tion does connect Abraham with two chief centres of the Babylonian moon-worship. But what we chiefly desiderate is some evidence that the worship of the moon-god had greater affinities with monotheism than the worship of Marduk, the god of the vernal sun. [The attempt to connect Joseph with the abortive monotheistic reform of Chuenaten (Amenophis IV.) is destitute of plausibility.]—To a similar effect Jeremias, ATLO2, 327 ff.: "A reform movement of protest against the religious degeneration of the ruling classes" was the motive of the migration (333), perhaps connected with the introduction of a new astronomical era, the Taurus-epoch (which, by the way, had commenced nearly 1000 years before! cf. 66). The movement assumed the form of a migration—a Hegira—under Abraham as Mahdi, who preached his doctrine as he went, made converts in Ḥarran, Egypt, Gerar, Damascus, and elsewhere, finally establishing the worship of Yahwe at the sanctuaries of Palestine. This is to write a new Abrahamic legend, considerably different from the old.
§ 5. Preservation and collection of the traditions.
In all popular narration the natural unit is the short story, which does not too severely tax the attention of a simple audience, and which retains its outline and features unchanged as it passes from mouth to mouth.[1] A large part of the Book of Genesis consists of narratives of this description,—single tales, of varying length but mostly very short, each complete in itself, with a clear beginning and a satisfying conclusion. As we read the book, unities of this kind detach themselves from their context, and round themselves into independent wholes; and it is only by studying them in their isolation, and each in its own light, that we can fully appreciate their charm and understand, in some measure, the circumstances of their origin. The older stratum of the primæval history, and of the history of Abraham, is almost entirely composed of single incidents of this kind: think of the story of the Fall, of Cain and Abel, of Noah's drunkenness, of the Tower of Babel; and again of Abraham in Egypt, of the flight or expulsion of Hagar, of the sacrifice of Isaac, etc., etc. When we pass the middle of the book, the mode of narra-
- ↑ Cf. Gu. p. XXXII, to whose fine appreciation of the "Kunstformder Sagen" this § is greatly indebted.
