Читать книгу The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets - Westbrook Richard Brodhead - Страница 5

IT is impossible to understand modern Christian ecclesiasticism without a careful study of ancient Judaism. It is reported that Jesus himself said, “Salvation is of the Jews.” The gospel was to be preached “to the Jews first.” The common belief to-day is, that the Christian Church represents the substance of what Judaism was the promise, and that the New Testament contains the fulfilment and realization of what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament.

All well-informed theologians understand that the Christian Church is held to have had its origin in what is denominated the “call of Abraham,” and that what is known in orthodox parlance as the “Abrahamic covenant” lies at the foundation of the orthodox theory of grace and of all other systems of doctrine falsely designated as evangelical. It is a suggestive fact that while Christians hold that their religion is the very quintessence and outcome of Judaism, they most cordially hate the Jews, and the Jews in return, have a supreme contempt for Christians and stoutly deny the relationship of parent and child.

Now that the descent of the Jews from the Chaldean Abram, whom they affect to call their father, is discredited by all scholars who reject the inspirational and infallible theory of the Old Testament, it is very difficult to find out the real origin of this strange people. All modern writers on Jews and Judaism admit that outside of the Old Testament there is little or no history of the Jews down to the time of Alexander, and that there is very little reliable history even in the collection of books known as the Hebrew Scriptures. It cannot be doubted now that the Pentateuch, improperly called the five books of Moses, was mostly written after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, about 538 b. c., and what is found in these books mainly corresponds with the religion and literature of the Assyrians, and was learned during their sojourn in that country, and not, as has ignorantly been supposed, from the mythical Abram, the reputed immigrant from Ur of the Chaldees. What is recorded in the Pentateuch, not being mentioned in other Old-Testament writings, shows that such records had no existence when those books were written, and therefore could have no recognition. It will be shown hereafter that there is little or nothing in the Pentateuch that is strictly original, much less strictly historical. Indeed, the tales of the Old Testament generally were written for a religious or patriotic purpose, with little regard for time, place, or historical accuracy. Persons, real or mythical, are often used to represent different tribes, while allegory is the rule rather than the exception in what is ignorantly accepted as history. This is admitted by many eminent Christian writers.

The word “Jew” first occurs in 2 Kings 16: 6 to denote the inhabitants of Judea, but they should properly have been called “Judeans.” The very name Jew is probably mythological, derived from Jeoud, the name of the only son of Saturn, though, like Abraham, he had several other sons. It cannot be doubted that the stories of Saturn and Abraham are slightly varied versions of the same fable.

The Jews never deserved to be called a nation, at least not until in comparatively modern times. They were inclined from the first to mingle with and intermarry with other peoples, and so became mongrels at an early period.

There was no race distinction, we are told, between the Canaanites, Idumeans, and Israelites. Ishmael married an Egyptian woman, and so did Joseph, the son of Jacob. Esau married a daughter of Ishmael, also two other women, called daughters of Canaan, one a Hittite and the other a Hivite. Judah and Simeon each married Canaanites. We read in Judges 3: 5, 6, “The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their [own] daughters to their sons, and served their gods.”

In Ezekiel 16th it is written: “Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity was in the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hittite. Your mother was an Hittite and your father an Amorite—thine elder sister, Samaria, and thy youngest sister, Sodom.”

In Deut. 7: 7 the Jews are told, “The Lord did not set his love upon you because ye were more in number than any other people, for ye were fewest of all people.” In Josh. 12: 24 they are reminded that it was necessary to “send them hornets which drove them (the Canaanites) out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites;” and in Ex. 23: 28, 29 it is said, “I will send hornets before thee which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against thee.” This does not look as if the Jews were very numerous or valorous in the little territory not much larger than the State of Connecticut.

Josephus makes certain notes to show that the Lacedemonians claimed original kinship with the Jews, and some writers make the same claim for the Afghans and several other peoples. Nothing is more certain, in my judgment, than that the Jews are the most thoroughly mongrel race upon the face of the earth. That they have certain idiosyncrasies in common, and even certain distinguishing facial and other physical marks, can easily be accounted for on other grounds than the assumption of unity of race.

The common story of the origin of the Jews is certainly fabulous. Major-General Forlong, of the British Army, says: “They were probably in the beginning a wandering tribe of Bedouin Arabs who got possession of the rocky parts of Palestine, which were never made better by their presence. They are a comparatively modern people. The first notice of Jews is possibly that of certain Shemitic rulers in the Aram paying tribute about 850 b. c. to Vul-Nirari, the successor of Shalmaneser of Syria; regarding which, however, much more is made by biblicists than the simple record warrants. This is the case also where Champollion affirms that mention is made on the Theban temples of the capture of certain towns of the land we call Judæa, this being thought to prove the existence of Jews. Similar assumption takes place in regard to the hieratic papyri of the Leyden Museum, held to belong to the time of Rameses II., an inscription read on the rocks of El-Hamamat, and the discovery of some names like Chedorlaomer in the records of Babylonia; but this is all the (so-called) evidence as to the existence of ancient Jews which has been advanced; and the most is made of it in Dr. Birch’s opening address on the Progress of Biblical Archaeology at the inauguration of the Archaeological Society. Of Jews we hear nothing during all the Thothmik wars, unless they be included among the phallic-worshipping Hermonites who were mentioned as inhabiting the highlands of Syria. We have no real historical evidence of the persons or kingdoms of David or Solomon, though we may grant the Jewish stories cum grano salis, seeing how outrageously they have always exaggerated in everything pertaining to their own glorification.

“The only logical conclusion justifiable when we give up the inspiration theory is, that Arabs and Syro-Phœnicians were known to Assyrians and Egyptians, and this none would deny. Indeed, we readily grant, with Dr. Birch, that under the nineteenth and twentieth Egyptian dynasties the influence of the Aramæan nations is distinctly marked; that not only by blood and alliances had the Pharaohs been closely united with the princes of Palestine and Syria, but that the language of the period abounds in Semitic words quite different from the Egyptian, with which they were embroidered and intermingled. Could it possibly be otherwise? Is it not so to this day? Is a vast and rapidly-spawning Shemitic continent like Arabia not to influence the narrow delta of a river adjoining it or the wild highlands of Syria to the north? Of course Arabs or Shemites were everywhere spread over Egypt, Syria, and Phœnicia, as well as in their ancient seats of empire in Arabia, Irak (Kaldia), and on the imperial mounds of Kalneh and Koyunjik; but not necessarily as Jews. I cannot find that these last were anything more than a peculiar religious sect of Arabs who settled down from their pristine nomadic habits and obtained a quasi government under petty princes or sheiks, such as we have seen take place in the case of numerous Arabian and Indian sects.

“Only about two hundred years or so after their return from Babylon did the Jews seem to consolidate into a nation, and the collection and translation of their old mythic records—deciphered with much difficulty by the diligent librarians of Ptolemy Philadelphus from “old shreds and scraps of leather”—no doubt materially aided in consolidating the people and in welding them into what they became—clans proud of a sort of a mythic history built up by Ezra and other men acquainted with Babylonian records and popular cosmogonies.”

No efforts, say the leaders of the Biblical Archaeological Society, have been able to find either amidst the numerous engravings on the rocks of Arabia Petrea or Palestine, any save Phœnician inscriptions; not even a record of the Syro-Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the peculiar property of Hebrews. Most of those inscriptions hitherto discovered do not date anterior to the Roman empire. Few, if any monuments (of Jews) have been found in Palestine or the neighboring countries of any useful antiquity save the Moabite Stone, and the value of this last is all in favor of my previous arguments on these points. At the pool of Siloam we have an “inscription in the Phœnician character as old as the time of the Kings;… it is incised upon the walls of a rock-chamber apparently dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it. So that here, in a most holy place of this peculiar people, we find only Phœnicians, and these worshipping the Sun-god of Fertility, as was customary on every coast of Europe from unknown times down to the rise of Christianity.”

The Biblical Archaeological Society and British Museum authorities tell us frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, at all events, this inscription of Siloam shows “that the curved or Phœnician character was in use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew monarchy, as well as the conterminous Phœnicia, Moabitis, and the more distant Assyria. No monument, indeed,” continues Dr. Birch, “of greater antiquity inscribed in the square character (Hebrew) has been found as yet older than the fifth century A. D. [the small capitals are mine], and the coins of the Maccabean princes, as well as those of the revolter Barcochab, are impressed with Samaritan characters. So that here we have the most complete confirmation of all that I assert as to the mythical history of a Judean people prior to a century or so b. c., and even then only under such a government as Babylonian administrators had taught them to form and the lax rule of the Seleukidæ, followed by intermittent Roman government, permitted of.”

Another modern writer says: “Soon after the death of Alexander the Jews first came into notice under Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and some of their books were collected at the new-built city of Alexandria.”

Such was the insignificance of the Jews as a people that the historical monuments preceding the time of Alexander the Great, who died 323 years b. c., make not the slightest mention of any Jewish transaction. The writings of Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus, and Xenophon, all of whom visited remote countries, contain no mention of the Jews whatever. Neither Homer nor Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander, makes any mention of them. The story of Josephus, that Alexander visited Jerusalem, has been proved to be a fabrication. Alexander’s historians say nothing about it. He did pass through the coast of Palestine, and the only resistance he encountered was at Gaza, which was garrisoned by Persians (Wyttenbach's Opuscula, vol. ii. pp. 416, 421).

For half a century after its destruction, says Dr. Robinson, there is no mention of Jerusalem in history; and even until the time of Constantine its history presents little more than a blank (vol. i. pp. 367, 371).

General Forlong says: “The area of Judea and Samaria is, according to the above authority, 140 X 40 = 5600 square miles, which I think is certainly one-fourth too much, my own triangulation of it giving only 4500, or a figure of about 130 X 35. I will, however, concede the allotment of 5600, but we must remember that, as a rule, the whole is a dismal, rocky, arid region, with only intersecting valleys, watered by springs and heavy rain from November to February inclusive, and having scorching heats from April to September. Even the inhabitable portions of the country could only support the very sparsest population, and I speak after having marched over it and also a considerable portion of the rest of the world. In India we should look upon it as a very poor province; in some respects very like the hilly tracts of Mewar or Odeypoor in Kajpootana, but in extent, population, and wealth it is less than that small principality.

“The chief importance of Palestine in ancient history was due to its lying on the high-road between the great kingdoms of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, and as giving the Arabs a hiding- and abiding-place which they—Jews included—could not obtain if they ventured out on the plains south and east. The holes and fastnesses of the hills were their safeguards, and, as they assure us, very much used indeed. The Jewish strip is divided into Samaria as a centre, with Galilee north and Judea south, giving to the two former eight-tenths, and the latter two-tenths; that is, two tribes; 5600 X 2/10 so that the Judean area would be about 5600 X 8/10 = 20 square miles, against the 4480 of the latter; and the population would be somewhat in this proportion, for the extreme barrenness of all the country south and east of Jerusalem would be in some degree made up for by this town being perhaps a little larger than those in the north.

“We are thus prepared to state the population of the entire land in terms of its area, as was done for the Judean capital, and with equally startling results. The whole Turkish empire yields at present less than twenty-four persons to the square mile, and in the wild and warring ages we are here concerned with we may safely say that there were less than twenty per square mile, of which half were females and one-third of the other half children and feeble persons, unable to take the field whether for war or agriculture. The result is disastrous to much biblical matter, and far-reaching; upsetting the mighty armies of Joshua and the Judges, no less than those of David and Solomon, who are thought for a few short years to have united the tribes: nay, the stern facts of figures destroy all the subsequently divided kings or petty chiefs who lasted down to the sixth century or so b. c., and show us that Jews have ever been insignificant in the extreme, especially when compared with the great peoples who generally ruled them, and far and wide around them.

“So that this paltry thirty thousand to forty thousand is the very most which the twelve tribes could, and only for these few years, bring to the front. In general, the tribes warred with one another and with their neighbors, so that, for the purposes of foreign war, the Jewish race represented only two or three tribes at a time, or, say, ten thousand able men. Thus one tribe—as, for example, Judah—would have only from three thousand to four thousand men in all, supposing every man left his fields and home to fight, while Assyrian armies not unusually numbered one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men.”

In the above statistics also we have taken a greater area than I think the tribes occupied. There is not a sign of a Jewish people till about what is called their “Eastern Captivity,” and the Rev. Mr. Rodwell writes in the Trans. of the Biblical Archaeological Society that “the Hebrew of the Bible is no other than a dialectic variety of the Canaanitish or Phœnician tongue expressed in the Chaldean character, not brought, as has been taught, by Abram himself from Ur of the Chaldees, but adopted by the Israelites during their long captivities.” “Could it possibly be otherwise when we look at the facts? The Jews were a poor, ignorant, weak Arab tribe, living on the outskirts of a land occupied for long ages previously by the most famous race of all antiquity—a people from whom Greece, Rome, and Carthage alike borrowed the ideas of their earliest art and architecture. Homer called this race Phens Poludaidaloi—‘artists of varied skill,’ and later Romans prized them above all others for their constructive talent. Pliny, Seneca, and Varro praise them in words which will never die; Jews said that David solicited their skilled labor, and that Solomon's temple, small and simple though it was, could not be raised without their help; nay, though Ezra says he had these ensamples before him, and had seen all the fine buildings of Babylon, yet he too had to solicit their aid, else the walls of the city of Jehovah and Zerub-babel’s second shrine could never have been constructed. In all arts, trades, and manufactures this extraordinary people excelled every ancient race, and from the very earliest times down and into the Roman period. Is it surprising, then, that their language and customs prevailed wherever their skilled aid was required? that Africa in its writing was no less Punic—that is, Phœnician—than Libyan, guided by these wondrous Pheni or “Tyrii bilingues”? The history of Britain during some past generations as the first great manufacturing country of modern times shows how civilization, power, and progress must ever follow industry and usefulness, and Phœnicians to a great extent in early days controlled ‘the sinews of war’ where this was their interest; but it too often proved more profitable to deal in swords and helmets than in ‘Tyrian purple’ and costly brocade stuffs. Manufacturers are not much given to writing, and these Pheni have been so parsimonious in their vowels and lavish and indifferent in the use of b’s, dfs, r’s, and s’s that few philological students have attempted the translation of Phœnician writings, though Phœnician, and not Hebrew, is what alone we find traces of in Syria and Palestine.”

It has been substantially said by William Henry Burr, in a work not now in the market, that “very erroneous ideas prevail in regard to the magnitude of the nation and country of the Jews and their importance in history. Most maps of ancient Palestine assign far too much territory to that nation. They make the greatest length of the country from 160 to 175 miles, and its greatest breadth from 70 to 90, inclosing an area of from 10,000 to 12,000 square miles—a little larger than the State of Vermont. They not only include the entire Mediterranean coast for 160 miles, but a considerable mountain-tract on the north, above Dan, and a portion of the desert on the south, below Beer-sheba, besides running the eastern boundary out too far. Moreover, they lengthen the distances in every direction. From Dan to Beersheba, the extreme northern and southern towns, the distance on Mitchell’s map is 165 miles, and on Colton’s, 150; but on a map accompanying Biblical Researches in Palestine, by Edward Robinson, D. D., which is one of the most recent and elaborate, and will doubtless be accepted as the best authority, the distance is only 128 miles.

“Now, the Israelites were never able to drive out the Canaanites from the choicest portion of the country—the Mediterranean coast—nor even from most parts of the interior (Judges 1: 16-31; 1 Kings 9: 20, 21). The Phœnicians, a powerful maritime people, occupied the northern portion of the coast, and the Philistines the southern; between these the Jebusites or some other people held control, so that the Israelites were excluded from any part of the Mediterranean shore. The map of their country must therefore undergo a reduction of a strip on the west at least 10 miles wide by 160 long, or 1600 square miles. A further reduction must be made of about 400 square miles for the Dead Sea and Lake of Tiberias. This leaves at most 9000 square miles by Colton’s map. But on this map the extreme length of the country is 175 miles, which is 47 miles too great: for the whole dominion of the Jews extended only from Dan to Beersheba, which Dr. Robinson places only 128 miles apart. We must therefore make a further reduction of an area about 47 by 60 miles, or 2800 square miles. Then we must take off a slice on the east, at least 10 miles broad by 60 long, or 600 square miles. Thus we reduce the area of Colton’s map from 11,000 square miles to 5600—a little less than the State of Connecticut.

“But now, if we subtract from this what was wilderness and desert, and also what was at no time inhabited and controlled by the Israelites, we further reduce their habitable territory about one-half. The land of Canaan being nearly all mountainous and bounded on the south and east by a vast desert which encroached upon the borders of the country, a great part of it was barren wilderness. Nor did but one-fifth of the Israelites (two and a half tribes) occupy the country east of the Jordan, which was almost equal in extent to that on the west, the proper Land of Promise. The eastern half, therefore, must have been but thinly populated by the two and a half tribes, who were only able to maintain a precarious foothold against the bordering enemies. So, then, it is not probable that the Israelites actually inhabited and governed at any time à territory of more than 3000 square miles, or not much if any larger than the little State of Delaware. At all events, it can hardly be doubted that Delaware contains more good land than the whole country of the Jews ever did.

“The promise to Abraham in Gen. 15: 18 is ‘from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates.’ But the Jewish possessions never reached the Nile by 200 miles. In Ex. 33: 31 the promise is renewed, but the river of Egypt is not named. The boundaries are ‘from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines (the Mediterranean), and from the desert to the river.’ By ‘the river’ was doubtless meant the Euphrates; and assuming that by ‘the desert’ was meant the eastern boundary (though Canaan was bounded on the south also by the same great desert which reached to the Red Sea), we have in this promise a territory 600 miles long by an average of about 180 broad, making an area of about 100,000 square miles, or ten times as much as the Jews ever could claim, and nearly one-half of it uninhabitable. So, then, the promise was never fulfilled, for the Israelites were confined to a very small central portion of their land of promise, and whether they occupied 3000 or 12,000 square miles in the period of their greatest power, the fact is not to be disputed that their country was a very small one.

“Lamartine describes the journey from Bethany to Jericho as singularly toilsome and melancholy—neither houses nor cultivation, mountains without a shrub, immense rocks split by time, pinnacles tinged with colors like those of an extinct volcano. ‘From the summit of these hills, as far as the eye can reach, we see only black chains, conical or broken peaks, a boundless labyrinth of passes rent through the mountains, and those ravines lying in perfect and perpetual stillness, without a stream, without a wild animal, without even a flower, the relics of a convulsed land, with waves of stone’ (vol. ii., p. 146).”

But lest it may be thought that these dismal features are due to modern degeneracy, let us take the testimony of an early Christian Father, St. Jerome, who lived a long time in Bethlehem, four miles south of Jerusalem. In the year 414 he wrote to Dardanus thus: “I beg of those who assert that the Jewish people after coming out of Egypt took possession of this country (which to us, by the passion and resurrection of our Saviour, has become truly the land of promise), to show us what this people possessed. Their whole dominions extended only from Dan to Beersheba, hardly 160 Roman miles in length (147 geographical miles). The Scriptures give no more to David and Solomon, except what they acquired by alliance after conquest.... I am ashamed to say what is the breadth of the land of promise, lest I should thereby give the pagans occasion to blaspheme. It is but 47 miles (42 geographical miles) from Joppa to our little town of Bethlehem, beyond which all is a frightful desert” (vol. ii., p. 605).

Elsewhere he describes the country as the “refuse and rubbish of nature.” He says that “from Jerusalem to Bethlehem there is nothing but stones, and in the summer the inhabitants can scarcely get water to drink.”

“In the year 1847, Lieut. Lynch of the U. S. Navy was sent to explore the river Jordan and the Dead Sea. He and his party with great difficulty crossed the country from Acre to the Lake of Tiberias, with trucks drawn by camels. The only roads from time immemorial were mule-paths. Frequent détours had to be made, and they were compelled actually to make some portions of their road. Even then the last declivity could not be overcome until all hands turned out and hauled the boats and baggage down the steep places; and many times it seemed as if, like the ancient herd of swine, they would all rush precipitately into the sea. Over three days were required to make the journey, which in a straight line would be only twenty-seven miles. For the first few miles they passed over a pretty fertile plain, but this was the ancient Phœnician country, which the Jews never conquered. The rest of the route was mountainous and rocky, with not a tree visible nor a house outside the little walled villages (pp. 135 to 152).

“The ancient Sea of Galilee has a prominent place in Jewish geography and commerce, yet on this insignificant body of water, twelve miles long by seven wide, all the commerce of the Jews was carried on, except when they had the use of a port on the Red Sea.

“In a book entitled The Holy Land, Syria, etc., by David Roberts, R. A. (London, 1855), the valley of the Jordan is thus described:

“‘A large portion of the valley of the Jordan has been from the earliest time almost a desert. But in the northern part the great number of rivulets which descend from the mountains on both sides produce in many places a luxuriant growth of wild herbage. So too in the southern part, where similar rivulets exist, as around Jericho, there is even an exuberant fertility; but those rivulets seldom reach the Jordan and have no effect on the middle of the Ghor. The mountains on each side are rugged and desolate, the western cliffs overhanging the valley at an elevation of 1000 or 1200 feet, while the eastern mountains fall back in ranges of from 2000 to 2500 feet.’”

What was the size of ancient Jerusalem? We know pretty nearly what it is now and how many inhabitants it contains. It is three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide, and its population is not more than ,500 (Biblical Researches, vol i., p. 421), a large proportion of whom are drawn thither by the renowned sanctity of the place. Dr. Robinson measured the wall of the city, and found it to be only 12,978 feet in circumference, or nearly two and a half miles (vol. i., p. 268).

“In a book entitled An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, by James Fergusson (London, 1847), a diagram is given of the walls of ancient and modern Jerusalem, from which it appears that the greatest length of the city was at no time more than 6000 feet, or a little more than a mile, and its greatest width about three-quarters of a mile; while the real Jerusalem of old was but a little more than a quarter that size.

“With these measurements Mr. Fergusson undertakes to estimate the probable population of the ancient city, as follows:

“‘If we allow the inhabitants of the first-named cities fifty yards to each individual, and that one-half of the new city was inhabited at the rate of one person to each one hundred yards, this will give a permanent population of 23,000 souls. If, on the other hand, we allow only thirty-three yards to each of the old cities, and admit that the whole of the new was as densely populated as London, or allowing one hundred yards to each inhabitant, we obtain 37,000 souls for the whole; which I do not think it at all probable that Jerusalem ever could have contained as a permanent population.’ “‘In another part of the book (p. 47) he says:

“If we were to trust Josephus, he would have us believe that Jerusalem contained at one time, or could contain, two and a half or three millions of souls, and that at the siege of Titus 1,100,000 perished by famine and the sword, 97,000 were taken captive, and 40,000 allowed by Titus to go free.

“In order to show the gross exaggeration of these numbers, he cites the fact that the army of Titus did not exceed, altogether, 30,000, and that Josephus himself enumerates the fighting-men of the city at 23,400, which would give a population something under 100,000. But even this he believes to be an exaggeration. For, says he,

“‘In all the sallies it cannot be discovered that at any time the Jews could bring into the field 10,000 men, if so many.... Titus enclosed the city with a line four and a half miles in extent, which, with his small army, was so weak a disposition that a small body of the Jews could easily have broken through it; but they never seem to have had numbers sufficient to be able to attempt it.’

“The author guesses that the Jews might have mustered at the beginning of the siege about 10,000 men, and that the city might have contained altogether about 40,000 inhabitants, permanent and transient, in a space which in no other city in the world could accommodate 30,000 souls. But the wall of Agrippa was built, as the same author states, twelve or thirteen years after the Crucifixion; hence prior to that time the area of Jerusalem was only 756,000 yards, and it was capable of containing only 23,000 inhabitants at most, but probably never did contain more than 15,000.

“Allowing to Jerusalem, in the period of the greatest prosperity of the Jews, a population of even 20,000, is it at all probable that the whole country could have contained anything like even the lowest estimate to be gathered from the Scripture record? In 1 Chron. 21: 5, 6 we read that the number of ‘men that drew the sword of Israel and Judah amounted to 1,570,000, not counting the tribes of Levi and Benjamin. In 2 Sam. 24: 9, the number given at the same census is 1,300,000, and no omission is mentioned. Assuming the larger number to be correct, and adding only one-eighth for the two tribes of Levi and Benjamin, which may have been the smallest, we have 1,766,000 fighting-men. This would give, at the rate of one fighting-man to four inhabitants, a total population of over 7,000,000 souls. But if we adopt a more reasonable ratio, of one to six, we have a population of over 10,500,000 souls. And then we omit the aliens. These numbered 153,600 working-men only two years later (2 Chron. 2: 17), and the total alien population, therefore, must have been about 500,000, which, added to the census, would make the total population from 7,500,000 to 11,000,000, or more. Can any intelligent man believe that a mountainous, barren country, no larger than Connecticut, without commerce, without manufactures, without the mechanical arts, without civilization, ever did or could subsist even two millions of people? Much less can it be believed that it subsisted ‘seven nations greater and mightier than the Israelitish nation itself’ (Deut. 7: 1)—i e. not less than 14,000,000.

“That the Jews were a very barbarous people is undeniable. Slavery necessarily makes a people barbarous. Not only were the Israelites a nation of slaves, according to their own record, but after their entry into Canaan they were six times reduced to bondage in their own land of promise. During a period of 281 years they were in slavery 111 years.

“That the Jews were far behind their surrounding neighbors in civilization is shown by the fact that in the first battle they fought under their first king, Saul, they had in the whole army ‘neither sword nor spear in the hand of any of the people,’ except Saul and Jonathan (1 Sam. 13:22). Nor was any ‘smith found throughout all the land of Israel’ (ver. 19), but ‘all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock’ (ver. 20.) This was 404 years after the Exodus and only 75 years prior to the building of Solomon’s temple. Their weapons of war were those of the rudest savage.

“As another evidence of the barbarism of the Jews, when David resolved to build a house for himself he had no native artisans, but had to send to Hiram, king of Tyre, for masons and carpenters (2 Sam. 5: 11). Even the wood itself had to be brought from Tyre, it would seem that even in those days, as now, the mountains of Canaan were destitute of trees—a sure sign of a sterile country. The wood of course had to be carried overland. Wheel-carriages were unknown to the Israelites, except in the form of chariots of iron used by their enemies, which prevented Judah, even with the help of the Lord, from driving out the inhabitants of the valleys (Judg. 1: 19). David captured 1000 chariots in about the sixteenth year of his reign, of which he preserved only 100, disabling all the horses (1 Ghron. 18: 3.) Prior to this event neither chariots nor horses had been used by the Israelites, nor was much use made of them by the subsequent kings. Oxen and asses were their beasts of burden; camels were rare even long after Solomon’s reign. How, then, was the wood brought from Tyre over the mountains, unless it was carried on the backs of oxen or asses or dragged along the ground?”

That a considerable number of Jews at one time sojourned in Egypt is highly probable. How they got there, and how they came to leave, is not so certain. An eminent Egyptologist writes in a leading London journal:

“The presence of large numbers of Semites in ancient Egypt has always been a puzzle to historians, and what first led to their migrating from Mesopotamia to the land of the Pharaohs has never hitherto been made clear. Quite recently, however, the British Museum has become possessed of a number of cuneiform tablets which throw considerable light on the subject. Early in the present year a number of these tablets were offered for sale in Cairo. They had been dug up from the grave of a royal scribe of Amenophis III. and IV. of the eighteenth dynasty, which had given up its records, and not only records, but seals and papyri of great historical and artistic value. Some went to the Boulak Museum, some to Berlin, others to private persons, and eighty-one have found their way to the British Museum. These last have now been arranged and catalogued by Mr. Budge, the well-known Egyptologist, whose investigations have brought to light a most interesting chapter in the history of ancient Egypt. Not only do the tablets explain the historical crux mentioned above, but they introduce us to the family life of the early kings. They picture to us the splendors of the royal palaces; they enable us to assist at the betrothal of the kings’ daughters and to follow the kings to their hunting-grounds. Most of the tablets are letters addressed to Amenophis III., and some are from Tushratta, king of Mesopotamia.

“Amenophis III. was a mighty hunter, and once on a shooting-trip into Mesopotamia after big game he, like a king in a fairy-tale, met and loved Ti, the daughter of Tushratta. They were married in due time, and Ti went down into Egypt with three hundred and seventeen of her principal ladies. This brought a host of their Semitic countrymen along, who found in Egypt a good field for their business capacities, and gradually, like the modern Jews in Russia, got possession of the lands and goods of their hosts. The influence of the Semitic queen is attested by the very fact that this library of cuneiform tablets was preserved. And under the feeble sovereigns who followed, her countrymen doubtless held their own. But at last came the nineteenth dynasty and the Pharaoh ‘who knew not Joseph.’ Then they were set to brick-making and pyramid-building, till the outbreak which led to the Red Sea triumph.

“Mr. Budge, of the British Museum, has translated three of the letters. One is from Tushratta to Ameno-phis. After many complimentary salutations, he proposes to his son-in-law that they should continue the arrangement made by their fathers for pasturing doublehumped camels, and in this way he leads up to the main purport of his epistle. He says that Manie, his great-nephew, is ambitious to marry the daughter of the king of Egypt, and he pleads that Manie might be allowed to go down to Egypt to woo in person. The alliance would, he considers, be a bond of union between the two countries, and he adds, as though by an after-thought, that the gold which Amenophis appears to have asked for should be sent for at once, together with ‘large gold jars, large gold plates, and other articles made of gold.’ After this meaning interpolation he returns to the marriage question, and proposes to act in the matter of the dowry in the same way in which his grandfather acted, presumably on a like occasion. He then enlarges on the wealth of his kingdom, where ‘gold is like dust which cannot be counted,’ and he adds an inventory of presents which he is sending, articles of gold, inlay, and harness, and thirty eunuchs.”

In speaking of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, Dr. Knappert says: “According to the tradition preserved in Genesis, it was the promotion of Jacob’s son, Joseph, to be viceroy of Egypt that brought about the migration of the sons of Israel from Canaan to Goshen. The story goes that this Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers, and after many changes of fortune received the viceregal office at Pharaoh’s hands through his skill in interpreting dreams. Famine drives his brothers, and afterward his father, to him, and the Egyptian prince gives them the land of Goshen to live in. It is by imagining all this that the legend tries to account for the fact that Israel passed some time in Egypt. But we must look for the real explanation in a migration of certain tribes which could not establish or maintain themselves in Canaan, and were forced to move farther on.”

The author of the Religion of Israel says: “The history of the religion of Israel must start from the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Formerly it was usual to take a much earlier starting-point, and to begin with a discussion of the religious ideas of the patriarchs. And this was perfectly right so long as the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were considered historical. But now that a strict investigation has shown us that these stories are entirely unhistorical, of course we have to begin the history later on.” The author of The Spirit History of Man says: “The Hebrews came out of Egypt and settled among the Canaanites. They need not be traced beyond the Exodus; that is their historical beginning. It was very easy to cover up this remote event by the recital of mythical traditions, and to prefix to it an account of their origin in which the gods (patriarchs) should figure as their ancestors.”

But how about the Jewish exodus from Egypt? What was the real cause? Whom shall we credit, the writer of the book called Exodus or other writers? What follows differs very much from the Hebrew story.

Lysimachus relates that “a filthy disease broke out in Egypt, and the oracle of Ammon, being consulted on the occasion, commanded the king to purify the land by driving out the Jews (who were infected with leprosy, etc.), who were hateful to the gods. The whole multitude of the people were accordingly collected and driven out into the wilderness.”

Diodorus Siculus says: “In ancient times Egypt was afflicted with a great plague, which was attributed to the anger of God on account of the multitude of foreigners in Egypt, by whom the rites of the native religion were neglected. The Egyptians accordingly drove them out. The most notable of them went under Cadmus and Danaus to Greece, but the greater number followed Moses, a wise and valiant leader, to Palestine.”

Tacitus, the Roman historian, says: “In this clash of opinions one point seems to be universally admitted—a pestilential disease, disfiguring the race of man and making the body an object of loathsome deformity, spreading all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch, consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer that the kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude, as a race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search the wretched sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vulgar herd was sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that by the wisdom of his counsels they had been already rescued out of impending danger. Deserted as they were by men and gods, he told them that if they did not repose their confidence in him as their chief by divine commission they had no resource left. His offer was accepted. Their march began, they knew not whither. Want of water was their chief distress. Worn out with fatigue, they lay stretched on the bare earth, heartbroken, ready to expire, when a troop of wild asses, returning from pasture, went up the steep ascent of a rock covered with a grove of trees. The verdure of the herbage round the place suggested the idea of springs near at hand. Moses traced the steps of the animals, and discovered a plentiful vein of water. By this relief the fainting multitude was raised from despair.”

In a learned work on Egypt by Mr. William Oxley of England, published in 1884, the author writes: “Taking the records as we find them, if they are real history, and as Palestine is contiguous to Egypt, we should naturally expect to find some reference to the Israelites in the Egyptian annals, but what does appear in regard to Palestine is certainly not favorable to the assumption that it was the home of the Israelites as a nation. I cull the following from such materials as are at present within reach, partly taken from the Records of the Past:

“It has been generally acknowledged by Egyptian biblicists that ‘the cruel bondage of the Israelites, culminated under the reign of Rameses II., nineteenth dynasty, and that the Exodus took place under his successor, Menephtah I., 1326 b. c., who was drowned in the Red Sea with all his host in his attempt to bring the wanderers back again. But, as I have already said, the tomb of this very king at Thebes contains an inscription to the effect that he had lived to a good old age, and was a child of good-fortune from his cradle to the grave. In the annals of Rameses III., who reigned some fifty or sixty years after the Israelites ought to have been settled in their own land, many references are made to the country in which they were located (according to biblical accounts). The king goes to what is known to us as Palestine, Phœnicia, and Syria to receive the annual tribute from the chiefs/ whom he calls Khetas. In the enumeration of his conquests, extending from Egypt east and northward, he enumerates thirty-eight tribes and peoples, and says: ‘I have smitten every land, and have taken every land in its extent.’ In his reminder to the God Ptah of the benefits he had conferred on the god, the king says: ‘I gave to thy temple from the store-houses of Egypt, Tar-neter, and Kharu (i, e. Palestine and Syria) more numerous offerings than the sand of the sea, as well as cattle and slaves’ (Syrians). He also built a temple to Ammon in the same country, to which ‘the nations of the Rutenna came and brought their tribute.’ Making full allowance for the usual Egyptian flattery, the fact is clear that in the time of this king the Israelites could not have been a settled and distinct people; and the incident of their Exodus would have been too fresh and recent to be passed over without some comment by this vainglorious monarch.

“From a papyrus translated in the Records of the Past (ii. 107), entitled Travels of an Egyptian, who gives a full account of Palestine, etc., it appears there was a fortress there which had been built by Rameses II., and which was still belonging to Egypt. This would be about 1350 B. C.; but not the slightest hint of any such people as Israelites, although he tells us ‘he visited the country to get information respecting the country, with the manners and customs of its inhabitants.’

“The next is Rameses XII., some two hundred years after the Exodus, who is the hero of the story of the possessed princess. He was in Mesopotamia at the time when the chief of the Bakhten brought his daughter, who afterward became queen of Egypt. ‘His Majesty was there registering the annual tributes of all the princes of the countries,’ among whom he enumerates Tar-neter (Palestine), but no mention of Israelites.

“I find no further trace until the time of Herodotus (about 420 B. c.); and here we come on historical ground. This great historian travelled through Egypt and Palestine in the reign of one of the kings of the Persian dynasty, about forty or fifty years after the alleged return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and when the temple had been built and the city fortified. He repeatedly alludes to the Phœnicians and Syrians, whose country extended from the coast of the Levant down to the Egyptian frontier, including the isthmus and Sinaitic Peninsula. He says that Necho (about 670 b. c.) fought with the Syrians, and took a large city, Cadytis; but he makes no mention of Jews nor yet of Jerusalem. If they had been there, it is incredible that such a careful and grasping historian should have explored the land without noticing them in some way or other.

“The next is from a tablet erected to Alexander II. by Ptolemy, at that time viceroy under the Persian king, but who soon after himself became king of Egypt, 305 b. c. The inscription states that ‘Alexander marched with an army of Ionians to the Syrians’ land, who were at war with him. He penetrated its interior and took it at one stroke, and led their princes, cavalry, ships, and works of art to Egypt.’

“Next follows the third Ptolemy, 238 b. c. (see the Decree of Canopus, Records of the Past, viii., 81), who invaded the two lands of Asia, and brought back to Egypt all the treasures which had been carried away by Cambyses and his successors. He ‘imported corn from East Rutenna and Kafatha’—i. e. from Syria and Phœnicia. It was the father of this king who is credited with sending to Judea for the seventy-two men who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek; and yet neither of these Ptolemaic kings makes mention of Judea, Jerusalem, or the Jews! The inference is obvious: they were not there.

“Many historiographers, when writing of Jewish annals, use the Ptolemaic and other monumental and papyrian accounts as applying to the Jews, and consequently use the term ‘Jews,’ but this is unwarrantable, inasmuch as the accounts themselves speak of ‘Syrians, Phœnicians,’ etc., but not of ‘Jews.’ According to the best cyclopædists, ‘there is little or nothing known of the Jews or Jerusalem until the time of Christ;’ and even then it is taken chiefly from Josephus, who, to my view, is scarcely admissible as a chronographer of actual history. No mention is made by the Ptolemies—say 250 or even less years b. c.—of the Jews of Jerusalem, and as the Roman emperor Hadrian (from 117 to 138 A. D.) is credited with changing the name of the city to Ælia Capitolina, it could only have been known as Jerusalem for a few centuries at most. The Arch of Titus in Rome is taken as conclusive proof that it was erected to commemorate his victories over the rebellious Jews and the successful siege of Jerusalem. But even this, I apprehend, is taken chiefly from Josephus. When in Rome last year I closely inspected this arch, expecting to find an inscription to this effect, but I was disappointed at seeing only a Latin one over the arch, which reads (in English): ‘The Senate and Roman People to the Divine Titus, (Son) of the divine Vespasian,’ and another, by Pius VII., recording its restoration. It is true, I saw the alto-reliefs on the inside of the arch, showing a table, trumpets, and a seven-branched lamp; but these were used in many temples, and would as well refer to the Syrian or Phœnician temples, which undoubtedly existed at that time, and in the absence of direct Roman testimony to the name of the city and people (of which I am unaware), it cannot be accepted as indubitable evidence of its reference to a city called and known to them as Jerusalem, and to a people known to them as Jews. Unless this can be established, it only amounts to an inference resting on Josephus.

“As the result of my researches, I place Jewish historians, so called, upon the same footing as the Christian ecclesiastical ones, whose works, while containing a base of more or less historical reference and truth, are yet too much overweighted with unhistorical myths to be regarded as genuine, sober history. To my view, the Jews were, at the period I am referring to, in a not dissimilar position to the Druses of Lebanon of the present day. As is well known to a certain class of writers who have come in contact with them, they form a community held together not so much by national ties as by semi-religious ones, which are based upon Cabalistic and theurgic rites and ceremonies. Like what I conceive the Jews to have been in the centuries preceding the Christian era, they are an order rather than a nation, the remains of systems which have continued and survived from ancient times. In this light the Jewish records are intelligible as writings veiled in allegory, treating of their mystic lore, albeit expressed in verbiage that bears a literal meaning upon its surface. I give this as the only solution that presents itself of the mysterious problem under review.”

I now propose to state a few points from the Jewish writings themselves (collated from Bishop Colenso) to show the fabulous character of the history of this pretentious people.

The number of fighting-men who marched out of Egypt is nowhere estimated at less than 600,000, and if this represented only one-fourth of the population, the latter must have reached 3,000,000. If we cut this down one-third, so as to be sure of our figures, we make it 2,000,000 souls.

The number of the children of Israel who went into Egypt was 70 (Ex. 1: 5). They sojourned in Egypt 215 years. It could not have been 430 years, as would appear from Ex. 11:40. The marginal chronology makes the period 215 years, and there were only four generations to the Exodus—namely, Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (Ex. 6: 16, 18, 20). How could these people have increased in 215 years from 70 souls so as to number 600,000 warriors? It would have required an average number of 46 children to each father. The 12 sons of Jacob had between them only 53 sons. At this rate of increase, in the fourth generation there would have been only 6311 males (provided they were all living at the time of the Exodus), instead of 1,000,000. If we add the fifth generation, who would be mostly children, the total number of males would not have exceeded 28,465.

All the first-born males from a month old and upward, of those that were numbered, were 22,273 (Num. 3: 43). The lowest computation of the whole number of the people at that time is 2,000,000. The number of males would be 1,000,000. Dividing the latter number by the number of first-born, gives 44, which would be the average number of boys in each family, or about 88 children by each mother. Or, if where the first-born were females, the males were not counted, the number of children by each mother would be reduced to 44.

Dan in the first generation had but one son (Gen. 46: 23), and yet in the fourth generation his descendants had increased to 62,700 warriors (Num. 2: 26), or 64,400 (Num. 26: 43). Each of his sons and grandsons must have had about 80 children of both sexes. On the other hand, the Levites increased the number of “males from a month old and upward” during the 38 years in the wilderness only from 22,000 to 23,000 (Num. 3: 39; 26: 62), and the tribe of Manasseh during the same time increased from 32,200 (Num. 1: 35) to 52,700 (26: 34).

The whole population of Israel were instructed in one single day to keep the passover, and actually did keep it (Ex. 12). At the first notice of any such feast Jehovah said, “I will pass through the land of Egypt this night.*” The passover was to be killed “at even” on the same day that Moses received the command.

The women were at the same time ordered to borrow jewels of their neighbors, the Egyptians. After midnight of the same day the Israelites received notice to start for the wilderness. No one was to go out of his house till morning, when they were to take their hurried flight with their cattle and herds. How could 2,000,000 people, scattered about over a wide district, as they must have been with their cattle and herds, have gotten ready and taken a simultaneous hurried flight at twelve hours’ notice?

The Israelites, with their flocks and herds, reached the Red Sea, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles over a sandy desert, in three days! Marching fifty abreast, the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the road for seven miles, and the whole multitude would have made a column twenty-two miles long, so that the last of the body could not have been started until the front had advanced that distance—more than two days’ journey for such a mixed company. Then the sheep and cattle must have formed another vast column, covering a much greater tract of ground in proportion to their number. Upon what did these two millions of sheep and oxen feed in the journey to the Red Sea over a desert region, sandy, gravelly, and stony alternately? How did the people manage with the sick and infirm, and especially with the seven hundred and fifty births that must have taken place in the three days’ march?

Judah was forty-two years old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt, being three years older than his brother Joseph, who was then thirty-nine. For “Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh” (Gen. 41: 46); and from that time nine years elapsed (seven of plenty and two of famine) before Jacob came down into Egypt. Judah was born in the fourth year of Jacob’s double marriage (Gen. 29: 35), being the fourth of the seven children of Leah born in seven years; and Joseph was born of Rachel in the seventh year (Gen. 30: 24, 26; 21: 41). In these forty-two years of Judah’s life the following events are recorded in Gen. 38:

He grows up, marries, and has three sons. His eldest son grows up, marries, and dies. The second son marries his brother’s widow and dies. The third son, after waiting to grow to maturity, declines to marry the widow. The widow then deceives Judah himself, and bears him twins—Pharez and Zarah. One of these twins grows up and has two sons—Hez-ron and Hamul—bom to him before Jacob goes down into Egypt.

In Ex. 30:11-13, Jehovah commanded Moses to take a census of the children of Israel, and in doing it to collect half a shekel of the sanctuary as atonement-money. This expression “shekel of the sanctuary” is put into the mouth of Jehovah six or seven months before the tabernacle was made. In Ex. 38: 26 we read of such a tribute being paid, but nothing is there said of any census being taken, only that the number of those who paid, from twenty years old and upward, was 603,550 men. In Num. 1: 1-46, more than six months after this occasion, an account of an actual census is given, but no atonment-money is mentioned. If in the first instance a census was taken, but accidentally omitted to be mentioned, and in the second instance the tribute was paid, but accidentally omitted likewise, it was nevertheless surprising that the number of adult males should have been identically the same (603,550) on both occasions, six months apart.

Aaron and his two sons were the only priests during Aaron’s lifetime. They had to make all the burnt-offerings on a single altar nine feet square (Ex. 37: 1), besides attending to other priestly duties for 2,000,000 people. At the birth of every child both a burnt-offering and a sin-offering had to be made. The number of births must be reckoned as at least two hundred and fifty a day, for which consequently five hundred sacrifices would have to be offered daily—an impossible duty to be performed by three priests. For poor women pigeons were accepted instead of lambs. If half of them offered pigeons, and only one instead of two, it would have required 90,000 pigeons annually for this purpose alone. Where did they get the pigeons? How could they have had them at all under Sinai? There were thirteen cities where the presence of these three priests was required (Josh. 21: 19). The three priests had to eat a large portion of the bumt-offerings (Num. 18: 10) and all the sin-offerings—two hundred and fifty pigeons a day—more than eighty for each priest.

In keeping the second passover under Sinai, 150,000 lambs must have been killed—i. e. one for each family (Ex. 12: 3, 4). The Levites slew them, and the three priests had to sprinkle the blood from their hands (1 Chron. 30: 16; 35: 11). The killing had to be done “between two evenings” (Ex. 12: 6), and the sprinkling had to be done in about two hours. The killing must have been done in the court of the tabernacle (Lev. 1: 3, 5; 17: 2-6). The area of the court could have held but 5000 people at most. Here the lambs had to be sacrificed at the rate of 1250 a minute, and each of the three priests had to sprinkle the blood of more than 400 lambs every minute for two hours.

The number of warriors of the Israelites, as recorded at the Exodus, was 600,000 (Ex. 7: 37); subsequently it was 603,550 (Ex. 38: 25-28), and at the end of their wanderings it was 601,730 (Num. 26: 51). But in 2 Chron. 13:3, Abijah, king of Judah, brings 0,000 men against Jeroboam, king of Israel, with 0,000, and “there fell down slain of Israel 500,000 chosen men” (ver. 17). On another occasion, Pekah, king of Israel, slew of Judah in one day, 120,000 valiant men (2 Chron. 28: 6.)

The Israelites at their Exodus were provided with tents (Ex. 16: 16), in which they undoubtedly encamped and dwelt. They did not dwell in tents in Egypt, but in “houses” with “doors,” “sideposts,” and “lintels.” These tents must have been made either of hair or of skin (Ex. 26: 7, 14; 36: 14, 19)—most probably of the latter—and were therefore much heavier than the modern canvas tents. At least 200,000 were required to accommodate 2,000,000 people. Supposing they took these tents from Egypt, how did they carry them in their hurried march to the Red Sea? The people had burdens enough without them. They had to carry their kneading-troughs with the dough unleavened, their clothes, their cooking utensils, couches, infants, aged and infirm persons, and food enough for at least a month’s use, or until manna was provided for them in the wilderness, which was “on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 16:1). One of these tents, with its poles, pegs, etc., would be a load for a single ox, so that they would have needed 0.000 oxen to carry the tents. But oxen are not usually trained to carry goods on their backs, and will not do so without training. Then it is written:

“These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel” (Deut. 1: 1).

“And Moses called all Israel and said unto them” (Deut. 5:1).

“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them” (Josh. 8: 35).

How was it possible to do this before at least

2,000,000 people? Could Moses or Joshua, as actual eye-witnesses, have expressed themselves in such extravagant language? Surely not.

The camp of the Israelites must have been at least a mile and a half in diameter. This would be allowing to each person on the average a space three times the size of a coffin for a full-grown man. The ashes, offal, and refuse of the sacrifices would therefore have to be carried by the priest in person a distance of three-quarters of a mile “without the camp, unto a clean place” (Lev. 4:11, 12.) There were only three priests—namely, Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar—to do all this work for 2,000,000 people. All the wood and water would have to be brought into this immense camp from the outside. Where could the supplies have been got while the camp was under Sinai, in a desert, for nearly twelve months together? How could so great a camp have been kept clean?

But how huge does the difficulty become if we take the more reasonable dimensions of twelve miles square for this camp; that is, about the size of London! Imagine at least half a million of men having to go out daily a distance of six miles and back to the suburbs for the common necessities of nature, as the law directed.

The Israelites undoubtedly had flocks and herds of cattle (Ex. 34: 3). They sojourned nearly a year before Sinai, where there was no food for cattle; and the wilderness in which they sojourned nearly forty years is now and was then a desert (Deut. 32: 10; 8: 15). The cattle surely did not subsist on manna!

Among other prodigies of valor, 12,000 Israelites are recorded in Num. 31 as slaying all the male Midianites, taking captive all the females and children, siezing all their cattle and flocks, numbering 808,000 head, taking all their goods and burning all their cities, without the loss of a single man. Then they killed all the women and children except 32,000 virgins, whom they kept for themselves. There would seem to have been at least 80,000 females in the aggregate, of whom 48,000 were killed, besides (say) 20,000 boys. The number of men slaughtered must have been about 48,000. Each Israelite therefore must have killed 4 men in battle, carried off 8 captive women and children, and driven home 67 head of cattle. And then after reaching home, as a pastime, by command of Moses, he had to murder 6 of his captive women and children in cold blood.

Now, I respectfully submit that, judging from the account of the Exodus of the Jews, which they have written themselves, we cannot credit it. The narrative is full of contradictions, and is so absurd and incredible, and even impossible, that we must regard it as a huge myth. There may have been an Exodus from Egypt, of which this account is an exaggeration, but it bears so many evidences of the fabulous that we cast it aside and are led to doubt whether the Jews were ever in Egypt except as tramps and vagabonds, and to suspect that the whole story is an adapted history of some great exodus of some ancient tribes written for a purpose.

I think it has been shown that the Jews were not the people that they have been supposed to be. They are a modern people in the world’s history, antedated by many highly-civilized and powerful nations. They are not descendants of Abram, as will be shown more fully hereafter, and their population never reached the fabulous numbers that are given in what is called their sacred history. Indeed, there is so much of the fabulous about them, so much of false pretence that upon the very face is impossible and incredible, that the wonder is that Christians should ever have seriously thought of regarding them and their institutions as the source and substance of what Christianity is. We have no prejudice against the Jews. We cast no reflection upon the so-called Hebrews of the present day. They are not responsible for their ancestors, any more than Gladstone, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and other brainy Englishmen are responsible for the savagery and barbarism of their forefathers.

It has been our object in this chapter to show the Munchausenish character of Jewish history, upon which the whole superstructure of modern theology rests. If anybody is proud of his descent from such a people, he is welcome to the glory.