ARTICLE VII.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.-Beke's Origines Biblicae.*

A new work has recently made its appearance in England, entitled Origines Biblicae or Researches on Primeval History, by C. T. Beke. Its principal design seems to be, to shew that the later Jews, and after their example, the Christian world in general, have made some very important and even fundamental mistakes in respect to Scripture geography. Aram or Syria, the author maintains, originally meant only Coelo-Syria, i. e. Syria between the ridges of the Lebanon mountains; which, by a great mistake, has been extended to the country of Mesopotamia. In like manner he avers, that there is no evidence that the city of Babylon was built at or near the place where the tower of Babel stood; and, what is still much more extraordinary, that the ancient Mizraim or Egypt, where the Israelites were held in bondage, was not the country extending along the banks and in the valley of the Nile, but a country on the peninsula of Mount Sinai! The Israelites, of course, when they left Egypt, did not pass over an arm or outlet of the gulf of Suez, as is generally supposed, but over the extremity of the gulf of Acaba, the eastern fork of the bay of the Red Sea.

How Mr. Beke could find the fruitful country, (which the Egypt that the Israelites dwelt in is so abundantly represented in Scripture to be), in the peninsula of Sinai; and especially, how he could find in that desert the river which is so often adverted to in the first part of the book of Exodus, will, it is very likely, be a problem to some readers of difficult solution. But such must be advertised, that there is no difficulty which Mr. Beke cannot easily surmount. Great changes by the advance of the land upon the water, by earthquakes, or by other causes, he suggests, may have obliterated all traces of the river; and neglect of cultivation, with the drifting of desert sands, has converted the once fruitful country into a desert.

All this effort thus to transpose Egypt and place it in the desert, seems to have originated from the difficulties which Mr.

* For this article, we are indebted to Prof. Stuart.-ED.

B. met with, in finding a fulfilment of various prophecies in the Old Testament respecting the subversion of that country, and which he construes as meaning its total physical as well as civil subversion.

The only cure for such hallucinations seems to be a more attentive critical and exegetical study of the prophecies contained in the Old Testament. The nature of figurative language and of prophetic style once being well understood, would liberate Mr. B., or any other reader, from the necessity of such theories, in order to sustain the authority of prediction. Nor can any effectual method of relief from such embarrassments be found, except in this way. Nothing can be more certain, than that the first requisite for an interpreter of the prophecies, is to become thoroughly acquainted with the style and manner of them.

As to the geography of the Bible-one of the best internal evidences of the genuineness of this book, (independently of the moral nature of its contents), is the known and acknowledged fidelity of its writers in regard to localities. Just in proportion to our knowledge of ancient geography, and this too according to the general principles that have been followed, do we find that every thing, both as to countries and cities, is as it should be in the Scriptures. But suppose, for a moment, that Mr. Beke's theory respecting Egypt is true, then how could the Israelites pass over the gulf of Acaba, and direct their way eastward, and yet after a few days come to mount Sinai which lies on the peninsula west of Acaba? And if they turned back, when once passed over, and again travelled westward, why did they not come again in contact with the Egyptians, whose country they had just left?

It is but a few years, since we had an attempt of a similar nature, to transfer the whole of the early localities in Scripture over to Hindoostan, or into China; and this was the more to be regretted, inasmuch as it ruined what might otherwise have been a good and useful edition of the sober and judicious Wells, whose sacred geography has long had a general currency in the English world. Pudet has nugas! When will visionaries cease to substitute the reveries of their own brain, for plain and well established facts? Never, it is to be feared, until it becomes as easy to study long enough and with sufficient effort to make one's self master of a subject, as it is to dress it up with mere conjectures and dreamy phantasies. These cost but little time, and do not require much talent; and besides, they are apt to make some

noise because they are new, or attract perhaps some attention because they are ingenious. The unlucky wight that burned the temple of Diana, had some notion of a like nature in his head, about an easy method of procuring immortality of fame.

The object of this notice is not a formal review, not even a brief one, of the principles of Mr. Beke's book. The reader who wishes to see such a review, may consult the London Quarterly, No. CIV. (Amer. edit. Vol. I. No. 2), where he will find. a sober and fair-minded account of Mr. Beke's labours, and a pretty just estimate of their success. If the work reviewed were worth the trouble of more serious attention, even many more objections to its positions might easily be raised, than are there brought to view. But the game would not be worth the hunting.'

Mr. Beke, it would seem, is one of those prudent and careful spirits, who is so afraid of the Rationalism of Germany, that he has very scrupulously refrained from even making himself acquainted with what it consists of. With great solemnity and earnestness he lets his readers know, that he has not even read or consulted one of all this γένος αλλοφύλων. We give him full credit as to the fact. His book presents the most convincing internal evidence that it is true. Not one of all the Philistines -although many of them are famous enough for visionary schemes and extravagant conjectures-not one has ventured on any thing like the extravagance of Mr. Beke himself. Their most visionary schemes here are sobriety itself, compared with the phantasies of the book which this timid and orthodox Englishman has gravely sent out into the world.

On this point of Mr. Beke's prudential orthodoxy, we cannot refrain from quoting some very just and sober remarks from the London Quarterly, as mentioned above.

"Now we may respect the prudent timidity with which Mr. Beke has scrupled to venture his faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures in such dangerous society-yet we cannot but think that he would have conducted his argument, if indeed he had written his book at all, much more to the satisfaction of well-informed and scholar-like readers, if he had enlarged the sphere of his reading in that quarter. We do not urge Milton's bold and characteristic argument, not merely for unlicensed printing, but for the indiscriminate reading of all works, whatever their tendency: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where the immortal

garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' Still for an author, and an author on a subject of pure erudition, to refuse all communion with one great class of writers who have discussed the subjects on which he treats with most penetrating sagacity, with unwearied diligence, with the full command of all the sources of information, and an intimate acquaintance not with one but with the whole family of Eastern languages, because their theological system is erroneous or imperfect, betrays a pusillanimity of faith somewhat mistrustful of the power and stability of divine truth. Nor is there less ignorance than timidity in this indiscriminate proscription of German biblical learning. If the cautious inquirer will scruple to commune with Bauer or with Eichhorn--if he denies himself the rich treasures of the one great philological and critical commentary on the Old Testament, that of Rosenmüller-the writings of Michaelis, however in some respects more free and curious than suits our rigid tone of writing on such subjects, might have been consulted by the most diffident and scrupulous Christian writer. To such an inquiry the 'Spicilegium Geographiæ exteræ Hebræorum post Bochartum,' with the Epistles of J. Reinhold Forster, is indispensable. From the more learned German writers Mr. Beke would have derived another most essential advantage; he would have seen the necessity of a much more profound and laborious preparation for such a work, of more copious and general reading, of a more critical and extensive acquaintance with the genius and the structure of the Eastern languages. We are constrained to obsereve, that on many important points, vitally connected with his whole system, he has contented himself with very hasty and second-hand information. His learning is too much that of modern compilations, and derived from the elementary books with which our recent literature swarms. He has seldom consulted, and still more seldom deliberately investigated, the original authorities."

We have quoted this not merely because it contains a very just criticism on the course which Mr. B. has taken, but because it has a bearing on some things which are now and then said in some of our religious newspapers and periodicals, about German writers, and the study of them, and in particular about the preferring of them to the older critical writers. Gesenius, for example, if we are to believe some of our periodical curators, has become defunct before his death, and lives to see his posthumous fame, or rather his want of fame. His Grammar, his Isaiah, his Hebrew Lexicon, all are going, or are soon to go, into insignificance, either as error or as patch-work, compared with the octodecim Lexicon of Buxtorf, with its profound Rabbinical lore, and his Thesaurus Grammaticus and other critical and philological works. Geier and Cocceius and Buxtorf, and

other worthies of like gigantic stature, who flourished in days of yore, are once more to renew their youth in the midst of us, and we are to have Cabbala, and double sense, and vлovoiα, and allegorical interpretation, until we get back again to the early part of the sixteenth century from whence we started. What is old and has been long tried, must, as the writers in question seem to intimate, be good and sound; what is new, of course can be manufactured only in schools of neology.

In such a strain we find a few editors of newspapers and periodicals talking and writing; and it is thus that some will probably never cease to talk and write, so long as they wish to make a display of orthodoxy, or in some way to attract the particular notice and favour of those, who, from the best of motives, are jealous of changes, and slow (as indeed they should be), in admitting innovations. But either gravely, or through desire of attracting public notice, or through petulance, to advance the positions that philology has not made some very important advances during the last forty years, can, in our own sober apprehension, prove nothing more, than that a man is unacquainted with the true nature of that which he affirms, or else that he has some feelings in his breast that it would not be very creditable for him fully to disclose. It is too late in the day to decry en masse the philology of Germany, when all Europe and most of America is receiving lexicons, grammars, and commentaries from her. It is too late also to hinder men of fair and independent minds from "proving all things," in order that they may know "what is good" and "hold it fast."

If the subject were not too grave for amusement, it might afford us some, only to pass in review a few of the fantastic notions that are adopted and maintained by some who are so scrupulous about saying a word in favour of any book written by a neologist. Mr. Beke, as presented to view above, is a good specimen of this. No German visionary ever yet ventured on any thing like the extravagance of his notions. Yet he is withal, (we mean in his own estimation), very grave and orthodox in all this. The true state of the case with such men seems to be, that their own notions are the ultimate test of orthodoxy; and in these notions, whether they be new or old, they may go to any length, provided they can only assume a very grave and demure look whenever neology is mentioned, avoid reading works tainted with this poison, and earnestly caution others against it.