HISTORY OF ISRAEL. BOOK I. PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ISRAEL. SECTION I. ISRAEL BEFORE THE MIGRATION TO EGYPT. A. GENERAL NOTIONS. THIS Preliminary History embraces partly historical matter concerning the earliest times, treasured in the memory of the people at a later day, or received by them into their traditions from other nations; but partly also their own ideas and imaginings respecting those primeval ages, their connection with the other nations of the earth, with the first members of the human race and with God Himself. It is evident therefore that, ascending from the period which I call here the historical, the accounts which we possess divide themselves into various stages which were clearly enough distinguished in the national consciousness. On the lowest stage, nearest to the historical period, stand the traditions of the abode of the people when but little civilised, in Canaan, of their emigration thither from the northeast, and of the grand forms of the Fathers, alike of the people of Israel and of the other kindred Hebrew tribes. The dim remembrance of this migration which the Hebrew race preserved in their later position far to the south-west, together with their tradition of an original connection with other nations dwelling in the north and east, forms the boundary-line of this stage of the preliminary history. But behind this there arises a remoter question which no cultivated people can forbear to ask: in what relation they stand not only towards a few kindred nations, but towards all the peoples of the earth: a question the answer to which goes beyond the traditions of all existing nations, and leads into a cloud-land which can be reached only by means of linguistic and physical investigations, or (where these are untried or incomplete) by imagination merely, and never embraces But more than the origin of the existing nations and men. historical questions and imaginings logically stretch beyond these; nor can the ascending movement, once excited, again be laid to rest before, upon the third and last stage, and apart from all existing nations and living men, it has brought into view under an historical form the original condition of humanity, and the connection of mankind, and of the whole creation with the Creator; establishing on this subject a truth from which as from a first cause every further impulse of human history-that is of man's development-may be traced at leisure. These are the three stages of primeval history, which the Book of Origins distinguishes by the Creation, by the renovation of the human race after the great Flood, by Abraham's entrance into Canaan, as the commencement of so many great turning-points (or epochs), describing each characteristically and in detail with equal simplicity and precision; while the later narrators introduce from other sources many fuller or varying accounts. When to this we add, that the time after the close of the Patriarchal world is in the Book of Origins regarded as the properly historical age, continuing little changed in character, in comparison with the primeval age, to the author's own day, then we see here before us four great Ages, into which the author regarded the entire domain of the world's history as falling, and according to the succession of which he arranged his work, as has been further explained above, p. 79 sq. But the Book of Origins evidently did not originate this conception of Four Ages of the world, since it does not explain the ground on which it rests, but rather tells its whole story briefly according to that idea, as if it were already long established and well known. Unquestionably, then, we must recognise here the same Four Ages of the world of which the old legends both of the Greeks and of the Hindus speak. Nor is it the number four alone in which a striking agreement is found among the Hebrews, Greeks, and Hindus-nations widely separated in character as in locality they have all likewise worked out the conception of a gradual decline of the human race from the primitive perfection of the first age to the second, third, and fourth. These facts force us to recognise the traces of a primary tradition which was given before the separate existence of such nation as the Hebrews, Greeks, and Hindus, and from which they all drank in common. We may be certain also that with the tradition of the four gradually declining ages were handed down various particulars concerning them: for example, an account of the Creation of the visible world in all its parts: another of S the great Flood at the end of the first age: partly because the conception of the four ages could become clear and fixed only by means of such minute details respecting the commencement, course, and nature of each; and partly also because the accounts of the Creation and the Flood given in the Book of Origins recur among the Greeks, Hindus, and some other nations of antiquity, with so close a resemblance in essential portions, that we must assume for them also a common original source. Much indeed of that which the later narrators add to the representations of the Book of Origins respecting the first two Ages (see p. 38 sq.), appears on a closer examination to have been first imported from Eastern Asia through the brisker intercourse with foreign countries which especially marked the period after the tenth century; and then to have been so penetrated and leavened with the spirit of the Mosaic religion that it could find a place amid the ancient sacred traditions and ideas. But the case is quite different with those narratives of the Book of Origins which in their essential basis are found also among foreign and remote nations. Their importation can in no way be proved or rendered probable; yet while they manifest in every feature an extreme simplicity and primitive purity, though already tinged by the spirit of the Mosaic religion, we find them again not only in Eastern Asia but also in ancient Europe. Moreover, the composition of the Book of Origins dates from a time when the great influx of fresh stories and ideas from the east had not begun, and the people of Israel retained essentially their ancient condition. Their source must therefore reach back beyond the histories of the separate nations then existing into that obscure primeval period of the existence of one unknown, but early civilised nation, which was afterwards dissolved into the nations of that day, but left many wonderful relics as traces of its former existence. One such relic of the culture of this prehistoric people is the language of the historical nations, which clearly points to a common basis; and the Semitic group of languages is connected, at least remotely, with the Mediterranean or Aryan group. Another relic of this primeval nation are these old traditions: for where a cultivated language is found, there must be also a groundwork of peculiar institutions, traditions, and historical ideas; and if nations, while diverging widely from their original unity, preserve the essential elements of the primeval language, each in its own way, and according to its special development, we can see no reason why This subject is treated in detail in the various editions of my Hebräische Sprachlehre, and more at length in the two Sprachwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. they should not similarly have retained from the same period a common basis of traditions, laws, and customs.1 But a comparison of the different forms which this primeval tradition of the Four Ages has assumed among each of these nations according to its peculiar history and culture, brings us to the conclusion that the Hebrew story presents the most conspicuous fragments of it, and lends us the most aid in inferring its original shape. For the Greek tradition, even in its oldest extant version, only presents conceptions beautiful as poetry, but utterly barren of historical matter and tone, and not even conveying an idea of the reason for this division of all past time into four ages: for it would be manifestly absurd to suppose the reason for a four-fold division to have been that only four metals -gold, silver, brass, and iron-were known, and so only four ages corresponding to these could be affirmed. Clearly the thought of comparing the constant degeneration of the four ages with four metals similarly sinking in value is simply the Greek addition; but the fact that this merely poetical thought was required to revive and recast the whole idea of the four ages, proves satisfactorily that the original conceptions of the details were already lost. In the Hindu accounts the original form of the tradition is much more clearly recognisable; especially if we compare the various modifications of the story presented by different writers, and draw our picture of the original from them all combined.3 Some points are then even more plainly to be recognised in these than in the Hebrew tradition, of which indeed we have only the one single version given in the Book of Origins. For 1 While I have been careful to avoid combining what is really heterogeneous, or making any unwarrantable assumption, I have always in this sense maintained the possibility of a certain original similarity among all the above-mentioned nations, not merely in language, but in myths and customs also. (See Gött. Gelehr. Anz., 1831, pp. 1012-13). K. O. Müller, in the introduction to his History of Greek Literature, made a similar admission. 2 In Hesiod's Works and Days, v. 103119: Hesiod's introduction of the Heroic Age (making really five ages) is obviously his own innovation; and an attentive perusal makes it evident that he had received the series of four ages only, corresponding to the four metals, with a few uncertain fragmentary details, and that his own imagination added all the rest. In Mexico, the four ages of the world were graduated according to the four elements. Even among the Arabs was preserved a tradition (according to Sur. vi. 6; compare x. 14) of a series of ages commencing with one supremely blest. (قرن) 3 A number of ancient Hindu traditions are given very briefly by Manu, i. 68–86; later and more highly developed ones are found in Wilson's Vishnu-Pùrâna, p. 23– 26, 259-271; compare p. 622. The Bhagavata Purâna, iii. 11. 18 sqq., furnishes little that is characteristic. The Buddhist notion, given by Schiefner in the St. Petersburg Bulletin de l'Académie, 193, is peculiar but not very ancient. In the Veda no detailed account of the Four Ages of the world has as yet been found; but this does not prove that the whole conception was unknown among the Hindus till a late period. example, it is certain from them that the original idea of the Four Ages was formed by looking from below upwards, or in other words by looking from the present further and further back into the distant strata of primeval time, somewhat as conjectured above, see p. 256 sq.1 The regular proportion which was conceived to subsist among the Four Ages and to be expressed in numbers is another instance: for though it might indeed be presumed that in the endeavour to form anything like a complete conception of these four ages the scanty historical reminiscences of primeval times would be eked out by the assumption of mutual numerical relations yielding four terms of a proportion, yet this is first visibly confirmed by the Hindu traditions.2 The Hebrew tradition, on the other hand, possesses high excellence, in that it accurately distinguishes and bounds the four ages according to their intrinsic nature, so that we see clearly why four-neither more or less-are assumed, how each of them differs intrinsically from the rest, and has its meaning only in its own place and order. Their succession is not determined by a mere change in general mutual relations-each containing merely its definite space, its numbers and its greater or less degree of virtue: but each possesses, independently of its relation to the others, an external boundary and an internal life and character of its own, which make its existence in this particular form possible only this once; and together they include the whole domain of historical traditions. The non-Hebrew legends, by tearing the Great Flood away from its original position in the series of these four ages and setting it up as an independent event, have lost one clear distinction between the first two ages. And the Greek legend, by not assigning even to the third age any of the famous heroic names which approach the domain of strict history, fails to make any adequate distinction between the two middle ages.3 The proof of this is furnished by the names: Kali-juga is the fourth age, the sorrowful present; Dvâpara-juga, the third, has its name derived from the number two, as if counted from below; Trêta-juga, the second, from the number three; but both of these, now that the names and traditions are more minutely worked out, contain at the same time an allusion to the gradual decrease of the four pips on the dice, in the game of dice. This artificial, and, therefore, probably modern, image being once introduced, the Krita- or Satja-juga, the first age, signifying that of Perfection or Truth, is represented by the four pips, the best throw of the dice. Other figures were suggested by the various kinds of living beings; thus arose the Egyptian conception (one similar to which is still prevalent in Japan), half apparent even in Hesiod, of the successive rule of Gods, Demigods, Manes, and Men. 2 The progression of the four ages is exactly in the proportion of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4; but after starting with the simple conception that the length of human life was in the first age 400 years, in the second 300, in the third 200, and in the fourth 100 (Manu i. 83), they afterwards multiplied these numbers preposterously; the original numbers, however, being still discernible. I have gone at length into the subject of Primeval Biblical History in the Jahrb. |