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THE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Quarterly Review.

JULY, MDCCCXXXVII.

ART. I.-A Connexion of Sacred and Profane History, from the Death of Joshua to the Decline of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah; intended to complete the Works of Shuckford and Prideaux. By the Rev. MICHAEL RUSSELL, LL.D., Épiscopal Minister. Leith. Vol. III. London: J. G. and F. Rivington. 1837.

THIS volume concludes the undertaking on which Dr. Russell has been for many years engaged; it is clearly the result of indefatigable labour. It contains much conjectural matter, which we do not deem necessary to our investigation, but removes in other parts a very considerable portion of scriptural difficulties.

It is not our intention to follow its rapid survey of the Biblical narrative, but to fix our criticisms upon prominent particulars. We fully assent to the author's idea, that the prohibition from eating blood was occasioned by a propensity to partake of the warm blood of animals, such as Bruce has described to be prevalent in Abyssinia; which, with its attendant cruelties, the humane spirit of the Mosaic economy consistently denounced. But the author has overlooked the cause of the hostilities between Amalek and Israel; he has not, shown why the former, more particularly than any other nation, should have opposed the latter, immediately after the Exodus, which seems to have been necessary to his review of the reign of Saul. Two races appear to have borne the former name in the Old Testament: the first descended from Ham, who were probably of the Phoenician stock; the second, the descendants of Esau, who lived in Idumæa. This distinction is verified by Gen. xiv. 7, (where the Amalekites occur as a nation soon after Abraham's establishment in Canaan), compared with Numb. xxiv. 20, where they are mentioned as a very early or primitive nation (w); and by Gen. xxxiv. 12, where others of the same name occur among the posterity of Esau. Since, then, one class belonged to the family of Ham, we may easily give credit to the eastern historians, who assign as the

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cause of their attack upon the Israelites a desire to avenge the deaths of their kindred, the Egyptians, in the Red Sea. Nor will it appear strange, that two distinct people should have had the same name, when we call to mind, that several titles * designated habits. This Gentile term does not indeed seem to be easily deducible from the Semitic family of languages; but may we not, for reasons which will be given in the sequel, conjecture, that some trace of it survives in the Sanscrit

amālăkă,

which is applied to land near a mountain?-for as this is clearly adapted to the Amalekites, who resided in Arabia Petræa, so it may without difficulty have been given to another race of similar habits. Besides, when we consider the intermarriages of Esau. and his sons with the Canaanites, it is far from improbable, that Amalek, the grandson of Esau,-the-family of Timna his mother not being recorded,-may have been related by descent to the earlier race of the name; or that, as Israel was a cognomen of Jacob, and Edom of Esau, Amalek may have been one of the same description, and have been intended to designate the peculiar residences of himself and his descendants. This observation, which is only hypothetically proposed, will explain its application to two separate people; in which we are in some degree warranted by the wide use of Horim in Scripture.

Dr. Russell has correctly understood the transaction between Saul and the witch at En-dor. It is nowhere stated, that Samuel

,suggests not the idea וידע שאול כי שמואל הוא : actually appeared

that Saul saw Samuel, but that he was persuaded, i. e. by the
woman's description-that it was Samuel. As Dr. Russell says,
the shade of Samuel only seemed to be recalled from the shades.
That the woman knew Saul at the first glance, is clear from her
speech in 1 Sam. xxviii. 9; and the aspect of affairs, combined
with the knowledge, that the kingdom was decreed to pass from
the line of Saul to David, would naturally dictate to her the
part which she should play, and the answer which she should
return. Saul's mind was predisposed to receive any impression;
the time too was night, and favourable to her purpose. By the
aid of those ordinary illusions, which eastern pretenders to
necromancy practised, and by ventriloquism, in which they were
generally skilled, the particulars in the narrative might easily
have been effected. For, as no reasoning will convince us that
the Almighty would have thus favoured arts, which he had
severely and repeatedly denounced, and as it was not possible
for evil agency to have evoked the spirit of Samuel from
we are confident that the account requires a very different inter-
pretation. Saul had previously inquired of Jehovah; but Jehovah

That names were given from habits and circumstances, is evident from the Μακρόβιοι, Ιχθυοφάγοι, &ε. &c.

answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets-would he then have answered him by this woman?

But Saul's words, 18 NP (v. 8), prove beyond all possibility of refutation, that he desired and expected interdicted practices; and the whole shows that the woman resorted to them. That the ob,* which in some parts of our version is rendered "a familiar spirit," was ventriloquism, is very strongly indicated by the application of eyyaorpíuvos to it in the Septuagint and Josephus, and demonstrated in Isaiah xxix. 4,-IN IND Tp and thy voice shall be LIKE OB from the earth. The powerfully imitative word, at the end of the verse, leaves nothing wanting to the argument.

The woman had doubtless seen Samuel, and therefore could perfectly describe him; and the author well remarks, that N at ver. 15, should not be rendered gods, but a ruler, or mighty "Then the question would be natural: what form is he of?" This criticism is decided by the woman's reply, in which the is called "an old man with a mantle."

one.

In connexion with this inquiry Dr. Russell states, that "the immortality of the soul is not taught in the books of Moses, nor in any way connected with the doctrine of future reward and punishment, but that the separate existence of the spiritual part of man after death is distinctly admitted, even as an article of popular belief." Upon this he founds the origin of necromancy. But with respect to people believing a separate state after death, whose priesthood undoubtedly studied their legal types, it is impossible to fix the extent of this doctrine, or to show, whether or not from the temporal rewards and punishments of the law they argued to those of a future state. indeed, can scarcely imagine the ancient Hebrews to have been absolutely ignorant of this tenet, notwithstanding the ingenious arguments which Bishop Warburton has indulged on the contrary opinion. In Job and the Hebrew poets, Sheòl (5, aons) is described as a palace with gates and bars (xvii. 16, xxxviii. 17; Ps. cvii. 14-16); it is represented mighty and insatiable, and absorbing all men into it, whilst God is exhibited exercising authority over it, bringing men into it or delivering them from it, according to his good pleasure. (Cf. 1 Sam. ii. 6; Ps. xxx. 3; xlix. 15). The language, in which the arrival of the

We,

Neither the Hebrew nor the Arabic offers us a satisfactory etymology of N. Jablonski imagined it to be discoverable in the Coptic он, a sacrificer-a priest given to incantations. The word was probably borrowed from the pagan inhabitants of Canaan, and it is not unlikely that the Sanskrit ab, to sound, may contain the force of

its root.

king of Babylon in Sheòl is pourtrayed (Is. xiv. 9, sqq.), however it may be clothed in poetical imagery, unequivocally shows the popular belief of a future state; and expectations of a resurrection or resuscitation to conscious life, may be seen in Is. xxvi. 19; Ezek. xxxvii. 1—14, and many passages of the Psalms. In accordance with this, Job was persuaded that his Redeemer lived, or was the living one, and that after his release from the flesh (wa, xix. 26), he should see God.* But on this subject the Jewish notions became more definite after the Babylonian captivity; for in the second book of the Maccabees, and in the book of Wisdom, which was probably written by an Alexandrine Jew, the soul's eternal reunion with God, the resurrection, the final judgment, and its retributive sentences are very clearly set forth. The Pharisees, it is well known, blended this doctrine with the metempsychosis and the revolution of ones; and hence it was, that our Saviour's promulgation of the resurrection was so directly at variance with the opinions which they cherished and taught. Reviewing, therefore, this article of faith, as far as we can, in the several periods of Jewish history, we perceive nothing which will assure us, that the Israelites were entirely ignorant of future rewards and punishments.

*Not in my flesh, which would destroy the parallelism in the preceding part of the verse. The word is literally è carne meâ, as many foreign scholiasts have rendered it.

The following comparison of the apocryphal books with the New Testament may be worthy of the reader's attention :

Wisdom iii. 1

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Luke xxiii. 46.

vi. 23.

Rom. viii. 18; cf. 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18; Heb. xii. 10, 11.

Matt. xiii. 43; cf. 1 Cor. xv. 40.

2 Tim. ii. 12; cf. Rom. viii. 17; 1 Cor.

xv. 24, 27.

Rom. ii. 5,6; cf. 2 Cor. v. 10; Acts xvii. 31.
Luke vi. 23.

Apoc. xiv. 13.

Matt. xxv. 26.

Apoc. ii. 26, 27.

Matt. xix. 28; cf. Luke xxii. 29, 30.

xvii. 21; cf. ver. 14 2 Pet. ii. 17.

2 Macc. vii. 9. 36

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John v. 28, 29.

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Dr. Russell adverts to the difficulty in 2 Sam. xv. 7, which is presented by the proper period, from which the forty years. should be computed. But, as the Syriac and the Arabic versions, Josephus and Theodoret, reduce this number to four, we are bound to conclude that they had an authority in the text of their day; and as Josephus (Ant. vii. 8) says, that these four years should be reckoned from the time of Absalom's reconciliation with his father on account of his former conspiracy, we have an easy and reasonable solution of the chronological difficulty. Dr. Russell, indeed, appears inclined to sanction it. The words in our present copies are ; now, if we suppose, that

at the periods to which we have referred, was the reading, we may readily imagine, that a careless transcriber might have inserted in his copy for, and that a corrector, or a subsequent transcriber, finding it there, may have inserted the, without consulting other MSS., knowing that there was some error in the text before him; and thus have occasioned the variation from four to forty.*

We think, that in the explanation given of David's sin in numbering the people, the two reasons, which the author has suggested, should be combined. Josephus is certainly correct, when he supposes that the particular law, which David violated, was that which exacted half a shekel from every male of mature age, who was subjected to a census; and this idea is considerably strengthened by the contrite king's unwillingness to accept as a present Araunah's threshing-floor, oxen, and implements, and his determination to purchase them, lest he should offer unto the Lord "that which cost him nothing." For the price which he paid was one hundredfold more than that which the law demanded from an individual. But it was not merely this infraction of the law which constituted his sin, and caused Joab and others to attempt to dissuade him from the census; it was also the motive;t-which was a vain-glorious and presumptuous desire to contrast the flourishing state of the kingdom under his reign with its humbled and crippled condition under Saul.

The author conjectures, that the Cherethites and Pelethites,

Some MSS. read instead of . In this case, the computation will be from the beginning of this second conspiracy, as it is mentioned in the first verse of the chapter. The reading of forty days for forty years will, in this view of the subject, remove every difficulty.

A perusal of 2 Sam. xxiv. 3, will confirm this idea; for each of the modes of punishment, which God proposed to David, was directed against his presumptuous pride, and was calculated to diminish the number of armed men, on whom he relied.

We certainly observe in Sanskrit f

kīrātā, a barbarous

tribe, inhabiting mountains and woods, which lives by the chase; and

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