to Biblical studies to the younger members of the University of Oxford, p. 12,—

I contemplate the continued exercise of a most curious and prying, as well as a most vigilant and observing, eye. No difficulty is to be neglected; no peculiarity of expression is to be disregarded; no minute detail is to be overlooked. The hint, let fall in an earlier chapter, is to be compared with a hint let fall in the later place. Do they tally or not? And what follows?

Bishop BUTLER also truly observes, Analogy of Religion, Part II, chap. viii, i. 1,—

The Scripture history in general is to be admitted as an authentic genuine history, till somewhat positive be alleged sufficient to invalidate it.

But he adds

General incredibility in the things related, or inconsistence in the general turn of the history, would prove it to be of no authority.

CHAPTER II.

THE FAMILY OF JUDAH.

18. I SHALL now proceed to show, by means of a number of prominent instances, that the books of the Pentateuch contain, in their own account of the story which they profess to relate, such remarkable contradictions, and involve such plain impossibilities, that they cannot be regarded as true narratives of actual, historical, matters of fact. Without stopping here to speak of the many difficulties, which (as will appear hereafter) exist in the earlier parts of the history, I shall go on at once to consider the account of the Exodus itself, beginning with the very first step of it, the descent into Egypt.

19. And the sons of Judah, Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan; and the sons of Pharez, Hezron, and Hamul. G. xlvi. 12.

It appears to me to be certain that the writer here means to say that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan, and were among the seventy persons, (including Jacob himself, and Joseph, and his two sons,) who came into Egypt with Jacob.

He repeats the words again and again :

'These are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt,' v. 8 ;

All the souls, that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, were threescore and six,' v. 26,—which they would not be without Hezron and Hamul;

6

And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: ail the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.' v. 27.

So again we read,—

'These are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. And all the souls, that came out of the loins of Jacob, were seventy souls; for Joseph was in Egypt already.' E. i. 1, 5.

6

Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.' D. x. 22.

I assume, then, that it is absolutely undeniable that the narrative of the Exodus distinctly involves the statement, that the sixty-six persons, out of the loins of Jacob,' mentioned in G. xlvi, and no others, went down with him into Egypt.

*

20. Now Judah was forty-two years old, accord

*Joseph was thirty years old, when he 'stood before Pharaoh,' as governor of the land of Egypt, G. xli. 46; and from that time nine years elapsed, (seven of plenty and two of famine,) before Jacob came down to Egypt. At that time, therefore, Joseph was thirty-nine years old. But Judah was about three years older than Joseph; for Judah was born in the fourth year of Jacob's double marriage, G. xxix. 35, and Joseph in the seventh, G. xxx. 24-26, xxxi. 41. Hence Judah was forty-two years old when Jacob went down to Egypt.

ing to the story, when he went down with Jacob into Egypt.

But, if we turn to G. xxxviii, we shall find that, in the course of these forty-two years of Judah's life, the following events are recorded to have happened.

(i) Judah grows up, marries a wife-' at that time,' v. 1, that is, after Joseph's being sold into Egypt, when he was seventeen years old,' G. xxxvii. 2, and when Judah, consequently, was twenty years old,-and has, separately, three sons by her.

(ii) The eldest of these three sons grows up, is married, and dies.

The second grows to maturity, (suppose in another year,) marries his brother's widow, and dies.

The third grows to maturity, (suppose in another year still,) but declines to take his brother's widow to wife.

She then deceives Judah himself, conceives by him, and in due time bears him twins, Pharez and Zarah.

(iii) One of these twins also grows to maturity, and has two sons, Hezron and Hamul, born to him, before Jacob goes down into Egpyt.

The above being certainly incredible, we are obliged to conclude that one of the two accounts must be untrue. Yet the statement, that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan, is vouched so positively by the many passages above quoted, which sum up the 'seventy souls,' that, to give up this point, is to give up an essential part of the whole story. But then this point cannot be maintained, however essential to the narrative, without supposing that the other series of events had taken place beforehand, which we have seen to be incredible.

21. Let us now see how this part of the Bible is treated by those interpreters, who wish to maintain the authenticity and historical character of the Pentateuch, and whether they adhere to the principles of honest and truthful exposition, so admirably laid down in the following extracts :—

There is no attaining a satisfactory view of the mutual relations of Science and Scripture, till men make up their minds to do violence to neither, and to deal faithfully with both. On the very threshold, therefore, of such discussions as the present, we are encountered by the necessity for a candid, truthful, and impartial exegesis of the sacred text. This can never be honoured by being put to the torture. We ought to harbour no hankering after so-called 'reconciliations,' or allow these to warp in the very least our rendering of the record. It is our business to decipher, not to prompt, to keep our ears open to what the Scripture says, not to exercise our ingenuity on what it can be made to say. We must purge our minds at once of that order of prepossessions, which is incident to an over timid faith, and, not less scrupulously, of those counter-prejudices, which beset a jaundiced and captious scepticism. For there may be an eagerness to magnify, and even to invent, difficulties, as well as an anxiety to muffle them up, and smooth them over,—of which last, the least pleasing shape is an affectation of contempt, disguising obvious perplexity and trepidation. Those, who seek the repose of Truth, had best banish from the quest of it, in whatever field, the spirit and the methods of sophistry. Replies to Essays and Reviews, Rev. G. RORISON, p. 277.

Let the interpreter then resolve, with God's assisting grace, to be candid and truthful. Let him fear not to state honestly the results of his own honest investigations; let him be simple, reverent, and plain-spoken; and, above all, let him pray against that sectarian bias, which, by importing its own foregone conclusions into the word of Scripture, and by refusing to see or to acknowledge what makes against its own prejudices, has proved the greatest known hindrance to all fair interpretation, and has tended, more than anything else in the world, to check the free course of Divine Truth. Aids to Faith, DEAN ELLICOTT, p. 421.

Those, however, who are satisfied that the above statements of the Bible do involve a manifest contradiction, and who are not interested in seeing how good