Encyclopaedia Biblica, Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible

Abstract

AWORK like this demands a critic whose forte is omniscience, for the articles are written by men who can speak as authorities, and necessarily enter into questions of theology, a province of human thought with which science is only indirectly concerned. This alone makes it difficult to give any notice of the book in a publication strictly scientific. To read through a volume of 1544 closely printed columns of small type would be a herculean task which we do not pretend to have attempted. We have not perused more than a few of the salient articles in the present volume, which, as it contains the letters from E to K, happens to include a large number of exceptional interest. If we remember that even the letter J covers names such as James, Jasher, Jeremiah, Jerusalem, Jesus, Job, John, Jordan, Joshua, Joseph, Judah and Judges we realise the significance of many articles. These seem to be summaries of everything important that has been written on the subject. Indeed, sometimes the variety is a little bewildering to the ordinary reader, who, however, cannot complain of a stinted choice, though the writers generally favour views distinctly progressive. One or two slips, notwithstanding the care with which, obviously, the work has been done, have caught our eye, such as the statement that the vicinity of Jerusalem consists of strata of the Eocene and Chalk formations—where Cretaceous should have been written, as the limestone is not the variety designated chalk; or the obvious clerical error that Esdraelon lies 250 feet below the sea-level, which would make it difficult for the river Kishon to reach the Mediterranean. But the topographical articles, which of course have to be largely dealt with from the historical point of view, are generally excelient. For instance, the article “Geography” gives a most interesting account of what was known about that subject by the Old Testament writers. Formerly, no doubt, when the relations of theology and science were ill-understood, questions of Hebrew cosmogony and ethnology were more important than they now are; still there is an antiquarian interest, when the date of a document can be approximately determined, to see how much or how little the Hebrews had ascertained about the rest of the world. Evidently the knowledge of the Old Testament writers hardly extended eastward beyond Persia, or northward so far as the Caucasus, or southward beyond Ethiopia on the African continent, or westward of Greece, excepting Tartessus in Spain or possibly either Sicily or Carthage. If they had any notions of regions lying beyond those limits, such as India or China, these must have been of the vaguest, unless we locate Ophir in Mashonaland, to which identification, however, as we infer from the article on gold, the editor does not incline. The books of the Old Testament cover a long time, and knowledge grew; but we may safely assume that the writer of the ethnographical notices in Genesis x., whatever be their date, either did not know of, or deliberately excluded, the Black and the Yellow races. Probably, indeed, until about the tenth century before our era, the Hebrews had only a very limited knowledge of geography. The article on Egypt is full of information and has been brought down as nearly as possible to date. It is accompanied by three very useful little maps; one, a physical map of the Nile valley, north of Khartoum, another, on a smaller scale, of the Nile and the Euphrates, and a third showing the broader features of the geology. This brings out very clearly the close connection between the Sinaitic peninsula and the mountain region between the river and the Red Sea, and contains much information in a very small space. Encyclopaedia Biblica, Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible. Edited by Prof. T. K. Cheyne Dr. J. Sutherland Black. Vol. ii. E—K. (A. and C. Black, 1901.) Price 20s. net.