Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/260

 , who for 30 years has traversed the lake in every direction and in all weathers, showed me a place where iii winter fish abound because the waters are warmer there than anywhere else; this is evidently the point of emergence of a sub-lacustrine tributary stream.

On the whole these thermometrical observations, incomplete as they are, tend to confirm what the soundings had already demonstrated, to show that the general features of the Lake of Tiberias are those of a shallow lake, the maximum low-water mark of which scarcely exceeds 40 to 50 metres. If there exists opposite the Wady Semakh—at the point indicated by Lortet—an abyss 250 metres in depth, it can only be a narrow shaft with precipitous walls. The question, I repeat, is now clearly stated, and cannot fail to be soon settled.



THE HÆMATITE WEIGHT, WITH AN INSCRIPTION IN ANCIENT SEMITIC CHARACTERS, PURCHASED AT SAMARIA IN 1890 BY THOMAS CHAPLIN, ESQ., M.D.

{{center|{{fs|105%|{Reprinted from the {{sc|Academy,}} by the kind permission of the Editor.)}}}}

London, October 20th, 1893.

before leaving Europe, I have had the good fortune to receive a lesson in the methods of that "higher criticism," which we poor Englishmen are told to accept humbly from the Germans.

"Scientific criticism" has long since decided that the Song of Solomon was composed several centuries after the date to which it lays claim, and one of the proofs of its lateness is found in the little word shel "of." This, it has been revealed to the critics, had no existence in Hebrew before the Exile. Three years ago, however. Dr. Chaplin, when visiting the site of Samaria, purchased a small hæematite weight, which had just been found there, containing an inscription in two lines. The letters are very distinct, and were accordingly read without any difficulty by Dr. Neubauer and myself. I gave the reading in the Academy, and Dr. Neubauer published his translation of it elsewhere, of which Professor Driver has subsequently made use.

But unfortunately the word shel occurred in it, and as the letters belonged to the seventh or eighth century this was awkward for the critics. "Scientific criticism," however, soon found a way out of the difficulty. First of all, the genuineness of the object was denied; and when this argument failed, it was asserted that the reading of