BIBLICAL LORE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 7, 10 January 1938, Page 4

BIBLICAL LORE

DIGGING AND TRUTH

SOME FOOTNOTES TO

HISTORY

THE STORY OF ISRAEL

The fascination of archaeology is in its power to lay bare the workings of men's minds, writes Kenneth Henderson in the "Sydney Morning Herald." It may tell us little of individuals—often only the brief bare boasts of kings to posterity—but its buried cities reveal long strips of human thought and feeling and material circumstance in which great ideas came to influence and great men wrought. Not until we reach the day of the kings of Israel in the period of David and Solomon has the spade much, to report of Biblical personalities, but it has let in a flood of light on the "setting in life" of the earlier | figures, and has recovered the ideas in .which they moved, -. showing us what they, fought against and what they absorbed, and it has supplied a number of illuminating footnotes to the incidents recorded of them. ':

The Hebrew tradition first attains individuality when vTerah, the father of Abraham, left the great city of Ur of the Chaldees, on the lower Euphrates, and journeyed to Haran in northern Syria, following around the first part of the "Crescent of Fertility," which extended up the TigrisEuphrates valley to the valley of the Orontes, and thence down the Jordan to the Delta of the Nile.. In Haran, Abraham received the illumination of anew and purer faith, and a vision of the great destiny stretching before its guardian people, who, were to grow out of his little' tribe. But they had come from a high civilisation-r-already at least 2000 years old in Abraham's time—which is now yielding its secrets to the spade.' They, carried with them the religious legends and ideas of this civilisation, and these legends; their descendants revised to embody simpler and higher ideals. THE TOWER OF'BABEL. In this heritage was the story,of the Tower of Babel. The low. plains of Babylonia to this day are dotted iwith the ruins,of great towers whose composition is as Genesis describes, Having no stone the people built with brick, and for mortar they used slime, .which is bitumen. The towers were composed of solid brick platforms ascended by an inclined ramp or stairs, and a temple crowned the summit. They were used as rallying points for the ■people, impressive symbols of national or civic unity, lest the' people "be scattered abroad upon the face "of the whole earth," and their height was a matter of pride. The original of the Tower of Babel: in the Biblical story is thought to be the base of a great square tower within Babylon itself— the tower of Etemenanki. It was apparently so high that its pinnacle was constantly toppling,- and Scaiger reports that there are many records of its repair. On several of these towers are still to be found inscriptions with the ominous words: "Its top shall reach to the heavens," and Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, wrote: "I raised the summit- of the tower of :Stage,s at Etemenanki—this/, tower—so that its top rivalled the heavens." And the archaeologist George Smith found a fragment telling of. the collapse of one such tower, which says: "The building of this temple offended the gods. Jn a- night they threw down" what had been built. They scattered them abroad and made strange,their speech. The- progress they • impeded." The Biblical narrative tells of the ;building of the Tower as an. arrogant-assertion of unity and, might, which; brought down upon itself the • divine wrath. What will the. scholars, .10,000 years hence, make of the relics of our hot fits of pride? : ■ SIDELIGHTS ON ABRAHAM. Scholars of today are more inclined to regard Abraham as a historical person rather than as a tribal personification, as was 4he earlier view. The name is found in Babylonian farm contracts, as are the others of his story, but these do not refer to Biblical persons. His date appears to have been about 2100 B.C. That is surmised from the, interesting and mysterious episode (Genesis 14) which ■relates that when Abraham reached Canaan he allied himself with.the Amorite chieftains to fight againstfoiir invading kings. One .of1 them was Amraphel,. King of- Shinar,' whom archaeologists are inclined to identify with the great .King of .Bablyon, whose code is often compared, not very convincingly, I think, with the Ten Commandments. ' Shinar is the region of southern Babylonia,; and Amraphel is probably the. transliteration for Ammurabi-el,. Hummurr abi the God, Arioch of Ellassar may be Eri-Aruku, King of Larsa, and Chedorlaomer of Elam. has an Elamiite name. Chedor was a royal prefix and Lagamer an Elamite god. The battle seems to mark the attempt of Elam, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and its subkingdoms to reassert its .dominion over Palestine. Later, Hammurabi threw off therElamite yoke.

Abraham's journey broadly, corresponds with the movement of the Habiru and Hebrew people from southern Babylonia, where they are first mentioned in inscriptions. One further episode in his life is illuminated by excavations. The incident of "the ram caught in the thicket, which in the Bible marks the • break-away of the Hebrew tradition irom human sacrifice, is a favourite motive in Babylonian religious art. ;■■■.; ■ : THE STORY OF JOSEPH. Somewhere before 2000 B.C. Egypt was conquered by the Hkysos kings, who headed a mixture of tribes from the desert, and held the country up as far as Thebes. We know little about them, for the Egyptians, when they reconquered their country in 1580 8.C., destroyed the monuments of their alien rulers. But from ■ fragments we do know that these Bedouin rulers sometimes gave hospitality to their nomad kinsmen when drought withered their pastures and forced them-to seek the grazing lands of the Nile delta. Abraham made this ' journey, and later Joseph, sold into slavery, prepared the way for his father Jacob and the tribe. The obliteration of the monuments has left no direct record of/these years, but the historical setting of the Sojourn in Egypt, ;the Oppression, and the Exodus, can be brought to life. *A medieval tradition whose-value: is unknown relates that the Pharaoh who "entreated Joseph well" was • named Apapus. Reckoning dates by Biblical "dead-reckoning," Scaiger .thinks this may have been Apepi 111 of the XVI Dynasty, who was i-eigning in 1847 B.C. All the record that we have of this king is his beautiful dagger, and the complaint that a noisy hippopotamus under his window was' interfering with his sleep..; Scaiger permits himself a scholarly, jest to the effect that this may , have caused... the uneasy dreams that Joseph interpreted.

: But we find a Civil. servant of the period , relating that he built storehouses for food-to provide against the Mle's-failure, and:distributed--the grain.

Another civil servant and genera) of the time, Sebek-khu, has been identified with Joseph, but on very "shaky" grounds.

The details of Joseph's life are admitted to be authentically Egyptian. His boyhood's coat of many colours was a-Semitic fashion, but the signetring, the vesture of fine linen, the gold chain of office are: usual with Egyptian .officials. Court magicians i were customary, and1 Joseph's right- to ride in the Pharaoh's second chariot recalls that chariots and horses were first in1-' troduced into1 Egypt by these Bedouin kings.

The Oppression falls into a "blind spot" of history, but if it came 400 years after Joseph; there is no doubt that the wheel haii conrte round upon the Jews with the return of Egyptian kings who turned the privileged aliens of the, conqueror's days' into an enslaved p'eopie. ".■: .. THE STORE CITIES. Unconvincing attempts have been made to locate the store-cities Pithom and Raamses which these Pharaohs forced the Hebrews to build. There must have been several Pharaohs of the Oppression if it lasted several generations, and the first three would have been Ahmosis, Amenhotep I," and Thotmes I. Interest quickens when we come to Hatsheput, the favourite daughter of Thotmes (Thut-moses), who, if Scaiger's chronology is correct, may well have been the princess whoreared Moses when he was discovered in the bulrushes. No-she means "offspring of the Nile.'\ She was a wellmeaning and strong-minded lady who wore male attire, was-a great warrior, and filled Egypt during the" minority of her brother." Thotmes 111, who had to fight for his throne and angrily obliterated his sisters' monuments. This King, whose mummy is preserved, may. therefore, be the ruler in whose reign the Oppression reached its peak, and whose death made way for the Exodus. "It came to pass that the King of Egypt died." He also was a great warrior who used slave gangs pictured in monuments, and bricks withqut straw have been discovered bearing his stamp. If the Hebrew flights from Egypt occurred as the Bible reports, 480 years before the building of the temple, it would fall in the reign of his successor, and Amenhotep II was the. Pharaoh who "hardened his heart and would not let them go." •