“ Arabia” for KUSA, instead of “ Ethiopia.” “ Chns alii iEthiopiam, alii Arabiam
explicant. Prioreni interpretationem prater Hebrseos fere quotquot sint, etiara Grgeci
sequuntur, et vulgatus interpres, et Philo, et Josephus, et Eusebius, et Hieronymus, et
Eustathius in Hexeemeron, et author Chronici Alexandrini, et chorus patrum vniuersus.
Arabs etiam nuper editus qui bio habet Abasenorum seu Abissinorum terram,
id est.iEthiopiam. Posteriorem b veteribus, quod sciam, solus Jonathan, in cujus para-
phrasi Gen, x. 6, pro Hebneo Chus est Arabia, . , . Ex iis quse hactenus a
nobis'disputata sunt, credo constare luce clarius Chusseos in iis loois habitasse quse
supra indicauimus, nimirum supra ./Egyptum ad Rubri maris sinum intimum, in parte
Arabics Petrceee et Eelicis.”
Circumscribed -within a few pages, our part limits itself to the production of such
atoms of new data as bave been attained since Bochart’s day: beginning with the
four rivers of Eden.
“ The name of the second river, Gihon; that which encompasseth all the land of
KUSA” (Gen. ii. 13) — part of the Jehovistic, and consequently later document — may
be dismissed from the discussion; because, relating to ante-diluvian epochas, its
geography is unknown. If there ever was an universal Deluge, all land-marks were
necessarily obliterated. If there was not, as some geologists now maintain, the Bere-
skith (from Gen. i. 1 to Gen. vi. 9, rabbinical division) ceases to contain history; and,
when not accepted in the allegorical sense maintained by learned Christian fathers,
must be abandoned, by science, to thaumaturgical ingenuity; while the KUSA of Gen.
ii. remains to be sought for “ near the isle Utopia of Thomas Morus. Utopia!
expressive name! — invented by the satirical Rabelais (Pantagruel), and afterwards
applied by the great Chancellor of England (Sir Thomas More) to the beautiful land
(Oceana) of which he dreamed—this Greek noiin seems made expressly to indicate the
sole degree of latitude under which the poetic marvels of the grand Atalantic island
(and of the four rivers in Eden) could have ever been produced. It has been
believed,” continues Martin, the ablest critic upon Plato, “ that it (the river Gihon\
might be recognized in the New World.' N o : it belongs to another world, which exists
not within the domain of space, but in that of fancy.”
In the geographical nomenclature of Sth Genesis, KUSA is the “ son of BJiam; a
name applied to Egypt and her colonial affiliations: of which some are African, and
others, such as Canaanites, indisputably Asiatic. To which continent did the Hebrews
refer the name KUSA ?
In 1657, Walton, the upright and most proficient compiler of Biblia Polyglotta,
inveighed against the notion that KUSA could be the African “ iE th io p ia c itin g the
best scholars of his day to the same effect. So, again, Beroaldus, Bochart, and
Patrick, following the Targum of Jonathan, the Chaldee paraphrast— third to eighth
century after Christ — render KUSA by Arabia, on the subjoined, among other
grounds:—
1st. Moses* wife is termed a KUSA&m (Num. xii. 13). Tsipora was a daughter of
Jethro, the Cohen (priest) of Midian (Exod. ii. 16, 21; iii. 1); and Midianites being
Arabians, here KUSA is Arabia. No other wife is given to Moses in the Pentateuch;
nor can any supematuralist so torture the plain words of its text as to prove, to a
man of common sense, that Moses ever visited Ethiopia above Egypt. The Abbé
Glaire, Doyen de la Sorbonne, whose two volumes — models of erudition and style
that protestant divines would do well to imitate—lie before us, never resorts to such
pitiful subterfuges.
2d. “ I will make the land of Mitzraim a waste of wastes, from the, tower of Syene
even unto the frontier of KUSA” {Ezek. xxix. 10). Syene being Assou&n, at the first
cataract, on the border-line of (Ethiopia) Nubia> and Egypt, the writer cannot mean
“ from Ethiopia to Ethiopia,” but from Syene to KUSA, beyond the Isthmus of Suez,
on the north-eastern frontier of Lower Egypt, and consequently here indicates
Arabia.
Modern researches furnish more critical light. In the first place, Dr. Wells sustains,
and, to a certain extent, demonstrates, that the word KUSA refers exclusively to the
Asiatic “ Ethiopia,” and never to African localities; .summing up his reasonings with,
“ the nation of Cush did first settle in Arabia; and % word is, generally, to be so
understood in Scripture.” In the second, believers in the unity of all mankind’s
descent from “ Noah and his three sons,” must concede that Nimrod, and many other
affiliations of KUSA, settled in Assyrian vicinities; even if offshoots did "afterwards •
cross through Arabia into Africa, and there, owing to “ effects of climate, originate
Nigrilian races; beginning, with the comparatively high-caste Berber, and descending
down to the lowest grade of Boyesman—always along a sliding scale of deterioration,
from the valley of the Nile to the Cape of Good Hope — where, unfortunately, 200
years of occupancy have not yet transmuted Dutch Boers into animals different from
those left behind them in Holland and Flanders.
The text most triumphantly quoted to prove the African hypothesis is Jerem. xiii.
23.__“ Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ?” A glance at the
Hebrew shows that here, as in other instances, the fifty-four revisers of King James’s
version blindly copied the LXX, or the Vulgate; because “ Can the KUSAean change
his skin” leaves the question vague until the real application of KUSA be determined.
The same proclivity leads many divines to cite another text, from the so-called “ Song
of Solomon,” in behalf of their negrophile theories.-?-“ I (am) blade, but comely. . . .
Look not upon me, because I (am) black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my
mother’s children were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards; (but)
mine own vineyard have I not kept.” {Cant. i. 5, 6.) The absence of notes of interrogation
in Hebrew palaeography, coupled with the philological inanity of modem
translators of this ancient erotic ballad, perpetuates a delusion, removeable by
Land’s rendering: — “ I Cam) browned, but comely Look not [disparagingly]
upon me that I (am) browned [“ fosca” = tawny, dark], because the sun has tanned
me: the sons of my mother [ i e. my step-brothers] becoming free to dispose of me
[according to Oriental usage], posted me (as) custodian of vines; my own vine, have
I not guarded [taken care o f] it?” Besides, as it has been remarked on the above
interrogatory of Jeremiah, — “ If Cush means a Negro, then we have revelation to
prove that climate will not change a Negro into a white man; if it means an Arab
(dark) Caucasian, then it will not change a white man into a Negro ¡’’-— Indeed, the
ultra-high-church orthodoxy of a living English divine, and profound, whilst fantastic,
Orientalist, unhesitatingly endorses this critical view.—“ Among the great land-marks
of national descent, none, it may safely be affirmed, are surer, or more permanent, than
those physical varieties of form, countenance, and color, which distinguish from each
other the various races of mankind. . . . In Arabia, one of the earliest seats of postdiluvian
colonization; a country rarely violated, and never occupied, by a foreign
conqueror; and peopled, in all ages, by the same primitive tribes, . . . peculiarity of
form and feature may be justly received, in any specific or authentic example, as evidence
of identity of origin, little, if at all, short of demonstration. This principle
we are enabled, by Scripture, to apply as an index to the Arab tribes descended from
Cush, and especially to the posterity of his first-born, Seba.
If we had penned the above paragraph ourselves, we could not have embodied more
forcibly Morton’s decisive opinions on those “ primordial organic forms,” which are
perpetuated to this day, as the Rev. Charles Forster, B. D., justly remarks, among
“ the various races of mankind.”
After the citation of “ Can the Cushite change his skin?” the geographer of Arabia
proceeds: — “ This indelible characteristic of race would seem to identify with the
families of Cush the inhabitants of the southern coast” of Arabia. “ Now, since the
Cushites generally were distinguished by the darkness of their skin, and the Sebaim
(Isa. xlv. 14), particularly, were noted for the procerity of their stature, if we find,
in Arabia or its vicinity, a race uniting both distinctive marks, the probability cer*