68 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



"Ammu " or "Ammi" as well. In Bab.vloniau "ilii" is "god^" the 

 Hebrew "el" and "iVmnui-rapi-ilu" would be " Khainniurabi, the 

 god" (he did claim divine honors). " Ammu-rapi-iln is letter for 

 letter the Amraphel of Genesis." Sayce proves the identification 

 of Chedorlaonier and Arioch with names found in the cuneiform 

 tablets in exactl}- the same way. His proof is interesting and may 

 be correct, but it comes rather strangely from one who a few 

 minutes ago told us that "the more archaeological and the less 

 philological our evidence is the greater will be its claim to scientific 

 authority." In fact, one of the great difficulties in estimating the 

 value of archaeological evidence is, that so much proof rests on the 

 identification of proper names and in many cases expert linguists 

 are not agreed that such identification exists. Prof. McCurdy, for 

 instance, considers it much more likely that Amraphel is to be 

 identified with Sinmuballit, Khammurabi's father, and gives a 

 philological proof of the same kind and quite as good as Sayce's. 



lyCt us next consider Hommel's view. He is quite as anxious 

 as Sayce to prove the historical accuracy of the Genesis narrative, 

 but strangely enough he proves conclusively to his own satisfaction 

 and that, too, in opposition to McCurdy, Sayce and Hilprecht, that 

 Abraham and Khamnuirabi were contemporaries, not iii the twenty- 

 third century, B. C, but in the twentieth. He does this by an 

 appeal both to Babylonian and Biblical chronology. Hommel 

 considers the date an important point in his argument, and he not 

 only disagrees with Winckler, Hilprecht and Delitzsch, all of whom 

 are practically agreed that Abraham and Khannnurabi lived about 

 2250 B. C, but he believes that the later Babylonian historians 

 made a mistake of three centuries. If archaeology gives such self- 

 evident proof as is claimed, it is disconcerting to have archaeologists 

 differing among themselves on so radical a point. At one time 

 Hommel had agreed with the other critics as to the date. I give 

 the conclusion to Hommel's proof in his own words : "If we admit 

 that Khammurabi reigned not from 1947 to 1892, but from 2314 to 

 2258, then the period between Abraham and Moses would be not 

 650, but 1000 years, and between Abraham and Joseph not 200, 

 but 550 years : we should in that case be obliged to assume one of 



