of the Asi {supra, MaGUG, p. 471]. A powerful interest, however, incited these last to
withhold correot information on western countries from the Chinese officer; viz.: that,
hitherto, they had held the monopoly of the raw silk trade, hy caravan, between China and
the West; which silk, dyed and woven into then-priceless raiments by the Parthians, found
its way occasionally to the grandees of Europe; and, on the other hand, one of the practical
motives which carried Roman eagles to the Tigris, was a hope to discover the unknown
source whence the crude material of these exquisite fabrics had reached Persia.
It was during this, the most distant military expedition ever undertaken before Genghis-
Khan, that the Chinese heard, for the first time, of the existence, far west from the Asi,
of the Roman Empire. Deterred from advance for its conquest by the discouraging report
of the'Parthians that his commissariat ought to be supplied for three yearB, the Chinese
General renounced the enterprise, and returned to headquarters at Khot&n.
Prom the opposite direction, the arms of Rome had not been turned towards Persia
until, about B. c. 53, Pro-Consul Crassus perished by Parthian arrows on the western frontier
of Persia; some 155 years before the Chinese had penetrated to its south-eastern provinces.
Within four years after the retrograde march of the Chinese armies, Parthia was
invaded by Trajan, A . b. 106; and it was about that generation, a few years more or less,
that the Romans first heard, through the Persians, of the remote country whence the silk
came. (278) In a . b . 166, Antoninus sent the first Roman embassy to China; the hospitable
reception of which is chronicled, by contemporary Chinese annalists, in the reign of their
Emperor Houan-Ti.
No nations, then, situated to the north-west of Persia, so far as history or monuments
relate, had ever heard of China; nor had the Chinese known anything about such nations
until after the Christian era. Surmises to the contrary require, nowadays, to be justified
by something more substantial than the ipse dixit of moderns, however erudite, whose
opinions were formed before geographical criticism had fixed the boundaries of antique
intercommunications! possibilities.
With this historical basis, let us take up the only word in the entire canon of Scripture,
upon which living theologists have erected a fable, that the Chinese are mentioned in the
Old Testament. Even king James’s version suffices for this discussion: 4§,“ Behold these
[the Jewish Babylonian exiles] shall come from far; and, lo, these from the north and from
the west; and these from the land of Sinim.” (279) “ Our modern litterati,” says the Emperor
Houng-Wou, “ write a great deal; ” and sustain that Sinim means the Chinese; because,
after stripping away the Hebrew plural IM, there remains the-word SIN; and the
native name of China is THSIN.
Now, the whole context of the prophet refers to the return of the Jews from bondage in
Babylonia. It must, therefore, be in Mesopotamian vicinities that the SIN«—“ inhabitants
of SIN;” or, otherwise, “ cities, districts, localities o f” SIN—should be sought for, before
traversing Central Asia, in such impassable ages, to recall from China unknownrJewish
fugitives who might have escaped thither from Babylonia.
The root SIN of Isaiah is not SINI;(280) and, furthermore, that SWian was a Ca-
naanite. Nor is i't either of the “ wildernesses of,SIN ” familiar to the Mosaio Israelites;
because the first, (281) spelt with the letter same?, lay close to Egypt: and the second(282) |
was TsiN, near the Dead Sea. Par less could it have meant the Egyptian city of Pdusium;
called Sin, (283) or dialectically TAIN, anciently, as Teen now by the Arabs. Why travel
to China, when Mesopotamia itself offers to every eye, in an excellent map, (284) at the
(278) On “ Sirica ” and the fact th a t little or nothing was known about it by writers antecedent to Claudius
Ptolemy, in the second century after Christ; compare the excellent critique of Axihos, ( M s s. Did., voce “ Sew.
(2 7 9 ) I saiah : x l i x . 12.
(2 8 0 ) Genesis; x . 1 7 ; supra, p . 531.
(2 8 1 ) Exodus; x v i . 1 ; x v i i . 1.
(2 8 2 ) Numbers; x i i i . 2 1 ; — J>eut&ronomy; x x x i i . 5 1 ; &c.
(2 8 3 ) E zekiel: x x x . 1 5 ,1 6 .
(2 8 4 ) E r a s e r : Mesopotamia; 1 8 4 1 ; — X e n o p h o n : Anab.; lib . ii. 4.
mouth of the river Lycus, the vestiges of a city termed Kainai by Greeks, Cassias by Romans,
and Senn by Arabians ? Or, if it be absolutely necessary to obtain SINIM (more
SINs than one), add to the preceding Senn the site o f Sina, (285) about fifty miles northeastward
of Mosul;; together with the “ large mounds’’-called Sen, on the banks of the
Euphrates, opposite Dair.
One, or two, or all of these localities, amply suffice for the extremest points whence’ the
Jews were to be summoned from captivity; and, singly or collectively, they are comprehended
in the LXX translation; where Sinim is paraphrased \>y ck yys TIepaoiv— “ from a
land of the Persians.”
Aside from the obvious adaptation of these places, near the Euphrates or the Tigris, to
the natural sway of Nebuchadnezzar who captured the Jews, no less than of Cyrus and
Artaxerxes who released them; it is physically impossible, as well as unhistorical, that
ancient Jews should have been expatriated to China: a country none of their descendants
ever readied until centuries after the Christian era. (286) It is equally out of the question
that the Septuagint translators could have known anything of China—-a land beyond the
horizon of Alexandrian knowledge previously to, the time of Trajan, about a century after
c .; or some 230 years after the various Hellenistic-Jews, called the LXX {ubi supra], had
completed their labors. Indeed, they pretend to nothing of the kind; for they well knew
that the SINIM were in the “ land of the Persians; ” while Orientalists of the present day
always understand, with the Chaldee paraphrast, “ from the southern country” of Assyria,
in that passage, (287)
We forbear from reagitatipg here the question elsewhere treated, whether there were
really “ twelve tribes ” of Israel before the times of Sennacherib; nor- what became of the
ten said to have remained — where ? Some moderns (288) claim that these Israelites
marched round by Behring’s Straits into America; and, after building the cities of ancient
Mexico and Peru, have run wild in our woods—in short, unaccountably become our Indians.
Others have sought for them in Afghanistan; (289) although the portraits of Dost-Moham-
med, Shah-Soojah, and their fierce .cavaliers, are as little Jewish in lineaments as are their
speech, and still more their bellicose habits: for the Bible shows that the Jews of Palestine,
except under supernatural circumstances, were beaten and enslaved by any adjacent
tribe that happened to covet their persons or property. If ever supposititious offshoots of
the “ ten tribes” wandered as, far as Cabul, Bqkhara, Balkh, or Samaroand, they were
Jews at their migration, and Jews they would have remained in type and in religion, if certainly
not in language. Wolff found his compatriots everywhere. Indeed, we know, personally
and positively, that had the reverend renegade not been a true Hebrew, he could
never have traversed Central Asia in 1832-’5., But he narrates that the fathers of those
who kindly welcomed him, on the score of his inextinguishable Judaism, had established
themselves in Affghan .provinces very long after-the fall of Jerusalem. We also know that
Arabs (.to the Abrahamidse closely allied) settled in Persia, Khorassan, Balkh, &c., ever
since the Muslim invasion, one thousand years ago, having rarely intermarried with Tartars,
remain physiologically distinct to this day. Yet while they have preserved the name, religion,
and appearance o f Arabs, they have lost their Arabian language. (290) So it is with
the Hebrew nation in every clime—indelibility of physical type, coupled with a most pliant
faculty for change of tongue. If, then, exactly “ ten tribes” of Israel were swept away
into Chaldea, they did but return to their aboriginal centre of creation; and (mixing voluntarily
with no type of-mankind but their own) they have naturally disappeared amid the
(285) L atard : Second Expedition, Babylon ; 1 8 5 3 ; Map o f Journeys; and p . 297
(286) About 6 0 ,0 0 0 Jews are reputed to be there now; others reached Malabar about a .» . 490; — See N o t t :
Rhys. Mist, of the Jewish Race; 1 8 5 0 ; pp. 1 2 , 1 3 ; and swpra, pp. 1 1 7 -1 2 3 .
(287) Cahen : Bible; i x . p. 1 7 6 , note 12.
(288) D e l a f i e l d : American Antiquities.
(289) D u b e u x : Afghanistan; pp. 6 5 , 66.
(290) MiLcoiM: History o f Persia; 1 8 1 5 ; p. 2 7 7 ; - Moras®: Second Journey through Persia; 1 8 1 8 ; i . pp 47
4 3» — P ickering: Races; 1 8 4 8 ; p . 240.