Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
OLUME II.
CHAPTER
TO THE
WR IGHT,
OB,ERL IN COLLEGE.
D. D. LL . D.,
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The F undament9l,s.
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Here, certainly, tl1ere is about as glaring an apparent discrepancy as could be imagined. Indeed, there would seem to
he a flat contradiction between profane and sacred historians.
But in 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson fou.nd, while excavating in
the ru .ins of Mugheir ( identified as the site of the city of Ur,
from which Abraham emigrated), inscriptions which stated
that when N abonidus was near the end of his reign he asso .ciated with him on the throne his eldest sont Bil-shar-uzzur,
and allowed him the roya] title, thus making it per ectiy credi ble 'that Belshazzar shou]d have beeri in Baby lon, as he is said
to have been in the Bib le, and that he should have been called
king, and that he shou]d have perished in the city while Nabonidus survived outside. That h.e should have been called
king while his father was still living is no more strange than
that Jehoram should have been ap,pointed by his father, Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; seven years before his f'ather's death
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M onument.s
S cripturcs.
( see 2 Kings 1 :17 and 8 :16), or that Jotham should have been
made king before his father, Uzziah, died of leprosy, though
Uzziah is still called king in some of the references to him.
That Belshazzar should have been called son of Nebuchadnezzar is readily accounted for on the supposition that he was
his grandson, and there are many things to indicate that Nabonidus married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, while there is nothing known to the contrary. But if thfa theory is rejected, there
is the natural supposition that in the loose use of terms of relationship common among Oriental people "son" might be applied' to one who was simply a successor. In the inscriptions
on the monuments of Shalmaneser II., referred to below, Jehu,
the extirpator of the house of Omri, is called the "son of
Omri."
The status of Belshazzar implied in this explanation is
confirmed incidentally by the fact that Daniel is promised in
verse 6 the "third" place in the kingdon1, and in verse 29 is
given that place, all of which implies that Belshazzar was sec...
ond only.
Thus, what was formerly thought to be an insuperable
objection to the historical accuracy of the Book of Daniel
pro\tes to be, in all reasonable probability, a mark of accuracy.
The coincidences are all the more remarkable for being so
evidently undesigned.
THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER.
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dli
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0 ne 101 : t .e mo st tmport ,ant 1scovett es, giving rea 1ty t 0
0ld Testam ,ent history, , is that of the Moa:bite Stone, di .scovered at Dibon, east of the Jordan, in 1868, which was set up
by King Me 'sha ( about 850 B. C.) to signalize his deliverance
from the yoke of Omri, king of Israel. The inscription is
valuablej among other things, for its wit.ness to the civilized
condition of the Moabites at that time and to the Close si.milarity of their language to , that of the Hebrews. From this
inserip ,tion we learn that Omri, king 0 Israel, was compelled
by the rebellion of Me sha to re subjugate Moab; and that after,
doing so, he and his son occupied . the cities of Moab fof a
period of forty years, but that, after a series of battles, it was
restored to Moab in the days of Mesha. Whereupon the cities
a.nd fo.rt resses, reta ke'n w ere strengthene d, an d the country repopulated, whi le the methods of warfare were sifflilar t-0
those practiced by Israel. On comparing this :with 2 Kings
3 :4-27, we find a parallel account which dovetai ls in' with this
i 11.a tno st rema.rkable manner, though naturally the bib'lieal nar~
rative tr-eats lightly of the reconquest by lY;lesha,simply stating
II
II
z.'.
II
of the Script.u-res.
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that, on account of the horror created by the idolatrous sacrifice of his eldest son upon the walls before them, the Israelites
departed from the land and returned to their own country ..
THE EXPEDITION
OF SHISHAK.
The .Fund'a,1nentats.
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13
AND RAMESES.
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were ; h,eld together failed) to gatl1er f:or t]1e,1nselves stubbl,e
whic .h should se,rv e tl1e purpo ,se, of straw, and finally, when ,
even the stub ble failed,! to n1ake brick witl1out. straw (Ex .. 5).
Now, as th ese store pits at Pi.tl10m were unt:.ov e,r e d by Mra.,
Petri e, they w,ere f 0Und ( u11.like anything else in. Egy pt) to
be 'built .with mortar. Moreover, the 1,ow ,e1 ,Jayer ~ were bu 'ilt
of brick which contai1.1,ed stra .w, I while tl1e middle layers were
made of b'rick in which stub .hie, i11stead of stra ,w, h.ad be,en
use,d in their 01...mation, ,a11d the upper la,y ers w er,e of bri.r
ck
ma ,de 'Without str ,aw ,. A more perf ,ect cir ,cumstantial . confinnatio1n of 'the Bi.bl e ac.cou.nt could not be imagine id. Every .poin't
in the confir1nati on c,ons,i,s.t s of unexp ec.te:d discoveries . The
use of mo ,rtar js e:lsewh,ere unknown i.n Ancie .nt Egypt, as isr
the peculiar S1
ucces:sion in the quality of the brick used 'in tl1,e
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rael, of A1nmon,. and of the Arabs, amon ,g tl1e ''Hittite ''' pri11ces
wl1om l1e had subdu ed, thus bea1~ing n1,ost emphat .ic testimo~y
to the prominence which they assumed in his estimation.
~ . The C'ttneiform inscrip ti.on.s of Armenia also spea .k of mu
merous wars with the Hittit es, and descri 'be ''the land of the
Hittites ,'' as , extending far westward fro ,m the b,anks of ' the
Eupl1ra 'tes1.
Hittite sculptures and i11scriptionsare now traced in abuD,dance from Kadesh, in Coele Sy ria , we .stward . to Lyd :i.a, in Asia
..Minor, and nortl1ward to the Black Sea bey,011d Marsova.n.
Indeed, the exten .sive r'uins, of Boghaz-I(eui, ,sev,enty-fiye miles
southwest 0 Marsov lan, see1n to mark tl1e principa t capita.I
of the Hittites. Here partial excavations l1ave alrCady revealed sculptures of high artistic order, representing deities,
warr iors and amazons, together with many hiero .glyphs which
have not yet been translated. The inscriptions are written
in both directio 11s, from t,eft to r ig'ht, and -'then below back
from right to left. Similar inscriptions are found in numerous other places. No clue to their meaning has ye.t been found,
and even the cl:a.ss of Iangu .ages t:o whi ,ch they belong has not
been disco ver ed. But enough isl known to 1show that , the Hit-
tites exerted considerable influence upon the later ,civi'lization
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TABL .ETS ,
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at ~ebes.
But in his anxiety to introduce a reli~ous reform
he changed his name to Aken -Aten, Aten being the name of
the deity wor shipe d at Heliopoli s, near Cairo, where Joseph
got his wife. The effort s of Aken-Aten to transform the re-.
ligious worship of Egypt were Prodigious. The more perf e.ctly
to accomplish it, he removed his capital from Thebes to Tel elAmarna, and there collected literary men and artists and architects in great number s and erected temples and palaces, which,
after being buried in the sand with all their treasures for more
th.an three thousand year s,. were discovered by some wanderin.g A.rab,s twenty-tw ,o ,ye.ar .s ago .
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A number of the longest and mo,st interesting of the letters are those which passed between the courts of Egypt and
tho se of Babylonia. It appear s that not only did Aken-Aten
marry a daughter of the Babylonian king, but his mother and
grandmother were me_mbers of the roya.1.family in Babylonia,
and also that one of the daughter s of the king of Egypt had
been sent to Babylonia to become the wife of the king. All
this comes out in the letters that pa ssed b,ack and forth relat~
ing to the dowry to be bestowed upon these daughters and
relating to their health and welfare .
From these letters we learn that, although the king of Babylon had sent his sister to be the wife of the king Of Egypt,
that was not sufficient. The king of Egypt requested also
the daughter of the king of Babylon. This led the king of
Ea .bylon tOsay that he did 11otknow how his sister was treated ;
in fact,. he. did not know whether she was alive, fer he tould
not tell whether or not to, believe the evidence which came J
to hitt.L In response,. the ki11g of Egypt. wrote : ''Why don't
you send some o~e who knows your sister, and whom you can
trust ?~' Whereupon the royal co,rrespondents break off into
discussions concerning the gifts which are to pass between the
two in consideration of their friendship , and inti1nate re,lations.
Syria a:ndPalestine were at this time also, as at the present day, infested by robbers, and the messengers passing be~
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The Fu1idamentals .
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1n possession.
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In this varied correspondence a la.rge number of places are
mentioned with which we are familiar in J3iblehistory, among
t.hem Da~as icus, Sidon., Lachi sh, Ashkelon ., Gaza, Joppa, ,and.
Jerusalern" Indeed, several of the 1etters are written rom Jeru~alem b y one Abd-hiba ., who complains that so me one is slan dering him to the king, cha .rging that he was in revolt against
hisl lord ,. This, he says, the king ought to know is apsurd,
from the fact that ''11either my father nor my mother appointed
me to this place. The strong arm of the king inaugurated
me in my father's territory . . Why should I commit an offense
against my lord, the king?'' The argumen t being that, , a,s. 'h,i.s,
office is not hereditary, but one which is held by the king's
favor and app ointm ,ent, his loyalty sh ould b~ ~hove qu estion.
A single one of these Jerusalem . Je,tters may suffic,e for a?
illustration :,
feet of my .lord the king, seven and seven times I fall. Behol d
t~e deed which Milki-il and Suardata have done ,against the
land of my .Jord the king they have hire d the soldiers of ~Gazri,
of Gimti and of Kilti, and have taken the territory of Rubuti .
The territory of the king is. lost to Habiri. And now, indeed,
a ci,ty of the territ ory of Jerusa ,]em, called Bit-Ninib, one of
the cities of the king, has been lost t~ the p eople of Kilti ,. Le t
the king listen to Abd .-hiba, his servant, and send troops that
I may bring back the king's land to the king. For if there ar e
no troops, the J,and of the king will b e lost to the Habiri. This
is the deed of Suardata and Milki-il * * * [defective],
and let the ki'ng take ,care ,of his land.'' ' .
.
The discovery of these Tel el-Amarna letters came like a
flash ,of lightning , upo n the si1
cho]arly wo r .ld~ J,n this case the
overturning of a few ,spadefuls of earth let in a flood of~light
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upon the darke st por tion of ancient l1istory, and in eve,ry way
co nfirmed the Bible story.
it could not have been preserve .d, a1e reasoning witho ut due
kn.owledge of the fact s. Cons i.dering tl1e habits of the time.,
it would have . been well nigh a miracl e if Moses and his b.and
0 as,.sociat.e,s, co.nting out of Egypt had not l,ef t it,pon imperish a. 'hie clay tablets , a record of the striking events through which
th ey passe,d.
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The Fundamentals.
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is that we have n ot lived long enough, or have not had sufficiently wide ex .perience to te st its merits in all particulars
Gezer was an important place in Joshua's tirne, but it aft ,erward became a heap of ruins, and its Jocation was unknown
11ntil 18,70., when M. Cler1nont-Ganneau disco vered the site in
Tel J ezer, and, on excavating it, found three inscriptions, which
on int.erpreta.tio:n read ''Boundary of Gezer.''
Among the places conquere ,d by Joshua one of the 1no,st important and difficult to capture was Lachish (Josh. 10 :31).
This , has but recently been identifie,d in Tel el-Hes.y, about
eighteen miles nort heast of Gaza. Extensive excavations, first
in 1890 by Dr. Flind ers Petr ie, and finally by Dr. Bliss, found
a lsucces,siori 0 f ruins, one belo 1w the othe ,r, the lowet foundations of which extended back to about 1700 B. C., some time be. f or e th .e p erio d of. conquest, showing at that time a walled
city of great strength. In tl1e deb,ris somewhat high er tha11
this there was found a tablet with cuneiform inscriptions cor r1esponding t,o the Tel el-A1narna tabl ets wh .ich are known to
have been sent to Egypt from this region about 1400 B. C. At
a later .period, in the time 0 Sennacherib, Lachish was !1:ssaulted and take ,n by the Assyrian army, and the account of
th,e siege form s one ,of the m,ost conspicuous scenes on the
walls of Sennacherib's palace in Ninevel1. These sculptu.,res
are now in the British Mu seum .
ng th ie places menti ,011ed in the Tel el-Amar n,a corre.spondence from which letters were sent to Egypt about l'+I
B. C., are Gebal, Beirut, Tyre, Accho (Acre), Hazor, Jop pha,
Ashkelon, Makkad .ah, .Lachis,h, Gezer, Jerusalem; while men, tion is also made of Rabbah, Sarepta, Ashtaroth, Gaza, Gat]1,
Bethsh ,e:ine sh, al] o,f whi ch are familiar names, showing that the
Palestine of Joshtta is the Palestine known to Egypt in the
preceding century. Tw 0 hundred years before this, (about
'1600 B ~C.) also, Thothmes III. Conquere,d Pales .tine, and giv,es
in an inscription the names of more than fifty towns which
can be confidently i,d,entified with those in 'the Book of Jo,shua.
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Finally, the forty-two stations named in N uin. 33 as camping places for the children of Israel on their way to Palestine,
while they cannot all of them be identified, can be determined
in ufficient number s to show tl1at it is not a fictitious 1ist, nor
a mere pilgrim's diary, since t'he scenes of greatest interest,
like the region immediately about Mount Sinai, are specially
adapted to the great tran sactions which a1..e recorded as taking
p'lace. Besides, it is, incredi 'ble tl1at a writer of fiction should
have encumbered his pages with such a barre ,n cata lo,gue of
place s. But as part of t'he great histo'r'ical movem ent they are
perfectly ~pprop ,,riate.
This , conformity of' newly di scove1--ed facts to tl1e n.arrative
o,f Sacr ed Scripture ,confirm s our confidence in the 1nain testimony ;. just as the consistency of a witne ss in a cros s~exami:nati 1011 up,on mino1 and incidental p 1oi11tsestah lis,hes confidence in
his general t es,timo11y. T 'he lat e Sir Walt er Bes ant, in addition to his other lit erary and philanthropic lab,ors, was for
111anyyears secreta .ry of the Palestine Exploration Fund . In
reply to the inquiry whether the work of the sttrvey un d.er his
direction si1,staine,d the h.i.storica l character of the Old Testament, he says,: ''To my mi11d, absolute truth in local details,
a t.hing which cann iot possibly he invented, when it is spread
over a history covering many centuries, is proof almost ah
solute as to the truth ,of the things related.'' Stich proof we
have for every part of the Bible .
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THE FOURTEENTH
OF GENESIS.
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The F ie1idamentals.
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a rebellion wa s in stigated and in the f 9llowing year C!,1edorlaomer and tl1e kings that were wit l1 l1im ap peared 011 the scene
an d, aft e:r capturi ng nume1-ou,s su1,.rounding cit,ies, joined battl .e
with the rebellious allies in the vale of Sidd im, which was full
of slime pits. T 'he vic to1y of Chedo 1~taon1er ,was co mplete , a11d
after capturin .g Lot and his goods in Sodom he started ho1neward by way of Damascus, near whicl1 place Abra l1am ove1too 1k him, and by a suc cessful s.trat .agem sca tter ,ed his f,orces by
night and recovered Lot and l1is goods. This sto1 y, told with
so many deta ils tl1at its, ref uta ,tion w,ould be easy if it we1e no.t
true t,o the facts a.nd i.f there \\'ere co11temporary records with
which to con1pare it, has been a spec ial butt for the ridicule of
the Higher C1itics of t1ae Wellhausen school , Professo .r Noldeice confide ntly declaring as lat e as 1869 that critici sm had
forever disproved it s claim to be historical. But he re again
th e inscriptio11s on the mon11n1
c nt s ,of Babylonia have Come
to tl1e rescue of the sacred hi storian, if , indeed, he were in
need of rescue . (For .where gene :ral i.gnorance was so pr 0found as it was resp ec.ting that period forty years ago, true
modesty should have , suggested caution in the express ion of
posi,tive 0 pinions in contradi ction to sucl1 ,a detailed historical
.
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statement as this is.)
.
. Fro1n the , inscriptions already discovered and deciph er ed
i~ thie Va,lley of the Euphrates, it is now shown beyo nd reasonab1e dottbt that the four king s menti oned in the B.ible
as, j oini11gin tl1is expedition are n ot, as was f reeiy said, ''etyn10. raphel is
JogicaJ inventions,'' but real hi st,orical persons.
identified as the Hammurabi whose marvelous code of laws
was so recently dis covered b,y De Morg
,
a
n
at
Susa.
The
''H'~
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in the latter word simpl,y expre sses the rough breathing so
well known in Hebr ew. Tl1.e ''p' in the biblical name has ,
take n the .place of ''b'' by a well .-recognized law of phonetic
change. ''Amrap'' is equivalent to ''Ha.mrab .'' The addition
of ' 'il' in the b iblical name is P'robably the suffix of the divine nam .e, like '' el''
in
Israel.
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Hammt1rabi is now k11own to have l1ad ~1iscapital at Babylon at the time of Abraham.
Until recent1y this chronolgy was
dispu te d, so tl1at the editors and contributors of the New
Schaff-Herz 0g Cyclopedi .a dog1natically asserted tl1at as Abraham lived nearly 300 year - late r than Han1murabi, the biblical story mttst be unhistorical. I-Iarclly had these statements
been printed, however, when Dr. Kina of the British Museum
discovered indi spt1tab,le evidence th~t two of the dynasties
which .formerly had bee11 reckoned as co,nsecutive were, in
fact, contemporaneou , thus maki11g it easy to brin .g Hammu.
rabi's time down ei actly to that of bral1am.
Chedorlaomer is pretty certainly id entified as Kudur-Lagamar ( serv a.nt of ,Lagan1ar, one oft .he principal Elamite gods) ,.
Kudt1r-Lagamar was king of Elan1, and was eitl1er the father
or the brother of Kudur-lVI~bug, whose son, Eri-Aku ( Ari,och), ,reig11ed over Larsa and Ur, and o,ther citi,es of soutl1ern
Babylonia. H ,e speaks of Kudur-~abug ''as the father of tl1e
1and of the Amorites,' '' i. e., of Palestine and Syria.
Tidal, ''king of nati ,ons,'' was sup,posed by Dr. Pinches to
be referred to on a .late tablet in connection with Chedorlaomer and Arioch under the 11ame T11dghula, who a1e said,
together, to have ''attacked and spoiled Babylon.''
However much doltbt there may be about the identification of some of tl1ese names, tl1e main points are established,
revealing a condition of things just such as is implied by the
.biblical narrative.
Arioch styles himself king of Shumer
aqd Accad, which embraced BabylonJ where Amraphel (Hammurabi) w.as in his early years subject to him. This . furnishes
a reason or the associatio ,n of Chedorl ,aomer and Amraphel
in a campaign against the reb eliious sub,jects in Palestine.
Aga,in,, Ku .dur-Mabug, the father of Ari,och, st.y]es himself
''Prince of the land of Amurru,'' i. e., of Palestine and Syria .
Moreover, for a long period befo1e, kings from Babylonia
had claimed 'possession of th,e wl1ole eastern sl1ore of the
Mediterranean, including the Sinaitic Peninsula .
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In light o,f these well -atte sted facts, one read s with astonishment the fol lowing word s of W ellhau sen, written no longer
ago tl1an 1889 : '' T hat f 0L1 1- king s f r,om tl1e Persian Gulf
should,, 'in the time ,of Abr,aham,' have 1nade an incur sio,n int,e
the Sinaitic P eninsula, that they should on this oc casio11 have
attacked five kinglet s on the Dead Sea Littoral and have carried them off pri sone rs,, and finally that Ab raham shottld have
set OU't in pur suit of the retreatin g, victor ,s, accompanied by
318 men s,ervants, and have fo rced , them to disgorge tl1eir
prey, ,all the se incidents are sheer impo ssibilities which gain
11othing in credibility from the fact tl1at they are placed in a
world which had passed away."
.
And we c,an, have littl e r,e,,spect for tl1e ]o,g,ic of a lat,er
scho lar ('George Adam S1nith), wh o can write the following:
''We must admit that while archreology has richly illustrated
the possibility of the 1nain outl .ines of the Boo,k of Ge11esis
from Abraha1n .to Josepl1, it ha,s not one whit of p roof to
o,ffer or the personal exis:te:11ce 0 r the character 1s of t'h,e patri~rchs, themselves. This is the whole change archreotog)' has
wrot1ght; it ha s given us a background and an atmosphere for
the stories of Genesis; it is t1nable to recall or certify theiri
)1eroes,.''
But 'tl1e name, Abrahatn does appear in tablets ,of the ag~
of Hammurabi . ( See Professor George Barton in Journal of
Biblical Literature, Vol. 28, 1909, page 153.) It is true that
, thi s evidently is ,not 'the Abra 'h,am of the Bible, bu,t that of a
small farme ,r who l1a,d rent ed land of a well-to-do I.and owner.
The p r,e,servation of l1is na1ne is due to the fact that the most
of the tabl ets pre served ,contain contracts relating to the
business of the time s. There is little reason to expect that we
should find a definite reference : to the , Abraham who in early
]if e migrated f ro m his native I.and. But it is of a good deal of
stgntficance that his name appears to have b~en a con11nonone
in the time and place of his na tivity.
In considering 'the arguments , i,n tl1,e caseJit isl important to
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keep in mind that where so few facts are known, and general
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The F un,damentals.
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