THE

SCRIPTURAL RELIGIONS, HISTORIES,

AND PROPHECIES

ANALYZED AND EXAMINED.

BOOK I.

HISTORY TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE HEBREW KINGDOM.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN AND NAME.

Down to the time of their intimacy with the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Hebrews seem to have had as vague a notion of their origin as the Normans; their name indicated their advent from "beyond,"-beyond the desert-perhaps beyond the river-the Euphrates-perhaps from further beyond-just as that of the Normans indicated their advent from the north. It is probable, however, that they derived so indefinite a name from the indigenous peoples, who were more likely to have designated them foreigners than to have invented it themselves.

Their traditions, or traditions borrowed by them from their congeners on their eastern and north-eastern frontiers, trace them back to Chaldea in the south of Mesopotamia, as a sept of a horde or hordes of migrants from that region, spreading widely into Syria, Moab, Edom, and further south, to whom the general name Hebrew was originally perhaps applied. The migrants probably advanced across the Euphrates westward and north-westward, in detachments, and at different times; and, with a notion of a common origin, invented a common ancestry up to Heber, an eponym for their name. This notion may have arisen out of similarities in physiognomy, languages, and manners.

VOL. I.

B

Imagination has traced them to seats even more remote-into regions further "beyond "-to beyond the Oxus, and the borders of India, as it has traced the Gipsy hordes which swarmed over Europe in or about the fifteenth century of our era, a race in many respects resembling the Hebrew. Nor is it improbable that both originated in regions not far remote from each other. If the Hebrews first started from so far east, they must have remained for many generations in Semitic regions before their language could have undergone so great a change. The transition of the Gipsies was more rapid. They preserve, to no inconsiderable extent, the language with which they left their homes.

Imagination has also, perhaps with greater probability, traced the Hebrews, with the rest of the Chaldeans, from the southern regions of the Nile-from Ethiopia, Abyssinia, perhaps across the Arabian Gulf, along the southern and eastern coasts of Arabia, into the countries traversed by the Tigris and Euphrates, and bordering upon the Persian Gulf.

Migrating hordes require a leader. Tradition or fable supplied the Hebrews with one, Moses-" saved from or by the water". possibly to indicate an emir who led them across the Euphrates, in flight from powerful pursuers. Moses and Abraham were, perhaps, the first a Palestinian and the second a Syrian eponym for the same traditional leader. Abraham, in Syrian story, preserved by Nicolaus of Damascus, and cited by Josephus (Ant. I. vii. 2), came with an army from Chaldea, and conquered or founded the kingdom of Damascus, and extended his dominion into Canaan. Or it may be that after the Hebrews had become acquainted with Syrian traditions, and transferred their Moses to the exode and the Red Sea, they adopted Abraham and his Arab family, and modified the Syrian tale.

These traditions and stories indicate the settlement of Hebrew clans north-east and east of the Jordan, for no inconsiderable period before any of them began to cross that river.

The name Hebrew then extended to various cognate or supposed cognate peoples; but, except where otherwise explained by the context, the name "Hebrew" will be used in the sequel to indicate the people or peoples who, penetrating into Gilead, ultimately constituted the kingdoms united under David and Solomon; and "Hebrew kingdom" and "Hebrew kingdoms" will be confined in description to these realms.

Eponyms even of imaginary persons are often useful, as indica

tive of origins, characteristics, inventions, and other particulars, as to which definite information cannot be obtained. Whether Menu, Menes, Sesostris, Semiramis, Moses, Joshua, Ion or Romulus were the real names of individuals is immaterial-they are history-marks for the registering of series or successions of traditional events. The Hebrews had among them clan names, some originating in personal characteristics, achievements or accidents, and some invented in after-times, as eponyms for the supposititious patriarchs of their families or septs; some perhaps those of real ancestors, others fashioned out of the names of the septs or families or the places which they inhabited or from which they had traditionally come.

Families, septs, and clans which had coalesced into oon nation were naturally provided by fabulists and poets-the bards and prophets of all ages-with a common ancestry, a common genealogy branching from an original eponymous ancestor, into the clans, septs, and families so connected, and with appropriate eponyms, sometimes dictated by flattery. Israel means "the princely," "the powerful;" the Bene Israel," the people of Israel," "the powerful or princely people." Judah signifies "the celebrated," "the illustrious;" the Bene Judah, "the celebrated clan," "the children of the illustrious."

Total ignorance of the original names of peoples and countries, in very early times, compels us to adopt names for them, which came into existence centuries later. They are necessarily anachronisms. They must sometimes be adopted instead of earlier known, changeable, fugitive or less definite names, as Samaria for the northern kingdom, which began some time before Samaria became its capital; Galilee, and even Upper, Superior, or Lower Galilee, Galilee of the Gentiles; Arabia, Arabians and the like, long before these regions or peoples had acquired such designations. Palestine, according to our definition, is a very modern designation. Sometimes it is even convenient to invent for areas of country names by which they have never been known.

CHAPTER II.

AREA OF THE HEBREW AND NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES.

THE Hebrew kingdom occupied a small district of that vast region which, for want of a more appropriate designation, we may call Semitica. But this must be regarded as a mere eponym to which no definite or permanent geographical boundaries can be assigned. It may be convenient however as an approximate indication of the wide expanse throughout which, at times, a general similarity of races and languages more or less prevailed, though interpenetrated by other races and tongues. Semitica may be regarded, in its widest extent, as approaching the mountain chain of Zagros beyond the Tigris on the east; approaching the Nile and reaching the Mediterranean and Asia Minor on the west; bordering upon the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea on the south-east, the south, and the south-west; and the mountains of Armenia on the north. Semitica may be regarded as having included the Assyrian empire, Babylonia, Chaldea, Arabia, a portion of Egypt during the domination of the Hyksos, Hamath and the whole of the land of the Hittites, and ancient Syria. Its coast line on the Mediterranean included Phoenicia on the north, thence southward a short reach of Palestine, and Philistia further south.

Between this coast line and Euphrates and Arabia Deserta lay the regions of Hamath, Damascus, Ammon, Gilead and Moab; and between them, on the east, and Phoenicia, the Mediterranean and Philistia, on the west, lay the region to which it will be convenient in this work to confine the name Palestine; and south of it lay Idumea or Edom. Palestine thus defined and Gilead constituted the Hebrew kingdom in its greatest plenitude. The further extent of the "promised land" is a land of myth. This "promised land" never became the subject of history. But as scripturists found so many speculations and calculations upon it, and it constitutes an

element of the pentateuchal fable, inquiry into the manner in which it grew up may not be unprofitable, and may tend to show how modern was this part of the story.

The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel seem to have been often dreaming about this fairy-land, as constituting the future empire of their god Adoni and his anointed vicegerent and priesthood; and at some subsequent time some compiler or editor of Exodus introduced into it the story of the promise to Jacob; and some compiler or editor of Joshua introduced into it a distribution of this imaginary kingdom among the tribes of the Hebrews; and some other compiler or editor introduced into Joshua a redistribution. But as their forefathers never possessed it, those stories were manifestly fabricated to give the colour of ancient sanction to the manner in which the writers proposed to distribute this imaginary kingdom, when Adoni and his priests should come into power.

The series of dreams which led to this will be developed in the sequel. The dream of Isaiah seems to have been the prototype for those of the later visionaries.

"In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom El Sabaoth shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." (Isaiah xix. 23-25.)

And (substitute him for Solomon) Isaiah awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. (1 Kings iii. 15.)

Edom-Idumea-Nabatea.-South of Philistia and Palestine is a region, the southern portion of which is shaped on two sides into a figure approaching that of a triangle. Its line from north-west south-eastward is considerably longer than that from north-east towards the south-west. The former runs from about Suez (the Heroopolite Gulf, the Gulf of Suez), the other from about the ancient Ezion-geber (the Elanitic Gulf-the Eleatic or Gulf of Akaba) into the Red Sea. The gulfs of which these lines indicate the northward coast constitute the two horns of the Red Sea. An irregular line might be drawn from the top of the western (Heroopolite) Gulf towards El Arish, north-eastward forming the boundary of Egypt: and a line might be drawn from the top of the eastern horn (the Elanitic Gulf) northward a little declining to the east which would