The Bible and the Monuments.
If there were heroes before Agamemnon, the world of Greece had lost all record of them. They were quite forgotten, or had been lifted into a pantheon of mythical demigods. If there were books before the Old Testament, they had been buried, lost, forgotten. With the exception of one or two of the later pamphlets, the Old Testament antedated all written history known at the beginning of the present century. Its assertions could be confirmed by no contemporary documents. For vast periods, and not for Israel alone, but for kingdoms and mighty empires which fell before Greece developed a written literature, it was the only record that could claim authority. What the Greeks knew of the history of Egypt and Assyria and Babylonia, they credulously gathered as they could, centuries after. Standing thus alone, the Old Testament history was unconfirmed. There was nothing with which to confirm it, except the muddled accounts of two or three blundering late Greek story-tellers—who were quite as likely to contradict as to tell the truth. The critics had it all their own way. They could deny what they pleased. They could say that this story was inherently improbable, that that was contradicted by Xenophon or Syncellus, and praise the Greek or disparage the Hebrew writers; and no positive and conclusive reply was possible. But the last half-century has changed all this. Fifty years ago Egypt began to open the contemporaneous monuments of her kings. Thirty years ago the capitals of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys were discovered, and their language unlocked. Long historical inscriptions—a few from Egypt, but multitudes from Assyria—have been discovered, written in the life-time, and by the direct orders, of the kings whose deeds they record; contemporary annals, whose historical trustworthiness is beyond question, except as we must make allowance for that boastful temper which would change a defeat into a victory. Fifty years ago critics doubted if such a king as the Sargon mentioned once in the Bible, ever lived. Now, we know the history of the whole dynasty of the Sargonidæ, and have Sargon's own full record of where his armies fought during each successive year of his reign. That record can be trusted. Sargon himself, or his own official historian, tells the story, and the same is true of the other Assyrian kings. My object in this article is to give a few examples, showing how the monuments confirm Bible history. I purposely omit matters of cosmogony, and what comes before the history of nations, which, though abundantly illustrated by the mythic poetry of old Babylon, cannot, in the nature of the case, be historically confirmed. There is space to mention but a few out of scores of combinations which would each bear a much fuller treatment than can be given them here. It is not many years ago that it was stoutly objected that Moses could not have written a book of the law or the ten commandments, because writing was not then invented. But not only is it now abundantly proved that Egyptian hieroglyphic and Assyrian syllabic writing was familiarly known long before the time of Moses, or even of Abraham, but within the past twenty years the history of Phœnician writing used by the Hebrews, has been carefully studied; and it is now the general conclusion of the best scholars that it originated during the time of the conquest of Egypt by the shepherd kings, four or five centuries before Moses. The last student of the subject, Mr. Isaac Taylor, thus sums up the result of long and careful investigation:— "The possible date of the origin of the alphabet is thus brought within definite limits. The possible limits lie between the twenty-third and seventeenth centuries; and there seems to be no reason why we should not provisionally accept the approximate date which has been proposed by de Rougé, and place it in or about the nineteenth century B. C." This objection is swept away. It had seemed strange that, in the tenth chapter of Genesis, it should be represented in one verse that the people of Babylonia were descendants of Ham, through Nimrod; and in another, that they came from Shem, through Asshur. The inscriptions gathered into the British Museum now fully prove that two races occupied that country from a very early time: one pure Shemitic, and the other a darker non-Shemitic race, older than the former, and having an entirely different language and physiognomy, being of what the Bible calls "the sons of Ham." This difficulty is fully met. It seemed, a few years ago, an almost incredible story told in Genesis of the campaign of the four kings of Elam and Babylonia, Chedorlaomer, Arioch, Amraphel, and Tidal, against the five kings of Sodom and the plain. The monuments confirm the story wonderfully. They tell us that at just this time there had been an Elamite (or Median) conquest of Babylonia; they tell us that Laomer was the name of an Elamite god, or that Chedorlaomer means worshiper of Laomer; and we find an account of this very Arioch mentioned on the monuments as king of Elassar, and we learn that his father's name was Chedormabug, and his grandfather's was Simtisilhak; and we further learn that even earlier than this there had been Babylonian expeditions to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Every difficulty is completely removed, and confirmation supplied. Abraham, we are told in the Scriptures, came from Ur of the Chaldees. Such a town had become utterly lost, except in this Biblical mention of it, and a pious tradition had put it in an impossible place. The present generation has rediscovered it, and read its record on the monuments. We find it was the second capital of Babylonia, and was distinguished for the worship of the moon-god. The names could be mentioned of half a dozen of its kings, one of whom was Chedormabug, father of the Arioch of the Bible. Two seals, worn by gentlemen of Ur before the time of Abraham, and bearing the names of the two first kings, are in the British Museum. The Bible geography is proved no fiction. Passing now, with the course of the Hebrew history, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, in the time of the oppression, we find on the Egyptian monuments no record of Bible miracles; that was not to be expected—kings do not report their disasters. But the whole color of the Genesis story agrees admirably with that of Egypt at this time, and Egyptian scholars speak of it with wonder. We find pictures and accounts of slaves with Hebrew features, and working at brick-making as the Hebrews worked. Only lately has any systematic exploration been made in the region where the Hebrews lived. During the present year an expedition was sent from England to search for records of this region; and the first thing done was to discover Pithom, one of the two store cities which the Bible tells us the children of Israel built. The city was previously unknown, but it was found bearing the name of Pithom on an inscription; and the chief buildings were great brick store-houses, without windows or doors, in which grain was to be preserved for use in war or famine. But the Egyptians had no historical tastes. They have left us much to illustrate habits and customs, and only clues to their history. Their annals fail us, but their pictures and stories and pious books are full of helps and of illustrations bearing on the Bible accounts of the land and people of the Nile. The Bible tells us of a strong Israelite kingdom established by David, or extended by him and his son Solomon to the very banks of the Euphrates. But is this credible? What was the mighty empire of Assyria doing all this time? The monuments have answered the question. At just this time the Assyrian empire had suffered a great decline. It was scarcely able to hold its own cities, much less to make any foreign wars. Room was then made for the new Israelite kingdom. But soon after Solomon's death a great king arose in Nineveh, Assur-nazirpal, who unified the Assyrian kingdom and conquered his neighbors, though he did not send his armies as far as Palestine. But his son Shalmaneser tells us, in his own monuments, how he fought with the very kings mentioned in the Bible. He says that in his sixth year he fought against Ben-hadad, king of Damascus, and that Ahab, king of Israel, sent two thousand chariots and ten thousand infantry to help Ben-hadad. He says that twelve years later he again attacked the king of Damascus, who was now Hazael, and who was helped by Jehu, son of Omri. Here Hazael succeeds Ben-hadad, and Jehu succeeds Ahab, precisely as the Old Testament tells us; although Shalmaneser made an error as to Jehu's parentage. Omri was not his father, but the founder of Ahab's dynasty. From this time nearly every king of Israel and Judah is mentioned in the annals of the Assyrian kings. One of these is Hezekiah. Sennacherib's own story adds much of interest to the Bible account. The Bible says that Sennacherib was at Lachish while Jerusalem was invested. We have an actual picture preserved, made by order of the Assyrian king, of his victory at Lachish. He does not claim to have captured Jerusalem, but only that he received tribute. The Bible says that Hezekiah gave him thirty talents of gold and three hundred talents of silver. Sennacherib, in his own account, says it was the talents of gold and eight hundred of silver. But there were two sorts of silver talents, a large talent and a small talent; and eight hundred of one is not equal to three hundred of the other, so that the two accounts fully tally to a shekel.—William Hayes Ward, D. D., in S. S. Times.
(To be concluded.)