92 



ORDINARY MEETING, January 4, 1886.* 

 The Rev. R. Thoenton, D.D., Vice-Peesident, in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Chairman then said : I have the pleasure of calling on Mr, St. 

 Chad Boscawen, who is well known among Assyriologists, for his learning 

 and research, to read his paper on " The Historical Evidences of the 

 Migration of Abram." I think Mr. Boscawen has very properly used 

 the designation " Abram," because the migration to which the paper refers 

 took place, as we all know, at a time when he was called " Abram," and not 

 " Abraham." 



The following paper was then read by the Author : — 



HISTORICAL EVIDENCES OF THE MIGRATION 

 OF ABRAM.— By W. St. Chad Boscawen, Esq., 

 F.R.Hist,Soc. 



nVTOT many years ago it would have been considered almost 

 1 1 impossible to deal with the subject of my paper this 

 evening, and two strong objections would have been urged 

 against its adequate treatment. In the first place, to many it 

 would have seemed irreverent thus to place the Scriptures in 

 comparative contact with secular records, and it would have 

 been urged that to do so threw at once an onus of doubt upon 

 their authenticity. A second, and still more forcible objection 

 could then have been advanced, that provided that such a 

 comparison was proposed, where were the monuments by 

 which the Hebrew records were to be tested ? The few 

 traditions preserved by the Greek writers, Herodotus and 

 Ctesias, were so brief and so full of late oral tradition and 

 second-hand caricatured history of the ancient empires of 

 the Bast that they could not throw any light upon the birth 

 of the Hebrew nation. In like manner the writings of 

 Josephus, the Greco- Hebrew historian, were too essentially 

 based upon the Scriptures themselves to be admissible as 

 evidence. If, however, thirty years ago, it was impossible to 



* The large number attending this meeting rendered it necessary to hold 

 it at the Hall of the Society of Arts, which is close to the Institute's House, 



