SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading us notice such Books of ths week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.] The Expositor. Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 75. 6d.)—Professor Bennett carries on his very useful and instructive studies in the Gospel of St. Mark ; these are an effort to construct a Life of Christ out of St. Mark's narrative, taken by itself. Another continuation is Mr. George Jackson's "Ethical Teaching of St. Paul." Professor W. M. Ramsay returns to the subject of the continuity of Demeter worship and the cult of the Virgin as practised in early days at Ephesus. He has also three highly interesting papers on Iconium, in which he draws out a comparison between that city and Damascus. A noteworthy paper is Professor Flinders Petrie's on "The Census of the Israelites." There are two census documents in the Book of Numbers. The first, taken before the Wandering, gives a total of 603,550; the second, taken after, the total of 561,700. Of course, these numbers are impossible They could not have existed in Goshen, or in Sinai. In the Peninsula now the population does not exceed seven thousand. The nomadic tribe of Amalek could not have contended with such a host. Canon Rawlinson boldly conjectures that Israel's weakness lay in their unwieldy numbers ! Professor Petrie's conjecture is that "the hundreds of the census lists have an independent origin, apart from the thousands," that the thousands (aar) mean "families," this being as probable a meaning of the word as "thousands." The result works out that the first total really was 598 tents, and the second 596 tents. Another difficulty about the commonly accepted numbers is this, that while the males in the first census are 603,550, the first-born are only 22,273. The attempts to reconcile these statements are curious.
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