but 'camels' and 'asses,' G.xxxii. 15, why did he not send some of these servants, with additional camels and asses, instead of sending merely his sons on foot with their asses, to bring food for his people, without a single servant or extra ‘camel' or 'ass,' on the first occasion, or on the second?

(vi) If it be said, the corn was only needed for the use of Jacob and his sons, and not for the hundreds of famishing shepherds and herdsmen and their families, who might contrive to live upon such coarse and scanty food as the land of Canaan still supplied, yet the language used on each occasion, 'that we may live and not die,' G.xlii.2,xliii.8, shows that the corn was a necessary for them, and therefore also for their servants. Would Jacob, indeed, have sent off at last, and with such great distress of mind and extreme reluctance, his beloved Benjamin, if he only needed the superfluous luxury of a loaf of wheaten bread for himself?

III. In short, Bishop BROWNE's supposition is utterly untenable. Yet only by making three such assumptions,—

(i) That a special blessing of fruitfulness was given to the Israelites in Egypt, though we have no trace of such fruitfulness in any of the families, whose numbers are stated in the story,*(ii) That there were eight or nine' generations, instead of four, as the Bible says, [of Jacob's offspring at the time of the Exodus,]

(iii) That hundreds of circumcised followers' went down with Jacob into Egypt, and their descendants were numbered with the genuine Israelites, in direct contradiction to the whole. tenor of the Bible narrative, and the express words of D.x.22,'Thy fathers went down with threescore and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude,'—

Bishop BROWNE is able to say, p.22,

We can easily believe that there may have been at the time of the Exodus 600,000 men able to bear arms.

Even then, however, he adds, p.25,

Still, in any view of the subject, it would be wrong to deny that the numbers of the Exodus are inordinately great, and proportionately puzzling. But then, when the whole story is professedly miraculous, is it reasonable, in the consideration, to keep out of sight miracle altogether?

* Zelophehad had only five children, N.xxvii.1,—Aaron four, N.xxvi.60,—Amram, Izhar, Uzziel, Korah, each three, N.xxvi.59, E.vi.21,22,24; Moses had two, E.xviii. 3,4; Eleazar had one, E.vi.25.

But a 'miracle' cannot make twice-two to be three or five. IV. Accordingly, having obtained these numbers by the above processes, Bishop BROWNE is now puzzled what to do with them. It was a matter of great difficulty to get them; but, having got them, he finds himself pressed by the consequences of his own success, and would, if he could, get rid of them. He says,

If for 600 [thousand men fit to bear arms] we might read 60, all would be clear; every numerical difficulty worth thinking of would vanish at once. p.26. I utterly deny this. I have repeatedly challenged those who have made this suggestion to assume a reduced number, and test it by application to the repeated enumerations which occur in the Pentateuch. It is surely time that this idea of a possible reduction of the numbers should be banished from work on this subject, professing to be a real and genuine scientific enquiry. And so, in fact, Bishop BROWNE himself admits in a note, p.26,—

any

Sixty thousand would, perhaps, be as much too small as six hundred thousand seems too large a number. On the whole, notwithstanding the admitted difficulty of the large numbers, it is very questionable whether the difficulties would not be greater on the supposition that the numbers were much less.

Yet in the text he had just said, as above quoted,—

If for 600,000 we might read 60,000, all would be clear; every numerical difficulty worth thinking of would vanish at once!

V. Again, Bishop BROWNE, p.22, quotes Bishop OLLIVANT as an authority for the suggestion, that the disproportion of the firstborn males to the whole population of Israel—

resulted partly from the fact that polygamy probably existed in Egypt, and that only the firstborn of the first wife would be reckoned the firstborn.

With all due respect for my episcopal brethren, I can only say that, whether polygamy was practised or not in Egypt, the words of E.xiii.12 seem to make it plain that the firstborn of every mother is meant,—

Thou shalt set apart unto Jehovah all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast.

6

Let the reader compare the second of the above italicised expressions with the first; since every firstling of a beast' does not mean, surely, only the first progeny of every male beast. Or, if any doubt remain, let him consider those of E.xiii.2 :—

'Sanctify to me all the firstborn, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, of man and of beast: it is mine.'

VI. We know that circumcision, the very bond of the Covenant, the initiatory rite of Judaism, was néglected till the people came to Gilgal, Jo.v.2-6. p.22.

As if this fact itself, which Bishop BROWNE states so quietly, did not involve a stupendous difficulty, as great as any which I have set forth in Part I! For who can believe that Moses, after having actually written the account in G.xvii, of the solemn institution of the rite by Almighty God Himself, as the very sign and seal of His Covenant, with that tremendous sanction, v.14,

'The uncircumcised manchild, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people, he hath broken My covenant,' — after having been expressly warned in person of the danger of neglecting the rite by the occurrence recorded in E.iv.24-26,after having been again reminded of his duty in this respect by the words pronounced to him by Jehovah on the occasion of the first Passover, on the very night of the Exodus, E.xii.48,

'And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the Passover to Jehovah, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it ... for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof,”—

would yet-under the holy mount itself, fresh from his daily communings with God,-when they rested for nearly twelve months together in one place, and everything-place, time, circumstances-combined to assist the discharge of this primary duty, have allowed the people entirely to neglect having their children circumcised, during all his lifetime, for forty years together? The thing is utterly incredible; and no stronger

proof of the unhistorical character of the Pentateuchal story can be produced than the very fact itself, to which Bishop BROWNE appeals as helping him partially out of a difficulty.

VII. We know that the Passover itself must have been at least imperfect, at a time when there was no wheat from which to make unleavened bread. p.22.

And, of course, this is true. The only question is, How, then, did they manage to keep the second Passover under Mount Sinai at all, N.ix.1-5, when their flour had long been spent, and they had been living on manna for nearly twelve months, E.xvi? And yet they are said to have kept it strictly,—

'According to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof, shall ye keep it,' N.ix.3;

‘And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at even, in the wilderness of Sinai, according to all that Jehovah commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel,' N.ix.5.

And at this very time it was laid down, v.13,

'Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying . . . The man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and forbeareth to keep the Passover, even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people; because he brought not the offering of Jehovah in his appointed season, that man shall bear his sin.'

VIII. It is hard also to believe, if the Pentateuchal narrative is historically true, that, as Bishop BROWNE says, p.23,—

The Mosaic ordinances, as regards sacrifice and the like, were at least very imperfectly observed during the wanderings in the wilderness :

when the Tabernacle, with its Brazen Altar, was expressly built, and the Priests and 22,000 Levites expressly set apart, for the very purpose of carrying out these ordinances; and various commands such as these are recorded, which refer expressly to the camp' in the wilderness, e.g.

* Bishop BROWNE seems to have lost sight altogether of the account of this Passover, as he speaks of the 'first true Passover' being celebrated at the end of the forty years at Gilgal, p.22. Or does he mean to say that this was not a 'true Passover'? Let any one read the passage in which it is described, N.ix.1–14, and see if the Scripture story affords the slightest ground for saying this.

What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to offer an offering unto Jehovah before the Tabernacle of Jehovah, blood shall be imputed unto that man,—he hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.' L.xvii.3,4.

IX. And, after all, Bishop BROWNE himself is compelled to make some remarkable admissions, which I commend to the consideration of the attentive reader.

It is generally believed that it ['the book of the Law'] may have been put together after the time of Moses. It may have gone through some such changes as happened to the poems of Homer, collected by one, and re-edited by another. p.29.

Suppose we say, as some have said, that 'Every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable, every letter, was the direct utterance of the Most High,' -still, is it possible to add that, in the transmission down to us, every word, syllable, and letter, has been infallibly and unalterably preserved? p.30.

Hence, even if Bishop COLENSO's arithmetical objections could be proved valid to the utmost, they would not disprove the original inspiration of Moses, nor the preservation of his writings to us; but would show only that there had not been a miraculous protection of them from slight corruptions in the text, which in various ways might have affected, most probably and easily, the numbers in the Pentateuch. p.32.

It is something to allow that the Pentateuch

may have gone through some such changes as happened to the poems of Homer,-especially when it is remembered that these poems are believed by most scholars to have been written in different ages, and that very great doubt exists as to whether Homer himself ever lived.

But, with reference to the last quotation, Bishop BROWNE shows that he is very well aware that the numbers, which betray the unhistorical character of the whole story of the Exodus, are not corrupted,'-that there is positively not the slightest ground for making the suggestion that they may have been corrupted, that you cannot change or take out the present number, 600,000, without tearing the whole fabric of the history to pieces. For he has said, p.26:

I must freely confess, this solution of the problem [viz. by reducing the numbers from 600,000 to 60,000] is not so simple and satisfactory as it sounds at first.