LIFE and TIMES of the PATRIARCHS, ABRAHAM, ISAAC and JACOB BEING A SUPPLEMENT TO “THE LAND AND THE BOOK” BY WILLIAM HANNA THOMSON, M.D., LL.D. Author of “Life, Death and Immortality,” “Brain and Personality,” etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FURNISHED BY THE AUTHOR [not included] FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON 1912 Formatted and annotated (in blue) by William H. Gross www.onthewing.org Aug 2015 PREFACE I have chosen to call this book “Life and Times of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and to add that it is “a Supplement to ‘The Land and the Book,’ “ which has been the widely read production of my father, the Rev. William McClure Thomson, D.D. The present volume is based on my own personal experiences while traveling with my father. But as he did not allude in any detail to the events connected with those journeys, my own production will then serve as a supplement to his work. In its present form this book is made up of articles furnished to the Designer magazine at the request of my friend, Mr. George B. Baker, the editor, to whom I am indebted for permission so to publish them. CONTENTS PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTORY ......................................................................................................................... 3 THE BOOK OF GENESIS AS LITERATURE ............................................................................ 3 Chapter I – A TRIP TO JAULAN .................................................................................................. 3 Chapter II – ATTACKED BY BEDOUIN ROBBERS .................................................................... 5 Chapter III – THE FAIR PLAIN OF GENNESARET ................................................................... 8 Chapter IV – PSALMS XLII AND XLIII ...................................................................................... 11 Chapter V – ISHMAEL ................................................................................................................ 14 Chapter VI – THE RELIGION OF THE SWORD ........................................................................ 18 Chapter VII – ISAAC AND REBEKAH ........................................................................................ 21 Chapter VIII – THE CAVE OF MACHPELAH ........................................................................... 24 Chapter IX – ESAU OR EDOM .................................................................................................. 27 Chapter X – JACOB .................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter XI – THE MAN ISRAEL ............................................................................................... 34 Chapter XII – THE PATRIARCHAL TENT ................................................................................ 36 Chapter XIII – PROPHECIES IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS. .................................................... 39 Chapter XIV – THE AUTHORSHIP OF GENESIS .................................................................... 44 Chapter XV – THE BOOK OF JOB ............................................................................................. 47 INTRODUCTORY THE BOOK OF GENESIS AS LITERATURE REGARDED from a literary point of view, the book of Genesis is virtually the memoirs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the first twelve of its fifty chapters being an introduction, as we would term it, to the story of the patriarchs. This story surpasses any other in literature for the minuteness of its geographical details. The names of small towns and their relative position to each other continually occur, such as “Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem unto the oak of Moreh” (R.V.). The reference to the oaks of a place is exclusively Palestinian, as anyone who has seen these giant single oaks can testify. The next sentence reads: “And he moved from thence to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.” And so it is all through the book, as any one who would study this characteristic of the narrative will discover. Such a feature would be wholly unnecessary in a mythical or imaginary story. Romances are never burdened with geographical items, nor with points of the compass. But there is far more to this than romance. It would be beyond human invention to represent the ordinary acts of persons living nearly 4,000 years ago, how they stood, walked, bowed, sat, ate, drank, bought and sold, talked or gestured. But this is just what we find in Genesis, and told in such a way that life in Palestine now confirms it all down to the minutest details. The work of my father, entitled “The Land and the Book,” published fifty-two years ago, owed its wide sale to its innumerable illustrations of the Bible being the most natural of all books in its correspondence to human lives and places. Chapter I – A TRIP TO JAULAN ONCE, just after my college days, my father was in the town of Hasbeiya, in Mount Hermon, when an incident occurred which took us at once back to the times of Abraham. My father had long sought an opportunity to visit and to explore the region of ancient Bashan east of the Jordan, but the whole district was in the hands of different Bedouin tribes, and any stranger found in it would be at once stript of everything, including his clothes, which would be highly inconvenient in such a wild district. One day a Druse sheik called on us, and upon my father’s mentioning his wish to travel along the east of the Jordan, he said: “I can introduce you there, and you would be as safe as in your own home. My great-grandfather made a Brotherhood Compact with the great-grandfather of the present Emir of the Fadal Arabs, a tribe whose camps extend all the way from the Jordan to the Euphrates. Now, I have never myself visited my brother, the Emir, nor has he visited me, and therefore I can take this opportunity to go to his encampment, and you can go along.” These Brotherhood Compacts date from time immemorial, and are formed between prominent men with very solemn ceremonies. A great crowd is present to enjoy the feast of the occasion, when seven sheep are slaughtered and their blood collected into a large basin. The two men then stand up and clasp their hands, whereupon the oldest sheik of the community solemnly pours the blood of the sheep over their clasped hands with the words: “Whoever of us, or of our descendants, breaks this covenant, let his blood be poured on the ground like this.” This compact stipulates that whenever either of the parties is in straits, he can call upon his brother to help him with all the power he can command. It also stipulates that when either of the parties visits the other, he and his retinue shall be royally entertained. Now it will be recalled that one day Abraham received the news that his nephew Lot with his family had been captured and carried away captive by the army of Chedorlaomer. Abraham at once equipped his 318 trained servants, a body of men, the nature of which we will soon describe, and then called upon Aner, Mamre and Eshcol, three Canaanite chiefs with whom he 3 had become confederate, and they furnished their contingent to Abraham’s troop. Doubtless the whole force numbered considerably over one thousand men. With this body Abraham made a night attack on Chedorlaomer’s army. It should be remembered that all through ancient history, Oriental armies had no sentinels; and thus, in the Bible, King Saul when he was pursuing David, slept without any guard, so that David stole up to where the king lay asleep and took the cruse of water at his head with him (1Sam. 26). A striking illustration of this was when Alexander the Great, accompanied by his chief officers, entered the lines of the Persian army the night before the decisive battle of Arbela, and found that there was not one of the sleeping host who observed them. We can readily see, therefore, that a panic might occur by a sudden night attack on an army so carelessly guarded, and that Abraham’s company might easily have taken advantage of this. According to appointment, we started on a bright morning in April from the foot of Mount Hermon to ascend the long slopes of the mountains rising on the east of the Jordan, where we should traverse the region now called the Jaulan, or ancient Gaulanitis. It should be noted that the valley of the Jordan constitutes the deepest depression on the face of the earth, the Sea of Galilee itself being over 700 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, while the Dead Sea is over 1,300 feet below the level of all the oceans of the world. The Jaulan is a very diversified tableland at an elevation of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the valley of the Jordan, consisting of a volcanic plateau with here and there cones of extinct volcanoes rising from the level. At one time we suddenly came upon an extinct crater, whose sides were so steep that the bottom was strewn with the bones of animals that had fallen into it. Nothing could exceed the picturesqueness of this apparently deserted country. Every little while a sparkling stream of water descended the gentle valleys, later to enter on its way to the savage Jordan gorges with basaltic precipices like our Western canons. The whole surface of the country and the sides of the valleys were covered with an amazing profusion of flowers of every tint and hue, while the air was literally filled with flocks of wild geese, every conceivable kind of wild ducks and other waterfowl. We should remember that Syria is the wintering ground of the birds of northern Europe and northern Asia, but in April they meet, on the other hand, an innumerable host of quails marching, not flying, up from Africa, and which I myself have seen in numbers that would amply feed the camp of the Israelites, as detailed in Exodus 16:13. Besides waterfowl, however, every bush was alive with singing birds of kinds too numerous to mention. In fact, the whole district explained why the tribes of Reuben and of Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh asked Moses to allow them to settle on that side of the Jordan because they had much cattle. So here, herds of cattle, horses and camels and unnumbered flocks of sheep and goats appeared over the wide expanse the whole day that we were traversing it. Meanwhile we noticed on every low hilltop a solitary Bedouin horseman with his long spear. These correspond to Abraham’s trained servants, their sole business being to watch the possessions of their master and be ready to resist the raids of hostile tribes. Shortly after noon our cavalcade made a detour which at first I did not understand, but the reason was that we were approaching the camp of the Emir himself, and it was requisite that we should come up straight to his tent and not pass any other Bedouin’s tent, because, according to custom, its owner could then come out and claim us as his guests, while we did not wish to be the guests of anyone but the Emir himself. The Emir’s tent was typical of its kind and would cover about an acre, being composed of great carpets woven from camel’s hair and stretched from pole to pole. As we dismounted, the Emir himself came out to meet us, asking whether we would do the honor to our humble servant of entering his tent. He was a young man, drest very simply like any other Bedouin, except that he had a long chain of black coral beads, which are very expensive and which reached nearly to his feet. This Emir was rather noted as a simple-minded man, so that he had the nickname of “tongue-tied” among the Arabs. 4 By his side stood a tall, rather old black negro, with anything but a comely appearance, but whose fame had long reached us. His name was Dahook, and he was the head and hereditary slave in the Emir’s family, who virtually managed the entire affairs of the tribe. As an example of his sharp tongue, it was told me that on one occasion the Turkish Government, with its consistent policy of setting one tribe against the other, had bribed the Emir of the great Benu Sakhr tribe to pay a visit to the Emir of the Fadal Arabs for the purpose of picking a quarrel with them; but when they had partaken of the customary meal and began to talk business, the Benu Sakhr Emir found, to his great inconvenience, that all the talking was done by Dahook. The Benn Sakhr Emir then turned to his retinue and said: “Surely has Allah blest this tribe, whose servant is its master!” “Yes,” quickly retorted Dahook, “Allah has indeed blest this tribe, for its servant is better than the master of any other tribe.” We soon found that Dahook was conversant with all the politics of Syria and of Europe, and he asked many questions about the pending war in the Crimea between the Russians and the French and English armies. In fact, we saw in this head slave a fit representative of that Eliezer of Damascus whom Abraham regarded as his heir if he had no son, and to whom Abraham afterward committed the task of going to Mesopotamia to fetch Rebecca for Isaac. We were first asked to take little stools instead of sitting on the mats, as all Arabs do, but our feet so soon fell fast asleep on these stools that we asked to discard them and squat with the rest. Then a closely woven mat was brought in, followed by the body of a sheep which had been cooked in a closed oven until its flesh was very tender. The sheep was then literally buried out of sight by piles of boiled rice, and then upon this was poured the fermented milk of the country. The Emir stood while we sat around the feast as his guests.1 The Arabs then stretched forth their bare arms and dove into the savory pile, then rolled up the rice, milk and meat in balls and dexterously pitched them into their open mouths, but when I tried this maneuver myself I failed so lamentably that our servants were requested to bring us plates with knives and forks. After the first row of banqueters were sated they arose and the second line took their place, and so on until everything eatable disappeared, and then the little cups of coffee were brought in, of which we partook with the customary salutations. As the sun was setting I walked to the top of the hill overlooking the encampment, and then from every direction I could see long lines of camels, mares, cattle, flocks of sheep and goats, coming over the wide expanse toward the camp, led by their shepherds and escorted by the mounted horsemen. In the camp the calves and ewes were kept in small enclosures, and the constant lowing of the cows, bleating of the sheep and neighing of the horses which were tethered beside a blazing fire before’ each tent, with the tall, tufted Bedouin spears stuck in the ground beside them, gave as bustling and animated a scene of pastoral life as could well be imagined, and led me to remember many a line of Arabic poetry alluding to the picturesque scenes of life in the desert. Chapter II – ATTACKED BY BEDOUIN ROBBERS WHOEVER comes up on the deck of a ship at anchor in the harbor is apt to think that everything on shore has swung around, if meanwhile the ship itself has turned its bow to the wind or tide; so when we arose in the morning at this Bedouin camp, it appeared as if the entire encampment had shifted its points of the compass. The reason was that the whole side of a Bedouin tent is opened by a removal of the carpet curtain on the east side in the afternoon, because that will be the shady side, and then is reversed in the morning. 1 As Abraham did on such occasions. 5 In Gen. 18:15 (R. V.) we read: “And Jehovah appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, ‘My lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: let now a little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and strengthen ye your heart; after that ye shall pass on: forasmuch as ye are come to your servant.’” From a natural mistake, I have seen pictured in religious primers Abraham on this occasion sitting in the door of a small conical tent like ours, whereas every Arab knows that what was meant by the door was this open side of the tent. Shortly after our early meal, we bade farewell to the Emir and Dahook and our kind Druse escort, and started for another and a long day’s ride with a mounted guide furnished by the Emir. During this ride we passed a number of encampments, all belonging to the Fadal Arabs, and each with its herds and flocks. Just as we started a young girl ran ahead of us driving a donkey, laden, as we found out, with her trousseau. She was the daughter of our guide and he was taking advantage of this opportunity to escort her to the tent of her bridegroom, whom, by the way, she had never yet seen. I mention this incident to explain the sending of Hagar away with her son from Abraham’s encampment, because, as that narrative reads in our version, Gen. 21:14, it would appear as a heartless procedure on Abraham’s part. Every Arab, however, understands at once that Abraham for the purpose of quiet, did not send her with an escort; but instead she was going to some one of Abraham’s many encampments, which thereafter should be hers. The subsequent history showed that Abraham’s son Ishmael received a large portion of his father’s property, and therefore was enabled soon to take a high position among the roving Arab tribes, which were the sons of Joktan (Gen. 10:25, 30) and who preceded Abraham. The Arabs to this day, accordingly, divide themselves into the original Arabs, descendants of Joktan, and what they call the “naturalized” Arabs, who are descendants of Ishmael. Our Emir of the Fadal Arabs traces his descent from Ishmael through Mohammed. What happened to Hagar was that she evidently lost her way while going to what was to be her own encampment. There is, however, to be inferred from this passage that there was to be a difference between Isaac the son of Sarah who inherited the covenant of Abraham, namely: that in him and in his seed should all the nations and families of the earth be blest, while Ishmael was to be in no sense a partaker of this divine heritage. It is interesting to note that all Mohammedans, who as such highly revere Abraham, never mention Isaac, but speak only of Ishmael as Abraham’s son. It was prophesied that Ishmael’s hand should be against every man and every man’s hand against him, and as Dean Milman fitly says: “The religion of Mohammed declares war against all mankind.” In keeping with this fact, it is significant that Arab geographers divide the world into Darelislam, or, as we would term it, Islamdom, and Darelharb, or the region of the Enemy. There can never be peace in a purely Mohammedan country, as Morocco and Afghanistan now show. Toward the close of our long day’s ride, our course turned toward the Valley of the Jordan until, near sunset, we found ourselves on the brink of a high precipice. Looking down the gorge, however, almost at our feet, was a beautiful little plain surrounded by basaltic cliffs. On this plain was a Bedouin encampment, and our guide dismounted, and told us that we had to do the same, and lead our horses down a breakneck path alongside a dashing little brook. 6 In time we reached the encampment, and were met by a tall, majestic-looking sheik, whom I had long heard of as the truly righteous man of that region. Our subsequent conversation with him deeply imprest us with his simplicity and his strong faith in God as his protector. His only tribe consisted of this small encampment and had no connection with any other Arab tribe, many of whom are inveterate thieves and robbers, but all of whom hold this Sheik Fraij in veneration. I do not know that I have ever been more imprest than with the native dignity and at the same time rectitude of conduct shown by this simple Bedouin chief. He even spoke mildly of the Turkish Government which tried to take advantage of his small following to oppress him, but which soon found that every Bedouin tribe was ready to come to his assistance. After a pleasant night spent at his encampment, he gave us a guide to conduct us on our rough way down to the Lake of Tiberias, or Sea of Galilee, a glimpse of whose waters we saw far below. After a long and difficult descent we found ourselves at the shore, which is but a short distance from the steep mountains that here come very near the lake. Seeing a small ruin on one side we asked the guide what its name was, and were delighted to hear him answer “Girsa,” for this at once identified it with the Girgasa which was the scene where our Lord, crossing over to the country of the Girgasenes, met the maniac. (Matt. 8:28, A. V.) There were the rocks and there were the caves among which this maniac wandered. Being very thirsty, I saw what looked like a beautiful spring close to the water’s edge. Dismounting to drink of it, it proved to have an intolerable sulfurous smell, and we could see that the bottom of the lake for some distance was covered with sulfur from similar springs. Just then my father called to me to get on my horse, because over a clump of great flowering oleanders some twenty feet high appeared what seemed like a little forest of Bedouin spears. In another instant we were surrounded by Bedouins with their keffeyah or head kerchiefs tied across their faces, which showed that they were on a raid. They instantly pulled me off my horse and commenced to strip me and the baggage of the rest of our party right and left. Just then our guide, who had followed us on foot, ran up and exclaimed: “These men were the guests of Sheik Fraij last night!” With general cursing and swearing the Bedouins dropt everything on hearing this statement, and in another moment were gone. Mounting our horses again after we had pulled ourselves together, we rode on for about half an hour along the shores of the lake, and then came to the encampment of these very fellows, who came out and most graciously invited us to come in and share their hospitality. When we were seated in the tent of their chief, they soon brought in some bowls of a very savory mixture of honey and their native butter, with their kind of bread. This was the highest mark of consideration they could give. The reader may now turn to Isaiah 7:14 (R. V.): “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good.” For this was the food of a princely-born child. Having partaken of the hospitality of these predatory Bedouins, which itself constituted our protection while in their neighborhood, we started for the place where the Jordan flows out of the Lake of Tiberias as the end of this day’s journey. Our hosts gave us a ceremonious farewell and furnished us with a guide who was a typical Bedouin horseman, whom we found very talkative and who soon volunteered to act as our guide to the great ruins of Gadara up in the mountains of Bashan. He remarked that he would be very useful there because that region was full of Bedouin robbers. I asked him if robbers abounded throughout the whole district, whereupon he replied: “Of course, for I am a robber and so all my fathers have been robbers. You wouldn’t take me for a plowman, would you?’ I 7 once heard a Bedouin woman introduce herself to Dr. Van Dyck at our Mission Dispensary as “the daughter of the greatest robber in the Hauran.” It should be remembered that in every Mohammedan country robbers are held in high esteem, because Mohammed himself was a typical highwayman and a murderous robber to the end of his days. ‘When one reflects how founders of every religion are revered by their followers, we can easily imagine the contrast between those who venerate Jesus, the man of peace, and those whose life pattern was a bloody freebooter, as Mohammed was. On that account, even in the palmiest1 days of Arab supremacy, no travelers could pass from one city to another except in caravans with their armed guards. On our way we passed through what might be called a thicket of mustard trees. It should be noted that the mustard seed contains a larger proportion of sulfur than the seed of any other plant, but nowhere in the world does the mustard plant attain such size as it does along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, on account of its very rich soil and its abundance of sulfur, as we have had occasion to note in our previous chapter. This particular clump of mustard plants was as high as our heads as we rode through it on horseback, and it was full of hundreds of twittering and singing goldfinches, which feed upon the seeds. Now, there is nothing irritating in the seed itself, because the activity of powdered mustard is brought out only by the addition of water, and therefore these little birds could feed upon the seeds with impunity. This explains the parable which was uttered on this very shore of the Sea of Galilee in Matt. 13:31 (R. V.). “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof.” This parable refers to the external growth of the Kingdom in the world, and was strikingly fulfilled when the political power of a united Christendom was first shown at the terrible battle of Chalons, A.D. 451, in which the slain were estimated at 300,000, when the combined armies of Roman and Christianized Goths overthrew the pagan hosts of Attila. Never since that day has any combination of non-Christian powers been able to meet even a partial alliance between the nations of Christendom. Chapter III – THE FAIR PLAIN OF GENNESARET IT MAY be well, to enable the reader to picture to himself the Lake of Tiberias and the relative positions of its different localities as they are mentioned in the New Testament, to say that this lake is just about the size and shape of New York Harbor. The outlet of the Jordan, then, would correspond with the Narrows, and Staten Island stretching from the Narrows to the Kill van Kull would correspond to the shore on which the town of Tiberias is located. The difference would be that the mountains steeply rise above Tiberias to the height of about two thousand feet. Tiberias is now the only town on the lake and has some five thousand inhabitants. It is greatly venerated by the Jews as the seat, for centuries, of their great rabbinical schools. Many Jewish rabbis come from distant Russia to die and to be buried in its sacred soil. Proceeding from Tiberias along a low but rocky shore, meeting with many hot springs on the way, but never seeing a sail or a boat on the lake, the traveler comes to a gorge with lofty precipices entering from the west. In these precipices are a number of fortified caves, which were the strongholds of robbers in the time of our Lord. Those robbers Josephus describes as having been finally dislodged by Roman soldiers, who were let down in boxes from the top of the precipice. Considering the dreadful oppression to which the common people were subjected under Roman rule, one cannot doubt but that many of these robbers took to the road 1 Very lively and profitable. 8 from very justifiable anger at the cruel rule of such governors as Felix. I have, therefore, often thought that the penitent thief on the cross may not have had the mind of a wicked robber. At the mouth of this gorge is the only village on the lake. Its houses are the most miserable hovels, but it goes by the name of Mejdel, and is no less than the town of Mary Magdalene. When I last passed it the women of the place were standing on the flat roofs of their houses indulging in a general row, with much cursing and swearing. From Mejdel the mountains recede from the lake, and we now come to the far-famed plain of Gennesaret, probably the most fertile spot on earth. The plain is some fifteen miles in length and averages from two to four miles in width. Josephus exhausts all his vocabulary in describing the wonderful fertility of this plain. It is now nothing but a bare waste, covered in the spring with the densest carpet of beautiful flowers, among which my father found the splendid Huleh lily. When Sir Joseph Hooker of the Kew Gardens acknowledged the receipt of some bulbs of this lily from my father, he declared it to be the most beautiful lily in the world. No wonder our Lord could say of it that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. As we depended largely on my gun for providing our evening meal, I dismounted to take a shot at an immense flock of blue rock pigeons picking up the seeds on the plain. As soon as I fired the whole flock rose, and circling rapidly up in the air, flew until they reached the caves of the robbers, just mentioned. This naturally suggested to us the words of the Psalmist: “In Jehovah do I take refuge. How say ye to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain’” (Ps. 11:1, R. V.) This plain would correspond in its location on the lake to the flats from Bergen Point to Jersey City. At the upper end of the plain the hills return to the lake in the form of low, stony ridges, and here is what I consider to be one of the most interesting spots mentioned in the Bible. A small, rocky cove enters from the lake, in the center of which I think that our Savior sat in a boat while He delivered those wonderful parables given in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, because the assembled multitude could have stood around its steep shores and readily heard Him while He spoke. Anywhere else along the flat shore of Gennesaret only the front rank in the crowd could have listened to Him. Just beyond this, on the east, are some shapeless ruins whose name identifies them with Capernaum. This situation would correspond to the location of Jersey City in New York Harbor. Further on, the Jordan flows into the lake, and on its eastern banks are the small ruins of Bethsaida, corresponding to the most southern point of New York City. Beyond the Jordan, corresponding to the site of Brooklyn, is the well-nigh unbroken mountainous range on the eastern side of the Lake of Tiberias, cleft with many a gorge such as we have described in the previous chapter. After these geographical details, it may be well to take a glance at the relations of the Book of Genesis to ancient history, and to do so we may instance the narrative given in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. It was a settled principle of the higher critics of the days of Voltaire and Volney that no historical statement in the Bible was to be credited unless it was confirmed by Greek or Roman writers. In particular, the fourteenth chapter of Genesis was ridiculed. This chapter represented Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, as ruler over all Mesopotamia, including Nineveh and Babylon, whose empire extended to the Mediterranean, so that Palestinian chiefs were tributary to him. As no Greek or Roman historian had ever heard of such an Elamite empire, and as elsewhere in the Bible itself, the references to Elam are very scanty, this chapter was regarded as a pure myth, invented for the purpose of glorifying the legendary Jewish hero Abraham. 9 At present, however, this chapter in Genesis is acknowledged by all scholars of every shade of belief, as the most important fragment of ancient history in the world, as well as settling conclusively when it was that Abraham lived. The first discovery which came to the learned world as a shock was a long inscription by King Ashurbanipal, about the year 642 B.C., found in a buried palace in Nineveh. In this Ashurbanipal gives full details of his war with the King of Elam, when he captured his capital city Susa, and among other trophies brought back the images of the gods of Nineveh, which Cudur Nakunta, King of Elam, had taken when he captured Nineveh one thousand six hundred and twenty-eight years before (that is, before 642 B.C.). Soon after, further discoveries showed that Elam was the most ancient of conquering powers, before either Nineveh or Babylon became such, and in particular that it was ruled by a dynasty of nine successive kings, each of whom bore the title prefix Cudur or Chedor, the last being Cudur Lagurrier, or Chedorlaomer. In addition, the tablets of Arioch King of Ellaser have been found, in which he states that he was a son-in-law of Chedorlaomer. But above all, Amraphel, King of Shinar, turns out to be no less than Hammurabi, the first king of the dynasty which delivered Babylon from the yoke of Elam, B.C. 1900 years.1 Hammurabi’s laws have been deciphered and, as usual, it is claimed that Moses was, in his laws, a mere copyist of this Babylonian king. By the side of this example in Genesis of the correspondence of the Bible with the actual facts of ancient history, let us contrast history as it was written by the Greeks. For this purpose we need only refer to their account of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, who held much the same political relations to them that Napoleon the Great did to England. Herodotus, after giving a long list of fables about the birth of Cyrus, details his wide conquests until, he says, Cyrus came to his end by invading the country of the Scythians, who were ruled by a queen named Tomyris. This queen defeated him in battle, and cutting off his head, had it put in a skin filled with human blood, bitterly saying that he might thus slake his thirst for gore. Xenophon, on the other hand, wrote a memoir of Cyrus, who, according to him, died peacefully in his palace, surrounded by his counselors, to whom he had delivered a long speech of wise advice. Meanwhile, Ctesias, another Greek historian, gives a totally different account from either of these narrators. As a parallel instance, we might imagine a writer two thousand years hence telling his readers that, as English historians are very discordant about the life and death of Napoleon, it is best to follow the statements of their greatest historian. This historian, after narrating how Napoleon fought the English in the Crimea, states that he then proceeded to invade America, which was peopled by warlike tribes of Hindus under their king, Andrew Jackson, who defeated and captured Napoleon, and put him to death at the instigation of his wife, whom these pagan Hindus regarded as a deity and erected temples to her honor under the name of Mother Eddy. This great queen, however, to show her respect for law, had Napoleon tried by the famous American judge named Lynch, who sentenced him to be hung from their king’s favorite hickory tree. In fact, at present, both Greek and Roman historians, wherever they speak of times preceding their own, are held in no estimation whatever. The Greeks had no conception of where they came from, and therefore created mythical stories about their derivation from renowned Phoenicia and Egypt. No statement would therefore have been so scouted by them as that they were first cousins of their Persian enemies, which the Bible correctly represents them to be in Gen. 10:2. Among the sons of Japheth, the Bible puts Javan (or Ionia) as the nearest brother to Madai or the Medes. It is from Iran, the original home of the Aryans, that the European races have come, as language testifies; for in modern Persian, whole classes of words are virtually the same as they are in German, while others occur in Greek, and others again in Latin. Meanwhile, neither the Shemitic Phoenician nor the 1 Modern scholarship (2015) places Hammurabi’s rule from 1792 BC to 1750 BC. – WHG 10