The New Monthly Magazine (Volume 109) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE HOLY LAND It is one of the greatest pleasures derived from the pursuit of knowledge that its acquisition leads on to further inquiries. The preparation of the former Biblical Researches in Palestine, combined with the results of personal observation, awakened in Dr. Robinson's mind a more lively sense than he had ever felt before of the deficiencies yet remaining in our knowledge of the historical geography of the Holy Land. The account of a second exploratory journey possesses, then, all the interest of being the determination of question; which arose from continued investigation of the subject, and yet which could only be solved by personal inquiry on the spot. Combined with the researches that preceded them, they constitute a mass of material, which the author proposes to himself to embody in a systematic work on the physical and historical geography of the Holy Land. It is not a slight reproach to the learning and enterprise of the Church of England, that it has never attempted anything so complete or so comprehensive as has now been effected by an industrious divine of the New World. Not that all that ever can be done to illustrate Biblical geography has been accomplished?such an exploration cannot be regarded as within the power and opportunities of any single individual. To cultivate aright the particular field of historical topography would require a residence of several years, and a visit to every town and village, to every mountain and valley, to every trace of antiquity and ruin. It is only within very recent times that the decipherment of cuneatic legends has thrown a new light upon primeval sites in Babylonia, Chaldea, and Assyria. Much, very much, remains to be done in those countries, and in the long valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, ...