The Gaelic Land System Same as that of the Hebrews

John O’Hart

Irish Pedigrees; or the Origin and Stem of the Irish Nation

1892 (5th Edition)

Even in the matter of the Gaelic System of allotting a portion of land to each head of a family for the sustenance of himself and those dependent on him (and which obtained among the Gaels in Ireland down to the seventeenth century, in the reign of King James I., of England), how strangely coincident was that Gaelic System with the Land System of the Hebrews:

"Ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families; to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance; every man shall be in the place in which his lot falleth."—Numbers xxxiii. 54. See also Numbers xxvi. 54-56; and Joshua xi. 23, and xiv. and xvi., etc.

This similarity between the Land System of the Irish Gaels and that which obtained among the Hebrews is the more extraordinary, when we consider the intimacy which existed between Moses and Gaodhal [Gael]. But we are unable to say which (if either) of these two ancient peoples gave their Land System to the other.

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