520 THE HORITES. 



lists are vitterly useless for genealogical purposes ; and we liave no 

 record that tlie twelve tribes ever employed tliem for such an end, or 

 even that the most learned of their rabbis have been able to reduce 

 them to order. It is u.tterly imj)ossible to redvice them to order, on 

 the hypothesis or understanding that they represent the descendants 

 of Judah, Benjamin, &c. The Ram and Hur and Salma of Judah 

 cannot be reconciled with those of the same name afterward men- 

 tioned ; neither can the Beni-Jamin of the seventh chapter be made 

 to agree with the children of Jacob's youngest born. What, then, 

 it may be asked, is the alternative 1 The books of Chronicles are of 

 low canonicity — for the Jew places them at the end of the hagio- 

 grapha. Shall they be deemed unworthy of the canon ] Far from 

 it. I regard the first book of Chronicles as one of the most valuable 

 books in the Old Testament Scriptures. It contains what is found 

 in no other book in the world, a brief but most comprehensive record 

 of all the great families of antiquity. It embraces a large Gentile 

 genealogy, or series of genealogies, overshadowing those of the 

 Hebrew people ; and this accounts for the mystification of all the 

 Jewish doctors. They never thought of looking in the inspired 

 writings of their canon for a sign of the Divine interest in all the 

 nations of the earth, beyond that furnished in the tenth chapter of 

 Genesis. 



The books of Chronicles are among the least edited, even at the 

 present day, of all the books of the Bible. The versions of these 

 books difier widely, to an extravagant degree, in the names given in 

 the first few chapters of the first book and in other particulars.^^ It 

 may yet be found by scholars possessing greater Oriental erudition 

 and greater facilities than I Can command, that the connection of the 

 sons of Jacob with these Gentile families is the result of ancient 

 rabbinical interpolation ; and that a well meant, but injudicious, 

 attempt to clear up a mystery has led to the serious confusion that 

 so frequently appears. I may state here, once for all, that nothing 

 short of the most sei'ious and long settled conviction of the truth 

 and important reality of my discovery could induce me to cast a 

 doubt upon the presently received views in regard to this portion of 

 the Sacred Yolume. "With the Apostle Paiil I trust ever to be able 

 to take as my motto, " We can do nothing against the truth, but for 

 the truth," meaning by that Truth the inspired Word of God, 



11 E.g., The Septuagint and iSyriac yersions. 



