Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/568

 526 Reviews.

in regard to views set forth in another work of his, the author is by no means destitute of confidence in his superior knowledge; indeed, not to leave the reader to the mercy of his {i.e. the reader's) private judgement, he states in plain language, "We contend that the result of our labours herein set forth is correct" (p. 5). It may be quite true that the reviewers of the former work of the author had no knowledge of the Egyptian alphabet (pp. xiv et seq.), and we have no doubt that the author has " tried to search after the facts with a steady honesty" (p. xi), and, when he says, — "Facts and history are one thing; theories and "according to" are another" (p. i), we agree with him heartily, finding both in his book. The book contains many facts carefully collected from numerous mentioned and not mentioned sources, and a great many more theories, many of which have long been exploded as fanciful. To the facts no one can object, but, when they are handled, as they have been by the author, to prove a preconceived notion, science gives way to imagination and fact to fancy.

The book bristles with assertions which one really cannot take seriously, and is full of inaccuracies. The writer seems to lack even an elementary acquaintance with one of the languages which he uses (or attempts to use), to prove one of his theories. This is surprising, especially as he lays so much stress upon accurate knowledge, from which he avers the correctness of his deductions (p. 5). We will point out only a few things in support of what has been said above.

The author's remarks on the Jewish religion (pp. 236 ei seq.) betray no knowledge of the state of the historical situation as recognized by the scholars of to-day. It may be that the author, who seems to quote well-known authorities simply to point out their ignorance, did not consider it worth while even to mention the critical position of Bible scholars as being perhaps, to use his own language, " too ludicrous to discuss." He revives a long-exploded theory identifying Jahweh with an Egyptian deity (p. 294). The author's knowledge of Hebrew cannot even be called elementary. The Hebrew word in 1. 20, p. 294, which he imagines to represent the Hebrew word for mercy-seat, has absolutely no meaning. The four Hebrew letters n^S? should be HISD and the mistake arose simply from the author's ignorance of Hebrew. The same