or that Pontius Pilate, when recalled from Judæa, was banished to France.

The other objection is drawn from the statement that in Joseph's time "every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians" (ch. xlvi. 34). This is said to be "quite conclusive" against the view that the Pharaoh of Joseph was a shepherd king.1 But it is admitted that the prejudice was anterior to the invasion of the Hyksôs, and appears on the monuments of the Old Empire. It would certainly not have been lessened by the Hyksôs conquest, nor can the shepherd kings be supposed to have been ignorant of it. If it was a caste prejudice, it would have been quite beyond their power to put down; and nothing would have been left for them but to bear with it, and make the best of it. This is what they seem to have done. When men of the nomadic races were feasted at the Hyksôs court, they were feasted separately from the Egyptians (ch. xliii. 32); and when a nomad tribe had to be located on Egyptian territory, it was placed in a position which brought it as little as possible into contact with the natives. Pharaoh had already put his own herdsmen in Goshen (ch. xlvii. 6), with the view of isolating them. In planting the Israelite settlers there, he did but follow the same principle. Like a wise ruler, he arranged to keep apart those diverse elements in the population of his country which were sure not to amalgamate.

1" Speaker's Commentary," vol. i., p. 449, note 33.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NOTICES OF EGYPT IN EXODUS.

"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters, to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses."-EXOD. i. 8–19.

THE question of the period of Egyptian history into which the severe oppression of the Israelites, and their "exodus" from Egypt, are to be regarded as falling, is one of no little interest, and at the same time of no little difficulty. In the last chapter we saw reason for accepting the view that the Pharaoh whom Joseph served was Apepi, the last king of the seventeenth (shepherd) dynasty. In order, however, to obtain from this fact any guidance as to the dynasty, and still more as to the kings, under whom the events took place which are related in the first section of the Book of Exodus (chs. i.-xiv.), we have to determine, first of all, what was the length of the Egyptian sojourn. But here we find ourselves in the jaws of a great contro

versy.

Taking the Authorised Version as our sole guide, we should indeed think the matter plain enough, for there we are told (ch. xii. 40, 41), that "the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years; and it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." If we consult the Hebrew original, the plainness and certainty seems increased, for there we find that the words run thus:-" The sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years," which seems to leave no loophole of escape from the conclusion that the four hundred and thirty years mentioned are those of Israel's stay in Egypt. And it is quite admitted that thus far-if this were all the evidence-there could be no controversy upon the subject. Doubt arises from the fact that in the two most ancient versions of Exodus that we possess the passage runs differently. We read in the Septuagint, "The sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt and in the land of Canaan, was four hundred and thirty years;" and in the Samaritan version, "The sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers, which they sojourned in the land of Canaan and in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." Nor is this the whole. St. Paul, it is observed, writing to the Galatians (ch. iii. 17), makes the giving of the law from Mount Sinai "four hundred and thirty years after," not the going

down into Egypt, but the entering into covenant with Abraham. And it is further argued that the genealogies for the time of the stay in Egypt are incompatible with the long period of four hundred and thirty years, and require the cutting down of the time to the dimensions implied by the Septuagint and Samaritan translations. This time is two hundred and fifteen years, or exactly half the other, since it was two hundred and fifteen years from the promise made to Abraham until the entering of the Israelites into Egypt.

Now, if the Exodus was but two hundred and fifteen years after any date in the reign of Apepi, it must have fallen within the period assigned by Manetho and the monuments to the eighteenth dynasty. But if we are to substitute four hundred and thirty years for two hundred and fifteen, it must have belonged rather to the later part of the nineteenth. Let us consider, therefore, whether on the whole the weight of argument is in favour of the shorter or the longer term of years.

The

First, then, with regard to the versions. Hebrew text must always be considered of paramount authority, unless there is reason to suspect that it has been tampered with. But, in this case, there is no such reason. Had the clause inserted by the LXX. existed in the Hebrew original, there is no assignable ground on which we can imagine it left out. There is, on the other hand, a readily conceivable ground for the insertion of the clause by the LXX. in their

anxiety to harmonise their chronology with the Egyptian system prevalent in their day. Further, the clause has the appearance of an insertion, being irrelevant to the narrative, which is naturally concerned at this point with Egypt, and with Egypt only. The Samaritan version may appear at first sight to lend the Septuagint confirmation; but a little examination shows the contrary. The Samaritan translator has the Septuagint before him, but is dissatisfied with the way in which his Greek predecessor has amended the Hebrew text. His version is an amendment of the Greek text in two points. First, he sees that the name children of Israel" could not properly be given to any but the descendants of Jacob, and therefore he inserts the clause "and of their fathers." Secondly, he observes that the LXX. have inverted the historical order of the sojourns in Egypt and in Canaan, placing that in Egypt first. This he corrects by a transposition. No one can suppose that he derived his emendations from the Hebrew. He evolved them from his inner consciousness. He gave his readers, not what Moses had said, but what, in his opinion, he ought to have said.

Secondly, with respect to St. Paul's statement to the Galatians, it is to be borne in mind that he wrote to Greek-speaking Jews, whose only Bible was the Septuagint Version, and that he could not but follow it unless he was prepared to intrude on them a chronological discussion, which would in no way have advanced his argument. His argument is that the