graphies and their background that the former would be unintelligible if transplanted to other and later surroundings. We should gladly welcome any evidence that this is the case; but it seems to us that the remarkable thing about these narratives is just the absence of background and their general compatibility with the universal conditions of ancient Eastern life.[1] The case for the historicity of the tradition, based on correspondences with contemporary evidence from the period in question, appears to us to be greatly overstated
The line of argument that claims most careful attention is to the
following effect: Certain legal customs presupposed by the patriarchal
stories are now known to have prevailed (in Babylon) in the age of
Ḫammurabi; these customs had entirely ceased in Israel under the
monarchy; consequently the narratives could not have been invented
by legend-writers of that period (Je. ATLO2, 355 ff.). The strongest
case is the truly remarkable parallel supplied by Cod. Ḫamm. 146 to
the position of Hagar as concubine-slave in ch. 16 (below, p. 285). Here
everything turns on the probability that this usage was unknown in
Israel in the regal period; and it is surely pressing the argumentum ex silentio too far to assert confidently that if it had been known it
would certainly have been mentioned in the later literature. We must
remember that Genesis contains almost the only pictures of intimate
family life in the OT, and that it refers to many things not mentioned
later simply because there was no occasion to speak of them. Were
twin-births peculiar to the patriarchial period because two are mentioned
in Gen. and none at all in the rest of the OT? The fact that
the custom of the concubine-slave has persisted in Mohammedan
countries down to modern times, should warn us against such sweeping
negations.—Again, we learn (ib. 358) that the simultaneous marriage
with two sisters was permitted by ancient Babylonian law, but was
proscribed in Hebrew legislation as incestuous. Yes, but the law in
- ↑ A striking illustration of this washing out of historical background is the contrast between the Genesis narratives and the Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe, from which Je. (ATLO2, 298 ff.) quotes at length in demonstration of their verisimilitude. While the latter is full of detailed information about the people among whom the writer lived, the former (except in chs. 14. 34. 38) have hardly any allusions (243 3715f.) to the aboriginal population of Palestine proper. Luther (INS, 156 f.) even maintains that the original Yahwist conceived Canaan as at this time an uninhabited country! Without going so far as that, we cannot but regard the fact as an indication of the process of abstraction which the narratives have undergone in the course of oral transmission. Would they appeal to the heart of the world as they do if they retained, to the extent sometimes alleged, the signature of an obsolete civilisation ?
