C.

Re❜HU,

District of the Shepherd, country of Edessa (Rohi).

Leaves Ur of the Chaldees and goes to 'Haran (Karrä) a day's journey south of Edessa.

275 years (70 + 205).

doubt, not geographical but historical, the Mission, the Partition, the Passage. "The Mission" (Sela'h) represents the epoch of the first descent from the heights of the wild mountain country. "The Partition " is clearly the branching off of the race which passed into South Arabia (the Joktanida). "The Passage" ('Heber) must be the passage near the Upper Tigris in a south-western direction. These are followed once more by (C), geographical entries: Re'hu= Rohi, the old name of Edessa, and Serug Sarug, the district lying somewhat to the west of it.

As the former entries can only allude to bodies of emigrants who passed through the above countries-for had they stayed there permanently they would have come into collision with, or have been merged in, the Aramæans —all the circumstances conspire to show that these latter represent stationary and permanent settlements. Here were the districts of the Skirtus and the Belus, once so flourishing (the two confluents of the greater Belekhus (Belekh) where Orfa or Edessa and Karrä (Haran) were afterwards founded): further to the south-east was the ancient Osroëne, the identity of which with Serug (Sarug, Srug) Buttmann has so ingeniously pointed out. A little more to the south-east was the primeval city of Resen, mentioned in Genesis (x. 12.) as having been built by Nimrod, the Rezaïna of Ptolemy, on the Chaboras. In the same latitude, but nearer to the Tigris, is the district where Nisibis was situated, not far from which was Ur of the Chaldees. This is another instance of the genius of D'Anville, who marked on his map almost every one of these places on the spot where they were found by Niebuhr, and latterly by General Chesney and Captain Lynch, after so many years of neglect, to the shame of Europe be it spoken, and as Ritter had fixed them upon scientific grounds.

When we come to Serug it is as manifest that these colonists are no longer mentioned as pastoral races, as it

is that the adjacent Skirtus district (Edessa) is introduced.

All at once we find ourselves in Ur of the Chaldees, that is to say, between the eastern confluents of the Chaboras and Tigris; the difference, however, being that Ur does not serve as a guide or finger-post to us, as Edessa and Sarug did in the other case. The next two names again (Na'hor and Terah) are not geographical any more than Abraham is. A vast deal of ingenuity has been wasted upon their etymology, simply because it was not employed in the right direction. We should have naturally expected to find names of individuals mentioned immediately before the personal chronology of Abraham, and we hope to be able to prove that Terah and Na'hor were really the names of his father and grandfather.

II. THE HISTORICO-CHRONOLOGICAL MEANING OF THE DATES IN THIS SERIES.

Here the

We will now take a glance at the dates. first step undoubtedly must be to abandon the views and system adopted by the narrator, from the impossibility of an historian dealing with men who beget children like other people at the age of thirty, and live more than 400 years afterwards. Those upon whom this consideration fails to make an impression may still be staggered by the fact, that, upon this calculation, the patriarch Noah lived down to the time of Abraham, without troubling himself about the history of the world. But we shall be equally bound to discard the complacent and irreverent solution that these high numbers are mere arbitrary inventions. Neither can we venture, like the authors of the Septuagint, to falsify the text, and, in order to get rid of the disproportion, add on every occasion a hundred years to the ages of these geographical patriarchal monsters at the time of their marriages.

We have, therefore, but one alternative; to ascertain which of the two is the really traditional date, that of the ages after the birth of the first son, or the whole date: to ascertain, in other words, whether the narrator had the authority of tradition for the former date, and, in order to assist his chronology, added at random thirty or forty years to their ages when the first son was born; or whether he found the whole sum total recorded, and deducted from it whatever suited his purpose. The fact of his not stating the sum total would incline us to adopt the former view; but, in the immediately preceding entries about Noah and Shem, we can prove that the complete sum total is the actually traditional date. In each case it is 600 years, which was shown to be the original Chaldaic equation between lunar and solar years. We must, therefore, assume that it is so here also.

There is a remarkable closeness between the first three

(geographico-historical) dates, Arphaxad, Sela'h and

Supposing Arphaxad to represent the duration of the Semitic settlement in Arrapakhitis, the mountain district above Assyria, prior to the memory of man, "the Mission" would represent the commencement of the journey towards the plains three years before the close of this migration, and 'Heber would represent the period when the migrating race passed over the Upper Tigris on their way to the valleys of Upper Mesopotamia. The year 464 would in that case be the one in which they entered Mesopotamia Proper, and the tribe must have remained in a compact body 239 years before a portion of them commenced the great migration southward, the result of which was the foundation of the primeval

kingdoms of Southern Arabia, the kingdoms of the Aḍites in Yemen, who believe that they came from the sacred north, and once lived in a glorious garden of the earth which they are to restore. The first part of the above table would consequently give us 464 +239=703 years. The settlement of that portion of the tribe which remained behind we must consider as being between the Tigris and Chaboras, that is, again in the country about Nisibis, the Ur, which was called in later times Ur of the Chaldees, or Kurds.

Now, inasmuch as the entry relative to the first member of the fixed period of colonisation is again exactly 239 years, we may fairly assume that this term, and the one mentioned as a division of it, are merely two differ. ent versions of one and the same chronological period. When the great Arab migration took place, (which may perhaps not have been voluntary, but a consequence of the pressure of the Aramaic race, or of the Turanians,) a portion of those who stayed behind in Mesopotamia may have settled in the beautiful western valley of the Skirtus about Edessa. But the advance upon Sarug more to the west and south we must suppose to represent a new period, and one therefore of 230 years.

This would make in all 933 years down to Nahor, the grandfather of Abraham.

Before we submit the dates in the latter portion to closer examination, we propose to lay before our readers in a synoptical form the whole genealogical table, including Abraham and his nephew Lot.