Our author in his reply quotes this note, and italicizes the passages as they are printed here. I am glad that he has done so, for I wish especially to call attention to the connection between the two. He adds that 'an apology is surely due to the readers of the Contemporary Review,' and, as he implies, to himself, 'for this style of criticism,' to which he says that he is not accustomed [133:2].
I am not sorry that this rejoinder has obliged me to rescue from the obscurity of a footnote a fact of real importance in its bearing on the historical character of the fourth Gospel. As for apologizing, I will most certainly apologize, if he wishes it. But I must explain myself first. I am surprised that this demand should be made by the same person who penned certain sentences in Supernatural Religion. I am not a little perplexed to understand what canons of controversial etiquette he would lay down; for, while I have merely accused him, in somewhat blunt language, of great carelessness, he has not scrupled to charge others with 'wilful and deliberate evasion,' with 'unpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of his readers,' with 'a deliberate falsification,' with 'disingenuousness' [134:1] and other grave moral offences of the same kind. Now I have been brought up in the belief that offences of this class are incomparably more heinous than the worst scholarship or the grossest inaccuracy; and I am therefore obliged to ask whether he is not imposing far stricter rules on others than he is prepared to observe himself, when he objects to what I have said. Nevertheless I will apologize; but I cannot do so without reluctance, for he is asking me to withdraw an explanation which seemed to me to place his mode of proceeding in the most favourable light, and to substitute for it another which I should not have ventured to suggest. When I saw in his text the unqualified statement, 'It is admitted that there was no such place,' [134:2] and found in one of his footnotes on the same page a reference to an article by an eminent Hebraist devoted to showing that such a place is mentioned several times in the Talmud, I could draw no other conclusion than that he had not read the article in question, or (as I might have added), having read it, had forgotten its contents. The manner in which references are given elsewhere in this work, as I have shown in my article on the Ignatian Epistles, seemed to justify this inference. His own explanation however is quite different.—
My statement is, that it is admitted that there was no such place as Sychar—I ought to have added, 'except by apologists, who never admit anything'—but I thought that in saying, 'and apologetic ingenuity is severely taxed to explain the difficulty,' I had sufficiently excepted apologists, and indicated that many assertions and conjectures are advanced by them for that purpose.
Certainly this qualifying sentence needed to be added; for no reader could have supposed that the author intended his broad statement to be understood with this all-important reservation. Unfortunately however this explanation is not confined to 'apologists.' As I pointed out, it is adopted by M. Neubauer also, who (unless I much mistake his position) would altogether disclaim being considered an apologist, but who nevertheless, being an honest man, sets down his honest opinion, without considering whether it will or will not tend to establish the credibility of the Evangelist.
But after all, the really important question for the reader is not what this or that person thinks on this question, but what are the facts. And here I venture to say that, when our author speaks of 'assertions and conjectures' in reference to Delitzsch's article, such language is quite misleading. The points which the Talmudical passages quoted by him establish are these:—
(1) A place called 'Suchar,' or 'Sychar,' is mentioned in the Talmud. Our author speaks of 'some vague references in the Talmud to a somewhat similar, but not identical, name.' But the fact is, that the word [Greek: Suchar], if written in Hebrew letters, would naturally take one or other of the two forms which we find in the Talmud, [Hebrew: Sukh'r] (Suchar) or [Hebrew: Sykh'r] (Sychar). In other words, the transliteration is as exact as it could be. It would no doubt be possible to read the former word 'Socher,' and the latter 'Sicher,' because the vowels are indeterminate within these limits. But so far as identity was possible, we have it here.
(2) The Talmudical passages speak not only of 'Sychar,' but of 'Ayin-Sychar,' i.e., 'the Well of Sychar.'
(3) The 'Well of Sychar' which they mention is in a corn-growing country. This is clear from the incident which leads to the mention of the place in the two principal Talmudical passages where it appears, Baba Kamma 82b, Menachoth 64b. It is there stated that on one occasion, when the lands in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem were laid waste by war, and no one knew whence the two loaves of the Pentecostal offering, the first-fruits of the wheat harvest, could be procured, they were obliged ultimately to bring them from 'the valley of the Well of Sychar.' Now the country which was the scene of the interview with the Samaritan woman is remarkable in this respect—'one mass of corn, unbroken by boundary or hedge'[136:1]—as it is described by a modern traveller; and indeed the prospect before Him suggests to our Lord, as we may well suppose, the image which occurs in the conversation with the disciples immediately following—'Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.' [136:2] It is true that the Talmudical passages do not fix the locality of their 'Ayin-Sychar;' but all the circumstances agree. It was just from such a country as this (neither too near nor too far distant for the notices) that the Pentecostal loaves would be likely to be procured in such an emergency.
The reader will draw his own conclusions. He will judge for himself whether the unqualified statement, 'It is admitted that there was no such place as Sychar,' is or is not misleading. He will form his own opinion whether a writer, who deliberately ignores these facts, because they are brought forward by 'apologists who never admit anything,' is likely to form an impartial judgment.
The identification of Sychar with Askar, to which recent opinion has been tending, is a question of less importance. Notwithstanding the difficulty respecting the initial Ain in the latter word, an identification which has commended itself to Oriental scholars like Ewald and Delitzsch and Neubauer can hardly be pronounced impossible. I venture to suggest that the initial Ain of 'Askar' may be explained by supposing the word to be a contraction for Ayin-Sychar, the 'Well of Sychar.' This corruption of the original name into a genuine Arabic word would furnish another example of a process which is common where one language is superposed upon another, e.g., Charter-house for Chartreuse.