“But how huge does this difficulty become, if, instead of taking the excessively cramped area of 1652 acres, less than three square miles, for such a camp as this, we take the more reasonable allowance of Scott, who says, ‘this encampment is computed to have formed a moveable city of twelve miles square, that is, about the size of London itself,’—as it well might be, considering that the population was as large as that of London, and that in the Hebrew tents there were no first, second, third, and fourth stories, no crowded garrets and underground cellars. In that case the offal of these sacrifices would have had to be carried by Aaron himself, or one of his sons, a distance of six miles.... In fact, we have to imagine the priest having himself to carry, on his back, on foot, from St. Paul's to the outskirts of the metropolis, the ‘skin, and flesh, and head, and legs, and inwards, and dung, even the whole bullock’.... This supposition involves, of course, an absurdity. But it is our duty to look plain facts in the face”—(Part i. pp. 38-40).
We agree with Dr. Colenso that this is a “huge difficulty”, and that the duties of the priest, as described by him, involve a manifest absurdity. But we contend that the duties of the priest, as described by him, are not to be found in the Pentateuch; that all the circumstances which constitute the difficulty and the absurdity are simply additions of his own. This is indeed a serious charge against a writer who represents himself to the public as an earnest and conscientious searcher after truth. But we hope to satisfy our readers that it is a plain and obvious fact; and it is our duty, as Dr. Colenso truly tells us, “to look plain facts in the face”.
It is evident that the whole weight of the objection consists in this: that, according to the sacred narrative, the priest is commanded, first, to carry the bullock himself; secondly, to carry it on his back; thirdly, in doing so, to go on foot. Now there is not the faintest insinuation in any text Dr. Colenso has produced, nor, we may add, in any text the Pentateuch contains, that the priest should go on foot, or that he should carry the bullock on his back. These two ideas are to be found only in the fanciful and rather irreverent gloss of Dr. Colenso.
Neither is it commanded in the sacred text that the priest should himself carry the bullock out of the camp. Even in the English translation there is nothing to imply that he might not, for this duty, employ the service of his attendant Levites. It is said, indeed, “he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp”. But by the common use of language we may impute to a person, as his own, the act which he does by the agency of another. Thus a minister of state is said to write a letter, when the letter is written at his direction by his secretary. In the Fourth Book of Kings it is recorded of Nabuchodonosor that “he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the valiant men of the army, to the number of ten thousand, into captivity:... and the judges of the land he carried into captivity from Jerusalem into Babylon. And all the strong men, seven thousand, and the artificers and the smiths a thousand”, etc.—(IV. Kings, xxiv. 14-16). No one dreams of any difficulty in a sentence like this. Yet, if we admit the Colenso system of interpretation, the difficulty is insuperable, because the meaning of the sentence is, that Nabuchodonosor himself carried that immense multitude on his back from Jerusalem to Babylon.
If we now turn to the Hebrew text we shall find that it is still less favourable to Dr. Colenso and his “huge difficulty”. The word והוציא (vehotzi), which is there used, literally means and he shall cause [it] to go forth, that is to say, he shall have it removed. This will be at once admitted by every biblical scholar, and can be made intelligible without much difficulty to the [pg 374] general reader. In the Hebrew language there are several forms of the same verb, sometimes called conjugations, each of which has a meaning peculiar to itself. The primitive form is kal; and the hiphil form “denotes the causing or permitting of the action, signified by the primitive kal”.[5] For example: קדש (kadash) in kal signifies to be holy; in hiphil, to cause to be holy, to sanctify; נטה (natah) in kal means to bow; in hiphil, to cause to bow, to bend. Now, in the passage quoted by Dr. Colenso the word והוציא is the hiphil form of יצא (yatza), to go forth; it therefore means literally to cause to go forth.[6] We need scarcely remark that the priest would comply with this injunction whether he himself in person removed the bullock, or whether he employed the Levites to do it; whether he carried it on his back, according to the ridiculous paraphrase of Dr. Colenso, or removed it in wagons provided for the purpose.
And now that our paper approaches to a close, it may be asked what is the result of our labours, and what has been gained to the cause of truth by all the minute and tedious details through which we have conducted our readers? It seems to us that we have directly answered two of Dr. Colenso's arguments, and that we have moreover established indirectly a strong presumption against all the rest. Let us put a case to our readers. A jeweller exhibits for sale a string of pearls. He demands a very high price, but he pledges his word of honour that the pearls are of the rarest quality and of the highest excellence. A casual passer-by is attracted by the glittering gems. He enters the shop; he listens with eager credulity to the earnest protestations of the merchant; but he hesitates when the price is named. At this critical moment a friend arrives, who is happily somewhat versed in jewellery. He selects one or two pearls from the string, and after a brief inspection clearly shows, not merely that the price is far beyond their value, but that they are not pearls at all. What would be thought of the merchant who had offered them for sale? Who would frequent his shop? Who would believe [pg 375] the other pearls to be genuine on the strength of his protestations? It may be indeed that he is not a swindler; but if he is an honest man, he is certainly a very indifferent judge of his business.
Now what this jeweller is in a matter of commerce, such, as it seems to us, has Dr. Colenso been proved to be in a matter of infinitely greater moment. He comes before the world with the prestige of a great name and of a high position. He earnestly announces that he has made a great discovery, and that he is forced by his conscience to speak out his mind. He offers to the public an attractive array of brilliant and plausible arguments; and in return he asks us to surrender the inestimable treasure of Christian faith. At first we are bewildered and perplexed by the novelty and variety of his arguments; but after a little we summon up courage; we select two or three from the number, and these we submit to a minute and careful analysis. We find that they are miserably defective and utterly inconclusive. Facts are misrepresented, the meaning of language is perverted, the principles of sound reasoning are disregarded. May we not then fairly infer that Dr. Colenso's earnest protestations of sincerity and good intention afford a very insufficient guarantee for the accuracy of his statements and the stability of his arguments? We do not say that he is dishonest; but we do say that he has proved himself a very incompetent authority.
Blessed Thaddeus M'Carthy.
[In an article of the Record for April (page 312), we briefly referred to a Bishop of Cloyne and Cork who is venerated as blessed, in Ivrea, a town of Piedmont. In conformity with the few fragments preserved in the archives of Ivrea and elsewhere regarding him, we adopted the opinion that his name, according to modern orthography, should be rendered Thaddeus Maher. Since the publication of the article just mentioned, a paper containing much valuable matter has been communicated to us through the great kindness of the Very Rev. Dr. M'Carthy, the learned Professor of Scripture in Maynooth College, who had prepared it long before the article in the Record was published, and before he could have had any knowledge of our views on this subject. We are anxious to publish every document that we can find on this interesting question, in the hope that by discussing it, light may be thrown on the history of a holy Irish bishop, who is honoured beyond the Alps, but so little known at home, that there is great difficulty in determining his real name. In one of our next numbers we shall return to this subject.]