The next objection (Phases, p. 108) is Acts 7:1616And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem. (Acts 7:16): "And were carried over, and placed in the sepulcher which Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Hamor, the father of Sychem." That there is a difficulty in this passage is beyond a doubt; and some mistake difficult for us now to solve. There is a name which is inexactly connected with an historical fact in the Old Testament. It is also one of those difficulties long since discussed. But to call in question inspiration because of it, is to put what an error in copying would produce, in competition with all the moral and spiritual evidence of divine power, manifest in the whole contents of the book itself, and in its effects in the world for ages. It is so falsely measuring the intrinsic importance of evidence, and the character of proof, that the person rejecting the scriptures because of it would prove nothing but his own incompetency to measure evidence. A book two thousand years old has a mistake in a sentence, which the omission of a word entirely rectifies, without changing anything-a word very likely to creep in. And this is used to discredit what bears the largest, fullest, strongest, positive proofs of every kind, of being the testimony of God, and has produced, and does produce, effects which nothing but the testimony of God could do.
The objection is this: Abraham is said, as the passage stands, to have bought the place of the sepulcher of the sons of Emmor. It was Jacob, if the sons of Emmor be rightly here, not Abraham, who did so. The solution of it is, in one sense, exceedingly easy. The only question is, Is it really the true one? The word "Abraham" being left out, all difficulty disappears. "Jacob died, as did also our fathers, and were carried over to Sychem, and placed in the sepulcher which he bought," &c. Now Joseph was buried there; and Jerome states, that Paula saw the sepulchers of the rest; and Wetstein quotes Syncellus and two Jewish writers to the same purpose. The omission of Abraham is given credit to by this-that one uncial MS, ancient and of good authority, has an addition here which gives strong ground to suppose Abraham to be an interpolation.
I would lead the attention of my reader to another point here. Let him read Stephen's speech, and he will find.a very brief but most perfect and complete summary, for application to the consciences of the Jews, of the history of the patriarchs from Abraham to the end of Joseph's history-a summary which supposes the most perfect and accurate knowledge possible of the details of the history; a man thoroughly master of the whole account given in Genesis, and carrying it in his mind, as all perfectly well known, so as to give in few words the whole moral bearing of all its parts. It would have been impossible for any one, leaving aside inspiration (and if inspired, the question is at an end), for any one not perfectly familiar with every part of it to have given such an abridgment of the history. But it would have been equally impossible for a person so informed, and master of his subject, to have made such a mistake; because the facts were connected with most interesting points in Jewish history, which made the deepest impression on their memory, and connected themselves with their earliest and strongest associations, and are in the history itself too entirely distinct, and accompanied with far too great a detail of different circumstances to allow of the supposition of any confusion of mind between the two. The supposition, therefore, that Stephen confounded the two, is, in every point of view, the most improbable solution of any one that can be made. This, it is true, is nothing for a skeptic, because he gains his point by it, or at least raises a doubt. That his reasoning is very absurd is no matter to him; because, if he can produce a doubt, faith is at an end. Hence he uses arguments which would be absolutely unreasonable in any human inquiry, and at once rejected.
Now I am bold to say, that nothing can be more unreasonable than that an author who could have produced such a summary of the patriarchal history as Acts 7 should make the blunder supposed to be made in verse 16. The mere literal authority would lead to correct it by leaving out Abraham; but the internal evidence would lead me, I confess, to believe "the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem" interpolated; and it would run thus: "in the sepulcher which Abraham bought for a sum of money." I would add, that the Peschito Syriac reads the verbs in the singular: "Jacob died, as also our fathers, and was carried over to Sychem, and laid in the tomb which Abraham bought for a sum of money." The point seems to be, that he had it when Israel was not in possession of the land, Sychem being mentioned as showing God's title over the whole land: for it was now the seat of Samaritanism, a point in Stephen's speech of moment, as was his showing that the best and most blessed of their ancestors had nothing there at all but what they bought-were still pilgrims and strangers, as the saints now were becoming through the Jews' rejection of Messiah and the Holy Ghost's testimony in Stephen's own person. It is the whole tenor and bearing of Stephen's speech-the rejection of the lawgiver whom God sent as a deliverer, and the delivering to the Gentiles Him who was their preserver of life, and hence the stranger's place for the true-hearted, Solomon's temple itself being rejected by the testimony of their own prophets. Some one, seeing "Sychem, where Jacob was carried over," added the "Emmor father of Sychem," and left "Abraham" in the text.
In result, it is fully confessed that a difficulty exists in the text as it stands.
The reason assigned for it by the infidel is the most improbable of any, humanly speaking.
We are not in possession of means to correct with certainty the mistake that exists.
There is a very probable way of accounting for it, without doing any violence whatever to the text as it stands, when one word is omitted, or if the last words naming the persons are omitted; for the account of the transaction, if either be, is perfectly exact: the mistake is in the name only.
This last remark is material; namely, that it is a mistake which a transcriber might make, or a marginal reference to a name introduce: no moral error, no mistake, even in the facts, setting aside the name, exists. The teaching of the Holy Ghost in the passage is in no way in question, otherwise than in the insertion of a name.