lived. They deserve, therefore, more confidence than foreign writers, who flourished centuries afterwards. We attach authority to Herodotus or Tacitus in proportion to the proximity of their lives to the events which they portray.

Again, the Hebrew writers were members of the community whose actions they record, actual residents in the countries and cities respecting which they give information. Moses was educated in the Egyptian court. He lived many years in the wilderness, and became, doubtless, intimately conversant with the whole Arabian peninsula. He does not take up his geographical notices at hearsay. The objects which he describes, he did not see with the hasty glance of a traveller, but with the practised eye of a native. So with other biblical writers. The author of the book of Job writes with the sure hand of one who had ocular proof. The scene of his poem is perfectly familiar to him. Moses does not speak of Egypt in the manner of Pythagoras or Plato, who saw the country only as travellers or temporary residents. Daniel does not write respecting Babylon in the manner of a Greek historian, who might have accompanied the expedition of the younger Cyrus. He professes to have lived, during the greater part of a century, in the metropolis, engaged in an employment which would necessarily lay open to him every source of information. On the other hand, Xenophon and Diodorus Siculus lived hundreds or thousands of miles from scenes and events which they describe. They may have been observing travellers, but they could not narrate the affairs of the Assyrians as they might do those of the Athenians or Sicilians. The journal of a tourist is no adequate substitute for the knowledge which is obtained from half a century's residence in a country or city.

In the third place, some of the principal classical writers were strongly prejudiced against the Jews. The early Greek writers seem to have known or cared little for the descendants of Abraham. The literary community at Athens, though excessively fond of novelties, seem to have been wholly ignorant of the Jews, or else to have held them in profound contempt. We wonder that Herodotus, with his liberal mind, and his passion for extensive researches, did not devote part of a chapter to a land crowded with so many interesting objects as Palestine. We wonder still more that men of the comprehensive views and philosophical liberality of Plato and Aristotle, did not think it worth while to look into the laws and institutions of Moses. The entire silence of such writers argues either total ignorance of what was occurring in Palestine, or contempt for its inhabitants unworthy of men of their pretensions.

Essentially similar is the impression which we receive from

the Roman writers. Cicero throughout his multifarious writings makes no mention, we believe, of the Jews. The poets allude to them in a few instances, to point a jeer or round a period. Thus Juvenal:

"The laws of Rome those blinded bigots slight
In superstitious dread of Jewish rite ;

To Moses and his mystic volume true," &c.

So remarkable is a paragraph relating to the Jews in the pages of the philosophic Tacitus, that we are tempted to give the substance of it. It is found in the fifth book of his History.

"According to some, the Jews, fleeing from the island of Crete, found an abode in the most distant parts of Libya, at the time that Saturn was violently dethroned by Jupiter. A proof is obtained from the name. There is a celebrated mountain in Crete called Ida; the inhabitants are termed Idaei, and by a barbarous enlargement of the word, Judaei. Others report, that in the reign of Isis, a multitude, pouring forth from Egypt, removed into the contiguous territories, under the lead of Hierosolymus and Judas. Most maintain that they are descended from the Ethiopians, who, compelled by fear and hatred of their king, Cepheus, changed their habitation. Others relate that an Assyrian mixed population, being destitute of land, took possession of a part of Egypt, and by and by inhabited Hebrew cities and territories as their own right, and then the neighbouring parts of Syria. Others give a distinguished origin to the Jews. The Solymi, a people celebrated in the poems of Homer, founded the city Jerusalem, and called it from their own name."

And this is from the calm, careful, and reflecting Tacitus, written after the Jewish nation had been in existence almost two thousand years, after the country had become a Roman province, when Rome was filled with Jews, and when, by a few minutes' walk, he could have found the true account of the origin of the Jews from the Antiquities of Josephus, or, perhaps, from that author's own mouth. From these legends related by Tacitus, we learn that a profound historian might neglect with impunity to obtain accurate information in respect to a people so despicable as the Jews; and we may also see what vague and unsatisfactory stories then prevailed throughout the civilised world in regard to the history of the Hebrews.

These facts show with sufficient clearness, that some of the Greek and Roman writers were altogether ignorant of the true origin and condition of the Hebrews, while others looked upon them with prejudice and contempt. Why, then, should we prefer these historians as authorities to the Hebrew writers, when the affairs of the Jews are in question? Yet this has

been the prevailing habit. Diodorus is put first, Moses second. If Manetho corroborates the lawgiver, well; if not, then the pagan must be set up as the standard. If Daniel's chronology does not agree with that of Abydenus, then the Hebrew is pronounced to be in error, and an additional proof is supposed to be furnished against the authenticity of his prophecies.

§ 4. Early Origin of Alphabetic Writing.

It has often been alleged as an argument against the genuineness of the Pentateuch, that alphabetic writing did not exist at the time of Moses, or if it had been discovered, the knowledge of it was very limited, much too limited to admit of the existence and use of such a book as the Pentateuch.

That alphabetic writing, however, did exist at or before the age of Moses, i. e., 1500 B. C., is capable of proof from a great variety of considerations. If each of the following positions does not of itself establish the fact, yet all, taken together, can leave no reasonable doubt on the subject.

1. So far as there is any evidence from tradition, it is in favour of the very early discovery of alphabetical writing.* The traditions of all the nations of antiquity coincide in this, that the art of writing belonged to the origin of the human race, or to the founders of particular nations. "Several kinds of alphabetical writing were in existence in Asia," says William von Humboldt, "in the earliest times." The Egyptians attribute the discovery of alphabetic writing to Thaaut; the Chaldeans to Oannes, Memnon, or Hermes; many of the Greeks to Cecrops, who probably came from Egypt; some to Orpheus; others to Linus; Eschylus assigns it to Prometheus; and Euripides, to Palemedes the Argive;-all these are witnesses that the discovery reached beyond the commencement of history, so that Pliny remarks, not without reason, ex quo apparet æternus literarum usus.

2. It will hold good as a general fact that the most useful arts would be first invented or discovered. Such as are necessary to the support of human life, those which man's inward or outward necessities would first crave, would, in general, be the first that would be originated. Necessity deeply felt is the mother of art. Feelings of joy or sorrow, common to man, and which require for their full expression some outward symbol, or some auxiliary accompaniment, would necessarily lead to the invention of musical instruments. Some of the more important uses of iron would be early found out, because any degree of civilization, or even of comfort, would be hardly conceivable without it. The violent passions which agitate man, *Hengstenberg, Beiträge, i. p. 425.

would early lead him to invent armour, defensive and offensive. Journeys or marches would be impossible for any considerable distance, without means for crossing deep rivers and narrow seas. Civilization, in any proper sense of that word, would imply a considerable knowledge of house architecture, if not of such contrivances as chimneys and glass windows, yet some substitute for them.

Now, we can conceive of few things more necessary, where there was any degree of refinement, where the sciences were at all cultivated, or where there was any measure of commercial activity, than the art of writing. A patriarch burying a beloved wife among strangers in a strange land, would feel desirous to erect something more than a heap of stones, and to affix something more than a rude portrait or hieroglyphic. He would wish to write her name on the rock for ever. Among all nations, particularly the oriental, there is a strong disposition for constructing and handing down genealogical tables and family registers. The practice has its origin in one of the deepest feelings of our nature. Yet this would be hardly possible in the absence of an alphabet. A long list of proper names might be engraven on the memory of a single person. But how could it thus be accurately propagated through a number of centuries? We have abundant proof that the Chaldeans were early engaged in some kind of astronomical calculations. But how could these be carried on without the use of letters or figures? and would this skill in astronomy be any less difficult than the invention of an alphabet? would it not be much further from the wants of common life? Again, we learn from many unquestionable sources that the Phoenicians were, in very early times, engaged in an extensive commerce, embracing at least all the shores and the principal islands of the Mediterranean. Now, these marine adventurers presuppose a sufficient degree of activity of mind in the Phonicians to invent an alphabetic system, if they did not before possess one. Besides, how extremely difficult, if not impossible, to conduct an extensive system of barter, to transport into distant regions a great variety of goods, as we know the Phonicians did, to commission agencies or something equivalent to them, and to carry home the proceeds or the exchanged articles, and distribute them to a variety of owners, without any written record whatever, in dependence merely on the memory, or on some rude visible signs. For these purposes, no Mexican painting or Chaldean symbols would be sufficient. The Egyp tian hieroglyphics did not render a contemporaneous alphabetic writing unnecessary. For some of the most important purposes of a civilised people, hardly any invention could be more clumsy than the hieroglyphics. How could the deed of

a piece of land, the forms and inflections of grammar, thousands of foreign names and terms, and the numerous commercial and statistical details which would be indispensable in a kingdom like Egypt, be expressed by pictures, by the representations of visible objects, however ingenious?

3. The perception of historical truth exists in such close connection with the knowledge and extension of the art of writing, that where the latter is wanting, the former is never found, not even among those nations which have certain elements of it. This is strikingly illustrated by the example of the Arabians before the age of Mahomet. All which we know of their history, says De Sacy, was found in the midst of oral traditions, and showed every where that entire lack of chronological order, that mixture of fables and marvels which characterise the period when a nation has no other historians than the poets, and no other archives than the memory of succeeding generations. Now the Pentateuch, according to the unanimous opinion of men engaged in the same department of literature-the historians, with whom, to a certain extent, agree the most prejudiced among the theologians,--has a truly historical character. In this respect, it is totally unlike the Arabian traditions referred to. It may be said, indeed, that the Pentateuch was composed at a period much later than Moses, and thus acquired its historical character when the art of writing was generally practised by the Israelites. But according to the theory generally entertained by those who hold to the late origin of the Pentateuch as a whole, there are fragments, portions larger or smaller, which must have been written at or before the time of Moses. Now these fragments have the genuine historical stamp as clearly as the supposed later portions; and in them, also, are references to historical works, like the "Book of the Wars of the Lord," which have perished.

4. The theory of the early discovery of the art of writing derives strong confirmation from the fact of the very high antiquity of many of the arts in Egypt, and especially of such as are necessary to the art of writing. If arts, requiring great skill and strong powers of invention, were in use at a very early period, then we may suppose that the art of writing, requiring no higher, perhaps less, powers of invention, might have been discovered.

"We have been enabled," says Sir J. G. Wilkinson, "to fix, with a sufficient degree of precision, the bondage of the Israelites and the arrival of Joseph; and though these events took place at an age when nations are generally supposed to have been in their infancy, and in a state of barbarism; yet we per* Hengstenberg's Authentie, i. 409.