The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets. Westbrook Richard Brodhead
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would be about 1350 B. C.; but not the slightest hint of any such people as Israelites, although he tells us ‘he visited the country to get information respecting the country, with the manners and customs of its inhabitants.’
“The next is Rameses XII., some two hundred years after the Exodus, who is the hero of the story of the possessed princess. He was in Mesopotamia at the time when the chief of the Bakhten brought his daughter, who afterward became queen of Egypt. ‘His Majesty was there registering the annual tributes of all the princes of the countries,’ among whom he enumerates Tar-neter (Palestine), but no mention of Israelites.
“I find no further trace until the time of Herodotus (about 420 B. c.); and here we come on historical ground. This great historian travelled through Egypt and Palestine in the reign of one of the kings of the Persian dynasty, about forty or fifty years after the alleged return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and when the temple had been built and the city fortified. He repeatedly alludes to the Phœnicians and Syrians, whose country extended from the coast of the Levant down to the Egyptian frontier, including the isthmus and Sinaitic Peninsula. He says that Necho (about 670 b. c.) fought with the Syrians, and took a large city, Cadytis; but he makes no mention of Jews nor yet of Jerusalem. If they had been there, it is incredible that such a careful and grasping historian should have explored the land without noticing them in some way or other.
“The next is from a tablet erected to Alexander II. by Ptolemy, at that time viceroy under the Persian king, but who soon after himself became king of Egypt, 305 b. c. The inscription states that ‘Alexander marched with an army of Ionians to the Syrians’ land, who were at war with him. He penetrated its interior and took it at one stroke, and led their princes, cavalry, ships, and works of art to Egypt.’
“Next follows the third Ptolemy, 238 b. c. (see the Decree of Canopus, Records of the Past, viii., 81), who invaded the two lands of Asia, and brought back to Egypt all the treasures which had been carried away by Cambyses and his successors. He ‘imported corn from East Rutenna and Kafatha’—i. e. from Syria and Phœnicia. It was the father of this king who is credited with sending to Judea for the seventy-two men who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek; and yet neither of these Ptolemaic kings makes mention of Judea, Jerusalem, or the Jews! The inference is obvious: they were not there.
“Many historiographers, when writing of Jewish annals, use the Ptolemaic and other monumental and papyrian accounts as applying to the Jews, and consequently use the term ‘Jews,’ but this is unwarrantable, inasmuch as the accounts themselves speak of ‘Syrians, Phœnicians,’ etc., but not of ‘Jews.’ According to the best cyclopædists, ‘there is little or nothing known of the Jews or Jerusalem until the time of Christ;’ and even then it is taken chiefly from Josephus, who, to my view, is scarcely admissible as a chronographer of actual history. No mention is made by the Ptolemies—say 250 or even less years b. c.—of the Jews of Jerusalem, and as the Roman emperor Hadrian (from 117 to 138 A. D.) is credited with changing the name of the city to Ælia Capitolina, it could only have been known as Jerusalem for a few centuries at most. The Arch of Titus in Rome is taken as conclusive proof that it was erected to commemorate his victories over the rebellious Jews and the successful siege of Jerusalem. But even this, I apprehend, is taken chiefly from Josephus. When in Rome last year I closely inspected this arch, expecting to find an inscription to this effect, but I was disappointed at seeing only a Latin one over the arch, which reads (in English): ‘The Senate and Roman People to the Divine Titus, (Son) of the divine Vespasian,’ and another, by Pius VII., recording its restoration. It is true, I saw the alto-reliefs on the inside of the arch, showing a table, trumpets, and a seven-branched lamp; but these were used in many temples, and would as well refer to the Syrian or Phœnician temples, which undoubtedly existed at that time, and in the absence of direct Roman testimony to the name of the city and people (of which I am unaware), it cannot be accepted as indubitable evidence of its reference to a city called and known to them as Jerusalem, and to a people known to them as Jews. Unless this can be established, it only amounts to an inference resting on Josephus.
“As the result of my researches, I place Jewish historians, so called, upon the same footing as the Christian ecclesiastical ones, whose works, while containing a base of more or less historical reference and truth, are yet too much overweighted with unhistorical myths to be regarded as genuine, sober history. To my view, the Jews were, at the period I am referring to, in a not dissimilar position to the Druses of Lebanon of the present day. As is well known to a certain class of writers who have come in contact with them, they form a community held together not so much by national ties as by semi-religious ones, which are based upon Cabalistic and theurgic rites and ceremonies. Like what I conceive the Jews to have been in the centuries preceding the Christian era, they are an order rather than a nation, the remains of systems which have continued and survived from ancient times. In this light the Jewish records are intelligible as writings veiled in allegory, treating of their mystic lore, albeit expressed in verbiage that bears a literal meaning upon its surface. I give this as the only solution that presents itself of the mysterious problem under review.”
I now propose to state a few points from the Jewish writings themselves (collated from Bishop Colenso) to show the fabulous character of the history of this pretentious people.
The number of fighting-men who marched out of Egypt is nowhere estimated at less than 600,000, and if this represented only one-fourth of the population, the latter must have reached 3,000,000. If we cut this down one-third, so as to be sure of our figures, we make it 2,000,000 souls.
The number of the children of Israel who went into Egypt was 70 (Ex. 1: 5). They sojourned in Egypt 215 years. It could not have been 430 years, as would appear from Ex. 11:40. The marginal chronology makes the period 215 years, and there were only four generations to the Exodus—namely, Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (Ex. 6: 16, 18, 20). How could these people have increased in 215 years from 70 souls so as to number 600,000 warriors? It would have required an average number of 46 children to each father. The 12 sons of Jacob had between them only 53 sons. At this rate of increase, in the fourth generation there would have been only 6311 males (provided they were all living at the time of the Exodus), instead of 1,000,000. If we add the fifth generation, who would be mostly children, the total number of males would not have exceeded 28,465.
All the first-born males from a month old and upward, of those that were numbered, were 22,273 (Num. 3: 43). The lowest computation of the whole number of the people at that time is 2,000,000. The number of males would be 1,000,000. Dividing the latter number by the number of first-born, gives 44, which would be the average number of boys in each family, or about 88 children by each mother. Or, if where the first-born were females, the males were not counted, the number of children by each mother would be reduced to 44.
Dan in the first generation had but one son (Gen. 46: 23), and yet in the fourth generation his descendants had increased to 62,700 warriors (Num. 2: 26), or 64,400 (Num. 26: 43). Each of his sons and grandsons must have had about 80 children of both sexes. On the other hand, the Levites increased the number of “males from a month old and upward” during the 38 years in the wilderness only from 22,000 to 23,000 (Num. 3: 39; 26: 62), and the tribe of Manasseh during the same time increased from 32,200 (Num. 1: 35) to 52,700 (26: 34).
The whole population of Israel were instructed in one single day to keep the passover, and actually did keep it (Ex. 12). At the first notice of any such feast Jehovah said, “I will pass through the land of Egypt this night.*” The passover was to be killed “at even” on the same day that Moses received the command.
The women were at the same time ordered to borrow jewels of their neighbors, the Egyptians. After midnight of the same day the Israelites received notice to start for the wilderness. No one was to go out of his house till morning, when they were to take their hurried flight with their cattle and herds. How could 2,000,000 people, scattered about over a wide district, as they must have been with their cattle and herds, have gotten ready and taken a simultaneous hurried flight at twelve hours’ notice?
The Israelites, with their flocks and herds, reached the Red Sea, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles over a sandy desert, in three days! Marching fifty abreast, the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the road for seven miles, and the whole multitude would have made a column twenty-two miles long,