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OLUME II.

CHAPTER

THE TESTIMONY OF THE MONUMENTS

.
T,RUTH OF THE , SCRIPTURES ,.

TO THE

BY PROF '. GEORGE FREDERICK

WR IGHT,

OB,ERL IN COLLEGE.

D. D. LL . D.,

All history is fra.gme11tary. Each parti cular fact is the cen

ter of an infinite comple x of circumstance s. No man h,as in ...
tel1igence enough to insert ,a s,uppo sititiou s fac 't into cir ,cums,tances not be,J,onging t,o it and mak e :it exactly fit. This 011ly
infinite intelligence could do. A successful forgery, therefore,
is impos sib1e ,if only we ha ve a sufficient nttmber Of the original circumstances with which to compare it. 'It is this prin ..
cipie which gives sucl1 importance to the cros -e~atfiination of
.
.
witnesses. ,If the witnes s 1s truth ful, the more he ts que stioned . th .e more perfectly will his testimony be seen to accord
with the framewo ,r ,k of ci1c,ull1.stances 1 int 0 which it is fitted~
If false, the more will his fal sehood becom'e apparent ..
Remarkable opportunities for cross-examining the Old Te stament Scriptures have been afforded by the recent uncovering of long-buried monuments in Bible lands and by deciphering th'e inscriptions upon them. It . is the objeot of this essay
to give the results of a sufficientportion of this cross-examina
tion to afford a reasonable test of. the competence and honesty
o,f' the hist oriatts of th ,e Old T estament, and of the faith ulne ,ss
with 'Which their record has been transmitted to us. B ut the
prescribed lin1its will 11otper1nit the hR-lfto be told ; while room
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The F undament9l,s.

is left for an entire essay on the discoveries of the last five

years to be treated b,y another hand, specially . competent for
the, task.
Passing by the mon .umental evidence which has removed
ob,jections to the historical statements of the New Testament,
as less needing support, . attentio ,n will be given first to one of
the Old Testament narratives, which is nearest t.o us in time,
and against which the harshest judgments o,f modern critics
have been burled. We ref er to the statements in the Boo,k of
Daniel concerning the personality and fate of Belshazzar.

TH ,E IDENTIFI CATI0 N 0F BELSHAZZAR

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In the fifth ch.aper of Daniel Belsl1azzar is called the ''son

of Nebuchadnezzar,'' and is said to have been ''king'' of Babylon and to have been slain on the night in which the city was
taken. But according to the other historians he was the son
of N abonidus, , who was then king, and who is known to, have
been out of the city when it was captured, and to have lived
some time af t erwar ds.

.
Here, certainly, tl1ere is about as glaring an apparent discrepancy as could be imagined. Indeed, there would seem to
he a flat contradiction between profane and sacred historians.
But in 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson fou.nd, while excavating in
the ru .ins of Mugheir ( identified as the site of the city of Ur,
from which Abraham emigrated), inscriptions which stated
that when N abonidus was near the end of his reign he asso .ciated with him on the throne his eldest sont Bil-shar-uzzur,
and allowed him the roya] title, thus making it per ectiy credi ble 'that Belshazzar shou]d have beeri in Baby lon, as he is said
to have been in the Bib le, and that he should have been called
king, and that he shou]d have perished in the city while Nabonidus survived outside. That h.e should have been called
king while his father was still living is no more strange than
that Jehoram should have been ap,pointed by his father, Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; seven years before his f'ather's death
1

M onument.s

to fhe Truth of the

S cripturcs.

( see 2 Kings 1 :17 and 8 :16), or that Jotham should have been
made king before his father, Uzziah, died of leprosy, though
Uzziah is still called king in some of the references to him.
That Belshazzar should have been called son of Nebuchadnezzar is readily accounted for on the supposition that he was
his grandson, and there are many things to indicate that Nabonidus married Nebuchadnezzar's daughter, while there is nothing known to the contrary. But if thfa theory is rejected, there
is the natural supposition that in the loose use of terms of relationship common among Oriental people "son" might be applied' to one who was simply a successor. In the inscriptions
on the monuments of Shalmaneser II., referred to below, Jehu,
the extirpator of the house of Omri, is called the "son of
Omri."
The status of Belshazzar implied in this explanation is
confirmed incidentally by the fact that Daniel is promised in
verse 6 the "third" place in the kingdon1, and in verse 29 is
given that place, all of which implies that Belshazzar was sec...
ond only.
Thus, what was formerly thought to be an insuperable
objection to the historical accuracy of the Book of Daniel
pro\tes to be, in all reasonable probability, a mark of accuracy.
The coincidences are all the more remarkable for being so
evidently undesigned.
THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER.

From various inscriptions in widely separated places we

are now able to trace the movements of Shalmaneser II.
through nearly all of his career. In B. C. 842 he crossed the
Euphrates for the sixteenth time and carried ,his conquests to
the shores of the Mediterranean.
Being opposed by Hazael
of Damascus, he overthrew the Syrian army., and pursued it
to the royal city and shut it up there, while he devastated the
territory surrounding.
But while there is no mention of his
fighting with the Tyrians, Sidonians, and Israelites, he is said

to ha.ve recei ve d trib ut e fr om them and ''from Jehu,. the son

of Omri.'' Thi ,s inscription occur s ,on the cel,ebrated B'lack
Obelisk di,seovered many years ago 'b.Y Sir Hen~y .Rawlins .on
in the ruins of Ni.mtoud~ On it are represented string!., of
captives with evident Jewi sh feature s, in the act of bringing
their tribute to the Assyrian king. Now, though there is no
mention in the sacred records of any defeat of Jehu by the
Assyrians, nor of the paying of tribute by him) it is most
natura .l tha t tribute shou.ld ha v,e been paid under th e circumstanc1es ; f 1or in the p 1eriod sub.sequ,ent t 10 the: battle of Karkar,
Damascus ha d turn ed again st Is :rael, s.o that J,srael's :mos.t likely
method of getting even with Ha:zael would have been to make
terms wit'h his ene1ny, and pay tribute, .as ,she is said to ha, e
do,ne, to Shalma .11ese.r.
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0 ne 101 : t .e mo st tmport ,ant 1scovett es, giving rea 1ty t 0
0ld Testam ,ent history, , is that of the Moa:bite Stone, di .scovered at Dibon, east of the Jordan, in 1868, which was set up
by King Me 'sha ( about 850 B. C.) to signalize his deliverance
from the yoke of Omri, king of Israel. The inscription is
valuablej among other things, for its wit.ness to the civilized
condition of the Moabites at that time and to the Close si.milarity of their language to , that of the Hebrews. From this
inserip ,tion we learn that Omri, king 0 Israel, was compelled
by the rebellion of Me sha to re subjugate Moab; and that after,
doing so, he and his son occupied . the cities of Moab fof a
period of forty years, but that, after a series of battles, it was
restored to Moab in the days of Mesha. Whereupon the cities
a.nd fo.rt resses, reta ke'n w ere strengthene d, an d the country repopulated, whi le the methods of warfare were sifflilar t-0
those practiced by Israel. On comparing this :with 2 Kings
3 :4-27, we find a parallel account which dovetai ls in' with this
i 11.a tno st rema.rkable manner, though naturally the bib'lieal nar~
rative tr-eats lightly of the reconquest by lY;lesha,simply stating
II

II

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II

Monuments to the truth

of the Script.u-res.

11

that, on account of the horror created by the idolatrous sacrifice of his eldest son upon the walls before them, the Israelites
departed from the land and returned to their own country ..
THE EXPEDITION

OF SHISHAK.

In the iourteenth chapter of 1 Kings we have a brief ac

count of an expedition of Shishak, king of Egypt, against Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam. To the humiliation of
Judah, it is told that Shishak succeeded in taking away the
treas~res of the house of Jehovah and of the king's house,
among them the shields of gold which Solomon had made;
so that Rehoboam made shields of brass in their stead. To
this simple, unadorned account there is given a wonderful air
of reality as one gazes on the southern wall of the court of the
temple of Amen at Karnak and beholds the great expanse of
sculptures and hieroglyphics which are there inscribed to rep ...
resent this campaign of Shishak. One hundred and fifty-six
places are enumerated among those which were captured, the
northernmost being Megiddo. Among the places are Gaza,
Adullam, Beth-Horon; Aijalon, Gibeon, and Juda-Malech, in
which Dr. Birch is probably correct in recognizing the sacred
city of Jerusalem,-M aleeIi being the word for royalty.
ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

The city of Tahpanhes, in Egypt, mentioned by Jeremiah

as the place to which the refugees fled to escape from Nebu
chadnezzar, was discovered in 1886 in the 1nound known as

Tel Defennch, in the northeastern portion of the delta, where

Mr. Flinders Petrie found not on1y evidences of the destruction of the palace caused by Nebuchadnezzar, but apparently
the very "brick work or pavement'' spoken of in Jer. 43 :8:
"Then came the word of the Lord unto ] eremiah in Tahpanhes,
saying, Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in mortar in the btickwork, which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house
in Tahpanhes, in the sight of the men of Judah," adding that

The .Fund'a,1nentats.

12

Nebuchadnezz ,ar woul d ''set his t.hrone upon thes,e stones,.'i

and ''spread his royal pavilion over them.''
.
A bri ck pl.atf orm in partial ruins, correspo11ding to this de.scrip tion, was fo.und by Mr. Petri ,e adjoining the fort ''upon
the north west.'' In every respect the arrangement corre-
sponded to that indicated in the Book of Jeremiah .
Farther to the nortl1, not a gre at way from Tahpanhes, . on
the Tanitic branch of the Nile, at .the modern village of San,
excavations revealed the ancient Egyptian capital Tanis, which
went under the earlier name of Z,oan, where the Pharaoh of
tl1e oppression f requent1y made his headquarters.
According
to the Psalmist, it was in. the field of ''Zoan'' that Moses and
A.a iron wrought thieir wonders before haraoh .i and, a ccording
to th e Book of Numbers, ''Hebron'' was built onty seven years
before .Zoan.. As Hebron w.as a. p1a,ce of importance before ,
Ab1raham's time, it is la matter of mu.ch si.gnificance that Zoaa
appears to have been an ancient c~t.y which was a favorite
dwelling~place, of the Hyk sos, or . Shepherd Kings, who preceded the period of the Exodus, and w ere likely to be f riendly
to the Hebrews, thus giving greater credibility to the ~precise
statements made in Numbers, and to the whole narrative of
the reception 0 the patriarchs in Egyp t.
The Pharaoh of the Oppression, ''who knew not Joseph,''
is generally supposed to be Ran1eses II.,, the third king of the

nineteenth dynasty, k.nqwn among the Greeks as S,esostrisl, one

of the grea .test of the Egyptian monarchs. Among his most .
important exl}editions was one dire~ted against the tribes of
Pal estine an d Syria, where, at the battl e of Kadesh, east of
the Lebanon Mountain s,, he encounte :red. the Hittit es. The , en~
counter ended practically in a drawn battle, after which a treaty
of peace was n1ade. But the whole state of things! revealed
by this campaign and subsequent events shows that Palestine
w,as in sub stantiaJly the same condition . of affairs which was
found by the children .of Israe :1 when they occupied it shortly
after, thus confir111ing
the Scripture ac count.
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Monuments to the Truth of the Scriptures.

13

This Rameses during his reign of sixty-seven years was

among the greate st builders of the Egyptian n1onarchs. It j
estimated that nearly half of the extant temple s were built in
his reign, among which are tho se at Karnak, Luxor, Abydo ,
., Memphis, and Bubastis. The great Rames seum at Thebes is
also his work, and his name is found carved on ahnost every
monument in Egypt. His oppression of the children of Israel
was but an incident in his rema rkable career. While engaged
in his A iatic campaigns he naturally made his headquarter
at Bubastis, in the land of Goshen, near where the old canal
and the pre sent railroad turn off from the delta toward the
Bitter Lakes and the Gulf of Suez. Here the ruins of the
temple referred to are of immense extent and include the fragments of innumerable statues and monuments which bear th
impress of the great oppressor. At length, also, his mummy
has been identified; so that now we have a photograph of it
which illustrates in all its lineaments the strong feature ~ of
his character.
l'HE STORE CITIES OF PITHOM

AND RAMESES.

But most interesting of all, in 1883, there were uncovered,

a short distance east of Bubastis, the remains of vast vaults
which had evidently served as receptacles for storing grain preparatory to supplying military and other expeditions setting out
for Palestine and the far East. Unwittingly, the engineers of
the railroad had named the station Rameses. But from the
inscriptions that were found it is seen that its original name
Was Pithom, and its founder was none other than Rameses II.,
and it proves to be the very place where it is said in the Bible
that the children of Israel "built for Pharaoh store-cities
Pithom and Raamses" ( Ex. 1 :11), when the Egyptians "made
their liv,es bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick." It
was in connection with the building of these cities that the
oppression of the children of Israel reached its ~limax, when
they were compelled (after the straw with which the brick

14
were ; h,eld together failed) to gatl1er f:or t]1e,1nselves stubbl,e
whic .h should se,rv e tl1e purpo ,se, of straw, and finally, when ,
even the stub ble failed,! to n1ake brick witl1out. straw (Ex .. 5).
Now, as th ese store pits at Pi.tl10m were unt:.ov e,r e d by Mra.,
Petri e, they w,ere f 0Und ( u11.like anything else in. Egy pt) to
be 'built .with mortar. Moreover, the 1,ow ,e1 ,Jayer ~ were bu 'ilt
of brick which contai1.1,ed stra .w, I while tl1e middle layers were
made of b'rick in which stub .hie, i11stead of stra ,w, h.ad be,en
use,d in their 01...mation, ,a11d the upper la,y ers w er,e of bri.r
ck
ma ,de 'Without str ,aw ,. A more perf ,ect cir ,cumstantial . confinnatio1n of 'the Bi.bl e ac.cou.nt could not be imagine id. Every .poin't
in the confir1nati on c,ons,i,s.t s of unexp ec.te:d discoveries . The
use of mo ,rtar js e:lsewh,ere unknown i.n Ancie .nt Egypt, as isr
the peculiar S1
ucces:sion in the quality of the brick used 'in tl1,e
1

c:onsit ,ruction of tl1e walls.

Thus l1ave all Egyp ,tian explo,
r
ation
,
s
,
shown
that
the
writ
er
.
of the Pentateuch had .such f,amiliarity with t'he country, t,h e
civilization, and th e his 'tory of Egyp ,t as coul d have , been obtain1ed only by intimate, persona.I exper ,ie:n,ce. The le,af which
is here given i,s ,in its right place. It could not have 'bee,n. inserte d except by a participant in. tl1,e events, or by . direct Di'""
vine :revelation.
T :tIE HITTITESa.
In Jos.11ua 1 :4, tl1e COUll try .between Lebanon , and the Eupbra te,s is cal]e ,d the , land of tl1e Hittites ., In 2 Sam. 2 4 :6..
accor d_i11g:to the r,eading 0 tl1e S ep tuagint, t,he limit ,of Joah's
c,onquests was that of 'i'tl1e I-Iitti te.s. of Kades 1h,,'"' which is in
Coe,Je Syria, som.e d1sta11ce north of the pr esent Baalbeck ..
Solomon is a1s0 said t 0 have im.p.orted horses fr .om ''th ,e kings
of the Hittite ,s'' and wh,en the :.S yria ns were besie :ging Samaria,
acco,rding to 2 Ki ,ngs, 7 :6, they ,were , ,alarme d f riom f ear that
th ,e king of Israel had hired against t11.e:m '''th,e kings of the
Hittites .'' These re ,ferences imply the e,xisi"
tence 0 f a strong ,
nation wi de]y spr ead over the northe rn pa ,rt of Syria and the
regi,ons 'beyo~nd. At the. s,ame time frequent mention is m,ad e
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M onu , 111ents,to the Trutli of tlie Scriptu -re~"

of Hittite families in Pale .sti,ne itself. It was of a Hittite

( Gen. 23 :10) that Abral1am boug 'ht his burying -place at He ..
bron. Bathsheba, the mother ,of Solomon, had been the wife
of Uriah t' ..1e Hittite, and E sau h,ad two H ittit e wives. Hittite ~
a1e also men tioned as dwelling with tl1e Jebusites ,and . orites
in th.e mount,ain regi on of Canaa11.
Until tl1e d1ecipherment of , the inscrip ,tions 011 the monuinents , of E ,gypt and Assyri ra, t,l1e numero ,us re ,er ,ences in the
Bible to this myst ,eri ,ous people were unconfirme ,,d by any other
historical authorities, so that .many regarded the bib]ical statements as mythical, and an indication of the general untrustworthiness of biblical history. A promin~nt English biblical
critic declared not many years ago that an alliance between
Egypt and th,e Hittites was as improbable as would be 0n e at
th.re presen t time hetwee n Engla11d and the Cboct aws. B,ut,
alas, for the over-confi de,nt criti c, recent investigations have
l1own, not only that s,t1ch an allianc e was natura ,l, but that it
a,ctually occurred.
From tl1e mo11uments of Egypt we .learn that Thothmes III.
of tl1e eighteenth dynasty, [ in 1470 B. C., marched to the banks
of the Euphrates and received tribute fro ,m ''the Greater Hittites'' to the amount of 3,200 pounds of silver and a ''great
piece of crystal ..'' Seven years later tribute was again sent
f ro m '~tl1e king , of the Gr,eate,1 Hittite land.,''' Later, Amenophi .s III. and IV. are said, in the Te l el-Amarna tablets, to
have been constantly ca,lled up 011 'to aid in re,pelling the at. tacks of the Hittite king, who ca1ne down from the no rt~1
and intrigued . witl1 the dis affected Canaanitish tribes , in Pale .stine; while in B. C. 1343, Rameses the Great attempted to
capture the Hittite capital at Kadesh, bttt was unsucces sfu1, and
came near losing his life in the attempt, extricating himself
from an ambuscade only by most heroic deeds of valor~ Four
year .s later a treaty of peace was signed between the Hittites
a'nd the Egyptians, and a daughter of the Hittite king was given
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111 1narr1age to Ram es,es.

16

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The A .ss,yrian monu1nents also bear abundant testimony to .

the p rominence of tl1e I-Iitti tes north and west of the Euphr ates,
of which the mo st pron1inent ,state w .as tl1.at witl1 it .s capital
a.t . Carchemis :11, in tl1.e time 0 f Tiglath -pile ser I., #about 1100
B. C.. In .8.54 B. C, Sh,al.m.aneser II .. i11clt1d
ed the kings of Is1

rael, of A1nmon,. and of the Arabs, amon ,g tl1e ''Hittite ''' pri11ces
wl1om l1e had subdu ed, thus bea1~ing n1,ost emphat .ic testimo~y
to the prominence which they assumed in his estimation.
~ . The C'ttneiform inscrip ti.on.s of Armenia also spea .k of mu
merous wars with the Hittit es, and descri 'be ''the land of the
Hittites ,'' as , extending far westward fro ,m the b,anks of ' the
Eupl1ra 'tes1.

Hittite sculptures and i11scriptionsare now traced in abuD,dance from Kadesh, in Coele Sy ria , we .stward . to Lyd :i.a, in Asia
..Minor, and nortl1ward to the Black Sea bey,011d Marsova.n.
Indeed, the exten .sive r'uins, of Boghaz-I(eui, ,sev,enty-fiye miles
southwest 0 Marsov lan, see1n to mark tl1e principa t capita.I
of the Hittites. Here partial excavations l1ave alrCady revealed sculptures of high artistic order, representing deities,
warr iors and amazons, together with many hiero .glyphs which
have not yet been translated. The inscriptions are written
in both directio 11s, from t,eft to r ig'ht, and -'then below back
from right to left. Similar inscriptions are found in numerous other places. No clue to their meaning has ye.t been found,
and even the cl:a.ss of Iangu .ages t:o whi ,ch they belong has not
been disco ver ed. But enough isl known to 1show that , the Hit-
tites exerted considerable influence upon the later ,civi'lization
1

which sprung Up in Greece and on the western coasts of Asia

Minor. It was through them that the emblem of the winge(l
horse made its way into E ,urope. The mural crown carved
upon the head of some of the godde sses at Boghaz-Keui also
passed into Grecian sculpture ; while the remarkable lions s,culptured over the gate at Mycenae are thought to represent Hittite,
rather than B,abyloni ,an a1t~

It is impo ssible to overestimate the value of this testin1ony ,

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in confirmation of the correctness of biblical historJ.

It shows
conclusively that the silence of profane historians regarding
facts stated by the biblical writers is of small account, in face
of ditect statements made by tl1e biblical historians. All the
doubts entertained in former times concerning the accuracy of
the numerous biblical statements concerning the Hittites is now
seen to be due to our ignorance. It w,as pu1e ignorance, not
su,per.ior knowledge, which led so 1nany to dis credit tt1ese representations. w hen shall we learn the inconclusiveness of neg.
'
ative testimony ?

THE TEL EL-AMARNA

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TABL .ETS ,

In 1887 s0.me Ar ,abs dis covered a wond .erf til C'ollection of

tablets at Tel el-Amarna, an obscure settlem .ent on the east
hank of the Nile, about two hundred miles above Cairo and
a~ut as far below Thebes. These tablets were of clay~ which
had been written over with cuneiform inscriptions, such as are
found in Babylonia, and th,en burnt, . ,so as t 0 be indestructible. When at length the inscriptions were deciphered, it ap.
peared that they were a collection of official letters, which had
been sent shortly before 1300 B. C. to the last kings .of the
eighteenth dynasty.,
.
There were in all about thre,e hundred letters, most of which
were from officers of the Egyptian army scattered over Palestine to . maintairi the Egyptian rule which had been established
by the preceding kings, most prominent of whom was Tahutimes III., who flourished about one ht1ndred years ea:rlier.
But many of the letters were from the kings alld prince~ of
Babylonia. What surprised the world most, however, was that
, this correspondence was carried on,. not in the hieroglyphic .
script of Egypt, but in the cuneiform script of Babylonia.
All this was par tly explained when more became known
about the character of the Egyptian king to whom the letters
were addressed. His original title , was Amenho ,tep IV., indicating that he was a priest of the sun god who is, wot$hiped
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at ~ebes.
But in his anxiety to introduce a reli~ous reform
he changed his name to Aken -Aten, Aten being the name of
the deity wor shipe d at Heliopoli s, near Cairo, where Joseph
got his wife. The effort s of Aken-Aten to transform the re-.
ligious worship of Egypt were Prodigious. The more perf e.ctly
to accomplish it, he removed his capital from Thebes to Tel elAmarna, and there collected literary men and artists and architects in great number s and erected temples and palaces, which,
after being buried in the sand with all their treasures for more
th.an three thousand year s,. were discovered by some wanderin.g A.rab,s twenty-tw ,o ,ye.ar .s ago .
1
A number of the longest and mo,st interesting of the letters are those which passed between the courts of Egypt and
tho se of Babylonia. It appear s that not only did Aken-Aten
marry a daughter of the Babylonian king, but his mother and
grandmother were me_mbers of the roya.1.family in Babylonia,
and also that one of the daughter s of the king of Egypt had
been sent to Babylonia to become the wife of the king. All
this comes out in the letters that pa ssed b,ack and forth relat~
ing to the dowry to be bestowed upon these daughters and
relating to their health and welfare .
From these letters we learn that, although the king of Babylon had sent his sister to be the wife of the king Of Egypt,
that was not sufficient. The king of Egypt requested also
the daughter of the king of Babylon. This led the king of
Ea .bylon tOsay that he did 11otknow how his sister was treated ;
in fact,. he. did not know whether she was alive, fer he tould
not tell whether or not to, believe the evidence which came J
to hitt.L In response,. the ki11g of Egypt. wrote : ''Why don't
you send some o~e who knows your sister, and whom you can
trust ?~' Whereupon the royal co,rrespondents break off into
discussions concerning the gifts which are to pass between the
two in consideration of their friendship , and inti1nate re,lations.
Syria a:ndPalestine were at this time also, as at the present day, infested by robbers, and the messengers passing be~
1

Monuments to the Truth of the Scriptures.

19

tween. these royal , ho~s ,es were occasionally waylaid. Where.

upon the one who suffered loss w.ould claim da1nages ftrom the
other if it was in his territory, because he had not properly protected the road. An intere sting thing in connection with one
of these robberies is that it took place at ''Hannathon,'' one of
the border towns mentioned in Josh. 19 :14, but of which noth,ing else was ever known until it appeared in this unexpected
manner.

Most of t'he Tel el-Amarna letters, however, consist of those

which were addressed to the king of Egypt (Amenhot ,ep IV.)
by his officers who were attempting to hold the E ,gyptian fortr,esses in Syria ,and Palestine against various enemies who
were pr.essing hard upon them. Among tl1ese were the Hittites, of whom we hear so much in later times, ana who, coming down from the far north, were gradually extending their
colonies into Palestine and usurping control over the northe1tt1
part of the c.ountry.
About sixty of the letters are from an officer narned Ribaddi, who is most prof use in his expressions of humility anti
loyalty, addressiqg the king as ''his lord'' and ''sun,'' and call
ing himself the ''footstool of the king's feet,' and saying th~t
l1e ''prostrat ,es himself seven times seven times at his feet.'' He
compJ.ains, however, that he is not properly supported in atis
efferts to def end the provinces of the king, and is constantly
wanting more saldiers, more cavalry, more money, mane pr.~
visions, more everything. So frequent a.re his importunities
that the king finally tells him that if he will write less and fight
mere he, would be better pleased, and that there would be more
hopes of his maintaining his power. But RitJ.;addi says that
he is being IJetrayed by the ''curs'' that are su:r.rounding him,
who represent the other cot1ntries that pretend to be friendly
to Egypt, but are no,t.
F. am this correspondenee, and from letters friom the
h
of Pales ,tine, it is made plain that the Egypti .an power was
fast losing its hold of the country, tlius preparing ffie way for
1

....

The Fu1idamentals .

20

the Condition 0 f things which prevailed a century o.r two later,

when JoshNa took possession of the promised lan d, and found
no resistance except from a number of disorganiz .ed tribes then

1n possession.
.
In this varied correspondence a la.rge number of places are
mentioned with which we are familiar in J3iblehistory, among
t.hem Da~as icus, Sidon., Lachi sh, Ashkelon ., Gaza, Joppa, ,and.
Jerusalern" Indeed, several of the 1etters are written rom Jeru~alem b y one Abd-hiba ., who complains that so me one is slan dering him to the king, cha .rging that he was in revolt against
hisl lord ,. This, he says, the king ought to know is apsurd,
from the fact that ''11either my father nor my mother appointed
me to this place. The strong arm of the king inaugurated
me in my father's territory . . Why should I commit an offense
against my lord, the king?'' The argumen t being that, , a,s. 'h,i.s,
office is not hereditary, but one which is held by the king's
favor and app ointm ,ent, his loyalty sh ould b~ ~hove qu estion.
A single one of these Jerusalem . Je,tters may suffic,e for a?
illustration :,

''To :MyLord the King: Abd-hiba, your servant. At the

feet of my .lord the king, seven and seven times I fall. Behol d
t~e deed which Milki-il and Suardata have done ,against the
land of my .Jord the king they have hire d the soldiers of ~Gazri,
of Gimti and of Kilti, and have taken the territory of Rubuti .
The territory of the king is. lost to Habiri. And now, indeed,
a ci,ty of the territ ory of Jerusa ,]em, called Bit-Ninib, one of
the cities of the king, has been lost t~ the p eople of Kilti ,. Le t
the king listen to Abd .-hiba, his servant, and send troops that
I may bring back the king's land to the king. For if there ar e
no troops, the J,and of the king will b e lost to the Habiri. This
is the deed of Suardata and Milki-il * * * [defective],
and let the ki'ng take ,care ,of his land.'' ' .
.
The discovery of these Tel el-Amarna letters came like a
flash ,of lightning , upo n the si1
cho]arly wo r .ld~ J,n this case the
overturning of a few ,spadefuls of earth let in a flood of~light
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21

M onumetits to tlie Trittli of the Scriptures.

upon the darke st por tion of ancient l1istory, and in eve,ry way
co nfirmed the Bible story.

As an official letter -writer, Rib -ad di has had few equals',

and he wrote on ma terial which the n1ore it was burned the
longer it lasted. Those who think that a history of Israel
could not l1ave been written in Moses' ti1ne, and that, if. written

it could not have been preserve .d, a1e reasoning witho ut due
kn.owledge of the fact s. Cons i.dering tl1e habits of the time.,
it would have . been well nigh a miracl e if Moses and his b.and
0 as,.sociat.e,s, co.nting out of Egypt had not l,ef t it,pon imperish a. 'hie clay tablets , a record of the striking events through which
th ey passe,d.
.
1

ACCURACY OF GE,QiGRAPHICAL , DETAILS.

Many persons doubtles s wonder why it is that the Bible .

.so abounds in ''uninteresting'' lists of nameS both of perso ns
and places which seem to have no relation to modern times or
current events . Such, however, will cease to wonder when
the.y come to see the relation which these lists sustain to our
confidence in the trustwo rthiness of the records ,containing
them. The ,y are li.ke the water-mar ,ks in paper, which bear indelibl,e evidence of the time .and place of manufactu ,re., If,
f urthe1more.'1one should contemplate pers ,9nal explorations in
Egypt, Canaan ., or Babylonia , he would find tha .t for his pur. poises the most interesting and imp,ortant portions of the Bible ,
Would be these very li.sts of the n.an1e.s of persons 1
an1d places
which seeined to encumber the histori ,cal books of the Ol d Tes ..
tam ent.
" One of the most striking peculiaritiCs of the Bible is the
'tong l~k'' toward the permanent wants of mankind Which is
everywhere manifeste ,d in its pr :eparation; so that it circulat e 5
best in its entirety. No man knows enough to abridge the
Bible without impairing lts usefulnes s. The parts which the
'
reviser would cut out as sup.erfluous are sure, very soon, to be
If we find that we have
found to be ''the more necessary.''
not any use for any po rtion of the Bible, the reason do11btless

11

The Fundamentals.

22

is that we have n ot lived long enough, or have not had sufficiently wide ex .perience to te st its merits in all particulars
Gezer was an important place in Joshua's tirne, but it aft ,erward became a heap of ruins, and its Jocation was unknown
11ntil 18,70., when M. Cler1nont-Ganneau disco vered the site in
Tel J ezer, and, on excavating it, found three inscriptions, which
on int.erpreta.tio:n read ''Boundary of Gezer.''
Among the places conquere ,d by Joshua one of the 1no,st important and difficult to capture was Lachish (Josh. 10 :31).
This , has but recently been identifie,d in Tel el-Hes.y, about
eighteen miles nort heast of Gaza. Extensive excavations, first
in 1890 by Dr. Flind ers Petr ie, and finally by Dr. Bliss, found
a lsucces,siori 0 f ruins, one belo 1w the othe ,r, the lowet foundations of which extended back to about 1700 B. C., some time be. f or e th .e p erio d of. conquest, showing at that time a walled
city of great strength. In tl1e deb,ris somewhat high er tha11
this there was found a tablet with cuneiform inscriptions cor r1esponding t,o the Tel el-A1narna tabl ets wh .ich are known to
have been sent to Egypt from this region about 1400 B. C. At
a later .period, in the time 0 Sennacherib, Lachish was !1:ssaulted and take ,n by the Assyrian army, and the account of
th,e siege form s one ,of the m,ost conspicuous scenes on the
walls of Sennacherib's palace in Ninevel1. These sculptu.,res
are now in the British Mu seum .
ng th ie places menti ,011ed in the Tel el-Amar n,a corre.spondence from which letters were sent to Egypt about l'+I
B. C., are Gebal, Beirut, Tyre, Accho (Acre), Hazor, Jop pha,
Ashkelon, Makkad .ah, .Lachis,h, Gezer, Jerusalem; while men, tion is also made of Rabbah, Sarepta, Ashtaroth, Gaza, Gat]1,
Bethsh ,e:ine sh, al] o,f whi ch are familiar names, showing that the
Palestine of Joshtta is the Palestine known to Egypt in the
preceding century. Tw 0 hundred years before this, (about
'1600 B ~C.) also, Thothmes III. Conquere,d Pales .tine, and giv,es
in an inscription the names of more than fifty towns which
can be confidently i,d,entified with those in 'the Book of Jo,shua.
1

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'

M o,iu,ments to ,the Truth of the Scriptures. .

23

Finally, the forty-two stations named in N uin. 33 as camping places for the children of Israel on their way to Palestine,
while they cannot all of them be identified, can be determined
in ufficient number s to show tl1at it is not a fictitious 1ist, nor
a mere pilgrim's diary, since t'he scenes of greatest interest,
like the region immediately about Mount Sinai, are specially
adapted to the great tran sactions which a1..e recorded as taking
p'lace. Besides, it is, incredi 'ble tl1at a writer of fiction should
have encumbered his pages with such a barre ,n cata lo,gue of
place s. But as part of t'he great histo'r'ical movem ent they are
perfectly ~pprop ,,riate.
This , conformity of' newly di scove1--ed facts to tl1e n.arrative
o,f Sacr ed Scripture ,confirm s our confidence in the 1nain testimony ;. just as the consistency of a witne ss in a cros s~exami:nati 1011 up,on mino1 and incidental p 1oi11tsestah lis,hes confidence in
his general t es,timo11y. T 'he lat e Sir Walt er Bes ant, in addition to his other lit erary and philanthropic lab,ors, was for
111anyyears secreta .ry of the Palestine Exploration Fund . In
reply to the inquiry whether the work of the sttrvey un d.er his
direction si1,staine,d the h.i.storica l character of the Old Testament, he says,: ''To my mi11d, absolute truth in local details,
a t.hing which cann iot possibly he invented, when it is spread
over a history covering many centuries, is proof almost ah
solute as to the truth ,of the things related.'' Stich proof we
have for every part of the Bible .
1

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THE FOURTEENTH

OF GENESIS.
'

The fourteenth chap ter of Genesis relates that ''In :toe

days of Amraphel, kin.g of Sl1inar, Arioch, king of Ellasar,
. Chedorlaomer, king of Ela 1n, and Tidal, king of Goiim ( nations), they made war with Bera, Icing of Sodo111,and with
Ber sha, king of Gomorrah , and Shinab, ki11g of Admah, and
Shemeber, king of Zeboim , and the king of Bela ( the same i~
Zoar).''
The Babylonian king s were successful and the region
about the D ead Sea wa s subject to, tl1em f'or twelve years, ,\rl1en
1

The F ie1idamentals.

24

a rebellion wa s in stigated and in the f 9llowing year C!,1edorlaomer and tl1e kings that were wit l1 l1im ap peared 011 the scene
an d, aft e:r capturi ng nume1-ou,s su1,.rounding cit,ies, joined battl .e
with the rebellious allies in the vale of Sidd im, which was full
of slime pits. T 'he vic to1y of Chedo 1~taon1er ,was co mplete , a11d
after capturin .g Lot and his goods in Sodom he started ho1neward by way of Damascus, near whicl1 place Abra l1am ove1too 1k him, and by a suc cessful s.trat .agem sca tter ,ed his f,orces by
night and recovered Lot and l1is goods. This sto1 y, told with
so many deta ils tl1at its, ref uta ,tion w,ould be easy if it we1e no.t
true t,o the facts a.nd i.f there \\'ere co11temporary records with
which to con1pare it, has been a spec ial butt for the ridicule of
the Higher C1itics of t1ae Wellhausen school , Professo .r Noldeice confide ntly declaring as lat e as 1869 that critici sm had
forever disproved it s claim to be historical. But he re again
th e inscriptio11s on the mon11n1
c nt s ,of Babylonia have Come
to tl1e rescue of the sacred hi storian, if , indeed, he were in
need of rescue . (For .where gene :ral i.gnorance was so pr 0found as it was resp ec.ting that period forty years ago, true
modesty should have , suggested caution in the express ion of
posi,tive 0 pinions in contradi ction to sucl1 ,a detailed historical
.
.
statement as this is.)
.
. Fro1n the , inscriptions already discovered and deciph er ed
i~ thie Va,lley of the Euphrates, it is now shown beyo nd reasonab1e dottbt that the four king s menti oned in the B.ible
as, j oini11gin tl1is expedition are n ot, as was f reeiy said, ''etyn10. raphel is
JogicaJ inventions,'' but real hi st,orical persons.
identified as the Hammurabi whose marvelous code of laws
was so recently dis covered b,y De Morg
,
a
n
at
Susa.
The
''H'~
.
in the latter word simpl,y expre sses the rough breathing so
well known in Hebr ew. Tl1.e ''p' in the biblical name has ,
take n the .place of ''b'' by a well .-recognized law of phonetic
change. ''Amrap'' is equivalent to ''Ha.mrab .'' The addition
of ' 'il' in the b iblical name is P'robably the suffix of the divine nam .e, like '' el''
in
Israel.
.
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M o,numents to the T1'uth of tlte Scriptu1"es.

25

Hammt1rabi is now k11own to have l1ad ~1iscapital at Babylon at the time of Abraham.
Until recent1y this chronolgy was
dispu te d, so tl1at the editors and contributors of the New
Schaff-Herz 0g Cyclopedi .a dog1natically asserted tl1at as Abraham lived nearly 300 year - late r than Han1murabi, the biblical story mttst be unhistorical. I-Iarclly had these statements
been printed, however, when Dr. Kina of the British Museum
discovered indi spt1tab,le evidence th~t two of the dynasties
which .formerly had bee11 reckoned as co,nsecutive were, in
fact, contemporaneou , thus maki11g it easy to brin .g Hammu.
rabi's time down ei actly to that of bral1am.
Chedorlaomer is pretty certainly id entified as Kudur-Lagamar ( serv a.nt of ,Lagan1ar, one oft .he principal Elamite gods) ,.
Kudt1r-Lagamar was king of Elan1, and was eitl1er the father
or the brother of Kudur-lVI~bug, whose son, Eri-Aku ( Ari,och), ,reig11ed over Larsa and Ur, and o,ther citi,es of soutl1ern
Babylonia. H ,e speaks of Kudur-~abug ''as the father of tl1e
1and of the Amorites,' '' i. e., of Palestine and Syria.
Tidal, ''king of nati ,ons,'' was sup,posed by Dr. Pinches to
be referred to on a .late tablet in connection with Chedorlaomer and Arioch under the 11ame T11dghula, who a1e said,
together, to have ''attacked and spoiled Babylon.''

However much doltbt there may be about the identification of some of tl1ese names, tl1e main points are established,
revealing a condition of things just such as is implied by the
.biblical narrative.
Arioch styles himself king of Shumer
aqd Accad, which embraced BabylonJ where Amraphel (Hammurabi) w.as in his early years subject to him. This . furnishes
a reason or the associatio ,n of Chedorl ,aomer and Amraphel
in a campaign against the reb eliious sub,jects in Palestine.
Aga,in,, Ku .dur-Mabug, the father of Ari,och, st.y]es himself
''Prince of the land of Amurru,'' i. e., of Palestine and Syria .
Moreover, for a long period befo1e, kings from Babylonia
had claimed 'possession of th,e wl1ole eastern sl1ore of the
Mediterranean, including the Sinaitic Peninsula .
1

'

In light o,f these well -atte sted facts, one read s with astonishment the fol lowing word s of W ellhau sen, written no longer
ago tl1an 1889 : '' T hat f 0L1 1- king s f r,om tl1e Persian Gulf
should,, 'in the time ,of Abr,aham,' have 1nade an incur sio,n int,e
the Sinaitic P eninsula, that they should on this oc casio11 have
attacked five kinglet s on the Dead Sea Littoral and have carried them off pri sone rs,, and finally that Ab raham shottld have
set OU't in pur suit of the retreatin g, victor ,s, accompanied by
318 men s,ervants, and have fo rced , them to disgorge tl1eir
prey, ,all the se incidents are sheer impo ssibilities which gain
11othing in credibility from the fact tl1at they are placed in a
world which had passed away."
.
And we c,an, have littl e r,e,,spect for tl1e ]o,g,ic of a lat,er
scho lar ('George Adam S1nith), wh o can write the following:
''We must admit that while archreology has richly illustrated
the possibility of the 1nain outl .ines of the Boo,k of Ge11esis
from Abraha1n .to Josepl1, it ha,s not one whit of p roof to
o,ffer or the personal exis:te:11ce 0 r the character 1s of t'h,e patri~rchs, themselves. This is the whole change archreotog)' has
wrot1ght; it ha s given us a background and an atmosphere for
the stories of Genesis; it is t1nable to recall or certify theiri
)1eroes,.''
But 'tl1e name, Abrahatn does appear in tablets ,of the ag~
of Hammurabi . ( See Professor George Barton in Journal of
Biblical Literature, Vol. 28, 1909, page 153.) It is true that
, thi s evidently is ,not 'the Abra 'h,am of the Bible, bu,t that of a
small farme ,r who l1a,d rent ed land of a well-to-do I.and owner.
The p r,e,servation of l1is na1ne is due to the fact that the most
of the tabl ets pre served ,contain contracts relating to the
business of the time s. There is little reason to expect that we
should find a definite reference : to the , Abraham who in early
]if e migrated f ro m his native I.and. But it is of a good deal of
stgntficance that his name appears to have b~en a con11nonone
in the time and place of his na tivity.
In considering 'the arguments , i,n tl1,e caseJit isl important to
1

'

keep in mind that where so few facts are known, and general

ignorance is so great, negative evidence is 0 .small account,

wh ile every scrap of po,s itive evidence has great weight. The
burden of proof in such cases falls upon tho se who dispute
the positive evidence. For example, in the article above referred to, Profes sor Barton argues that it is not ''quite certain'' that Arioch (Eri-Agu) was a real Babylonian king. But
he admits that our ignorance is such that we must admit its
''possibility.'' Dr. Barton further argues that ''we have as .
yet no evi,dence from the inscriptions that Arad-Si n, even if
he were caIIe.d Iri -Agu , ever l1ad anything to do with Ham- , .
tnurabi.'' .But., he adds, '''0 f co,urse, it is posl,sible that h,e may
have had, as their reigns must have overlapped, but that re. to b e prove d .''
mains
All such reasoni11g ( ,and there is any atno,u~t of it in the
critics of the preval ent scl10,ol) reveals ,a ]amen .table lack in
tl1ei,r l.ogi c.al training. When we have a reputable do cument .
containing positive histo rical state1nents which are s'hown by
cir,cumsta11tia1 evidence to be possibl .e, that is all We need to
accept them as true. When, further, we fin.d la gr 1eat amount
of circutnsta11tial evidenc ,e p ositiv,ely showing that . the sta te ments conform to the co11ditions o,f time and place, s,O fa,r a.s
we know them, this ad ds imme nsely to the weight of the testitno ,ny. We .never can fill in .all the background of any historical fact. But if the statement of it fits into, the background
so far as we can fi]J it in, we ,sh,ould ,a ccept th ,e fact until posi~
tive contrary evidence is pro ,c.Iuced. No supposition can be
tnore extravagant than that which Profess ,or Bar ton .seems to
accept which i,s that of the German critic, Meyer ) that a Jew,
tnore than l, 000 years after the event, obtained in B,abylon the
amount Of exact inf orma ,t.io11 concerning the conditions in
Babylonia in Abraham's time, found in the fourteenth chapter
of Genesis, and ip.terpolated the sto,ry of Chedor]aomer's ex- .
pedition into the , b.ackground thus furnish ed, To entertain such
1

..

28

The F un,damentals.

a supposition discredits the prevalent critical scholarship, rather

than the Sacred Scriptures.
But present space for bids further e11umeration of particitlars. J,t is sufficient to say th ,at while n1any more positiv e confirmations of the ,s eemingly i1nprobabie statem ,ent ,s of the sacred historians can h,e adduced, there have been no dis~overies
which ne ,cessatil ,y contravene tl1eir statem ,ents. The cases already l1ere enumerated relate to such widely separated time s
an 1
d ,places , and iurni s1l1 explanatio ,n s so unexpect ,ed, y et na ,tu- ,
ral, t 0 difficultie s that have been tho11ght insuperable, th,at their
testimony can11ot be ignored or rejected. That this history
s,hould be co,nfirmed in so many cas es and . in such a remarka- .
ble manner by monuments uncovered 3,000 years after their
ere~,tion, can be nothing else tl1an providential. Su ,rely, God
has seen to it that the failing faith of these later days should
not be left to grope in darkness. When tl1e faith of many
wa :s wanin .g and many heralds of truth we1e tempted to speak
with uncertain sound, the very stones have cried out wjth a
voi ce th,at only the deaf could fail to he ,ar. Bo ,th in the writing and in the preservation of the Bibl,e we behold the l1andiWork of God.
.
1

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