Chapter IV: , VII (141)

"Father Antoine Lavalette, 'procureur' of the Jesuit Missions
in the Antilles, resided in that capacity at St. Pierre in the
island of Martinique. He was a man of talent, energy, and
enterprise; and, following an example by no means uncommon in
the Society, he had been for many years engaged in mercantile
transactions on an extensive scale, and with eminent success.
It was an occupation expressly prohibited to missionaries; but
the Jesuits were in the habit of evading the difficulty by
means of an ingenious fiction. Lavalette was in correspondence
with the principal commercial firms in France, and
particularly with that of Lioncy Brothers and Gouffre, of
Marseilles. He made frequent consignments of merchandise to
their house, which were covered by bills of exchange, drawn in
Martinique and accepted by them. For a time the traffic
proceeded prosperously; but it so happened that upon the
breaking out of the Seven Years' War, several ships belonging
to Lavalette, richly freighted with West Indian produce, were
captured by the English cruisers, and their cargoes
confiscated. The immediate loss fell upon Lioncy and Gouffre,
to whom these vessels were consigned," and they were driven to
bankruptcy, the General of the Society of Jesus refusing to be
responsible for the obligations of his subordinate, Father
Lavalette. "Under these circumstances the creditors determined
to attack the Jesuit community as a corporate body," and the
latter were so singularly unwary, for once, as not only to
contest the claim before the Parliament of Paris, but to
appeal to the constitutions of their Society in support of
their contention, that each college was independent in the
matter of temporal property, and that no corporate
responsibility could exist. "The Parliament at once demanded
that the constitutions thus referred to should he examined.
The Jesuits were ordered to furnish a copy of them; they
obeyed. … The compulsory production of these mysterious
records, which had never before been inspected by any but
Jesuit eyes, was an event of crucial significance. It was the
turning-point of the whole affair; and its consequences were
disastrous." As a first consequence, "the court condemned the
General of the Jesuits, and in his person the whole Society
which he governed, to acquit the bills of exchange still
outstanding, together with interest and damages, within the
space of a year from the date of the 'arrêt.' In default of
payment the debt was made recoverable upon the common property
of the Order, excepting only the endowments specially
restricted to particular colleges. The delight of the public,
who were present on the occasion in great numbers, 'was
excessive,' says Barbier, 'and even indecent.'" As a second
consequence, the Parliament, on the 6th of August, 1761,
"condemned a quantity of publications by the Jesuits, dating
from the year 1590 downwards, to be torn and burnt by the
executioner and the next day this was duly carried out in the
court of the Palais de Justice. Further, the 'arrêt'
prohibited the king's subjects from entering the said Society;
forbade the fathers to give instruction, private or public, in
theology, philosophy, or humanity; and ordered their schools
and colleges to be closed. The accusation brought against
their books was … that of teaching 'abominable and murderous
doctrine,' of justifying sedition, rebellion, and regicide.
… The Government replied to these bold measures by ordering
the Parliament to suspend the execution of its 'arrêts' for
the space of a year. The Parliament affected to obey, but
stipulated, in registering the letters-patent, that the delay
should not extend beyond the 1st of April, 1762, and made
other provisions which left them virtually at liberty to
proceed as they might think proper. The Jesuits … relied too
confidently on the protection of the Crown. … But the
prestige of the monarchy was now seriously impaired, and it
was no longer wise or safe for a King of France to undertake
openly the defence of any institution which had incurred a
deliberate sentence of condemnation from the mass of his
people." In November, 1761, a meeting of French prelates was
summoned by the Royal Council to consider and report upon
several questions relative to the utility of the Society of
Jesus, the character of its teaching and conduct, and the
modifications, if any, which should be proposed as to the
extent of authority exercised by the General of the Society.
The bishops, by a large majority, made a report favorable to
the Jesuits, but recommended, "as reasonable concessions to
public opinion, certain alterations in its statutes and
practical administration. … This project of compromise was
forwarded to Rome for the consideration of the Pope and the
General; and Louis gave them to understand, through his
ambassador, that upon no other conditions would it be possible
to stem the tide of opposition, and to maintain the Jesuits as
a body corporate in France.
{1893}
It was now that the memorable reply was made, either by the
General Ricci, or, according to other accounts, by Pope
Clement XIII. himself—Sint ut sunt, aut non sint'; 'Let them
remain as they are, or let them exist no longer.'" Even had
the proposed reform been accepted, "its success was
problematical; but its rejection sealed the fate of the Order.
Louis, notwithstanding the ungracious response from Rome,
proposed his scheme of conciliation to the Parliament in
March, 1762, and annulled at the same time all measures
adverse to the Jesuits taken since the 1st of August
preceding. The Parliament, secretly encouraged by the Duc de
Choiseul, refused to register this edict; the king, after some
hesitation, withdrew it; and no available resource remained to
shield the Order against its impending destiny. The
Parliaments, both of Paris and the Provinces, laid the axe to
the root without further delay. By an 'arrêt' of the 1st of
April, 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from their 84 colleges
in the ressort of the Parliament of Paris, and the example was
followed by the provincial tribunals of Rouen, Rennes, Metz,
Bordeaux, and Aix. The Society was now assailed by a general
chorus of invective and execration. … The final blow was
struck by the Parliament of Paris on the 6th of August, 1762.
… The sentence then passed condemned the Society as
'inadmissible, by its nature, in any civilized State, inasmuch
as it was contrary to the law of nature, subversive of
authority spiritual and temporal, and introduced, under the
veil of religion, not an Order sincerely aspiring to
evangelical perfection, but rather a political body, of which
the essence consists in perpetual attempts to attain, first,
absolute independence, and in the end, supreme authority.' …
The decree concludes by declaring the vows of the Jesuits
illegal and void, forbidding them to observe the rules of the
Order, to wear its dress, or to correspond with its members.
They were to quit their houses within one week, and were to
renounce, upon oath, all connection with the Society, upon
pain of being disqualified for any ecclesiastical charge or
public employment. The provincial Parliaments followed the
lead of the capital, though in some few instances the decree
of suppression was opposed, and carried only by a small
majority; while at Besançon and Douai the decision was in
favour of the Society. In Lorraine, too, under the peaceful
government of Stanislas Leczinski, and in Alsace, where they
were powerfully protected by Cardinal de Rohan, Bishop of
Strasburg, the Jesuits were left unmolested. … The
suppression of the Jesuits—the most important act of the
administration of the Duc de Choiseul—was consummated by a
royal ordonnance of November, 1764, to which Louis did not
give his consent without mistrust and regret. It decreed that
the Society should cease to exist throughout his Majesty's
dominions; but it permitted the ex-Jesuits to reside in France
as private citizens, and to exercise their ecclesiastical
functions under the jurisdiction of the diocesans. … Almost
immediately afterwards, on the 7th of January, 1765. appeared
the bull 'Apostolicum,' by which Clement XIII. condemned, with
all the weight of supreme and infallible authority, the
measure which had deprived the Holy See of its most valiant
defenders. … The only effect of the intervention of the
Roman Curia was to excite further ebullitions of hostility
against the prostrate Order. Charles III. of Spain, yielding,
as it is alleged, to the exhortations of the Duc de Choiseul,
abolished it throughout his dominions by a sudden mandate of
April 2, 1767. … The Pope precipitated the final catastrophe
by a further act of imprudence. The young Duke of Parma, a
prince of the house of Bourbon, had excluded the Jesuits from
his duchy, and had published certain ecclesiastical
regulations detrimental to the ancient pretensions of the
Roman See. Clement XIII., reviving an antiquated title in
virtue of which Parma was claimed as a dependent fief of the
Papacy, was rash enough to launch a bull of excommunication
against the Duke, and deprived him of his dominions as a
rebellious vassal. All the Bourbon sovereigns promptly
combined to resent this insult to their family. The Papal Bull
was suppressed at Paris, at Madrid, at Lisbon, at Parma, at
Naples. The Jesuits were expelled from Venice, from Modena,
from Bavaria. The Pontiff was summoned to revoke his
'monitorium'; and on his refusal French troops took possession
of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, while the King of Naples
seized Benevento and Pontecorvo. On the 16th of January, 1769,
the ambassadors of Spain, France, and Naples presented a joint
note to the Holy Father, demanding that the Order of Jesus
should be secularised and abolished for ever. Clement, who had
suffered severely from the manifold humiliations and reverses
of his Pontificate, was overwhelmed by this last blow, from
the effects of which he never rallied. He expired almost
suddenly on the 2nd of February, 1769."

_W. H. Jervis,
History of the Church of France,
volume 2, chapter 10._

ALSO IN:
_T. Griesinger,
The Jesuits,
book 6, chapter 6,
and book 7, chapter 1._

JESUITS: A. D. 1769-1871
Papal suppression and restoration of the Order.

"The attitude of the Roman Catholic Courts was so threatening,
and their influence with the Conclave so powerful, that
Lorenzo Ganganelli was selected [1769] for the triple crown,
as the man best suited for their purposes. Belonging to the
Franciscans, who had ever been antagonistic to the Jesuits, he
had been a follower of the Augustinian theology, and was not
altogether free from Jansenism. The Jesuits even went so far
as to pray publicly in their churches for the conversion of
the Pope. The pontificate of Clement XIV. has been rendered
memorable in history by the Papal decree of July 21, 1773,
which in its policy adopted the maxim of Lorenzo Ricci, the
inflexible General of the Jesuits, 'Sint ut sunt, aut non
sunt'—Let us be as we are, or let us not be! That decree
declared that, from the very origin of the Order, sorrow,
jealousies, and dissensions arose, not only among its own
members but between them and the other religious orders and
their colleges. After further declaring that, urged as its
head by a sense of duty to restore the harmony of the Church,
and feeling convinced that the Society could no longer
subserve the uses for which it was created, and on other
grounds of prudence and governmental wisdom, he by his decree
abolished the Order of Jesuits, its offices, houses, and
institutes. … The other religious orders at Rome were
jealous that Jesuits should have been the confessors of
Sovereigns at Westminster, Madrid, Vienna, Versailles, Lisbon,
and Naples. The influences of the Dominicans, the
Benedictines, and the Oratorians were accordingly exercised
for their suppression. … The Papal Bull 'Dominus Redemptor
noster' was at first resisted by the Jesuits, and their
General, Lorenzo Ricci, was sent to the Castle of St. Angelo.
{1894}
Bernardine Renzi, a female Pythoness, having predicted the
death of the Pope, two Jesuits, Coltrano and Venissa, who were
suspected of having instigated her prophecies, were consigned
to the same prison. All that follows relating to the fate of
Ganganelli is of mere historic interest; his end is shrouded
in mystery, which has been as yet, and is likely to continue,
impenetrable. According to the revelations of Cardinal de
Bernis, Ganganelli was himself apprehensive of dying by
poison, and a sinister rumour respecting a cup of chocolate
with an infusion of 'Aqua de Tofana,' administered by a pious
attendant, was generally prevalent throughout Europe; but the
time has long since passed for an inquest over the deathbed of
Clement XIV."

_The Jesuits and their Expulsion from Germany
(Fraser's' Magazine, May, 1873)._

"All that follows the publication of the brief—the death of
Ganganelli, the fierce and yet unexhausted disputes about the
last year of his life, and the manner of his death—are to us
indescribably melancholy and repulsive. … We have
conflicting statements, both of which cannot be
true—churchman against churchman—cardinal against
cardinal—even, it should seem, pope against pope. On the one
side there is a triumph, hardly disguised, in the terrors, in
the sufferings, in the madness, which afflicted the later days
of Clement; on the other, the profoundest honour, the deepest
commiseration, for a wise and holy Pontiff, who, but for the
crime of his enemies, might have enjoyed a long reign of peace
and respect and inward satisfaction. There a protracted agony
of remorse in life and anticipated damnation—that damnation,
if not distinctly declared, made dubious or averted only by a
special miracle:—here an apotheosis—a claim, at least, to
canonization. There the judgment of God pronounced in language
which hardly affects regret; here more than insinuations, dark
charges of poison against persons not named, but therefore
involving in the ignominy of possible guilt a large and
powerful party. Throughout the history of the Jesuits it is
this which strikes, perplexes, and appals the dispassionate
student. The intensity with which they were hated surpasses
even the intensity with which they hated. Nor is this depth of
mutual animosity among those or towards those to whom the
Jesuits were most widely opposed, the Protestants, and the
adversaries of all religion; but among Roman Catholics—and
those not always Jansenists or even Gallicans—among the most
ardent assertors of the papal supremacy, monastics of other
orders, parliaments, statesmen, kings, bishops, cardinals.
Admiration and detestation of the Jesuits divide, as far as
feeling is concerned, the Roman Catholic world, with a schism
deeper and more implacable than any which arrays Protestant
against Protestant, Episcopacy and Independency, Calvinism and
Arminianism, Puseyism and Evangelicism. The two parties
counterwork each other, write against each other in terms of
equal acrimony, misunderstand each other, misrepresent each
other, accuse and recriminate upon each other, with the same
reckless zeal, in the same unmeasured language—each
inflexibly, exclusively identifying his own cause with that of
true religion, and involving its adversaries in one sweeping
and remorseless condemnation. To us the question of the death
of Clement XIV. is purely of historical interest. It is
singular enough that Protestant writers are cited as alone
doing impartial justice to the Jesuits and their enemies: the
Compurgators of the 'Company of Jesus' are Frederick II. and
the Encyclopedists. Outcast from Roman Catholic Europe, they
found refuge in Prussia, and in the domains of Catherine II.,
from whence they disputed the validity and disobeyed the
decrees of the Pope."

_Clement XIV. and the Jesuits
(Quarterly Review, September, 1848.)_

"The Jesuit Order remained in abeyance for a period of
forty-two years, until Pius VII. on his return to Rome, after
his liberation from the captivity he endured under Napoleon I.
at Fontainebleau, issued his brief of August 7, 1814,
'solicitudo omnium,' by which he authorised the surviving
members of the Order again to live according to the rules of
their founder, to admit novices, and to found colleges. With
singular fatuity the Papal Edict for the restoration of the
Jesuits, contradicting its own title, assigns on the face of
the document as the principal reason for its being issued the
recommendation contained in the gracious despatch of August
11, 1800, received from Paul, the then reigning Emperor of the
Russias. We have the histories of all nations concurring that
Paul was notoriously mad, and within six months from the date
of that gracious despatch he was strangled in his palace by
the members of his own Court, as the only possible means, as
they conceived, of rescuing the Empire from his insane and
vicious despotism. In return probably for the successful
intercession of Paul, Thadeus Brzozowski, a Pole by birth but
a Russian subject, was elected the first General of the
restored order. We find a striking comment on his
recommendation in the Imperial Ukase of his successor, the
Emperor Alexander, by which, in June 1817, he banished the
Jesuits from all his dominions. Spain, the scene of their
former ignominious treatment, was, under the degraded rule of
the Ferdinandian dynasty, the first country to which they were
recalled; but they were soon again expelled by the National
Cortes. Our limits here confine us to a simple category of
their subsequent expulsions from Roman Catholic States: from
France in 1831, from Saxony in the same year, from Portugal
again in 1834, from Spain again in 1835, from France again in
1845, from the whole of Switzerland, including the Roman
Catholic Cantons, in 1847, and in 1848 from Bavaria and other
German States. In the Revolution of 1848, they were expelled
from every Italian State, even from the territories of the
Pope; but on the counter Revolution they returned, to be again
expelled in 1859 from Lombardy, Parma, Modena and the
Legations. They have had to endure even a more recent
vicissitude, for, in December 1871, a measure relating to the
vexed question, the Union of Church and State, received the
sanction of the National Council (Bundesrath) of Switzerland,
by which the Jesuits were prohibited from settling in the
country, from interfering even in education, or from founding
or re-establishing colleges throughout the Federal
territories. They have thus within a recent period received
sentence of banishment from almost every Roman Catholic
Government, but they still remain in Rome."

_The Jesuits and their Expulsion from Germany
(Fraser's Magazine, May, 1873)._

{1895}

JESUITS: A. D. 1847.
The question of Expulsion in Switzerland.
The Sonderbund and the war of religions.

See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1803-1848.

JESUITS: A. D. 1880.
The law against Jesuit schools in the French Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1875-1889.

----------JESUITS: End--------

JESUS, Uncertainty of, the date of the birth of.

See JEWS: B. C. 8-A. D. 1.

JEU-DE-PAUME, The Oath at the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1789 (JUNE).

JEUNESSE DOREE, of the Anti-Jacobin reaction in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (JULY-APRIL).

----------JEWS: Start--------

JEWS.
The National Names.

There have been two principal conjectures as to the origin of
the name Hebrews, by which the descendants of Abraham were
originally known. One derives the name from a progenitor,
Eber; the other finds its origin in a Semitic word signifying
"over," or "crossed over." In the latter view, the name was
applied by the Canaanites to people who came into their
country from beyond the Euphrates. Ewald, who rejects this
latter hypothesis, says: "While there is nothing to show that
the name emanated from strangers, nothing is more manifest
than that the nation called themselves by it and had done so
as long as memory could reach; indeed this is the only one of
their names that appears to have been current in the earliest
times. The history of this name shows that it must have been
most frequently used in the ancient times, before that branch
of the Hebrews which took the name of Israel became dominant,
but that after the time of the Kings it entirely disappeared
from ordinary speech, and was only revived in the period
immediately before Christ, like many other names of the
primeval times, through the prevalence of a learned mode of
regarding antiquity, when it came afresh into esteem through
the reverence then felt for Abraham."

_H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
volume 1, page 284._

After the return of the Israelites from the Babylonian
captivity—the returned exiles being mostly of the tribes of
Judah and Benjamin—"the name of Judah took the predominant
place in the national titles. As the primitive name of
'Hebrew' had given way to the historical name of Israel, so
that of Israel now gave way to the name of 'Judæan' or 'Jew,'
so full of praise and pride, of reproach and scorn. 'It was
born,' as their later historian [Josephus] truly observes, 'on
the day when they came out from Babylon.'"

_A. P. Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
volume 3, page 101._

JEWS:
The early Hebrew history.

"Of course, in the abstract, it is possible that such persons
as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob should have existed. One can
imagine that such and such incidents in the accounts regarding
them really took place, and were handed down by tradition. …
But our present investigation does not concern the question
whether there existed men of those names, but whether the
progenitors of Israel and of the neighbouring nations who are
represented in Genesis are historical personages. It is this
question which we answer in the negative. Must we then deny
all historical value to the narratives of the patriarchs? By
no means. What we have to do is to make proper use of them.
They teach us what the Israelites thought as to their
affinities with the tribes around them, and as to the manner
of their own settlement in the land of their abode. If we
strip them of their genealogical form, and at the same time
take into consideration the influence which Israel's self-love
must have exercised over the representation of relationships
and facts, we have an historical kernel left. … The
narratives in Genesis, viewed and used in this way, lead us to
the following conception of Israel's early history. Canaan was
originally inhabited by a number of tribes—of Semitic origin,
as we shall perceive presently—who applied themselves to the
rearing of cattle, to agriculture, or to commerce, according
to the nature of the districts in which they were established.
The countries which were subsequently named after Edom, Ammon,
and Moab, also had their aboriginal inhabitants, the Horites,
the Zamzummites, and the Emites. Whilst all these tribes
retained possession of their dwelling-places, and the
inhabitants of Canaan especially had reached a tolerably high
stage of civilization and development, there occurred a
Semitic migration, which issued from Arrapachitis (Arphacsad,
Ur Casdim), and moved on in a south-westerly direction. The
countries to the east and the south of Canaan were gradually
occupied by these intruders, the former inhabitants being
either expelled or subjugated; Ammon, Moab, Ishmael, and Edom
became the ruling nations in those districts. In Canaan the
situation was different. The tribes which—at first closely
connected with the Edomites, but afterwards separated from
them—had turned their steps towards Canaan, did not find
themselves strong enough either to drive out, or to exact
tribute from, the original inhabitants; they continued their
wandering life among them, and lived upon the whole at peace
with them. But a real settlement was still their aim. When,
therefore, they had become more numerous and powerful, through
the arrival of a number of kindred settlers from
Mesopotamia—represented in tradition by the army with which
Jacob returns to Canaan—they resumed their march in the same
south-westerly direction, until at length they took possession
of fixed habitations in the land of Goshen, on the borders of
Egypt."

_A. Kuenen,
The Religion of Israel,
chapter 2 (volume 1)._

"In the oldest extant record respecting Abraham, Genesis xiv.,
… we see him acting as a powerful domestic prince, among
many similar princes, who like him held Canaan in possession;
not calling himself King, like Melchizedek, the priest-king of
Salem, because he was the father and protector of his house,
living with his family and bondmen in the open country, yet
equal in power to the petty Canaanite kings. …
{1896}
Detached as this account may be, it is at least evident from
it that the Canaanites were at that time highly civilised,
since they had a priest-king like Melchizedek, whom Abraham
held in honour, but that they were even then so weakened by
endless divisions and by the emasculating influence of that
culture itself, as either to pay tribute to the warlike
nations of the northeast (as the five kings of the cities of
the Dead Sea had done for twelve years before they rebelled,
ver. 4), or to seek for some valiant descendants of the
northern lands living in their midst, who in return for
certain concessions and services promised them protection and
defence. … This idea furnishes the only tenable historical
view of the migration of Abraham and his kindred. They did not
conquer the land, nor at first hold it by mere force of arms,
like the four north-eastern kings from whose hand Abraham
delivered Lot, Genesis xiv. They advanced as leaders of small
bands, with their fencible servants and the herds, at first
rather sought or even invited by the old inhabitants of the
land, as good warriors and serviceable allies, than forcing
themselves upon them. Thus they took up their abode and
obtained possessions among them, but were always wishing to
migrate farther, even into Egypt. … Little as we are able to
prove all the details of that migration from the north towards
Egypt, which probably continued for centuries, it may with
great certainty be conceived as on the whole similar to the
gradual advance of many other northern nations; as of the
Germans towards Rome, and of the Turks in these same regions
in the Middle Ages. … We now understand that Abraham's name
can designate only one of the most important and oldest of the
Hebrew immigrations. But since Abraham had so early attained a
name glorious among the Hebrews advancing towards the south,
and since he was everything especially to the nation of Israel
which arose out of this immigration, and to their nearest
kindred, his name came to be the grand centre and
rallying-point of all the memory of those times."

_H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 1, section 1, C, part 3._

JEWS:
The Children of Israel in Egypt.

"It has been very generally supposed that Abraham's visit to
Egypt took place under the reign of one of the kings of the
twelfth dynasty [placed by Brugsch B. C. 2466-2266], but which
king has not yet been satisfactorily made out. … Some
Biblical critics have considered that Amenemha III. was king
of Egypt when Abraham came there, and others that Usertsen I.
was king, and that Amenemha was the Pharaoh of the time of
Joseph. … It is generally accepted now that Joseph was sold
into Egypt at the time when the Hyksos were in power [and
about 1750 B. C.]; and it is also generally accepted that the
Exodus took place after the death of Rameses II. and under the
reign of Merenptah, or Meneptah. Now the children of Israel
were in captivity in Egypt for 400 or 430 years; and as they
went out of Egypt after the death of Rameses II., it was
probably some time about the year 1350 B. C. There is little
doubt that the Pharaoh who persecuted the Israelites so
shamefully was Rameses II."

_E. A. W. Budge,
The Dwellers on the Nile,
chapter 4._

"It is stated by George the Syncellus, a writer whose
extensive learning and entire honesty are unquestionable, that
the synchronism of Joseph with Apepi, the last king of the
only known Hyksos dynasty, was 'acknowledged by all.' The best
modern authorities accept this view, if not as clearly
established, at any rate as in the highest degree probable,
and believe that it was Apepi who made the gifted Hebrew his
prime minister, who invited his father and his brethren to
settle in Egypt with their households, and assigned to them
the land of Goshen for their residence."

_G. Rawlinson,
History of Ancient Egypt,
chapter 19 (volume 2)._

"The new Pharaoh, 'who knew not Joseph,' who adorned the city
of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic nome, and the city of
Pithom, the capital of what was afterwards the Sethroitic
nome, with temple-cities, is no other, can be no other, than
Ramessu II. or Rameses—the Sesostris of the Greeks, B. C.
1350, of whose buildings at Zoan the monuments and the
papyrus-rolls speak in complete agreement. … Ramessu is the
Pharaoh of the oppression, and the father of that unnamed
princess, who found the child Moses exposed in the bulrushes
on the bank of the river. … If Ramses-Sesostris … must be
regarded beyond all doubt as the Pharaoh under whom the Jewish
legislator Moses first saw the light, so the chronological
relations—having regard to the great age of the two
contemporaries, Ramses II. and Moses—demand that Mineptah
[his son] should in all probability be acknowledged as the
Pharaoh of the Exodus."

_H. Brugsch-Bey,
History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
chapter 14._

The quotations given above represent the orthodox view of
early Jewish history, in the light of modern monumental
studies,—the view, that is, which accepts the Biblical
account of Abraham and his seed as a literal family record,
authentically widening into the annals of a nation. The more
rationalizing views are indicated by the following: "There can
be no doubt … as to the Semitic character of these Hyksos,
or 'Pastors,' who, more than 2,000 years B. C., interrupted in
a measure the current of Egyptian civilisation, and founded at
Zoan (Tanis), near the Isthmus, the centre of a powerful
Semitic state. These Hyksos were to all appearances
Canaanites, near relations of the Hittites of Hebron. Hebron
was in close community with Zoan, and there is a tradition,
probably based upon historical data, that the two cities were
built nearly at the same time. As invariably happens when
barbarians enter into an ancient and powerful civilisation,
the Hyksos soon became Egyptianised. … The Hyksos of Zoan
could not fail to exercise a great influence upon the Hebrews
who were encamped around Hebron, the Dead Sea, and in the
southern districts of Palestine. The antipathy which
afterwards existed between the Hebrews and the Canaanites was
not as yet very perceptible. … There are the best of reasons
for believing that the immigration of the Beni-Israel took
place at two separate times. A first batch of Israelites seems
to have been attracted by the Hittites of Egypt, while the
bulk of the tribe was living upon the best of terms with the
Hittites of Hebron. These first immigrants found favour with
the Egyptianised Hittites of Memphis and Zoan; they secured
very good positions, had children, and constituted a distinct
family in Israel. This was what was afterwards called the
'clan of the Josephel,' or the Beni-Joseph. Finding themselves
well off in Lower Egypt, they sent for their brethren, who,
impelled perhaps by famine, joined them there, and were
received also favourably by the Hittite dynasties. These
new-comers never went to Memphis. They remained in the
vicinity of Zoan, where there is a land of Goshen, which was
allotted to them. …
{1897}
The whole of these ancient days, concerning which Israel
possesses only legends and contradictory traditions, is
enveloped in doubt; one thing, however, is certain, viz., that
Israel entered Egypt under a dynasty favourable to the
Semites, and left it under one which was hostile. The presence
of a nomad tribe upon the extreme confines of Egypt must have
been a matter of very small importance for this latter
country. There is no certain trace of it in the Egyptian
texts. The kingdom of Zoan, upon the contrary, left a deep
impression upon the Israelites. Zoan became for them
synonymous with Egypt. The relations between Zoan and Hebron
were kept up, and … Hebron was proud of the synchronism,
which made it out seven years older than Zoan. The
first-comers, the Josephites, always assumed an air of
superiority over their brethren, whose position they had been
instrumental in establishing. … Their children, born in
Egypt, possibly of Egyptian mothers, were scarcely Israelites.
An agreement was come to, however; it was agreed that the
Josephites should rank as Israelites with the rest. They
formed two distinct tribes, those of Ephraim and Manasseh. …
It is not impossible that the origin of the name of Joseph
(addition, adjunction, annexation) may have arisen from the
circumstance that the first emigrants and their families,
having become strangers to their brethren, needed some sort of
adjunction to become again part and parcel of the family of
Israel."

_E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 1, chapter 10 (volume 1)._

See, also, EGYPT: THE HYKSOS, and ABOUT B. C. 1400-1200.

JEWS:
The Route of the Exodus.

It is said of the oppressed Israelites in Egypt that "they
built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses."
(Exodus i. 11.) One of those "treasure cities," or
"store-cities," has been discovered, in a heap of ruins, at a
place which the Arabs call "Tell el Maskhutah," and it was
supposed at first to be the Raamses of the Biblical record.
But explorations made in 1883 by M. Naville seem to have
proved that it is the store-city of Pithom which lies buried
in the mounds at Tell el Maskhutah and that Raamses is still
to be found. As Raamses or Ramses was the starting point of
the Exodus, something of a controversy concerning the route of
the latter turns upon the question. It is the opinion of M.
Naville that Succoth, where the Children of Israel made their
first halt, was the district in which Pithom is situated, and
that the Land of Goshen, their dwelling-place in Egypt, was a
region embracing that district. The site of Pithom, as
identified by Naville, is "on the south side of the sweet
water canal which runs from Cairo to Suez through the Wadi
Tumilât, about 12 miles from Ismailiah." The excavations made
have brought to light a great number of chambers, with massive
walls of brick, which are conjectured to have been granaries
and storehouses, for the provisioning of caravans and armies
to cross the desert to Syria, as well as for the collecting of
tribute and for the warehousing of trade. Hence the name of
store-city, or treasure-city. Under the Greeks Pithom changed
its name to Heroopolis, and a new city called Arsinoë was
built near it.

_E. Naville,
The Store-City of Pithom._

"I submit that Goshen, properly speaking, was the land which
afterwards became the Arabian nome, viz., the country round
Saft el Henneh east of the canal Abu-I-Munagge, a district
comprising Belbeis and Abbaseh, and probably extending further
north than the Wadi Tumilat. The capital of the nome was Pa
Sopt, called by the Greeks Phacusa, now Saft el Henneh. At the
time when the Israelites occupied the land, the term 'Goshen'
belonged to a region which as yet had no definite boundaries,
and which extended with the increase of the people over the
territory they inhabited. The term 'land of Ramses' applies to
a larger area, and covers that part of the Delta which lies to
the eastward of the Tanitic branch. … As for the city of
Ramses, it was situate in the Arabian nome. Probably it was
Phacusa."

_E. Naville,
Shrine of Saft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen._

The Israelites leaving Succoth, a region which we now know
well, the neighbourhood of Tell-el-Maskhutah, push forward
towards the desert, skirting the northern shore of the gulf,
and thus reach the wilderness of Etham; but there, because of
the pursuit of Pharaoh, they have to change their course, they
are told to retrace their steps, so as to put the sea between
them and the desert. … 'And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying: Speak unto the children of Israel that they turn and
encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over
against Baalzephon; before it shall ye encamp by the sea.' …
The question is now, Where are we to look for Migdol and
Pi-Hahiroth? As for Migdol, the ancient authors, and
particularly the Itinerary, mention a Migdol, or Magdolon,
which was twelve Roman miles distant from Pelusium. It is not
possible to admit that this is the same Migdol which is spoken
of in Exodus, for then it would not be the Red Sea, but the
Mediterranean, which the Israelites would have before them,
and we should thus have to fall in with MM. Schleiden and
Brugsch's theory, that they followed the narrow track which
lies between the Mediterranean and the Serbonian Bog. However
ingenious are the arguments on which this system is based, I
believe it must now be dismissed altogether, because we know
the site of the station of Succoth. Is it possible to admit
that, from the shore of the Arabian Gulf, the Israelites
turned to the north, and marched forty miles through the
desert in order to reach the Mediterranean? The journey would
have lasted several days; they would have been obliged to pass
in front of the fortresses of the north; they would have
fallen into the way of the land of the Philistines, which they
were told not to take; and, lastly, the Egyptians, issuing
from Tanis and the northern cities, would have easily
intercepted them. … All these reasons induce me to give up
definitively the idea of the passage by the north, and to
return to the old theory of a passage of the Red Sea, but of
the Red Sea as it was at that time, extending a great deal
farther northward, and not the Red Sea of to-day, which
occupies a very different position. The word Migdol, in
Egyptian, … is a common name. It means a fort, a tower. It
is very likely that in a fortified region there have been
several places so called, distinguished from each other,
either by the name of the king who built them, or by some
local circumstance; just as there are in Italy a considerable
number of Torre. I should therefore, with M. Ebers, place
Migdol at the present station of the Serapeum. There the sea
was not wide, and the water probably very shallow; there also
the phenomenon which took place on such a large scale when the
Israelites went through must have been well known, as it is
often seen now in other parts of Egypt.
{1898}
As at this point the sea was liable to be driven back under
the influence of the east wind, and to leave a dry way, the
Pharaohs were obliged to have there a fort, a Migdol, so as to
guard that part of the sea, and to prevent the Asiatics of the
desert from using this temporary gate to enter Egypt, to steal
cattle, and to plunder the fertile land which was round
Pithom."

_E. Naville,
The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus
(Egypt Expl. Fund, 1885)._

"Modern critics prefer an intelligent interpretation,
according to known natural laws, of the words of Exodus xiv.
21, 22, which lay stress upon the 'east wind' as the direct
natural agent by which the sea bottom was for the time made
dry land. … The theory, which dates from an early period,
that the passage was in some sense tidal, miraculously aided
by the agency of wind, has thus come to be very generally
adopted."

_H. S. Palmer,
Sinai
(Ancient History from the Monuments),
chapter 6._

JEWS:
The conquest of Canaan.

"The first essay [west of Jordan] was made by Judah in
conjunction with Simeon and Levi, but was far from prosperous.
Simeon and Levi were annihilated; Judah also, though
successful in mastering the mountain land to the west of the
Dead Sea, was so only at the cost of severe losses which were
not again made up until the accession of the Kenite families
of the south (Caleb). As a consequence of the secession of
these tribes, a new division of the nation into Israel and
Judah took the place of that which had previously subsisted
between the families of Leah and Rachel; under Israel were
included all the tribes except Simeon, Levi, and Judah, which
three are no longer mentioned in Judges v., where all the
others are carefully and exhaustively enumerated. This
half-abortive first invasion of the west was followed by a
second, which was stronger and attended with much better
results. It was led by the tribe of Joseph, to which the
others attached themselves, Reuben and Gad only remaining
behind in the old settlements. The district to the north of
Judah, inhabited afterwards by Benjamin, was the first to be
attacked. It was not until after several towns of this
district had one by one fallen into the hands of the
conquerors that the Canaanites set about a united resistance.
They were, however, decisively repulsed by Joshua in the
neighbourhood of Gibeon [or Beth-horon]; and by this victory
the Israelites became masters of the whole central plateau of
Palestine. The first camp, at Gilgal, near the ford of Jordan,
which had been maintained until then, was now removed, and the
ark of Jehovah brought further inland (perhaps by way of
Bethel) to Shiloh, where henceforwards the headquarters were
fixed, in a position which seemed as if it had been expressly
made to favour attacks upon the fertile tract lying beneath it
on the north. The Bne Rachel now occupied the new territory
which up to that time had been acquired—Benjamin, in
immediate contiguity with the frontier of Judah, then Ephraim,
stretching to beyond Shiloh, and lastly Manasseh, furthest to
the north, as far as to the plain of Jezreel. The centre of
gravity, so to speak, already lay in Ephraim, to which
belonged Joshua and the ark, It is mentioned as the last
achievement of Joshua that at the waters of Merom he defeated
Jabin, king of Hazor, and the allied princes of Galilee,
thereby opening up the north for Israelitish settlers. …
Even after the united resistance of the Canaanites had been
broken, each individual community had still enough to do
before it could take firm hold of the spot which it had
searched out for itself or to which it had been assigned. The
business of effecting permanent settlement was just a
continuation of the former struggle, only on a diminished
scale; every tribe and every family now fought for its own
hand after the preliminary work had been accomplished by a
united effort. Naturally, therefore, the conquest was at first
but an incomplete one. The plain which fringed the coast was
hardly touched; so also the valley of Jezreel with its girdle
of fortified cities stretching from Acco to Bethshean. All
that was subdued in the strict sense of that word was the
mountainous land, particularly the southern hill-country of
'Mount Ephraim'; yet even here the Canaanites retained
possession of not a few cities, such as Jebus, Shechem,
Thebez. It was only after the lapse of centuries that all the
lacunæ were filled up, and the Canaanite enclaves made
tributary. The Israelites had the extraordinarily
disintegrated state of the enemy to thank for the ease with
which they had achieved success."

_J. Wellhausen,
Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah,
chapter 2._

"Remnants of the Canaanites remained everywhere among and
between the Israelites. Beside the Benjamites the Jebusites (a
tribe of the Amorites) maintained themselves, and at Gibeon,
Kirjath-jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth were the Hivites, who
had made peace with the Israelites. In the land of Ephraim,
the Canaanites held their ground at Geser and Bethel, until
the latter—it was an important city—was stormed by the
Ephraimites. Among the tribe of Manasseh the Canaanites were
settled at Beth Shean, Dan, Taanach, Jibleam, Megiddo and
their districts, and in the northern tribes the Canaanites
were still more numerous. It was not till long after the
immigration of the Hebrews that they were made in part
tributary. The land of the Israelites beyond the Jordan, where
the tribe of Manasseh possessed the north, Gad the centre, and
Reuben the south as far as the Arnon, was exposed to the
attacks of the Ammonites and Moabites, and the migratory
tribes of the Syrian desert, and must have had the greater
attraction for them, as better pastures were to be found in
the heights of Gilead, and the valleys there were more
fruitful. To the west only the tribe of Ephraim reached the
sea, and became master of a harbourless strip of coast. The
remaining part of the coast and all the harbours remained in
the hands of the powerful cities of the Philistines and the
Phenicians. No attempt was made to conquer these, although
border-conflicts took place between the tribes of Judah, Dan,
and Asher, and Philistines and Sidonians. Such an attempt
could only have been made if the Israelites had remained
united, and even then the powers of the Israelites would
hardly have sufficed to overthrow the walls of Gaza, Ascalon,
and Ashdod, of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus. Yet the invasion of
the Israelites was not without results for the cities of the
coast: it forced a large part of the population to assemble in
them, and we shall see … how rapid and powerful is the
growth of the strength and importance of Tyre in the time
immediately following the incursion of the Israelites, i. e.,
immediately after the middle of the thirteenth century.
{1899}
As the population and in consequence the power of the cities
on the coast increased, owing to the collection of the ancient
population on the shore of the sea, those cities became all
the more dangerous neighbours for the Israelites. It was a
misfortune for the new territory which the Israelites had won
by the sword that it was without the protection of natural
boundaries on the north and east, that the cities of the
Philistines and Phenicians barred it towards the sea, and in
the interior remnants of the Canaanites still maintained their
place. Yet it was a far more serious danger for the immigrants
that they were without unity, connection, or guidance, for
they had already given up these before the conflict was ended.
Undoubtedly a vigorous leadership in the war of conquest
against the Canaanites might have established a military
monarchy which would have provided better for the maintenance
of the borders and the security of the land than was done in
its absence. But the isolated defence made by the Canaanites
permitted the attacking party also to isolate themselves. The
new masters of the land lived, like the Canaanites before and
among them, in separate cantons; the mountain land which they
possessed was much broken up, and without any natural centre,
and though there were dangerous neighbours, there was no
single concentrated aggressive power in the neighbourhood, now
that Egypt remained in her borders. The cities of the
Philistines formed a federation merely, though a federation
far more strongly organised than the tribes of the Israelites.
Under these circumstances political unity was not an
immediately pressing question among the Israelites."

_M. Duncker,
History of Antiquity,
book 2, chapter 11 (volume 1)._

_H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 2, section 2, C._

JEWS:
Israel under the Judges.
The wars of the Period.
Conquest of Gilead and Bashan.
Founding of the kingdom.

"The office which gives its name to the period [between the
death of Joshua and the rise of Samuel] well describes it. It
was occasional, irregular, uncertain, yet gradually tending to
fixedness and perpetuity. Its title is itself expressive. The
Ruler was not regal, but he was more than the mere head of a
tribe, or the mere judge of special cases. We have to seek for
the origin of the name, not amongst the Sheykhs of the Arabian
desert, but amongst the civilised settlements of Phœnicia.
'Shophet,' 'Shophetim,' the Hebrew word which we translate
'Judge,' is the same as we find in the 'Suffes,' 'Suffetes,'
of the Carthaginian rulers at the time of the Punic wars. As
afterwards the office of 'king' was taken from the nations
round about, so now, if not the office, at least the name of
'judge' or 'shophet' seems to have been drawn from the
Canaanitish cities, with which for the first time Israel came
into contact. … Finally the two offices which, in the
earlier years of this period, had remained distinct—the High
Priest and the Judge—were united in the person of Eli."

_Dean Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
lecture 13._