Feb.6] SOCIETYOF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. [1894.WHERE WAS TARSHISH?By P. le Page Renouf.The identificationof Tarshish with Tartessus in Spain is so
universally taken for granted, not only by the most accomplished
Biblical scholarsbut by writers of secular history,like Grote and
Duncker,thatit would arguea great wantof modesty to call it in
questionwere not the arguments in its behalf wellknownto be
devoidof positively demonstrativeforce. Theutmostthat must be
claimedfor them is that they lend probability or plausibility to what
is in fact a very modern conjecture.
The identification in question was entirely unknownto the earlier
interpreters of Scripture. The Septuagint version understands
Carthageto be meant in certain placeswhereTarshishis alluded to,
and the same senseis adopted by the Vulgate in Ezekiel xxvii,12.
JosephusunderstandsTarsus in Cilicia, and is followed by some
laterJewishand Christian authorities. But Tarshish is translated
Sea in the Septuagint, Isaiahii, 16, in the Targums, andin several
placesof the Vulgate. AndSt. Jerome remarks:—" Hebraei putant
linguapropriamareTarsi'sappellari."
Eusebiusstandsalonein identifying QapoeitwithSpain,and this
conjecturewas caught up and modified in the seventeenth century
by the learned French scholar Samuel Bochart, and has since
flourished under the authority of great names. If however an
Egyptianinscriptionof Thothmes III, or an Assyrian one of Sargon
or Sennacherib, wereto mention Tarshishas beingon the Phoenician
or Syrian coast,the Tartessian hypothesiswouldat once be dismissed
and the arguments in support of it recognised as destitute of value.
The truth is that in the days of Bochart and down to the days of
evenWiner,Geseniusand Grote, the most learnedscholars had no
conceptionof the amount of historical and geographical information
whichwas hidden fromthem,and has only been graduallydiscovered
to the world during the last forty or fifty years. Theyseem,un
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