(The numbers in parentheses throughout this article refer to the notes at the end of the article.)
Introduction
"Recent" is a dangerously capacious word to intrust to an archaeologist. Anything this side of the Day of Pentecost is "recent" in biblical archaeology. For this review, however, anything since 1904 is accepted to be, in a general way, the meaning of the word "recent."
"Recent testimony of archaeology" may be either the testimony of recent discoveries or recent testimony of former discoveries. A new interpretation, if it be established to be a true interpretation, is a discovery. For to uncover is not always to discover; indeed, the real value of a discovery is not its emergence, but its significance, and the discovery of its real significance is the real discovery.
The most important testimony to the Scriptures of this five year archaeological period admits of some classification:
I. The Historical Setting of the Patriarchal Reception in Egypt.
The reception in Egypt accorded to Abraham and to Jacob and his sons(1) and the elevation of Joseph there(2) peremptorily demand either the acknowledgment of a mythical element in the stories, or the belief in a suitable historical setting therefor [sic]. Obscure, insignificant, private citizens are not accorded such recognition at a foreign and unfriendly court. While some have been conceding a mythical element in the stories(3), archaeology has uncovered to view such appropriate historical setting that the patriarchs are seen not to have been obscure, insignificant, private citizens, nor Zoan a foreign and unfriendly court.
The presence of the Semitic tongue in Hyksos' territory has long been known(4); from still earlier than patriarchal times until much later, the Phoenicians, first cousins of the Hebrews, did the foreign business of the Egyptians(5), as the English, the Germans, and the French do the foreign business of the Chinese of today; and some familiarity, even sympathy, with Semitic religion has been strongly suspected from the interview of the Hyksos kings with the patriarchs(6); but the discovery in 1906(7), by Petrie, of the great fortified camp at Tel-el-Yehudiyeh set at rest, in the main, the biblical question of the relation between the patriarchs and the Hyksos. The abundance of Hyksos scarabs and the almost total absence of all others mark the camp as certainly a Hyksos camp(8); the original character of the fortifications, before the Hyksos learned the builders' craft from the Egyptians, shows them to have depended upon the bow for defenses(9); and, finally, the name Hyksos, in the Egyptian Haq Shashu(10) "Bedouin princes," brings out, sharp and clear, the harmonious picture of which we have had glimpses for a long time, of the Hyksos as wandering tribes of the desert, of "Upper and Lower Ruthen"(11); i.e., Syria and Palestine, northern and western Arabia, "Bow people"(12), as the Egyptians called them, their traditional enemies as far back as pyramid times(13).
Why, then, should not the patriarchs have had a royal reception in Egypt? They were themselves also the heads of wandering tribes of "Upper and Lower Ruthen," in the tongue of the Egyptians, Haq Shashu, "Bedouin princes"; and among princes, a prince is a prince, however small his principality. So Abraham, the Bedouin prince, was accorded princely consideration at the Bedouin court in Egypt; Joseph, the Bedouin slave, became again the Bedouin prince when the wisdom of God with him and his rank by birth became known. And Jacob and his other sons were welcome, with all their followers and their wealth, as a valuable acquisition to the court party, always harassed by the restive and rebellious native Egyptians. This does not prove racial identity between the Hyksos and the patriarchs, but very close tribal relationship. And thus every suspicion of a mythical element in the narrative of the reception accorded the patriarchs in Egypt disappears when archaeology has testified to the true historical setting.
II. The Hittite Vindication.
A second recent testimony of archaeology gives us the great Hittite vindication. The Hittites have been, in one respect, the Trojans of Bible history; indeed, the inhabitants of old Troy were scarcely more in need of a Schliemann to vindicate their claim to reality than the Hittites of a Winckler.
In 1904 one of the foremost archaeologists of Europe said to me: "I do not believe there ever were such people as the Hittites, and I do not believe 慘heta
