384 Mr. Beginald Stuart Poole [March 12, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 12, 1886. 



The Duke of Northumberland, E.G. D.C.L. LL.D. President, 



in the Chair. 



Reginald Stuart Poole, Esq. LL.D. of the British Museum. 



The Discovery of the Biblical Cities of Egypt. 



Biblical criticism has been pursued by three schools. The Old School 

 was eminently conservative, and by too defensive an attitude had 

 produced the strong reaction of the New School, whose tendency was 

 in the opposite direction. Kejecting traditional authority, this school 

 based all its arguments on the text itself. The appearance of the 

 text, as redacted by the Masoretes in the sixth century of our era, 

 seemed to it to favour the idea of the latest date in all cases, 

 especially in that of the major part of the Pentateuch. The weak 

 jjoint in the researches of a body of scholars who had rendered the 

 greatest services to verbal criticism was their failure to pay due 

 consideration to historical evidence outside the record. Thus the 

 Moabite Stone, a document of the ninth century before our era, 

 reversed a canon of their criticism. Aramaic forms are now shown 

 to be consistent with antiquity, and no longer a proof of late date. 

 Again, existence of the Levitical body as generally understood, and 

 the arrangement of the Levitical cities, is denied by Prof. Wellhausen ; 

 yet the list of the conquests of Shishak, Jeroboam's ally, enumerates 

 ten Israelite cities, seven or eight of which belong to the Levitical 

 list, thus explaining the statements of Chronicles that the Levites 

 supported Rehoboam and were driven out by Jeroboam. This docu- 

 ment, fully explained twenty-two years ago, was wholly ignored by 

 Prof. Wellhausen. Such instances justified the existence of the Third 

 or Historical School, which devotes itself to bringing all historical 

 evidence to the elucidation of Biblical history. The chief weapon of 

 this school is the spade of the excavator. 



The Egypt Exploration Fund, desirous of finding monumental 

 evidence of the history of the Hebrews in Egypt, succeeded, in 1883, 

 in obtaining the services of Mr. Kaville, one of the first living 

 Egyptologists. On reaching Cairo, Mr. Naville asked the advice of 

 Prof. Maspero, Director of the Museums and Excavations of Egypt. 

 He was recommended to try the great mound of Tel-el-Maskhutah, 

 on the Sweet-water Canal leading to Ismailia. This mound was sup- 

 posed by Lepsius to cover the remains of Kaamses or Rameses, one of 

 the two store-cities built by the Israelites during the great oppression. 

 Mr. Naville's excavation revealed not Rameses, but the sister store-city 



