The Holy Bible, According to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611) Volume 1, PT. 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ... a peculiar tone, a local colouring, an atmosphere so to speak of the desert, which has made itself felt by all those who have explored the country, to whatever school of religious thought they may have belonged. And this fact is the more striking when we bear in mind that, although the great general features of the Peninsula, the grouping of its arid heights and the direction of its innumerable wadys are permanent, still changes of vast, and scarcely calculable importance in matters which personally affect the traveller and modify his impressions, have taken place since the time of Moses; changes to which, for obvious reasons, it is necessary to call special attention. At present one great difficulty felt by all travellers is the insufficiency of the resources of the Peninsula to support such a host as that which is described in the narrative; a difficulty not wholly removed by the acceptance of the accounts of providential interventions, which appear to have been not permanent, but limited to special occasions. But facts can be adduced which confirm, and indeed go far beyond, the conjectures of travellers, who have pointed out that the supply of water, and the general fertility of the district, must have been very different before the process of denudation, which has been going on for ages, and is now in active progress, had commenced. We have now proofs from inscriptions coeval with the pyramids, both in Egypt and in the Peninsula, that under the Pharaohs of the third to the eighteenth dynasty, ages before Moses, and up to his time, the whole district was occupied by a population, whose resources and numbers must have been considerable, since they were able to resist the forces of the Egyptians, who sent large armies in repeated, but unsuccessful, attem...