296 PROF. ARCHIBALD R. S. KENNEDY, M.A., D.D., ON 



is thus li pecks, the ephah of 72 logs is our bushel, while its 

 companion liquid measure, the bath, is 9 gallons. We must 

 remember, however, that the higher we go in the scale the less 

 accurate are our approximations according as the log differed 

 less or more from our standard pint. 



But even with this caution, there is considerable evidence, 

 including a passage in Josephus' own writings {Ant. Ill, 

 xv, 3, as emended by Hultsch), to the effect that the Hebrew 

 measures were, originally at least, somewhat smaller than the 

 popular estimates just given. Thus it is probable that the 

 ephah-bath originally did not exceed 64 to 66 pints, a conclusion 

 confirmed by the statement in the Mishna {Menakhoth vii, 1), 

 that " 5 Jerusalem seahs are equal to 6 wilderness seahs," i.e., 

 the seah-measure of Mosaic times, pointing to a later increase of 

 J- or 20 per cent. (For details see H.D.B. iv, 910 ff.) 



In the early writers on metrology, such as Epiphanius, there 

 are several references to the Hebrew measures, but these are 

 sometimes contradictory, at other times too indefinite, owing to 

 our ignorance of which of the numerous modii, medimni, etc., 

 they are using in their comparisons. Thus, in a recent essay 

 in Klio xiv (1914), pp. 357 ff, Professor Lehmann-Haupt, 

 starting from one of Epiphanius' notices, reaches a value for 

 the seah of 27J xestai, which, since he takes the xestes at "96 

 pint, is 2 6 '4 pints. This raises the ephah-bath of 3 seahs to 

 45 litres or 79*2 pints. Another German metrologist, 0. Viede- 

 bannt, who has made a special study of ancient measures of 

 capacity, reaches quite different conclusions {see art. Hin in 

 Pauly-Wissowa, Real-encyclopcidie , etc., 1913, and several papers 

 in Hermes, 47, 1912). The fact that one can hardly find two 

 metrologists agreeing in their estimates of the Hebrew measures 

 proves conclusively, to my mind, the inadequacy of literary 

 evidence, even when combined, as with Viedebannt, with 

 brilliant speculations in comparative metrology, to solve the 

 problem without the aid of monumental evidence in the shape 

 of actual measures. 



Now such evidence, though not so precise as one could have 

 wished, is at last available. At various intervals in the last 

 twenty-five years or thereby, stone vessels, apparently intended 

 as measures of capacity, have been discovered by the Assump- 

 tionist Fathers in Jerusalem. A full account of them is given 

 by the learned Pere Germer-Durand in a lecture published, with 

 illustrations, in a small volume entitled Conferences de Saint 

 £tienne, 1909-1910 (Paris, Victor Lecoffre). 



The measures in question belong to two distinct sets, one of 



