originating just where a writer might feel impelled thereto, in Egypt. This work has not yet been recovered; but Fl. Josephus quotes from it a trait which pleased him,' though without saying or apparently remembering whence he had derived it. And it was perhaps this book which made the characteristic Egyptian comparison of Joseph with Sarapis,' a demigod who only appears in the Ptolemaic age, who was described as a beautiful youth who, having been through the infernal regions, imparts to men in this upper world various gifts of healing, and also plenteous harvests,-in token of which latter character he bore on his head a corn measure and a yard measure. Other authors, misled by the similarity of name, identified Joseph the sage with Esop.3 The twelfth Sura of the Koran,' remarkable on many accounts, contains a poetical enlargement of the legend founded primarily upon embellished versions of history, such as we find in Fl. Josephus; and this again was afterwards worked up more highly by Mohammedan writers, in their poems of Yûsuf and Zalikha (Zulaikha).' These however differ so widely from the original legend in tone and feeling, that they have no claim to be regarded as true offshoots from the grand old stem. But in later times they even showed Joseph's tomb beside the Nile," though (according to p. 406) it must from the time of Moses have been only an empty sepulchre. Ant. ii. 4. 3-5. It deserves to be investigated whether the Syrian work treating of Joseph's history, in a Nitrian Codex in the British Museum, be an old translation of this which was in use in the time of Josephus. And the same work may probably be intended by the title, The Words of Jeseph the Just, in the Ascensio Jesaiae, iv. 22; or by that of The Book of Asenath, so called from Joseph's wife, mentioned in Gen. xli. 45, xlvi. 20; the commencement of which is given in Greek in the Codex Pseudepigraphus of Fabricius ii. p. 85-102; and which according to Dillmann's Catal. Codd. Aeth. Musei Britann. p. 4 is found complete in the Aethiopic Canon. passed into Egypt, such a name might be See Ebedjesu in Assemani's Biblioth. See further remarks on this in the 5 On the other hand, Philo describes this son of Jacob, speaking the sense of the later legend, as the Ever Young (i. p. 309), but in his little work On Joseph, torical, often bad and offensive paraphrase he gives as usual only a lengthy and rheof the Bible narrative, and yet gives an allegorical interpretation of the first half. On principle he follows no other authorities; but yet he sometimes deviates, and makes in xx. a remarkable addition. To make the narrative consistent, he also leaves out some facts entirely, e. g. the preparatory mission of Judah, mentioned 2 According to Melito in Cureton's Spic. Syr. p. 24, 6; and something similar even in the Gemâra, at y iii. 3; and also in Suidas, under Zápamis. On Sarapis see Taciti Hist. iv. 81-84; Plutarch On Isis and Osiris, xxviii. sq. If he was distinguished, as Plutarch says, by the sign of the Cerberus and Dragon, the question • See Abdalhakam's Hist. Aegypt. p. 15, arises whether his name is not identical and the Rabbinical passages in Heidenwith (p. 322); Egyptian it evidently heim's Deut. Vierteljahrsschrift für Engl. cannot be; and in Pontus, whence it theol. Forschung, 1861, p. 248 sqq. p. 413. C. JOSEPH AS THE FIRST-BORN OF ISRAEL. CONCLUSION OF The memory of that great change which took place in Israel some 430 years before Moses, took a form quite in the spirit of prehistoric tradition, in the brief and significant title given to Joseph, The First-Born of Israel.' 'The Crowned among his Brethren,' he had been also named in Jacob's ancient Blessing (p. 409); yet well as this expresses the ancient preeminence of that one tribe, a still deeper meaning is conveyed in the words, First-Born of Israel. Tradition, seeking a new and fitting name and idea to express every important relation among men, could here find no image so happy as the conception that Reuben originally held precedence in Israel, and Joseph afterwards came into his place-that what the former forfeited for his arrogance (p. 373 sq.) the latter gained by wisdom and faithfulness. Nor let it be understood as referring only to the mortal individual Joseph; for it is the tribe of Joseph which remained the leading race, from the Egyptian period until many centuries. after the time of Moses, and whose preeminence, gained in those early days, became so completely incorporated with the national life, as to give its peculiar impress to the later history. When Judah rose in later times to such importance among the twelve tribes as might have entitled him equally to the designation First-Born, the primitive modes of thought and expression had so far passed away, that such a title was scarcely likely to be applied to him.2 Reuben, the natural First-Born of Israel, whose right, even when he had trifled it away, could not be forgotten; Joseph, whose exalted virtues won for him the forfeited place; Judah, to whom in fact though not in name the honour finally fell : these three figures may be regarded as typifying three great periods of Israelite history, the two first of which belong to the dim twilight of the prehistoric age. And how long must even the first of these national conditions have endured, to impress its remembrance on the national mind, indelible through all the changes and convulsions of later years! At the close of the prehistoric period of Israel, we may consider that this much at least has been made evident-that if This is referred to as early as in the very ancient passage, Gen. xlviii.-22; but also in the often retouched Blessing of Jacob, in Deut. xxxiii. 17, we find an allusion to it in the phrase, a firstling bullock. See also 1 Chron. v. 1, 2. 2 As is in fact expressly stated in 1 Chron. v. 2, compared with 2 Sam. xix. 44, according to the reading of the LXX. only we diligently seek and rightly apply all the means at our command, many most important historic truths may be recovered even from that distant age. We have not telescopes of sufficient power to discern and describe each single star among the glittering multitude of that distant heaven; yet some single stars begin to shine with greater brilliancy, if we will but refrain from gratuitously throwing dust into our eyes. And it is not impossible that we may yet discover still more as we gain by degrees more efficient means of observation. Nor is our view wholly limited to Israel as one of the nations of the earth,—to an acquaintance with some of its early habits and institutions. Imperishable fragments of Israelite Poetry and Prophecy have been borne to us safely on the waves of the far-off ocean of primeval history; thus revealing to us the antiquity of the origin of those two influential arts, which especially in that nation were to become so wonderful a power. HISTORY OF ISRAEL. BOOK II. THE THEOCRACY. INTRODUCTION. THE Migration of Israel into Egypt, and the history of Joseph, stand on the border-land between the preliminary and the actual history of the people. But during the long years of their fixed settlement in Egypt, we see the Israelites not merely enter as an actual people into the clear light of comparatively well known history, but also soon boldly aspire after, and attain to, the supreme rank in that kind of constitution and government which became the most marked and enduring portion of their whole two thousand years' history, and constituted that history's noblest life and its high importance for the general history of the world. This is the THEOCRACY-one among many kinds of rule and polity; as mutable and changeable as any other; passing through the most varied changes and admixtures in Israel, often distorted until all likeness was lost, and weakened so as to threaten total decay, and in semblance found among other nations of antiquity; and yet, in its actual form, unique in this one people, and wholly new on earth-the sole true life and undying breath of its history, always renewing itself on its deepest basis, all chances and changes notwithstanding, and in the course of its development only unfolding itself again to a fuller and riper perfection, till at length it attains to the only true and adequate realisation possible to it. For this Theocracy in Israel is in itself nothing else than the effectual commencement of all true religion in an entire people and realm; and this like every other necessary great effort and movement in the life of humanity, when once really begun, can find no repose until it attain its full development. As it first appeared, it was folded, like the grain before it begins to sprout and grow, in the narrowest compass; and then grew to be the purest, and in its original purity the intrinsically strongest, but at the same time the most circumscribed and outwardly weakest-in a word what may be briefly called pure Theocracy. But even this pure Theocracy-at once the commencement of the whole history, and the first of its principal divisions and epochs-did not attain its full maturity and influence as easily, or as rapidly, as a superficial survey might lead us to believe. For it is not until the glorious days of the first complete deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian rule and their irrevocable return from Egypt, that we see its real development and power; and the years which intervened between the giving of the law at Sinai, and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua-a period short indeed, but most influential and decisive for all future time,-constitute the highest point, as well as the grand central period of this first long epoch of the entire history. But this elevated point rises very gradually out of the low broad plain of the residence in Egypt; and it is incontrovertiblethe history of the whole ancient world in its earliest developments being what it was-that this very Egyptian ground is the only one from which it could arise. For it is only where such an uncommonly high intellectual culture, accompanied by such lofty aspirations, had been already fully developed, as they were in Egypt apparently in the remotest times, and were even ripe enough to be tending to a new and still higher culture, that the living germ of so thoroughly new a life-aim could be first formed, and then developed at so early a date. It was certainly not by chance that the very highest gift bequeathed to us by a remote antiquity germinated on that soil alone, which had already for thousands of years been more deeply intellectualised than any other country on earth; and it is Moses, the greatest hero of this first epoch, and in many respects of the whole history of Israel, whose memory reveals to us most emphatically and distinctly the strict connection of the Egyptian times of Israel with the succeeding ones, and their highest result, the Theocracy. We have therefore full reason to consider all the 430 years of the residence in Egypt as the first stage of this first great epoch, and to examine narrowly, how much light may even now be thrown upon the long night that preceded the day of that era. |