(b) The commonest class of all, especially in the patriarchal narratives,
is what may be called ethnographic legends. It is an obvious
feature of the narratives that the heroes of them are frequently personifications
of tribes and peoples, whose character and history and
mutual relationships are exhibited under the guise of individual biography.
Thus the pre-natal struggle of Jacob and Esau prefigures the
rivalry of 'two nations' (2523); the monuments set up by Jacob and
Laban mark the frontier between Israelites and Aramæans (3144ff.);
Ishmael is the prototype of the wild Bedouin (1612), and Cain of some
ferocious nomad-tribe; Jacob and his twelve sons represent the unity
of Israel and its division into twelve tribes; and so on. This mode of
thinking was not peculiar to Israel (cf. the Hellen, Dorus, Xuthus,
Aeolus, Achæus, Ion, of the Greeks);[1] but it is one specially natural to
the Semites from their habit of speaking of peoples as sons (i.e. members)
of the collective entity denoted, by the tribal or national name (sons of
Israel, of Ammon, of Ishmael, etc.), whence arose the notion that these
entities were the real progenitors of the peoples so designated. That
in some cases the representation was correct need not be doubted; for
there are known examples, both among the Arabs and other races in a
similar stage of social development, of tribes named after a famous
ancestor or leader of real historic memory. But that this is the case
with all eponymous persons—e.g. that there were really such men as
Jerahmeel, Midian, Aram, Sheba, Amalek, and the rest—is quite incredible;
and, moreover, it is never true that the fortunes of a tribe are
an exact copy of the personal experiences of its reputed ancestor,
even if he existed. We must therefore treat these legends as symbolic
representations of the ethnological affinities between different tribes
or peoples, and (to a less extent) of the historic experiences of these
peoples. There is a great danger of driving this interpretation too
far, by assigning an ethnological value to details of the legend which
never had any such significance; but to this matter we shall have occasion
to return at a later point (see p. xix ff.).
(c) Next in importance to these ethnographic legends are the cult-legends. A considerable proportion of the patriarchal narratives are designed to explain the sacredness of the principal national sanctuaries, while a few contain notices of the origin of particular ritual customs (circumcision, ch. 17 [but cf. Ex. 424ff.]; the abstinence from eating the sciatic nerve, 3233). To the former class belong such incidents as Hagar at Lahairoi (16), Abraham at the oak of Mamre (18), his planting of the tamarisk at Beersheba (2133), Jacob at Bethel—with the reason for anointing the sacred stone, and the institution of the tithe—(2810ff.), and at Peniel (3224ff.); and many more. The general idea is that the places were hallowed by an appearance of the deity in the patriarchal period, or at least by the performance of an act of worship (erection of an altar, etc.) by one of the ancestors of Israel. In reality the sanctity of these spots was in many cases of immemorial antiquity, being rooted in the most primitive forms of Semitic religion; and at times the narrative
- ↑ See Dri. 112; Gordon, ETG, 88
