It is an unmistakable feature of the earlier Jewish history, this inspired reverence for sacred localities, such as Mizpah, Bethel, etc., where the people came " to inquire of the Lord," before the building of the temple and the full prophetic era. So, too, some kinds of divination practised among the surrounding nations are clearly alluded to. They are not charged as groundless imposture, though by no means approved as reverent, or true in the highest sense. The Egyptian Magi, the Chaldean Haruspices, are not spoken of as conscious cheats, though baffled by a diviner art. The heathen Balaam is presented as a true prophet, with a real unearthly afflatus. Although an evil man, he was permitted to see the star rising out of Jacob, and the scepter proceeding from Israel,--the far-off glory of the latter day.

Aside, however, from their actual credibility, or their theoretical rationality, the ancient oracles present to us a subject of deep and curious interest. Their long dominion over the human mind, the influence they have had in the course of human events, give them a strong claim to our study. They were very ancient. They belong to the very earliest migrations of the race. The language used by Cain, Gen. iv, 14, shows the feeling men had in leaving the old homeland, notwithstanding the new migratory impulse which had taken possession of them since the supernatural events at Babel. They were driven forth into the "wide, wide world," then all unknown, and full of all imagined dangers. Into boundless space they went, across the arid desert, or through the dense and pathless wilds, or venturing upon the stormy seas. Impious as they had shown themselves, yet, in view of the old associations, it was like "going out from the presence of the Lord," from the land and sky where dwelt the ancestral Deity. Hence the mind was ever intent upon methods by which, as was supposed, they might carry something of that presence with them. Thus it was that in the Mediterranean stream of migration, oracles, "mysteries" (teletai, or secret rites connected with some supposed mysterious knowledge), were among the first things that show themselves in the very dawning of history.

The oracle of Dodona belongs to this early mythical period.

It must have been of Pelasgian, that is, of Javanic origin, and its great antiquity running far up into the ante-Homeric times, furnishes no slight proof that in this name there is preserved the Dodan, or Dodanim, of Gen. x, 4: “And the sons of Javan (Ion) were Elisha (Hellas), and Tarshish, and Kittim (Macedonia), and Dodanim." The last has a plural termination, but, like others in this genealogical table, is representative of one who was the founder of a race, clan, or settlement, named after him. It may be noted here that Javan, Yawan (Iwan, Ion) has ever been the name by which Greece was known to the Shemitic nations, although the Arabians, in later times, called it Roum from the second or Græco-Roman Empire. As authority for regarding Kittim as Macedonia, see 1 Maccabees i, 1, and viii, 5. By almost universal consent, Tirash is held to be synonymous with Thrace. The mythical Greek accounts of Ion, Hellas, Dorus, Æolus, etc., are a confounding of chronologies and genealogies, a contradictory mingling of the Javanic and Pelasgian with later periods.

The Dodanim settled Dodona, Western Greece, called afterward Epirus, or the Continent, the mainland, as distinguished from the Western or Ionian isles that lay near it. For Elisha and Kittim, see also Ezek. xxvii, 6. Tarshish, or the sons of Tarshish, went farther on, and made the beginning of settlements in Spain, or near the Pillars of Hercules (Ezek. xxvii, 12). Hence it became a name for any distant land, and "ships of Tarshish" meant ships that went very long voyages, such as Phoenician sailors and traders made in very early times, even to the Atlantic, and far into it, north and south. So those that Solomon and Hiram sent were called "ships of Tarshish," though sailing in a different direction. It was very much as we now speak, or used to speak a few years ago, before Suez Canals and Pacific Railroads, of China ships and East Indiamen. There are some grounds, too, for supposing that, in early times, there was the idea of an Eastern Tarshish as well as a Western; just as now we use the names East and West Indies. The thought of the earth's sphericity, and of the remote East and West being very near to each other, is not wholly modern. Aris

totle was very familiar with it, and besides giving a very clear and cogent argument, containing most of the positions popularly presented in our school-books,--such as the elevation or depression of stars, phenomena of sailing vessels, etc., he speaks of a belief prevailing that the Pillars of Hercules were not far from India (see Aristotle, De Colo, Lib. II, Sec. xiv, 15). As held by the Tyrian sailors, who were acquainted with both regions thus called Tarshish from their similar remoteness, it may have been an early belief, which become still more current in Aristotle's day. We have elsewhere given the phenomenal evidences of the earth's roundness, as they must have struck thoughtful observers in the earliest times. Ancient Astronomy, Bib. Rep. 1849.

"By these," continues the account in Genesis (x, 5), “ were divided the isles of the nations, each according to their families" (tribes or clans). Hence that frequent scriptural name, ISLES. It was used for all the Western Mediterranean country; because Greece, Italy, Spain, with their numerous bays, peninsulas, and indented coasts, presented that appearance to the early Tyrian voyagers, as well as the islands proper, such as Cyprus, Crete, Euboea, with the numerous Cyclades, etc. It was figured to the early imagination very much as the Northern portion of the American continent now appears in those imperfect maps which leave blanks in the continuity of coasts. The Mediterranean regions became, doubtless, better known afterwards; but the early impression had given the geographical name, which was still retained. Hence arose a division of the known world, generally, into two great parts: The Earth (aretz), that is, the land or mainland, the Continent, on the one hand, and the Isles of the Sea on the other. It is not found in Homer, or in any early Greek writing, because it would necessarily be a view peculiar to the Asiatics, as presenting itself from their standpoint. There is a good example of it in the language used, Esther x, 1, setting forth the Persian Edict: "King Ahasuerus" (Xerxes), it is said, "laid a tribute upon the earth (the land or mainland) and upon the Isles of the Sea." It was the Persian as well as the Hebrew manner of speaking, and, in the swelling style of the Oriental monarch, was

regarded as including the whole oikoumené, or habitable world, as the Roman Empire came afterwards in like manner to be called. This ancient dual division of the world is most clearly and sublimely expressed, Ps. xcvii, 1,

Jehovah reigns; let Earth rejoice,

Let the many Isles be glad.

The dual idea is also well exemplified in other passages, such as Isaiah xli, 5: "The Isles saw and were afraid; the ends of the earth (the remote countries of the Asiatic continent, such as the land of Sinim, or China) were in terror;" Isaiah xlii, 4: "Until he set judgment in the Earth, and the Isles shall wait for his law." Compare also Isaiah lxvi, 9: "For the Isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish to bring thy sons from afar ;" Isaiah xl, 15: “He taketh up the isles (the vast unknown Western regions) as a mite (dak) or very little thing;" Ps. lxii, 11: Tarshish and the Isles; Zeph. ii, 11 (the same comparison as in Ps. xcvii, 1, Isaiah xlii, 4): "He shall make lean all the gods of the Earth and there shall bow down to him all the Isles of the nations;" Iyyai haggoyim, as in Gen. x, 5.

The old name, and the one afterwards retained by the later Greeks, for all these early pioneers, was Pelasgi,-the earlier form, probably, Pelaxi or Pelagsi. The failure of every attempt to get any meaning for this from any of the Hellenic dialects, is proof of its foreign origin. The derivation of it from the Hebrew (Palag or Phalag) was once thought to stand on a good foundation, but has been somewhat contemptuously rejected, in certain quarters, as unscholarly. Such a decision, however, should not be allowed to bar out all examination of its claims. It may have as much in its favor as the derivation of Strabo and Ælian, quoted by Bochart, and sustained by some modern authorities, which makes it from pelargos, a stork, or that of Donaldson in his Cratylus (sec. 95), which makes it the same phonetically, and the same in meaning, with Pelops. Palag, or Pelag, certainly seems to have more phonetic resemblance to Pelasg than either of these (the introduction of the letter s being quite in harmony with such forms as μoy for μy, or the metathesis σx for 5 y5, for и or y), but this is not

conclusive; since such resemblance is sometimes merely accidental, and words may be closely allied etymologically that have very little of such outward similarity, or have lost nearly all traces of what they may have once possessed. A better argument is derived from the clear and most suitable meaning which the Shemitic origin would give it, especially as connected with what may be supposed to have been the ground and source of its first application. The great objection to this etymology has arisen from its seeming to favor the hypothesis that the Pelasgian, or early Greek language (which must have been very nearly the same) was derived from the Shemitic. This certainly was not the case. The sons of Javan had a very different tongue from the very commencement of their migrations, although it is also true that a great many roots in Greek (whether from later introduction or any other cause) are capable of being identified with Hebrew or Phoenician. In aid of this objection has been the kindred idea that the name must have been one given by the Pelasgi to themselves, or first assigned to them by the later Greeks. In defense of this latter supposition, or rather in taking it for granted, Donaldson maintains (see Cratylus 95 and note)" that the name given to the foreigners by the Greeks who spoke about them would, more probably, be a term significant in their own language, than a foreign word which conveyed no meaning to those who used it." The first fault in this argument is the regarding of the Pelasgi as foreigners to "the Greeks who spoke about them." They were rather aborigines, or prior settlers of the same original race, driven on by a later wave of migration. Equally controversible, to say the least, is the position that the name could not have been a foreign one, or that it must have been given by the Pelasgi, or Javanites, to themselves. Only admit the naturalness of the contrary supposition and the case becomes clear. Whatever may have been the cause (and we do not think that philology will ever find a more probable one than that assigned Gen. xi, 7-9), the sons of Javan carried with them a language both radically and structurally very different from the Shemitic, though closely related to that of another tribe of wanderers who, in this early period of univer