his own, as is also his preference of the Hebrew texts for the dates of the Flood and the birth of Abram. We find in his works the following notices on Egyptian history: 1. "Mēnæus " 139 (Antiquit. viii. 6. 2.) "lived long before Abram; for there are more than 1300 years between him and Solomon." Josephus in fact reckoned from the birth of Abram to the building of Solomon's Temple about 1100 years (viii. 3. 1.): consequently according to him, Menes is more than 200 years older than Abram. According to this assumption then he must be placed more than 2300 years before our era. We shall show in the fourth book that, in any case, this reckoning is false as regards Menes-even should it not rather be necessary to assign Abram the earlier date of the two. 2. Susakos (Sesak, the conqueror of Rehoboam) is, according to Josephus, the Sesostris of Herodotus (viii. 10. 2, 3.). It was seemingly not mere carelessness which misled this intelligent author to so preposterous an assumption, but a feeling of vanity, that the conquest of Jerusalem should have been expressly mentioned by Herodotus- although the monuments in Palestine, cited by Herodotus, do not offer flattering testimony to the manly resistance of the nation. 3. Bocchoris. Lysimachus related that the famine and pestilence in Egypt, which led to the expulsion of the leprous and unclean Jews, occurred under Bocchoris : and that Moses led them out plundering whatever came in their way, on which account the city he built was called Hierosyla (the plunder of the Temples). In quoting this story he adds 140 that Bocchoris lived 1700 years before his own time. But this King belongs to 139 Mηvatos instead of Mivaios, as the MSS. read it. the middle of the eighth century B. C., consequently about 850 before Josephus. Such a blunder seems hardly credible: for he must have known (having read Manetho) that Bocchoris could not have reigned so early-700 years after his Menes, and almost contemporary with Moses. On the other hand, 700 years would here be no impossible number for an author, such as Lysimachus. Apion indeed placed the Exodus in the first year of the seventh Olympiad, consequently 750 years B. C., and 850 before Josephus, obviously on the same data which guided Lysimachus. But with all his defects we cannot be sufficiently thankful for the researches of Josephus. How little assistance he could have derived from his own countrymen in any critical investigation into foreign history, may be shown by one example, furnished by himself, in treating of the affairs of Solomon. After having, in the well-known passage of the eighth book of the Antiquities, correctly explained the derivation and meaning of the word Pharaoh (viii. 2.), he quotes from the books of "our People: " 141 that after Solomon married a daughter of Pharaoh, the Kings of Egypt ceased to call themselves Pharaohs; doubtless out of respect for their wise brother-in-law at Jerusalem. This is about as absurd as any of the later rabbinical fables. Josephus knew well that Apries (Hophra) was called Pharaoh, and his authorities also knew it: but a notice tending to flatter the national vanity was not to be omitted, simply because it was absurd and contrary to Scrip ture. Josephus himself had not examined the archives of Tyre. In the 8th book of the Antiquities (v. 3.) and in his tract against Apion (i. 17, 18.) he quotes Menander of Ephesus and Dius, the Phoenician historian as his authorities. In stating as he does in his last 141 Ἐν τοῖς ἐγχωρίοις ἡμῶν βιβλίοις εὗρον. mentioned work, that many letters which passed between Solomon and Hiram were preserved in those archives-those he has to cite are but the messages -described in the Bible (1 Kings v. 2., 2 Chron. ii. 3.) as having passed between the two sovereigns relating to the building of the Temple-embodied in epistolary form. The message of Hiram is indeed distinctly stated in Chronicles to have been transmitted in writing. In his Antiquities (viii. 2. 8.), when treating of the same subject, he boldly refers his readers to those archives. But he had never seen them himself, and was probably little apprehensive of any searching inquiry being made regarding them, either on the part of the Emperor Vespasian, his patron, or of Apion and his other antagonists. But after all, how infinitely superior is he in criticism and knowledge to Alexander Polyhistor, who describes a correspondence between Mephres (Hophra) and Solomon 142, and still more to the critics of his own times, among whom there was certainly no one to compare with him either in ability or in acquaintance with Oriental history. His acute learning and power of composition are nowhere exhibited in such glowing colours, as in the little tract already mentioned, which he felt called upon to write in defence of himself and his nation against the attack of Apion. This work contains both remarks and quotations of great importance to the study of Jewish history, especially as regards Egypt, Moses, and the Exodus. With great ingenuity he demonstrates to the vain Hellenistic bookworm that the civilisation of the Greeks was, in comparison with that of the Jews and Egyptians, but of yesterday-and refutes the statement advanced relative to his own countrymen, by an appeal to the authority both of Greek authors and of Manetho, whom his adversary had cited against him. Apion 142 Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 143. (396. Potter). had repeated a story from that author's historical work, the purport of which was to prove that the Exodus under Moses was nothing else but a revolt of leprous outcasts, who, at a much later period, established themselves under an apostate Egyptian priest, Osarsiph of Heliopolis, in the ancient Hyksos city, which had been benevolently made over to them, and then called to their aid the old enemies of the Empire. Josephus did not content himself in his refutation of this story, with urging that Manetho himself related it as a mere popular legend, but turns the tables upon his opponents by asserting that the Jews are the old lords of Egypt, who, after many centuries of glorious dominion, at length quitted it under an honourable convention, and the guidance of Moses, long before the supposed date of that fabulous story. This is evidently the assertion of a bold controversialist, who feels his superiority to his opponent in the field of native research. It is hardly credible that Josephus meant seriously to maintain that the Jews are the Hyksos, for not only is he altogether silent on this subject in his Jewish history, but the supposition itself is irreconcilable with the historical truth of the books of Moses. It is not impossible however that he may have surmised a certain connection between the Hyksos and the Jews and their wanderings-a connection which we believe capable of being now so clearly demonstrated, that we may anticipate the probability of there being not a few persons who will be disposed to return to the opinion of Josephus. In our judgment there is no better grounded hypothesis than that of the affinity of race between the Hyksos and the Jewsbut none more inadmissible than that of an identity between the expulsion of the one, and the Exodus of the other. 143 143 Here again we rejoice in finding ourselves in agreement with Ewald (vol. i. p. 448. seqq.). Critical research among the Jews into the remote periods of Scripture history, in so far as deserving of notice in the history of science, ends with Josephus. Ideler has proved that Hillel, who was the founder of the Jewish era of the creation in the fifth century, possessed no merit as a chronologer, and certainly none as a man of science.144 He did nothing more than connect the well-known lunar cycle of Meton and Callippus -discovered by Greek ingenuity 750 years before, and adopted by all the other nations who reckoned by lunar years-with the conventional date of the Creation, and then adapted it to Jewish chronology. II. CHRONOLOGY AMONG THE APOSTLES AND THE FATHERS OF THE EASTERN CHURCH DURING THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. CHRISTIAN research was developed under very different auspices. Christianity engrafted on the limited inquiries of the later Greeks and Romans into the origin of nations, the grand ideas of a creation and of the unity of the human race; and thus held out to chronological research, as the guide in the new path of science, a novel and unlooked for object. It required that a connection should be established between the primitive traditions of the Bible and the historical traditions of the Gentiles about the past ages of the world; and at the same time challenged research, in order to defend the historical truth of Scripture. From that moment Egyptian research became linked with Jewish, and through it with the whole history of the world. The Apostle Paul, on several occasions, expresses very marked opinions upon various points of Jewish chronology. In his discourse at Antioch, according to St. Luke (Acts xiii. 20.), after mentioning the Exodus, the 40 years in the wilderness, and the division of the land of Canaan consequent on the extermination of the seven Canaanitish tribes, he adds: 144 Handbuch der Chronologie, i. 575. seqq. |