Joseph, were in the condition of pure nomads among whom the blood feud was
fully recognized as law, an interval of four or five hundred years, such
as they are supposed to have passed in Goshen would bring them to the
exodus. Now, assuming that the Israelites during those four centuries,
when they lived among civilized neighbors and under civilized law, made an
intellectual movement corresponding in velocity to the movement the
English made after the conquest, they would have been, about the time when
the cities of refuge were created, in the position described in Numbers,
which is what we should expect assuming the Biblical tradition to be true.

To us the important question is not whether a certain piece of the
supposed Mosaic legislation actually went into effect during the life of
Moses, for that is relatively immaterial, but whether the Biblical
narrative is, on the whole, worthy of credence, and this correlation of
dates gives the strongest possible evidence in its favor. Very possibly,
perhaps it may even be said certainly, the order in which events occurred
may have been transposed, but, taken as a whole, it is impossible to
resist the inference that the Bible story is excellent history and that,
due allowance being made for the prejudice of the various scribes who
wrote the Pentateuch in favor of the miraculous, where Moses was
concerned, the Biblical record is good and trustworthy history, and frank
at that;--much superior to quantities of modern documents which we accept
without question.

Of all the achievements of Moses' life none equals the exodus itself,
either in brilliancy or success. How it was possible for Moses, with the
assistance he had at command, to marshal and move a column of a million or
a million and a half of men, women, and children, without discipline or
cohesion, and encumbered with their baggage, beside their cattle, is an
insoluble mystery. "And the children of Israel did according to the word