IN PALESTINE IN KEL.VilON TO THE BIBLE. 



251 



of Palestine is now as well known and hetter understood than our own. 

 I am sure that most of the audience who have spent the last week 

 in London will readily believe Dr. Masterman's assertions. 



It should never be forgotten that the Palestine Exploration 

 Fund was founded and exists for the purpose of discovering and 

 recording facts — facts of all kinds which may prove useful to a 

 more thorough knowledge of the country and its people, past and 

 present, and which cannot but help to explain its history and 

 those incidents of which it was the scene, as recorded in the Bible. 

 It places the facts before the world to be made use of ; it does not, 

 <isa Society, attempt to apply them to the views of any one religious 

 hodij. These facts have been gathered 1)y able scientific men ; and 

 in this meeting it is but gracious to remind you that one of these 

 explorers was your own Secretary, Dr. Edward Hull, who made 

 a Geological Survey of the country, recorded in a volume which 

 forms a part of the great Survey Memoir. 



Dr. Masterman has very ably brought together the results of 

 recent discoveries which could otherwise only be found scattered 

 among the records of the several societies in different languages, 

 and I very cordially join in the vote of thanks to him for his 

 paper. 



Henky Proctor, H.M.C.S., M.R.A.S.— I should like to add a 

 few remarks to Dr. Masterman's paper on " Recent Discoveries in 

 Palestine." In this excellent paper a good deal of fresh light is 

 thrown on the religion of the early inhabitants of Palestine. We 

 are already familiar with the fact of the almost universal prevalence 

 of the worship of the heavenly bodies. It is clear that in Palestine, 

 as in Egypt and Babylon, as well as among all the nations subject 

 to them, the principal objects of worship were the sun and moon. 

 But the most recent researches all tend to show that phallic worship 

 was almost if not quite as universal as sun-worship. This throws a 

 good deal of light on many passages of Scripture. For instance, if 

 such was the religion of Sodom, we can scarcely wonder at the 

 depravity and downfall of the Cities of the Plain, at the action of 

 the daughters of Lot, and at the enticement of Israel into this kind 

 of sin through the worship of Baal-Peor. Here too, we find a full 

 and satisfactory reason for the great number of enactments against 

 nameless sins in the Mosaic Law. This, no doubt, constituted what 

 was most abhorrent to the God of Israel, in the worship of 



