Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

Ramses the First has also left a record of the treaty of peace that he made with the Hittite king Seplal at the end of the war that he unsuccessfully fought to throw off the yoke of this people. On the north wall of the temple at Karnak, he gives the route of his march and tells of the victories that he won. He did not, however, delineate his final capitulation. This conflict resulted in a treaty of peace which is recorded in this account.

The successor of Ramses the First was Seti the First, and in his day the treaty was broken. According to Seti, it was the Hittites who offended against the covenant, and he also engraved on the walls at Karnak an account of the consequent battle with its result. To bring just a short line from his voluminous record, he acknowledges his own greatness in such an inscription as the following:

“Seti has struck down the Asiatics; he has thrown to the ground the Kheta. He has slain their princes.”

Telling them how he concluded a treaty with the Hittites, to the enhancement of his own glory, Seti’s record concludes with these words:

“He returns home in triumph. He has annihilated the people. He has struck to the ground the Kheta. He has made an end of his adversaries. The enmity of all people is turned into friendship.”

With just this brief reference to the voluminous records to be found in Egyptian archeology, we would be able to establish the triumph of the Bible in the realm of historical accuracy, had we no other sources. The fact of the matter, however, is that the Assyrian and Babylonian accounts of the Hittites are at least as numerous as are the Egyptian.

It may be noted in passing that, although filled with consternation at these marvelous discoveries in Egyptology, the critics were by no means silenced. It would have been better for their later reputation had they graciously accepted their defeat and acknowledged that they were in error. Instead, they rushed into vociferous refutation of the newly discovered Egyptian records. Unfortunately, their denunciations and renewed claims were given wide publicity by being included in the then current edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is to be regretted that this great encyclopedia has often been a tremendous aid to criticism in spreading its errors and fallacies. This in large measure is due to the fact that there is a common reverence for this great work in the mind of the average human. There is a certain class of readers who hold this notable reference work in such great reverence that its authority to them is greater than that of the Word of God. It must be remembered, however, that the encyclopedia of each generation represents only the current thought of that brief period of human experience. Anything that is written by man is subject to later revision or repudiation, as human knowledge increases. So in this great compendium of human wisdom it is unfortunate that much space was given to the famed critic, the Rev. T. K. Cheyne.

This eminent authority was a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. In the above cited article, he treated the statements of the Bible as unhistorical and classified them as pure folklore. Concerning the Biblical references to the Hittites, he used these exact words, “They cannot be taken as of equal authority with the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions!” In dealing with Abraham’s purchase of the burial plot for Sarah, he had a great deal to say in refutation of the possibility of any accuracy in the record. At the conclusion of his criticism he stated, “How meager the tradition respecting the Hittites was in the time of the great Elohistic narrator, is shown by the picture of Hittite life in this reference.”

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.