Bible -- Antiquities; Bible. Old Testament -- Evidences, authority, etc.
Dr. Cheyne fell into the great error of claiming that the Hittites were
only warriors. Because they are thus shown on the walls of Karnak, he
concluded that they were mercenary troops who never entered into
business transactions. In his article on the Canaanites in this above
cited encyclopedia, he goes so far as to say, “The Hittites seem to have
been included among the Canaanites by mistake. Historical evidence
proves convincingly that they dwelt beyond the borders of Canaan.” These
conclusions were also advocated by his great colleague and collaborator,
Prof. W. H. Newman.
Dr. Newman was also a Fellow of Balliol College at Oxford and is the
author of the once famous “History of the Hebrew Monarchy.” In all of
this work he maintained that the Hittite references in the Old Testament
were unqualifiedly unhistorical. They prove beyond question, according
to the author, that the writers of the Old Testament were totally
unacquainted with the times of which they wrote. His conclusion was that
the Old Testament was written many centuries after the events which it
purports to depict. He stated with finality, along with Dr. Cheyne, that
the Hittite people were limited to Syria and had no place in Palestine.
Thus the story of Abraham buying territory from them at Hebron is
unquestionably mythological.
These ardent advocates of a collapsing theory should have waited! It was
not long after these utterances were printed that Prof. Sayce deciphered
certain of the Assyrian records of Tiglath-pileser. These showed that in
the reign of this monarch, as late as 1130 B. C., _the Hittites were
still in command of all the territory from the Euphrates to Lebanon_!
Again the Word of God was vindicated, when the monuments, as they were
deciphered, yielded the interesting information that the Hittites were
notable colonizers. They also covered all the ancient world as
merchants, and their caravans and trade-routes were the earliest to be
established. They are in Assyrian annals depicted as artisans and
artists. Although all of them could fight when war was inevitable, they
had a standing army for the casual and necessary protection of the
realm. Dr. Newman was unfortunate also in choosing the time in which he
charged the Bible with error. At a most unfortunate period for criticism
in the history of archeology he questioned the details of Hittite
prowess in the incidental references of the Scripture. As though the
scientists of that day were in league with the Lord, they laid bare in
site after site a refutation of all the critics maintained!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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