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The barley (Exod. ix. 31) smitten by the seventh plague of hail, was destroyed, because it was ', 'in the ear; that is, the grain or productive principle of the plant was developed; the meaning of the word rather indicating an approach to maturity than greenness. Hence Abib (1) as a proper name, even if from a Hebrew root, cannot express a month in which corn is green, but any month in which corn or any fruit is produced; so that etymology fails in establishing this word as a Hebrew name characteristic of spring.

In the next place, the manner in which Moses mentions this month is worth remarking. Whenever he prescribes the formalities which, in future times, are to mark all feasts and offerings, and indicates the season for observing them, he merely names the months by their numeral order. Even respecting the first command to keep the passover (Ex. xii. 18), this command is not to keep it in the month Abib, but in the first month.' Also in Lev. xxiii. 5, 6; and Num. xxviii. 16, 17. Again, the second passover was kept in the first month.' (Num. ix. 1.) He never names

borne by the root N, upon which I found an argument. I therefore subjoin a list of Latin and Greek root words, formed from the same archetype as the Hebrew root, and all similarly implying an active or a passive form of origination or production. I separate the true root from the formative additions, for greater clearness :

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And the ancient Egyptian ab has the sense of , fruit or produce, generally; but more particularly, an ear of corn.

The same word occurs again, Lev. ii. 14; but there it is wrongly translated in the common version, as the context, and a reference to the parallel ordinance in Lev. xxiii. 14, will show. It should be, "Thou shalt offer the meat-offerings of thy first fruits', the abib, grain, or fruit, i. e. productive part), 'parched with fire, beaten out of the full ear;' and not as the common version has it, 'green ears of corn, beaten out of the full ear:' for it stands to reason that what is beaten out of the full ear is not the green ear, but only the grain or eatable part of it. It may be this very error which misled the etymologists. But if they had compared the passage with its parallel, Lev. xxiii. 14, in which 7, here rendered full ear, is there rendered green ears, they would never have rendered by green ears also; because if, in Lev. xxiii. 14, be green ears, the same word must be green ears likewise in Lev. ii. 14, which would make our passage read green ears beaten out of green ears,' a self-condemning absurdity. These are the only two instances of this word, except where it is the proper name of a month.

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The other form, 2, occurs in Cant. vi. 11, rendered 'fruits;' and in Job vii. 12, where, however, the common translation by greenness is again wrong, the sense being the radical idea as above: Can the flag grow without water? still flourishing, and not cut down, it withereth before any green herb.' of greenness has been gratuitously superadded to that implied by the root, a flourishing or fruit-bearing condition.

The idea

Abib as the month in which the passover is to be kept, but only as a period to be remembered by means of that feast, e. g. : Exod. xiii. 4— This day came ye out, in the month Abib;' Exod. xxiii. 15; and xxxiv. 18-Thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee in the appointed time of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out of Egypt.' Again, in Deut. xvi. 1- Observe the month Abib; and keep the passover unto the Lord thy God, for in the month Abib the Lord brought thee out of Egypt by night. thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it: seven days shalt thou eat bread of affliction, because thou camest forth from Egypt in haste, that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.' In all these passages the month Abib is the thing to be remembered as the nominal period of a past event; it is not the period designated for commemorating that event in future.

The Mosaic narrative of the deluge implies the writer's familiar acquaintance with the conventional month of thirty days. Indeed this has been quoted often as proof that such a division of time was then in use. But the reference does not necessitate this conclusion: besides, the lunar method speaks to the eye, showing it to be the primitive method; the other is an artificial arrangement made to facilitate calculation, which argues a more recent origin. Men simply observed before they began to calculate. It is admitted that the Egyptians themselves had originally used the lunar method, but they had already abandoned it at the earliest periods reached by their monuments.

The Hebrews had become familiar in Egypt with the traditional idea, peculiar to that climate only, that autumn was the period of the world's creation and renewal. The renewal of agricultural operations after the autumn equinox when the inundation begins to subside, marks, in Egypt, that revival of nature which in all other countries is marked by the return of spring. The mythological offices of the patron deities of the twelve Egyptian months show that such had been the initial position of their calendar, although, in consequence of the Egyptians having no leap-year, that calendar did not keep its place among the seasons. The Hebrews in Egypt. took up this popular idea. They retained it so firmly rooted among them from two centuries of usage, that it became the basis of their civil or chronological account; although, in order not to disturb the arrangement of their ancestral festivals, or the rules appointed for their observance, it became necessary to have in use two kinds of year; one for common reference in dating, beginning in autumn; and the other exclusively for reference in regulating religious festivals, starting from the primeval starting-point of their forefathers—the spring. A familiar acquaintance with the

Egyptian adopted idea of an agricultural year, is betrayed in Exod. xxiii. 16-The feasts of in-gathering (ny) at the going out of the year;' i. e., the end of summer; and also in Exod. xxxiv. 22-n nppa, the revolution of the year,' supposed complete at the same period.

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Prior to their sojourn in Egypt, the Hebrews used to divide their year according to the natural phenomena of their own climate, like the Chaldeans, Romans, and other ancient nations: the renovation of nature at the return of spring was, to them, the natural beginning of the year. Some of our ablest Biblical critics have seen, in the sacrifice of Cain and Abel, an indication that at the earliest period the memory of man can ascend to, the opening of the year had been marked by a religious service of thanksgiving. It has been justly remarked that the expression Dpp signifies ' at the end of the year;' the return of a fixed and definite period, and not, as it is vaguely rendered in our common translation, in process of time.' And the substance of the sacrifice itself sufficiently indicates the season in which it took place; the offerings being the firstlings of the flock, and their fat, and the fruits of the ground;' by which we see that both as to the offerings and the season of presenting them, the ordinance relative to the offering of first-fruits to the Lord, appears to have been nothing more than the revival of a far more ancient ancestral solemnity.

Now when we examine the two chapters containing directions for the future observance of the Passover, we find there no directions concerning the offering of first-fruits at the same time. In succeeding portions of the written code, we do find the observance of such a feast enjoined; and the order is associated with another to continue to observe the Passover; and the period of both observances is fixed at the same day. There is evidently some kind of connection between the celebration of these feasts, so intimately associated as to time. If such a feast as the offering of first-fruits had not been a previously established institution, coinciding in period with the subsequent celebration of the Passover, would not the first order to institute such a feast have been given at the same time as that for the Passover itself, and all the other ordinances connected with it?

But indeed we can have very little doubt that the season for celebrating some particular solemn feast was near at hand, at the time which introduces the events of the Exode; which the mass of the people were under a religious obligation to celebrate by sacrificing to the Lord. It might have been legitimately inferred, from the authoritative manner in which Moses repeatedly insists on this obligation, that although he availed himself of it to

demand for the people the liberty to exercise their religious duties unmolested, by withdrawing from the Egyptian territory, he was not adducing it as a mere pretext to obtain an opportunity of getting out of the country. The liberty to fulfil all their religious duties without fear of interruption from an ignorant and superstitious Egyptian populace, was the end of his demand. The people were at last withdrawn from the land with a high hand and mighty judgments,' because that had been refused.

As the Hebrews at first vaguely fixed their ancient religious year by the return of spring,-but measured their time strictly by the changes of the moon,-their great ancestral festival of the end of the days,' or opening of the new year, would be more precisely fixed by the lunation nearest to or next following the spring equinox, than by the equinox itself. The first day of the year would be the day of the first new moon after the equinox. Since the time of Moses the Hebrews have never changed the ordinance concerning the epoch at which the Passover and associated feasts are kept; they have always been kept from the eve of the 15th day of the month. Therefore, they will always fall about the day of the full moon, being regulated by a lunar calendar. Was this the case with the first Passover? This, then, is the principal point to be determined, if we mean to render this inquiry productive of definite practical results-Whether the first Passover, which was celebrated on the eve of the 15th day of the month, fell at the time of the full moon? For it is evident that the conclusion whether Moses dates that event by an Egyptian or by a Hebrew method of computation, must entirely depend on the answer to this question; since the Hebrew method followed the phases of the moon, and the Egyptian method did not.

That answer can now be given with the certainty of an astronomical demonstration, based on the fact that the tides, in a given place, regularly follow a given time after the moon's passage over the meridian of the place.

The physical geography of the Egyptian frontier at the time of the Exodus is now ascertained; consequently we may safely say we know the site of the passage. The route of the Hebrews thither has been successfully traced, and each of its stations, as enumerated by Moses, identified with places well known to ancient geography; consequently, by the length of the route we know the time taken Rameses up to perform it.

Starting from

Heliopolis

on the 15th by the

I beg to refer the reader to the Athenæum of June 28 and July 5, 1851, for the final details of the investigation I have carried on during several years, in order to determine the amount of change the scene of the Exodus has undergone from the effect of recent geological changes.

For the present convenience of those who have not the means of this reference at hand, I will briefly sum up the results. In the time of Moses there were two

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(Succoth, Etham, through Scenæ, Zhoum,

Hiroth, Baalzephon, Hero, the Serapeum, eighty-three Roman miles, the Hebrew host would reach the plain facing Baalzephon in the afternoon of the 19th day. On the morning of the 20th they start off, the Egyptian army having begun to pursue them ;-there is nearly a day's journey more, round the south-western side of the ancient inner gulf, to the narrow pass in the arm of the sea where they crossed over. After a halt of a few hours, they must have made the passage early in the morning of the 21st day of the month. This calculation supposes a march of from 12 to 14 geographical miles a-day. The march, from the encampment near Etham to the neighbourhood of Hiroth or Heroopolis, would take up two days; the distance from Scena to Hero being 50 Roman 40 geographical miles.

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Accordingly, if the month Abib Moses speaks of be a Hebrew and a lunar month, the passage of the Red Sea must have taken place when the moon's age was 21 days. But if this month be an Egyptian conventional division of time, wholly independent of the moon's age, the fact will be revealed by the tidal phenomena of the locality at the time of night when the passage was effected, which is very clearly indicated by Moses in his narrative of the event; for the hour of the final catastrophe is fixed within such narrow limits, that we can ascertain the moon's age at the time of its occurrence, without an error of a day.

Some persons, however, may be offended at its being thus taken for granted that natural phenomena, invariable at other times and on other occasions, can possibly be turned to account as grounds of argument on this particular occasion, when they have been accustomed to admit, or to assume, a standard of operations altogether supernatural.

inner gulfs beyond the present head of the Red Sea. One, now called the 'Temsah Lakes,' was separated from the great middle gulf by a shallow ford, opposite the Serapeum, which was dry at low tide. A small arm of the Nile emptied into this gulf near Heroopolis; and the march of the Hebrews lay all along its southern bank. The other basin, now dried up, was separated from the present little upper gulf of Suez by a strait having for a bottom a long shoal, of which the highest part, where the strait was very narrow, lay about ten feet below high water mark. This is the site of the passage, close to the southern edge of the great basin, and eleven miles north of Suez. The particulars of Mr. Sharpe's identification of the stations in the old Roman itinerary with those of the Hebrew marches have been given in Mr. Bartlett's Forty Days in the Desert.' But what relates to the ancient physical geography of the localities is there incomplete: my research into that division of the subject was not then finished.

It appears that by following the road along the bank of the river to Heroopolis, the Hebrews intended to go out into the Sinaitic desert by the Serapeum ford; but that they were intercepted there by a body of Egyptian troops, who wanted to drive them back into the desert and shut them in by the sea: and but for the Divine interposition which forms the subject of the present discussion, the plan would have succeeded, as the sea was too deep to be forded.

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