ration. According to the Scripture narrative, when they were leaving
Egypt they numbered 600,000 men of twenty years old and upwards,
representing a population of about 2,000,000: but this is absolutely
impossible. Dr. Colenso assures us that "the multiplied impossibilities
introduced by this number alone, independent of all other
considerations, are enough to throw discredit upon the historical
character of the whole narrative" (part i. p. 143.) This bold assertion
he endeavours to establish by an elaborate argument extending over
several chapters. We must be content to present it in a condensed form
to our readers; but, in doing so, we shall adhere as closely as possible
to the language of the author.

As the groundwork of his objection he lays down:--

"That it is an indisputable fact, that the story as told in
the Pentateuch intends it to be understood--(i.) that they
came out of the land of Egypt about 215 years after they
went down thither in the time of Jacob; (ii.) that they came
out in the _fourth_ generation from the adults in the prime
of life, who went down with Jacob" (p. 100).

He next proceeds to estimate the average number of children in each
family:

"In the first place, it must be observed, that we nowhere
read of any _very large families_ among the children of
Jacob or their descendants to the time of the Exodus.... We
have no reason whatever, from the data furnished by the
Sacred Books themselves, to assume that they had families
materially larger than those of the present day.... The
twelve sons of Jacob had between them fifty-three sons, that
is, on the average, 4-1/2 each. Let us suppose that they
increased in this way from generation to generation. Then,
in the _first_ generation there would be 53 males (or rather
only 51, since Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan,
_Gen._, xlvi. 12, without issue); in the _second_, 243; in
the _third_, 1,094; and in the _fourth_, 4,923; that is to
say, instead of 600,000 warriors in the prime of life, there
could not have been 5,000....

"The narrative itself requires us to suppose that the Hebrew
families intermarried, and that girls, as well as boys, were
born to them freely in Egypt, though not, it would seem, in
the land of Canaan.

"Yet we have no ground for supposing, from any data which we
find in the narrative,