period I am referring to, in a not dissimilar position to the Druses of Lebanon of the present day. As is well known to a certain class of writers who have come in contact with them, they form a community held together not so much by national ties as by semi-religious ones, which are based upon Cabalistic and theurgic rites and ceremonies. Like what I conceive the Jews to have been in the centuries preceding the Christian era, they are an order rather than a nation, the remains of systems which have continued and survived from ancient times. In this light the Jewish records are intelligible as writings veiled in allegory, treating of their mystic lore, albeit expressed in verbiage that bears a literal meaning upon its surface. I give this as the only solution that presents itself of the mysterious problem under review.”
I now propose to state a few points from the Jewish writings themselves (collated from Bishop Colenso) to show the fabulous character of the history of this pretentious people.
The number of fighting-men who marched out of Egypt is nowhere estimated at less than 600,000, and if this represented only one-fourth of the population, the latter must have reached 3,000,000. If we cut this down one-third, so as to be sure of our figures, we make it 2,000,000 souls.
The number of the children of Israel who went into Egypt was 70 (Ex. 1: 5). They sojourned in Egypt 215 years. It could not have been 430 years, as would appear from Ex. 11:40. The marginal chronology makes the period 215 years, and there were only four generations to the Exodus—namely, Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Moses (Ex. 6: 16, 18, 20). How could these people have increased in 215 years from 70 souls so as to number 600,000 warriors? It would have required an average number of 46 children to each father. The 12 sons of Jacob had between them only 53 sons. At this rate of increase, in the fourth generation there would have been only 6311 males (provided they were all living at the time of the Exodus), instead of 1,000,000. If we add the fifth generation, who would be mostly children, the total number of males would not have exceeded 28,465.
All the first-born males from a month old and upward, of those that were numbered, were 22,273 (Num. 3: 43). The lowest computation of the whole number of the people at that time is 2,000,000. The number of males would be 1,000,000. Dividing the latter number by the number of first-born, gives 44, which would be the average number of boys in each family, or about 88 children by each mother. Or, if where the first-born were females, the males were not counted, the number of children by each mother would be reduced to 44.
Dan in the first generation had but one son (Gen. 46: 23), and yet in the fourth generation his descendants had increased to 62,700 warriors (Num. 2: 26), or 64,400 (Num. 26: 43). Each of his sons and grandsons must have had about 80 children of both sexes. On the other hand, the Levites increased the number of “males from a month old and upward” during the 38 years in the wilderness only from 22,000 to 23,000 (Num. 3: 39; 26: 62), and the tribe of Manasseh during the same time increased from 32,200 (Num. 1: 35) to 52,700 (26: 34).
The whole population of Israel were instructed in one single day to keep the passover, and actually did keep it (Ex. 12). At the first notice of any such feast Jehovah said, “I will pass through the land of Egypt this night.*” The passover was to be killed “at even” on the same day that Moses received the command.
The women were at the same time ordered to borrow jewels of their neighbors, the Egyptians. After midnight of the same day the Israelites received notice to start for the wilderness. No one was to go out of his house till morning, when they were to take their hurried flight with their cattle and herds. How could 2,000,000 people, scattered about over a wide district, as they must have been with their cattle and herds, have gotten ready and taken a simultaneous hurried flight at twelve hours’ notice?
The Israelites, with their flocks and herds, reached the Red Sea, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles over a sandy desert, in three days! Marching fifty abreast, the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the road for seven miles, and the whole multitude would have made a column twenty-two miles long, so that the last of the body could not have been started until the front had advanced that distance—more than two days’ journey for such a mixed company. Then the sheep and cattle must have formed another vast column, covering a much greater tract of ground in proportion to their number. Upon what did these two millions of sheep and oxen feed in the journey to the Red Sea over a desert region, sandy, gravelly, and stony alternately? How did the people manage with the sick and infirm, and especially with the seven hundred and fifty births that must have taken place in the three days’ march?
Judah was forty-two years old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt, being three years older than his brother Joseph, who was then thirty-nine. For “Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh” (Gen. 41: 46); and from that time nine years elapsed (seven of plenty and two of famine) before Jacob came down into Egypt. Judah was born in the fourth year of Jacob’s double marriage (Gen. 29: 35), being the fourth of the seven children of Leah born in seven years; and Joseph was born of Rachel in the seventh year (Gen. 30: 24, 26; 21: 41). In these forty-two years of Judah’s life the following events are recorded in Gen. 38:
He grows up, marries, and has three sons. His eldest son grows up, marries, and dies. The second son marries his brother’s widow and dies. The third son, after waiting to grow to maturity, declines to marry the widow. The widow then deceives Judah himself, and bears him twins—Pharez and Zarah. One of these twins grows up and has two sons—Hez-ron and Hamul—bom to him before Jacob goes down into Egypt.
In Ex. 30:11-13, Jehovah commanded Moses to take a census of the children of Israel, and in doing it to collect half a shekel of the sanctuary as atonement-money. This expression “shekel of the sanctuary” is put into the mouth of Jehovah six or seven months before the tabernacle was made. In Ex. 38: 26 we read of such a tribute being paid, but nothing is there said of any census being taken, only that the number of those who paid, from twenty years old and upward, was 603,550 men. In Num. 1: 1-46, more than six months after this occasion, an account of an actual census is given, but no atonment-money is mentioned. If in the first instance a census was taken, but accidentally omitted to be mentioned, and in the second instance the tribute was paid, but accidentally omitted likewise, it was nevertheless surprising that the number of adult males should have been identically the same (603,550) on both occasions, six months apart.
Aaron and his two sons were the only priests during Aaron’s lifetime. They had to make all the burnt-offerings on a single altar nine feet square (Ex. 37: 1), besides attending to other priestly duties for 2,000,000 people. At the birth of every child both a burnt-offering and a sin-offering had to be made. The number of births must be reckoned as at least two hundred and fifty a day, for which consequently five hundred sacrifices would have to be offered daily—an impossible duty to be performed by three priests. For poor women pigeons were accepted instead of lambs. If half of them offered pigeons, and only one instead of two, it would have required 90,000 pigeons annually for this purpose alone. Where did they get the pigeons? How could they have had them at all under Sinai? There were thirteen cities where the presence of these three priests was required (Josh. 21: 19). The three priests had to eat a large portion of the bumt-offerings (Num. 18: 10) and all the sin-offerings—two hundred and fifty pigeons a day—more than eighty for each priest.
In keeping the second passover under Sinai, 150,000 lambs must have been killed—i. e. one for each family (Ex. 12: 3, 4). The Levites slew them, and the three priests had to sprinkle the blood from their hands (1 Chron. 30: 16; 35: 11). The killing had to be done “between two evenings” (Ex. 12: 6), and the sprinkling had to be done in about two hours. The killing must have been done in the court of the tabernacle (Lev. 1: 3, 5; 17: 2-6). The area of the court could have held but 5000 people at most. Here the lambs had to be sacrificed at the rate of 1250 a minute, and each of the three priests had to sprinkle the blood of more than 400 lambs every minute for two hours.
The number of warriors of the Israelites, as recorded at the Exodus, was 600,000 (Ex. 7: 37); subsequently it was 603,550 (Ex. 38: 25-28), and at the end of their wanderings it was 601,730 (Num. 26: 51). But in 2 Chron. 13:3, Abijah, king of Judah, brings
