24-6 Mr. Carter's Remarks on Mr. Beke's Papers 



reverence of the worshipers, some other word would have 

 been selected to express the atonement and mercy-seat, than 

 one to which the people must have been daily familiar in the 

 sense of pitch and a sliming over of pitch, from their tradi- 

 tionary or other history, and that this is one reason, though 

 not " the principal," for inferring that the word, nowhere else 

 used in that sense, is not so used here*. 



To the country near Babylon being the spot of Noah's ante- 

 diluvian residence, Mr. Beke objects, as being founded on 

 mere tradition, mentions the place where the ark rested to be 

 Armenia or the North of Mesopotamia, a statement which can 

 scarcely be considered as founded on anything better, — then, 

 taking that as a fact, observes," The most philosophical course 

 is to assume that in the neighbourhood where the ark rested 

 there also it was built." Why, in the unequalled atmospheric 

 disturbances which the narrative of the Deluge bespeaks, the 

 ark should be thus immoveable is not very manifest. I as- 

 sume it was just as likely to be found at length in any other 

 spot, as in the one where such uncertain agency began to act 

 upon it. 



It being universally allowed that Babylon (Babel in the 

 original) was in the neighbourhood of Hillah, and the Jewish 

 church having furnished us with the same name for both the city 

 and the country of the tower-builders and those of Nimrod f , 

 the natural inference is that they are identical. Mr, Beke, con- 

 sidering that, at this period, the Persian Gulf occupied, or the 

 waters of the rivers desolated, this part, denies their identity, 

 the only reason appearing to be, that at the dispersion in 

 Peleg's days the builders are said to have " left off to build 

 the city." But if we consider that Nimrod was but the third 

 from Noah, and Peleg the fifth, the spots, which in time 

 grew into cities, become but inclosed lands or small villages, 

 and the dominion mere patriarchal rule. On that event hap- 

 pening, enough of the habitations of such a period might have 

 been ready for those who probably remained with Nimrod J, 



* The very word said to signify pitch is used to designate the Messiah: 

 " Deliver him, &c. : I have found (kopher) a ransom."— Job xxxiii. 24. 



f See Gen. x. 9. 10. and xi. 2.9.; 1 Chron. xxxvi. 7. ; and Dan. i. 2. 

 By comparing which we find that Babel as well as the Babylon of Nebu- 

 chadnezzar was in the land of Shinar. 



X Is. xxiii. 13. seems distinctly to identify Nimrod' s Babel and Babylon: 

 rt The Assyrian founded it (Chaldea or Babylon) for them that dwell in the 

 wilderness." That Nimrod was the patriarchal chief of Assyria is deter- 

 mined by Micah v. 6., where Assyria is expressly called " the land of Nim- 

 rod." It is surely manifest that it could be his land in no other sense than 

 that he first settled it. Thus the Assyrian Nimrod founded Babel, formed 

 into a social community the remnant of the people scattered and broken 



