of the second founder of the human race, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

"If Shem lived until the 110th year of Isaac and the 50th year of Jacob, why was not he included in the covenant of circumcision made with Abraham and his family?—or why is he utterly unnoticed in their history?

"How could the earth be so populous in Abraham's days, or how could the kingdoms of Assyria, Egypt, &c., be established so soon after the deluge?" This last difficulty was strongly felt by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in his 'History of the World' remarks, "In this patriarch's time all the then parts of the world were peopled; all nations and countries had their kings; Egypt had many magnificent cities, and so had Palestine, and all the neighbouring countries; yea, all that part of the world besides, as far as India: and these, not built with sticks, but of hewn stone and with ramparts; which magnificence needed a parent of more antiquity than those other men have supposed." In another place he forcibly observes, "If we advisedly consider the state and countenance of the world, such as it was in Abraham's time, yea, before his birth, we shall find it were very ill done, by following opinion without the guide of reason, to pare the times over-deeply between the flood and Abraham; because in cutting them too near the quick, the reputation of the whole story might perchance bleed." And it has bled. The sagacity of this accomplished man did not erroneously anticipate that "the scorners " would not fail to detect and make the most of the great and serious difficulties which the shorter chronology creates, but which by the longer computation are wholly obviated.

After all this, we trust it will be felt that we have done well, and taken a safe course, in adopting the longer account for the present work; and we do not regret that the explanation which thus became necessary has afforded an opportunity of bringing so important a subject under the notice of many whose attention may not hitherto have been directed towards it. It only remains to state why the reckoning of Josephus in particular has been chosen.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the account of that great historian is not a system of his own, but a statement of the interpretation, received in his time, of the account which the Scriptures gave. The Scripture is still the authority; and Josephus is the witness of the testimony which it bore before any disagreement on the subject existed, and when the accounts of the Hebrew and the Septuagint synchronized. The system is that of the Bible, and Josephus becomes the agent through which its uncor

rupted statements may be recovered. His particulars evince great skill in reconciling apparent discrepancies, and in eliciting that which, when clearly stated, appears at once to be the sense which the Scriptures convey, and which is in perfect agreement with every fact and circumstance which it records. Besides this, he gives sums and results collected from the Scriptures; and how important such materials are as tests, and as means of comparison and verification, no one who has given the least attention to such subjects needs be told. It is true that his numbers also have been much corrupted, in order to bring them into agreement with the Hebrew account; but, happily, enough of sums and dates escaped the general spoliation, to afford materials for the detection of the alterations, and the restoration of the original numbers. In some cases, where the sum had been altered, the particulars sufficed to render the alteration manifest; but more generally a number of sums which, having been stated incidentally, had escaped the general havoc, evinced the alteration of the details, and at the same time offered a firm basis for the restoration of the original edifice, which had been disfigured in some parts, and demolished in others, to the grievous injury of the builder's reputation. The beautifully connected chain of analytical and synthetical argument, by which Dr. Hales has effected this restoration, may, as one of the finest pieces of reasoning we possess, be recommended to the admiration even of those who feel but little interest in the subject to which it refers.

(2) "CANAANITES," p. 4.-In stating that the original settlements of the descendants of Canaan were on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea, we have adopted the well-supported opinion of Professor Jahn.* The necessary statement on this subject has the incidental merit of giving a much clearer and satisfactory account of the Amalekites than it is possible otherwise to obtain. This very learned and acute Biblical archeologist says:-"The Canaanites frequently occur in the Arabian poets, historians, and scholiasts, under the name of Amalekites (Imilkôn and Amalikôn), as a very ancient, numerous, and celebrated people, who inhabited Arabia before the Joktanites, and some of whom removed to Canaan, whence they were expelled by the Hebrews. Herodotus also says that the Phoenicians (who are the same as the Canaanites) originally dwelt on the coasts of the Red Sea, whence they

Biblische Archaologie, th. ii., b. 1; Politische Alterthumer, sect. 4. Wien., 1824 This (the historical) portion of Jahn's great work on Biblical Antiquities has been translated in America, and reprinted in this country, under the title of "The History of the Hebrew Commonwealth."

emigrated to the Mediterranean, and there engaged in navigation to distant countries.* We are informed in Genesis that when Abraham arrived in Canaan the Canaanite was then in the land; a plain intimation that the Canaanites had emigrated thither not long before. The enumeration of the Canaanites among the Amalekites who inhabited Arabia Petræa, but made distant excursions into other countries, is also an indication that Arabia was their original residence.+

The Canaanites who remained in Arabia formed a numerous people, of whom, in the seventh century, there were distinguished families still in existence. They could not be descended from Amalek the grandson of Esau, as they are spoken of long before his time as inhabiting the southern borders of Canaan. Balaam calls them one of the most ancient nations, and their king the most powerful monarch that he knew. For the offence of attacking the rear of the Hebrews in their march through Arabia Petræa, they received immediate punishment, but those Hebrews who attempted to penetrate into Canaan, contrary to the command of God, they defeated, and formed an alliance in later times with the Moabites and Ammonites, and also with the Midianites, against that people. They were vanquished by Saul, by David, and finally by the Simeonites, in the reign of Hezekiah. Being nomades, and subsisting principally by tillage, they led a wandering life, though we find them, for the most part, on the southern borders of Palestine.

(3) "MIDIANITES, KENITES," &c., p. 12.The inference that the Kenites were a family of Midianites is derived from the circumstance that Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, is called both a Midianite and a Kenite. And then as we know that one nation of Midianites were descended from a son of Cush, they could not be a subdivision of the Kenites, but the Kenites of them. But there are two Midians, and two nations of Midianites mentioned in Scripture, and the question arises to which of these Jethro, who is also called a Kenite, belonged.

The older nation, which alone could have existed in the time of Abraham, is so constantly associated in Scripture with the Cushites ("Ethiopians" in our version) as to suggest that they were descended from Cush, the son of Ham, through some one of his de

• Herodot. i. 2; compare Justin, Frag. xviii. 3; Abulfede, Descript. Syria, p. 5.

Gen. xi. 10-26; Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arab., p. 30; Herbelot, Bible Orient., t. i. p. 215; Reland, Palæs. p. 82; Gen. xii. 6, xiii. 7, xxvi. 34, xxviii. 8; Num. xiii. 29; Psa. lxxxiii.; compare Deut. iii., Josh. xii. and xiii. 2—32.

scendants who was called Midian. It is true that no such name occurs in the list of the sons and grandsons of Cush which the tenth chapter of Genesis contains; but we are scarcely to suppose that this list gives the names of all the first fathers of mankind; and the founder of the Midianites may have been a great grandson of Cush. As it is scarcely worth while to enter into all the arguments for the existence of a race of Cushite Midianites, we may state that the evidence for the fact is so clear, that the conclusion has generally been formed and admitted on its own grounds, without reference to any controversy or discussion.

The later Midianites were descended from Abraham himself, through his son Midian by his second wife Keturah. Now, although the Kenites were a Midianitish people, it is evident they could not be from this family, seeing that they are named in Scripture many years before even Midian their founder was born. And this, by the by, is an argument for the existence of a race of Cushite Midianites before Abraham's son existed.

To weaken this argument it has been, however, alleged that the Kenites are, in the list under review, named proleptically, as a people who should be in possession of a territory at the time when Abraham's posterity should arrive to take possession of the Promised Land. But an easy answer is found to this in the fact that no instance of a proleptical insertion occurs in any of these lists. The case indeed is so much the reverse, that all the apparent discrepancies between the lists arise from there being nothing in them either proleptical or retrospective. In all cases we are furnished the existing names of the clans ac tually in occupation at the time the list is given. Hence every fresh list is indicative of the changes which had taken place since the previous one was supplied. If a name has been changed, the old one is dropped and the new one given: if a name once current has been lost, from whatever cause, it is omitted in the new list; and if a new name has arisen by division, intrusion, or change of place, it fails not to be inserted. It will therefore appear most unlikely that the name of the Kenites should form the only exception to this general course of proceeding.

Furthermore, that the Kenites mentioned to Abraham were not his own descendants proleptically named, might, at the very first view, be suspected from the fact that all the tribes whose lands were promised to his posterity were descended from Ham, and that a branch of his own descendants should be included, or, in other words, that one branch of his descendants should take away the lands of another

branch, might not have seemed very desirable to him. If the inheritances of Moab and Ammon were respected for the sake of Lot's relationship to Abraham, how much more would the inheritance of Midian be respected as that of the immediate son, though not the heir, of the great patriarch.

To this we may add that the Abrahamic Midianites settled to the east and south-east of the Dead Sea, between Moab and Edom; whereas the principal locality of the other Midianites was on the Red Sea to the south of Edom; and it is there to whom, historically, the name of Kenites is also given; and that these were Cushites is, in addition to what we have already said, strongly intimated in the fact that the daughter of Jethro, a great man among the Midianitish Kenites, is called a Cushite also, by Aaron and Miriam. (Num. xii. 1.)

It appears that they occupied, or rather were in the country extending from the south of Palestine into Arabia Petræa and the borders of the Red Sea. The intimations to this effect are not very precise; and this may be partly because the Kenites appear to have been a roving pastoral people, not dwelling in towns, and therefore more dispersed than the proper Canaanitish tribes. At the Hebrew conquest we find a very distinguished Kenite, Heber, living in tents in the very heart of Palestine, much in the same way, apparently, that the Hebrew patriarchs did before, and as the Arabs do now in the same country, and the Eelauts in Persia. No doubt this was the case with other clans of the same people, and that, too, at a late date: for the kindness of a Kenite family to Moses, during his exile, was only not an ultimate benefit to that family, but

secured from molestation such of the tribes as chose to submit to the Hebrews. Such of them as did not, probably joined the Edomites and Amalekites; for we know that it was their practice to associate with more powerful tribes in times of difficulty, by which means their distinct existence was in the end lost. From the top of the mountain to which the king of Moab called Balaam to view and curse the camp of Israel, that prophet was able to view the place of those Kenites who held aloof from the Hebrews. He mentions them along with Amalek and Edom, and intimates that they abode in caverns: "He looked upon the Kenites.. and said, Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock.""* But it is rather uncertain whether we are to infer from this that those of the Kenites who were near the Dead Sea and Seir sought the limited shelter which people of their habits required in the caverns which abound in the mountains of that neighbourhood, in preference to living in tents; or that they had taken refuge in them under the pressure of existing circumstances, when they were in dread of the Hebrews. The former seems probable enough, particularly since the caverns are described as their "dwelling places."

As merely relating to so obscure a people as the Kenites, the remarks we have hazarded might seem of undue length, but will not appear to be the case when it is recollected that the subject has necessarily involved an exposition of our views concerning the Midianites, who are of much more importance than the Kenites alone, and more frequently mentioned in the History of the Jews.

Num. xxiv. 21.