devotion of the Pharisees attracted the mob; their wild and exonce a ready acceptance with the Jewish people. The outward Absurd as the doctrines of the Chasîdim were, they found at

have no more connexion with Moses, than a Mohammedan with the title of a Christian. The modern Talmudic Jews appear to a follower of Moses, than a Mohammedan could pretend to believer in the traditional law has no more claim to be deemed law, could justly claim the title of orthodox. The truth is, a

Christ.

The modern representatives of the orthodox fol-
lowers of Moses are the Karaite Jews.

The modern representatives of these heretics are
the Talmudic Jews, whose relation to the religion
of Moses is precisely that of the Mohammedans
to the religion of Christ.

travagant legends suited the Oriental taste; and they, by degrees, acquired such influence, that the very priests, who hated them, were eventually compelled to come over to their party.

When the traditionists had acquired a secure footing in Judæa, they began to look out for the tombs of the prophets, that this, their favourite engine of imposture, might not be wanting in Judæa. The two greatest names of the race of Israel were Moses and his brother, the first high priest. The tomb of Moses was declared by the Scriptures themselves to be unknown to any man; that of Aaron, on the other hand, was well known to be on the summit of Mount Hor.

But while the Jews were in exile in Chaldæa, during the seventy years' captivity, great changes had taken place in the countries formerly belonging to Edom and Amalek. While Judæa had been left waste and its cities were empty, the Edomites had entered upon the vacant territory, and occupied nearly the whole southern half of Judæa, extending their encroachments as far north as the city of Hebron, in the south highlands, and that of Beyth-gabra (afterwards Eleutheropolis), in the Shephelah, or lowlands. It is possible that this emigration was compulsory, for at the same time the Nabathæan Arabs (the Ishmaelites of the race of Nebaioth), seized on the greater part of ancient Edom and nearly the whole of ancient Amalek, and founded a powerful kingdom, of which Petra (the ancient Botzrah, also called Sela'), became the capital.

Notwithstanding some modern opinions to the contrary, the ancient kingdom of Edom consisted not only of the long range of mountains to the east of the Wady 'Arabah (which we shall term the Eastern Mount Se'yr), but also of that mountainous range of limestone formation which lies on the north-west of the Arabah, and extends southward to the Jebel Araif-en-Nakah. This western range we shall term the Western Mount Se'yr. After the Nabathæan conquests or encroachments, the Edomites retained only the western Mount Se'yr; and even of this they afterwards appear to have lost some portion. These changes had thrown some obscurity over the geography of Edom and Amalek, when the Jews returned from Babylonia.

The true site of Kadesh (as we shall clearly prove in the sequel), was at a place now called El-Khalesah (the "Exovoa of the Macedonians and Elusa of the Romans), which lies about fifteen miles to the south of the ancient Canaanite border. Mount Hor may be safely identified with Jebel 'Araif-en-Nakah, a lofty conical mountain at the south-west corner of the kingdom of Edom, and between sixty and seventy miles to the south of El-Khalesah. Unfortunately, therefore, for the designs of the

rabbins, the true Mount Hor was in the territory still possessed by the children of Esau, and Kadesh was in that which they had recently acquired.

Of all the people in the universe the race most detested by the Jews were the Idumæans. They were declared by the prophets to be a nation against whom the Lord had a perpetual indignation,—the people of his curse. That part of their territory which was within the ancient limits of Judæa, was called "the wicked border." A pilgrimage to the true Mount Hor would have been to a genuine Jew at once hateful and perilous. This difficulty would have caused ordinary men to hesitate; to the doctors of the traditions it appeared no obstacle whatever. They could easily have discovered Kadesh if they had pleased, and this would have guided them to Mount Hor. Kadesh, it is true, had changed its name (since it belonged to the Idumæans) to Alusa, but the desert around it was still called the desert of Kadesh, and retained this name till the days of Constantine. But they had no wish to discover Mount Hor in Idumæa, and therefore, by one of those bold impostures which any one acquainted with the Talmud will know to have been as familiar to them as the air which they breathed, they decided that Petra, then the capital of the Nabathæans, should and ought to be Kadesh; and that a mountain in the immediate neighbourhood of that city was the true Mount Hor!

It is true that Petra and the pretended Mount Hor were in the centre of the eastern Mount Se'yr, which was the chief portion of ancient Edom. It is equally true (as has before been observed), that the Israelites were forbidden by Jehovah to set a single footstep in Edomite soil; and the king of Edom with a large army watched their march, to prevent such aggression; so that without a miracle, worked by the power of evil, in direct opposition to the will of Jehovah, it was impossible that Petra should be Kadesh, or the pretended Mount Hor the real one. These, however, were points very little known to the Jews of the Macedonian era; they saw Petra in possession of the Nabathæans, and had not sufficient learning even to suspect that it had ever been otherwise. There was, therefore, little danger in this strange identification; and it presented a most important advantage. The Nabathæans were a friendly people; Petra, their capital, was the greatest depôt of Oriental commerce in the west of the Euphrates, and, by holding their religious pilgrimages to the tomb of Aaron at the same time with the great annual fairs of the Nabathæans, they might combine all the attractions of worldly commerce with the agreeable consciousness of the strict performance of a religious duty.

It is remarkable that the Jews of the time of our Saviour (discarding the ancient names of Botzrah, Sela', and Yoktheel, which would not have suited the rabbinical imposture), always called Petra, Rekem, (-; in the Arabic translation,). This does not appear to have been the Nabathæan name; and we may suspect that it was a corruption of the Arabic, a cairn or tomb; for the Nabathæans, like the modern Egyptians, pronounced the hard, like our g in gild. The first enquiry of the Jewish pilgrims was apparently for the tomb, which the Nabathæans called Regem; and thus the city of Petra itself, in Jewish parlance, acquired this name, slightly corrupted and softened

into Rekem.

Josephus (himself a Pharisee), naturally adopted the Pharisaic tradition; and hence he makes the Israelites to encamp at Petra (for he never mentions the name of Kadesh), and informs us that Aaron was buried in a mountain near that city. But Josephus also assures us that Petra, in the time of Moses, was the capital of the Amalekites. From this we may judge what degree of confidence we ought to place in this writer. It can be proved to demonstration, that the whole of the eastern Mount Se'yr was part of Edom at the time of the Exodus, and that the Amalekites possessed no portion of this region.

Eusebius, Jerome, and others of the earlier Christian writers, naturally borrowed their scriptural geography of the Old Testament from the Jews, which led them, unfortunately, into numerous errors and self-contradictions.

When Christianity expelled Paganism from the Petræa, the city of Petra became the seat of a Christian bishopric; and the Christians of Petra adopted, without hesitation or enquiry, the Pharisaic tradition as to the site of Mount Hor. Never was there an imposture more extravagant than this of the rabbins respecting Kadesh and Mount Hor; rarely has an imposture been more successful. The traditionists were not satisfied with identifying the two principal sites, they planted round them a host of minor sites, all equally false. The desert of Tzin was assumed to be the pleasant valley now called the Wâdy Musa; the waters of Meribah-Kadesh were shewn in the spring now known as the 'Ain Musa; and the first crusaders, in a rapid expedition made into Idumæa, in the year 1100, watered their horses, with great devotion, at the sacred spring. The Beeroth Beney Ya'akan was pointed out at some spot about ten miles from Petra, and ", which was on the borders of Moab, was transferred to the immediate vicinity of Petra, and called Taí

by the Greeks. What is most singular is, that while Eusebius and Jerome adopt the rabbinical impostures, they admit (contrary to the rabbins) that Petra (otherwise called Rekem), was in the land of Edom, or Idumæa, the country of Esau, in their days called Gebalene; and that the latter name (Hellenized from the Arabic J), was only another name for Mount Se'yr. So gross was the fallacy of the rabbinical imposture, that these strange topographers actually conducted the Israelites to Kadesh from the east (by the Wâdy Musa and the Syk), and from thence westward to the false Mount Hor, though this was leading them away from Moab and the Arnon, the true direction of their march, by a long, unintelligible, and most needless circuit. Yet modern travellers and Biblical critics, who all conduct the Israelites to the false Mount Hor from the west, by the Wâdy Haroun (a day's journey through the very heart of Edom), have not perceived that the only foundation for this theory is a wild tradition, which conducts the three millions in the directly contrary direction. And for such absurdities as these they are content to reject and trample under foot the plain words of Moses, who assures us that the Israelites were prevented by a hostile army, and the interdiction of God, from passing, by a single foot-pace, any part of the boundaries of Edom.

The tradition thus readily accepted by the Christians, was transmitted by them to the Mohammedans. When the Arabs became masters of Syria, the Petræa and Egypt, that people, who (as taught by their prophet) revered both Moses and Aaron as much as the Jews themselves, received this false tradition of the site of Mount Hor from the unanimous testimony of Jews and Christians; and the deceived Moslemin, even to this day, deem it a pious act of devotion to sacrifice a sheep or a goat at the tomb of Aaron, a rite which they certainly learnt from the Jewish traditionists.

In this manner a legend, commencing in imposture, has descended from the era of the Asmonæans to our own times; but from the earliest commencement of the tradition to the time of Moses, there is a gap of, at least, eleven centuries; and during the latter part of this period, the Jewish nation, long at war with Edom, then exiled at Babylon, and afterwards on the very worst terms with their old enemies the children of Esau, and excluded from Idumæa in the Negeb, had, amidst the revolution of the neighbouring states, the alteration of boundaries, and the change of local names, certainly lost all knowledge of the true Mount Hor of the Mosaic period.

That the mountain now called the Jebel Haroun (or moun