"Now, concerning the Kingdom of the Chaldaeans, as tersely and distinctly as Berosus speaks, so directly speaketh Polyhistor." The following two lists as derived from the above will be found to correspond with the numbers given for the two last dynasties over Babylon, as given some years ago on p. 37 second of my volume called "Cosmotheolgies etc." The rest, as given in the foregoing, will be found to correspond generally with the others, except that in the dynasty just preceding, the last Assyrian, Eusibus has forty Kings instead of forty-five elsewhere. His aggregate number also differs a little from the other, which may have arisen from mistakes of transcribers.

To Nabonedus succeeded Cyrus, the first King of the Persian dynasties over Babylon.

The name Laborosoarchod I find in Josephus (Contra Apion, Bk. I. 20), who elsewhere spells the name Labosordacus. In this last place also he enters Nabonedus as Naboande!us who, he says, was that Baltasar (Balshazar) from whom Darius, King of Media and Cyrus, King of Persia, having attacked Babylon with their united forces, took the Kingdom.

† Ardamuzane and Samuges may be the two sons of Senacherib, named Adrammelech and Sharezer (2 Kings XIX., 37) who conspired against and slew their father in the temple. Or they may have been son and grandson of Senacherib; but in the foregoing Eusebius gives a reign of 21 years each to Samuges and his brother.

THE RECORDS OF THE HEBREW ORIGINES AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY EXAMINED INTO BY TUCH, EWALD, BUNSEN, DELITSCH AND OTHERS:

An analysis of the Book of Genesis, in regard to the beginnings of the human race, discovers to us that the Babylonian epochs, though bearing some similarity to, are essentially different from the Biblical. The nine or ten Babylonian epochs of the prediluvial times have been aptly compared to the dynasties of the Egyptian Gods; but neither the Chaldæan nor the Egyptian traditions, as these appear developed in their respective systems, could have pertained in general to the old races as their common property. The one is formed according to the type of Chaldee life, bearing the local marks of the general Aramaic race; the other attained its formation in the valley of the Nile, assisted by Phoenicia. If the groundwork of them both was Asiatic, as some have supposed, it is remarkable that the Egyptians have no account of a flood, a piece of ignorance of theirs which was common also to the Phoenicians. If the groundwork of them both pertained to the Ethiopic regions about the Nile's sources, as might be thought to be suggested by their topographical nomenclatures and the ancient names of their deities being, to some extent, common in their ancient writings, why have they not developed into consonant and similar systems? But while, in one sense, the theologies referred to are particular and local, in another they are each general and universal representing, in as far as they do represent the Supreme Deity, as the same God and Father of the Human race, though under different or varying cosmical ideals and dialectical appellations. More distributive, if not more expansive, as to its ideal of Deity, than the Phoenician, the Egyptian system did not set forth all perfection and supremacy under the ideal of a man, in which some think it to have come short or not to have arrived at the most perfect simplicity attainable.

I have stated elsewhere (in Cosmotheologies, etc., p. 12) that the records of the early part of the book of Genesis are characterized by the use of two forms of the Divine name, the one El, plural Elohim, the other Jehovah; which latter is sometimes connected with the former as Jehovah-Elohim. This with other marks, also of an internal character, has proved to the satisfaction of the critics, that the Book of Genesis is made up of at least two ancient documents, from which it was compiled at a date posterior to their date or dates. It was said by Bunsen that the great merit of Tuch, in his commentary on Genesis, consisted in his having established "that the Elohim record forms a connected whole, while the Jehovistic writer is merely to be considered as offering a supplement to the earlier original records, which he found in existence. Tuch supposed the date of the original record to be about the end of the time of the Judges and the Jehovistic writer to have lived in the time of David.

Ewald, in his "History of the People of Israel," supposes the Pentateuch to be made up of four great written works and by four different authors, omitting a few later additions. The oldest, he believes, to be the "Book of the Covenant," composed in the time of the Judges, from written sources of information, then ancient, some of them derived from Moses himself. Of the other three he

thinks the "Book of the Origines "the oldest. From it again he distinguishes a later authority, to whom, he attributes the 14th chapter of Genesis, with the narratives of the Mesopotamian and Chaldaean war in which Abraham was an actor, derived from a preMosaic source; also the section containing the history of Joseph (Gen. xxxix-xli, etc.) with some smaller pieces. As regards the Book of Genesis the two accounts of the second and third compiler, as according to Ewald, coincide in the main with Tuch's original record; as does the fourth and, in regard to Genesis, the last in the series, with the Jehovistic record. The latter, however, Ewald does not suppose to be a supplement but a narrative complete in itself.

As regards the date of its origin, Ewald places the fundamental writing (A.) of the Book of the Origins at the beginning of Solomon's reign. There are in it many peculiarities, which he explains by reference to this date among others the remark (Gen. xxxvi, 31) "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." In the fundamental writing (B) of the third account he recog

nizes the date of Elijah. The Jehovistic account he assigns to the beginning of the eighth century " B. C.

Of the second and fourth narrators he considers the former to have been a Levite and a man of great legislative mind; the latter of a prophetic and poetic genius, a learned man, who extracted from the mass of existing records the best materials with good judgment. He supposes the documents to have been originally private and to have emanated from men of great learning and piety.

Delitsch, a more modern expositor, coincides with the view that the Book of Genesis was made up out of earlier and independent records and with the view propounded by Tuch as to the Elohistic fundamental writings having been completed by means of the Jehovistic.

In regard to the components of the Pentateuch Dr. Bunsen thinks it originally divisible into two main portions, being in part made up of external events and in part of a history of the internal life of men of the Spirit: This being the real and the ideal element in all ancient history, out of a combination of the two the epic narrative has been made up. While in general acquiescing in Tuch's idea of two original records, he thinks the Jehovistic, which is supplementary to the other, to be rather of an ideal character and to indicate progressive research. He is, however, not at all opposed to the idea of the Pentateuch having been a compilation of the products of many different authors or an aggregation of their records, as will be understood in the following quotation: "If," says he, "the false or childish, not to say godless, notion of there having been a mechanical communication of the Sacred Books to a single man of God (that is, in the present instance, to Moses), for the purpose of transmission be abandoned, our faith will rest upon the assumption, that each compiler has told us something, not an invention of his own, but what he had learned or knew of his own knowledge; that he was a faithful vehicle of the traditions, which came down to him, and that each of his successors has preserved this national and humanizing treasure with veneration and fidelity. In this way that which seems to have no meaning becomes reasonable and an object of moral belief and serious contemplation to educated minds.

"We come," says he, "to this conclusion by sound science and research as much as by methodical thought. By sounding the laws of mind we become conscious of eternal ideas in a symbolical language. What we know not to be true by the logical process, we

find through historical investigation to have been believed and acted upon instinctively and expressed ritually and artistically. But, lastly, the discoveries in our own peculiar domain, those especially of Egyptian as well as Assyro-Babylonian antiquity, and pre-emininently those of historical ethnology have forced upon us the conclusion that there is a far more remote background of early history than critics ventured to assume at the begining of this century." (Egypt: IV. 384.)

The truth and soundness of all he has here said being admitted we must perceive that a proper understanding or restoration of the originals would be a great desideratum. What is understood as history is the varied picture of the living, active, human race: Historical, scientific research can, therefore, accept nothing as historical, which proves to be a picture not true to the life which it purports to represent; or which, in its general representation, is found to be at variance with the conditions of existence in time and space.

Taking such axioms as his guide the historical enquirer often finds himself opposed by the Jewish Rabinical belief. Has he found enough of cause for rejecting the historical view of a tradition? Yet he may not have the means at his disposal of finding an affirmative solution, explaining the origin of the tradition. It is recognized as the especial merit of some modern historical investigators to have exerted themselves to the utmost to effect a true and complete restoration as to the originals of the Old Testament, and that "the dreams of Dupuis and the scoffs of Voltaire" have vanished wherever the published results of their scientific-historicBiblical researches have penetrated. It has, in fact, clearly demonstrated that Christianity, properly understood, lives and moves in a sphere of intelligent belief, which is strictly and necessarily consistent with truth and fact.