322 The Fundamentals. not incongruous in the Palestine of the Conquest period. The great rock-hewn, and rock-built cisterns at Taannek < 42 >, the remarkable engineering on the tunnel at Gezer < • 3 >, the great forty-foot city wall in an Egyptian picture of Canaanite war < ••>, the list of richest Canaanite booty given by Thothmes III. <• 5 > , the fine ceramic and bronze utensils and weapons recovered from nearly every Palestinian excavation<• 0 > , and the literary revelations of the Amarna tablets < • 1 >, together with the reign of law seen by a comparison of the scriptural account with the Code of Hammurabi, show < • 3 > Canaanite civilization of that period to be fully equal to that of Egypt. ( f) Then the Bible glimpses of Canaanite practices and the products of Canaanite religion now uncovered exactly agree. The mystery of the High Place of the Bible narrative, with its sacred caves, lies bare at Gezer and Taannek. The sacrifice of infants, probably first-born, and the foundation and other sacrifices of children, either infant or partly grown, appear in all their ghastliness in various places at Gezer and "practically all over the hill" at Taannek < 40 > . (g) But the most remarkable testimony of archaeology of this period is to the Scripture representations of the spiritual monotheism of Israel in its conflict with the horrible idola trous polytheism of the Canaanites, the final overthrow of the latter and the ultimate triumph of the former. The history of that conflict is as plainly written at Gezer in the gradual decline of the High Place and giving way of the revolting sacrifice of children to the bowl and lamp deposit as it is in the inspired account of Joshua, Judges and Samuel. And the line that marks off the territory of divine revelation in religion from the impinging heathenism round about is as distinct as that line off the coast of Newfoundland where the cold waters of the North beat against the warm life-giving flow of the Gulf Stream. The revelation of the spade in Palestine is making to stand out every day more clearly the revelation that God made. There is no evidence of a purer religion growing up out of
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker