The Pentateuch vindicated from the aspersions of Bishop Colenso

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THE PENTATEUCH

Preface

The aim of this Treatise is precisely what its title imports. It does not pretend to be an exhibition of the grounds on which the faith of Christendom reposes in adhering to the historical truth, the Mosaic Authorship and the inspiration of the Pentateuch ; nor is it designed to afford a complete refutation of the objections of all opposers. It occupies itself exclusively with the recent extraordinary publication of Bishop Colenso, containing an examination of his arguments seriatim with proofs of their inconclusiveness and of the indubitable verity of the statements which he impugns.

If the book reviewed in these pages had come from the hands of a professed infidel, it would probably have attracted no attention whatever. The notoriety, which it has gained, is due not to any novelty in its arguments, or speciousness in its objections, nor to any special merit in the mode of their presentation, but solely to the fact that a Bishop belonging to one of the leading churches of

IV PREFACE.

evangelical Christendom has undertaken to destroy the faith which once he preached. This joined with his loud professions of candour and disinterested love for the truth, his repeated insinuations of the insincerity of those with whom he was once associated, and the triumphant air which he assumes, as if confident of an easy victory, has given to it for the moment a factitious importance.

For scholars no refutation is needed; what is here written, has been prepared with the view of guarding the unwary from being imposed upon by bold assertions and baseless assumptions, and of affording those who have not the leisure for a more extended examination of the subject, the evidence that though the faith of some may be overthrown, nevertheless the Foundation of God Standeth Sure.

If the author's life is spared, he hopes to be able at some future day to prepare a more extended work upon the criticism of the Pentateuch, and perhaps upon that of the Old Testament generally.

The titles of the chapters are adopted from Bishop Colenso and contain his objections in the order in which they are stated by himself. The references to his book are throughout to the American Edition, issued by the Appletons.

PrdhCETON. February, 1863.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

Preliminary Kemarks ..... 9

I. — The Family or Judah 30

Chapter I. The Family Of Judah

The first difficulty alleged with this flourish of trumpets concerns the number of Jacob's family when he went down into Egypt.

Genesis xlvi. 8-27 contains a list of "the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt." These are arranged in the order of their mothers, and the descendants of each are summed up separately. The number here recorded as sprung from Leah is reckoned (ver. 15) thirty and three ; from Zilpah (ver. 18) sixteen ; from Rachel (ver. 22), including Joseph and his two sons, fourteen ; from Bilhah (ver. 25) seven. A general summary is then made at the close, vs. 26, 27.

" All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore and six :

" And the sons of Joseph which were born him in Egypt, were two souls : all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were three score and ten."

JSTow the point which Colenso makes is this. There are two persons named in this list, and who must be included to make up the number, but who could not have been born when Jacob went down into Egypt nor for a considerable time afterwards. The names in question occur in ver. 12 :

"And the sons of Judah ; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez and Zarah ; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul."

•' Now if Er and Onan who ' died in the land of Canaan' be dropped from the list, it will be necessary to include in the enumeration Hezron and Hamul the sons of Pharez, or there will be a deficiency in the descendants of Leah, as well as in the total number of the descendants of Jacob. But that Hezron and Hamul could not have been born prior to the descent into Egypt he undertakes to show in the following manner :

" Now Judah was forty-two* years old, according to the story, when he went down with Jacob into Egypt.

" But, if we turn to G-. xxxviii. we shall find that, in the course of these forty-two years of Judah's life, the following events are recorded to have happened.

"(i) Judah grows up, marries a wife — ' at that time,' v. 1, that is, after Joseph's being sold into Egypt, when he was ' seventeen years old,' Gr. xxxvii. 2, and when Judah, consequently, was twenty years old, — and has, separately, three sons by her.

" (ii) The eldest of these three sons grows up, is married, and dies.

" The second grows to maturity (suppose in another year), marries h's brother's widow, and dies.

" * Joseph was thirty years old, when he ' stood before Pharaoh,' as governor of the land of Egypt, G-. xli. 46 ; and from that time nine years elapsed, (seven of plenty and two of famine,) before Jacob came down to Egypt. At that time, therefore, Joseph was thirty-nine years old. But Judah was about three years older than Joseph ; for Judah was born in the fourth year of Jacob's double marriage, G-. xxix. 35, and Joseph in the seventh, G-. xxx. 24-26, xxxi. 41. Hence Judah was forty-two years old when Jacob went down to Egypt."

" The third grows to maturity (suppose in another year still), but declines to take his brother's -widow to wife.

" She then deceives Judah himself, conceives by him, and in due time bears him twins, Pharez and Zarah.

" (iii) One of these twins also grows to maturity, and has two sons, Hezron and Hamul, born to him, before Jacob goes down into Egypt.

" The above being certainly incredible, we are obliged to conclude that one of the two accounts must be untrue." (pp. 61, 62.)

We cheerfully grant the Bishop his premises, but cannot agree with him in his conclusion. We would not be prepared to admit that any writer of ordinary sense could so stultify himself, as he here alleges that Moses has done ; not, at least, until we had first exhausted every effort for the reconciliation of his statements. We can, therefore, but repeat the explanation which has satisfied a multitude of candid and intelligent minds from the beginning and which satisfies our own, notwithstanding the sneer at those who have adduced it as willing to ' do violence to the plain reading of the Scripture in order to evade the difficulty,' and as ' having recourse to shifts in order to avoid confessing the manifest truth in this matter.'

The sacred writer evidently desires to make out the round number seventy (ver. 27) as the total of Jacob's family when he went into Egypt. In order to arrive at this result he allows himself a certain latitude of expression, which those, who are disposed to carp at words, may charge upon him as verbal inaccuracies, though he makes his meaning sufficiently plain, and no one but a caviller is in any danger of being deceived by it. Thus in ver. 8 Jacob is himself included, as well as his sons, among " the children of Israel which came into Egypt." He is also counted along with " his sons and his daughters" by Leah to complete the number thirty-three (ver.

15). And in ver. 27 " the sons of Joseph which were born him in Egypt* 1 are included among " the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt." It is plain, therefore, that the narrator was more concerned about the substantial truth of his statements than about punctilious precision in regard to phrases.

Now, including Er and Onan, the two who had deceased in Canaan, the family of Jacob, up to the time of his entering Egypt, amounted to seventy souls. Or again, if these two names be omitted, and the vacancy so created be filled up by two descendants of the same branch of the family born in Egypt, viz. Hezron and Hamul, the number will again be seventy. It no more conflicts with the good faith of this family register that it admits two grandsons of Judah born in Egypt, than that it admits the two sons of Joseph also born in Egypt, and then sums all up as " the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt." The grandsons of Judah came into Egypt in precisely the same sense that the sons of Joseph came, viz. in the loins of their father, Heb. vii. 10 ; and in a sense kindred to that in which God brought Jacob up again from Egypt Greu. xlvi. 4, i. e. in the persons of his descendants.

But why, urges Colenso, are not

" the children of Reuben's sons, and Simeon's, and Levi's, &c, all named and counted in like manner, as being in their father though not yet born ?" " Why not also the great-great-grandsons, and so on ad infinitum ?" And 11 why does the sacred writer draw any contrast between the three score and ten persons who went down into Egypt, and the multitude as the stars of heaven who came out, since these last as well as the former were all in the loins of their father Jacob ?" See Deut. x. 22.

The reason, doubtless, is because Judah adopted his grandsons Hezron and Hamul in place of his deceased

2* sons Er and Onan : just as Jacob adopted Joseph's two sons to be his own, Gen. xlviii. 5, 6, for the sake of giving him the double portion among his children which was his birthright, 1 Chron. v. 1, 2, at the same time declaring that this adoption did not go beyond these two. That Hezron and Hamul were thus adopted by Judah is not indeed declared in so many words, for the sacred history makes no further mention of them ; and, of course, the idea would be scouted by Colenso, et id genus omne. But we feel warranted in inferring it, first, from the appearance of their names in this register, where they plainly stand as substitutes for Er and Onan. Secondly, from Num. xxvi. 19, where, in an enumeration of the Israelitish families existing at the time of the exodus, Er and Onan are alone mentioned of all the descendants of Jacob from whom families did not spring. There must, therefore, have been some special reason why they, in particular, are named, when other grandchildren who died without issue are omitted. ISTow, what more probable reason can be suggested than that they were regarded as perpetuated in the descendants of their two nephews, adopted in their stead ? Thirdly, from Num. xxvi. 21, where it appears that Hezron and Hamul gave rise to families in Israel distinct from the family of Pharez, their father. But, as appears from a comparison of Num. xxvi. with the register before us, the honour of originating permanent families in Israel was confined to those descendants of Jacob who were living at the time of his going down into Egypt. The only exceptions are, first, Manasseh and Ephraim, who were raised from the rank of families to the dignity of tribes ; the families or subdivisions of these tribes must, therefore, of necessity, be drawn from amongst their offspring who were not yet born ; and, secondly, Hezron and Hamul.* And how do Hezron and Hamui, though born in Egypt, come to be the heads of distinct families or tribal subdivisions, contrary to the universal analogy of Jacob's other descendants ? What answer can be given, or what answer need be given, except that they were, by Judah's adoption, substituted for Er and Onan, and thus succeeded to the rights which the latter would have possessed but for their untimely death ?f

"But," continues the pupil and admirer of the Zulus (p. 69), " if Hezron and Hamul are substituted for Er and Onan, for whom are Heber and Malchiel, the sons

* It is scarcely necessary to remark that the tribe of Levi formed no real exception. There were but three leading families in this tribe, and these were named after the three sons of Levi, from whom they were respectively descended, Num, xxvi. 57. The families spoken of in ver. 58, the Libnites, Hebronites, Mahlites, etc., are not distinct from and co-ordinate with the preceding, but, as appears from Num. iii. 21, 27, 33, they were subdivisions of the proper tribal families, necessitated by the distribution of ministerial functions in this sacerdotal tribe, and its separation into different encampments.

f An illustration of Colenso's carelessness in argument, or ignorance of Hebrew, or both, which is very fine in its way, is afforded on page 68. Kurtz argues from Gen. xlvi. 5, where the household of Jacob is spoken of as comprising himself, his sons, their little ones and their wives, that, in the view of the writer, Jacob's grandsons were still young and had no children of their own. Our author replies with a triumphant air to this "feeble argument,'* that Benjamin is called a little one, Gen. xliv. 20, at a time when he " had actually ten sons of his own," Gen. xlvi. 21. He never seems, in his innocence, to suspect that the original term is totally distinct in the two cases. In one it is f]tp which Gesenius defines to mean parvuli, as opposed to young men and maidens, Ezek. ix. 6, as well as to adults, Ex. xii. 37 ; in the other it is *)t3j"3, which means not only small in respect of size, but minimus natu, and is applied to Benjamin as the youngest of Jacob's sons. We are strongly inclined to suspect that he only saw Kurtz through the medium of a translation, as it is the English form of expression which betrayed him into the blunder.

of Beriah, Asker's son, ver. 17, supposed to be substituted?"

We really cannot answer this. We are not aware that they are " supposed to be substituted " for anybody. If the bishop thinks they are, and will give reasons for his opinion equal or comparable to those which have been alleged in the preceding instance, we are open to conviction. Till then we will abide by our present belief, that Heber and Malchiel were born before the descent into Egypt, and are named in the register for that reason.

Here we might rest the case. The objections made to the truthfulness of this family register demand nothing more than has now been said for their refutation. But before dismissing the matter, we desire to show more fully the impregnability of this portion of the sacred record, and the futility of the attacks made upon it.

The list given us in Num. xxvi. of the tribal families, as they existed in the days of Moses, affords irrefragable evidence of the correctness and the antiquity of Jacob's family register, in Gen. xlvi. ; and, on the other hand, this latter renders unimpeachable testimony to the truth of the former. We have here, in fact, two witnesses, demonstrably independent, and yet perfectly corroborating each other. The differences between them are of such a nature that one cannot have been taken from the other, nor both from a common source, nor can both have proceeded from the same hand, least of all the hand of a forger, who would not have convicted himself by the admission of such apparent discrepancies. Nor can this document, purporting to be Jacob's family register, be the product of a later period, made out on the basis of the tribal families existing when it was prepared, by concluding back from these to assumed progenitors, and hence to be regarded as an d posteriori construction instead of a hond fide historical narrative. For, not to insist upon the difficulty with which such a theory would be pressed, arising out of what may be styled the irregular construction of this ancient register, making all the names in some families sons, in others adding a daughter, in others still grandsons, in which it is true to the life if it records facts, but unaccountable if it be the theoretical deduction of a later age ; — not to insist upon this, how is it to be explained, in the first place, that several names are found in this register to which, as appears from Num. xxvi., there were no families subsequently corresponding? There is, Gen. xlvi. 10, Obad, son of Simeon ; ver. 17, Ishuah and his sister Serah, children of Asher ; ver. 21, Becher, Gera, and Rosh, sons of Benjamin, from whom no families seem to have sprung. They must, therefore, either have died without issue, or their descendants were too few to constitute a separate family, and were accordingly reckoned as belonging to one of their brothers' houses, agreeably to the principle set forth in 1 Chron. xxiii. 11. In either case their names were of no permanent national consequence, there being no representative families upon which they were impressed. How comes it to pass, then, that we meet names of this character in this register? It is a sorry shift to say that they may be purely fictitious. For, apart from the considerations that this is abandoning the hypothesis of an a posteriori construction, and that it brands the writer, without any evidence, with being a wilful forger of what is false, which Colenso expressly disclaims,* and which would, in fact, be very

* Page 16, note * "I use the expression 'unhistorical,' or 'not historically true,' throughout, rather than 'fictitious,' since the word 'fiction'

inconsistent in him after the disgust he expresses at Hengstenberg for charging his opponents with dishonesty (p. 69) ; the notion of fictitious genealogies and dry, unmeaning lists of names is in itself sufficiently amusing. The writer's imagination or invention must have been given to very odd flights, if he thought to divert either himself or his readers in this way.

In the second place, the originality of this register in Gen. xlvi. and its independence of the list of families in Num. xxvi. appears still further from the diversity in their general construction, and the order in which the several tribes are arranged ; and yet more plainly from the diversity in the names themselves, some of which have undergone considerable alteration in the long interval between the periods, which they respectively represent. When we recall the great changes which the names of many modern families have suffered both in their orthography and pronunciation, we need not be surprised that the lapse of centuries brought about like results in Israel. It is, in fact, just what ought upon natural principles to have taken place, and yet what it would not have entered the mind of a forger to contrive. At any rate the differences between these two lists are such as to show beyond question, that one is not derived from the other. A few apparent differences in the authorized English version are due to a divergent orthography adopted by our translators, where the forms in the original are coincident, as Pballu and Pallu, son of Eeuben ; Phuva and Pua, son of Issachar ; Isui and Jesui son of Asher. In other cases the diversity belongs to the Hebrew form of the name, as Jemuel, and Zohar,

is frequently understood to imply a conscious dishonesty on the part of the writer, an intention to deceive."

sons of Simeon, called in Numbers Nemuel and Zerah ; Job, son of Issachar, in Numbers Jashub ; Ziphion, Ezbon and Arodi, sons of Gad, in Numbers Zephon, Ozni, Arod ; Ehi, Muppim and Huppim, sons of Benjamin, in Numbers Ahiram, Shupham (Heb. SKphupham) and Hupham ; Hushim, son of Pan, in Numbers, Shubam. These varying forms of the same name are nearly enough related either in their radicals or their signification * to account for the transition, which occurred in the usage of common life. But by no possibility could one list have been taken from the other, or the ancestral names be factitious, and inferred from those of families. A still more remarkable difference between the lists of these two chapters, and one which tends still more strikingly to establish their independence of each other, has respect to the sons of Benjamin and the families which sprang from them. In Gen. xlvi, 21, Naaman and Ard are said to have been sons of Benjamin. Num. xxvi. 40, declares that the families of the Ardites and of the Naamites were descended from Ard and Naaman, sons of Bela, Benjamin's eldest son. The two accounts differ too palpably to be traceable to a common source. On the other hand there is no real disagreement or discrepancy between them. The sons of Benjamin of this name died doubtless without issue, and hence no families are derived from them. Benjamin, therefore, to preserve the number of his sons intact, adopted in their stead two children of his eldest son, naming them after the sons whom he had lost. They thus succeeded to the rights of sons born before the descent into Egypt, and each gave name to a separate family. The two accounts are

* As if, to employ an English analogy, the name of a famihy was changed from Pike to Fish, or from Smith to Wright, or from Coon to Khun.

thus perfectly harmonious, though drawn from entirely independent sources. And we have here again a fresh instance of adoption in the patriarchal family, which' both corroborates and is corroborated by the instances previously adduced.

If now, as has been shown, the register of Jacob's sons in Gen. xlvi., and the list of tribal families in Num. xx vi. are quite independent in their origin, then the truth and accuracy of both are indisputable. Two such documents involving such a number of particulars could never agree by chance. If they are independent witnesses, and their witness agrees together, they are both true. Now, with all the superficial diversities, which have been already exhibited, these lists do in fact upon a narrow inspection tally throughout. For every family set down in Numbers, a corresponding name is recorded in Genesis. These uniformlv succeed each other in the like order, with the single exception of the descendants of Benjamin, and that for a reason which has just been explained. Furthermore, the names are, in a vast majority of cases, precisely identical ; and where they are not, the evidence is but strengthened by the appearance of such changes as lapse of time, constant usage, and perhaps family caprice would be apt to introduce. With its genuineness and reliability certified by such tests as these, the register of Jacob's sons can withstand the attacks of a hundred Colensos. "What does all his paltry pecking at it amount to, beside such evidences in its favour ? In a like case affecting the validity of a legal document, would the jury have to leave the courtroom before making up their minds to a unanimous verdict ?

It is apparent that the number of persons composing a

THE FAMILY OP JUDAH. 41

family may be stated variously, and yet each statement be entirely correct. Everything depends upon the principle of enumeration. The parents may be included or omitted. The children of both sexes may be reckoned, or only those of one. The statement may embrace those only who are living, or. at home at the time ; or it may extend likewise to the absent and the departed. It may cover the first generation only, or all the descendants. A certain measure of liberty was possessed accordingly by the author of Jacob's family register, without departing from truth or becoming inexact. Omitting Jacob the number would be sixty-nine ; omitting Joseph and his household, who were in Egypt already, it would be sixty-six ; omitting the two that were deceased, or their substitutes subsequently born, it would be sixty-four ; omitting the daughter, ver. 15, and grand-daughter, ver. 17, it would be sixty-two ; and, on the other hand, including all these and in addition " Jacob's sons' wives," ver. 26, the number would have been at least eighty-two, and perhaps more. Inasmuch as one of these modes of enumeration was just as correct as another, it was within the discretion of the writer to select whichever he might prefer. He chose the enumeration which he has given us, and which yields as its total the number seventy. And there can be little doubt that he was influenced in his selection, in part at least, by the desire to produce that number.

A round number and a familiar number is always preferred to another, if nothing is sacrificed by it. This is manifest in indefinite numbers where precision is of no consequence, or is not pretended to. We speak of ten or a dozen, of fifty or a hundred. And we observe that even Colenso (p. 90) is guilty of calling the old Greek

42 THE FAMILY OF JTJDAH.

version, which according to tradition was made by seventy-two interpreters, the LXX.

It is particularly the case if a number has been fixed by usage or hallowed by association. We never speak of thirteen apostles, or of fourteen, but only of twelve. Does this warrant the inference that we never heard of the election of Matthias or the appointment of Paul ? And we never hear of the thirteen tribes of Israel but only of the twelve ; so that the inspired author of the book of Eevelation vii. 4-8, though professedly speaking of " all the tribes of the children of Israel," omits one to preserve the familiar number. Perhaps, if an "intelligent " Zulu were to question his Bishop about this, he might be told that the writer was clearly ignorant of the existence of the tribe of Dan. And if the same Zulu were helping him " translate " 1 'Kiogs xi. 35, 36, he might come to the conclusion that in the arithmetic of the Jews ten and one make twelve. The sacredness of a past association evidently controlled the language of Joseph's brethren, in saying (Gen. xlii. 32), " We be twelve brethren," although one was not. A like affection for a number similarly hallowed may have led the patriarch to fill up his family to its ancient dimensions by adopting two born in Egypt in the stead of the two who had died in Canaan ; and hence that feature of the register at which Colenso so needlessly cavils.*

An additional motive for the preference of a particular number may lie in some relation of correspondence which it suggests. Thus Elijah, in building an altar in the presence of a schismatical and apostate people, constructed it of "twelve stones, according to the

* A modern parallel, as suggested by Pro£ Mahan, may be found in "Wordsworth's ballad, We are Seven.

number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob," 1 Kings xviii. 31. The sentence of wandering in the wilderness fixes its duration by the time that the spies, whose false report occasioned it, were searching the promised land, Num. xiv. 33, 34. Daniel (ix. 24), sighing for the restoration of Israel at the end of seventy years' captivity, is informed that seven times seventy years must intervene before the coming of the great Eestorer. Matthew omits a few unimportant names from the genealogy of Christ, in order so to adjust its three great periods as to exhibit fourteen generations in each, Matt. i. 17. Such correspondences, which are frequent in the Scriptures generally, especially abound in the ritual, where all is significant and full of mystical allusions. As a single example, witness the cycle of sevens in the sacred periods, from the weekly Sabbath through the seventh month with its day of atonement and the seventh year to the highest of all, the year of jubilee, Lev. xxv. 8, 9, each in its various grade at once a commemoration and a prefiguration of that rest of God, with which the number seven was associated (Gen. ii. 3), and into which it is man's privilege and destiny to enter, Heb. iv. 3-5.

Now, at a time when instruction was so largely conveyed by mysterious hints in figures and symbols, it need not surprise us to find the suggestion of a momentous truth in the number of Jacob's family at this great crisis in their history. Nor need we be surprised that such a mode of enumeration was selected as might suggest a truth which was to be inculcated. That this is not purely fanciful, appears from Moses' directing the attention of the people expressly to it, Deut. xxxii. 8, ' When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people (Heb. peoples) according to the number of the children of Israel.' There was, therefore, a significant relation between ' the number of the children of Israel ' and the nations of mankind. The tenth chapter of Genesis, which gives an account of the sons of Noah and their dispersion over the world, makes the number to be seventy. With this the number of Jacob's family at the time when it was about to pass into a nation, when it was about to receive its permanent organization and its tribal divisions to be determined, precisely corresponded. The universal aim of Israel, its world-wide relations, which were in so many ways explicitly set forth, are here impressed upon its origin in a numerical symbol. That this number was regarded as not wholly casual but significant, and that its significance was kept in mind, appears still further from ' the seventy elders of Israel,' of whom we repeatedly read, Ex. xxiv. 1, Num. xi. 16-25, Ezek. viii. 11, a body perpetuated in the Sanhedrim.* As seventy is not a multiple of twelve, it could