Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/183

Rh there keep their statutes, which they never kept in their own land. And they entered into Euphrates by the narrow passages of the river. For the Most High then showed signs for them, and held still the flood till they were passed over. For through that country there was a great way to go, namely of a year and a half, and the same region is called Arsareth. Then dwelt they there until the latter time, and now when they shall begin to come, the Highest shall stay the springs of the stream again, that they may go through; therefore sawest thou the multitude with peace."

This narrative, therefore, precise as it appears to be in its details, is nevertheless given avowedly only as the interpretation of a dream, and not as an actual occurrence. Yet, such as it is, this is all the groundwork of authority upon which so many theories have been formed as to the fate of the ten tribes, thereon alleged to have been lost. Supposing, however, that it is not to be considered as of the nature of a vision, but given historically, as Sir William Jones and others have thought proper to receive it, the first question arising on the consideration of such an extraordinary isolated narrative would be, the credit due to it, as determinable from the character of the work in which it was found, or the probabilities of truth apparent in the narrative itself. With regard to the former point of estimate, the character of the work, this book of Esdras may certainly be pronounced to be as worthless as any in the Apocryphal collection. It is evidently of very late compilation, for it speaks of Jesus Christ (ch. viii. 28-9); and the learned Dean Prideaux, in his inestimable work, 'The Old and New Testament Connected,' rightly designates it as "a bundle of fables, too absurd for the belief of the Romanists themselves, for they have not taken this book into their canon, though they have those of Tobit and of Bel and the Dragon." (Sub ann. A.C. 610 and A.C. 446.)

Nor is the narrative trustworthy in itself, judging from any inherent probability we can allow it to possess. Even if we could suppose that a people so prone to idolatry as the Israelites had been in their own land, and separated for so many generations from the more systematic observance of the Law at Jerusalem, should, upon being carried away captives into a foreign country, become all at once so zealous for that law as to leave the multitude of the heathen and go forth into a further country where never mankind dwelt, that they might there keep their statutes, which it is with great simplicity acknowledged they never kept in their own land, we may next ask. How can we conceive it pro-