The voice of history against negative criticism

(The failure of the main argument of negative criticism about the inauthenticity of the Pentateuch of Moses in the face of the latest historical and archaeological discoveries) It is sad to observe what efforts the latest negative criticism uses to undermine in the consciousness of modern humanity the faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible. She strives for this goal with a zeal worthy of better things and takes advantage of every opportunity to cast a shadow of doubt, or completely undermine confidence in this or that biblical fact or in entire holy books. This sad work of criticism began, however, a long time ago, back in the last century; but never before has it assumed such dangerous proportions as it does now. In former times, the results of negative criticism were only the property of a few adherents of science, who looked down on the crowd around them, not considering them capable of perceiving the deepest fruits of scientific-critical research, and therefore these results did not have a significant influence on the religious mood of mankind. Many learned critics even then expressed the most extreme opinions, but since they (with a few exceptions) did not leave the sphere of learned publications, which frightened hitherto ordinary people with the wisdom of incomprehensible terminology, they did not directly cause much harm. It's a completely different matter now. Our century, with its democratic tendencies, has introduced a strong dose of democracy into the field of scientific research, and every so-called discovery tries to bring it into the consciousness of the masses as quickly as possible, which, in turn, with its characteristic impressionability, grabs hold of every “new word” of scientific knowledge, seeing in it a new revelation. This is why negative ideas are now constantly to be found in the most popular books; but what is even sadder is that these ideas are already accepted as something generally accepted even in general history courses, and not only abroad, but also here. It is enough to point to the recently published and widely distributed publications in the Russian public such as Yeager’s “World History” and Maspero’s “Ancient History of the Peoples of the East,” in which negative ideas with an air of scientific seriousness are presented to the reading public without any reservations, as something that has actually already received the right of citizenship in science 1 . In the West, and incidentally in England, these negative ideas became so widespread that they shook the conscience not only in secular society, but also in many representatives of the clergy, among whom open voices were heard asking whether it was time to reconsider the church’s attitude towards the books of St. Scriptures in order to more accurately determine what is historically true and divinely inspired in them, and what is there that bears all the signs of human weakness. With this particular tendency, a special publication appeared two years ago, which, under the loud title “Lux mundi,” created an extraordinary stir in the circles of the clergy and secular society, since in this collection many prominent representatives of the Anglican clergy clearly took the point of view of negative criticism. The temptation was great, and under its influence voices even began to rise about whether the Old Testament, filled with so many imperfections and historical unreliability, should be taught in schools as the Law of God, and whether it was not enough to limit ourselves to the New Testament alone. Fortunately, in England there were quite a few such courageous defenders of the faith who, seeing in this movement only a new attempt by rationalism to shake the foundations of the church, and convinced that this attempt, like many others, would pass only like a temporary darkness, after which the sun of truth would shine with even brighter rays, were not embarrassed, but came out in defense of the trampled truth and published a collection of articles aimed at refuting the hasty conclusions of negative criticism. This collection was published under the general title “Lex Mosaica”, and contains a number of apologetic articles in which a refutation of the attacks of negative criticism on all the main books of the Old Testament and mainly on the Pentateuch of Moses is made. In the first place is an article by the famous Orientalist archaeologist Sayce, who with his scientific research has done perhaps more than all the newest researchers for the history of the ancient world and therefore his word has a highly authoritative meaning even among specialists in ancient Eastern archeology. In his article, Sayce deals a decisive blow to the main point of negative criticism, which, tacitly or openly, has hitherto served as the main basis for denying the authenticity and historical reliability of the Mosaic Pentateuch. As is known, negative criticism attributes the origin of the Mosaic Pentateuch to a later time, namely to the period following the Babylonian captivity, and the basis for this is usually put forward by the consideration that at the time of Moses there was no writing among the Jews, and therefore, just as Moses himself could not write these books, which were relatively large for antiquity, so if later by some miracle these books appeared, there would not have been for them would be readers, since the Jewish people first became acquainted with writing only during their captivity in Babylon. This position, first expressed in the last century (for example by Voltaire), continues to be supported by negative criticism to this day; and yet impartial science inflicted a decisive defeat on him, since the latest discoveries and research have provided absolutely accurate evidence of the complete inconsistency of this position, and in his article Sayce shows this with irresistible documentation 3 . It must be borne in mind that for a long time, St. The books of the Old Testament were not only the only monument of the Hebrew language and literature, but were the only monument of the literature of the ancient civilized East in general. The monarchies and kingdoms of which we read in these books passed across the stage of history, leaving scarcely, as it might seem, any traces of their existence. The Hebrew Bible, from a literary and historical point of view, was thus what in logic is called a "single example"; there was nothing yet with which it could be compared and with the help of which it would be possible to refute the false opinions expressed about it. The assumptions from which learned critics proceeded regarding it could not be overthrown, no matter how groundless they were. The most important of these assumptions was the established opinion that the ancient world was not a literary world. In view of this, the books of the Old Testament were considered the only and therefore exceptional example of the literary productivity of the ancient East. The very idea that around the Jews lived peoples who, from the very dawn of their historical life, possessed writing and had a great literature, was met with contemptuous distrust. Literary culture, as was usually supposed, began only with Greece, and Greek literature began no earlier than the 6th century BC. That such an uncultured people as the Jews could have a completely independent literature, independent of the Greeks, and, moreover, much earlier than the appearance of writing among the Greeks, it seemed completely incredible, and therefore the critical school naturally began to push back the Hebrew Bible to later centuries, on the assumption that it could have happened no earlier than writing had already become the common property of civilized humanity. It was on this basis, as mentioned above, that negative criticism, tacitly or knowingly, carried out its critical experiments on the books of the Old Testament. The literary use of writing, according to this assumption, could not have been known to the Jews of the time of Moses, and therefore the very books attributed to Moses cannot have their origin in such antiquity. They must belong to a much later period, when few reliable legends about the times of Moses were preserved, so that the gaps had to be filled in by the imagination of later authors. Hence the criticism rests on a simple syllogism: none of the Jews knew how to write or read in the time of Moses, or for several centuries and after him; Consequently, the documents that supposedly set out the history of this time belong to a later time and therefore do not have historical authenticity. Further conclusions are clear. If there was no person who could at one time record in the chronicle, for example. the event of Abraham’s meeting with Melchizedek or the conquest of Palestine by the king of Aram of Nagaraim, then criticism considers itself to have the right to dispute or completely reject the historical authenticity of these events. Events not included in the chronicle soon fall into oblivion, or are shrouded in the mists of fiction and myth, and this is even more possible in the east than in the sober and less prone to fantasy west. Oral tradition cannot be relied upon with certainty even as to the preservation of the main events of history, much less as to the details from which they are composed. Historical accuracy in a known narrative therefore cannot be assumed unless it can be proven that it is based on contemporary chronicle evidence. Thus, everything depends on whether writing existed or did not exist at the time of Moses, and if archaeological science, which now has at its disposal the richest material obtained by diligent excavations on the historical graves of the peoples of antiquity, proves that writing really existed, then the entire structure of negative criticism will collapse by itself - like a building built on sand. Meanwhile, the science of ancient Eastern archeology now has in its hands the material with which it deals a decisive blow to the main position of negative criticism. While learned critics, sitting in their offices, were laboring over the analytical analysis of the Pentateuch and competing with each other in bold flights of imagination as to which century, perhaps later, the compilation of this sacred collection could be attributed to, and thus with their pens they were destroying the historical authenticity of the narrative contained in it, at this very time other learned researchers, taking up the spade and spade and digging up the graves of the historical peoples of the ancient East, they discovered material that again and, moreover, brilliantly restored and confirmed the truth that had been prematurely and frivolously trampled upon. Thanks to excavations, discoveries followed discoveries, each more striking than the other, and before the eyes of amazed researchers, a forgotten ancient world with its rich culture and civilization arose from its thousand-year-old graves. Work on the study of historical graves was actively carried out first in Egypt, then in Assyro-Babylonia, and finally in the rest of the countries of ancient humanity that huddled along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Entire cities, palaces and churches were discovered, the richest monuments of modern writing to these cities were found and read, and thanks to it, the thousand-year-old dead, as if alive, began to testify to their life forgotten by the modern world. Now, thanks to these discoveries, we have the full opportunity to follow the everyday life of an Egyptian who lived three or four thousand years ago in even greater detail than the life of, for example, a medieval German; we can penetrate into the very thoughts, and even more so into the external affairs of the Babylonians who lived in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, we can follow the policies of Sennacherib and enjoy leafing through the letters of the Canaanites who lived before the birth of Moses. Many of these discoveries are still so new and recent that only a few scientists know about them, and individual voices are just beginning to be heard about their significance in the apologetic sense in relation to the historical data of the Old Testament. Since now it is negative criticism that raises its voice loudest in order to make it heard in the widest possible circles, it is now obvious and most opportune to make these discoveries available to the widest possible circle of readers in order to show how fragile is the foundation on which criticism builds its negative structure. And the most important result of these discoveries is the undoubted fact that writing was a phenomenon with which the Eastern world has been familiar since ancient times. Long before Moses, even before Abraham, the Egyptians and Babylonians already had an extensive written language, possessed the art of reading and writing; among them books were published and schools flourished, and there were even large libraries filled with book treasures of antiquity. But literature, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist only in Babylonia and Egypt. Recent discoveries, especially those produced by excavations at Tell el-Amarna in upper Egypt, have proven that the literary culture of Babylonia during its period of high prosperity was spread throughout western Asia. In Mesopotamia and Aram-Nagaraim, in Cappadocia and Syria there were readers and writers, there were scientists and libraries. Canaan was especially saturated with this Babylonian culture, as it was located along the coastline, which served as a historically beaten path of relations between Babylon and Egypt. Already in the most distant times, Babylonian troops passed through this country and even penetrated into northern Arabia - along the road, but which Hedorlaomer, mentioned in the XIV chapter of the book of Genesis, subsequently made his raids with his allies. Already 3000 years before Christ, Sargop of Akkadian (i.e., southern Chaldean) made invasions of the west, undertaking as many as four separate campaigns, and for a time united it politically with his Babylonian monarchy. Monuments contemporary to him and his son, who conquered the Sinai Peninsula, were recently discovered in Babylonia by American explorers. Fifteen hundred years after the age of Sargon we meet with another Babylonian monarch who also claimed dominion over Sinai, "that land of the Ammorites," and the inscriptions on the tablets found at Tel el-Amarna present clear evidence that these claims were of a real character. From these inscriptions it is clear that at the time when they were made (at the end of the 15th century BC), although Canaan at that time was already a province of Egypt, the Babylonian culture with all its characteristic features dominated in it. Not only was all Canaanite literature written in the Babylonian language and using Babylonian wedge-shaped signs, but furthermore, the correspondence of officials in Canaan was carried out in the Babylonian language and using the Babylonian script. The native deities of Canaan were identified with the deities of Babylonia, and next to Jerusalem itself there was a church to one of the Babylonian gods. Obviously, Canaan was under the control and influence of Babylon for a long time, which alone can explain such a strong influence on the people of this country from a culture alien to them. It is also obvious that this influence was largely literary in nature. But this is not enough. The excavations at Tel el-Amarna, thanks to the correspondence discovered in them, revealed something even more important than that Babylonia once had a lasting and profound influence on the inhabitants of Canaan. This correspondence proves that long before the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, Palestine was a land of books and schools, in which not only a foreign language was taught and studied, but also the complex system of Babylonian cuneiform writing. Only those who have studied Assyrian inscriptions can fully understand what this means. The syllabary system of Assyrian cuneiform requires many years of labor and practice before one can become more or less thoroughly familiar with it. Not only are the signs in it numerous, not only do they differ significantly from each other in different types of cuneiform writing, but each sign also has several phonetic meanings. In addition, the signs themselves could be used ideographically - to express not syllables, but entire concepts, and words could be signified by a certain combination of them, so that their pronunciation already became completely different from the usual pronunciation of the signs that made up this combination. Even the very method of writing is not such that it can assist the memory in assimilating it. The signs of this writing were not pictorial reproductions of objects, like Egyptian hieroglyphs; on the contrary, they were rows of monotonous clips, arranged in an arbitrary order and differing only in their position among others. And yet, despite this difficulty in studying cuneiform, lively correspondence took place throughout Canaan using this foreign writing system and, moreover, in a language foreign to the natives. This fact necessarily leads to the assumption that there were many schools and teachers in the country, as well as books and entire book and archival repositories. As in Babylonia and Assyria, so probably in Canaan there were libraries in which clay books with their wedge-shaped writings were stored and studied. In these same libraries or archives, as can be seen from the discoveries at Tel el-Amarna, official correspondence was also produced. The remains of this correspondence that have reached us indicate how detailed this correspondence was and how often it was carried out. Everyday events were noted and recorded in it with almost the same detail and thoroughness as is done in our time, and a historian who wants to compile the history of the cities of Canaan will find in this correspondence material that is quite sufficient for himself and, moreover, contemporary with the events themselves. Already much earlier than the life of Abraham, there were written documents that contain precious material for the historian for depicting historical life in these distant times. With the attack on Egypt by the semi-savage horde of the Hetians (or Hyxes), who ruled on the banks of the Nile for several centuries, precisely before the reign of the native XVIIIth dynasty, this living literary connection between the basins of Mesopotamia and the Nile had to be interrupted (as, for example, the connection between Russia and Western Europe ceased under the pressure of the Mongol horde that strangled the first), and those lively relations between them, which for several centuries were carried out along the coastal strip of Canaan, ceased for a long time. Only with the overthrow of the rule of the Hykses could these relations be resumed again, albeit in a different form. The Egyptian warriors, the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty, having expelled the Hykses from the banks of the Nile, did not limit themselves to this, but trying, as it were, to exterminate the very root of barbarism, they made numerous campaigns into the depths of Asia in order to finally defeat and scatter the hated Khetians in the very center of their existence, precisely in their capital Cadet, on the banks of the Orontes in Syria. The campaigns were persistent and the warriors stubborn, continuing even in the time of Ramses II (Sesostris of the Greeks), and these campaigns resulted in the fact that Palestine, which lay on the path of these campaigns, which in all likelihood took the side of the Hetites, was subjected to devastation and ruin, many cities in it were destroyed and the state organization was disrupted. But these campaigns were at the same time a kind of preparation for the conquest of Palestine by the Israelis, who, having left Egypt at the end of the 18th dynasties, could easily conquer and occupy the promised land devastated by the Egyptians. The Canaanite fortresses, weakened by lengthy wars, fell one after another and the Israelites settled in the new country as sovereign victors 4 . Nevertheless, as we see from the first chapter of the book of Judges, some of the fortified Canaanite cities retained their independence, and in the extreme south the cities of the Philistines not only were not taken by the Israelites, but remained, so to speak, a thorn on which the people of Israel were constantly pricked and wounded. Until the reign of David and Solomon, cities such as Jerusalem, Gaza and Gezer remained independent of the Jews. They were never conquered by this invading people in Palestine. Gezer was taken and burned by the Egyptians only in the time of Solomon; Gaza never allowed foreign victors into its walls, and Jerusalem, taken by David, with his permission remained the place of residence of its former rulers, the Jebusites, who little by little merged with the victorious people. Meanwhile, these very cities - Jerusalem, Gaza and Gezer - were the seat of Egyptian governors during the very time to which the correspondence found during excavations at Tel el-Amarna relates. Much of this correspondence was written on durable clay slabs, and much of it was kept in the archives of the Canaanite cities. As long as these cities remained unoccupied and were not burned by the enemy, their archives could be accessible to anyone who wanted to read them. There is no reason to suppose that these ancient books and writings could not have been preserved in places even until the period when, even according to modern criticism, familiarity with writing had spread among the Israelites. And with the preservation of books, acquaintance with the very art of reading them could be preserved. Even if we assume, therefore, that the Israelis at the time of their invasion of Palestine were an illiterate people like the Bedouin nomads, there is still no reason to think that when they first learned to read and write, the history of the past was already completely forgotten. On the contrary, they could have had large reserves of historical material at hand even in the relatively late period of the founding of the Jewish monarchy: all that was needed was the desire to read and familiarity with the wedge-shaped writing of Babylonia. But the very assumption that the Israelites, who, having left Egypt during the period of its most flourishing state, were still a horde of illiterate barbarians when they conquered Canaan, does not have sufficient grounds. In Egypt they were surrounded on all sides by books and writers. Not only churches and tombs, but even the walls of private houses there were covered with inscriptions. The very bricks they were forced to make sometimes bore stamps of hieroglyphic characters, just as the most ordinary objects of use and decoration were inscribed with hieroglyphs. Wherever they went, inscriptions appeared before their eyes, which by their very form must involuntarily attract their attention. Is it conceivable that at least one of them would not have mastered the art of reading and writing, or at least understand what was contained in these so widely circulated letters? Even Egyptian tradition itself does not allow such an incredible assumption. In the Egyptian legend of the exodus, as transmitted by the Egyptian historian Manetho, the leader of the people of lepers expelled from Egypt (by which the people of Israel were vaguely meant) is presented as a priest from Iliopolis or Ona, from the city where the first and best university of the land of the pharaohs was located under the jurisdiction of the priests. To admit that the Israelites ever lived in Egypt and at the same time to deny their acquaintance with writing at the time when they fled from this country would perhaps be in accordance with the principles of modern criticism, but in any case it is inconsistent with the principles of plausibility and common sense. Public education, however, was in a flourishing state not only in Egypt. As we have seen, from the letters found at Tel el-Amarna it can be concluded beyond doubt that Canaan also had many schools and libraries. And if from the Bible we learn that one of the first cities taken and destroyed by the Israelites was the city of Kiriath-Sepher (Judges I, 11, 12), i.e., “the city of books,” then this evidence is in complete agreement with archaeological data. Among the ruins of Lachish, which probably lay near Kiriath-Sepher, the explorer Bliss found a cuneiform slab of the same age as the slabs discovered at Tel el-Amarna, and it mentions the then governor of Lachish, the same one whose letter to the pharaoh is in the collection of letters found at Tel el-Amarna. Thus, the Israelites found themselves in contact with a widely developed written language on both sides. On the one hand, their lords and rulers in Egypt, where the Israelites stayed for so long and from where they had just been liberated, had written language from time immemorial. On the other hand, the country to which they were heading and where they were destined to settle had also long been familiar with the art of writing, which it used to a wide extent. In view of this, they would need to avoid both of them in every possible way, they would need to completely hide from the outside world, hide somewhere in an uninhabited desert, so as not to have contact with writing. But even in the desert itself, as recent discoveries show, the art of writing was not at all unfamiliar. In southern Arabia, the “happy” land of incense trees, culture has flourished since ancient times. In Yemen and Hadramaut, the ruins of cities and large technical structures clearly indicate how high the ancient population of this country stood culturally. In addition, many inscriptions were found there written in letters of the so-called Gimiaritic branch of the Phoenician alphabet. Glaser's research has recently shed new light on these remains of ancient Arabic epitaphs. He not only again made copies of the inscriptions collected by previous travelers and corrected the errors that appeared in them, but added to them many others that had remained unknown until then. The main result of these discoveries was the conclusion that many of these inscriptions are even of much greater antiquity than hitherto assumed. If you believe him and Prof. Hommel, a well-known expert on Arab and Assyrian antiquity, some of these inscriptions date back to the century of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, if not earlier. It has long been known that these inscriptions fall into two classes, of which one belonged to the kingdom of Maina or Menaea, and the other to the kingdom of Saba, or Sheba - in biblical pronunciation (the kingdom of the famous Queen of Sheba, who came to Solomon). The dialect of the Menaeans is more archaic than the dialect of the Saveans, as well as the very forms of the signs with which the inscriptions are made. In general, however, it was assumed that the kingdoms of the Menaeans and Sabeans existed together and the two classes of inscriptions belonging to them were therefore contemporary with each other. However, Glaser and prof. are against this view. Hommel raised very compelling objections. One of the most difficult to answer is the objection that the cities of the Menaeans and Sabeans are so intertwined and mixed up with each other that the places where the Minaean inscriptions are found are mixed with those places where the Sheba inscriptions are found. It’s the same as if St. Petersburg was the capital of one kingdom, and Vasilyevsky Island or Okhta belonged to another kingdom 5 . And yet, among the numerous inscriptions, copies of which have been made by learned researchers, there is not a single one that would indicate a war between these two kingdoms. Glaser therefore, perhaps rightly, holds the opinion that these two kingdoms were not contemporary with each other, but followed one after the other, and the kingdom of the Menaians preceded the kingdom of Sheba. This result, if correct, leads to very important consequences. The existence of the Kingdom of Sheba can be traced back to the reign of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pelassar, in the 8th century BC. At that time it was already so powerful that its possessions extended to northern Arabia, where it came into contact with this Assyrian monarch. A few years later, the Sheba king Ithamar paid tribute to Sargon of Assyria. The kingdom of Sheba is then repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament books, and already during the reign of Solomon, as they say, the Queen of Sheba, famous for her wisdom, came to him from these distant countries of the south. Native inscriptions, meanwhile, indicate that before Sava began to be ruled by kings and queens, it was under the control of makaribs, that is, high priests. In this respect, its government was similar to the government of the Midian tribe, whose prince and priest Jethro accidentally became the son-in-law of Moses, or to the government of Assyria, which, according to cuneiform monuments, was first ruled by the Pates, i.e. e. the high priests of Assur, and only subsequently did power pass into the hands of the Assyrian kings. The first beginnings of the power of the kingdom of Sheba must thus be traced back to a period much earlier than the reign of Solomon, and if the Minaean kingdom flourished and then fell before the kingdom of Sheba arose in its place, then its antiquity must be very significant. Meanwhile, the inscriptions have already acquainted us with the names of thirty-three Minaean kings, the oldest of whom, therefore, probably lived before the birth of Moses. Consequently, already at this distant time the art of writing was in use in this country and an accurate, modern chronicle was kept about all the events of the time. But that's not all. Like the Sheba kings of later times, the Menaan kings also laid claim to dominion over central and northern Arabia. Minaan inscriptions mentioning three Minaan kings have been found as far north as Teima, on the great trade route from southern Arabia to Palestine, and another inscription discovered in Yemen states that Minaan rule extended even to Gaza. Thus, in the desert itself, the Israelites would have been in contact with a civilized state, whose subjects could read and write. Their inscriptions were found on rocks and monuments not only in southern Arabia, but also in northern Arabia, in the vicinity of the country of the Midianites and Edom. Edom or Idumea was already an independent country, as can be seen from one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, which states that Edom was at war with Egypt, and a century later its neighbor Moab was included by Ramses II among the peoples he conquered 6 . Is it therefore possible to doubt that the alphabetic writing, which the merchants and officials of the Menaean kingdom brought with them to the north, did not penetrate among the population living there? In the book of Genesis we have lists of Kings who reigned in Edom before the rise of the Jewish monarchy, and this list bears all the signs of historical accuracy. Why not assume that this list was extracted from the state chronicles of a country that managed to maintain its independence even during the period of the power of the Egyptian monarchy and which (if there is at least some truth in the argument of Glaser and Hommel, which their most inveterate opponent can hardly deny) was already familiar with the art of alphabetical writing before the time of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt? It is important to note that the writing was alphabetic - a branch, and perhaps the root, of the so-called Phoenician alphabet. Hence it is possible that the Israelites were more likely to become acquainted with the letters of this particular alphabet than with the signs of the cuneiform syllabary, when it was Moses who was “king in Israel” and issued laws in Kadesh-barnea. They lived in an age of widespread development of writing and at the center of literary activity; so that they do not take one or another part in this activity, to assume this means to assume something incredible and impossible. In any case, there are so many facts to prove the contrary and they are so irresistible that no criticism can overthrow them, no matter how hard it tries to do so - although it must overthrow them in order to have the right to assert that for all that, the Israelites in the time of Moses could neither read nor write. It is also incredible that the Israelites, after their settlement in Palestine, fell asleep mentally, so to speak, while all around their people enjoyed all the benefits and advantages of ancient writing. The Canaanites, among whom they settled, had long been familiar with writing, and the Tyrian chronicles went back even into the third millennium BC. From the first chapters of the book of Chronicles we learn that a significant part of the Jewish population of Judah was of Edomite origin, and the Gibeonites were serfs of Canaanite origin, and many Canaanite cities generally retained their power and independence. Is it therefore possible that the Israelites remained in a position of alienation from writing? Moreover, there is direct evidence against this, and if, for example, the song of Deborah and Barak says that “from Zebulun (came) those wielding a scribe’s cane” 7, then we do not have the slightest reason to doubt the historical accuracy of this evidence. On the contrary, the evidence of ancient Eastern archeology is quite consistent with the literal understanding of this verse. But ancient Eastern archeology goes even further, and can point out places in the Pentateuch itself that suggest the use of historical documents during the time of Moses. Take, for example, the list of descendants of Ham in Chapter X of the Book of Genesis. Canaan is called there the brother of Mizraim, that is, Egypt. Meanwhile, this position could only be true during the prosperity of the Egyptian monarchy, when the Canaanite country was a province of Egypt. Subsequently, after the death of Ramses II, Canaan and Mizraim were already alien to each other, and thus the close kinship attributed in the book of Genesis to these two countries in the person of their ancestors presupposes familiarity with their relations that once existed, but then ceased, so that the thought of this already ceased closeness between them could in no way have occurred to the later writer, who saw completely a different order of things. Or let's take again the legend about Nimrod, the son of Kush. The book of Genesis says about him not only that the beginning of his kingdom was in Babylonia, but also that there was a saying about him: “A strong hunter is like Nimrod before the Lord.” This saying, however, is of Palestinian, not Babylonian origin. The name of the Lord (Jehovah or Jehovah) was not known in Babylonia except as a foreign word, and this proverb takes us back to an era when there was such close connection between Palestine and Babylonia that the name of a Babylonian hero could be the subject of a proverb in Palestine. This was also the era when this Babylonian was called the son of Cush, or rather Kash. Meanwhile, thanks to the latest discoveries, we already know when this era was. This was during the period of Babylonian power and influence in Palestine, a period whose final events are evidenced by the Tel el-Amarna tablets, dating back to the time before the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. At the same time, these plates reveal to us the fact that the Babylonians were then known to the inhabitants of Canaan under the name Kass or Kassites. After this time, nothing like this happened anymore. But, say representatives of the newest negative criticism, in the book of Genesis there are parts, such as. the narrative of the flood, which reveals a Babylonian origin and therefore became known to the Jews already in recent times, during their captivity to Babylon. But “therefore” here does not follow logically at all. There is no doubt that research in the field of wedge-shaped inscriptions has revealed the curious fact of the existence among the Chaldeans of a flood story so closely similar to the biblical narrative that the idea of ​​a common source of origin of these stories involuntarily arises; but at the same time, these studies have proven beyond doubt that this story, even in its present form, predates the time of Abraham, and the traditions on which it is based are even more ancient. Moreover, as can be seen from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the inhabitants of Canaan were familiar with Babylonian writing even before the birth of Moses. Among the slabs there are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which is even marked in red ink to facilitate the study of it by some Canaanite or Egyptian scribe 8 . Hence, if anything follows from all this, it is only that the legends about primitive times were also preserved in Mesopotamia, this cradle of the human race - and these were the same legends that, under the guidance of divine inspiration, were written down by Moses in the book of Genesis, purified from all human impurities. By the way, from a comparison of the Bible's narrative about primitive times with Babylonian legends about the same thing, an extremely curious and important fact emerges that in these latter legends both those passages of the Bible that modern criticism attributes to the “Jehovahist” and those passages that it attributes to the “Elohist” are equally found. This discovery, even from the point of view of the theory of borrowing the biblical story from the Babylonians, deals a decisive blow to the intricate guesses of critics who built their notorious theory of “fragments” on the difference in the names of God used in the Bible - Jehovah or Elohim. This is truly a house built on sand! Meanwhile, even now, dozens of learned sages continue to work on the “analytical” study of the biblical text from the point of view of this absurd theory, which, however, is confused by the critics themselves with such subtleties that they themselves are finally unable to understand. In view of all that has been stated, the question involuntarily arises: what remains after this of those conclusions with which negative criticism has recently been so proudly rushed around, confusing quite a few simple-minded people both abroad and here? How many times have representatives of the negative school, in a tone of infallibility, asserted that thanks to the wit of critical research, the question of the time of origin and historical reliability of the Pentateuch has been resolved forever - and precisely in the negative sense. Moses, under the pen of critics, turned into a vague personality, whose very existence was questioned or even denied; the narratives of the book of Genesis are declared to be fictitious; the story of the exodus was rejected, and the origin of most of the Pentateuch was already attributed to the Babylonian age. And indeed, only on the assumption that the Pentateuch was written centuries after the events described in it, critics had reason to so freely dispose of the historical material contained in it, which, on the basis of its late origin, they had the apparent right not to recognize historical authenticity. But as soon as it is shown that this foundation is false, the entire structure erected on it collapses. And now it turns out that this whole construction was erected on an assumption that is decisively overthrown by the data of ancient Eastern archeology. The age of Moses, contrary to the assurances of negative criticism, was a completely literary age; The countries in which such events as the exodus and conquest of Canaan took place were long familiar with writing and literature flourished in them many generations before these events. Consequently, the writer of the Pentateuch had no need to postpone the compilation of his books due to “illiteracy” until the Babylonian captivity. He could have written them at the very period of his life, and his books could then have been the subject of reverent reading by at least the priests and elders of the people. This is precisely the evidence of history and archaeological science, which bases its conclusions on data that, in any case, is stronger and more reliable than the fantastic analyzes of negative criticism. For Maspero’s work, see “Proceedings of Kiev. spirit. acad." for Oct. real g. Lex Mosaica, or the Law of Moses and the higher criticism, edit. by K. French, London. 1804. See his article: The archaeological witness to the literary activity of the Mosaic age, in Lex Mosaica, pp. 3–18. Regarding the chronology of the exodus, Says adheres to the view now prevailing in the West, according to which the exodus refers to the successor of Ramses VI Menephtha; but here we offer a view that, in our opinion, is more consistent with the data of biblical chronology, namely, that the exodus took place at the end of the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty, traces. before Ramses VI. See our Biblical History in the Light of Recent Research and Discovery, Vol. I, in the chapter on the Exodus. It is, Says says for English readers, as if Oxford and London were the capitals of one kingdom, while Reading and Banbury were the capitals of another. See p. 13. As it appears on the pedestal of the statue located in front of the Luxor Church, where the name Muav or Moab follows Assar or Ashurim Gen. XXV, 3. Another legend contains part of a story that describes the creation of man and the invasion of death into the world, and a copy of the first part of this story, written about eight centuries later, was found in the ruins of the famous library of Assurbanipal in Nineveh. You might be interested in: