The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets. Westbrook Richard Brodhead
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and Egyptians, and this none would deny. Indeed, we readily grant, with Dr. Birch, that under the nineteenth and twentieth Egyptian dynasties the influence of the Aramæan nations is distinctly marked; that not only by blood and alliances had the Pharaohs been closely united with the princes of Palestine and Syria, but that the language of the period abounds in Semitic words quite different from the Egyptian, with which they were embroidered and intermingled. Could it possibly be otherwise? Is it not so to this day? Is a vast and rapidly-spawning Shemitic continent like Arabia not to influence the narrow delta of a river adjoining it or the wild highlands of Syria to the north? Of course Arabs or Shemites were everywhere spread over Egypt, Syria, and Phœnicia, as well as in their ancient seats of empire in Arabia, Irak (Kaldia), and on the imperial mounds of Kalneh and Koyunjik; but not necessarily as Jews. I cannot find that these last were anything more than a peculiar religious sect of Arabs who settled down from their pristine nomadic habits and obtained a quasi government under petty princes or sheiks, such as we have seen take place in the case of numerous Arabian and Indian sects.
“Only about two hundred years or so after their return from Babylon did the Jews seem to consolidate into a nation, and the collection and translation of their old mythic records—deciphered with much difficulty by the diligent librarians of Ptolemy Philadelphus from “old shreds and scraps of leather”—no doubt materially aided in consolidating the people and in welding them into what they became—clans proud of a sort of a mythic history built up by Ezra and other men acquainted with Babylonian records and popular cosmogonies.”
No efforts, say the leaders of the Biblical Archaeological Society, have been able to find either amidst the numerous engravings on the rocks of Arabia Petrea or Palestine, any save Phœnician inscriptions; not even a record of the Syro-Hebrew character, which was once thought to be the peculiar property of Hebrews. Most of those inscriptions hitherto discovered do not date anterior to the Roman empire. Few, if any monuments (of Jews) have been found in Palestine or the neighboring countries of any useful antiquity save the Moabite Stone, and the value of this last is all in favor of my previous arguments on these points. At the pool of Siloam we have an “inscription in the Phœnician character as old as the time of the Kings;… it is incised upon the walls of a rock-chamber apparently dedicated to Baal, who is mentioned on it. So that here, in a most holy place of this peculiar people, we find only Phœnicians, and these worshipping the Sun-god of Fertility, as was customary on every coast of Europe from unknown times down to the rise of Christianity.”
The Biblical Archaeological Society and British Museum authorities tell us frankly and clearly that no Hebrew square character can be proved to exist till after the Babylonian captivity, and that, at all events, this inscription of Siloam shows “that the curved or Phœnician character was in use in Jerusalem itself under the Hebrew monarchy, as well as the conterminous Phœnicia, Moabitis, and the more distant Assyria. No monument, indeed,” continues Dr. Birch, “of greater antiquity inscribed in the square character (Hebrew) has been found as yet older than the fifth century A. D. [the small capitals are mine], and the coins of the Maccabean princes, as well as those of the revolter Barcochab, are impressed with Samaritan characters. So that here we have the most complete confirmation of all that I assert as to the mythical history of a Judean people prior to a century or so b. c., and even then only under such a government as Babylonian administrators had taught them to form and the lax rule of the Seleukidæ, followed by intermittent Roman government, permitted of.”
Another modern writer says: “Soon after the death of Alexander the Jews first came into notice under Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and some of their books were collected at the new-built city of Alexandria.”
Such was the insignificance of the Jews as a people that the historical monuments preceding the time of Alexander the Great, who died 323 years b. c., make not the slightest mention of any Jewish transaction. The writings of Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Herodotus, and Xenophon, all of whom visited remote countries, contain no mention of the Jews whatever. Neither Homer nor Aristotle, the preceptor of Alexander, makes any mention of them. The story of Josephus, that Alexander visited Jerusalem, has been proved to be a fabrication. Alexander’s historians say nothing about it. He did pass through the coast of Palestine, and the only resistance he encountered was at Gaza, which was garrisoned by Persians (Wyttenbach's Opuscula, vol. ii. pp. 416, 421).
For half a century after its destruction, says Dr. Robinson, there is no mention of Jerusalem in history; and even until the time of Constantine its history presents little more than a blank (vol. i. pp. 367, 371).
General Forlong says: “The area of Judea and Samaria is, according to the above authority, 140 X 40 = 5600 square miles, which I think is certainly one-fourth too much, my own triangulation of it giving only 4500, or a figure of about 130 X 35. I will, however, concede the allotment of 5600, but we must remember that, as a rule, the whole is a dismal, rocky, arid region, with only intersecting valleys, watered by springs and heavy rain from November to February inclusive, and having scorching heats from April to September. Even the inhabitable portions of the country could only support the very sparsest population, and I speak after having marched over it and also a considerable portion of the rest of the world. In India we should look upon it as a very poor province; in some respects very like the hilly tracts of Mewar or Odeypoor in Kajpootana, but in extent, population, and wealth it is less than that small principality.
“The chief importance of Palestine in ancient history was due to its lying on the high-road between the great kingdoms of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria, and as giving the Arabs a hiding- and abiding-place which they—Jews included—could not obtain if they ventured out on the plains south and east. The holes and fastnesses of the hills were their safeguards, and, as they assure us, very much used indeed. The Jewish strip is divided into Samaria as a centre, with Galilee north and Judea south, giving to the two former eight-tenths, and the latter two-tenths; that is, two tribes; 5600 X 2/10 so that the Judean area would be about 5600 X 8/10 = 20 square miles, against the 4480 of the latter; and the population would be somewhat in this proportion, for the extreme barrenness of all the country south and east of Jerusalem would be in some degree made up for by this town being perhaps a little larger than those in the north.
“We are thus prepared to state the population of the entire land in terms of its area, as was done for the Judean capital, and with equally startling results. The whole Turkish empire yields at present less than twenty-four persons to the square mile, and in the wild and warring ages we are here concerned with we may safely say that there were less than twenty per square mile, of which half were females and one-third of the other half children and feeble persons, unable to take the field whether for war or agriculture. The result is disastrous to much biblical matter, and far-reaching; upsetting the mighty armies of Joshua and the Judges, no less than those of David and Solomon, who are thought for a few short years to have united the tribes: nay, the stern facts of figures destroy all the subsequently divided kings or petty chiefs who lasted down to the sixth century or so b. c., and show us that Jews have ever been insignificant in the extreme, especially when compared with the great peoples who generally ruled them, and far and wide around them.
“So that this paltry thirty thousand to forty thousand is the very most which the twelve tribes could, and only for these few years, bring to the front. In general, the tribes warred with one another and with their neighbors, so that, for the purposes of foreign war, the Jewish race represented only two or three tribes at a time, or, say, ten thousand able men. Thus one tribe—as, for example, Judah—would have only from three thousand to four thousand men in all, supposing every man left his fields and home to fight, while Assyrian armies not unusually numbered one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand men.”
In the above statistics also we have taken a greater area than I think the tribes occupied. There is not a sign of a Jewish people till about what is called their “Eastern Captivity,” and the Rev. Mr. Rodwell writes in the Trans. of the Biblical Archaeological Society that “the Hebrew of the Bible is no other than a dialectic variety of the Canaanitish or Phœnician tongue expressed in the Chaldean character, not brought, as has been taught, by Abram himself from Ur of the Chaldees, but adopted by the Israelites during their long captivities.” “Could it possibly be otherwise when we look at the facts? The Jews were a poor, ignorant, weak Arab tribe, living on the outskirts of a land occupied