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The Bible and the Hittites

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 53.

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The Bible and the Hittites

By L. L. C.

Among the peoples who are said to have lived in Palestine in the patriarchal age, according to the Bible record, were the Hittites. It was from Ephron, the Hittite, that Abraham bought the cave and the field of Machpelah. See Gen. 23: 10. It was Esau’s Hittite wives that were a grief to Isaac and Rebekah. See Gen. 26: 34. The Bible also mentions the Hittites in the list of the peoples whom the Lord promised to drive out of the land of Palestine. The promise made to Israel was, “I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite.” Ex. 33: 2.
Some years ago the accuracy of the Biblical records concerning the Hittites was challenged by critics on the ground that there was no mention of any such people in any records outside of the Bible; the man is still living who first suspected that anything more could be known of the Hittites than the Biblical statements concerning them. Yet archeology has now discovered proof of the accuracy of the Bible and of the historical existence of the Hittites. George A. Barton tells the story:—
“In the inscriptions of the Egyptian kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties there is frequent mention of a people called Kheta. In the inscriptions of Assyrian kings there is also frequent mention of a people called Kha-at-tu. Slowly, too, during the nineteenth century, rock-carvings, often accompanied by inscriptions in a peculiar hieroglyph, were found scattered through northern Syria and Asia Minor. The figures of gods and men on these carvings usually wore caps of a peculiarly pointed type and shoes turned far up at the toe. In 1876 it dawned upon Professor Sayce that these were all references to the Biblical Hittites. He proceeded to elaborate this view in two articles published in the ‘Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology,’ Vols. V and VII.
“About the same time the Rev. William Wright independently started the same idea, and gave it expression in his book, ‘The Empire of the Hittites,’ 1884; second edition, 1885.”
Since the people mentioned in these Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions have been shown to be the Biblical Hittites, many further discoveries have been made of Hittite monuments and inscriptions. Professor Sayce was the first one to attempt to recover the Hittite language. In 1880, in the so-called “Boss of Tarkondemos,” he thought he had found such a key to the Hittite language as the Rosetta stone had afforded to the Egyptian. This “boss” contained writing both in Hittite characters and in the cuneiform writing of Assyria. By comparison Sayce tentatively determined the values of a number of Hittite signs. His results were, however, of a rather uncertain nature, as the Assyrian characters were capable of being read in more than one way.
The work of Professor Sayce in the study of the Hittite inscriptions has been instrumental in turning the attention of many scholars to the problem of a proper decipherment of Hittite signs. Some of the chief men who have worked on this problem are Dr. Peiser, who published a book on the Hittite inscriptions in 1892; Professor Jensen, who published his method of solving the problem in 1894; Lieut.-Col. C. R. Conder, who, in 1898, published his investigations in a work called “The Hittites and Their Language;” and R. Campbell Thompson, who has made the latest attempt on a large scale to unravel the mystery of these Hittite inscriptions, and whose work appears in “Archeologia,” second series, Vol. XIV, Oxford, 1913. A collection of tablets found by Professor Winckler at Boghaz Koi is about to be published by Ernst Weidner. Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, under whose general direction Weidner is working, has published (May, 1914) a study of twenty-six fragments of these texts, which is soon to appear. These texts defined Hittite words in Sumerian and in Assyrian. Thus Professor Delitzsch has been able to gain a vocabulary of about one hundred and sixty-five Hittite words, and to ascertain some facts about the grammar.
It would, therefore, seem that we are on the eve of a complete mastery of the secrets of the Hittite inscriptions. As to all that this may mean in the way of additions to our knowledge of ancient times, we cannot even surmise. It seems clear, however, that while the Hittite language resembles in some of its features our own family of languages, in others it has an affinity with the Tartar family. The pictures of Hittites as they appear in Egyptian reliefs also portray two distinct types of faces. One type resembles the inhabitants of Mongolia and China, having high cheek bones, oblique eyes, and wearing a cue. The other type is somewhat like the early Greek, with a clean-cut head and face. Though the Hittite inscriptions have not yet been deciphered, much of the history of the Hittites is now known through the mention of them in Assyrian and Egyptian records.
It is not the purpose of this article to go into a discussion of the history of this people, but only to point out the wonderful proof of Biblical accuracy which has come to us within the last thirty years on one of the very points where the statements of the Bible had been challenged by critical skeptics. One cannot but be impressed with the manner in which the divine hand of Providence is bringing to light records long concealed in the earth, to substantiate beyond a shadow of a doubt the historical accuracy of the Bible. L. L. C.