rank foremost. Before, however, entering upon the consideration of Moses,
as a necromancer, as a scientist, as a statesman, as a priest, or as a
commander, we should first glance at the authorities which tell his
history.

Scholars are now pretty well agreed that Moses and Aaron were men who
actually lived and worked probably about the time attributed to them by
tradition. That is to say, under the reign of Ramses II, of the Nineteenth
Egyptian dynasty who reigned, as it is computed, from 1348 to 1281 B.C.,
and under whom the exodus occurred. Nevertheless, no very direct or
conclusive evidence having as yet been discovered touching these events
among Egyptian documents, we are obliged, in the main, to draw our
information from the Hebrew record, which, for the most part, is contained
in the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible.

Possibly no historical documents have ever been subjected to a severer or
more minute criticism than have these books during the last two centuries.
It is safe to say that no important passage and perhaps no paragraph has
escaped the most searching and patient analysis by the acutest and most
highly trained of minds; but as yet, so far as the science of history is
concerned, the results have been disappointing. The order in which events
occurred may have been successfully questioned and the sequence of the
story rearranged hypothetically; but, in general, it has to be admitted
that the weight of all the evidence obtained from the monuments of
contemporary peoples has been to confirm the reliability of the Biblical
narrative. For example, no one longer doubts that Joseph was actually a
Hebrew, who rose, through merit, to the highest offices of state under an
Egyptian monarch, and who conceived and successfully carried into
execution a comprehensive agrarian policy which had the effect of
transferring the landed estates of the great feudal aristocracy to the