In the later days of the Jewish monarchy there was a library at Jerusalem similar to those of Assyria and Babylonia, and we hear of the scribes belonging to it in the days of Hezekiah re-editing the Proverbs of Solomon (Prov. xxv. 1). There are indications that they were as careful and honest in their work as the scribes of Assyria whose example they probably followed. Thus the names of Chedor-laomer and his allies are preserved with singular correctness, as well as the forms of two geographical names which seem to imply translation from a cuneiform original.[142] So, again, the Aramaic inscriptions of a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III. found at Sinjerli, north of the Gulf of Antioch, show that in one case at least the spelling which we find in the books of Kings has remained unchanged since the eighth century B.C. As in the books of Kings, so at Sinjerli, the Assyrian name Tukulti-Pal-Esarra is incorrectly written Tiglath-pileser, with _g_ instead of _k_, and even the country over which he ruled is in both cases written _plene_ (with the symbol of the vowel _u_). On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are many clear and unmistakable corruptions of the text. In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis itself the name of the city Larsa has been transformed into Ellasar;[143] elsewhere glosses have been received into the text, while there are whole passages which are either ungrammatical or unmeaning as they now stand. Ancient authors, whether Hebrew or otherwise, did not write nonsense; and if the natural rendering of a passage does not make sense, we may feel quite sure that it is corrupt. The historian of the Hebrews, then, is bound to treat his authorities as the Greek historian would treat Herodotos or Thucydides or any other writer on behalf of whose character and age there is a long line of external testimony. The results of the ‘literary analysis’ may be left to the philologist, as well as the conjectures and theories that have been substituted by scholars of the nineteenth century for early Israelitish history. They have vanished like bubbles wherever they have been tested by the archæological evidence, which, on the other hand, has vindicated the substantial truthfulness of those Old Testament statements which had been scornfully thrown aside.