Hittites, The

The discovery of the important place once occupied by the Hittites has been termed 'the romance of ancient history.' Nothing can be more interesting than the resurrection of a forgotten people, more especially when that people is so intimately connected with Old Testament story, and with the fortunes of the Chosen Race.

Larger Print, 15 point font

**************

Excerpt:

How the resurrection has been accomplished, by putting together the fragmentary evidence of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, of strange-looking monuments in Asia Minor, and of still undeciphered hieroglyphics, will be described in the following pages. It is marvellous to think that only ten years ago 'the romance' could not have been written, and that the part played by the Hittite nations in the history of the world was still unsuspected. Yet now we have become, as it were, familiar with the friends of Abraham and the race to which Uriah belonged.

*************

We are told in the Second Book of Kings (vii. 6) that when the Syrians were encamped about Samaria and the Lord had sent a panic upon them, 'they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.'

Nearly forty years ago a distinguished scholar selected this passage for his criticism. Its 'unhistorical tone,' he declared, 'is too manifest to allow of our easy belief in it.' 'No Hittite kings can have compared in power with the king of Judah, the real and near ally, who is not named at all ... nor is there a single mark of acquaintance with the contemporaneous history.'

Recent discoveries have retorted the critic's objections upon himself. It is not the Biblical writer but the modern author who is now proved to have been unacquainted with the contemporaneous history of the time. The Hittites were a very real power. Not very many centuries before the age of Elisha they had contested the empire of Western Asia with the Egyptians, and though their power had waned in the days of Jehoram they were still formidable enemies and useful allies.

They were still worthy of comparison with the divided kingdom of Egypt, and infinitely more powerful than that of Judah. But we hear no more about them in the subsequent records of the Old Testament. The age of Hittite supremacy belongs to an earlier date than the rise of the monarchy in Israel; earlier, we may even say, than the Israelitish conquest of Canaan. The references to them in the later historical books of the Old Testament Canon are rare and scanty. The traitor who handed over Beth-el to the house of Joseph fled 'into the land of the Hittites' (Judg. i. 26), and there built a city which he called Luz.