1. On the Mediterranean Shore. — M. Brugsch has re- ! cently discovered a new crossing-place for the Israelites on their passage out of Egypt, which, on account both of the fame of the author and his confident announce- ment, has attracted no little attention (L'Exode et les Monuments Egyptians: Discours prononce a l'occasion du Congres International d'Orientalistes a Londres, par Henri Brugsch-Bey, dele'gue de son Altesse Ismael Premier, le Khedive d'Egypte ; accompagne d'une carte [Leipsic, J.CHinrichs, 1872, 8vo |,p.36). He conceives thai they did nol cross the Red Sea at all. hut a noted the Sirbonian Bog of antiquity, the modern Sabdket Bardawal -a shallow lake along tin- Mediter- ranean, on the confines of Egy pi towards Palestine, lie thinks he has found all the names of the Biblical ac- count in the Egyptian papyri, and that he has succeed- ed in identifying them with modern localities. Thus (.)u lie sets down as equivalent to Ann. a city, according to him, in the Heroopolitic nome. Pi-beseth or Bubas- tis is, of course, Tell-Bast Goshen he traces, through the hieroglyphical Phacoussa, to the modern Kits or, Facus; and in the Sit limit i.- nome on the north of this he finds mention of l'ithan and Sukkoth, with I'l-ram- Bes, or Rameses, in the same neighborhood. Etham he conjectures to In Khetam, noticed as another of three ancient stations in this latter region of Tanis-Rameses; the remaining one adjoining being Migdol, which, of course, must he the Magdolum of classical writers, and the present Tell es-Semut Baal-Zephon becomes Mount Casius, and Pi-hahiroth is the entrance upon the nar- row sand-beach separating the Mediterranean from the Sirbonian Lake just east of Pelusium. Many of these identifications, which M. Brugsch gives with great brev- ity, and without the detailed authority, the reader might reasonably question, both on the -round of strained ety- mological rest mblance and inadequate historical data for position. I *.iii we prefer to call attention to a few palpable discrepancies with the scriptural narrative,
which seem to put this locality utterly out of the ques- tion, notwithstanding the author's .lain) of their perfect accord. To lie sure, the Hebrews, on this theory, sim- ply threaded their way along a narrow heach till they came to a bar which allowed them an easy crossing- place over the marsh, and M. Brugsch candidly admits
(p. 32), "The miracle, it is true, then ceases to be a miracle; but let us acknowledge, with all sincerity, that Divine Providence always maintains its place and authority." What childlike faith !
In the first place, it certainly was the Red Sea that the Israelites crossed on this occasion. True, the his- tory in Exodus does not explicitly name the body of water, hut the immediate context and other passages of Scripture do so most definitely ami unequivocally i Exod. xv. 4-22; Dent. xi. 1 : Josh. iv. -J.",; xxiv, 6; Psa. cvi, 9; exxxvi, 13, 15, etc.). Josephus distinctly understands it so (\<4«r. ii, 15, 1), and the New-Test writers ;m- equally clear (Acts xii, 36; Heb. xi, 29). Even M. Brugsch has fell himself obliged on his map
to call the Sirl iau Sea Yum Suf, the Hebrew name
exclusively applied to the Arabian Gulf, thus coramit- ting a twofold blunder.
In the next place, the route which this theory selects for the Israelites on setting out is exactly the one « hich they avoided. '-And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. . . . hut ( tod led the people ahont, through the way of the wilderness of the lied Sea" ( Kxod. xiii, 17, 18). Moreover, it makes no proper account of the ab- rupt turn, or rather retrogression, on their way in ordet to leach the sea (Exod. xiv. 2 i.
finally, this view is wholly unsupported by any lo- cal tradition, and requires a displacement of the well- settled positions of Marah, Elim, etc. This latter M. Brugsch locates at "the place which the Egyptian monuments designate by the name of Aalim or Tent- lira ; that is to say. 'the city of fishes,' situated near the Gulf of Suez, in a northerly direction." Moses, how- ever, speaks of no -city" there, much less so large a one as Heroopolis, which M. Brugsch sets down there on his map; hut only of some wells and palms.
This view of the Red-Sea crossing M. Brugsch reiter- ates in his latest work (Gesch. Aegyptens, Leips. 1877), hut "he has not won a single Egyptologist of note to a theory which demands so many conjectures in geogra- phy and such fanciful analogies in philology"! Dr. J. 1'. Thompson, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1877, p. 544).
•.'. At tin "Bitti r Lakes." These are a series of -hal- low ponds of brackish « ater, some of t hem of very con- siderable extent, stretching at intervals from the head of the Gulf of Siii'/. to the Mediterranean. They arc supposed to have formerly constituted a continuous wa- ter connection between those two greal seas, which has since been broken by a change of level, leaving these isolated basins partly salt from the remnant of sea- water. A few geological evidences in support of this theory have been adduced, the most palpable of which is the fact that sea-shells, of the same character with those now thrown up by the Red Sea. may be Been