6

ERRORS IN THE EXISTING SYSTEM

Sacred Volume: and, in fact, they have in many cases been led virtually (though indirectly, and, I need scarcely say, altogether without intention,) to impugn that revered authority.

Upon no subject, probably, are the effects of the perversion of the truth which has hence ensued, more plainly evident than upon that of Scriptural Geography.

It will be denied by no one who is competently acquainted with this subject, that many difficulties and discrepancies exist in connexion with it, which cannot in any manner be reconciled either to one another or to obvious reason; and it must equally be admitted that those difficulties and discrepancies -not, it is to be remembered, upon points of opinion or belief, but upon simple matters of fact,can only have arisen from some fundamental error; which, whilst it has prevented the sincere believers in Revelation from having a proper perception of the truths of this particular branch of Biblical knowledge, has afforded their adversaries advantages, of which they must necessarily be deprived whenever the Geography of Sacred History can be established upon correct and undeviating principles.

This error, I conceive, is that to which I have already alluded; namely, the allowing heathen authorities to bias and controul the judgement in the investigation and interpretation of the Scriptures, instead of taking the latter alone as the basis upon which all history is to be founded. As it is of importance to possess correct ideas respecting the na

OF SCRIPTURE GEOGRAPHY.

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ture and extent of this error, it will be advisable to show in a few words its origin and progress, and its continuance down to the present time.

In the ages immediately succeeding the period during which the Pentateuch was composed, the localities of the countries mentioned as those in which the occurrences recorded in it had taken place, continued to be well known to the Israelites; and, by tradition, and by means also of the communication which existed between Israel and the surrounding nations, the remembrance of them was preserved, it is probable, until a late period of their national existence. At length the time arrived when the wickedness of the Israelites had increased to so high a degree as to bring down upon them the anger of the Almighty, and ultimately to cause their destruction as a nation; when their moral and religious blindness was equalled only by their intellectual darkness. The words of the Law had then become utterly unknown to them'; and if by tradi

1 A remarkable instance of this utter ignorance is recorded in 2 Kings xxii. It is stated, that in the eighteenth year of Josiah king of Judah, the book of the Law was found (accidentally, as it would appear,) by Hilkiah the high priest:-"And Shaphan" (the scribe) "read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the

king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent "his clothes." ver. 11. Here was a religious and virtuous king, who (as we are told in 2 Chron. xxxiv. 3., where the account of the same event is repeated,) "in the eighth year of his reign, while

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he was yet young," (that is, sixteen years of age,) “began to "seek after the God of David his father," but who yet; for the period of ten years after, appears to have remained without the knowledge even of the words of the Law.

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STATE OF SCRIPTURE GEOGRAPHY

tion or other means any portion of the contents of the Scriptures was still kept in remembrance, it is to be feared that its meaning had become so perverted as almost to render nugatory even that remnant of the truth. At this time, therefore, the Geographical information of the Israelites must, like all other knowledge retained by them, have been reduced to the lowest ebb.

Yet, what

When, however, the Sacred Volume began again to be studied by the Jews, a sincere desire to understand and appreciate its contents doubtless existed in their minds; but neither their dispositions nor their intellectual faculties-perverted as they had become by false doctrines, and by the monstrous traditions and fables which they had learned in Babylon and the other countries of their dispersion,— were in a fit state to receive the truth. ever may have been the extent of their ignorance and incompetency, it was only natural that, in thus recommencing the study of the Scriptures, they should have been desirous of understanding the historical portions of the Sacred Volume, and especially of acquiring some definite knowledge concerning the situations of the many memorable places to which their national history refers. Their means of arriving at just conclusions on the subject were defective; but the self-sufficiency and credulity consequent on their imperfect knowledge, would have more than counterbalanced the deficiency: hence we may conceive how-in the same manner as the Empress Helena and her coadjutors and successors

corrupted the Topography of the Holy Land, after the establishment of Christianity,-the Jews, at an earlier period, assumed the authority of determining the sites of the countries and places which were so interesting to them, as recorded in or connected with their national history. In doing so they were aided no doubt in many instances by the natural localities, by architectural remains, and by other distinguishing marks; but in the far greater number of cases they must have been left to their own deductions from the Sacred Writings; which deductions would have been founded, in great measure, upon the perverted and erroneous notions of History and Geography which they had either acquired in the countries of their captivity, or adopted from the Egyptians and Greeks with whom they were now brought into immediate contact.

The following remarkable instances of this process of error may be adduced to illustrate the position thus asserted :-The national vanity of the Babylonians having led them, by a corruption and perversion of the only true history, to attribute the foundation of their capital to Nimrod, and to assert that the tower of Babel was erected in the place where Babylon stood', the Jews adopted this erroneous notion during their captivity, and retained and perpetuated it after their return from Babylon into their native country :-so the name of Syria, which

1 The entire incorrectness of this tradition will be shown in the next Chapter.

10 THE ERRORS OF THE JEWS PERPETUATED AMONG

in the first instance was applied to Aram or Cœlosyria alone, having under the Greeks received so extensive a signification as to include Mesopotamia also, the Jews in like manner extended the application of the name of Aram; and hence Mesopotamia was conceived to represent the country of Padan Aram, in which was situate Haran the dwelling-place of the family of Terah, the father of Abraham' :-the Scriptural country of Mitzraim, also, having by the fulfilment of prophecy become 'the basest of the kingdoms,' and being in fact merged in its powerful neighbour the Egypt of profane history, the Jews of Alexandria, who knew of no other kingdom in that direction than the mighty monarchy of the Ptolemies, regarded those princes as the successors and representatives of the Pharaohs, and Egypt itself as the country which had been the land of bondage' of their forefathers.

The system of Geography thus established among the Jews, would naturally have been received and adopted by the Jewish translators of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and accordingly we find that the names of the various countries and places recorded in Scripture, are translated by

1 See Chapter vi. for the consideration of the true position of Padan Aram.

2 The subject of this remarkable and pervading error will be discussed at length in Chapters viii. and xi.

3 It is the translation of the proper names of countries in the Septuagint version which has tended more than any other cause to prevent even the suspicion of error in the geographical identifi