Sanutus, states that there were three rivers beyond the Jordan, each called Arnon, and two of which fall into the Dead Sea, but he seems to lay little stress upon it, though it is very probable, and will be in favor of Josephus. If it be alleged that in Numbers XXI. v. 13. the Israelites are said to have pitched on the other side of Arnon, the reply is very easy, since the word D of the original is, in the very first verse of the next chapter, translated on this side, and should have been so here. Literally the word signifies adjoining to ford or pass, whether on the one side or the other, and here the error arose probably from a misconception as to the course of the Arnon.

As far, then, as I am able to judge, after a careful examination, the Arnon of Moses must rise in the range of Mount Nebo, probably in the springs of Pisgah; and flowing round the base of this range to the Dead Sea, divide that which was the proper territory of Moab from that of the Amorites. I believe its course is represented nearest to the truth, by the river delineated by D'Anville as flowing through the valley Bagras; and that thus described it will obviate every difficulty relative to it in the sacred writings. One argument more, of some weight, may be urged in favor of this description of it. In the plate given by Reland from the tables of Peutinger, a single river only is described to the east of the Jordan, and this is represented as rising in a mountain to the east of Lake Tiberias, flowing nearly parallel to the Jordan as far south as Jericho, and then falling into the Dead Sea. This river is there called the Heromicas, and as far as the authority of this table goes, it is in favor of what I have said as to the Arnon, except in the name which is here of little consequence, as the Jarmuck of Reland, D'Anville, &c. is a river which falls into the lake of Tiberias. If my conception of the proper territory of Moab be correct, it will follow that Balak, when he sent for Balaam, was not on the south side of the Arnon, as Sir W. D. has assumed; and that Balak certainly was not then on that side of the Arnon, whether its course be such as I have described, or as it is laid down on the maps, would have been found proved by Mr. Bryant himself, if Sir W. had been able to have consulted the original tract; for Mr. B. says: "The place, to which Balaam had his summons, was near Pisgah, Nebo, and Peor, close by Jordan, in the most western part of the country:" (page 84.) and if he was near these he certainly was to the north, and not to the south of the Arnon; for the three are to the north of it. Having so noted where Balak then was, it would have been very difficult for Mr.

1 Numbers xxiii. v. 28. and xxiv. v. 2. Deut. xxiv. v. 1. From which it appears that the Israelites, when in the plain of Shittim, would be seen plainly from Peor; and all Judea from Pisgah, one of the mountains of Nebo.

B. to have anticipated any objection to his statement, and therefore, I presume, he has contented himself without further remark; that it includes a full answer to the objection is easily shown. When it is said that Balak went "to a city of Moab which is in the border of Arnon which is in the utmost coast," to meet Balaam, the return of Balak must have been on the same side of the river from which he set out; it must have been to a place in his own territory, and his territory was therefore the one in which those mountains are situated; and from which, when he went to meet Palaam, if Balaam was coming from Midian, he must have gone, not in a northern, but a southern direction. The first of the two contradictions alleged by Sir W. is therefore founded on an erroneous supposition, and invalid as an objection to the history.

The second contradiction alleged is one of so very little importance, except as it would appear to those who are ignorant of the Hebrew language, that I cannot forbear expressing some surprise that it should have been brought forward. The translators of the bible have been faithful to the original to the best of their knowledge, and their judgment; but it does not follow that in rendering the names of places, of animals, or plants, they were always correct. That they have been so, as far as the knowledge of their age extended, may justly be allowed in general. If they could not go farther, they are not to blame, neither are they, if, believing the Hebrew text correct, and Aram Naharaim undoubtedly to signify Mesopotamia, a country to the east of Palestine, they translated the mountains of the east, consistently with such belief, and with the persuasion that Balaam came from Mesopotamia, of which, though the greater part is to the north of Moab, yet the most southern part, from Bagdad to the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, is nearly due east from Moab. If the investigation of Mr. Bryant has afforded him grounds for the assertion that Balaam came from Midian, is so very indefinite an expression as the mountains of the east sufficient to prove that Balaam did not come from thence? To do so, the signification of the original words must first be proved to be restricted to a particular range of mountains to the east of Moab itself. This is so far from being the case that it was hardly worthy of the learning of Sir W. Drummond to lay any stress on the interpretation of them here; and the less so as in Deut. xXXIII.V. 15. where the same words of the original Dp again occur, the same translators have felt it so inconsistent with the context to interpret them by the expression the mountains of the east, that the interpretation they have given is the ancient mountains. The whole of the passage consists of part of the blessing pronounced by Moses on Joseph, and begins, verse 13., with, "And of Joseph he said, blessed of the lord be his land for the precious things of heaven—and (v. 15.)

for the chief things of the ומראש הררי קדם וממגד גבעות עולם

ANCIENT mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills." Here the sense of the passage, and the genius of Hebrew poetry require that DP, in the former part of the verse, should be so rendered as to accord with the sense of Dy (in the second) which properly signifies the duration of the world. The sense of the portion of the original given above is more accurately this: (let his land be blessed)-from the summit (OR EXCELLENCE) of the ancient mountains, and from the abundant produce of the valleys which are from the beginning of the world. He must be a hardy translator who could here render DTP by the mountains of the east. If then, on the authority of the translators of our bible, the words may signify the ancient mountains, they may signify the same in the speech of Balaam, and then what becomes of the contradiction alleged? Whatever might have been the place from which Balaam came, no such contradiction would follow here. So far then is it from being distinctly stated, except in a translation, that Balaam came from the mountains of the east, that it is at least doubtful whether he intended a reference to any particular mountains. If he did intend any such reference, I fully concur in the opinion of Mr. Bryant as to their situation. And here again I have to remark that, in his tract on the subject, the objection in this respect has also been anticipated in a manner which, after what I have already said, may not be the less convincing. He observes, that "the terms east and west are local and comparative, and are therefore limited to those districts to which they are adapted by the natives. If referred to others, they may be found quite opposite and contradictory. By the mountains of Kiddim, the prophet meant some eastern eminences, which were signified by the word (DTP) east; and which the natives thus distinguished from others in the west.-Balaam might well say that he was brought from the Kiddim, or eastern mountains of Hor or Seir, as they lay in that direction in respect to the Ereb or western. Of these two opposite ridges Josephus gives a very particular account. The one ran from Scythopolis and the north, to the farthest end of the Asphaltite lake, south. Of the eastern he gives the following description, To the ridge there runs another by the river Jordan in an opposite and parallel direction, which borders upon, or bounds, the Arabian city Petra.' We have here a very precise account both of the Ereb, or western mountains, and the Kiddim which ran parallel to the east.-These, therefore, I take to be the mountains to which Balaam refers in Scripture. This may be farther seen in the account given of the people of Kedar. They inhabited a part of this mountainous country, and bordered upon Edom and Teman, and were esteemed an eastern people by those of Canaan. Arise, go up to Kedar, and spoil the men of the east.

(Jer. xlix. v. 27.) The place of their habitation must have had the same reference, and we may be assured that here were mountains by way of distinction called Kiddim, or mountains of the east." (p. 103-6.)

In this passage Mr. Bryant has said enough to destroy that restriction of the meaning of the words the mountains of the east, on which the second contradiction wholly depends; since he has pointed out a mountainous range to which an inhabitant of Midian, as Balaam was, might properly have applied the name, though it were not to the east of Moab. If known by such a name in Midian, surely a Midianite would no more alter the proper name, because he had gone to the north-west, than one who had gone from Norfolk to York would alter Norfolk into Suffolk, because both would to him, when he was at York, be to the south.

If Mr. B.'s argument, which takes the word OTP in a restricted sense, subverts that on which the contradiction is founded; much more so will the adopting of the other sense, of which I have already shown that this word is equally capable, viz. ancient. Its radical sense answers more precisely to that of the English word before, than of any other word that occurs to my recollection; and in this sense I think it is evidently used by Moses in Gen. ii. v. 8. and truly so explained by Onkelos, though not by his translator, who renders rop a principio instead of antea or prius. The English translation, following the Greek, has rendered it eastward, to the injury of the proper sense, which is, "Now the Lord God had before (previously) planted a garden in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed." The original word is from before; and though referring this signification of eastward, which itself is rather forced, to the situation of Eden with respect to that of Moses when he wrote, it is not intolerable; the verse, as here translated, has at least a simple and intelligible meaning.

In its secondary senses, signifies priority as to time or place, and hence it may signify the place of prior settlement or an original colony; and I confess it appears to me to have been used to signify a tract of country so called by the descendants of such a colony, and known by this name (Kedem) not only to Balaam but to Abraham. For when Abraham sent away his sons by Keturah and their children, he is said (Gen. xxv. v. 6.) to have sent them eastward, to the land of Kedem. Had Moses intended nothing more than to the land of the east by the original words, it would have been needless to premise that they went eastward. This has been so perceptible to the translator of the Syriac version into Latin, that for the Syriac word which signifies eastward he

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The Latin version of the Syriac in Walton's Polyglott.

has given in primis as the meaning. A meaning for which Castel affords no authority, and which in this instance appears to me merely an erroneous attempt to correct an error, occasioned by mistaking the real nature of the error which has pervaded all the translations in the Polyglott, and the Paraphrase of Onkelos as well as the English. With these before me, I cannot but be sensible that it may require no trifling apology for venturing to differ from them; which I certainly am not inclined to do unless it appear to be absolutely necessary; and I hope what I have to offer in justification of my dissent from them here, will exempt me from any charge of presumption.

That Op Kedem may here signify a tract of country so called, if any such can be pointed out, will not, I believe, be disputed; neither will it, that in construction it stands as a proper name, and that to avoid tautology it ought to be such. As far as general custom can be an authority, it may be assumed that the names of the descendants of Abraham, whom he sent from Canaan, were given to the tracts in which they settled; and we do find tracts called Midian, Dedan, Ephah, Nebaioth, Kedar, Dumah, Tema, and Kedemah, in the portion of Arabia which borders on Palestine, and that each of these names was the name of some one of those descendants. The reasonable inference is, then, that the portion of Arabia, in which tracts so called were situated, was the land of Kedem to which those descendants of Abraham were sent, and that Midian was a part of it at that time, though the Midian seems afterwards to have been excepted.

The name of Kedem, as that of a tract of country, occurs again in the expression the sons of Kedem, (Judges vi. v. 3.) That the sons of Kedem may signify the people of Kedem, or the Kedemites, needs not to be insisted on; and that Kedem does here signify a particular territory is ascertained by the Syriac and Arabic version, in which Kedem is rendered Recem, that is, Rekem, the Syriac or Arabic name, as it should seem, of Kedem, the Hebrew one, and of the Greek name Petra; for had Rekem been, as Sir W. supposes, the Hebrew name, it would probably have been found here in the Hebrew text. However this be, there can be no doubt that Kedem and Rekem signify tife same, though there might be some as to the origin of the appellation Kedem. But this may be accounted for in a very probable manner from a circumstance mentioned by Michaelis. He says that "the Arabs pride themselves so much in the antiquity of the Amalekites, that they consider not only the descendants of Ishmael, but even those of Joktan, as mere moderns in comparison with the Amalekites; for, in the

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Spicilegium Geographiæ, Heb. Ed. 4to. Gottingen 1769. p. 173.