RAWLINSON'S BAMPTON LECTURES.

(Continued from page 22.)

THERE is something mournful in the summing up of the scanty memorials which have descended to us of such mighty empires, and vast dynasties, as those of Assyria and Babylon, of Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, of Tyre and Carthage. Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin, mystically connected with, and consecrated by, their combined use in the last act of man's redemption, so monopolize ancient history, that we are but too apt to forget that other languages of extinct nations, had their long day of vernacular life, and their more sacred and priestly forms traced out, not on the fragile papyrus alone, but also on the more enduring substances of marble and of brick. The traveller still gazes with wonder upon the pyramids, obelisks, arches, which form the ruins of Egypt, Babylon, and India :ruins which are not only what Sir J. Brown calls them," the irregularities of vain-glory, the wild enormities of ancient magnanimity," but something more too, "they are the huge chronicles by which the men who built them, tell to posterity the wonderful history of their industry and of their art, the writing of a race of giants traced with enduring characters on the great page of nature, which neither the rage of the elements, nor the passions of men, nor even the slow sure hands of time have been able as yet to convert into a palimpsest."2

:

There is another circumstance which will tend to mitigate our surprise at the smallness of these remains. The lapse of time, and the destruction of the large libraries of the ancients, have done much to produce this result; but we must never forget, that contemporaneously with the development of the Aramaic tribes, a parallel history was being worked out by the southern branch of the great Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran; tribes who crossed the snow-capped heights of the Himalaya; the last tribes to leave their central home and find new dwelling-places in the beautiful and fertile valleys of the rivers of Northern India. Their footsteps were untracked by the great conquerors of old time, Sesostris, Semiramis, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus; and so the contemplative element flourished under such favourable conditions for external peace. While Eli and Samuel as Judges; while Saul, David and Solomon as kings, were ruling Israel, and Solomon's temple in all its magnificence and splendour was being reared and consecrated, the Indian was singing those hymns which form the poetry of the early Rishis; hymns dating 2 New Cratylus, p. 63.

1 Hydriotaphia.

from 1000 to 12000 years before our era, the composition of which marks the Chhandas or oldest period of the Vedic literature.

In the succeeding two hundred years these hymns were being collected, and arranged, and augmented, and this the Mantra period of Indian literature was passed through, and another two hundred years and more had elapsed, and the commentatorial age of the Vedic writings had set in, and the Brahmana period had come; ere turning westward we find Nebuchadnezzar seated upon the throne of Babylon, and sacred and profane history brought into contact once more. It is a satisfaction to find, that the paucity in the records of some nations, is in a measure compensated for by a contemporaneous literature filling up the defective portions of the universal history. While one division therefore of the great Aryan race was inscribing its memorials upon the enduring fabrics of its external skill, the other was consolidating a vast religious system and opening up the third phase in the history of the human mind, leaving it in no ambiguous guise, how men felt, reasoned, and worshipped, some three thousand years ago. While God's chosen people were in captivity, and when the chronicles of their nation had ceased, and the national contact with other empires was altogether suspended, then in the foreign court of the victorious conqueror is to be found a man, half a "seer" and half an historian, to bridge over the melancholy period of the captivity, and to connect the last records of the Kings with the later books of Ezra and Nehemiah; and so of inestimable value are the historical notices in the prophecies of Daniel.

It is with the Book of Daniel that Mr. Rawlinson's fifth lecture is principally concerned. All the objections against the authenticity of this prophecy are glanced at with great brevity. The assertion of Ewald, that the writer was an uninspired man who falsely assumed the name of the prophet; of De Wette, that he was a mythic personage; of Porphyry, that he lived in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes; and the general charge of irreconcilability with the leading facts of profane history, are all answered by Mr. Rawlinson. As to the captivity itself, "the fundamental fact of the times," it was not likely to have been invented by the Jews as a myth of their own disgrace; and it is certainly worthy of remark, that while the fragments of Berosus, preserved in the writings of Alexander Polyhistor, treat of the creation and the deluge, and those found both in Apollodorus and Abydenus give an account of the Chaldean kings, and the building of the Tower of Babel; the fragments preserved by Josephus, not only make mention of the destruction of the Temple, but relate many particulars of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The lecturer seems to think that an incidental proof of the captivity, arises from the monuments of the Assyrian kings and the later Persian history as recorded by Herodotus and Arrian, both writers witnessing to the entire transfers of whole nations in

the East, and so recording facts, which would show that the carrying of the Jews into Babylon was a circumstance by no means devoid of an analogue in the history of the times. Yet the words of Berosus are very explicit upon this point. He says that Nebuchadnezzar "removed our people entirely out of their own country (Aws Te Tάντα TоV паρ' Яμv λaòv) and transferred them to Babylon." The united testimony of Berosus and Megasthenes is conclusive as to the splendour and magnificence of Nebuchadnezzar's reign: the former relating how he rebuilt the old city and added another to it on the outside, fortified it with triple walls and magnificently adorned gates, constructed a new palace with high walks and stone pillars, and formed a hanging garden (xpsuarтov паρádεiσov.) Nebuchadnezzar is the only profane prince who is recorded in Scripture to have been endowed with the prophetic gift. (Dan. ii. 28, 29.) Mr. Rawlinson quotes a fragment from the "History of the Assyrians," by Abydenus, which is preserved in the "Præparatio Evangelica" of Eusebius, as if Abydenus himself had stated the prophecy, uttered by Nebuchadnezzar upon the going up into his palace, which prediction relates to the subjugation of his kingdom, stating that "a Persian mule shall come, and by the assistance of your gods shall impose upon you the yoke of slavery, the author of which shall be a Mede." Then follow in the quotation of Abydenus maledictions upon the invaders; the king's confidence in his own happier end, and it so continues: "When he had thus prophesied he expired (or suddenly disappeared), and was succeeded by his son Evilmaluruchus." Now all this is in reality a fragment within a fragment. Thus runs the text, "'Aßudnvos ev τῇ ̓Ασσυρίων γραφῇ, Μεγασθένης δέ φησι.” The name of Megasthenes does not occur at all in Mr. Rawlinson's account of this matter, he gives the fragment as composed by Abydenus the historian.

Again, we are told both in the second Book of Kings (xxv. 27) and also in Jeremiah (lii. 31), that Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, lifted Jehoiachim out of prison in the seven-and-thirtieth year of his captivity; while these very same books (2 Kings xxiv. 12, Jer. xxv. 1) tell us further, that Nebuchadnezzar carried Jehoiachim away captive in the eighth year of his reign. Now placing the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's reign seven years earlier, and the thirty-seventh of the captivity being the first of Evil-Merodach, the thirty-sixth year would be Nebuchadnezzar's last complete year. But 36+7=43, and this is the length assigned to this monarch's reign by Berosus, Polyhistor, and Ptolemy. Mr. Rawlinson proceeds: "The Babylonian monuments go near to prove the same: for the forty-second year of Nebuchadnezzar has been found on a clay tablet. Here Scripture is in exact accordance:"2 and this accordance is heightened by the fact that Scripture nowhere states 1 Joseph. C. Ap. I. 19.

2 P. 161.

Evil-Merodach to be the successor of Nebuchadnezzar. The value of little minute points of evidence such as this is, cannot well be made too much of; they are the triumphs of history, and just as moralists tell us that the character of a man is determined by an aggregate of the small incidents in a man's life and not by the cast of some one great incident, so in history, a forged narrative may hold water when tested by one or two signal events, but its claim to truth is only established by a close agreement in very many small particulars, some of which appear at first sight to be so insignificant, that they are noticed by the careful student alone, and are not recognised at all by the general reader. The scholar we are sure will endorse our remarks. The epistles of Phalaris, the narrative of Aristeas, the modern forgery of Simonides of the Greek text of the Pastor of S. Hermas, will suggest themselves to his mind at once; and especially so, when it is remembered that the fame of Bentley, of Hody, and of Tischendorf has been in no small degree increased by the parts which they have played in these successive controversies. The ecclesiastical student never opens an Ignatian epistle, without a thankful feeling for the minute criticism of Bishop Pearson, which has for ever authenticated these most delightful memorials of the early days of the Church.

:

To return three charges have been brought against the Prophet Daniel, for misrepresentations of the condition of the kingdom of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar; in their refutation Mr. Rawlinson does not seem to have been quite so happy as in his treatment of other portions of this history. In the first place, exception is taken to Daniel's account of the Babylonian wise men ; a mention, which may indicate the Prophet's intimate acquaintance with the external conditions under which Babylonian learning flourished.

6

The lecturer states: "The wise men are designated primarily by a word which exactly suits the condition of literature in the time and country; a word derived from the root cheret, which means a graving tool,' exactly the instrument wherewith a Babylonian ordinarily wrote:"1 for many of their documents consist of bricks, upon which the inscription was impressed by a triangular pointed tool, before the clay was baked. However plausible at first sight this explanation may be, we cannot subscribe it. The word "magician," or "chartom," is a very old one indeed, of Egyptian origin, for it occurs in Genesis (xli. 8, 24), and certainly signifies a class of Egyptian priests; it is one of the earliest examples of a translation of an Egyptian expression into Hebrew. In Exodus also (vii. 11) the "magicians" (chartummey)2 of Egypt are mentioned, and these are the only three books in the Bible in which this peculiar class of people are referred to. Herodotus 3 distinctly enumerates the magi (Máy) as one of the tribes of the

1 P. 162.

2 I.e. construct state of chartummim.

3 Clio, c. 101.

Medes which were cemented by Deïoces into one nation. As the Hebrew is constant, it need not trouble us, if the LXX. call the magician, in Genesis, an nynths, in Exodus, an naodós, and in Daniel, a uάyos, as the translation was made at various times, and by different hands; but Herodotus's use of the Telimessian interpreters (Toùs Enynτéas) seems to restrict the extended application of the word magician. The use of the word Chaldeans (Chasdim) supports the notion of caste; Strabo, Berosus, and Herodotus, all testify, that the term is applied, not merely to the inhabitants of Chaldea, but to an order of astrologers: while Sir H. Rawlinson has shown from the inscriptions, that they were the remnants of the primitive Scythic inhabitants, and that during the later Semitic times, the learning of Babylon was preserved in their language.

A second objection was raised upon the ground of Daniel having been admitted into this sacred caste. Mr. Rawlinson answers this objection by attempting to show, with it appears but little success, that the "wise men were not an exclusive or priestly class at all. We, on the other hand, holding that the strict law of exclusion would apply to Babylon as well as to the other Eastern nations, do not find that the sacred narrative states Daniel to have been admitted among the number of these "wise men," or priests. We read that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were "ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers2 that were in all his [Nebuchadnezzar's] realm," "that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon," was no proof that they were fully initiated into all their mysteries; and both Daniel's address to Arioch, and the speech of Arioch to the king, would seem to imply the same imperfect connection between them.

The third objection has been founded upon a "satrapial organization" of the kingdom of Babylon having been asserted by Daniel; whereas the system was first introduced under the government of Darius Hystaspes. On this point historical inscriptions are silent; but Berosus gives a plain testimony to the fact. "When Nabopolassar his (Nabuchodonosor's) father heard, that the governor (ὁ τεταγμενος σατράπης) whom he had set over Egypt and the provinces of Colesyria had revolted," &c. It seems to be very doubtful, indeed, whether this satrap of Egypt and Syria was Pharaoh-Necho, or not. The "princes," so often mentioned in the sixth chapter of Daniel, are called in the text “ Achasdarpenim," to which word Winer and Leopold both give the meaning Archisatraps, or people placed over the provinces. The LXX. here agrees with the signification of the Hebrew, and in it the princes are called " σατράπας. It would matter but little whether this point was ceded to the Bible history or no, for in the extent of the kingdom of Babylon, the power of the king, the influence of the