Dr. Hales has attempted to substitute the longer chronology of
the Septuagint for the Hebrew chronology. But this implies that
the Hebrew Church, as a body, was not faithful to the trust
committed to it in respect to the keeping of the Scriptures,
which seems distinctly opposed to the testimony of our Lord in
reference to these Scriptures (John v. 39; x. 35), and also to
that of Paul (Rom. iii. 2), where there is not the least hint of
unfaithfulness. Then we can find a reason that might induce the
translators of the Septuagint in Alexandria to lengthen out the
period of the ancient history of the world; we can find no reason
to induce the Jews in Palestine to shorten it. The Egyptians had
long, fabulous eras in their history, and Jews dwelling in Egypt
might wish to make their sacred history go as far back as they
could, and the addition of just one hundred years in each case,
as in the Septuagint, to the ages of the patriarchs, looks
wonderfully like an intentional forgery; whereas we cannot
imagine why the Palestine Jews should make any change in regard
to this matter at all. It is well known that the Septuagint
contains innumerable gross errors and interpolations.
Bunsen casts overboard all Scriptural chronology whatever,
whether Hebrew, Samaritan, or Greek, and sets up the unsupported
dynasties of Manetho, as if they were sufficient to over-ride the
Divine word as to a question of historical fact. But, if the
Scriptures are not historically true, we can have no assurance of
their truth at all. Now it is worthy of notice that, though
Herodotus vouches for the fact that at one time there were no
fewer than twelve contemporaneous kings in Egypt, Manetho, as
observed by Wilkinson (vol. i. p. 148), has made no allusion to
this, but has made this Thinite, Memphite, and Diospolitan
dynasties of kings, and a long etcetera of other dynasties, all
successive!
The period over which the dynasties of Manetho extend,
beginning with Menes, the first king of these dynasties, is in
itself a very lengthened period, and surpassing all rational
belief. But Bunsen, not content with this, expresses his very
confident persuasion that there had been long lines of powerful
monarchs in Upper and Lower Egypt, "during a period of
from two or four thousand years" (vol. i. p. 72), even
before the reign of Menes. In coming to such a conclusion, he
plainly goes upon the supposition that the name Mizraim, which is
the Scriptural name of the land of Egypt, and is evidently
derived from the name of the son of Ham, and grandson of Noah, is
not, after all, the name of a person, but the name of the united
kingdom formed under Menes out of "the two Misr,"
"Upper and Lower Egypt" (Ibid. p. 73), which had
previously existed as separate kingdoms, the name Misrim,
according to him, being a plural word. This derivation of the
name Mizraim, or Misrim, as a plural word, infallibly leaves the
impression that Mizraim, the son of Ham, must be only a mythical
personage. But there is no real reason for thinking that Mizraim
is a plural word, or that it became the name of "the
land of Ham," from any other reason than because that
land was also the land of Ham's son. Mizraim, as it stands in the
Hebrew of Genesis, without the points, is (the word being derived
from Im, the same as Yam, "the sea," and Tzr, "to
enclose," with the formative M prefixed).
If the accounts which ancient history has handed down to us of
the original state of Egypt be correct, the first man who formed
a settlement there must have done the very thing implied in this
name. Diodorus Siculus tells us that, in primitive times, that
which, when he wrote, "was Egypt, was said to have been
not a country, but one universal sea."--(DIOD., lib.
iii. p. 106.) Plutarch also says (De Iside, vol. ii. p. 367) that
Egypt was sea. From Herodotus, too, we have very striking
evidence to the same effect. He excepts the province of Thebes
from his statement; but when it is seen that "the
province of Thebes" did not belong to Mizraim, or Egypt
proper, which, says the author of the article "Mizraim"
in Biblical Cyclopedia, p. 598, "properly denotes Lower
Egypt;" * the testimony of Herodotus will be seen
entirely to agree with that of Diodorus and Plutarch. His
statement is, that in the reign of the first king, "the
whole of Egypt (except the province of Thebes) was an extended
marsh. No part of that which is now situate beyond the lake
Moeris was to be seen, the distance between which lake and the
sea is a journey of seven days."--(HERODOT, lib. ii.
cap. 4.) Thus all Mizraim or Lower Egypt was under water.
This state of the country arose from the unrestrained
overflowing of the Nile, which, to adopt the language of
Wilkinson (vol. i. p. 89), "formerly washed the foot of
the sandy mountains of the Lybian chain." Now, before
Egypt could be fit for being a suitable place for human
abode--before it could become what it afterwards did become, one
of the most fertile of all lands, it was indispensable that
bounds should be set to the overflowings of the sea (for by the
very name of the Ocean, or Sea, the Nile was anciently
called,--DIODORUS, lib. i. p. 8), and that for this purpose great
embankments should enclose or confine its waters. If Ham's son,
then, led a colony into Lower Egypt and settled it there, this
very work he must have done. And what more natural than that a
name should be given him in memory of his great achievement? and
what name so exactly descriptive as Metzr-im, "The
embanker of the sea," or as the name is found at this
day applied to all Egypt (WILKINSON, vol. i. p. 2), Musr or Misr?
Names always tend to abbreviation in the mouths of a people, and,
therefore, "The land of Misr" is evidently
just "The land of the embanker." From this
statement it follows that the "embanking of the
sea"--the "enclosing" of it within
certain bounds, was the making of it as a river, so far as Lower
Egypt was concerned. Viewing the matter in this light, what a
meaning is there in the Divine language in Ezekiel xxix, 3, where
judgments are denounced against the king of Egypt, the
representative of Metzr-im, "The embanker of the
sea," for his pride: "Behold, I am against
thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the
midst of his rivers, which saith, My river is mine own, I have
made it for myself."
When we turn to what is recorded of the doings of Menes, who,
by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus alike, is made the first
historical king of Egypt, and compare what is said of him, with
this simple explanation of the meaning of the name of Mizraim,
how does the one cast light on the other? Thus does Wilkinson
describe the great work which entailed fame on Menes, "who,"
says, "is allowed by universal consent to have been the
first sovereign of the country." "Having diverted the
course of the Nile, which formerly washed the foot of the sandy
mountains of the Lybian chain, he obliged it to run in the centre
of the valley, nearly at an equal distance between the two
parallel ridges of mountains which border it on the east and
west; and built the city of Memphis in the bed of the ancient
channel. This change was effected by constructing a dyke about a
hundred stadia above the site of the projected city, whose lofty
mounds and strong EMBANKMENTS turned the water to the eastward,
and effectually CONFINED the river to its new bed. The dyke was
carefully kept in repair by succeeding kings; and, even as late
as the Persian invasion, a guard was always maintained there, to
overlook the necessary repairs, and to watch over the state of
the embankments."--(Egyptians, vol. i. p. 89.)
When we see that Menes, the first of the acknowledged
historical kings of Egypt, accomplished that very achievement
which is implied in the name of Mizraim, who can resist the
conclusion that Menes and Mizraim are only two different names
for the same person? And if so, what becomes of Bunsen's vision
of powerful dynasties of sovereigns "during a period of
from two to four thousand years" before the reign of Menes, by which all Scriptural chronology respecting Noah and his
sons was to be upset, when it turns out that Menes must have been Mizraim, the grandson of Noah himself? Thus does Scripture
contain, within its own bosom, the means of vindicating itself;
and thus do its minutest statements, even in regard to matters of
fact, when thoroughly understood, shed surprising light on the he
dark parts of the history of the world.
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