names of the Arameans (except that this name seems to have been originally identical with that of the Armenians), or of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Lydians, and Elameans. And how easily a section of a nation might migrate southwards from the Caucasian Iberia, and then grow into historical greatness, is shown by the very similar case which Amos briefly mentions. It was well known in the time of Amos that the Arameans (here used in the narrower sense of the Damascenes 2) had emigrated from the Cyrus, the same river that, according to Strabo, flows through Iberia also; although Amos by a strange sport of destiny was compelled to threaten them with banishment to this same northern river, which had then become Assyrian.3 That the name of Hebrews originally included more nations than Israel alone follows not only from the position which the ancient tradition gives to Eber, but also from other indications. When the ancient fragment, Gen. xiv. 13, gives the epithet 'the Hebrew' to Abraham (though his name in itself by no means suggests the word Hebrew), it evidently ascribes to the name Hebrew a much wider extension, and speaks just as we might expect from the primitive views of national relationships contained in the genealogical tables of the Book of Origins. In like manner speaks the Fifth Narrator, who had several very old accounts before his eyes, of all the sons of Eber,' in a place where he must have had in view many more nations than the one people of Israel. The name Hebrew, indeed, belongs to all the nations who came over the Euphrates with Abraham. So also long before Abraham, according to ancient tradition, a powerful branch of the Hebrews, under the name Joktan, had migrated into the south of Arabia and there founded flourishing kingdoms; for nothing else can be meant when Joktan (Gen. x. 25-30) is made the second son of Eber. And since in northern Arabia many tribes are placed in a close relation to Abraham, the name Hebrew might well be very predominant throughout the whole length of that country. But Amos ix. 7. 6 2 According to Amos i. 5. 3 Amos i. 5. 4 Although Artapanus in Eusebii Prep., his son, and all the Evang. ix. 18, derives the name Hebrew names with prefixed present a characfrom Abraham. teristic formation of the ancient Hebrew 5 Because Gen. x. 21, a verse inserted by the Fifth Narrator, speaks in the style of the genealogies. The same narrator however in Numb. xxiv. 24 (where the context is very different), understands the name Eber, as used in poetry, to mean no (seo Lehrbuch § 162a), which probably parison therewith to be Arabised. we must beware of fancying that the name Arab, which was gradually extended to all the nations of that immense country only after the seventh century before Christ, was produced only by a slight modification of the older name Hebrew.1 The people who remained in the north on the far side of the Euphrates seem then to have founded several small kingdoms, the memory of which (see p. 268) has probably been retained in the names of the four direct descendants of Eber, and among whom the Nahoreans, who lived in Haran, have been somewhat more fully described for us because of Jacob's close connection with them. That Nahor is the name both of the father and of the second of the three sons of Terah (see p. 273), agrees well with this supposition; and the name of Haran, the third of the three sons of Terah and the father of Lot, is probably still preserved in that of a northern country, the situation of which agrees not ill with the idea.2 3. Accordingly, in the migration from Ur-Chasdim distinguished by the name of Abraham and his companions, as well as in the subsequent one of Jacob, who took the same direction from the more southerly Haran, we see only continuations of the migratory movements of this primitive people, which, after having struck out probably in many directions, now took its farthest course towards the south-west, and thus found its last goal in Egypt. But this leads us into a new region. Here rises into view the land which was destined to be to the children of Israel, when arrived at maturity and competing for the good places of the earth, infinitely more sacred than ever the fatherland of their childhood had been; and on which the plot was laid of all the rich history that follows. Yet so long as the migration reaches only the fore-land of Egypt, Canaan, and not that great centre and point of attraction of ancient civilisation itself, we remain still only in the Primeval History. This name undoubtedly may be traced Arabia, since y resembles the Hebrew back to the signification Steppe (Isaiah xxi. 13), as also according to the, but is foreign to ordinary Arabic. أعراب Moslim only the are genuine Bedouins, and these two names are interchangeable (Hamasa, p. 294, v. 2); but these very words of Isaiah (xxi. 13) show that in the ninth or eighth century it was not yet in use; and according to Jer. iii. 2, Ezek. xxvii. 21, and Isaiah xiii. 20, it was not current till the seventh century, when the name Hebrew had been long obsolete. But the usage of language shows that this name originated in Northern not Central dáa. See Kemâleddîn in Freytag's Chrestomathy, p. 138, 8; Abulfida's Geography, p. 386, ed. Reinaud; and Journal Asiatique, 1847, i. p. 444; ii. p. 403; in Armenian probably Harkh (which is only a plural form); in Moses Chor. History, i. 9, 10, Geography, lxix. On another Arrán beyond the Tigris in Media, see Rawlinson in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, x. 81 sq. 139 sq. C. THE THIRD AGE. I. THE THREE PATRIARCHS OF THE NATION. THE Third Age is properly (according to p. 275 sqq.) that of the Heroes. Those only are strictly Heroes, whom every nation boasts of possessing in the time of its fresh energy and youth, and of whom the earliest and most powerful serves as the founder or father of the nation itself. For the conception of such prehistoric heroes afterwards spreads further, and the like grand forms are finally transferred even into the preceding ages; so that their collective image is constantly being removed farther and higher (of which we had an example at p. 275); but their proper place is unquestionably in this Third Age, immediately before the historic period. And they may be conceived as entirely filling the space of this age, the Book of Origins even placing the last remnants of the Hero-race in the earliest part of the age of Moses as enemies of Israel.2 But since in the case of Israel their Egyptian period makes the boundary between the two last ages, all the persons who in the strict sense may be called their fathers fall before this time, especially those whom in the spirit of the tradition itself we must distinguish under the name of the three Patriarchs. 3 The region of these three Patriarchs is thus sharply defined on both sides. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-Israel are, according to the true national feeling, the great names of the three sole founders and types of the Canaanite-Hebrew nation; the addition of Joseph to the number belongs to a much later view. In the old tradition concerning them their sphere is separated from that which precedes it by the fact that they first tread the holy ground, and thus with them the narrative first acquires the true Mosaic expansion and warmth of tone. From the following it is separated by the fact that even Joseph's life sinks into the scale usual in the later age, while the three others all remain upon the higher scale of the as yet little enfeebled hero-life. The exact investigation of this region is rendered difficult, 1 , or, according to the earlier more mythical appellation, . See the Jahrb. der Bibl. Wiss. vii. p. 18 sq. 2 Numb. xiii. 22, 28, 33. 3 It is clear from the age of the passages Ps. lxxvii. 16 [15], lxxx. 2 [1], lxxxi. 6 [5]. because (with a very few exceptions to be mentioned shortly) we have knowledge of it only from Biblical sources, since these three Patriarchs could not possibly be to other nations what they were to the Hebrews after Moses. But there is some compensation in the greater fulness and variety that are here to be observed for the first time in the specially Hebrew accounts. If we recognise in this far-off cloud-land comparatively little real history with the desirable certainty and completeness, we welcome the more gladly some important truths which are in the strictest sense historical, as soon as we are prepared to see them aright. But the more narrowly we reinvestigate the multitude of primitive traditions and reminiscences united here, and which upon a closer view appear remarkably rich and varied, the more manifest it becomes that even in those ancient times when their foundation was laid there were two veins from which, by a kind of intermingling, they grew into their present form. One half only, though indeed by far the most important one, is so to speak purely Hebrew; and this carries us easily and securely back to the basis of the true history of that primeval period when the nation of Israel and those immediately related to it were formed. Of another kind are single scattered traditions, which in their essential substance and general bearing recur also among other ancient nations belonging to the same sphere of high civilisation, different as they may at the first glance appear in the names of places and of persons. The carrying off of Sarah and of Rebekah by a foreign king has unmistakable resemblance to the Greek legend of Helen and the Hindu story of Sita; and in the original meaning of these traditions unquestionably it was the honour and beauty of the kingdom itself of whose protection and recovery they spoke. In like manner, as will be shown below, many things narrated of Isaac and Jacob recur in the traditions of the most ancient neighbouring nations.' In fact, we have here only fragments of a primitive body of tradition existing in these regions long before the time of these Patriarchs, which early mingled itself with the remembrance of the grand patriarchal days, and adorned it with many flowers which then, bedewed by the spirit of the religion of Israel, shone again with a double radiance. How this might happen is shown by the case explained above (p. 275 sqq.), as well It is perfectly obvious that this extends much further, to later as well as to earlier times. Icarius, like Noah in Gen. U ix. 2, meets with disaster through his disAthen. Dipn. xv. 6, 8, as by many other instances; and nothing else so clearly indicates the antiquity of all these traditions respecting the Patriarchs as the fact that through them we can look back farther into a still remoter sphere. As a third source of these traditions, the strictly Canaanitic stories may be named; that of Sodom, for example, Gen. xviii., xix., is unquestionably purely Canaanitic. That which may still be recognised as belonging to the ancient accounts of the time of these Patriarchs, will be here explained with a careful distinction of its sources. At a later period the history of the Patriarchs, in common with the whole of the primeval history and even that of Moses, gradually became a field for arbitrary invention, as may be seen in the extant fragments of that literature; but upon these no close attention need be bestowed. 1 II. THE CYCLE OF THE TWELVE TYPES. If we look simply at the prevailing character of the narratives and representations of this period given in the most ancient sources, we shall find little that is really historical to say of the three Patriarchs. For on a close view it is obvious that to the nation as we see it in the time of Moses they had not only long served as types, and therefore receded more and more into a prehistoric region, but also that they were members of a very large circle of national types. When an ancient people occupied a position from which it could look back upon a previous period of grandeur and renown, in which its own foundations had been laid and its organisation advanced, the few indestructible personages of that past, its true Heroes, naturally formed in the imagination a circle, and were treated as so many members of a typical house. For the distinction of a Hero, as contrasted with a God, so long at least as they are not confounded with each other (which generally took place in the more refined heathen religions), is this: that the God is the type of all men, but the Hero of one special order, correspondent to his own character; the Hero being always conceived as the man of his age, stamped with all 1 An instance of this sort of EgyptianAbrahamic history, with a king Nekao, with Jerusalem, &c., is given by Josephus in his Jewish Wars, v. 9. 4, but not repeated in his Antiquities. In an addendum, given by a Greek codex to Barnabas xii. ed. Dress., may be seen a piece of fictitious early history on Shem and his age. But the use of Abraham's and Isaac's names in adjuration by the Egyptians and others, affirmed by Origen, Contra Celsum, i. 5. 1, iv. 4. 3 sq., can only be referred to a later confusion of religions. |