Part 3 (1/2)
Now that the descent of the Jews from the Chaldean Abram, whom they affect to call their father, is discredited by all scholars who reject the inspirational and infallible theory of the Old Testament, it is very difficult to find out the real origin of this strange people. All modern writers on Jews and Judaism admit that outside of the Old Testament there is little or no history of the Jews down to the time of Alexander, and that there is very little reliable history even in the collection of books known as the Hebrew Scriptures. It cannot be doubted now that the Pentateuch, improperly called the five books of Moses, was mostly written after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, about 538 b. c., and what is found in these books mainly corresponds with the religion and literature of the a.s.syrians, and was learned during their sojourn in that country, and not, as has ignorantly been supposed, from the mythical Abram, the reputed immigrant from Ur of the Chaldees. What is recorded in the Pentateuch, not being mentioned in other Old-Testament writings, shows that such records had no existence when those books were written, and therefore could have no recognition.
It will be shown hereafter that there is little or nothing in the Pentateuch that is strictly original, much less strictly historical.
Indeed, the tales of the Old Testament generally were written for a religious or patriotic purpose, with little regard for time, place, or historical accuracy. Persons, real or mythical, are often used to represent different tribes, while allegory is the rule rather than the exception in what is ignorantly accepted as history. This is admitted by many eminent Christian writers.
The word ”Jew” first occurs in 2 Kings 16: 6 to denote the inhabitants of Judea, but they should properly have been called ”Judeans.” The very name _Jew_ is probably mythological, derived from _Jeoud_, the name of the only son of Saturn, though, like Abraham, he had several other sons.
It cannot be doubted that the stories of Saturn and Abraham are slightly varied versions of the same fable.
The Jews never deserved to be called a _nation_, at least not until in comparatively modern times. They were inclined from the first to mingle with and intermarry with other peoples, and so became _mongrels_ at an early period.
There was no race distinction, we are told, between the Canaanites, Idumeans, and Israelites. Ishmael married an Egyptian woman, and so did Joseph, the son of Jacob. Esau married a daughter of Ishmael, also two other women, called daughters of Canaan, one a Hitt.i.te and the other a Hivite. Judah and Simeon each married Canaanites. We read in Judges 3: 5, 6, ”The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hitt.i.tes, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their [own] daughters to their sons, and served their G.o.ds.”
In Ezekiel 16th it is written: ”Thus saith the Lord G.o.d unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity was in the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite and thy mother an Hitt.i.te. Your mother was an Hitt.i.te and your father an Amorite-thine elder sister, Samaria, and thy youngest sister, Sodom.”
In Deut. 7: 7 the Jews are told, ”The Lord did not set his love upon you because ye were more in number than any other people, for ye were _fewest_ of all people.” In Josh. 12: 24 they are reminded that it was necessary to ”send them hornets which drove them (the Canaanites) out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites;” and in Ex. 23: 28, 29 it is said, ”I will send hornets before thee which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hitt.i.te from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against thee.” This does not look as if the Jews were very numerous or valorous in the little territory not much larger than the State of Connecticut.
Josephus makes certain notes to show that the Lacedemonians claimed original kins.h.i.+p with the Jews, and some writers make the same claim for the Afghans and several other peoples. Nothing is more certain, in my judgment, than that the Jews are the most thoroughly _mongrel_ race upon the face of the earth. That they have certain idiosyncrasies in common, and even certain distinguis.h.i.+ng _facial_ and other physical marks, can easily be accounted for on other grounds than the a.s.sumption of unity of race.
The common story of the origin of the Jews is certainly fabulous.
Major-General Forlong, of the British Army, says: ”They were probably in the beginning a wandering tribe of Bedouin Arabs who got possession of the rocky parts of Palestine, which were never made better by their presence. They are a comparatively modern people. The first notice of Jews is possibly that of certain Shemitic rulers in the Aram paying tribute about 850 b. c. to Vul-Nirari, the successor of Shalmaneser of Syria; regarding which, however, much more is made by biblicists than the simple record warrants. This is the case also where Champollion affirms that mention is made on the Theban temples of the capture of certain towns of the land we call Judaea, this being thought to prove the existence of Jews. Similar a.s.sumption takes place in regard to the hieratic papyri of the Leyden Museum, held to belong to the time of Rameses II., an inscription read on the rocks of El-Hamamat, and the discovery of some names like Chedorlaomer in the records of Babylonia; but this is all the (so-called) evidence as to the existence of ancient Jews which has been advanced; and the most is made of it in Dr. Birch's opening address on the _Progress of Biblical Archaeology_ at the inauguration of the Archaeological Society. Of Jews we hear nothing during all the Thothmik wars, unless they be included among the phallic-wors.h.i.+pping Hermonites who were mentioned as inhabiting the highlands of Syria. We have no real historical evidence of the persons or kingdoms of David or Solomon, though we may grant the Jewish stories _c.u.m grano salis_, seeing how outrageously they have always exaggerated in everything pertaining to their own glorification.
”The only logical conclusion justifiable when we give up the inspiration theory is, that Arabs and Syro-Phnicians were known to a.s.syrians and Egyptians, and this none would deny. Indeed, we readily grant, with Dr.
Birch, that under the nineteenth and twentieth Egyptian dynasties the influence of the Aramaean nations is distinctly marked; that not only by blood and alliances had the Pharaohs been closely united with the princes of Palestine and Syria, but that the language of the period abounds in Semitic words quite different from the Egyptian, with which they were embroidered and intermingled. Could it possibly be otherwise?
Is it not so to this day? Is a vast and rapidly-sp.a.w.ning Shemitic continent like Arabia not to influence the narrow delta of a river adjoining it or the wild highlands of Syria to the north? Of course Arabs or Shemites were everywhere spread over Egypt, Syria, and Phnicia, as well as in their ancient seats of empire in Arabia, Irak (Kaldia), and on the imperial mounds of Kalneh and Koyunjik; but not necessarily as Jews. I cannot find that these last were anything more than a peculiar religious sect of Arabs who settled down from their pristine nomadic habits and obtained a _quasi_ government under petty princes or sheiks, such as we have seen take place in the case of numerous Arabian and Indian sects.
”Only about two hundred years or so after their return from Babylon did the Jews seem to consolidate into a nation, and the collection and translation of their old mythic records-deciphered with much difficulty by the diligent librarians of Ptolemy Philadelphus from ”old shreds and sc.r.a.ps of leather”-no doubt materially aided in consolidating the people and in welding them into what they became-clans proud of a sort of a mythic history built up by Ezra and other men acquainted with Babylonian records and popular cosmogonies.”
No efforts, say the leaders of the Biblical Archaeological Society, have been able to find either amidst the numerous engravings on the rocks of Arabia Petrea or Palestine, _any save Phnician inscriptions_; not even a record of the Syro-Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the peculiar property of Hebrews. Most of those inscriptions. .h.i.therto discovered do not date anterior to the Roman empire. Few, if _any_ monuments (of Jews) have been found in Palestine or the neighboring countries of any useful antiquity save the Moabite Stone, and the value of this last is all in favor of my previous arguments on these points.
At the pool of Siloam we have an ”inscription in the Phnician character as old as the time of the Kings;... it is incised upon the walls of a rock-chamber apparently dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it. So that here, in a most holy place of this peculiar people, we find only Phnicians, and these wors.h.i.+pping the Sun-G.o.d of Fertility, as was customary on every coast of Europe from unknown times down to the rise of Christianity.”
The Biblical Archaeological Society and British Museum authorities tell us frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, at all events, this inscription of Siloam shows ”that the curved or Phnician character was in use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew monarchy, as well as the conterminous Phnicia, Moabitis, and the more distant a.s.syria. No monument, indeed,” continues Dr. Birch, ”of greater antiquity inscribed in the square character (Hebrew) has been found as yet _older than the fifth century A. D._ [the small capitals are mine], and the coins of the Maccabean princes, as well as those of the revolter Barcochab, are impressed with _Samaritan_ characters. So that here we have the most complete confirmation of all that I a.s.sert as to the mythical history of a Judean people prior to a century or so b. c., and even then only under such a government as Babylonian administrators had taught them to form and the lax rule of the Seleukidae, followed by intermittent Roman government, permitted of.”
Another modern writer says: ”Soon after the death of Alexander the Jews first came into notice under Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and some of their books were collected at the new-built city of Alexandria.”
Such was the insignificance of the Jews as a people that the historical monuments preceding the time of Alexander the Great, who died 323 years b. c., make not the slightest mention of any Jewish transaction. The writings of Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus, and Xenophon, all of whom visited remote countries, contain no mention of the Jews whatever. Neither Homer nor Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander, makes any mention of them. The story of Josephus, that Alexander visited Jerusalem, has been proved to be a fabrication.
Alexander's historians say nothing about it. He did pa.s.s through the coast of Palestine, and the only resistance he encountered was at Gaza, which was garrisoned by Persians (Wyttenbach's _Opuscula_, vol. ii. pp.
416, 421).
For half a century after its destruction, says Dr. Robinson, there is no mention of Jerusalem in history; and even until the time of Constantine its history presents little more than a blank (vol. i. pp. 367, 371).
General Forlong says: ”The area of Judea and Samaria is, according to the above authority, 140 X 40 = 5600 square miles, which I think is certainly one-fourth too much, my own triangulation of it giving only 4500, or a figure of about 130 X 35. I will, however, concede the allotment of 5600, but we must remember that, as a rule, the whole is a dismal, rocky, arid region, with only intersecting valleys, watered by springs and heavy rain from November to February inclusive, and having scorching heats from April to September. Even the inhabitable portions of the country could only support the very spa.r.s.est population, and I speak after having marched over it and also a considerable portion of the rest of the world. In India we should look upon it as a very poor province; in some respects very like the hilly tracts of Mewar or Odeypoor in Kajpootana, but in extent, population, and wealth it is less than that small princ.i.p.ality.
”The chief importance of Palestine in ancient history was due to its lying on the high-road between the great kingdoms of Egypt, Babylon, and a.s.syria, and as giving the Arabs a hiding- and abiding-place which they-Jews included-could not obtain if they ventured out on the plains south and east. The holes and fastnesses of the hills were their safeguards, and, as they a.s.sure us, very much used indeed. The Jewish strip is divided into Samaria as a centre, with Galilee north and Judea south, giving to the two former eight-tenths, and the latter two-tenths; that is, two tribes; 5600 X 2/10 so that the Judean area would be about 5600 X 8/10 = 20 square miles, against the 4480 of the latter; and the population would be somewhat in this proportion, for the extreme barrenness of all the country south and east of Jerusalem would be in some degree made up for by this town being perhaps a little larger than those in the north.
”We are thus prepared to state the population of the entire land in terms of its area, as was done for the Judean capital, and with equally startling results. The whole Turkish empire yields at present less than twenty-four persons to the square mile, and in the wild and warring ages we are here concerned with we may safely say that there were less than twenty per square mile, of which half were females and one-third of the other half children and feeble persons, unable to take the field whether for war or agriculture. The result is disastrous to much biblical matter, and far-reaching; upsetting the mighty armies of Joshua and the Judges, no less than those of David and Solomon, who are thought for a few short years to have united the tribes: nay, the stern facts of figures destroy all the subsequently divided kings or petty chiefs who lasted down to the sixth century or so b. c., and show us that Jews have ever been insignificant in the extreme, especially when compared with the great peoples who generally ruled them, and far and wide around them.
”So that this paltry thirty thousand to forty thousand is the very most which the twelve tribes could, and only for these few years, bring to the front. In general, the tribes warred with one another and with their neighbors, so that, for the purposes of foreign war, the Jewish race represented only two or three tribes at a time, or, say, ten thousand able men. Thus one tribe-as, for example, Judah-would have only from three thousand to four thousand men in all, supposing every man left his fields and home to fight, while a.s.syrian armies not unusually numbered one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men.”
In the above statistics also we have taken a greater area than I think the tribes occupied. There is not a sign of a Jewish people till about what is called their ”Eastern Captivity,” and the Rev. Mr. Rodwell writes in the _Trans. of the Biblical Archaeological Society_ that ”_the Hebrew of the Bible is no other than a dialectic variety of the Canaanitish or Phnician tongue expressed in the Chaldean character_, not brought, as has been taught, by Abram himself from Ur of the Chaldees, but adopted by the Israelites during their long captivities.”
”Could it possibly be otherwise when we look at the facts? The Jews were a poor, ignorant, weak Arab tribe, living on the outskirts of a land occupied for long ages previously by the most famous race of all antiquity-a people from whom Greece, Rome, and Carthage alike borrowed the ideas of their earliest art and architecture. Homer called this race _Phens_ Poludaidaloi-'artists of varied skill,' and later Romans prized them above all others for their constructive talent. Pliny, Seneca, and Varro praise them in words which will never die; Jews said that David solicited their skilled labor, and that Solomon's temple, small and simple though it was, could not be raised without their help; nay, though Ezra says he had these ensamples before him, and had seen all the fine buildings of Babylon, yet he too had to solicit their aid, else the walls of the city of Jehovah and Zerub-babel's second shrine could never have been constructed. In all arts, trades, and manufactures this extraordinary people excelled every ancient race, and from the very earliest times down and into the Roman period. Is it surprising, then, that their language and customs prevailed wherever their skilled aid was required? that Africa in its writing was no less Punic-that is, Phnician-than Libyan, guided by these wondrous Pheni or ”Tyrii bilingues”? The history of Britain during some past generations as the first great manufacturing country of modern times shows how civilization, power, and progress must ever follow industry and usefulness, and Phnicians to a great extent in early days controlled 'the sinews of war' where this was their interest; but it too often proved more profitable to deal in swords and helmets than in 'Tyrian purple' and costly brocade stuffs. Manufacturers are not much given to writing, and these Pheni have been so parsimonious in their vowels and lavish and indifferent in the use of b's, dfs, r's, and s's that few philological students have attempted the translation of Phnician writings, though Phnician, and not Hebrew, is what alone we find traces of in Syria and Palestine.”