To go through the whole of the miracles in the Old Testament and to attempt to shew how in almost every case the miraculous part of the story may have crept in without intention to deceive, would be a task far above my powers; and it would require a book not a letter. If you were to study with care the articles in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ on the books of the Old Testament they would give you a good deal of light on this subject. But the problem is complicated by the fact that the causes that originated the miraculous element are not always the same. For example the seven miracles of Elijah and the fourteen miracles of Elisha (the latter number being exactly the double of the former in order to fulfil the prayer of Elisha for a “twofold” portion of the spirit of his master) cannot be explained in the same way as the miracles of the Wanderings or as those in the life of Samson. The eminent Hebraist to whom we are indebted for the Articles above-mentioned would confer on all students of the Bible a very great benefit, if he would give us a separate treatise on the Old Testament miracles. Meantime I must content myself with shewing how some miracles, of what I may call a “grotesque” kind, may be explained as the mere result of misunderstood names. You must be familiar with this kind of explanation, I think, in ancient history, and even in modern English history, although you have never thought of applying it to the Bible. Perhaps you have read in Mr. Isaac Taylor’s _Words and Places_ how the sexton in Leighton Buzzard used to show the eagle of the lectern as the identical _buzzard_ from which the place derived its name—little guessing that “Buzzard” is a mere corruption of “Beaudésert;” and the porter at Warwick Castle, when he shows you the bones of the “dun cow” slain by Guy of Warwick, hands down a similar erroneous tradition probably derived from a misunderstanding of “dun.”[10] A far more famous instance connects itself with the Phœnician name of “Bosra,” belonging to the citadel of Carthage. This name meant, in the Phœnician language, “citadel;” but the Greeks confused it with the Greek word “Bursa,” a “hide;” and then they proceeded to invent a story to explain the name. Queen Dido, they said, had bought for a small price as much ground as she could encompass with a hide; she had cut the hide into thin thongs and thereby purchased the site of a city for a trifle: hence the city received the name of “Hide.” Thus subtilized the Greeks; but it may interest you to know that our own ancestors consciously or unconsciously followed in their footsteps. There is near Sittingbourne a castle called Tong or Thong Castle, situated on a “tongue” of land (Norse, _tunga_) which has given it its name. But tradition has invented or imitated the old Greek story, and has declared that the castle was so-called because the site was bought like Dido’s, a trifling price being given for so much land as could be included in the “thong” made from a bull’s hide.