version of the only true history, to attribute the foundation of their capital to Nimrod, and to assert that the tower of Babel was erected in the place where Babylon stood the Jews adopted this erroneous notion during their captivity, and retained and perpetuated it after their return from Babylon into their native country: So the name of Syria, which in the first instance was applied to Aram or Cœlosyria alone, having under the Greeks received so extensive a signification as to include Mesopotamia also, the Jews in like manner extended the application of the name of Aram; and hence Mesopotamia was conceived to represent the country of Padan Aram, in which was situate Haran the dwelling-place of the family of Terah, the father of Abraham.-The Scriptural country of Mitzraim, also, having by the fulfilment of prophecy become "the basest of the kingdoms," and being in fact merged in its powerful neighbour the Egypt of profane history, the Jews of Alexandria, who knew of no other kingdom in that direction than the mighty monarchy of the Ptolemies, regarded those princes as the successors and representatives of the Pharaohs, and Egypt itself as the country which had been "the land of bondage" of their forefathers.'--pp. 9, 10.

Now, the first thing that strikes us in this bold statement is the utter inadequacy of the hypothesis to account for the facts, as well as the extreme improbability of the facts themselves. What valid authority have we that the Babylonians did attribute the foundation of their capital to Nimrod?—that the name of Nimrod appeared in their accredited authorities, or was identified with any of their famous ancestors? Did they derive all their knowledge of the Mighty Hunter' from the records of their oppressed and despised slaves? Themselves soaring in their monstrous astronomical fictions, to an antiquity which would make them look on Nimrod as a man of yesterday, and reduce the longest chronology of the Jewish Scriptures to a narrrow and contemptible fragment of one of their immense cycles, did their national vanity' condescend to derive honour from the supposed accordance of their own traditions with those of the Israelites? The same links of evidence are wanting as to the Tower of Babel. Had the Babylonians any original tradition of this event?-was it floating among the mythic legends disseminated throughout the whole East, and in which, though of doubtful date, yet apparently of very high antiquity, we trace, as in those of the Flood, a dim resemblance to those recorded in the Old Testament? Did they derive all their belief on the subject from their intercourse with the Jews during the captivity? If the tradition was of ancient date, already incorporated into the national annals, its locality already fixed, it is quite conceivable that it should have gained full possession of the popular belief; and even that some vast mass of shapeless ruin-some Birs Nimrud, like

that

that in which, to the present day, the superstitious Arab beholds the immemorial vestige of divine wrath-should have been invested with the awful and mysterious majesty of the heavenblasted Tower of Babel. But unless the tradition was thus domiciliated, and had gained a local habitation'-if it was only borrowed at a later period from the Jewish annals, an event so inseparably connected with the divine displeasure was not that which national vanity, in its wildest and most fantastic mood, would choose forcibly to enshrine in the annals of the country; the pride of ancestry would not have been flattered by a descent from forefathers of such awful impiety. We think that we could help Mr. Beke to a much more rational hypothesis on his own side of the question. It is well known to scholars, who have investigated the later opinions on this subject, that Eichhorn called in question the derivation of Babel (Babylon) from the Hebrew word signifying confusion,' an etymology which requires the addition of an l. He suggested rather its origin in two Arabic words, signifying the gate or city of Bel,' the first monarch, or the god of the Babylonian empire. The Jews of the captivity, from the similarity, or rather the identity of the name of the city of the great Bel with the Babel of Nimrod in their own sacred writings, might naturally suppose the identity of the cities themselves. Nothing, according to the writer of the recent History of the Jews,' could present a more striking and overpowering contrast than

'their national Temple-a small but highly-finished and richly-adorned fabric, standing in the midst of its courts on the brow of a lofty precipice, and the colossal temple of the Chaldean Bel rising from the plain, with its eight stupendous stories or towers, one above the other, to the perpendicular height of a furlong.'-Hist. of Jews, vol. ii. p. 1. In their mighty conquerors, therefore, the awe-struck imagination of the Jews would recognize, as it were, the lineal descendants of the giants which were in those days;' and in the structures of such stupendous, such oppressive, such hitherto unconceived vastness and height, raised, as they were, to idolatrous worship, they would trace, if not the completion of that impious edifice, which was built, that its top might reach to heaven,' at least works planned and executed in the same gigantic spirit of defiance and rivalry against the Most High. To this conjecture, in our judgment far less improbable than his own, Mr. Beke is welcome; for our own part, we see no reason for departing from the common opinion.

The manner in which our author accounts for the extension of the name of Aram to Mesopotamia is equally unsatisfactory with

this

this first part of his Babylonian hypothesis. Because the Greeks extended the name of Syria from a district to a province, (if indeed they did so,) the Jews who, at least those of Palestine, had little connexion till a late period with the Greeks, gave a similar extent to another name! With regard to the Egypt of the Scripture, as from the days of their father Abraham, down to the present, in which Cairo and Alexandria swarm with Jews, there seems to have been a constant, and in general, intimate connexion between the two countries, interrupted only by short periods; as the learned Jews of Alexandria were engaged in the fiercest antiquarian disputes with the Græco-Egyptians-in which the Egyptian polemics accused the Jews of being descended from a race of filthy lepers, whom their ancestors were glad to cast forth from amongst them— while the Jews retorted, by boasting the manner in which their God had led them out with a high hand :' it is somewhat unaccountable, that it never occurred to either party that the Jews never had been in Egypt at all, and that the real kingdom of the Egyptian Pharaohs is scarcely mentioned in the Old Testament.

We shall confine our observations chiefly to these main points, without detaining our reader with Mr. Beke's theory of the dispersion of the nations during the flood. But even in this, an axiom which we venture to lay down, has been constantly present to our minds. Next to the accurate knowledge of what is contained in the Scripture, the most valuable is that of what is not. There is a kind of cabbalism constantly at work, which is discovering not mysteries in the letters, but a whole series of historical facts in the simplest and plainest sentence; while, at the same time, those who are fond of framing such theories, possess a singular facility of overlooking clear and indisputable circumstances which are adverse or fatal to their views. Take the following passage as an example :—

First, then, the place where the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat must have been at or near the highest point of them; for it was two months and fourteen days, i.e. from the seventh'-[lege seventeenth day of the seventh month to the first day of the tenth month after the ark had so rested, before the tops of the mountains were seen by Noah. We may further reasonably assume, that the descent from the ark to the valley below was easy and without difficulties or impediments, since we may rest satisfied that through the goodness of God it could not have been otherwise. That the resting-place was not in the pent-up valley of any lateral stream may also, I think, not unfairly be assumed. Notwithstanding the resignation of the righteous Noah, and his implicit confidence in that Almighty Providence which had so miraculously preserved him from the destruction which had overwhelmed the rest of the human race, we may yet con

ceive that the weakness of human nature would not have permitted his faith and resignation to be at all times entirely perfect. How deep, then, must have been his despair, if, on leaving the ark, he had found himself in the valley of some secondary stream, surrounded by mountains, with the prospect confined, and nothing cheering to direct him as to the course he was to take! But if we assume the place of the ark's stranding to have been upon a mountain within view of the open and wide-spreading valley of the Euphrates, then indeed might the patriarch and his family have had reason to rejoice; for their confidence in that Almighty Power which had so long preserved them would have been confirmed, and they would have been encouraged unhesitatingly to descend, and to take possession of the earth which had been restored to them. It is not, however, absolutely necessary to suppose that the ark rested on an eminence commanding the valley of the Euphrates itself, since the valley of some principal branch of that river would probably have answered the purpose equally well with that of the main stream.

It may be asserted with still greater confidence, that the ark must have rested on the western side of the mountain, or, at least, that the descent from it took place in that direction. The time when God commanded Noah and his family "to go forth of the ark," could only have been in the early morning; and the first act of the patriarch was to build an altar unto the Lord, and to offer burnt offerings, which he doubtless accompanied with thanksgivings for his deliverance, and prayers for his future protection. From the Ark-that is,

towards the west-would the faces of Noah and his sons have been turned in thus offering their sacrifice to the Almighty; and in that direction, whilst the morning sun threw its enlivening beams over the smiling face of the regenerated world, would they have beheld the beauteous token of the "everlasting covenant [then made] between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.' pp. 37, 38.

On what intimation, either direct or indirect, in the narrative in the Book of Genesis, rests half this most circumstantial and not unfanciful detail? Why is all the unlading of the ark, with all its animals, as well as human inhabitants, crowded into a few hours? Why must Noah have left the ark early in the morning? Why must he have looked toward the west? Why must the sign of the rainbow have appeared on the day when, or even within many days after, Noah left the ark? The first impression from the narrative in Genesis is certainly that it was not immediate. As to the patriarch's despair at finding himself imprisoned in a narrow, pent-up valley, our author has overlooked two material points. The world was not new to Noah, however its face might be altered. Mr. Beke himself has argued with considerable plausibility against the philosophical notion that man rose progressively from a state of the

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lowest

lowest barbarism. Those who admit, with the sacred volume, that Noah was the second parent of the human race, must likewise acknowledge that the patriarch and his family must have been well acquainted with the arts, inventions, and general civilization, whatever it might be, of the antediluvian period. If‘Noah, then, and the seven other persons saved in the ark, were members of an artificial, and, most probably, a highly advanced state of society,' were they likely to be alarmed at finding themselves in a confined valley, even if this valley was to all appearance as completely mountain-locked as that of Prince Rasselas in Abyssinia? And would not the wild animals, bounding away, or speeding about in the lightsome joy of freedom from their long confinement, or in search of fresh pasture, by their rapid disappearance have shown at once that the boundaries were not insuperable?

We revert to the first of the three questions which we proposed to examine the position of the Tower of Babel, as described in the Book of Genesis, on the site of the Babylon of Oriental history. Mr. Beke advances an argument, certainly conclusive, if supported by satisfactory evidence. The plain of Babylon, according to this theory, was not even an unwholesome swamp, unsuited to the habitation of man, and unlikely therefore to be chosen as a dwelling place by the new founders of the human race, but actually covered by the Persian Gulf. Mr. Beke adduces, to support this hypothesis, the authority of some modern geologists, a very doubtful passage of Nearchus, and a statement of Pliny, in our opinion so extravagant as to labour under strong suspicion either of corruption in the text or inaccuracy in the author. There is every probability that, as in all the rivers which flow from Central Asia towards the Indian Ocean, vast accretions of land have taken place at the embouchures of those streams which discharge themselves into the head of the Persian Gulf. In the opinion of Mr. Lyell adduced by Mr. Beke, the union of the Tigris and Euphrates must undoubtedly have been one of the comparatively modern geographical changes on our earth. But Mr. Lyell always tempers his boldness of speculation with the caution of a philosopher; and for those vaster changes which have taken place upon the surface of our planet, however he may trace their progressive development to existing causes, he would require, we suspect, periods not merely extending far above any historical era, but even far above the existence of the human race. Mr. Beke's is the first attempt to reconstruct history on the principles of the young science of geology; but if historical speculation allies itself with science, it must submit to all the severe rules of scientific disquisition. It must take nothing for granted; it must not be content with sketching on a map the

probable