A Few years ago I was piloting an American lawyer through the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum, and was interested to observe that he used a word about the monuments quite foreign to our usual vocabulary on these occasions. He did not say that the sculptures were “Wonderful” or “Lovely,” but that they were “So static.”
In a different vein of thought, but with the same basis, is the idea, frequently expressed, that archaeologists and others whose faces look towards the past are lacking in bowels of mercies and the humanities generally, because their thoughts are centered upon things stony and dead rather than warm and sentient.
If this is so, it is a danger. Nothing can hurt the contemplation of the lessons and morals of past incidents and past times more than the almost involuntary desire to dismiss everything as “dry as dust.”
I think such a dismissal is an evidence of smallness of mind. The great writers and painters of all ages have recognised in ancient records the wealth of living material ready to hand for treatment on canvas or in song and story. In the Old and New Testaments, for example, the gorgeous colouring, whether of the English language of the Authorised Version, “the well of English undefiled,” or of the incidents and situations justifying its use, are so self-evident to all but the most casual reader, that the volume has been used for quotation and picture more than any other book.
Let us look at a few examples of this :
“All day long to the judgment seat
The crazed provincials drew,
All day long at their ruler’s feet
Howled for the blood of the Jew.
Insurrection with one accord
Banded itself and woke,
And Paul was about to open his mouth,
When Achaia’s Duty spoke :
“Whether the God descend from above,
Or the man ascend upon high,
Whether this maker of tents be Jove,
Or some other deity,
I will be no judge between your gods,
And your godless bickerings,
Lictor, drive them hence with rods.
I care for none of these things.”
Read the whole of the poem, which is called “Gallio’s Song,” and appears in Rudyard Kipling’s “Actions and Reactions,” and you will agree that it certainly does recreate vividly the atmosphere of the incident. Actually large portions of the verses are the identical words of the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. The poet has recognised the interest in the record, and has exhibited it for the delectation of the modern reader.
Similarly, Victor Hugo, in his poem “Moise,” has drawn a noble picture of Moses’ view of the promised land from the top of Pisgah. Byron has multiplied examples in his “Hebrew Melodies” ; and Milton, Shakespeare and Macaulay have frequent indications in their works of their knowledge and appreciation of the inspired text. Macaulay’s “Ladies who deign not on our paths to set their tender feet” is just Deut. 28, 56, while Edmund Spenser’s “Epithalamion” is in parts verbatim “The Song of Solomon.”
So the poets, and every reader should have similar personal recollections to exhibit how notably the Old Testament incidents and texts have appealed to the singers of songs. Why? Because of their living character and fascinating human appeal.
Now take another point of view. More and more during the last hundred years have the stones cried out of the wall, and the beams of timber have answered them. The excavators resurrect the past.
“They call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.”
These scholars are specialists dealing with places rather than incidents, and giving us in their own language their ideas of the places. Now these places may be familiar to the average reader as just simply names (as UR, BETHSHAN, MIGDOL), with the possible vague additional thought that “something happened there once,” whereas the archaeologist, working in Bible lands, is able to present anew the social life, the arts and crafts, of ancient time and place. Isaiah, speaking while Babylon was the strongest power in the world (“the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees, excellency”), prophesied that it should become a naked and hideous waste (Isaiah 13, 19). Layard in 1853 (“Nineveh and Babylon,” p. 484) says in effect, “This is how I find it,” and writes an undoubtedly undesigned parallelism of Isaiah’s words.
The latest description of Abraham’s home town is given in the British Museum handbook to the 1930 temporary exhibition of antiquities from Ur.
Listen to the words of the excavator:
“The ruins which to-day rise from an absolutely dry and barren desert were in the time of Abraham a city of waters with the river Euphrates running past on the west, canals washing the foot of the walls on the east and north sides, and with a branch canal cutting right through the town and dividing it into two main parts, in the north-west of which lies the Sacred Area with its complex of palaces while the southeast part is probably more of a residential character.”
And so that which before was just a name becomes a reality.
The sudden popularity achieved by Woolley’s “Ur of the Chaldees” last year shows that the archaeologist with a journalistic touch and a “news sense” (which this writer undoubtedly possesses) can stimulate an interest in Old Testament times and places by the general reading public.
Certainly not since 1872, when George Smith startled the world with his publication of the Babylonian “Creation Tablets,” have they received such an advertisement, as evidence of which it may be noted that “Punch,” always an accurate barometer of the state of public opinion, actually prints a poem, though not a very good one, on the tragedy underlying the crumpled silver head-band in the death pit of Queen Shub-Ad. (A queen,s grave, many servants, soldiers and animals buried together, having evidently died to accompany their mistress into the unknown future ; the remains of most ladies of the court showing traces of a silver fillet across the skull ; one with no such trace, but the band rolled up and preserved, per-ham in the pocket of the deceased).
Admittedly scholars painters and poets at times make foolish errors in giving the world their opinion on the places and incidents of the ancient texts, but these inaccuracies arise from lack of knowledge, and do not in any sense detract from the value of the records themselves, or of their living character when viewed from the right angle. (G. K. Chesterton was right in principle when he said he never understood the New Testament until he started to read it rather than read about it). This is abundantly clear from a little consideration.
The simplest example is the Christmas card and nursery picture idea of angels with wings (derived from the German, according to H. G. Wells) which is universally held to be accurate, though no one has ever stopped to enquire how their beautiful flowing robes are put on over those wings! Now, from the proper point of view, the idea of angels without wings is not incongruous at all. The records actually show that those messengers were frequently mistaken for men : in fact, there is nothing to suggest otherwise in very many of the incidents.
Further examples come to mind, and two may be cited as a matter of interest, one slight and amusing, the other serious.
The first is Byron’s reference to Daniel’s age in the popular poem about Belshazzar’s feast and the writing on the wall:
“A captive in the land,
A stranger and a youth,
He heard the king’s command,
He read the writing’s truth.”
When it is remembered that the child Daniel, referred to in the first two chapters of that book, was a witness of the whole of the political history of the Babylonian Empire from the first years of Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 604) to the overthrow by the Persians (B.C. 538) it will be realised that he must have been anything o’er seventy years of age at the time that he interpreted the words mene tekel peres.
The other, a clumsy academic bungle, is one of the many made by the famous critic Wellhausen in his book on the composition of the Hexateuch (3rd edition, Berlin, 1899, p. 312) where he says, speaking of the chapter in Genesis about Amraphel, Chedorlaomer, and the four kings against five (Gen. 14) :
“That at the time of Abraham four kings from the Persian Gulf made a raid as far as the peninsula of Sinai ; that they on that occasion surprised and captured five city princes who reigned in the Dead Sea ; that finally Abraham, at the head of 318 servants, fell upon the departing victors, and recaptured what they had robbed these are simply impossibilities.”
Poor old Wellhausen! Within very few months of the publication of that statement the Museums of his own and other Western European countries were producing masses of evidence demonstrating completely the fallacy of his contention, and illustrating the desirability of keeping abreast of knowledge and discovery on these matters, so that the ancient texts may be given their proper setting in the framework of modern knowledge.
The condemnatory attitude towards the Old Testament is not so evident in the writings of the leading archaeologists as it was a generation ago, and whereas at the time of the first attempts to read the Babylonian writing people like Sir G. Cornewall Lewis sneered and called the cuneiform inscriptions “patterns” and “ornamental work,” now the leader writer in the “Times” (Dec. 23, 1930) is quite prepared to agree “beyond all doubt that four hundred years before the Moabite stone” alphabetical writing was in existence, etc., etc.
This keeping abreast of knowledge and discovery is of course practically impossible of attainment (as anyone who has taken the “Times Literary Supplement” for a few weeks will know from bitter experience) and bearing in mind the ancient truth :
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
Many have to realise their dependence upon others for information. There is no harm in this provided a proper judgment is exercised as to whether any argument adduced is based upon the evidence; and of course for the purposes of the present discussion the value of the work of the specialist lies in the contribution of fresh facts, as well as the additional and helpful light thrown upon much that may be obscure to the ordinary citizen, with no library at his elbow and little leisure for research.
By this additional light much which may have appeared “so static” revives, the dry bones live, and the new facts may be utilised for specific purposes.
“While poring antiquarians search the ground
Upturned with curious pains, the bard, a seer.
Takes fire. The men that have been, reappear,
Romans, for travail girt, for business gowned.”
A tiny instance of the great benefit of the smallest ray of new light may serve to illustrate this. Reading Genesis 36, 24, it may be wondered why the name of a man who found some mules while minding his father,s donkeys, should be perpetuated in the text, but when it is found that the land was Mount Seir, that the region is volcanic in character, and that the correct translation is “this was that Anah that found the hot springs in the wilderness,” the achievement becomes noteworthy.
Enough has been said to indicate that the dismissal of those writings as having no living character is a mistaken and perhaps somewhat unintelligent action. Admittedly the matters dealt with are “long ago and far away,” and the only tangible evidences are generally bricks or stones ; but it must be remembered that glass, paper, and rubber were not available to those times, and even had they been, would have perished along with the silver, wool and wood which assisted the ancient craftsman to beautify the dwellings, and to decorate the persons of the elite of that generation.
The reader should let these considerations have their proper weight. Shakespeare, in deploring the inadequacy of his language to draw the foulness of the picture, makes his Prologue say :
“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth,
For, tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings”
and so, reading about the incident of Achan at the siege of Ai (“and when I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment”) the intelligent student will appreciate that even at that early date, Babylon, as the arbiter of fashion, was sending out to foreign centers the products of its skill, one of which, recognizable by a common and uncultured man as “a good thing,” was a robe of excellent workmanship (perhaps even similar to “the four flounced cloaks for the Hebrew sergeants, received from Ibni-Adad the master workman” referred to in a Babylonian tablet found in 1915 on the site of Larsa, the Ellasar of Gen. 14, 1), to be coveted and taken and hidden for the moment from the eyes of others.
And so, reading of the healing of Naaman’s leprosy (“Surely he will strike his hand over the place”), will the mind’s eye visualize the expectation of the Syrian captain for the elaborate ceremony of magic ; the peeping, the muttering, the incantation, the mystic passes, the “waving up and down of the hands” (the correct translation of the passage); and his disappointment at not being the center of the stage in a spectacular effect that would have been the talk of the year by the camp fires of “Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One