The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

“In the year 1847, Lieut. Lynch of the U. S. Navy was sent to explore the river Jordan and the Dead Sea. He and his party with great difficulty crossed the country from Acre to the Lake of Tiberias, with trucks drawn by camels. The only roads from time immemorial were mule-paths. Frequent détours had to be made, and they were compelled actually to make some portions of their road. Even then the last declivity could not be overcome until all hands turned out and hauled the boats and baggage down the steep places; and many times it seemed as if, like the ancient herd of swine, they would all rush precipitately into the sea. Over three days were required to make the journey, which in a straight line would be only twenty-seven miles. For the first few miles they passed over a pretty fertile plain, but this was the ancient Phœnician country, which the Jews never conquered. The rest of the route was mountainous and rocky, with not a tree visible nor a house outside the little walled villages (pp. 135 to 152).

“The ancient Sea of Galilee has a prominent place in Jewish geography and commerce, yet on this insignificant body of water, twelve miles long by seven wide, all the commerce of the Jews was carried on, except when they had the use of a port on the Red Sea.

“In a book entitled The Holy Land, Syria, etc., by David Roberts, R. A. (London, 1855), the valley of the Jordan is thus described:

“‘A large portion of the valley of the Jordan has been from the earliest time almost a desert. But in the northern part the great number of rivulets which descend from the mountains on both sides produce in many places a luxuriant growth of wild herbage. So too in the southern part, where similar rivulets exist, as around Jericho, there is even an exuberant fertility; but those rivulets seldom reach the Jordan and have no effect on the middle of the Ghor. The mountains on each side are rugged and desolate, the western cliffs overhanging the valley at an elevation of 1000 or 1200 feet, while the eastern mountains fall back in ranges of from 2000 to 2500 feet.’”

What was the size of ancient Jerusalem? We know pretty nearly what it is now and how many inhabitants it contains. It is three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide, and its population is not more than ,500 (Biblical Researches, vol i., p. 421), a large proportion of whom are drawn thither by the renowned sanctity of the place. Dr. Robinson measured the wall of the city, and found it to be only 12,978 feet in circumference, or nearly two and a half miles (vol. i., p. 268).

“In a book entitled An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, by James Fergusson (London, 1847), a diagram is given of the walls of ancient and modern Jerusalem, from which it appears that the greatest length of the city was at no time more than 6000 feet, or a little more than a mile, and its greatest width about three-quarters of a mile; while the real Jerusalem of old was but a little more than a quarter that size.

“With these measurements Mr. Fergusson undertakes to estimate the probable population of the ancient city, as follows:

“‘If we allow the inhabitants of the first-named cities fifty yards to each individual, and that one-half of the new city was inhabited at the rate of one person to each one hundred yards, this will give a permanent population of 23,000 souls. If, on the other hand, we allow only thirty-three yards to each of the old cities, and admit that the whole of the new was as densely populated as London, or allowing one hundred yards to each inhabitant, we obtain 37,000 souls for the whole; which I do not think it at all probable that Jerusalem ever could have contained as a permanent population.’ “‘In another part of the book (p. 47) he says:

“If we were to trust Josephus, he would have us believe that Jerusalem contained at one time, or could contain, two and a half or three millions of souls, and that at the siege of Titus 1,100,000 perished by famine and the sword, 97,000 were taken captive, and 40,000 allowed by Titus to go free.

“In order to show the gross exaggeration of these numbers, he cites the fact that the army of Titus did not exceed, altogether, 30,000, and that Josephus himself enumerates the fighting-men of the city at 23,400, which would give a population something under 100,000. But even this he believes to be an exaggeration. For, says he,

“‘In all the sallies it cannot be discovered that at any time the Jews could bring into the field 10,000 men, if so many.... Titus enclosed the city with a line four and a half miles in extent, which, with his small army, was so weak a disposition that a small body of the Jews could easily have broken through it; but they never seem to have had numbers sufficient to be able to attempt it.’

“The author guesses that the Jews might have mustered at the beginning of the siege about 10,000 men, and that the city might have contained altogether about 40,000 inhabitants, permanent and transient, in a space which in no other city in the world could accommodate 30,000 souls. But the wall of Agrippa was built, as the same author states, twelve or thirteen years after the Crucifixion; hence prior to that time the area of Jerusalem was only 756,000 yards, and it was capable of containing only 23,000 inhabitants at most, but probably never did contain more than 15,000.

“Allowing to Jerusalem, in the period of the greatest prosperity of the Jews, a population of even 20,000, is it at all probable that the whole country could have contained anything like even the lowest estimate to be gathered from the Scripture record? In 1 Chron. 21: 5, 6 we read that the number of ‘men that drew the sword of Israel and Judah amounted to 1,570,000, not counting the tribes of Levi and Benjamin. In 2 Sam. 24: 9, the number given at the same census is 1,300,000, and no omission is mentioned. Assuming the larger number to be correct, and adding only one-eighth for the two tribes of Levi and Benjamin, which may have been the smallest, we have 1,766,000 fighting-men. This would give, at the rate of one fighting-man to four inhabitants, a total population of over 7,000,000 souls. But if we adopt a more reasonable ratio, of one to six, we have a population of over 10,500,000 souls. And then we omit the aliens. These numbered 153,600 working-men only two years later (2 Chron. 2: 17), and the total alien population, therefore, must have been about 500,000, which, added to the census, would make the total population from 7,500,000 to 11,000,000, or more. Can any intelligent man believe that a mountainous, barren country, no larger than Connecticut, without commerce, without manufactures, without the mechanical arts, without civilization, ever did or could subsist even two millions of people? Much less can it be believed that it subsisted ‘seven nations greater and mightier than the Israelitish nation itself’ (Deut. 7: 1)—i e. not less than 14,000,000.

“That the Jews were a very barbarous people is undeniable. Slavery necessarily makes a people barbarous. Not only were the Israelites a nation of slaves, according to their own record, but after their entry into Canaan they were six times reduced to bondage in their own land of promise. During a period of 281 years they were in slavery 111 years.

“That the Jews were far behind their surrounding neighbors in civilization is shown by the fact that in the first battle they fought under their first king, Saul, they had in the whole army ‘neither sword nor spear in the hand of any of the people,’ except Saul and Jonathan (1 Sam. 13:22). Nor was any ‘smith found throughout all the land of Israel’ (ver. 19), but ‘all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock’ (ver. 20.) This was 404 years after the Exodus and only 75 years prior to the building of Solomon’s temple. Their weapons of war were those of the rudest savage.

“As another evidence of the barbarism of the Jews, when David resolved to build a house for himself he had no native artisans, but had to send to Hiram, king of Tyre, for masons and carpenters (2 Sam. 5: 11). Even the wood itself had to be brought from Tyre, it would seem that even in those days, as now, the mountains of Canaan were destitute of trees—a sure sign of a sterile country. The wood of course had to be carried overland. Wheel-carriages were unknown to the Israelites, except in the form of chariots of iron used by their enemies, which prevented Judah, even with the help of the Lord, from driving out the inhabitants of the valleys (Judg. 1: 19). David captured 1000 chariots in about the sixteenth year of his reign, of which he preserved only 100, disabling all the horses (1 Ghron. 18: 3.) Prior to this event neither chariots nor horses had been used by the Israelites, nor was much use made of them by the subsequent kings. Oxen and asses were their beasts of burden; camels were rare even long after Solomon’s reign. How, then, was the wood brought from Tyre over the mountains, unless it was carried on the backs of oxen or asses or dragged along the ground?”

That a considerable number of Jews at one time sojourned in Egypt is highly probable. How they got there, and how they came to leave, is not so certain. An eminent Egyptologist writes in a leading London journal:

“The presence of large numbers of Semites in ancient Egypt has always been a puzzle to historians, and what first led to their migrating from Mesopotamia to the land of the Pharaohs has never hitherto been made clear. Quite recently, however, the British Museum has become possessed of a number of cuneiform tablets which throw considerable light on the subject. Early in the present year a number of these tablets were offered for sale in Cairo. They had been dug up from the grave of a royal scribe of Amenophis III. and IV. of the eighteenth dynasty, which had given up its records, and not only records, but seals and papyri of great historical and artistic value. Some went to the Boulak Museum, some to Berlin, others to private persons, and eighty-one have found their way to the British Museum. These last have now been arranged and catalogued by Mr. Budge, the well-known Egyptologist, whose investigations have brought to light a most interesting chapter in the history of ancient Egypt. Not only do the tablets explain the historical crux mentioned above, but they introduce us to the family life of the early kings. They picture to us the splendors of the royal palaces; they enable us to assist at the betrothal of the kings’ daughters and to follow the kings to their hunting-grounds. Most of the tablets are letters addressed to Amenophis III., and some are from Tushratta, king of Mesopotamia.

“Amenophis III. was a mighty hunter, and once on a shooting-trip into Mesopotamia after big game he, like a king in a fairy-tale, met and loved Ti, the daughter of Tushratta. They were married in due time, and Ti went down into Egypt with three hundred and seventeen of her principal ladies. This brought a host of their Semitic countrymen along, who found in Egypt a good field for their business capacities, and gradually, like the modern Jews in Russia, got possession of the lands and goods of their hosts. The influence of the Semitic queen is attested by the very fact that this library of cuneiform tablets was preserved. And under the feeble sovereigns who followed, her countrymen doubtless held their own. But at last came the nineteenth dynasty and the Pharaoh ‘who knew not Joseph.’ Then they were set to brick-making and pyramid-building, till the outbreak which led to the Red Sea triumph.

“Mr. Budge, of the British Museum, has translated three of the letters. One is from Tushratta to Ameno-phis. After many complimentary salutations, he proposes to his son-in-law that they should continue the arrangement made by their fathers for pasturing doublehumped camels, and in this way he leads up to the main purport of his epistle. He says that Manie, his great-nephew, is ambitious to marry the daughter of the king of Egypt, and he pleads that Manie might be allowed to go down to Egypt to woo in person. The alliance would, he considers, be a bond of union between the two countries, and he adds, as though by an after-thought, that the gold which Amenophis appears to have asked for should be sent for at once, together with ‘large gold jars, large gold plates, and other articles made of gold.’ After this meaning interpolation he returns to the marriage question, and proposes to act in the matter of the dowry in the same way in which his grandfather acted, presumably on a like occasion. He then enlarges on the wealth of his kingdom, where ‘gold is like dust which cannot be counted,’ and he adds an inventory of presents which he is sending, articles of gold, inlay, and harness, and thirty eunuchs.”

In speaking of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, Dr. Knappert says: “According to the tradition preserved in Genesis, it was the promotion of Jacob’s son, Joseph, to be viceroy of Egypt that brought about the migration of the sons of Israel from Canaan to Goshen. The story goes that this Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers, and after many changes of fortune received the viceregal office at Pharaoh’s hands through his skill in interpreting dreams. Famine drives his brothers, and afterward his father, to him, and the Egyptian prince gives them the land of Goshen to live in. It is by imagining all this that the legend tries to account for the fact that Israel passed some time in Egypt. But we must look for the real explanation in a migration of certain tribes which could not establish or maintain themselves in Canaan, and were forced to move farther on.”

The author of the Religion of Israel says: “The history of the religion of Israel must start from the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. Formerly it was usual to take a much earlier starting-point, and to begin with a discussion of the religious ideas of the patriarchs. And this was perfectly right so long as the accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were considered historical. But now that a strict investigation has shown us that these stories are entirely unhistorical, of course we have to begin the history later on.” The author of The Spirit History of Man says: “The Hebrews came out of Egypt and settled among the Canaanites. They need not be traced beyond the Exodus; that is their historical beginning. It was very easy to cover up this remote event by the recital of mythical traditions, and to prefix to it an account of their origin in which the gods (patriarchs) should figure as their ancestors.”

But how about the Jewish exodus from Egypt? What was the real cause? Whom shall we credit, the writer of the book called Exodus or other writers? What follows differs very much from the Hebrew story.

Lysimachus relates that “a filthy disease broke out in Egypt, and the oracle of Ammon, being consulted on the occasion, commanded the king to purify the land by driving out the Jews (who were infected with leprosy, etc.), who were hateful to the gods. The whole multitude of the people were accordingly collected and driven out into the wilderness.”

Diodorus Siculus says: “In ancient times Egypt was afflicted with a great plague, which was attributed to the anger of God on account of the multitude of foreigners in Egypt, by whom the rites of the native religion were neglected. The Egyptians accordingly drove them out. The most notable of them went under Cadmus and Danaus to Greece, but the greater number followed Moses, a wise and valiant leader, to Palestine.”

Tacitus, the Roman historian, says: “In this clash of opinions one point seems to be universally admitted—a pestilential disease, disfiguring the race of man and making the body an object of loathsome deformity, spreading all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch, consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer that the kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude, as a race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search the wretched sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vulgar herd was sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that by the wisdom of his counsels they had been already rescued out of impending danger. Deserted as they were by men and gods, he told them that if they did not repose their confidence in him as their chief by divine commission they had no resource left. His offer was accepted. Their march began, they knew not whither. Want of water was their chief distress. Worn out with fatigue, they lay stretched on the bare earth, heartbroken, ready to expire, when a troop of wild asses, returning from pasture, went up the steep ascent of a rock covered with a grove of trees. The verdure of the herbage round the place suggested the idea of springs near at hand. Moses traced the steps of the animals, and discovered a plentiful vein of water. By this relief the fainting multitude was raised from despair.”

In a learned work on Egypt by Mr. William Oxley of England, published in 1884, the author writes: “Taking the records as we find them, if they are real history, and as Palestine is contiguous to Egypt, we should naturally expect to find some reference to the Israelites in the Egyptian annals, but what does appear in regard to Palestine is certainly not favorable to the assumption that it was the home of the Israelites as a nation. I cull the following from such materials as are at present within reach, partly taken from the Records of the Past:

“It has been generally acknowledged by Egyptian biblicists that ‘the cruel bondage of the Israelites, culminated under the reign of Rameses II., nineteenth dynasty, and that the Exodus took place under his successor, Menephtah I., 1326 b. c., who was drowned in the Red Sea with all his host in his attempt to bring the wanderers back again. But, as I have already said, the tomb of this very king at Thebes contains an inscription to the effect that he had lived to a good old age, and was a child of good-fortune from his cradle to the grave. In the annals of Rameses III., who reigned some fifty or sixty years after the Israelites ought to have been settled in their own land, many references are made to the country in which they were located (according to biblical accounts). The king goes to what is known to us as Palestine, Phœnicia, and Syria to receive the annual tribute from the chiefs/ whom he calls Khetas. In the enumeration of his conquests, extending from Egypt east and northward, he enumerates thirty-eight tribes and peoples, and says: ‘I have smitten every land, and have taken every land in its extent.’ In his reminder to the God Ptah of the benefits he had conferred on the god, the king says: ‘I gave to thy temple from the store-houses of Egypt, Tar-neter, and Kharu (i, e. Palestine and Syria) more numerous offerings than the sand of the sea, as well as cattle and slaves’ (Syrians). He also built a temple to Ammon in the same country, to which ‘the nations of the Rutenna came and brought their tribute.’ Making full allowance for the usual Egyptian flattery, the fact is clear that in the time of this king the Israelites could not have been a settled and distinct people; and the incident of their Exodus would have been too fresh and recent to be passed over without some comment by this vainglorious monarch.

“From a papyrus translated in the Records of the Past (ii. 107), entitled Travels of an Egyptian, who gives a full account of Palestine, etc., it appears there was a fortress there which had been built by Rameses II., and which was still belonging to Egypt. This would be about 1350 B. C.; but not the slightest hint of any such people as Israelites, although he tells us ‘he visited the country to get information respecting the country, with the manners and customs of its inhabitants.’

“The next is Rameses XII., some two hundred years after the Exodus, who is the hero of the story of the possessed princess. He was in Mesopotamia at the time when the chief of the Bakhten brought his daughter, who afterward became queen of Egypt. ‘His Majesty was there registering the annual tributes of all the princes of the countries,’ among whom he enumerates Tar-neter (Palestine), but no mention of Israelites.

“I find no further trace until the time of Herodotus (about 420 B. c.); and here we come on historical ground. This great historian travelled through Egypt and Palestine in the reign of one of the kings of the Persian dynasty, about forty or fifty years after the alleged return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and when the temple had been built and the city fortified. He repeatedly alludes to the Phœnicians and Syrians, whose country extended from the coast of the Levant down to the Egyptian frontier, including the isthmus and Sinaitic Peninsula. He says that Necho (about 670 b. c.) fought with the Syrians, and took a large city, Cadytis; but he makes no mention of Jews nor yet of Jerusalem. If they had been there, it is incredible that such a careful and grasping historian should have explored the land without noticing them in some way or other.

“The next is from a tablet erected to Alexander II. by Ptolemy, at that time viceroy under the Persian king, but who soon after himself became king of Egypt, 305 b. c. The inscription states that ‘Alexander marched with an army of Ionians to the Syrians’ land, who were at war with him. He penetrated its interior and took it at one stroke, and led their princes, cavalry, ships, and works of art to Egypt.’

“Next follows the third Ptolemy, 238 b. c. (see the Decree of Canopus, Records of the Past, viii., 81), who invaded the two lands of Asia, and brought back to Egypt all the treasures which had been carried away by Cambyses and his successors. He ‘imported corn from East Rutenna and Kafatha’—i. e. from Syria and Phœnicia. It was the father of this king who is credited with sending to Judea for the seventy-two men who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek; and yet neither of these Ptolemaic kings makes mention of Judea, Jerusalem, or the Jews! The inference is obvious: they were not there.

“Many historiographers, when writing of Jewish annals, use the Ptolemaic and other monumental and papyrian accounts as applying to the Jews, and consequently use the term ‘Jews,’ but this is unwarrantable, inasmuch as the accounts themselves speak of ‘Syrians, Phœnicians,’ etc., but not of ‘Jews.’ According to the best cyclopædists, ‘there is little or nothing known of the Jews or Jerusalem until the time of Christ;’ and even then it is taken chiefly from Josephus, who, to my view, is scarcely admissible as a chronographer of actual history. No mention is made by the Ptolemies—say 250 or even less years b. c.—of the Jews of Jerusalem, and as the Roman emperor Hadrian (from 117 to 138 A. D.) is credited with changing the name of the city to Ælia Capitolina, it could only have been known as Jerusalem for a few centuries at most. The Arch of Titus in Rome is taken as conclusive proof that it was erected to commemorate his victories over the rebellious Jews and the successful siege of Jerusalem. But even this, I apprehend, is taken chiefly from Josephus. When in Rome last year I closely inspected this arch, expecting to find an inscription to this effect, but I was disappointed at seeing only a Latin one over the arch, which reads (in English): ‘The Senate and Roman People to the Divine Titus, (Son) of the divine Vespasian,’ and another, by Pius VII., recording its restoration. It is true, I saw the alto-reliefs on the inside of the arch, showing a table, trumpets, and a seven-branched lamp; but these were used in many temples, and would as well refer to the Syrian or Phœnician temples, which undoubtedly existed at that time, and in the absence of direct Roman testimony to the name of the city and people (of which I am unaware), it cannot be accepted as indubitable evidence of its reference to a city called and known to them as Jerusalem, and to a people known to them as Jews. Unless this can be established, it only amounts to an inference resting on Josephus.

“As the result of my researches, I place Jewish historians, so called, upon the same footing as the Christian ecclesiastical ones, whose works, while containing a base of more or less historical reference and truth, are yet too much overweighted with unhistorical myths to be regarded as genuine, sober history. To my view, the Jews were, at the period I am referring to, in a not dissimilar position to the Druses of Lebanon of the present day. As is well known to a certain class of writers who have come in contact with them, they form a community held together not so much by national ties as by semi-religious ones, which are based upon Cabalistic and theurgic rites and ceremonies. Like what I conceive the Jews to have been in the centuries preceding the Christian era, they are an order rather than a nation, the remains of systems which have continued and survived from ancient times. In this light the Jewish records are intelligible as writings veiled in allegory, treating of their mystic lore, albeit expressed in verbiage that bears a literal meaning upon its surface. I give this as the only solution that presents itself of the mysterious problem under review.”