Bible Triumphant, The
C Urquhart
Table of Contents
Foreword
IT is with peculiar pleasure that I write this foreword to a most valuable book of Biblical Archeology which represents the careful study of many years. In the whole realm of my acquaintance I know of no one who is better informed as to the precise facts of recent archaeology than my friend, Mr. Urquhart. Moreover, he has enjoyed the privilege of a unique training and education in this particular department of knowledge, as his father was a world-renowned authority in such matters to a previous generation.
In my recent visit to Australia for lecture purposes, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Urquhart and examining his manuscript. I believe that his compilation of archeological data, confirming the historical accuracy of the Bible, ought to prove a mine of great value to all Bible expositors and Sunday School teachers—especially those who have not direct access to the various original sources of information which Mr. Urquhart has so carefully explored.
In these days when the stones are crying out to vindicate the historical accuracy of the Bibles especially at those points which used to be thought most vulnerable, it behooves all lovers of the Word to be earnest and active in endeavoring to disseminate the facts among the people, and so prepare for that true religious revival which proceeds from renewed application to the reading and meditation upon Holy Scripture as the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever.
D. E. HART-DAVIES.
ST. THOMAS’S CHURCH, EDINBURGH.
Preface
IT will be readily acknowledged by the majority of those who have given serious consideration to the subject, that one of the greatest questions, and perhaps the supreme question of all the questions which today confront us, is the question, Is the Bible true? For, if it is true, then it is the message of the living God to us men; whereas, if it is not true, then we have no certainty whatever as to those things which matter most.
For reasons into which we need not enter, the Bible has been subjected to constant attack. During the latter part of last century, the attack was carried on with great determination and with a considerable display of learning. This has produced within the Christian Churches a very serious position indeed; and many people are wondering whether the old belief in the Bible can be maintained.
It is surely no mere coincidence that the last sixty or seventy years have witnessed a most amazing rediscovery of those ancient civilizations to which the Bible introduces its readers. The ruins and monuments of those far off days have now been unearthed and studied. By these discoveries and researches the accuracy of the Bible has been and is being tested at thousands of points; and it is a noteworthy fact that this new knowledge directs its searchlight most frequently upon those parts of the Bible which have been most confidently attacked.
It is our intention, in the present volume, to set forth, with all faithfulness and in sufficient detail, the results of this recent testing of the truthfulness and reliability of the Bible. As far as possible, we shall confine ourselves to the discoveries and researches of the present century, that is, the facts brought to light since 1900 A. D. The material has been arranged in such a manner that those who have not been in a position to make themselves familiar with this subject hitherto, may now have a clear and concise knowledge of the facts, and may be able to see what conclusions necessarily follow from those facts. There will therefore be at times some small amount of repetition in what has to be said.
In view of the tremendous issues at stake, we ask of our readers their earnest and sustained attention.
THE PERTH BIBLE INSTITUTE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
Chapter 1: From Creation to the Flood
Truth in Tradition
IN the 19th century the prevailing tone of historical research in regard to traditional beliefs was one of doubt and suspicion. All traditions were treated as “suspect,” and were presumed to be guilty of gross falsehood unless proved innocent; and such proof had to be very thorough indeed. In the present century, however, a new note is being sounded. The traditions of ancient peoples are being listened to with growing respect and are being studied with care. For example, in 1924, before the National Academy of Sciences, J. H. Breasted declared: “Not credulity, but historical method demands that we now recognize these traditions, or the nucleus of fact to be drawn from them, as a body of sources now to be restored to their proper chronological position in the succession of surviving evidences which reveal to us the past career of man on earth.” Referring to the irrational disbelief of the 19th century, he said: “Such critical negation was supreme when 50 years ago archeology began to reveal with startling vividness the facts and the daily equipment of human life in the very ages with which the rejected traditions dealt. . . Maspero’s bulky history of the oriental peoples... tells us that Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty of Egypt, was a purely mythical or legendary figure. Nevertheless we now possess his tomb, and in our collections at the University of Chicago we have a piece of his personal ornaments, a gold bar bearing his name in hieroglyphic.” In this same address the writer declares his disbelief of all miracles—an attitude of mind which makes his testimony to the real value of tradition all the more striking.
Similarly, ARTHUR WEIGALL in his “History of the Pharaohs” (Vol. II, 1927, p. 107), refers to Abraham, who, he says, “was doubtless a perfectly historical character.” So also L. A. WADDELL, in his recent book on “The Makers of Civilization,” has shown the great value of the oldest traditions of India. And let our readers weigh well this testimony by Prof. A. H. SAYCE, in his 1923 volume of “Reminiscences:” “Next to the historical books of the Old Testament the Tel el-Amarna tablets have proved to be the most valuable record which the ancient civilized world of the East has bequeathed to us.”
Naturally it has not been easy for archaeologists, trained in an atmosphere of doubt, to reach this revised view as to the value of traditions; but the change of outlook has been made necessary for them by recent discoveries and researches.
Tradition and Early Narratives of Genesis
By the end of last century a vast amount of evidence had been gathered from the oldest traditions of widely sundered peoples testifying to the universal knowledge of the facts recorded in the opening chapters of Genesis. We may add now the following particulars of beliefs current in Egypt in the earliest times—particulars given by WEIGALL in his 1922 volume on “Akhnaton.” It was believed that the first human being was formed by one of the gods from mud (cf. Gen. 2:7). It was believed that the first king suffered from the venomous bite of a snake (cf. Gen. 3). It was believed that in those primeval days a terrible murder of one brother by another was perpetrated (cf. Gen. 4). The first blacksmith and artificer had been deified, and was worshipped under the name “Ptah;” he was the same as the European god “Vulcan,” the original form of the name being “Tubal-cain” (cf. Gen. 4:22). As more of these earliest traditions are discovered and studied, so more clearly shines out the Divine superiority of the accounts given in the Biblical History. And a further point of great importance is this: the recent discoveries demonstrate that, as the centuries succeeded one another, the old traditions everywhere became increasingly debased and corrupted. This proved fact is incompatible with any theory of evolution.
Civilization Before the Flood
In view of the overwhelming magnitude and long duration of the Flood (as recorded in the Bible, and also indicated by a multitude of geological and other facts), it seems hardly likely that very many relics of the great antediluvian civilization will be recovered. The critics of the Bible have indeed ridiculed not only the very idea of such a worldwide Flood, but also the possibility of any civilization whatever at such a remote period. On the other hand, the Bible, in a few verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis, draws aside the curtain of the past and grants us a glimpse of that primal world of mankind. We behold the building of the first city; we are shown the first beginnings of sciences and arts. On which side lies the truth: on the side of the Bible, or on that of its critics? Has recent archeology anything to say on this point? If so, what is its verdict?
One after another the leading archaeologists are becoming convinced by their discoveries that the great Flood was a tremendous fact of history. For instance, Professor WOOLLEY was compelled to the conclusion that the eight-foot layer of clean clay, recently revealed during his excavations at Ur of the Chaldees, represents the complete break in civilization caused by the Flood of Scripture history. Above and below that clay, were found broken relics of the art of the potter. Those found underneath it of course represented the products from before the Flood; and the discoverers state that the relics prove that the civilization destroyed by the Flood was of a higher order than that which arose after the Flood.
Excavations at other places are yielding similar evidence: Kish near Babylon, Tel Halaf in Upper Mesopotamia, Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast, and Jericho.
Archeology and Evolution
The ancient cemetery at Ur, and the still more ancient one at the neighboring site called Al-Ubaid, testify strongly not only against evolutionary theories, but also to the accuracy of the Bible in ascribing long life-periods to primeval mankind. On this point it will be very apposite indeed to quote the words of such a determined evolutionist as Sir ARTHUR KEITH, from the volume on “Al Ubaid.” Sir Arthur assumes that the cemetery there is two thousand years older than the one at Ur. In summing up the evidence he says, on p. 240: “Certainly, as physical anthropologists measure people, the later people of Ur wen not the equal of the earlier people found at Al-Ubaid.” He says also (p. 225): “The ancient Sumerians were a large-headed, large-brained people, approaching or exceeding in these respects the longer headed races of Europe. They had many points of resemblance to a predynastic people whose remains have been found in cemeteries of Upper Egypt.” As to the greater longevity in the earlier human period, his conclusion is equally significant (p. 229): “The teeth of the early Sumerians of the Al-Ubaid cemetery were worn down to an extraordinary degree—much more than those of the people buried in the later cemetery at Ur itself.” The interval of time between these two cemeteries was probably only about three hundred years. In that case the testimony for deterioration and against evolution becomes all the more emphatic. Now although the people found buried at Al-Ubaid lived probably some centuries after the Flood, the argument remains valid as revealing a tendency which had been continued from the preceding age. These facts should surely make critics of the Bible pause.
Ancient Epic Poems
Ridicule was a weapon greatly used by 19th century critics against the Biblical accounts of the Creation and the Flood. They were eager and persistent in their efforts to prove that these accounts were composed from several distinct and contradictory narrations of unhistorical legends. Those critics allotted these assumed “sources” to imaginary writers denoted by such letters as “E.,” “J.,” etc. As the critics were strongly opposed to certain basic teachings of the Bible, they sought in this way to discredit its authority and inspiration. One of their great assumptions was that miracles never have happened; for the occurrence of miracles cannot be reconciled with their favorite theory of evolution. Faced therefore with the accounts of the miracles of the Creation and the Flood, they tried to show that those accounts had no historical value. It is true that their theories were manufactured in ignorance of the results of modern discovery; and so perhaps we ought to mingle pity with our blame.
In Mesopotamia there have been unearthed copies of several distinct Epic Poems which embody old traditions of the Creation and the Flood. One copy of the most ancient of these poems was found at Nippur (the “Calneh” of Gen. 10), and was translated by Professor LANGDON in 1912. This poem was written a thousand years before the time of Moses, and some 1800 years before the dates assigned by the critics to “E.” and “J.” Now in a striking way this ancient poem testifies to the unity of the accounts in Genesis, because in it are found already united the various elements which the critics tore asunder and allotted to various “sources.”
A further very important fact emerges from a comparison of this early Sumerian Epic with the much later Babylonian Epics. During the centuries that intervened, there was an increasing degradation in religious ideas, the later poem being much more corrupted by polytheistic and idolatrous conceptions. It is true that even in the later poems there still remain very striking resemblances to the pure and sober Biblical narratives; but the resemblance of the earlier Sumerian poem to the Genesis accounts is much closer.
This fact affords another decisive testimony to the truthfulness of the Bible and against the evolutionary hypothesis. In the absence of Divine revelation, the unvarying tendency in religion is not towards improvement, but towards degradation. Moses lived in an age of growing religious corruption; and nothing short of Divine inspiration can account for the simplicity and purity of the accounts which he wrote.
Some Primeval Inventions
According to the Biblical History the two great classes of musical instruments (wind-instruments and stringed-instruments) were invented a thousand years before the Flood. The critics of the Bible, however, in learned ignorance and unbelief, denied the accuracy of this representation, and said that not even in David’s days had many, if any, musical instruments been invented. It is true that, because of discoveries made before the end of last century, this criticism has ceased to be voiced; but the critics have never made any acknowledgment of their error.
To mention only one of the “finds” that have forever silenced that particular criticism—those magnificently made stringed-instruments found at Ur of the Chaldees, and buried there some 1500 years before the time of David, demonstrate that centuries must even then have elapsed since the first inventions in that sphere.
The Scripture relates that at about the same time as musical instruments were invented, men found out how to make and to work in copper and iron (see Gen. 4:21, 22). Until very recently, however, it has been the fashion even among arch2eologists to dispute the accuracy of this statement; and it was assumed that the use of iron dates from a much more recent period.
Once more it has turned out that those who simply believe the Bible are after all the best informed; for within the last few years definite proofs have been found at Eshnunnak, one of the capitals of Sargon the Great, that iron weapons were manufactured four or five hundred years before the days of Abram. It has escaped the notice of many investigators that iron soon rusts away, and all traces of it are apt soon to disappear.
Climatic Effects of the Flood
It is evident that the Great Flood, as described in the Bible, must have left, as it receded, vast lakes or inland seas in the interiors of the continents. There has thus been going on ever since a process of dessication, resulting in a gradual decrease of rainfall and a gradual increase of desert regions.
Recent archeology has something to tell us about this also. For example, Prof. R. E. NEWBERRY, President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, in 1923, said: “Much is known about the ancient fauna and flora of the desert wadies (of Egypt) from the paintings and sculptured scenes in the tombs of the Old and Middle Kingdoms and of the Empire.” This information, he goes on to say, proves that “the vegetation of the wadies was much more abundant then than now, and this again presupposes a greater rainfall than we find at present.” He further points out that the archeological evidence shows that in the still earlier predynastic times there were in Egypt such animals as the elephant, the marabou stork, etc. and he remarks: “From the nature and habits of these mammals and birds it is evident that there must have been a considerable rainfall in the valley of the Nile north of Aswan when they frequented Egypt.... The flora of the valley of the Lower Nile also points to the same conclusion.”
A vast amount of similar evidence to the truthfulness of the Biblical account of the Flood is at present rapidly accumulating from archaeology, geology, and other branches of science.
The Mesopotamian King-Lists
Several very ancient “King-Lists,” found recently in Mesopotamia, have created tremendous interest. They are lists of kings who reigned in various specified cities of Southern Mesopotamia. They distinguish between the kings who reigned before the Flood and those who reigned after the Flood. In the present connection we are concerned chiefly with two of these lists which were obtained in 1922-3, by the Weld-Blundell Expedition, and are called WB. 62 and WB. 444. The Babylonian King-List (WB. 62) says that ten kings reigned in succession before the Flood; and the Bible gives exactly ten generations from Adam to Noah. The Isin Dynastic Prism (WB. 444), while giving eight as the number of pre-Flood kings, makes some very significant statements:
Line 1, “kingship which from heaven descended.”
Line 39, “the deluge came up (upon the land).”
Line 40, “after the deluge had come.”
Line 41, “kingship which descended from heaven.”
This reference to Heaven’s appointment of kingship on earth is a memory of the facts recorded in Gen. 1. 26-28 and 9:1, 2. Any ordinary flood would come down from the higher parts of the country; but of this Flood it is here stated that it came up. Now in the Biblical History the breaking up of “all the fountains of the great deep” is recorded before the opening of “the windows of heaven,” as being the more important of the two factors which produced the Flood. Before the continued rainfall had time to inundate the Mesopotamian region, those populous plains were swept and submerged by the uprush of inconceivably immense tidal waves from the Persian Gulf. Then we notice that in these King-Lists, just as in the Bible narrative, this Flood is represented as causing a complete break in civilization and history.
It should be remembered that these King-Lists are not poems, but matter-of-fact records of the names and reigns and cities of kings of various Mesopotamian dynasties. It is indeed true that in some of the Lists, as we have them, enormously long reigns are credited, especially to pre-Flood kings. Thus in WB. 62, the reigns of the ten kings who ruled before the Flood range from 72,000 to 21,600 years. In WB. 444, the average pre-Flood reign is 30, 150 years; and the average for the next 23 kings (at Kish, after the Flood) is 1066 years. The explanation is probably as follows: When these portions of the Lists were translated into the language in which we now possess them, a mistake crept in from misunderstanding of the unit of measurement. The old Babylonian “sarus” had two values: one was 181 years, and the other was 3600 years. Substituting the smaller value for the greater, we get the following: According to WB. 62, the reigns of the pre-Flood kings ranged from 360 to 108 years; according to WB. 444, their average reign was 151 years. Now according to Gen. 5, the average length of the generations before the Flood was 156 years. It would thus appear that in the King-Lists there are enshrined facts from before the Flood handed down through many centuries with great accuracy, and confirming in many ways the Biblical History. In the light of these facts, it can be seen how premature and unwise was the ridicule poured by the critics upon the first chapters of Genesis.
Chapter 2: Bible Chronology
New Light on Biblical Chronology
THE facts brought to light by recent archaeology make necessary a fresh examination of the chronological data furnished by the Bible. We say “examination,” and not “revision” nor “accommodation.” It has long been realized that the system of Ussher, given in the margins of many editions of the Scriptures, is far from satisfactory; but no serious attempt to achieve a better understanding of the facts seems to have been made until the publication, in 1904, of Rev. JOHN URQUHART’S book, “How Old is Man?” Before continuing our review of the bearing of the new archaeological facts upon the Biblical History, we must certainly try to get clearness of thought on the chronology of that History. The present writer believes that the Bible does furnish a definite and accurate chronology back to the times of Abram, who received the Promises, and with whom it was on that account fitting that there should begin the counting off of the years of waiting for the fulfillment of those promises.
One fact in itself is enough to show that it is not the purpose of God in the Scriptures to furnish a chronology of human history. That fact is that “there is no recognized era in the Bible reckoning.” The purpose is a much higher one, namely, the teaching of great spiritual truths, and, in particular, the vitally important doctrine of substitution. To that matter we shall presently return. Let us ascertain the facts, as far as we can.
We may safely assume B. C. 606 as the date of the fall of the Jewish Kingdom, which had lasted for 490 years. From the Exodus to the Kingdom was likewise 490 years. (See Note 1 appended to this chapter.) From God’s first promise to Abram until the Exodus was 430 years (Gal. 3:17). (See Note 2 appended.) We thus have the following dates:
B.C.
606. Fall of the Jewish Kingdom.
1096. Saul became King of Israel.
1546. Joshua led Israel into Canaan.
1586. The Exodus of Israel from Egypt.
2011. Abram left Haran for Canaan.
2016. Abram’s call, and his departure from Ur.
2086. The birth of Abram.
2216. The birth of his father, Terah.
The last of the above dates results from a comparison of the statements made in Gen. 11:32 and 12:4, and Acts 7:4. In the selected genealogy recorded in Gen. 11:10-26 at least one generation (that of Cainan) has been blotted out (see Gen. 11:12 and Luke 3:35).
Now to return to the way in which the doctrine of substitution is taught by statements which seem at first sight to be chronological. In one case after another the advent of the firstborn son is hailed as the assurance of the birth of God’s chosen one; in other words, God’s elect is reckoned as the firstborn. For example, compare Gen. 5:32 and 6:10 with 9:24 and 10:21; also 10:22 with 11:10; also 11:26 with 11:32 and 12:4 and Acts 7:4. This means that in every generation in Gen. 11:10-26, in order to arrive at the actual chronology, we have to add on the number of years that intervened between the birth of the actual firstborn and the birth of that son whom God chose as the ancestor of the Redeemer.
In the case of the last link in this chain—that of Terah and Abram—we know that we have to add 60 years (130-70). It will therefore be fairly safe to assume an average of 60 years to be added in each generation as far back as Peleg, and an average of, say, 100 years to be added in each generation from Eber back to Shem. (For we see by the figures given that God in the time of Peleg halved the average duration of human life; and this remarkable fact must be allowed for in our calculations).
Following then the indications given in the Divine record, we reach the following approximate dates: B.C.
2305 Birth of Nahor (2216 and 29 and 60).
2395 “” Serug (2305 and 30 and 60).
2487 “” Reu (2395 and 32 and 60).
2577 “” Peleg (2487 and 30 and 60).
2711 “” Eber (2577 and 34 and 100).
2841 “” Salah (2711 and 30 and 100).
2976 “” Cainan (2841 and, say, 35 and 100).
3111 “” Arphaxad (2976 and 35 and 100).
3214 The Flood came (3111 and 3 and 100).
As there will be a margin of error either way, it will be safer to date the Flood as between 3100 and 3300 B. C.
To those who are wedded to Ussher’s system or to some modification of it, all this will appear very strange. Nevertheless, in view of facts which we are about to set forth, it is at least worthy of calm and patient consideration; and this is all that we ask of our readers.
Egyptian Chronology
By those who have had only a slight knowledge of the subject, the Bible has sometimes been accused of inaccuracy as to certain dates, the assertion being made that “Egyptian chronology contradicts the Bible.” In view of the frequent failure of similar accusations, one is tempted to reply: “So much the worse for Egyptian chronology.” To all, however, who have studied the subject, it is well known that the ancient records of Egypt do not furnish any connected system of chronology, nor even materials from which such a system can be constructed. The nearest approach to accurate dating for ancient times, from purely Egyptian records, has been the calculation of a few dates from certain references to the time of the rising of the Nile and the rising of the star Sirius; but modern investigators of this point have shown that there exist factors of uncertainty which render all such calculations unsatisfactory. This is especially so for the more ancient periods.
A recent excellent history of Egypt is ARTHUR WEIGALL’S “History of the Pharaohs,” the second volume of which was published in 1927. It deals with the period from Abraham to Moses. Now it is noteworthy that this volume leaves us in uncertainty on many points of Egyptian chronology. There is uncertainty as to the order in which some kings reigned (pp. 192, 203, 283, 389), and as to the dynasty to which some kings belonged (p. 209); and sometimes the ancient records disagree with his arrangement of kings (p. 389), and with his system of calculating dates (pp. 348-9). Thus this history of Egypt, like all the others, emphasizes the need for an assured basis for the chronology of ancient times.
Similarly, WALLIS BUDGE, in his 1925 volume on “Egypt,” remarks (pp. 49, 50): “Unlike the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, the Egyptians cared little for chronology, and at first, at least, their years were dated by events.... But mathematicians have discovered what they say are serious differences in the results attained by the different authorities from the same data, and the archaeologist must therefore look upon all early dates ‘fixed astronomically’ with some doubt.” Later on he says (p. 52): “The Egyptian scribes themselves made mistakes in reading the names of the earliest kings of Egypt, and their mistakes, repeated by Manetho, were greatly added to by his copyists, who regarded the forms in the documents from which they copied as uncouth and barbarous. And of course they misread many of the figures in the totals of the years of the kings’ reigns.”
Until very recently no sure basis for ancient chronology was known; and the consequence has been that among archaeologists there has been a great deal of uncertainty and considerable controversy concerning dates, and also a great deal of wild talk about “the ridiculously small” dating of ancient events given in the Bible. We now proceed to explain how at last, through a remarkable discovery, there has become available an assured basis for the chronology of ancient Egypt as well as Mesopotamia; and it will also be seen with what beautiful exactness the results accord with the real facts of Bible chronology as set forth above.
Certainty as to Ancient Dates
Hammurabi, King of Babylon (the Amraphel of Gen. 14), belonged to the First Babylonian Dynasty. The tenth king of that dynasty had a record made by his astronomers, for the twenty-one years of his reign, of the times of morning and evening appearances and disappearances of the planet Venus. The final results of date-calculations from this record were published in 1927 in the Revue d’ Assyriologie; and the date of the foundation of this dynasty of Babylonian kings is fixed at B.C. 2105, with a less-likely alternative of B. C. 2113. Hammurabi was the sixth king of the dynasty, and was probably co-regent with his father for some years before commencing his sole reign. His father died three years after overthrowing the Elamite Dynasty in B.C. 2007. These Elamite monarchs were really emperors, ruling over many kings; and their Mesopotamian seat of government was the city Isin. The Elamite Dynasty had lasted for 225 years, having been founded therefore in B.C. 2232. Its founder was an Elamite prince who conquered all Southern Mesopotamia and overthrew the Third Dynasty of Ur, which had been founded 120 years before this, namely, in B.C. 2352.
The Date of the Flood
As explained, the Scripture seems to indicate that God sent the Flood somewhere around B. C. 3200. For those far-off times the archaeological dating is at last emerging from the “guess and calculate” stage, thanks to the discovery of the King-Lists and especially to the fixing of the date for the First Babylonian Dynasty. From these we can with assurance work back to the date for the establishment of the Third Ur Dynasty, B. C. 2352. For periods prior to this, various factors of uncertainty enter into the calculations.
The Second Ur Dynasty lasted for 108 years, and was thus founded in B.C. 2460, just after the First Ur Dynasty had been overthrown by Sargon the Great, who conquered Ur near to the beginning of his reign.
Taking now the Isin King-List: the First Ur Dynasty lasted for 177 years, and so had been founded in B. C. 2637. Preceding this, the List gives an Erech Dynasty of 12 kings; and, prior to that, a Kish Dynasty of 23 kings, listing this as the first dynasty after the Flood. In both cases the figures as given are impossibly long, amounting in all to 26,820 years for the 35 kings. If we assume that these two dynasties were consecutive, and if we allow 20 years as an average length of reign, the 35 kings would then account for 700 years. But there is definite evidence to show that the two dynasties overlapped to a great extent. So the calculation is left very much “in the air” as far as this Isin King-List is concerned.
Let us now take the Kish King-List: the first post-Flood dynasty is given as one of 6 kings and as lasting for 99 years; the next as one of 8 kings, their reigns totaling 156 years; after that, one king, reigning for 25 years; and then Sargon the Great. So that, according to this, kingship after the Flood began 280 years before Sargon, that is, about B. C. 2740.
From the Bible we learn that from the Flood to the days of Nimrod enough time had passed by to allow a family of eight persons to develop into a community of many myriads. In this connection it is helpful to remember that Jacob’s family of seventy persons during 210 years of sojourn in Egypt, increased to about half a million of actual descendants.
Now from the date of the Flood as indicated in the Bible, on to B. C. 2740, is a period of some 450 years, which is clearly consistent with the implied increase in population from the Flood to the days when Nimrod established his empire. (Since Nimrod may have founded his empire by the conquest of a number of minor kings belonging to dynasties previously established, his date may be this side of B. C. 2740).
Here again we have a striking example of the way in which the most recent discoveries are confirming the accuracy of those parts of the Biblical History which have been most assailed by hostile criticism.
Note on 1 Kings 6:1
The statement in 1 Kings 6:1 is supposed by many to be in absolute contradiction to the statement in Acts 13:20; and so we would submit the following considerations on this important matter.
The reckoning given in Acts 13:20 is chronologically correct, as is shown from a study of the Book of Judges. (We need not bother about the Revised Version reading, which is condemned by the bulk of the manuscript evidence, and gives no clear sense, and is a variation which has arisen from an attempt to force Paul’s statement into conformity with the usual understanding of 1 Kings 6:1.)
Joshua judged Israel for about
Then followed a brief period of, say,
From 1st Oppression to Jair’s death was
Philistine Oppression of most of Israel, including Samson’s 20 years, lasted..
Eli’s judgeship was one of..
Samuel’s judgeship lasted, say,
The Biblical statements exclude the possibility of any overlapping up to the death of Jair; and the statement in Judg. 10:6, 7, shows that the Philistine Oppression on the West of Jordan and the Ammonite one on the East began at the same time.
The difference between the two reckonings:
1 Kings 6:1, equates Solomon’s fourth year with the 480th year after the Exodus; but according to the statement in Acts 13:20, the period was as follows
From the Exodus to Moses’ death,
Thence to Saul’s coronation, about
Saul’s reign, 40; David’s, 40; making..
3 or 4 years of Solomon’s reign,
The difference, then, is some 93 years. And this is the total of all the periods of judgment upon Israel for apostasy as given in the Book of Judges.
(3) The Spiritual Teaching. All the first readers of 1 Kings realized that these 93 years of apostasy were treated as not worth counting in the sight of God. This lesson is eternal. Time spent out of fellowship with God is worthless. Thus in 1 Kings 6:1, as in other passages in the Old Testament we have, not mere chronology, but something far more valuable.
Note on Exodus 12:40
From this passage many have concluded that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years. The Hebrew wording may be translated in either of two ways: (1) “And the sojourning of the children of Israel, who sojourned in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” (2) “And the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” The inspired apostle, in Gal. 3:17, has fixed the correct translation. He says that the Law was given (just after the Exodus) four hundred and thirty years after God’s people, in the person of Abram, became sojourners because of belief in the Divine promises. In addition to this decisive statement, we have the further fact that a period of 430 years in Egypt is far too long to be reconciled with the particulars mentioned in Ex. 6:16-20. As to Gen. 15:13, it is a question of punctuation. (In the original Hebrew there was no punctuation at all.) The verse should read thus: “And He said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs; and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them: four hundred years.” From the birth of Isaac to the Exodus was just 400 years.
Chapter 3: After the Flood
The Antiquity of Civilization
THE Biblical History tells us that a highly developed civilization was already achieved a thousand years before the Flood. And recent investigations, pushing their way back towards the time of the Flood, and now even back beyond that time, find always proofs of the existence of a civilization already achieved.
For example, R. E. NEWBERRY, in the address from which we quoted in our first chapter, says: “... the discoveries at Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos had shown us that all the essential features of the Egyptian system of writing were fully developed at the beginning of the First Dynasty. Hieroglyphic signs were already in full use as simple phonograms, and their employment as phonetic complements was well established. Determinative signs are found beginning to appear in these early writings.... At the very beginning of the First Dynasty the numerical system was complete up to millions, and the Egyptian had already worked out a solar year of 365 days.” Of the hieroglyphic system of writing, the Professor thinks that it “must have been the growth of many antecedent ages;” but he adds, “yet no trace of the early stages of its evolution has been found on Upper Egyptian soil”—nor in Lower Egypt either, where he thinks it must have been evolved.
Another archaeologist, VON OPPENHEIM, as the result of his recent excavations at and near Tell Halaf, close to the source of the Khabur River in Upper Mesopotamia, is convinced that the most ancient Hittite civilization was simply one taken over by the Hittites from the “Subaraic” people whom they conquered and dispossessed somewhere about 2000 B. C. And the evidence he has gathered shows clearly a deterioration and not an advance in the standard of civilization as the centuries rolled on, thus again confirming the accuracy of the Scripture statements and at the same time demonstrating that the evolutionary theory will not do even as a working hypothesis.
From Lower Mesopotamia comes similar evidence. Dr. JuLius JORDAN, in speaking of excavations at the site of the city of Erech, in 1930, said: “It has been proved that before the Dynastic period in Sumer—earlier than 3000 B. C. —the country was colonized by a people highly talented in art.” Still more recent discoveries at Erech and at Ur in the winter of 1933-4 have convinced the excavators that at a period several centuries older than the time of Sargon the Great—that is, about 700 years before Abram—the post-Flood civilization had already begun to deteriorate.
There also is clear evidence, referred to by WEIGALL in his “History of the Pharaohs,” that at least one great astronomical cycle, namely, the 1460 years period of Sothis, had been discovered before the rise of the First Egyptian Dynasty; and it will not be out of place to give here some further extracts from the address by Prof. BREASTED in 1924. He remarked that “The Edwin Smith Medical Papyrus, acquired in 1906 by the New York Historical Society,” and written in the 17th century B. C. , contains the record of medical observations which “show that its author had already observed that control of the members and limbs of the body was localized in different sides of the brain.” He points out that this fact has been rediscovered by the work of modern surgeons only within the last two generations. In the course of the same address he said: “I hold in my hand part of an original transit instrument, made as stated by the inscription upon it, by no less a king than Tutankhamen... for the tomb of his (or his wife’s) great-grandfather, Thutmose IV.... It was used for determining meridian time, especially at night, in order that the observer might then set his water clock, with its 24-hour divisions.” All this reminds one of what Solomon said about the ancient completeness of civilization (see Eccl. 1:9, 10; and 3:15).
The Origin of Alphabetic Writing
Recent discoveries have made matter of common knowledge the fact of the vast antiquity of writing and the fact of its widespread use in very early times. These facts are implied in many parts of the Biblical History. For instance, when Joshua led Israel into Canaan, one of the cities captured bore the names of “The Library City” (Kirjath-sepher) and “The City of Learning” (Kirjath-sannah); and 400 years earlier still, a legal land-transfer was drawn up between Abraham and Ephron the Hittite (see Gen. 23:17, 18; and 49:32).
As far back as archaeology has gone, proof has been always found of the popular use of writing; and it should not be forgotten that the 19th century unbelief in the Bible, as represented by the various “Higher Critical” theories, was largely based upon the assumption that the art of writing was a comparatively late invention.
It is not yet, however, generally known that alphabetic writing is of very great antiquity. This matter has a distinct bearing upon our present subject; for, if Moses could not have written except in syllabic signs, most of which had several sound-values, various questions at once arise as to the accuracy and reliability of the present Hebrew text of that very important part of the Biblical History. What, then, are the facts?
On the coast of Syria, directly opposite the most eastern point of Cyprus, is a promontory. On its northern side is a bay, where in ancient times was a fine harbor, called by the Greek merchants, “White Haven,” because of the glaring whiteness of the rocks that guard the entrance. (The modern Arabic name, Minet-el-Beida, means “White Bay.”) The old harbor has long ago become silted up by sediment: carried down into it by a small river. Close to the bay is a hill, about half a mile back from the present coastline. It is 65 feet high, 3000 feet long, and nearly 2000 feet wide. To quote from an article by the arch6eologist in charge of the excavations, M. F. A. SCHAEFFER: “In the spring of 1928 an Alouite (i.e., a native of that region) plowed up... a flagstone which covered the entrance to a subterraneous passage. This led to a burial chamber, which the native rifled. It probably contained gold objects, which got into the hands of antique dealers and were lost. But the Governor of the Alouites, H. SCHOEFFLER, learned of the discovery, and after an inspection of the place, advised the Government Bureau of Antiquities in Beyrouth to send an archaeologist at once.” Thus it came about that a French Expedition, led by M. SCHAEFFER, commenced excavations at Ras Shamra, the 65-foot hill, in 1929.
During that first season of the operations a number of tablets were found which were written in cuneiform (wedge-shaped characters). In date these go back as far as the beginning of the period of the Judges of Israel. The amazing thing about these tablets is that they are written not in syllabic signs, but in an alphabet containing 28 letters. M. SCHAEFFER says: “This alphabetic script is so well established that it must have been in use for a long time” before that period. He describes it as “a very finished alphabet,” and says that the language “is closely related to Phoenician,” which, again, was a language closely related to Hebrew.
Similarly, MACALISTER in his 1925 book on “A Century of Excavation in Palestine,” says (pp. 247-9): “Until recently the old Hebrew script was not known to have existed before about the year 1000 B. C.... But we now know that the old Hebrew script was much earlier than had been supposed. Among the discoveries of M. PIERRE MONTET, in the excavations of Byblos, was a tomb containing a sarcophagus inscribed in this old Semitic character.... This carries the history of the script back at least two hundred years, to the time of Ramessu II. Moreover, it shows us the alphabet not only fully developed, but actually deteriorating; for certain of the characters.. are undoubtedly of a form that has been developed by penmanship.”
Sir FLINDERS PETRIE’S discoveries at the Temple of Serabit in 1905, take us a step further. From them we learn that in the Peninsula of Sinai, in which region Moses spent forty years, there was in his days in common use a fully developed Semitic alphabet still simpler than the one used at Ras Shamra.
In 1935, excavations at the site of Lachish, in S.W. Palestine, furnished inscriptions which both in date and in the forms of the alphabetic letters are intermediate between the Serabit inscriptions on the one hand and those of Byblos and Ras Shamra on the other. It can now no longer be questioned that in the time of Moses there was a fully developed Semitic alphabet ready for him to use; and the 1935 discoveries at Lachish show that “ordinary people,” and not only professional scribes and priests, “were reading and writing alphabetically.”
But L. A. WADDELL, in his 1927 volume on “The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet,” proves that an alphabet was in use in times much further back than the days of Moses. On p. 61 he thus summarizes his conclusions: “The Sumerians from the earliest-known periods, as we have found, employed in their ‘syllabic’ writings these particular signs with their ‘alphabetic’ values generally, which are now disclosed to be the parents of our alphabetic letters....
But they did not often spell out words by such simple ‘alphabetic’ signs, but mixed these up with a greatly preponderating number of syllabic signs, often containing two or more consonants. Yet, sometimes the Early Sumerians appear to have spelled out a few of their words alphabetically even in the earliest period.”
Early Degradation in the Realm of Religion
The theory of evolution, largely because of its subtle flattery, is still strongly entrenched in popular belief, in spite of the destruction of every one of its foundations by recent scientific researches. The notion is still being propagated that in religion there has been a gradual enlightenment—a progress through the ages away from debased and wrong ideas about God, and onward to ideas noble and right. The Bible, on the contrary, declares that ever since the Fall mankind has been departing from the pure primal revelation of God, and has been going ever more deeply into religious darkness and corruption of the truth, and that only fresh Divine revelations have been able to arrest and to reverse this evil tendency.
Here, then, we have a clear issue which can be decided by the recent researches and discoveries; and these bear testimony, in accents strong and distinct, to the truthfulness of the Scriptural account and to the falsity of the evolutionary hypothesis.
Professor WOOLLEY shows this, in his volume on “Ur of the Chaldees;” and so does L. A. WADDELL, with considerable detail, in his 1929 volume on “The Makers of Civilization.” It is proved that in the course of the first three dynasties of Ur there was a very perceptible process of degradation in the religious ideas and observances. Abundant evidence to the same effect is coming in from other regions in Mesopotamia. In an article written in 1933, Dr. FRANKFORT describes recent “finds” at Eshnunna, belonging to the period of Sargon the Great, that is, 400 or 500 years before the time of Abram. The “exquisitely carved” cylinder-seals and other objects show that while sun-worship was the chief idolatry, a number of lesser deities were already acknowledged there, and even serpent-worship was flourishing. The recently excavated sacred buildings at Sakkara, built by Egyptian kings of the Third Dynasty, about 200 years before Abram, tell the same story; for the comparatively simple and grand religious ideas, enshrined in those early temples, put to shame those of the later priest-ridden Egyptians. Similar evidence is rapidly accumulating in regard to Asia Minor, Syria, and other regions of the ancient world.
Dr. LANGDON, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford in the preface of his book on “Semitic Mythology,” expresses his conviction that “both in Sumerian and Semitic religions Monotheism preceded Polytheism.” In Field-Museum Leaflet 28, he says: “In my opinion, the history of the oldest religion of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man.” (The expression “belief in evil spirits” should be, more accurately, “worship of evil spirits.”) Professor SCHMIDT, of Vienna, another outstanding authority on this matter, in his 1931 volume on “The Origin and Growth of Religion—Facts and Theories,” speaks to the same effect and in equally decisive tones.
The first step in the downward path was the supplanting of the adoration of the true God by the worship of the sun. Then came the introduction of female deities, of moon-worship, of human sacrifices, and of many other abominations. It becomes increasingly clear that, just as the Sacred Record relates, it was only by a succession of Divine revelations that Abram and his descendants could be delivered from these corrupt and corrupting ideas and practices, and be led onwards in the path of true godliness.
The Original Home of Civilization
The Bible declares that the radiating center of the earliest civilization after the Flood was “the Land of Shinar,” that is, Lower Mesopotamia. This portion of the Biblical History, however, was held up to ridicule by the critics of the 19th century. Concerning the account given in chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis, they used such epithets as “strange,” “laughable,” “marvelously grotesque,” “a childish theory.” In some respects they were most learned men, and some of them were extremely brilliant; but they allowed prejudice to obscure their judgment, and of course they were quite unaware that by marvelous discoveries in Biblical lands their own theories were about to be tried and found wanting. The Scriptural declaration as to the original home of civilization is now becoming the assured verdict of archeology.
It is now admitted that Assyria was colonized from Babylonia, as is stated in Gen. 10:11. The Bible mentions Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, as four of the very oldest post-diluvian cities; and the archeological proofs of the accuracy of this, especially as to Erech and Calneh (or Nippur), are rapidly accumulating. King Eri-aku, the Arioch of Gen. 14, in an inscription of about 2000 B. C., refers to Erech as “the ancient city of Erech.” As to Calneh, the mound of ruins there contains the remains of no less than twenty-one successive cities; and in connection with the ancient temple was a college or university for the training of priests and scribes, with a vast library and a three-years’ course of study.
There is increasing evidence that the first Egyptian civilization was imported from Lower Mesopotamia. One of the most recent and important contributions to the establishment of this fact is WADDELL’s 1930 volume on “Egyptian Civilization.” In the past, determined efforts have been put forth to show that the Egyptian civilization was either older than that of Mesopotamia or at any rate was originated independently; but it is now being shown that those who accepted the Biblical account were in the pathway of truth.
Until comparatively recently it used to be boldly asserted that the Bible was wrong in attributing a code of legislation to Moses: the critics said that mankind in Moses’ days was not sufficiently advanced for such a thing as that. At the beginning of the present century, however, came the discovery in Persia of the copy of the code of laws published throughout his wide empire by Khamu-Rabi of Babylon—the Amraphel of Gen. 14—four centuries before the time of Moses. And now this turns out to have been largely a revision of the legal code published by Urukagina, king of Lagash, who reigned some little time before Sargon the Great, that is, nearly nine hundred years before the Laws of Moses were given. Thus we now know that codified legislation, that potent factor in civilization, also came from the land of Shinar.
It appears to have been this Sargon who spread the Southern Mesopotamian culture, by wide and consolidated conquests, from the Mediterranean to Persia, and indeed from Crete to the Valley of the Indus.
The land of Shinar was also the radiating center of religious ideas and practices. GARSTANG, in his 1910 volume on “The Land of the Hittites,” says that the main source of the religion of the Hittites was Babylon; and this means that the “Subaraic” religion, which was borrowed by the Hittites, originated as to its main features at Babylon. Dr. FRANKFORT’S recent “finds” at Eshnunna, of objects belonging to the times before Sargon the Great, show that the classical worship of “Hercules” was derived from Southern Mesopotamia, where the “fertility god” was represented with lion-skin, bow, and club, and as slaying a seven-headed hydra. This same deity proves to be the original also of “Tammuz” or “Adonis.” It will be remembered that the Biblical History clearly indicates that the land of Shinar, and Babylon in particular, was the center from which spread the corrupting flood of idolatry.
Nimrod and His Times
It is significant that the tenth chapter of Genesis, so contemptuously treated by the learned critical ignorance of last century, is constantly receiving confirmation from modern discoveries. For example, the Bible was said to be in error in listing Elam as a Semitic people. But, as MACY, in a recent volume, says: “When the French exploration party made their investigations at Susa, the capital of Elam, they there found on the oldest bricks of the place, traces of a cuneiform writing, ages older than any that had been previously discovered there. And that writing was in the Semitic language. The critics tried, indeed, to explain this away by suggesting that at that time the ruling powers were Semitic, but the people of Elam were not. This explanation, however, collapsed when it was shown that the Elamites were then under Sumerian domination; and those non-Semitic overlords had to use the Semitic language in their dealings with the Elamites.
The particulars given about Nimrod were declared to be quite unhistorical; but confirmatory facts on this matter also are now coming to light in “the land of Shinar.” For some little time now tablets have been deciphered containing the name of a certain god that from most ancient times was worshipped especially at the temple of the city Lagash. Assyriologists gave “Nin-gir-su” as the pronunciation of the signs used for that name. WADDELL, however, in his recent volume on “Makers of Civilization,” remarks: “This title, Nimirrud... has hitherto been conjecturally restored by Assyriologists from the polyphonous Sumerian signs, without any key whatsoever to its traditional form, as ‘Nin-gir-su.’” He then shows that the signs used may (according to BRUNNOW’S standard “Classified List of Sumerian Ideographs”) be read also as “Ni-mir-rud.” One inscription tells us that Mesilim, king of Kish, near the end of the Second Dynasty of Ur (that is, some 300 years before Abram), built a temple at Lagash for Nimirrud the god of Lagash; and on that occasion he dedicated to Nimirrud a fine limestone mace-head, 8 inches high and 51 ins, in diameter. The suggestion which was made towards the end of last century, that Nimrod was the historical personage deified as “Marduk” or “Marud” by the Babylonians, is supported by various recent discoveries. The hunting fame of Nimrod is reflected in the fact that “Marduk” was pictured as attended by four hunting dogs, sculptured effigies of which used to be offered in his temple. Further, the old Babylonian tradition said that Marduk built the city of Erech (see Gen. 10:10). From a very early period, Nimirrud was worshipped as the supernatural patron of Lagash, a city not far from Ur.
Another fact which is revealed in the tenth chapter of Genesis, namely that the high civilization which arose after the Flood was one developed by the Hamitic peoples, used to be strongly contested and still is, in some quarters; but the latest investigations and discoveries in this matter also testify to the accuracy of the Bible. The first masters of civilization were the Sumerians. Later on, the Akkadians obtained supremacy. The same sign were used in the writing of both these peoples. Now TOYNBEE, a leading authority, in his work entitled “A Study of History” (1934), says: “When, however we examine the cuneiform script in which both the Sumerian and the Akkadian language was conveyed, we find, by conclusive internal evidence, that this script was originally evolved in order to convey Sumerian and was adapted to convey Akkadian subsequently” (p. 110). “The Akkadians spoke a language of the Semitic family, the Sumerians a language with an utterly different structure and vocabulary which has no known affinities” (p. 109). The Sumerian language was “agglutinative” in structure (p. 110); and that stamps it as one belonging to the Hamitic portion of the human race. Nimrod, the founder of the first empire after the Flood, was a Hamite.
Babylon: The City and the Tower
It is well to notice that the Biblical History distinguishes between the city and the tower, in Gen. 11. It speaks, not of “a city with a tower,” but of “a city and a tower.” At present the River Euphrates rolls between the ruins of Babylon and “Sirs Nimroud” or “Borsippa;” but recent discoveries have revealed the fact that in ancient times the course of that river lay to the east of Babylon, and close to the walls of Kish.
As to the Tower, the Bible, by saying that “they left off to build the city,” implies that the Tower was completed. Birs Nimroud (Arabic for “The Tower of Nimrod”) is still majestic in its ruined condition, being almost 300 feet high. It is constructed of exceedingly well baked bricks, united by bitumen: “they had brick for stone, and bitumen had they for mortar.” Eight hundred years ago, Benjamin of Tudela found it 700 feet high and two miles around the base. The Greek traveler, Herodotus, who saw it in the middle of the fifth century B. C., describes it as consisting of a series of eight towers, each successive one being smaller than the one below. The towers were square; and the lowest measured 1200 feet on each side. The ascent was by a spiral roadway, provided with resting-places. On the top was a spacious temple. The descendants of its ambitious builders carried the memory of the great achievement with them around the world, and everywhere “ziggurats” (“memorials”) were built. Every important Mesopotamian city had its ziggurat. Though smaller in dimensions, and varying somewhat in shape, the original step-pyramid form was maintained. The earliest pyramid in Egypt was the one at Sakkara; and it is a step-pyramid; the oldest temples of China were step-pyramid in form; so were the ancient temples in Mexico.
As to the City. From the most primitive times, Babylon was especially reverenced throughout Mesopotamia. For example, when Sargon the Great (B. C. 2460) built his new city Agade, he modeled it on Babel, which was then held to be “a city of special sanctity.”
In view of such facts as these, it occasions no surprise that archaeologists, who in their earlier days were taught the baseless fables of the 19th century “higher critics,” are coming out into the light of a reverent belief in the accuracy of the Bible. It is not so very long ago that the great archaeologist, Prof. A. H. SAYCE, published a book entitled “Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies.”
Chapter 4: Job and Abraham
The Date of the Book of Job
WE must first spend a few moments in considering the question: When did Job live? The Hebrew of the Book of Job is marked by word-forms more ancient than the Hebrew of Moses. Furthermore, while mention is made of the Flood (chap. 22:16), there is no reference to the miracles of the Exodus, whereas the arguments of the speakers would certainly have included mention of those miracles if they had already occurred. Still further, there is no reference to the destruction of Sodom and the neighboring cities, although Job and his friends lived near the River Jordan (chap. 40:23). It may therefore be safely inferred that Job lived before the overthrow of “the cities of the plain.” The length of his life indicates that he was a contemporary of Terah, the father of Abram; and this is borne out by the remark recorded in chapter 8:8, 9. We shall, then, be not far from the truth if we place the events of this Book at about B.C. 2150 or 2200: that is, shortly after the fall of the famous Third Dynasty of Ur founded by Ur-Nammu.
The Civilization of the Period
Recent research has thrown light upon a number of passages in the Book of Job. The more we learn of the culture of those times, the more accurately and beautifully is this Book seen to “dovetail” into that culture. This is the most severe and searching test that can be applied to any book; and this Book stands that test triumphantly.
Reference is made, in chapter 19:23, 24, to the practice of writing with a metal stylus on clay tablets, and also to the carving of inscriptions upon stone. It is interesting to notice that the use of iron for weapons and for tools was well-known in the land of Uz (see chap. 19:24; chap. 20:24; and chap. 28:2). Until recently this would have been set down by most archeologists as an error; but within the past few years discoveries have been made which prove that the use of iron was known in Mesopotamia hundreds of years before the time of Abram. What misled many investigators is the quickness with which tools and weapons of iron disappear by rusting away.
We notice also that in the time of Job the chief forms of idolatry, at least in that region, seem to have been sun-worship and moon-worship (see chap. 31:26, 27). Further, the graves of “the great” were distinguished by a mound (see chaps. 21:7, 28, 32) ( “and over the mound shall a watch be kept”). Further, harps were popular (see chap. 21:12); and one thinks of the magnificent stringed-instruments recovered from the “royal tombs” at Ur. Also, the existence of temple-prostitution is clearly implied in the Hebrew of chapter 36:14. By all who are familiar with modern archeological results it will be admitted that this Book has been remarkably confirmed.
A final remark on this subject may be added. In chapter 9:25 there is a reference to the existence of a widespread postal service. This gives us a wonderful glimpse into the very life of that period. Two or three hundred years before the time of Job, Sargon the Great built up a vast empire by great and rapid conquests. He was not only a mighty conqueror, but also a wonderful organizer. Throughout his wide domain he enforced one official language and one system of writing, and established a regular postal service from North-West India to the Levant.
Thus this ancient Book, in common with the other Scriptures, bestows upon its readers a privilege found in no other literature, namely, the privilege of observing and almost mingling with the men and women of long-past ages.
The Historic Reality of Abraham
By the nineteenth century critics of the Bible, the patriarch Abraham was treated as almost, or even quite, a myth. They were dogmatically certain that, if he ever lived, he could not have had the experience related in Genesis and referred to elsewhere in Scripture and vouched for by the Lord of Glory Himself again and again. Here also, however, twentieth century discoveries have been most unkind to the critical assertions and assumptions, and have furnished a host of confirmations to the truthfulness of this portion of the Biblical narrative.
The account in Genesis clearly implies that in ancient Ur of the Chaldees there was a Hebrew-speaking section of the population; and this has been amply confirmed by the “finds” of archaeologists there. The name “Abram” has been shown to have been a name then in use. An old poem found during the excavations of Ras Shamra is proved to have originated in South Palestine, and at about the time of Abraham. It contains the name “Terah,” showing that the name of Abraham’s father was also in use at that period. In the same poem, both “El” and “Jah” are used as Divine titles; and that one fact completely annihilates the critical theories.
The Bible also says that, as the result of the migration of Abram’s relatives from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran in Syria, a Hebrew community established itself at the latter city. Discovery has confirmed this also; there was, at the period indicated, an influential Hebrew community at Haran.
It has further been revealed that the moon-god was a special object of worship both at Ur and at Haran; so that Abram’s idolatrous relatives found themselves in congenial surroundings at their new home.
That old Ras Shamra poem has thrown light upon another matter in the history of Abraham. It contains the statement, “Shalem received sovereignty over the Arabs from (the god) El.” This strongly suggests that the city of Shalem (or “Salem”) was named after that ancient king or sub-deity.
The Chronological Setting
It will be helpful to have before us the following outstanding dates:
B.C.
2232. The Third Ur Dynasty was ended by Elamite conquerors, who made Isin the capital of their Mesopotamian dominions.
2105. The First Babylonian Dynasty was founded, under the Elamite overlordship.
2086. The birth of Abram.
2016. Abram left Ur and came to Haran.
2011. Abram left Haran for Canaan.
2007. The Elamite domination was ended by Khamu—
Rabi’s father.
Presently we shall point out the wonderful confirmation of Scripture contained in the last of the above dates. When Abram left Haran, the Eleventh Dynasty of Egyptian kings was coming to an end.
The Conditions in Canaan
As has already been remarked, we now know that over all those lands Sargon the Great had, some 400 years before Abram’s time, spread a uniform civilization. This fact of a “world-empire” at so early a period has been one of the great surprises of archaeology. But it is a fact that is reflected in many places in the story of Abram. He was one of the most widely traveled men of his time; yet he found no language problem during his extensive journeyings. Again, it is very clearly implied that the land of Canaan was at that period quite open to foreigners. Proofs of the accuracy of this representation have recently been accumulating. The right of common pasturage for herds and flocks was recognized throughout that land. Furthermore, in Melchizedek we have set before us a Priest-King; and recent Mesopotamian discoveries have demonstrated that this office of priest-kingship was a real though not a common institution of those times.
Abram’s Visit to Egypt
The critics of the Bible ascribed the composition of these narratives to a period many centuries later than the time of Moses; but even Moses never knew the Egypt of Abram’s visit; for more than four hundred years divided him from it, and during those eventful centuries great changes had occurred. Yet in this brief account we are given, as is proved by ancient Egyptian monuments and documents now discovered and read, an exactly correct picture of the Egypt of the closing years of the Eleventh Dynasty just when Abram visited that country, about B.C. 2009. WEIGALL, in his “History of the Pharaohs,” shows that at that very time the Egyptian royal policy was to welcome Semitic visitors, but that immediately afterward the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty adopted the policy of rigidly excluding them. The same writer further remarks upon the accuracy of the list of animals given to Abram by the Pharaoh. He points out that the omission of any reference to horses is true to history, because horses were introduced into Egypt at a later date, by the Hyksos conquerors (who were the masters of Egypt in the time of Joseph). Pious fabricators of history living in a much later age, such as were imagined by the critics of last century, would inevitably have fallen into anachronisms and other mistakes; but the alleged “mistakes of Moses” have turned out to be the mistakes of his critics.
The Battle of the Kings
If our readers will refer to a previous paragraph on “The Chronological Setting,” and study the history given in chapters 12 to 14 of Genesis, they will see that B. C. 2008 or 2007 was the date of the capture of Lot by the invading armies of the Elamite king “and the kings that were with him,” and of their overwhelming defeat at the hands of Abram and his allies.
Now the nineteenth century critics were emphatic in their denials of the truthfulness of Gen. 14. They denied any supremacy of Elam over Babylon at that period; they said that the names given to the invading kings were inventions of a much later age; they asserted that such an invasion at such a remote epoch was “simply impossible.”
But unsubstantial theories must give way to solid facts. We now know that when Abram entered Canaan, the whole of Lower Mesopotamia had been ruled by Elam for more than two hundred years; that every one of the kings named was contemporary with Abram; and that Mesopotamian monarchs invaded Canaan even 450 years before this occasion. Until recently, “Tidal king of nations” remained unidentified; but light has come on that matter also. It is now well-known that the Hittites were not one people, but were a number of associated peoples. The question at once arises: Was “Tidal king of nations” the contemporary Hittite emperor? The Hebrew spelling is “T-d-gh-1.” Professor SAYCE, in his 1925 volume on “The Hittites,” gives “Dudkhaliyas I” as the Hittite monarch who was reigning over those associated peoples about that very time.
A Startling Coincidence
Let us now draw attention to a remarkable instance of historical harmony. According to the Biblical History, it was in B.C. 2008 or 2007 that Abram inflicted a disastrous and humiliating defeat upon the armies of the Elamite emperor. According to the Babylonian records, it was in B.C. 2007 that Lower Mesopotamia successfully revolted and threw off the Elamite yoke. The one event explains the other. In this fact we have a really startling testimony to the veracity of the Genesis narrative.
Hagar and Ishmael
Abram’s acquiescence in his wife’s proposal that he should marry her slave-girl Hagar, and his strong disinclination to agree to her later request that Hagar and her son should be cast out, were both in entire harmony with the laws and customs of those times and lands—the laws and customs under which Abram and Sarah had spent their whole lives. This we know from the famous Law-Code of Khamu-Rabi (or Amurab-el, the Amraphel of Gen. 14). A copy of this code was discovered in Persia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is true that Amraphel’s Code was published in Abram’s lifetime; but further discoveries have revealed that this code was a revision of a law-code published 500 years earlier by Urukagina, king of Lagash, and made by Sargon the Great the standard code throughout his dominions, which included Egypt, the native land of Hagar. The sending away of Hagar and Ishmael, after Abram had acknowledged the latter as his son, was contrary to that code; and it required a special command and assurance from God before Abram would consent to Sarah’s request.
A very different code of laws was in force at the period when the critics of the Bible imagined these narratives to have been composed; and it would have been utterly impossible for any writer then to avoid blunder upon blunder in trying to describe life in the then ancient time of Abram. On the other hand, as the modern discoveries give us an increasingly full picture of that remote age, we perceive how perfectly the Bible narratives fit into that picture. It is not strange, therefore, that modern investigators who formerly accepted the postulates of the “Higher Criticism” are now among the defenders of the truthfulness of the Scripture records.
The Destruction of Sodom
The Scriptural account of the overthrow of the “cities of the plain” has from ancient times been held up to ridicule; and of course the critics of last century, with their strong bias against anything miraculous, joined in the chorus of scorn. Until recent years the very completeness of the catastrophe which overwhelmed those cities of sin, made it more difficult to meet the attack upon this part of God’s Word. Various attempts were made to locate the ruins of that old civilization; some investigators identifying them with ruins on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea, others to the north of it, while still others believed them to lie beneath the shallow waters at the south end. The main objection to the last-mentioned location was the statement made by several travelers that it would have been impossible for Abram, from the hilltop near Hebron, to have, in any real sense of the phrase, “looked toward Sodom” (Gen. 19:28). However, more accurate observations made since have shown that this objection does not hold.
Professor M. G. KYLE and his fellow archaeologists and investigators, in their recent and very thorough explorations in that region, have conclusively confirmed the Biblical narrative. They have proved (1) that the civilization of that region perished utterly in the Abrahamic period; (2) that the region itself is a burned-out region of oil and asphalt; (3) that there is “along the lower part of this Plain a great stratum of rock salt,” showing itself prominently in Jebel Usdum (“The Mount of Sodom”), where a stratum of salt one hundred and fifty feet thick has in it and about it a marl containing much free sulfur; (4) that lumps of sulfur are still to be “found scattered along the shore of the sea even on the east side”— Jebel Usdum being on the southwest coast. Professor KYLE adds (5) that the nearby mountain-peaks are encrusted with salt. We are thus helped to envisage the terrible deluge of burning brimstone mingled with salt that blotted out human and animal and vegetable life in and around those cities, whose cry of wickedness and violence had come before the Judge of all the earth. It is not often that blatant unbelief in the Bible has suffered such a decisive rebuke as has resulted from these twentieth century “Explorations at the Site of Sodom.”
Chapter 5: The Times of Joseph
The Hyksos Kings of Egypt
ACCORDING to the Biblical History, two hundred years intervened between Abram’s visit to Egypt and Joseph’s early experiences there. It was at the close of the Eleventh Dynasty that Abram was in Egypt. Two hundred years from then brings us to a date within the period during which Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos kings. The Hyksos people invaded Egypt from the south of Canaan, with overwhelming success. Some writers have tried to minimize this success; but the testimony available is decidedly against them. The Hyksos dominion in Egypt lasted for centuries. They had founded (or else rebuilt) Hebron in Canaan; and, seven years later, on invading Egypt, they built Zoan (see Num. 13:22). These Hyksos (“shepherd-kings”) had immense herds and flocks, and were not loved by the conquered Egyptians (see Gen. 46:34 and 43:32). Their very memory, so to speak, was afterward persecuted. Indeed, not much has been discovered in Egypt concerning these foreign dynasties, because of the determined destruction of their monuments and inscriptions by the native dynasty which was founded by the Egyptian prince who drove them out. The problem of arriving at the truth is made still more difficult by what seems to be a deliberate confusing or concealment of the historical facts in various records left by the Pharaohs that followed the final Hyksos Dynasty. Fresh light has however recently been shed upon the Hyksos by Sir FLINDERS PETRIE’S excavations at and near Gaza, especially during the 1930-1 season. These discoveries show that the Hyksos people were much more advanced in culture than had previously been supposed.
WEIGALL’S recent “History of the Pharaohs” shows clearly that it is impossible, from purely Egyptian monuments and documents, to arrive at any sure chronological conclusions for this period. (See Vol. II., pp. 192, 203, 208, 209.) Rev. J. URQUHART, however, in “The New Biblical Guide,” Vol. III (1900), has adduced a mass of evidence in support of the ancient tradition that the Pharaoh of Joseph was that Apepi who ruled over all Egypt, and who was probably the greatest of all the Hyksos kings. WEIGALL places Joseph’s elevation to power at an earlier date, under a king of the Twelfth Dynasty; but to accomplish this he has arbitrarily to reject some portions of the Biblical History, while acknowledging the reliability of other portions of it. Professor YAHUDA also places Joseph at a period earlier than that of the Hyksos kings; but he is proceeding upon the assumption that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, which, as we have already proved, is an error. It is noteworthy that nothing that either WEIGALL or YAHUDA proves invalidates the conclusions stated by J. URQUHART.
The Collapse of Hostile Criticism
Now the critics of the Bible assert that the Book of Genesis was not written till long after the time of Moses; that it was not written till long after the time of Samuel; that indeed it was not completed until the time of the Babylonian Captivity. It must be remembered that the Egypt of Joseph was in many respects different from the Egypt which Moses knew, and was, of course, far more different from the Egypt known to the Jews of later ages. It necessarily follows that, if the “Higher Critical” assumption be correct, this narrative about Joseph must be crammed full of misrepresentations of that ancient Egypt. Through the wonderful discoveries of modern times, we now know that ancient Egypt better than we know our own England of say two hundred years ago. This knowledge of that Egypt was not available to the Jews of the Babylonian Captivity, nor even to Jews of the time of Samuel. Here, then, is a straight-out issue. Is the truth with the Bible, or is it with the critics of the Bible? What is the verdict of archeology on this matter? On such a matter as this, that verdict is final; from it there can be no appeal. And that verdict has been given clearly and emphatically. It is, that in the Biblical narrative concerning Joseph we have a wonderfully full picture, an exact reflection, of the Egypt of that very period—200 years after Abram, and 200 years before Moses.
The Many Accuracies of the Narrative
We now proceed to detail a number of the marvelous accuracies which have been noted as the result of recent archaeological investigations.
The royal court was then in Lower Egypt, in the Delta, where the Hyksos kings established their seat of government.
“Potiphar” (meaning “consecrated to Ra”) was a name of that period, and of that region of Egypt.
“Captain of the Guard.” There was a corps of the ancient Egyptian army especially charged with police duties, and with the execution of the royal orders.
Thrice over in five verses it is stated as a noteworthy circumstance that this officer was “an Egyptian.” Under a Hyksos king, this was indeed remarkable.
This nobleman had a manager of his estate; and this position was occupied by a slave. In ancient Egypt, “every great Egyptian family placed a chosen slave at the head of its establishment.”
Just as the Scripture implies, the Egyptian women of that time were neither secluded nor veiled; and yet they did not, as a rule, bear a good moral character.
The upper-class homes were so constructed that the manager had to pass through the central rooms to reach the store-chambers at the back.
In a lecture before the Royal Asiatic Society, in 1935, Dr. A. S. YAHUDA remarked that “the dungeon in which Joseph was imprisoned could be identified from the Biblical particulars as a well-known Egyptian fortress used for the incarceration of political offenders.”
At the ancient Egyptian royal court everything was highly organized. There was a “chief of the bakers,” and there was a “chief of the cup-bearers.” The chief baker of Rameses III, according to a contemporary papyrus, had in store 114,064 loaves at one time.
On ancient Egyptian monuments the very act described in Gen. 40. 11 is pictured. The ancient Egyptians were connoisseurs in wine; yet the critics formerly denied that wine was then used at all in Egypt.
The art of baking and pastry-making was then very highly developed in Egypt.
The bakers used to carry their loaves and cakes in shallow baskets on their heads. (Women in Egypt carried their loads on their shoulders).
The punishment of the chief-baker was exactly of a kind practiced in the Egypt of that time. Mummies of decapitated bodies have been found; but this man, though high in rank, by the nature of his sentence was debarred from the consolation of embalmment. (The ancient Egyptians considered that if the body was not embalmed there would be no resurrection.)
The celebration of the royal birthday, in ancient Egypt, was a great occasion, and was accompanied by the release of prisoners.
The ancient Egyptians attached great importance to dreams, which they regarded as “messages from the gods.”
A special class of men practiced as interpreters of dreams, and were held in the highest esteem.
A number of purely Egyptian words, and Egyptian idioms, are in this narrative; and no interpretation or explanation is given: which would be inexplicable, on the critical hypothesis.
The vital importance given to the Nile is a purely Egyptian feature.
(19) So is the representation of the cattle coming forth from the Nile.
(20) “Seven cows:” the invariable number in Egyptian religious representations.
(21) The cow was, to the ancient Egyptians, the symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity.
(22) The Egyptian variety of wheat bore several ears upon one stalk.
(23) Wheat was the main crop in ancient Egypt. Compare the rice in India.
(24) The ancient Egyptians believed that all evil came from the east. Thus in all these particulars we can see how God was speaking to the Pharaoh in symbols at once familiar and striking.
(25) Pharaoh’s grave concern about his dreams is another specially Egyptian feature of this narrative.
(26) “All the magicians (scribes)... all the wise men.” In ancient Egypt, “the entire body of priests were divided into four classes, and to each class were assigned five representatives, who lived in the capital, and were the appointed counselors of the king.”
(27) Although the king was in such haste, Joseph had to be shaved and had to change his raiment before being brought before the king. The former is a specially Egyptian trait; not Jewish, and not Babylonian.
(28) As to the suddenness of Joseph’s exaltation, this was a characteristic of many promotions in ancient Egypt.
“All the land of Egypt.” Under the Hyksos monarch, Apepi II, Egypt was an undivided kingdom.
“Upon thy mouth shall all my people kiss” (Heb. in chap. 41:40). In ancient Egypt there was a state dignitary called “the superior mouth of the land of Egypt.”
Also, “kiss” was the idiomatic Egyptian expression for “eat” or “be fed.”
Pharaoh’s seal-ring. The critics used to deny that the kings of Egypt had such rings; but now it is well known that they were customary at that time.
“Fine Linen” in ancient Egypt was used for the costumes of kings and of nobles. One specimen discovered has, to each inch, 270 double-threads in the warp, and 110 in the woof.
The gold “chain.” An Egyptian word is here used, “rabid,” now known to mean “collar,” and referring to a royal decoration much coveted by the Egyptian grandees.
“Potipherah” and “Asenath” were names used at that period in that part of Egypt.
The priest of On was then the most important person, apart from royalty.
There are strong indications that Apepi II became a monotheist; and we can easily see the likelihood that the king who knew and honored Joseph would come to know and to honor the God of Joseph.
The seven-years’ famine. An inscription has been found, engraved on the rock-hewn tomb of an official named Baba who served under Sekenen-Ra (the vassal-king at Thebes under Apepi II), and stating: “I collected the harvest, as a friend of the harvest-god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. And now when a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued out corn to the city each year of famine.”
“Ye are spies,” was the accusation leveled against Joseph’s brothers on their arrival in Egypt from the south of Canaan. The Hyksos conquerors, who had successfully invaded Egypt from that same region, were naturally nervous lest fresh invaders should come thence and conquer them.
“They sat before him” (Gen. 43. 33). The Egyptian custom was to sit at meals, not to recline, as the Jews did in later times.
Also, they sat according to their ages. This was the old Egyptian custom.
Just as is here related, it was customary in Egypt for the host to send portions of food from before himself to honored guests.
As is indicated in the Genesis narrative, the land of Goshen lay to the east of Memphis—towards Canaan.
And it was a district especially suitable fox cattle.
And it was at that time inhabited largely by foreigners, most of whom were Semites. We know from ancient Egyptian records that Zoan (Tanis) was an essentially non-Egyptian town. The title of the chief official of Goshen was “Governor of the, Foreign Peoples.”
The Shepherd-King was naturally glad to establish upon his eastern border an enthusiastically loyal population.
Notice the emphasis upon “occupation.” In ancient Egypt work was highly honorable; every one was expected to have some definite occupation.
The Bible narrative tells us that during the seven-years’ famine, Joseph accomplished a tremendous stroke of public policy. He transferred the population within Egypt, breaking thus the power of the old Egyptian nobles, and so securing a long period of peaceful rule for his royal masters.
We can appreciate the real generosity of Joseph’s treatment of the peasants of Egypt, now that we know of the vast and intricate system of irrigation provided and maintained by the Government in those times.
When Jacob died, Joseph’s physicians (plural) embalmed his body. Every noble in ancient Egypt retained the services of a number of doctors; for every doctor was compelled to specialize.
(51) The most expensive method of embalming took forty days. About three miles of linen bandages were used in the process.
(52) For the “great,” the period of mourning lasted for seventy days: not thirty days, as with the Jews (Dent. 34. 8).
(53) Mourners went unshaven until the burial was over. Hence Joseph could not himself make his request to Pharaoh (Gen. 50. 4).
(54) Women mourners had special place in the old Egyptian funeral processions (Gen. 50. 8).
(55) The three classes enumerated in verse 7 is found to be exactly accurate.
(56) “Chariots and horsemen” (v. 9). The Hyksos introduced horses into Egypt.
(57) It is twice stated (vv. 22 and 26) that Joseph lived 110 years. We know from the Egyptian records that in ancient times this length of life was one that was specially longed for by Egyptians. God thus honored Joseph before them.
(58) The word translated “coffin” in the last verse of Genesis is a reference to the wooden mummy-case enclosing the embalmed body.
We trust that our readers’ patience has not been exhausted by this detailed evidence, to which a number of other points could be added. Our object has been to exhibit the minute and unfailing accuracy of this narrative; an accuracy which, apart from Divine inspiration, would hardly have been possible for even Moses to achieve, and utterly impossible for the “writers” postulated by the critics of the Bible.
The Argument From Language
One chief recent contribution to the discussion of this period of Biblical History is Professor A. S. YAHUDA’s research work, detailed in his 1933 volume on “The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian,” and in his 1935 volume on “The Accuracy of the Bible.” This author proves that the Hebrew of the first five Books of the Bible is an Egyptianized Hebrew, written therefore by a writer and for readers who were familiar with both those languages. He further proves that the Egyptian elements which are in the language of the Joseph-history and that of the Exodus-history are minutely in agreement with the linguistic peculiarities of Egyptian. The dispassionate thoroughness of this author leaves his readers with a sense that finality is reached as to all the main issues and as to most of the details dealt with. Now these things being established, the conclusion inevitably follows that the writer of the Pentateuch was Moses, and also that the readers for whom it was first written were the Israelites whom he led out of Egypt. As contrasted therefore with the uncertainties of the existing Egyptian records of the 13th to the 17th Dynasties, we have, in the Genesis record, an account written by one who had ample sources of information and who was born within sixty years of Joseph’s death.
Additional Chronological Evidence
The Scripture clearly implies that when Jacob died, twenty-six years after Joseph was made the ruler of Egypt, the Egyptian king was in complete control of Southern Canaan; for the large company that went with Joseph and his brothers to bury their father in Machpelah, near Hebron, was not a military expedition, and was accorded a peaceful reception by the Canaanites. The recent discoveries by PETRIE at Gaza, and by GARSTANG at Jericho, enable us to understand why this was so: those regions at that time formed part of the Hyksos dominion. But when Joseph died, seventy years later, no attempt was made to do the same for him. At that time the power of the Hyksos was waning.
Further light comes from the earlier chapters of 1 Chronicles, a portion of Scripture generally considered to be wearisome and unprofitable. In chapter 7, verses 20-24, we are told (1) that two of Joseph’s grandsons were killed in a battle with “the men of Gath;” and (2) that a grand-daughter of Joseph built, i.e., fortified, three cities in Canaan. A consideration of Gen. 50. 23 shows that these events must have occurred some time previous to Joseph’s death, and indicate that the Hyksos Pharaohs were then having trouble with their subjects in Southern Canaan. The outcome of that trend of things was, that by the time Joseph died, the rulers of Egypt had lost those provinces.
Now the Books of Chronicles were written a thousand years later than the Book of Genesis. Thus we see that to the inspired writers of Scripture the far-distant past was clearly and accurately revealed. Left to their own resources, they would often have gone astray; but their feet were kept steadily in the path of truth by the God to whom what we call “past” or “future” is an eternal present.
In the so-called “Higher Criticism” of the Bible by the unbelieving “scholarship” of the nineteenth century, the enemy came in like a flood; but in the twentieth century discoveries of archeology, the Spirit of the Lord has lifted up a standard against the enemy, and is putting him to flight.
Chapter 6: Moses and the Exodus
The Chronological Setting
AS we have explained above, it is only since 1927 that it has been possible to reach certainty as to the dates for kings who reigned in ancient times, say, before the twelfth century B. C. We have also seen how this astronomically fixed system of dating testifies to the precision of the Biblical dates for the life of Abraham. We shall now show that the same is true for the times of Moses.
According to the Bible, we have the following dates:
B.C.
1722. The death of Joseph.
1666. The birth of Moses.
1626. Moses fled from Egypt.
1586. The Exodus from Egypt.
1546. The death of Moses.
Let us now proceed to ascertain which Pharaohs reigned during the lifetime of Moses. We can do this by working forward from the fixed date for the First Babylonian Dynasty. Thus: B.C.
These figures are given in early and very accurate Babylonian lists of kings. This Third Babylonian Dynasty was that of “Kassite” kings, of whom the first 4 account for 68 years, and the last 15 account for 165 years. The figures for the rest of the dynasty cannot be read because of damage to the tablet; but we can proceed as, follows:
The remaining 17 kings reigned for 344 years in all, which gives an average of slightly more than 20 years apiece. From the total given for the whole dynasty we know that the 21st king’s reign ended in B. C. 1378. We may therefore estimate that the 17th king, named Kadashman-Bel, reigned round about the year B.C. 1470; and that his successor, Burnaburiash II reigned round about B. C. 1450. The importance of this is, that the former exchanged letters with Amenhotep III of Egypt, and the latter with Amenhotep IV (or Akhnaton), as we know from the famous Tel-el-Amarna Tablets. Thus, at long last, it has become possible to date, within very narrow limits, these two Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty.
Let us now inquire how the Biblical History stands the test of this new information. Those who are “old-fashioned” enough to believe the Bible will easily anticipate the nature of the reply.
The New King Who Knew Not Joseph
Ahmose, the prince who founded the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, expelled the foreign Hyksos kings, and pursued them and their forces into Syria (see WEIGALL, II, p. 244). When we recollect that it was the Hyksos Dynasty that exalted Joseph and favored Israel, and that the expulsion of the Hyksos was the result of a prolonged struggle, we see how marvelously brief yet precise is the description given in Ex. 1: 8: “Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.” This expulsion of the Hyksos occurred some little time after the death of Joseph (see Ex. 1:6).
According to WEIGALL (II, pp. 239-240), Ahmose began his reign some 190 years before the middle of the reign of Amenhotep III. Other authorities make the interval longer. WEIGALL omits the reign of the widow of Ahmose, who, according to Manetho (as quoted by several writers), reigned for 13 years. He also omits the reign of the widow of Thutmose I. A longer period than WEIGALL’S is indicated as necessary by an inscription of Queen Hatshepsut (or Hatasou), which says that 120 years had elapsed from the expulsion of the Hyksos to her own times (WEIGALL, II, p. 334). In any case, it is quite clear that the Pharaohs of Moses belonged to the Eighteenth Dynasty, which, if WEIGALL’S figures are accepted, was founded about the time Moses was born.
The Pharaoh of the Exodus
The recent discoveries have remarkably confirmed the identification of Thutmose II, as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. A considerable number of arguments in support of this are set forth in Rev. J. URQUHART’S “New Biblical Guide,” Vol. IV., published at the beginning of the present century; and now the new light on the chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty, as explained above, appears to make the identification certain. Furthermore, this identification explains fully some curious facts which are emphasized by WEIGALL. For example, this writer dwells on the contempt and hatred shown for the memory of Thutmose II. by his widow Hatshepsut; and this is exactly what was to be expected in view of the obstinate and disastrous folly manifested by the Pharaoh who defied the God of Israel. Again (2) WEIGALL shows that from the death of Thutmose II, the power of the Egyptian priesthood was broken for a while; and that priesthood must have been utterly discredited in its contest with Moses and Aaron. Further (3) he shows that at the death of Thutmose II, there was suddenly a state of unsettlement and dispute about the succession to the throne; and we remember that Pharaoh’s firstborn died in the last Plague. Also (4) WEIGALL points out that Thutmose II. died in springtime; and of course it was at that season (Passover) that the Pharaoh of the Exodus died. Again, (5) the body of the Pharaoh of the Exodus must have had upon it the marks left by the Plague of Boils; and WEIGALL (II, pp. 293-4) says in regard to Thutmose II.: “His body, as may be seen at the present day, is covered with small tubercles or eruptions.” Thus “he being dead yet speaketh;” and his mummified remains bear silent but eloquent witness to the truthfulness of Scripture.
A sixth confirmation is worthy of more extended mention. According to the Biblical History, forty years intervened between the Exodus and the victorious entrance of Israel into Canaan under Joshua, which was the beginning of their rapid conquest of most of Canaan and Lower Syria. Now the successor of Thutmose II, was Thutmose III, who for some twenty years was under the domination of Hatshepsut and her circle of advisers. As soon as he was free from this restraint, he commenced a series of brilliant campaigns against Canaan and Lower Syria. Sixteen times he led his forces to victory there; but in the later campaigns he took his army by sea to Syrian ports, instead of marching them across northern Sinai and through the country of the Philistines. Then, just forty-one years after the death of his father, Thutmose III stopped this series 431 military expeditions, and never attempted to resume them, turning his attention instead to conquests to the south of Egypt. This exactly accords with the facts recorded in the Bible. The smashing by Thutmose III. of the power of the kinglets of Canaan and of Lower Syria was a Divine preparation for Israel’s conquests in the same region. On the other hand, the invasion and occupation by Israel made impossible any further continuance of those Egyptian campaigns. A favorite title of these Pharaohs was “the hornet;” and quite possibly this fact is alluded to in Exodus 23:28, Deut. 7:20, and Josh. 24:12; although the main reference appears to be to literal hornets.
Who Was “The Daughter of Pharaoh?”
According to the Biblical History, the time from the death of Joseph to the Exodus was 136 years. The best available information as to the Egyptian history is as follows:
Ahmose, the “new king,” reigned
Nefertari, his widow, reigned
His widow, and Thutmose II. reigned
This leaves 25 years for the period indicated in Ex. 1:6, from the death of Joseph to the expulsion of the Hyksos people from Egypt. “The daughter of Pharaoh” who adopted Moses was, then, the daughter of Ahmose and Nefertari (who was the heiress of the ancient Pharaohs who had been dethroned by the Hyksos). The Pharaoh reigning when Moses fled from Egypt was Thutmose I, who, if the above figures are correct, died five years later. He and his sister-queen Amessis had no son to succeed to the throne; but they had a daughter named Hatshepsut. Amessis, towards the end of her reign, married Hatshepsut to a son of Thutmose I, “a child of the harem,” who, in virtue of this marriage came to the throne as “Thutmose II.” Later on, as recorded in Ex. 9:16, God reminded him of this elevation from obscurity to dominion.
We thus see again how exact is the harmony between the Scriptural statements and all the new knowledge which is in these days being granted to us. And let it be said once more that this accuracy would have been utterly impossible if the narrative had been composed, as the critics of the Bible have been asserting, by Jews who were separated by a thousand years from the events described.
Linguistic Evidence
We would again refer to the considerable amount of new evidence as to the peculiarities of language, as published so recently by Dr. YAHUDA. His volumes exhaustively prove that the writer of the Pentateuch, and the first readers, were Israelites whose vocabulary and way of speaking had been deeply colored by a long and intimate acquaintance with Egyptian language and customs. From this it follows that the writer was indeed Moses; and from this again it follows that the record of events given in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is first-hand and first-rate testimony.
Former Conditions in the Sinaitic Peninsula
We have previously mentioned that new evidence is accumulating which shows that the rainfall over Egypt and the neighboring lands was formerly much greater than it is at present. This throws light upon the fact that for almost forty years some three million people, with flocks and herds, sojourned in the Peninsula of Sinai. Nearly the whole of their route has been followed, and the places of their encampments identified, by the descriptions and names furnished in the Books of Exodus and Numbers. The critics of the Bible, in their learned ignorance, imagined that these portions of Scripture were concocted in much later times and by a set of Jews who were quite unfamiliar with the localities; but the archaeologists are convinced, by actual investigation and discovery, that the Biblical narrative bears upon it the unmistakable marks of truthfulness.
Moses and Khamu-Rabi
The nineteenth century critics of the Bible, in their almost complete ignorance of the facts of the ancient civilizations, for a long time maintained that the art of writing had not been invented so early as the time of Moses. Later on, faced by absolute evidence to the contrary, but still reluctant to abandon their theories, they declared that the days of Moses were at any rate far too early for the idea of a Code of Laws such as is found in the Book of Exodus. They were, apparently, determined not to admit the truthfulness of the testimony of the Son of God that Moses gave the Law to Israel; the basis of their critical theories being the ruling out of Divine intervention, in favor of the “natural evolution” of religion and all else.
Modern discovery, however, is increasingly unkind to those theories. In the winter of 1901-2, DE MORGAN’S Expedition to Persia found the famous copy of the Code of Khamu-Rabi (or Hammurabi), the Amraphel of Gen. 14. This is a monument of blackdiorite, 8 feet high. It has on its upper part an engraving of the king worshipping his favorite god; and underneath is a long inscription in 44 columns, and comprising 2644 lines. The introductory sentences are followed by no less than 282 laws. Now this Code of Laws was published in the time of Abraham, 400 years before the Exodus; and its discovery at once annihilated the critical position. Furthermore, it has since been found out that Khamu-Rabi’s Code was largely a revision of another Code of laws issued 500 years earlier still by Urukagina, king of Lagash: that is, about 900 years before Moses.
But criticism was reluctant to cease its attack upon this rampart of the faith. These critics are resourceful men. They advanced another theory, namely that the Mosaic legislation was borrowed from that of the Babylonian monarch. This also has proved to be an untenable position. Dr. JEREMIAS of Leipzig has pointed out far-reaching differences between the two systems of laws. (See “The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East,” English Translation, 1911.) In the Code of Khamu-Rabi, the religious motive is quite absent; transgression is not thought of as sin against God; there is no control of lust itself, there is no inculcation of unselfishness or of love to one’s neighbor. A further striking difference is well expressed by MACY: “Those (laws) of Amraphel were formed for a settled nation, and were chiefly made to protect property; while those of Moses were formed for the guidance of a people whose individual lives were considered as of more importance than property. One, in fact, was the outcome of the mind of man, to whom wealth was everything. The other was the result of the inspiration of God, to Whom every individual life was of great value. No other nation in those days had such laws; for that point of view was unknown among any other nation, at that time.” We may point out one more vital difference: While the Mosaic laws condemn magic and all superstition, the very first two laws of the Babylonian Code recognize magical spells as of real power.
These fundamental differences unquestionably establish both the originality and the immense superiority of the Laws of Moses. See what Moses himself says on this matter in Deut. 4:5-8. Thus this last device of the “Higher Critics” to save their theory ends, like the rest, in failure.
Egyptian Cults and Mosaic Rituals
Recent researches have made clear what a vast gulf separates the sacrificial ritual given by God to Israel through Moses, from the degraded practices of the Egypt out of which they were delivered. Professor MELVIN G. KYLE, in an article written in 1924, says: “There were few real sacrifices in Egyptian religion... There was no act of substitution, hence no idea of substitutionary sacrifice. No account was taken of the blood, hence no blood atonement. The sacrifices were not burned on the altar or elsewhere, hence no doctrine of dedication; and there was no sacrificial meal, hence no fellowship with the Divine. Thus not a single one of the great ideas of the Mosaic sacrifices was found in Egypt. Moses did not get his system from Egypt, for Egypt did not have it to give.” It appears that the primeval revelation given by God to the ancestors of the human race had in many respects become more corrupted among the Egyptians than even among their neighbors to the East, as the facts to be next mentioned prove.
In 1905, Sir FLINDERS PETRIE explored an ancient temple in the Sinai Peninsula called the Temple of Serabit, close to certain mines which were worked by the Egyptian Government before and after the time of the Exodus. The workers in those mines were evidently not Egyptians; and the temple was built for their sake. The ritual differed essentially from that of Egypt, resembling rather the Semitic modes of worship. For example, the temple was built on a “high place;” incense altars were used; ceremonial washings were practiced; burnt sacrifices were offered. It is quite possible, and even probable, that a number of the mine workers who used to worship in that temple were descendants of Abraham-Ishmaelites, or even Israelites before the Exodus—who thus continued ancestral modes of worship. This supposition is strengthened by the nature of inscriptions discovered there, going back in date to about the time of the Exodus. These inscriptions are in an alphabetic writing which resembles old Hebrew letters but also shows the influence of Egyptian hieroglyphic signs.
Revelations at Ras Sharma
Mention has already been made, in our remarks on “The Origin of Alphabetic Writing,” of the remarkable discoveries made at Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast during and since 1929. The temple there was famous in the ancient world. Even Egyptian royalty sent embassies to it. In those times the city was known as Ugarit, as is proved by a tablet found on the spot. Some of the Ras Shamra tablets contain an epic poem called “The Gracious Gods;” and its contents prove that the people who composed it, and who were responsible for the type of civilization and the religious beliefs and terminology which prevailed at Ugarit, had migrated thither from the south of Palestine centuries before the days of Moses.
Now one of the main assumptions of the critics of the Bible is that “the Books of Moses” were not really written by Moses at all, but were a combination of several documents, the earliest of which was written about 700 years after Moses was dead. These critics say that the documents can be easily distinguished; because one writer (or set of writers) knew only the Divine titles “El” and “Elohim” (translated “God”), while another knew the Deity only as “Jah” or “JHVH” (translated “LORD”). The Ras Shamra tablets have demonstrated that this basal assumption of “Higher Criticism” is entirely erroneous; for in these tablets, coming from a period one thousand years earlier than the assumed earliest critical “source,” those various Divine titles are used by the same writer.
It is also interesting to note that these tablets show that in the Ugarit religion, which was imported into Syria in patriarchal times from the district in which Abraham lived, the sacrifices offered to the gods included the whole-burnt-offering, the trespass-offering, the peace-offering, and the first-fruits-offering. Bread and wine were also offered. Even the phrases used by the Ras Shamra writers sound familiarly to readers of the Old Testament, e.g., “strong as the bulls of Bashan.” Facts like these make it impossible for archaeologists to believe any longer in the “armchair” theories of the “Higher Criticism;” while believers in the Bible rejoice as each fresh discovery in the Ancient East brings its tribute to the truthfulness of the Sacred Scriptures.
Canaanite Depravity
Moses again and again refers to the abomination of the practice of human sacrifice among the Canaanites. Until recently this has by some writers been declared to be a misrepresentation. MACALISTER, however, in his excavations at Gezer, between 1902 and 1909, found definite proofs of this revolting religious rite. This is his testimony: “The whole area of the High Place was found to be a cemetery of newborn infants. That these infants were all the victims of sacrifice is suggested by their close association with the High Place, and confirmed by the fact that two at least displayed marks of fire. These infants were deposited in large jars.” Similarly, the archaeologists excavating at Ras Shamra have found proofs that the sacrificing of newborn children was practiced there at a period contemporary with Moses. It has recently been proved that in Egypt, also at that period, human sacrifice was occasionally practiced.
The practice of prostitution as a religious rite is referred to in the Hebrew of Deut. 23:17, 18. This has been abundantly confirmed and illustrated by recent discoveries, for example, at Ras Shamra, very recently, and at Ur of the Chaldees. At Ras Shamra also, as at other places, clear evidence has been found of the ancient practice of making food-offerings to the dead (see Deut. 26:14). An authoritative volume published in 1934 refers to “the practice of a ritual for the souls of the exalted dead, the ‘Rephaim’ referred to in the tablets of Ras-Shamra.”
“Cities Walled up to Heaven.”
One thing that strongly impressed the Israelites who came out of Egypt, when they reached the borders of the Promised Land, was the hugeness of the defensive walls around the cities of Canaan. Upon this matter also recent archeology is shedding light. Sir FLINDERS PETRIE speaks as follows of some of the fortifications of Old Gaza excavated by him: “A deep trench was sunk, vertical on the outer side, and sloping up inaccessibly a hundred and fifty feet to the crest of the wall. Such were the cities, ‘great and walled up to heaven,’ which dismayed the nomad Israelites” (see Deut. 1:28).
Thus, just as in the case of the earlier sections of the Biblical History, so also in regard to the Scripture record of the times of Moses, the boasted “scholarship” of the critics of the Bible is ending in confusion of face for them. Of such men it was written long ago: “The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?” (Jer. 8:9).
Note on the Exodus-Pharaoh
A number of recent writers maintain that Amenhotep II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, which, they say, occurred early in his reign; but the Scriptures distinctly and repeatedly state that the Pharaoh of the Exodus perished with his army in the Red Sea: Ex. 9:15, 16; 14:4-30; Psa. 136:15.
Chapter 7: Joshua and the Judges
A Recent Declaration
SOME of the most interesting and arresting confirmations of the accuracy of the Bible have been due to the recent investigations in Palestine, and especially at Jericho, made by Professor GARSTANG and his associates. Early in 1928, in an address delivered before the American Committee of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, this distinguished archeologist made the following important pronouncement: “Recent excavations in Palestine have proved that there is not a flaw in the Biblical narrative of the campaigns of Joshua, and they can now be traced with absolute topographical accuracy.” What a difference between this verdict of a man who has become acquainted with the facts, and the easy and foolish talk about “unhistorical legends” indulged in by learned “critics” content with their titter ignorance of those facts!
The Jericho Excavations
Recent researches have shown that the capture of Jericho was of the first importance for Joshua and the Israelites. From very ancient times it was a city to which great trade routes converged. GARSTANG, in his 1933 excavations there, revealed the ruins of the royal palace which was destroyed by fire when the city, fell before Israel. In order to get at the remains of this palace, it was necessary to clear away the remains of a strong fortress which had been built on a three-foot layer which in its turn had accumulated over the ruins of the burnt down palace. The palace therefore was built at an earlier period than was the fortress. Now GARSTANG declares definitely that the fortress belonged to the Rameses period (the 19th Dynasty of Egypt). So here we have another important confirmation of the Biblical History, which places Israel’s invasion of Canaan in the period of the 18th Dynasty.
The Walls of Jericho
GARSTANG has found that the city of Jericho was defended by two walls, separated by 12 or 14 feet. Some houses were built across the top of the walls, spanning them. Rahab’s house was one of these. There was also, just as is indicated in verses 5 and 7 of Joshua chapter 2, only one gate giving entrance to the city. The walls were very badly built: the bricks, says GARSTANG, “contained no binding straw, and varied greatly in size. The walls were therefore not regular, and the gaps were filled with mud. The outer wall was on the very brink of the mound.” The houses which bridged the two walls helped to ensure the common ruin of both. As is mentioned in Psa. 114, when Israel crossed the Jordan a terrible earthquake shook the whole region; and that was only a few days before the walls of Jericho fell. The excavations show that the walls fell outwards; and the defenders of the city would at the time be mostly on the top of the walls, expecting an attack by the army of Israel. At first the excavators thought that they had found some evidence of some undermining of the walls; but later on they discovered that this theory was a mistaken one, and that the walls must have collapsed just as the Bible says they did. Further, the excavations show that the city of Jericho had reached its climax of prosperity and enlargement during the period of the Hyksos Pharaohs, some two hundred years previously; but that in the time of Joshua the circuit of its walls amounted to less than three-quarters of a mile. It was thus perfectly easy for the army of Israel to march around the city seven times on the seventh day.
The Burning of Jericho
The excavations have proved that all Jericho was burned, and not merely the palace area. The burning of the city was carried out with intense thoroughness. GARSTANG speaks of “these impressive traces of a terrific conflagration;” and he adds: “and though the stored oil and grain must have contributed to the intensity of the fire, it is clear that such an effect could only have been obtained by studied preparation.” And another unusual feature of the burning has greatly impressed the excavators. In exact accordance with the Divine instructions recorded in Joshua chapter 6:19 and 24, they have found that while the foodstuffs were devoted to destruction, all objects of metal had been removed before the burning took place.
The “Goodly Babylonish Garment.”
Achan found in Jericho a “goodly garment” from Shinar (that is, Southern Mesopotamia); and he immediately recognized it as such. These two facts imply that there was at that period a regular trade in these articles between Babylonia and Caanan and Egypt. Recent arch2eological discoveries have emphatically confirmed this by revealing that at that time there was intense commercial activity between Babylonia and Egypt, and that the land of Canaan was the “halfway house” of that trade. Also, GARSTANG and others have shown that Jericho was one of the great centers for this international commerce.
The Date of the Conquest
As we have already shown, the Biblical chronology places the Exodus from Egypt and the conquest of the land during the 18th Dynasty of Egyptian kings, this being confirmed by what GARSTANG has discovered about the Rameside fortress which was built some time after Jericho was destroyed by Joshua. But the excavators have discovered other cogent facts to the same effect. In the old cemetery near Joshua’s Jericho they have found, in the tombs, 94 royal Egyptian scarabs (beetle-shaped gems, inscribed with royal names), ranging from the Hyksos period to the earlier part of the 18th Dynasty, but not beyond this. The conclusion is, that Jericho fell before Israel somewhere about the middle of the 18th Dynasty—that is, prior to the period covered by the Tel-el-Amarna Letters.
It is only fair to mention, however, that GARSTANG and others are of the opinion that the actual Pharaoh reigning when Jericho fell was Amenhotep III, and not the earlier monarch Thutmose III. Their opinion is based upon the fact that in the old Jericho cemetery were found two seals of Amenhotep III. However, their inference by no means follows from the fact observed; because some further use of that cemetery may easily have been made after the burning of the city, during the oppression of Israel by Cushan Rishathaim, who, as we shall presently see, was a marriage relation of Amenhotep III. Professor GARSTANG has himself shown, by his discovery of the remains of the Rameside fortress, that, when the opportunity offered, the site of Jericho was reoccupied by friends of Egypt. The chronological statements of Scripture (some of which are not accepted by GARSTANG) make it clear that Jericho was burned during the latter half of the reign of Thutmose III.
Further Confirmations
It has further been shown by GARSTANG that “numerous cities of the age of Joshua are identical in name and strategic importance with places mentioned by the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.” This fact compels the acceptance of the Book of Joshua as a reliable document of Joshua’s own times; because after that period a number of those cities ceased to be called by the old names, and some others had altogether ceased to exist.
To the same archaeologist we owe the discovery of the site of the once strong fortress of Hazor, which was “large enough to contain a permanent garrison of 40,000 or 50,000 men.” The discoverer adds: “When, further, it is found that this ‘camp’ fulfills in character and situation all the indications of Hazor, the famous stronghold of the Canaanites in the age of Joshua, a new and welcome light of material evidence begins to illuminate some of the earliest and most fascinating pages of Bible history. The political and military situation, formerly obscure, becomes intelligible; and the background to the Biblical narrative becomes real.” The situation was not, of course, in the least obscure for the first readers of the Book of Joshua; but no writer of a later age could possibly have avoided falling into many inaccuracies.
Thus in this section also the Bible comes forth triumphantly from the most searching tests that can be applied to it. As the light from the wonderful modern discovery and research in Bible lands is focused upon its pages, there shine forth ever more brilliantly its faultless accuracy and its matchless descriptive excellence.
The Chronology of the Judges
It will be helpful, as we proceed to consider the period of the Judges, first of all to set forth the chronological data. However, before we do this, we would remind our readers that, while the facts as to the Bible dates have been available all along, it is only since 1927 that we have been able with certainty to ascertain the corresponding dates for this period of Egyptian history. Various friends of the Bible have tried to manipulate the Scripture chronology, in order to make it harmonize with the dates formerly assumed for certain Pharaohs; but now that the true facts are becoming known, it is seen that there is no need for any such manipulation. The facts may conveniently be set out as follows:
1546. Israel under Joshua crossed the Jordan
1586-1533 Thutmose III., whose Syrian Campaigns ceased in 1545
1516. The death of Joshua
1500-1492. Oppression by Chishan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia
1508-1499. Thutmose IV., who married an aunt of Tushratta, King of Mitanni.
1492-1452. Forty years of prosperity due to godliness.
1499-1463. Amenhotep III., married a sister of Tushratta.
1452-1434. Oppression by Eglon, king of Moab.
1463-1447. Akhnaton, who married a daughter of Tushratta.
1434-1354. Eighty years of prosperity due to godliness.
1409-1387. Seti I., who made conquests in Syria.
1354-1334. Oppression by Jabin, “King of Canaan” and Sise-Ra.
1387-1320. Ramses II. Who subdued Syria.
1294-1287. Oppression by the Midianites.
1199-1159. Oppression of S.W. Israel by the Philistines; and also,
1199-1181. Oppression of N.E. Israel by the Ammonites.
Exact Historical Harmony
A study of the above facts and dates reveals a number of most interesting correspondences:
Thutmose III. found it advisable to cease his Syrian expeditions as soon as Israel entered Canaan.
Shortly after the death of Joshua, Egypt began a long-continued alliance with the kingdom of Mitanni, Israel’s northern enemy, and identical with the “Syria of the two rivers” of Judg. 3:8. Chushan was doubtless incited and abetted by his marriage relations of Egypt, in his attack upon Israel.
The famous Tel-el-Amarna Letters form part of a considerable correspondence between the kinglets of Canaan and the two Pharaohs, Amenhotep III. and Akhnaton. From the foregoing table it will be seen that just at this time Israel was enjoying forty years of prosperity due to godliness, and was therefore able to go on subjugating the Canaanites. Now these letters contain many appeals to Egypt by the kinglets of Canaan, for help against mighty enemies called the “Khabiri”—the Hebrews. We give one example: Ribaddi of Northern Phenicia writes to the Pharaoh: “The hostility of the Hebrews waxes mighty against the land, and against the gods.” Further, the Khabiri, though so mighty, have no king over them: exactly as was the case with the Hebrews at that time.
During that forty years the Canaanites were so thoroughly subdued that the next oppression of Israel came not from them, but from Moab, whose king reoccupied Jericho. After the deliverance wrought by Ehud, Israel “had rest for eighty years.”
Consequent upon the Syrian conquests of Rameses II., we find, instead of a number of Canaanite kinglets, “Jabin, king of (all) Canaan:” an appointee of the Pharaoh, who took care to place over this king’s army an Egyptian general named Sise-Ra, furnishing him with an equipment of 900 iron chariots. Sir FLINDERS PETRIE remarks, concerning recent excavations in Palestine: “When iron furnaces and massive tools are unearthed, the 900 chariots of iron of Jabin’s become real to us.” It is also noteworthy that Thutmose III. boasts, in an inscription about one of his campaigns in Canaan and Syria, that he brought back from Migdol 900 chariots, “not only of iron, but many plated with gold and silver.”
From Judg. 4:24 we see that after the defeat and death of Sise-Ra, King Jabin held out for some time against Israel, but was finally destroyed. No doubt he sent urgent appeals to Rameses II. for help; but he received none. This is in exact accord with the policy of Egypt just then, whose resources had been disastrously and permanently weakened by the costly victory over the great Hittite confederacy at Kadesh in B.C. 1367.
The “Victory Monuments.”
The more recent discovery of “Victory Monuments” of Seti I. and Rameses II. at Beth-Shan in Palestine has brought into fresh prominence the victory monument of Merneptah (the successor of Rameses II.), which was found at Thebes in 1896, and which says: “Kheta (the Hittite-land) is subdued, Canaan has been despoiled, Ashkelon is led captive, Gezer is taken, Israel is wasted and has no seed.” These fresh monuments boast of similar victories by Seti I. and Rameses II. The Israelites were therefore, in the days of those monarchs, already settled in Canaan, just as the Bible says; whereas this has been denied by many, who have also, in the interests of their theories, treated the Biblical chronology with contempt. The notion that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh of the Egyptian Oppression obtained some seeming support from the discovery of that king’s name on buildings and monuments at Pithom (see Ex. 1:11). Now, however, it is well known that Rameses II. in a wholesale manner “stole the monuments of his predecessors;” and so the mere occurrence of his name should no longer deceive anyone. While, then, it is clear that the inscription on Merneptah’s monument cannot be reconciled with the more popular idea about the Pharaohs of the Oppression and of the Exodus, it is in complete accord with the chronology given in the Bible and with the new and accurate dating now at last obtained for the reigns of the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. From these new Victory Monuments found at Beth-Shan, we see that towards the close of those eighty years of Judg. 3:30, the godliness of the Israelites began again to decline, and so difficult times set in for them once more (see Judg. 5:6).
Thus every fresh discovery in Bible lands not only confirms the truthfulness of the Bible, but also helps us to enter more fully into the meaning and the implications of the sacred words.
Chapter 8: The Undivided Kingdom
The Reign of Saul
THE chief recent contribution of archeology to the illustrating of this part of the Biblical History relates to Beth-Shan and its “House of Ashtaroth” mentioned in 1 Sam. 31:10. While engaged in the excavating of this temple during 1925, the members of the Expedition made some important discoveries. They ascertained that the temple was built about the time of Seti I. and Rameses II., each of whom obtained temporary control of that part of Palestine. In the room just outside the temple they found a pottery cult-object, on the uppermost stage of which stands a figure of the goddess Ashtoreth. After the battle of Gilboa, the Philistine victors dedicated to this goddess the armor of King Saul.
The Reign of David
Recent discoveries have thrown further light upon various incidents in the life of David. During 1926 considerable remains were found of the old Jebusite fortifications of the Jerusalem stronghold which David captured after he had been crowned king over all Israel. In an article in Life and Work for February, 1927, the discoverer, Rev. J. G. DUNCAN, gives photographs of the Jebusite northern wall and outer northern wall, with the breach made by David’s army, and the diagonal wall which he afterward built to close the breach.
A year or two later, Sir FLINDERS PETRIE identified and excavated the ruins of Bethphelet, the home of David’s bodyguard troops, the Pelethites.
The stratagem by which David’s forces captured Jerusalem can now be clearly understood, since the “gutter” mentioned in 2 Sam. 5:8 has been identified by WARREN’S discoveries. This “gutter” was a secret tunnel some 55 feet long, together with a vertical shaft 50 feet high, from the top of which shaft there was access to the stronghold by a sloping passage and a flight of steps. The object of all this was to secure secret access for the garrison to a good water-supply. Up through this secret passage-way Joab led the storm troops (1 Chron. 11:6).
On the road that leads from Jerusalem to Shechem, near a place called Gofna, Dr. SUKENIK has recently discovered a burial cave which is identified as that of Bilgah, who was appointed by David as one of the chief of the priests (see 1 Chron. 24:14).
As investigation proceeds it becomes increasingly plain that, during the period covered by the reigns of David and Solomon, not one of the usually great powers of the Near East—Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittites—was in a position to challenge the new Empire of Israel.
The Reign of Solomon: The Temple
In regard to the building of the Temple, IRWIN, in his volume, “Bible, Scholar, and Spade,” published in 1932, says: “Captain (afterward Sir Charles) Warren, discovered masons’ marks in red paint, with some characters chiseled out of the stone itself, in some of the stones at the southeast angle of the rock on which Solomon’s Temple was built. Mr. DEUTSCH, of the British Museum, examined them, and said that they are the marks of Phoenician masons. Some are letters, some are figures, most of them quarry marks, put upon them by the masons who hewed them at the quarry, and would be intended possibly to indicate the position they would have in the wall. Mr. DEUTSCH said that they exactly correspond with markings which he found on the very oldest ruins of the city of Tyre. There is evidently here more than mere coincidence with the Bible statement that the Temple was built by the workmen of Hiram, king of Tyre.” Furthermore, it turns out that in 2 Chron. 4:16 we have preserved for us a special Tyrian title. The English Version reads, “Huram his father,” which does not yield any appropriate sense. But the Hebrew word “Abi,” which is rendered “his father,” was the Tyrian title meaning “king.” It is also noteworthy that at Ras Shamra the remains have been found of an ancient temple whose brick walls were covered with cedar wood. Compare what is written in 2 Sam. 7:2 and 1 Kings 6:9.
Other Buildings of Solomon’s
From excavations carried out at Jerusalem during 1923-4, it would appear that the remains have been discovered of that famous structure called “Millo,” which was built by Solomon, and repaired by Hezekiah (see 1 Kings 9:15, 24; 11:27; 2 Chron. 32:5).
Solomon rebuilt Megiddo, and made it one of the cities for his chariot and cavalry forces (see 1 Kings 9:15, 19). Now, in 1923 the Chicago University Palestine Expedition found and excavated “the actual stables in which Solomon kept his horses. It is possible to see the very holes in the stone pillars to which, by their halters, these royal steeds were hitched.” One great stable at Megiddo was more than 160 feet long. “Each block is for 24 horses and their chariots. There is a central avenue to hold the chariots, and on either side 12 great pillars, with tether holes, and stone posts placed between the pillars all the way. The horses were thus outside of the rows of pillars, and the grooms went up the chariot avenue to feed them. Many such great stables remain, and others of lesser size.”
Solomon rebuilt also Hazor, which had been destroyed by Joshua (see 1 Kings 9:15 and Josh. 11:11). Nearly 250 years after Solomon, it was captured by Tiglath-Pileser (see 2 Kings 15:29). This also has been beautifully confirmed by recent discoveries. The remains of Hazor, identified and investigated by GARSTANG in 1926, demonstrate that the place was destroyed at the same period as was Jericho, and that later on, in the “Early Iron Age,” which covers the period from Solomon to Tiglath-Pileser, the site was reoccupied.
Solomon’s Riches
Sir FLINDERS PETRIE, in connection with his excavations in Southern Palestine, remarks: “The dating of the tombs of this rich period... show that the richest age of Israel was the reign of Solomon.” And again: “Excavations made at Bethphelet show that even in a remote town on the southern frontier the profusion of fine jewelry far exceeds the products of Egypt and Babylonia in that age.”
Solomon’s Copper Mines
Mr. NELSON GLUECK, of the American School of Oriental Research, in an article published in July, 1934, says: “The source of a large part of the great wealth of Solomon has been ascertained through the discovery of a large number of rich copper-mines in the Arabah.... About thirty miles south of the Dead Sea, on the eastern side of the Arabah, an acropolis was discovered.” This fortress guarded “the western and northern approaches to the copper mines which were subsequently discovered. On the top and sides of the acropolis, pottery was found belonging to the period between the twelfth and the eighth centuries B. C.”
About five miles southeast of this fortress, the Expedition found “a very large mining site, where copper ore was extracted and smelted during the Solomonic period.... The area between the hills is packed with ruined houses and small, ruined furnaces, and is black with heaps of slag. The raw ore protrudes above the surface in the immediate vicinity ... . Within a five-mile radius” of this mining-site, “the expedition discovered three other large copper-mining and smelting centers.... Two of them... were worked during the Solomonic period.”
In addition to these, about three miles due south of the first site, lies one named Feinan. Concerning this, Mr. GLUECK remarks: “It is a tremendous site, and was occupied from about 2200-1800 B. C., and after that not until the period extending between the thirteenth and eighth centuries B. C. . . . There are huge heaps of copper ore slag.... Feinan is the site of the Biblical Punon mentioned in Num. 33:42.... “Another mining site exploited in the Solomonic period was found at Ghadian, on the Palestinian side of the Arabah. Iron ore was discovered there. A few miles south of it, also on the Palestinian side, is the largest and richest mining center in the entire Arabah, which also was worked primarily in the Solomonic period. It is called Mene’ iyyeh, and is about 21 miles north of Akabah. There is a great acropolis there, guarding six separate mining camps which cluster about it.... It also protected the approach to the mining sites in the Arabah north of it.”
“These mining sites,” continues the report, “which were revisited or newly discovered by the expedition, throw new light on the passage in Deut. 8:9, where the Promised Land is described to the Israelites as ‘a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.’” (The Hebrew word translated “brass” means “copper.”)
A Significant Contrast
Concerning this portion of the Biblical History, we would ask our readers to notice a most significant contrast: the contrast, namely, between the attitude of the critics of the Bible and the attitude of the men who are engaged in recovering the facts in Bible lands. A widely advertised critical commentary, published as recently as 1928, uses the following terms concerning the Scriptural account of the reigns of David and of Solomon: “fragmentary character;” “assembling of information culled from various ancient annals and temple records;” “they gave to their national hero a halo of which perhaps he was unworthy;” “doubtless this passage commemorates an ancient tradition;” “such idealizations, which ignore ugly facts.” There are absolutely no facts to support such suspicions and denials of the accuracy of the Scripture. On the other hand, as we have seen, the archaeologists are profoundly impressed with the wonderful and unfailing truthfulness of the Bible. It has been well remarked by one modern writer that, as the result of the twentieth century discoveries in the countries of the Near East, “the bottom has been knocked out of the nineteenth century critical theories.”
Chapter 9: From Solomon to Nebuchadnezzar
Rehoboam and Shishak
DURING 1926-7, Sir FLINDERS PETRIE excavated the ruins of Gerar, eight miles south of Gaza. Six successive and distinct periods of building were uncovered. One of these (the third oldest) was found to be due to Shishak, whose successful invasion and conquest of Judah, in the days of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, are related in 2 Chronicles chapter 12. In 1928 PETRIE began the excavation of the ancient Bethphelet, which lay a little inland from Gerar; and he has found that “the site was heavily refortified during Shishak’s occupation of Palestine in the 10th century B. C.”
Samaria and Omri
The Bible says that the city of Samaria was built by King Omri of Israel on a hill where no previous city had existed. The 1931 report of the Joint Expedition, which has been investigating the ruins at Samaria, makes the following statement: “Like our predecessors, we have failed completely to find any remains earlier than the time of Omri, and it would seem that Samaria was an entirely new foundation as the Bible suggests.”
Ahab’s Palace
The excavation of the ruins of Samaria was commenced by an Expedition sent out from Harvard University, about 1910, under Dr. REISNER; and since then a Joint Expedition has made further discoveries. As the result of their work during 1931, the excavators state that the buildings of old Samaria “are without parallel in contemporary Palestine,” the palace area covering at least 7 or 8 acres, and the stonework being remarkably good. The report states that “the jointing was very fine, and the bonding between courses carefully executed throughout.” The Expedition draws attention to the Biblical statement that “Samaria held out for three years against Assyria, the greatest military power of the day;” and the remark is made: “With these walls before us, can we be surprised?”
The Ivory Palace
This is referred to in 1 Kings 22:39. The Joint Expedition has found a large number of ivories “near the spot where Ahab’s ‘house of ivory’ must have stood.” The report states: “These ivories are the most charming examples of miniature art found on an Israelite site.” A comparison of them with other datable ivories has led the discoverers to conclude that these Samaria ivories “belong, like the walls, to the time of Ahab and Jezebel.” Furthermore, in view of the Biblical description of Ahab as one who adopted the idolatries of the Gentiles, it is very significant that the engravings on these ivories clearly reveal the influence both of the art and also of the idolatries of Egypt and of Assyria and of North Syria.
Ahab’s Temple and Jezebel’s Tower
In Samaria, King Ahab built a temple to Baal (1 Kings 16:32), which was destroyed forty years later by Jehu (2 Kings 10:27). The ruins of this temple were found and were excavated by the Harvard University Expedition. More recently still, what appear to be the remains of the Tower of Jezebel in Samaria have been found by Professor LAKE. It was constructed of “great granite blocks six feet long and a yard wide. It rises some thirty feet high, but was originally much higher.”
The Pool of Samaria
The Harvard archaeologists found, within the walls enclosing Ahab’s palace, the remains of that large reservoir, which is referred to in 1 Kings 22:38. The site of Samaria has no natural water supply; and so Omri and Ahab had to construct large “pools” and cisterns.
Ahab’s Search-Warrant
Ahab got out a search-warrant for Elijah, and had it circulated throughout the neighboring kingdoms, as we read in 1 Kings 18:10. Even a detail like this has had light thrown upon it by recent discovery. At Ras Shamra, in 1932, the French archaeologist, M. SCHAEFFER, found a tablet, probably of the time of Abraham, which turns out to be “a warrant of arrest against a fraudulent treasurer who had absconded and concealed himself in the Ras Shamra territory, where he was arrested.”
Ahaziah’s Embassy to Ekron
We read in 2 Kings 1:2, 3, that this son of Ahab sent an embassy to the heathen temple at Ekron to pray to the god of Ekron for healing from his disease. This incident also has been illustrated from Ras Shamra, where SCHAEFFER has found several gifts dedicated to the god or gods of the temple of that city, on behalf of members of the Egyptian royal families, for similar reasons. Gifts also, of course, were sent by King Ahaziah with his messengers; for the heathen priests acted always on the principle, “Nothing for nothing.”
King Amaziah and Gerar
From 2 Kings 14 and 2 Chron. 15, we learn that Amaziah, King of Judah, spent much time and energy in defensive and offensive military operations. These necessarily included the fortifying of various key-positions. The city of Gerar was one such place, as is proved by the fact that the remains of “great military granaries” have recently been discovered there. Sir FLINDERS PETRIE expressly declares that the building period at Gerar, next after that of Shishak, was the period of Amaziah, King of Judah.
Hezekiah’s Defensive Measures
Recent discoveries at Jerusalem have brought out the meaning of references in the Bible to the defensive measures which were adopted by King Hezekiah in view of the threatened Assyrian invasion. Sennacherib’s generals stood “by the conduit of the upper pool which is in the highway of the fuller’s field” (2 Kings 18:17 and Isa. 36:2); and the prophet said to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool” (Isa. 22:11). These references to the reservoir and aqueduct constructed by Hezekiah were confirmed by the excavations of SCHICK and MASTERMAN in 1913-4.
The Lachish Letters
In 1932 the Wellcome Archaeological Research Expedition began excavations at Tell Duweir, a mound of ruins twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem, situated on an almost isolated ridge and commanding an extensive view over the coastal plain. By the third season of investigation this site has been definitely identified as the Old Testament city of Lachish (a name meaning “height”), which is mentioned nine times in the Book of Joshua and in a dozen passages elsewhere. It is also referred to frequently in Egyptian and in Assyrian records. The Expedition has found abundant proof that Lachish was of great antiquity, its period of greatest expansion being before the time of Abraham; and, further, that it was powerful and famous in the days of Joshua and in the times of the Judges. The chief discoveries, however, relate to the disastrous period ending in the capture and destruction of the city by the army of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 34:7).
Mr. J. L. STARKEY, the Director of the Expedition, wrote as follows (July, 1935): “The levels of the later Jewish city bear eloquent witness to the tragedy of its complete destruction. The intensity of the great fires kindled below the walls during the Babylonian siege, which preceded the first Exile, reduced the city to ruins. This state of desolation continued until the Persian rebuilding after the return from the Captivity during the reign of Cyrus.... During the clearance of the Persian remains of the outer gateway, the earlier Jewish guardroom was discovered; fifteen potsherds were recovered from the burnt debris above the floor, inscribed in ink with early Hebrew characters. They appear to be letters received by the captain of the guard, one Ya’ush.” One of these letters is a military dispatch stating that the writer can no longer see the signals of Azekah. On this Dr. STARKEY remarks: “It is noteworthy that in this military contest Azekah and Lachish are mentioned together as in Jer. 34:7.”
It is possible to ascertain from these recent discoveries the very time of the year when Lachish fell: “We find quantities of carbonized olive stones in the ashes of the fires kindled against the foundations; they provide an indisputable seasonal date for the attack—in July or August.”
Dr. H. TORCZYNER, of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem, and others with him, have deciphered this series of letters, one of which actually refers to the expedition of Elnathan the son of Achbor, who was sent to Egypt to arrest the runaway prophet Urijah; as is recorded in Jer. 26:20-23. On this the translator remarks: “Here for the first time is authentic, contemporary, internal confirmation of the political, military and religious struggles during the last phase of the Judean Kingdom, as told in the Holy Scriptures.”
These letters also clearly testify to the fact of the religious reformation carried out by King Josiah. Out of twenty-one personal names in the letters, no less than sixteen are compounded with the sacred Name “Jehovah,” which proves that at the time when these people were born there was in Judah a revival of the worship of the true God. The excavators have also found evidence that not long before the destruction of Lachish by the Babylonians, the city had been purged of idolatrous worship. Close to the city gate they found “the ruins of a limestone base for a pedestal or altar... buried immediately below the level of the latest Jewish road surface.” This is indeed ocular demonstration of the thoroughness with which Kind Josiah smashed idolatry, as is recorded in 2 Kings, chapter 23, and in 2 Chronicles, chapter 34.
When facts like these are constantly coming to light, it is surely not to be wondered at that the formerly fashionable theories of the critics of the Bible are perishing out of the minds of the men who are discovering and investigating these records of the past.
Kings of Judah and of Israel
We believe that the following table of kings of Judah and Israel will be found useful by many of our readers.
It is important to notice that in a number of instances the monarch, some time before his death, associated with himself the son whom he intended should succeed him. This was done also in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. This fact of co-regency is the simple explanation of several alleged “discrepancies” in the Books of Kings and Chronicles; and it also solves certain difficulties arising from the comparison of the Assyrian inscriptions with the Biblical record.
Believers in the Bible are so sure of their ground that they welcome the fullest investigation, knowing that as real knowledge increases so there will be an increasing recognition of the absolute truthfulness of the Scriptures. In His wonderful prayer to the Father, the Lord Jesus exclaimed, “Thy word is truth;” and every disciple of the Lord will say, “Amen.”
Chapter 10: The Bible and Vanished Empires
1. THE HITTITES BIBLICAL STATEMENTS ABOUT THE HITTITES
IN the first place, we present a summary of what the Bible states concerning this important people. The Scriptures contain more than fifty references to the Hittites; and from these the following facts can be deduced: The Hittites were, at least mainly, neither Japhetic nor Semitic, but Hamitic.
They were a branch of the Canaanites, being descended from Canaan’s second son, Heth.
In Abraham’s time (2000 B. C.) they were an important element in the population of the land of Canaan, and were dominant in the city of Hebron, which was in the southern section of the central highlands.
Jerusalem was either built, or enlarged into an important city, by Amorites and Hittites acting conjointly (see Ezek. 16:3, 45).
Hittites (probably) built Hebron about the time of the Hyksos invasion and conquest of Egypt; and the Hyksos invaders built Zoan in Egypt seven years later (see Num. 13:22). Hittites seem to have formed a strong contingent of the conquering army.
Four hundred years after Abram, in the time of Moses, the Hittites formed the second strongest branch of the Canaanites in Palestine.
The Hittites, like the Jebusites and the Amorites, inhabited mountainous parts of Palestine, and not the lowlands (see Num. 13:29).
Forty years later, when Joshua led Israel to the conquest of the land, Hittites were the northern power, ruling the country between Lebanon and the Euphrates (see Josh. 1:4).
These Hittites came to help the kings of Northern Palestine against Joshua, and shared in their utter defeat (see Josh. 11:1-45).
550 years later, in Solomon’s time, a number of Hittites were still left in Palestine; and to the north of his dominions a number of “kings of the Hittites” were ruling (see 1 Kings 10:29).
A hundred years later still, about B. C. 890, “the kings of the Hittites” were so formidable that a mere rumor of their advance struck terror into the army of Syria (see 2 Kings 7:6).
Thus, according to the Biblical History, the Hittites were a powerful and independent people for well over a thousand years; and powerful Hittite monarchs were ruling within and beyond the borders of North Syria for at least a hundred years from the time of Solomon.
Critical Scorn of the Biblical Statements
Until comparatively recently, in the absence of all other sources of information about the Hittites, the Biblical statements were discredited by the critics, and were actually used against the Bible; the assumption being that no statement of the Bible was to be believed unless it was supported by some outside evidence. Professor SAYCE, to whom was given the privilege of being the first to discover the archaeological facts in regard to the Hittites, has remarked that. the Biblical statements “were set down as undeniable proof of the unhistorical character of the Scriptures. No other ancient literature knew anything of such an Empire, or made any mention of such a people.” It is true that even before the close of the nineteenth century sufficient facts had come to light to render such an unbelieving position untenable; but one leading critic could still venture to declare: “No Hittite king can have compared in power with the King of Judah... nor is there a single mark of acquaintance with the contemporaneous history.”
The Biblical Statements Confirmed
On this confident criticism SAYCE remarks: “It is not the Biblical writer, but the modern author, who is now proved to have been unacquainted with the contemporaneous history of the time.” The discovery and decipherment of the ancient records of the Hittites form one of the most notable achievements of recent archaeology; and the facts discovered (though not always the theories built upon those facts), concerning the Hittite Empire, and its associated peoples, have witnessed to the truthfulness of the Scripture references. Professor GARSTANG, in his 1910 volume on “The Land of the Hittites,” ranks the Scriptures as the most important of the sources for Hittite history. There is still controversy as to whether the Hittites were a Hamitic people. Some obscurity is caused by the fact that certain non-Hittite tribes and peoples, who were associated in the Hittite Empire, are in various records referred to loosely as “Hittites.” Already, however, there are many indications that on this point, as on the others, the Biblical History is about to be entirely vindicated. For the nineteenth century critics of the Bible, manufacturing theories “out of their own heads,” the Biblical references to the Hittites demonstrated the ignorance of the Biblical writers. For the twentieth century archaeologists, these same references constitute the Scriptures the most important of the sources for Hittite history. It seems to take a long time for such facts to become known to the religious world; and sometimes it seems as though they were being suppressed by those whose theories are endangered by the modern discoveries. Our readers therefore have a definite duty and a precious privilege in the passing on to others of these vital facts.
2. ASSYRIA
Assyrian Chronology
The foundations of our knowledge of Assyrian chronology are not so secure as has been generally supposed. One of its main sources is furnished by the “Eponym Lists.” (In these lists each year is named after the king or after some leading official, who have been entitled “Eponyms.”) These Lists were thought to be extremely accurate; and, since they could not always be harmonized with certain Bible statements, the critics of the Bible of course declared that the mistake must lie with the Bible. But further investigation has shaken confidence in the Eponym Lists. One leading Assyriologist is of the opinion that at one point some 46 or 47 years have been dropped out in the Assyrian Lists. Again, in the Eponym Lists, in one year of the reign of Assurdaan an eclipse of the sun is mentioned; and this has been identified with an eclipse which was visible in Assyria in 763 B. C. Professor OPPERT, however, points out that this identification cannot be correct; for in the same List it is mentioned that another eclipse occurred 121 years earlier, and there was no eclipse in that region in 884 B.C. Professor OPPERT declares “In the present state of Assyriological science, we are enabled to show that the Books of Kings are the real basis of our historical knowledge on the subject, and that the pretended cuneiform chronology must bow to the mathematical correctness of the Holy Scriptures.” Further, Professor SAYCE, in comparing two inscriptions, both by Shalmaneser II., remarks: “It may be added that the dates given in the latter inscription do not always agree with those in the one before us; a fact which illustrates the necessity of critical caution even when we are dealing with contemporary documents.” Thus by comparison with other historical records, the faultless accuracy of the Biblical History shines out more and more clearly.
The Fall of Nineveh and of Assyria
A most illuminating inscription has recently been found and deciphered, but has not yet become generally known. It was written by Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar; and it was first published by the University of Chicago in 1927. It throws much fresh light on the great events that occurred just before and just after the death of Josiah, King of Judah. This inscription has quite upset the hitherto accepted account of the fall of Nineveh; but it is found to be in perfect accord with what the Bible says. Nabopolassar relates that in his tenth year (B. C. 616) he attacked Assyria, and that an army of Egypt helped the Assyrians against him. In his eleventh year he renewed the war, being himself helped by the Medes. Three years later (B. C. 612) the combined forces of the Babylonian and the Medes took Nineveh by assault. The Assyrian king, however, escaped, and established himself at Harran, which he made his capital. Nabopolassar in his sixteenth year (B. C. 610) captured Harran; and the Assyrian king fled with the remnant of his army across the River Euphrates. Later in the same year, he re-crossed the river, along with “the great army of Egypt,” and besieged Harran, but could not recapture it, the Babylonian forces within it successfully resisting all attacks.
Now it was in the year 610 B. C., according to the Biblical History, that Pharaoh Necho, marching from Egypt to Carchemish, defeated and slew King Josiah.
The new tablet proceeds to relate that Nabopolassar marched to the relief of his garrison in Harran. From this point there are lacunae in the tablet; but the portions which remain readable show that the Babylonians were completely successful, and continued their victorious campaign as far as Armenia. The wording indicates that at this stage of the war Nabopolassar was no longer with his army; and it is probable that the commander was the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar. It would appear that, at a later stage in this protracted war, the Babylonian army, under Nebuchadnezzar, encountered the Egyptian army at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and inflicted upon Necho and his forces a decisive defeat.
These newly recovered facts enable us for the first time to understand some hitherto misinterpreted Scriptural statements about the military operations of this Egyptian monarch. The usual assumption—held by the critics of the Bible as well as by believers in the Bible—has been that Egypt was allied with Babylonia and Media against Assyria. This is indeed the impression conveyed by the ordinary translation of 2 Kings 23:29, where a certain Hebrew preposition (‘al) is rendered “against,” although a few words further on it is translated “to.” In the light of the facts revealed by this inscription, it becomes clear (1) that the more correct rendering of this passage is: “In his days Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to be beside the king of Assyria beside the River Euphrates...;” (2) that the phrase used by this Pharaoh and recorded in 2 Chron. 35:21, namely, “the house wherewith I have war,” refers to the Babylonian royal house, which had been his avowed enemy for over six years.
The Battle in Carchemish
The Bible tells us that Nebuchadnezzar inflicted final defeat upon the Egyptian army some three or four years later, in the fourth year of Josiah’s son; see Jer. 46:2, which speaks of “the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt, which was beside the River Euphrates IN Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzer king of Babylon smote” (Heb.). The date was B. C. 607 or 606.
And now for part of the same story, as unearthed by the spade of the archeologist. Professor C. L. WOOLLEY carried out excavations at Carchemish. He says: “We soon brought to light the ruins of a large private house.... It was clear from the outset that the house belonged to the last days of the city’s existence.... The floor was covered with a thick layer of ashes, and in the ashes lay hundreds of bronze arrowheads, lance-points, and fragments of broken swords. The weapons were most numerous near the doors of the rooms, and here, in the thresholds, one would find the arrowheads bent by the force with which they had struck the stone jambs or the metal binding of the doors. Evidently a desperate fight had been waged from room to room, the defenders gradually weakening, until at last the house had been fired over their heads.” The weapons found were “of Babylonian and Egyptian origin.” What a vivid commentary upon the concise statement of the inspired Word. Among other relics were found “clay seals impressed with the name of Necho himself.”
3. BABYLON
The Royal University
We learn from the Book of Daniel (chap. 1:3-5) that at Babylon there was a royal university with a course of teaching extending over three years, for the training of provincial governors and other important officials of the empire. It is significant that this training lasted for three years, just as did the studies at the far more ancient university at Nippur, of which we have spoken already in chapter 3, p.46. The regulations in the time of Nebuchadnezzar simply carried on the old traditions in this matter as in many other respects.
Nebuchadnezzar, the Builder of Babylon
“The king spake and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30). The archaeologists, who have studied the life and times of Nebuchadnezzar from that king’s own records, are agreed that this speech reveals, with astonishing clearness and brevity and fidelity, both his character and also his most cherished achievement—the rebuilding, enlarging and beautifying of Babylon.
In the fifth century B. C., the Greek historian Herodotus visited this city, and has left us the description of it as he beheld it; and we should remember that by then a century had passed away since the glory of Babylon had begun to fade. He says that the city was surrounded by walls 300 or 350 feet high, and some 80 feet in thickness, composing a square, each side almost fifteen miles in length. Piercing these tremendous walls were “a hundred gates all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.” Through the midst of the city the broad Euphrates flowed. Says one recent writer (J. A. BRENDON): “Babylon was not a city as we think of cities today, not a place where men lived herded in narrow streets and gloomy Squares. Its gorgeous temples, palaces, and halls stood in stately parks. There were great hunting grounds in its midst.” The dwellings of the people had palm groves, orchards, and small plots of cornland.
The chief glory of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon was the royal palace, with its famous “Hanging Gardens;” terrace rising above terrace, balcony upon balcony. It was erected “on one side of the river, in a circular space surrounded by a lofty wall;” and it formed a “central and commanding object.” It was the only building in Babylon “in which hewn stone was used to any considerable extent;” for stones lad to be brought from great distances, there being po source of supply in the Babylonian plains. This portion of the royal palace “occupied a square, with a circuit of rather more than a quarter of a mile.” It comprised “a series of wide, stone terraces, supported by arches, and rose, like a giant stairway, to a height of 350 feet, the whole structure being strengthened by a surrounding wall 20 feet thick. On each of the terraces was a layer of mold so deep as to make it possible not only for plants and flowering shrubs to grow, but fruit-bearing trees as well.
“The gardens were irrigated by means of hydraulic pumps which raised water to a reservoir on the highest terrace. On top of the numerous arches the builders laid reeds and bitumen, and above these, thick sheets of lead. This served to prevent moisture from the soil leaking through and so damaging the spacious and superbly decorated apartments constructed in the vaulted spaces between the arches below. A wide flight of steps ascended from each terrace to the one above” (J. A. BRENDON, in “Wonders of the Past”).
Just recently (1932) the Oxford Field Expedition, making excavations at the palace-site, found among the ruins “a luxurious swimming pool, 45 by 36 feet, lined with brick, and planned on a water system very similar to present-day methods. Constant fresh water was supplied by means of a ‘circulatory system,’ and by careful adjustment could be kept at the required depths.”
The modern archaeologists, carefully reconstructing from their discoveries the picture of the ancient glories of Babylon, find in the language of the Bible the most appropriate wording by which to express their admiration of those glories. The critics of the Bible have suffered no heavier defeat than that which has befallen them in their attack upon the Book of Daniel. One recent writer thus speaks of the “Higher Critical” theory that the Book of Daniel was a pious forgery composed by some Jew in Palestine in the early part of the second century B.C.: “If any man say that this could have been done by a forger writing four centuries after the events, when two empires and civilizations had overlaid and blotted out the Babylonian, we despair of changing opinions which refuse to be affected by the most stupendous facts. When Herodotus visited Babylon, only one hundred years after the great king’s death, Nebuchadnezzar, even for an inquiring Greek traveler, was not even a name in the city that he had built. The Greek traveler heard nothing of him. And yet it is supposed that a Palestinian Jew, writing after other two centuries had deepened the oblivion, could so recall the past, that this man should be set before us just as he lived and thought and spoke” (Rev. J. URQUHART, in “The New Biblical Guide”).
Belshazzar, the King
In the matter of the Scriptural references to Belshazzar, the critics of the Bible felt very sure of their ground. Outside the Bible, no king of this name seemed to be known to any ancient writer on Babylonian history. The last Babylonian king, according to those writers, was named Nabonadius or Nabonidus; and this was confirmed by the Babylonian monuments, which gave his correct name as Nabonahid. Further, he did not die when Babylon was captured, nor was he there at the time; nor was he a son or a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. In all these respects the Biblical History was impugned. However, one discovery followed another on this subject, even before the close of the nineteenth century. By then it was well-known, from Babylonian inscriptions, that Belshazzar was the eldest son of Nabonahid, and was referred to by him as “the delight of my heart;” that he had been appointed as commander-in-chief of the army; and that he was killed in Babylon on the night when that city was captured by Cyrus.
More recent discoveries have brought further tribute to the accuracy of the Biblical History. In 1915 Dr. PINCHES noted that on a business tablet from Erech there was registered an oath taken in the joint names of Nabonahid the king and Belshazzar the king’s son, this indicating clearly a co-regency. Then in SIDNEY SMITH’S “Babylonian Historical Texts,” 1924, there is published the content of a tablet from Babylon, which states that Nabonahid, when about to set out on a military expedition to “Tema in Amurru” (see Job 6:19; Isa. 21:14; Jer. 25:23), raised Belshazzar to co-regency: “He loosed his hands; he entrusted to him the sovereignty.” It is evident that when Belshazzar, terrified, and willing to promise anything he could grant, offered to Daniel only the third place in the kingdom (Dan. 5:16, 29), he himself was already sharing the throne with another. Belshazzar was descended from Nebuchadnezzar, not through his father Nabonahid, but through his mother.
It becomes increasingly manifest that, in answer to the nineteenth century attacks upon the Bible, the God of the Bible has been furnishing, through the startling recent discoveries in Bible lands, a wonderfully full and detailed and crushing reply.
In Conclusion
Marvelous Accuracy of the Bible
Before closing our review of this subject, we would place before our readers several important considerations relating to the whole field of Old Testament research. We do so in words of Professor R. D. WILSON, an authority of worldwide reputation, taken from his 1920 volume on “A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament.”
The Test of Language
“Now if the Biblical History be true, we shall expect to find Babylonian words in the early chapters of Genesis and Egyptian words in the later; and so on down, an ever-changing influx of new words from the languages of the ever-changing dominating powers. And, as a matter of fact, this is exactly what we find. Thus, the first chapters of Genesis contain proper and common names of Sumerian or Babylonian origin, and the Pentateuch has many Egyptian words. In the time of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and whose commerce included products from all countries, and whose empire extended from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt, we find in the narrative, words of Hittite, Indian, and Assyrian origin. In the documents from the eighth to the sixth century we find predominantly foreign words of Syrian, Assyrian, and Babylonian character. And in the records from the sixth century to the end we find Babylonian, Persian, and a few Greek words” (pp. 89-90). We need hardly point out how this fact completely overthrows the theories of “Higher Criticism,” whose advocates have tried to reverse entirely the traditional beliefs as to the order in which the Books of the Bible appeared.
Faultless Accuracy of Spelling
Professor WILSON remarks that “every one of the 22 consonants composing the names of the kings of Persia mentioned in the Bible has been transmitted correctly to us over a space of 23 or 24 hundred years. It may be added that in no other non-Persian document are they so accurately transliterated” (p. 79). Again, reviewing in this matter the whole field, he says: “Thus we find that in 143 cases of transliteration from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Moabite into Hebrew and in 40 cases of the opposite, or 183 in all, the evidence shows that for 2300 to 3900 years the text of the proper names in the Hebrew Bible has been transmitted with the most minute accuracy. That the original scribes should have written them with such close conformity to correct philological principles is a wonderful proof of their thorough care and scholarship; further, that the Hebrew text should have been transmitted by copyists through so many centuries is a phenomenon unequaled in the history of literature” (pp. 81, 82).
Unexampled Accuracy as to Kings and Dynasties
“The names of these kings—about forty in all—are the names of men who lived from about 2000 to 400 B. C., and yet they each and all appear in proper chronological order both with reference to the kings of the same country and with respect to the kings of other countries contemporary with them.... When we consider that there are nine distinct lines of kings in the countries mentioned, and that there are several hundred kings in all, and that the length of the reigns of the kings could be determined only from the most accurate records, the chance of anyone who did not have access to reliable sources to get a record as exact as that preserved for us in the Hebrew Scriptures would be so small that no mathematician on earth could calculate it” (pp. 86, 87).
Finally
We have endeavored to review in brief compass a subject of vast dimensions. It is difficult to keep pace with the amazingly rapid and brilliant achievements of recent archaeological discovery and research; but we trust that in the preceding pages there has been given a sufficiently full summary of the results at present available. One fact is full of happy significance. While a very great number of confirmations of the truthfulness of the Biblical History have emerged, and while in some cases the arch2eological results have guided us into a fuller understanding of the sacred words, not a single tested result of the discoveries and researches has proved to be contradictory to that History.
It is of special significance that those portions of the Biblical History which were most attacked have been the very portions which the modern investigations have most fully illustrated and confirmed.
The discoveries have come from so wide a range of time and space, and the researches have been so thorough, and the confirming of the Biblical History has been so constant, that we may with all assurance predict that the future results of archeology will but add to the already multitudinous proofs of the veracity of the Divine Record.