As the Hebrews were a branch of the Phœnician race, it is not surprising that we find some things in their history which look very much like legends of gunpowder.
When Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led a rebellion against Moses, Moses separated the faithful from the unfaithful, and thereupon "the ground clave asunder that was under them: and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.… And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.… But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord." (Numb. xvi., 31–41.)
This looks very much as if Moses had blown up the rebels with gunpowder.
Roger Bacon, who himself rediscovered gunpowder, was of opinion that the event described in Judges vii., where Gideon captured the camp of the Midianites with the roar of trumpets, the crash caused by the breaking of innumerable pitchers, and the flash of a multitude of lanterns, had reference to the use of gunpowder; that the noise made by the breaking of the pitchers represented the detonation of an explosion, the flame of the lights the blaze, and the noise of the trumpets the thunder of the gunpowder. We can understand, in this wise, the results that followed; but we cannot otherwise understand how the breaking of pitchers, the flashing of lamps, and the clangor of trumpets would throw an army into panic, until "every man's sword was set against his fellow, and the host fled to Beth-shittah;" and this, too, without any attack upon the part of the Israelites, for "they stood every man in his place around the camp; and all the host ran and cried and fled."
If it was a miraculous interposition in behalf of the Jews, the Lord could have scared the Midianites out of their wits without the smashed pitchers and lanterns; and certain it is
