Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/780

 REVIEWS OF BOOKS Encyclopaedia Bibhca : A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible. Edited by the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford and formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Canon of .Rochester, and J. Sutherland Black, M.A., LL.D., formerly Assistant Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. II.: E to K. (New York : The Macmillan Company ; London : Adam and Charles Black. 1901. Pp. 772.) The general character of this Dictionary and of the contents of Vol. I. have been described in a former number of this Review (V. 543-545)- The present volume follows the lines of its predecessor : it has a similar wealth of material, and is marked by the same freedom of critical re- search unhampered by regard for traditional opinions. Special attention is shown to the study of clan-names, a branch of inquiry which has been very little pursued, but may yield important results. Folk-lore and legend are abundantly represented, though, strangely enough, the trans- lations of Enoch and Elijah, to which there are so many parallels in ancient beliefs and which suggest so many interesting questions, are passed over with hardly a word of discussion. The volume contains a great number of conjectural emendations of the Hebrew text, some prob- able, some improbable ; in the latter class we may place the explanation of the name Jericho (col. 2396), the substitution of " Jair " for " Jeph- thah " (col. 2360), the etymology of " Emim " (col. 12S9), and some others ; but these remarks are usually given as conjectures, and may easily be distinguished by the general reader from what is offered as assured fact. The material of interest to the historical student is considerable. All the current histories of Egypt and Ethiopia are more or less antiquated — so great has been the progress of recent discovery — and it is therefore a matter of importance to have a conspectus by a careful scholar which shall point out exactly what may be accepted as history in the light of present knowledge ; such a discriminating statement is found in the articles by Professor W. M. Muller, of Philadelphia, in which the ques- tions of Egyptian chronology, Manetho's dynasties, the alleged discovery of the tomb of Menes (the first historical king), the Hyksos, the primitive religion, the manners and customs of Egypt, and the history of Ethiopia are treated with great precision, and with references to all important books. With a constantly growing inscriptional literature no such (770)