyptian servitude, and so we seem carried back to the anterior period when Israel was yet a free and comparatively cultivated people, living at ease and at large on the broad lands, and in the prolific vales of Canaan. In support of this conclusion, we could adduce several important testimonies, derived from the patriarchal life; but content ourselves with the remark, that the conquest made of Egypt long anteriorly by the Hyksos, a people kindred with the Abrahamidæ, is itself a proof that the Aramæan nomadic races, which had their settlements in the west of Egypt, and which formed one wave of the emigrants from Mesopotamia, must have possessed no inconsiderable * Ewald, Volkes Israel, i. 67, 8, 2nd Edit. 1851. amount of general culture. Already, previous to that subjugation, Egypt practised writing. But at that very early day, the Egyptians could hardly have become a degenerate people. Yet were they overcome and brought under subjection by the Hyksos. Not improbably, therefore, were the Hyksos superior to them in the arts of civilization; for not improbably it was to such superiority that the Hyksos were indebted for their conquest, and for the long dominion which they thereon established. In the earliest biblical writings which give an account of society in the ages immediately following the deluge, we find great centres of civilization established in a circle which has the very ancient city of Damascus for its centre. There on the extreme east we see Nineveh, and on the extreme west Egypt, with Babylon and other cities on the Euphrates and in Mesopotamia, or occupying a middle position. Districts which are now a howling wilderness, with here and there a solitary oasis, then afforded rich pasture grounds, and immense gathering-places to myriads of wandering nomads, or tens of myriads of industrious and happy citizens. The change from the desolation of the flood is so great and so sudden, as to cause surprise, if not to whisper doubt. Those huge and thickly peopled cities; those social and civil organizations; those mighty empires; that easily working mechanism of government, created by human intelligence, within so few generations! What a rapid transition from the semi-barbarism of the new race of men to the culture, polity, and the power of those great monarchies! Yet how many stages must there have been from the cave and the hut to the mansion and the palace. Grant that many more lives than are commonly allotted passed between the deluge and the mighty hunter' Nimrod, the grounds of the suprise are only insensibly lessened. Civilization would almost seem to have sprung from the soil with the rapidity and the luxuriance of eastern vegetation. History, in its very dawn, is crowded with marks, displays, and triumphs of culture. Such is the view implicated in the Bible. We have presented it in this manner, not to excite suspicion, but to give point to our argument. Such, however, is the biblical view. If we turn to Egypt, a similar view is presented. The Bible and Egypt then again appear concurring witnesses. Before, however, we enlarge a little on this point, let us carefully mark the site and the track of this material culture. The culture lies in the neck of country, which is bounded on the north-east by the Caspian, on the north-west by the Black Sea, on the west by the Mediterranean, on the south-west by the Red Sea, and on the south-east by the Persian Gulf. It has water on all sides. Water at no point very distant. A tract of country so circumstanced would most easily and most early be drained after the deluge. Where, then, was it so likely that society would be formed anew? where so readily could it be formed anew? Besides, this is the very spot on the earth, where, as we have reason to believe, the human race was originally placed by the hand of the Creator. Suppose the Bible had fixed the seat of the earliest postdiluvian monarchies on the steppes of Tartary, or the table-lands of Russia. What an incongruity! what impossibilities! Besides, observe the peculiarities of the earliest peopled spots of this early peopled district. Those spots are to be looked for in what the Hebrews and the Egyptians also denominated 'the land of the two rivers,' or Mesopotamia. Where so soon would the waters of the deluge have passed away? The vast valley which lies between these two mighty streams, is the drainage-ground of the highlands of Armenia, in which mount Ararat stands. From those highlands, indeed, there is a natural descent for water into all the seas except the Red Sea, which we have mentioned; but specially rapid and direct is the descent from the mountains on the north, to the Persian Gulf in the south. Here, then, might we expect to find the cradle of the new world; and here is that cradle placed alike by Egypt and the Bible. The route, too, which the renovated culture took deserves attention. In general, it may be described as lying in a south-westerly direction, running from its nothern extremity in Armenia, to its western extremity in Egypt. Pursuing that route, the reviving and quickening genius of human culture founded in succession Nineyeh, Babel, Erech, Damascus, Sidon, Salem (Jerusalem), Thebes, and Memphis, to omit cities of inferior note. With the eastern branch of this fruitful tree, which carried knowledge and art to Media, Persia, and India, we have here no concern. Such is the centre, and such the chief radii of the postdiluvian culture. So the Bible declares. Is not its declaration respected by the whole of ancient history? Is it not respected by modern antiquarian research? Does not philology, does not ethnology, look in the same direction? These considerations are as striking as they are wide and comprehensive. Mark well how they confirm the substance of the biblical narratives; and observe also that but for those narratives, we should know in detail all but nothing of the rise and spread of this very early culture. These things are neither chance nor fancy; but facts, and as very important facts they will receive from the student of primæval history the attention which they merit, and will well repay. We have intimated that the postdiluvian world of the Bible is the postdiluvian world of Egypt. True it is that the Egyptians, shut up in the enclosures of the Nile valley, and divided at many periods into separate, and even hostile nations, acquired a narrowness of mental horizon which made them exclusive alike in their religion and their social polity. They could not, therefore, take that large and comprehensive view of human civilization which is presented in the book of Genesis. It is also true that Osburn (Egypt's Testimony') contends that the extended conquests claimed for some of its monarchs were confined to the territories of its neighbours. Nevertheless, without an unwarrantable amount of scepticism, it cannot be denied that the Egyptian culture recognises the countries which spread out from its own centres in lines running eastwardly and southwardly. If the victories of Sesostris in Asia are a tradition, yet as a tradition they show the direction in which Egyptian ambition ran. And whatever uncertainty there may be about names, it is indubitable that early Egyptian monarchs made conquests, and left monuments of their achievements in various parts of Western Asia. It is equally certain that in the era of the building of the Pyramids the dominion and the commerce of Egypt extended into the peninsula of Arabia. There is a peculiar feature in the direction of the emigration-waves which is found in the Bible, and specially in the register of nations, and which being in general confirmed by ancient history, has special confirmation in regard to Egypt. The biblical register, drawn up with as much care as knowledge, while it considers the Japhetida as the north-western races, the Shemites as the south-eastern, and the Hamites as the southern, places the members of the several bodies in an order which begins with the remotest and ends with the nearest, the common centre being Armenia. Thus, of the Japhetidae, there come first the northern, and then the southern; of the Shemites, first the eastern, and then the western; and of the Hamites, first the southern, and then the northern. This arrangement finds its justification in obvious facts, for clearly the remotest nations and tribes must have been the earliest emigrants, just as the foremost wave must first have left the bosom of the sea. Of this general fact let us take the order in which is placed the two chief branches of the population of Africa. In the register, Cush, or Ethiopia, stands first; Mizraim, or Egypt, follows. Now the Cushites by unmistakeable remains can be traced from Babel, founded by the Cushite Nimrod, across the neck of the peninsula of Arabia, down its western side, and over the Arabian Gulf, to the great Cushite or Ethiopian monarchy, of which Meroe was the capital. Equally satisfactory proofs inform us that this line of the dark races differed from the line which is represented by Mizraim. If points of correspondence existed between the architecture of Ethiopia and the architecture of Egypt, the languages of the two were greatly dissimilar. As different and hostile nations do they appear in Egyptian antiquities. Here, again, our two authorities give us the same information. As, however, the register proceeds from the north to the south, making, so to say, the population waves come back towards the centre whence they started, so does it imply that the population and the culture of Egypt came down the Nile from the south towards the north, or from Upper to Lower Egypt. This biblical view is repeated by the prophet Ezekiel, who speaks of Pathros, or Said, in the Thebais, Upper Egypt, as the mother country' of the inhabitants of the valley of the Nile (Ezek. xxix. 14; xxx. 14). That such must have been the course pursued by the population of Egypt, is manifest from the later formation of the Delta, as set forth in the preceding essay. The ancients generally concur in this view, making the upper country to have been first inhabited, the Thebais to be the most ancient province of Egypt, and Thebes its most ancient city. Herodotus (ii. 15) is very clear in ་ "The land of their birth,' as in the margin, not their habitation,' as in the text. Consult the Scriptural Gazetteer' to The Biblical Atlas,' by the author of The People's Dictionary of the Bible.' |
