Archæology and the Bible

The second text comes from the reign of Merneptah (1225-1215 B. C.). It reads as follows:

These texts make it evident that at different periods of Egyptian history Asiatic tribes in time of famine and stress sought and found refuge in Egypt as the Israelites are said to have done.

VI

ALLEGED TRACES OF THE “TEN TRIBES” IN EXILE

To supplement Part II, Chapter XVII, at the end of § 10, p. 372.

In 2 Kings 15:29 it is said that Tiglath-pileser [IV] captured certain cities in Galilee, and carried their inhabitants captive to Assyria. In 2 Kings 17:6 it is said that when Samaria was destroyed by the Assyrian king [Sargon, in 722 B. C.], Israelites were carried captive to Halah and Gozan, which were situated on the Khabur River in Mesopotamia.

Two groups of cuneiform tablets, one in the museum at Berlin, the other in the British Museum, are thought to confirm these statements by the evidence they give that Hebrews who reverenced Jehovah were living in that region.[632] The evidence consists chiefly of a divine name A-u, employed as a component part of proper names just as Jo- and Jeho-, abbreviations of the name of Jehovah, are employed in Hebrew proper names in the Old Testament. Indeed, A-u is the form that Jo- or Jeho- would take, if expressed in Assyrian characters.

The names in question occur in a series of documents which record the transfer of slaves. If the men in question were Hebrews they would seem to have been interested in the business of buying and selling slaves. The documents are much alike. It will suffice to translate one of them:

The significant name here is Aushezib, meaning, “Au saves.” If Au is a translation of Jeho-, the name, in its entirety, would be a translation of one of the Hebrew forms of the name Joshua. Other names, into which the name of the god Au enters, appear sometimes in the body of a contract and sometimes among the witnesses. They are ^ilA-u-salim, “the god Au gives peace”; A-u-iddina, “Au gives,” equivalent to the Hebrew Jonathan; A-u-akhiddin, “Au has increased the brothers”; A-u-daninani, “Au is our mighty-one”; A-u-e-ballitani, “O Au, make us live”; ^ilA-u-dân(?)-ilani, “Au is judge of the gods”; A-u-sabi, “Au satisfies.”[633]

The tablets were written at Kannu, the Canneh of Ezek. 27:23, which was near Haran in Mesopotamia. One text states that if the seller of the slave ever brings legal action, he shall pay ten silver manas and one gold mana “at the sanctuary of the god A-u, who dwells in Kannu.” If the god A-u be really the Hebrew Jehovah, the captives from Samaria and Galilee had built for him a temple in Kannu, as the Jews at Elephantine afterward did on the island in the Nile. (See p. 387, f.)

The documents in which these names occur appear to be dated between 666 and 606 B. C. They are dated according to the Assyrian method of dating, which shows that they were written under the Assyrian monarchy, but the eponyms in which they are dated are not found in the extant portions of the Assyrian Eponymlist. They were therefore written after the year 666.[634] This fixes the dates of these documents in the seventh century—the century after Tiglath-pileser IV and Sargon transported to this region parts of the ten “lost tribes,” and, if A-u really is a form of the name Jehovah, these tablets afford us a little glimpse of some of these Hebrews in exile.

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES