“Una estatua de San Josef, que por su corpulencia no se podia sacar oculta la extrajo un catolico llamado Josef Martin de Medina, colocado sobre un caballo à imitacion de una persona que lo montaba; la afianzó bien, la embozó con una capa i la cubrió con una montera. Otro montado à la gurupa ayudaba à sostener al Santo, i agregandose algunos combidados para mayor confusion i disimulo salieron por la calle real sin ser descubiertos.”
Ayala, Hist. de Gibraltar.
C.
I suspect the apes tempted Mr. Carter to jump to the conclusion that Carteia was the Tarshish of Sacred History. Nevertheless, few places have furnished more food for conjecture than this famed city: some antiquaries, indeed, not content with Tarshish as a mere port, or even country, maintaining that the vast continent of Africa was so called; whilst others, differing toto cœlo, imagine that the word implies the wide or open ocean!
In spite of the great authorities arrayed against the vulgar opinion, that Tarshish is the self-same city as that situated on the southern coast of Asia Minor, and known in after ages as Tarsus, I cannot but subscribe to it. The difference in character between the Hebrew and Greek languages may, not unreasonably I think, be supposed to have led to the change in the mode of spelling and pronouncing the name of the place; (which in point of fact is not greater than between Dover and Douvres,) for most Jews of the present day would still pronounce Tarsus, Tarshish; whilst modern Greeks would as certainly call Tarshish, Tarsis.
That both were ports of the Mediterranean sea will hardly, I think, admit of dispute; since Jonah[242] embarked at Joppa (Jaffa,) to proceed to Tarshish; and Tarsus was the birth-place of St. Paul,[243] and must have been situated on the coast, but a short distance to the northward of Antioch.
The chief difficulty in determining what and where Tarshish was, arises from a discrepancy in the two accounts given of the building of Jehosaphat’s fleet, in the Books of Kings and Chronicles: the first stating, that the King of Judea “made ships of Tarshish to go to Ophir for gold,”[244] which ships were destroyed at Ezion Geber on the Red Sea; the latter, mentioning that the ships were built at Ezion Geber to “go to Tarshish.”[245]
Josephus makes the matter still more perplexing by saying, that “these ships were built to sail to Pontus, and the traffic cities of Thrace,” but were destroyed from being so unwieldy, without mentioning where they were either built or destroyed; thus differing from the account in Kings, which says they were made to go to Ophir, and, by implication, from the account in the Book of Chronicles, which states that they were made on the shores of the Red Sea; since vessels to trade with Pontus and Thrace would certainly have been built at the ports of Syria.
Now it is quite evident, that two of these three accounts must be incorrect; and it is more natural to conclude that the mistake originated in careless writing than from ignorance; since, little as the Jews (being neither sailors nor travellers) may be supposed to have known of foreign countries, they could not, even with their limited knowledge of geography, have imagined that a fleet sailing from Tyre, in the Mediterranean, was destined to the same country as another fleet built on the shores of the Red Sea. And, if they were not destined to the same country, the two places to which they were proceeding would certainly have been distinguished by different names.
It is not, I think, unwarrantable therefore to suppose, that the Hebrew writers, in alluding to a fleet which all accounts agree was destroyed at the very port where it was built, may (supposing always our translations to be perfectly correct,) have fallen into a mistake in stating the destination of that fleet, and hence that, in the Book of Chronicles, Tarshish has been written for Ophir. This appears the more likely when we bear in mind that the Jews, after the destruction of Jehosaphat’s fleet, do not appear to have ever again engaged in any naval enterprises, and consequently were careless, or had no opportunity, of correcting this mistake in their histories. In support of this supposition, it may be farther observed that, throughout the Scriptures, wherever the commodities brought by the fleets from Tarshish and Ophir are mentioned, the former is stated to have come laden with the productions of Europe and Northern Africa; whilst the latter brought only gold and precious stones, and algum trees.