MR FITCHETT'S LECTURE ON THE ISRAELITES. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 6503, 15 December 1882, Page 4

MR FITCHETT'S LECTURE ON THE ISRAELITES. TO THE EDITOR.

Sin, —It is much to be regretted that such men as the Rev. Mr Fitchett should not deem it beneath their dignity to dismiss a subject ad* vocated by men of sober miuda and undoubted intelligence with such a heroic Temark »s— " Too absurd for serious discussion—a romance as wild as Erewhon or Gulliver." • Anyman could say as profound a thing; but the thoughtful man naturally asks, " Can he justify the saying ?" If it bo absurd to speak of the ancient inhabitants of Britain as being a Semitic people, how will Mr Fitchett account for the Khymry, or Welsh and Cornish, speaking tho Somitic Hebrew language ? The Welim of the present day is so closely allied to the Hebrew that a man conversant with the former can understand the Hebrew Bible when read to him. Will Mr .Fitchett, in face of such a fact, deny that the Welsh are Semitic ?, Will Mr Fitchett further deny that the ancestors of the Saxons, Danes, and Normans are traced by historians, unprejudiced by theßritish-Israel thsory, to the regions of Assyria and Media, and that their migration from those parts was subsequent to the captivity of tne Israelites ? Will - Mr Fitchett state some facts from a philological standpoint which reduce the British-Israel theory to absurdity, and produce his ethnological rednctw ad absurdum > I for one would feel obliged to him, as I like argument much better than assortion. His use of the following sentence is peculiar;—" Of those who returned from tho Assyrian captivity, a portion aro specified by Nehemiah and Ezra as belonging to the threo tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Lovi."- Will he kindly point out where he finds in Nehemiah or Ezra any record of a return from Assyria ? So far as I am aware, theie is no sticb record. When he speaks of " the return of the Jews from thejr Assyrian captivity," lie speaks of what is simply a myth, for they never were iv an "Assyrian captivity," and consequently cannot have returned from it. Babylon was not Assyria, any more than .France is Spain, or Germany is Austria. The Assyrian captivity . of the kingdom of Israel was effected 130 yearb before the Babylonian captivity of the kingdom of Judah. Thefocafe of the first was into the country of the Medes, by the River Gozan, not far from the Caspian Sea; that'of. the second was to Babylon, on the Lower Euphrates, about 500 or 600 miles south-east of the former. Israel was never under Babylon; Judah was never under Assyria.: This may help to correct Mr Fitchett's chronology and geography. Concerning the restoration of the Jews to" Palestine, permit me Bimply to remark that when Mr Fitchett is Contradicted by such an eminent authority as Dean Alford, I prefer the latter as my guide. That question is not one to be treated m a cavalio^ atylein the preseut ago, when its affirmative is main-% tamed by some of the first Hebrew and Greek scholars oF all denominations; although, it must bo acknowledged, there is an equally respectable opposition. But that only shows the involved nature of the subject from the commentator's point of view. Mr Fitchett considers that there is nothing to induco the Jews to leave " the Western nations, America, and the Colonies and emigrate to Syria." He forgets they are a nation without a country, a people without a government. They have laws, without power to enforce them, and a form of religion dear to the heart of every pne of them, without being able to worship in accordance with it. Would their independent national establishment be no inducement for their return ? What people is there which sets no value on national rights and privileges? For what have so many civil wars been waged ? Is the Jew, therofme, devoid of patriotism.' Or is the Jew unfit for diplomatic statesmanship that ho should have no desire to re-estab-lish the piestige of the old nation? To. a<w . that for the Jews to return to Palestine WQulfl ' be to "descend from a higher civilisation to $ lower," is equal to saying that emigrants frqm the Old World to colonies have dime so, anq that thny have lost honour by becoming tl)o uiopagatois of now nations. Are the Jpws less capable of organising a new 'nationa.l power than other people? Are they lens capable of establishing new centres of art and commerce than are we of Australia and New Zealand? Such objections are, in Mr Fitchett's own words, "too absurd for serious discussion." 1 must, however, not follow him further, as already my letter is too long.—l am, &c, R. N. Adams, President British-Israel Association. Dunedin, Deceinbor 12th.