184 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
from, and has informed us of many things, and we have subject for 
reflection upon many points which, but for his ingenuity, research, 
and learning, probably we should not have thought worth while to 
consider. Those chance allusions and expressions, which we pass 
without any observation at all in matters we have been most of 
us familiar with from our youth, receive a new light from what 
he has told us; and I confess, for myself, the explanation has 
occurred to me, when I have been listening to his learned words, 
of many subjects which have been, perhaps, a little puzzling to 
one on reading that Book with which most of us are familiar, He 
has said so many wise things that I fear beimg over-fascinated and 
saying I agree too much in what he has said. As a lawyer, I 
should pause and consider, and hear somebody on the other side; 
but, at present, I can only say that I am delighted with what 1 
have heard. It is one of those things for which we are not suffi- 
ciently thankful, that men who are accomplished and learned do 
think it worth their while to gv into subjects which are not 
attractive to the popular mind unless they are rendered so by 
learning such as we have listened to to-night. I have now only to 
invite discussion. 
Mr. W. Sr. C. Boscawen: When I read the first six or eight pages 
of the proof copy of this paper, I thought the author was writing 
not on Jewish land tenure, but on a very much older system, viz., 
that of Babylonia; for I find that out of 16 words he quotes, more 
or less connected with land tenure, there are 14 of those words to 
be found on the old Babylonian legal tablets. There is hardly a 
precedent or a custom which he quoted which would not have 
been in use in Babylonia at the time when Abram left his home. 
You are probably aware that there are now in the British Museum 
a series of legal documents, dating from about 2300 years B.c. 
down to within a century of the Christian Era. There are over 
40,000 of those documents, which contain subjects to most people 
almost as dry as the material they are made of, but still there is no 
subject, perhaps, more interesting than that of the life of the 
common people. In studying these nscriptions, you get tired of 
the long platitudes poured out on the kings, and it is quite a treat 
to enter into the houses, as it were, and see the common life of the 
people. What Mr. Neil has said with regard to the light which 
Arab tenure throws on early Hebrew life, I may carry a little 
further back perhaps by giving one or two illustrations. He spoke 
