And the value of the story as an illustration of scientific
history is its familiarity, for no Christian child lives who has not been
brought up on it.
We have all forgotten when we first learned how the Jews came to migrate
to Egypt during the years of the famine, when Joseph had become the
minister of Pharaoh through his acuteness in reading dreams. Also how,
after their settlement in the land of Goshen,--which is the Egyptian
province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham
travelled, leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and which had
been the trade route, or path of least resistance, between Asia and
Africa, probably for ages before the earliest of human traditions,--they
prospered exceedingly. But at length they fell into a species of bondage
which lasted several centuries, during which they multiplied so rapidly
that they finally raised in the Egyptian government a fear of their
domination. Nor, considering subsequent events, was this apprehension
unreasonable. At all events the Egyptian government is represented, as a
measure of self-protection, as proposing to kill male Jewish babies in
order to reduce the Jewish military strength; and it was precisely at this
juncture that Moses was born, Moses, indeed, escaped the fate which
menaced him, but only by a narrow chance, and he was nourished by his
mother in an atmosphere of hate which tinged his whole life, causing him
always to feel to the Egyptians as the slave feels to his master.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25