ORIENTAL DISCOVERIES ON OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 41 



made them once more intelligible. Why was the New Testament 

 plan not adopted in the Old Testament ? The reason of the 

 difference must plainly be found in the attainments of those 

 in whose hands the Pentateuch was first placed, and for whose 

 use it was first of all intended. These must have hnoion Egyijtyian 

 as loell CIS Hehreio ; and the Egyptian words and names were not 

 explained in Hebrew, for the good and sufficient reason that 

 there was no call for any explanation. There is no other way 

 of accounting for the presence of these words in the Bible, and, 

 above all, for their not being interpreted even in a single instance. 

 The readers for whose use the Pentateuch was first of all written 

 were an Egyptian-speaking, as well as a Hebrew-speaking, 

 people. The bearing of that fact upon present discussions is 

 not merely important ; I venture to say it is also momentous. 

 For it means that the Pentateuch belongs to the times of the 

 Exodus. In otiier wwds, it must have been written for a 

 Hebrew people who had sojourned in Egypt. 



The discoveries touch also upon the suppositions on which the 

 scheme of division and the dating of the alleged documents rest. 

 It was taken for granted that the time of Moses was too early 

 for exact history. Little, if anything at all, it was said, was 

 then committed to writing. A nation's history, such as it was, 

 was handed down by oral tradition, and by ballads which had 

 been inspired by local or national events. That notion, however, 

 has now to be discarded. There was exact history in the time 

 of Moses. And not only so. For long ages previously monarchs 

 had been relating their achievements and making and recording 

 treaties ; merchants had been writing out, signing, and preserving 

 contracts ; priests had been registering astronomical phenomena, 

 and had been reading and copying books on religious ritual and 

 on various sciences. It has to be observed also that these state- 

 ments are not founded upon mere inference. The documents 

 referred to have been recovered, and are now available as proof 

 that history was possible in the age of Moses. They show that 

 history was actually being written in that very time, and that 

 the art had been in use for centuries. They show further that 

 there is nothing in Pentateuchal histoiy which could not have 

 been set down by ready pens in the days of the Exodus. Egypt, 

 like all the East, had cultivated learning for long ages. " When," 

 says Erman, " the wise Danuuf, the son of Chert'e, voyaged up 

 the Nile with his son Pepy, to introduce him into the ' court 

 school of books,' he admonished him thus : ' Give thy heart to 

 learning and love her like a mother, for there is nothing that is 

 so precious as learning.' Whenever or wherever we come upon 



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