genuine pre-Mosaic history. There are no grounds for any arbitrary distinction between the “pre-historic” pre-Abrahamic age and the later age. External evidence, which recognizes no universal deluge and no dispersal of mankind in the third millennium B.C., throws its own light upon the opening centuries of the second. It has revealed conditions which are not reflected in Genesis, and important facts upon which the book is silent—unless, indeed, there is a passing allusion to the great Babylonian monarch Khammurabi in the Amraphel of Gen. xiv. Any careful perusal of modern attempts to recover historical facts or an historical outline from the book will show how very inadequate the material proves to be, and the reconstructions will be found to depend upon an interpretation of the narratives which is often liberal and not rarely precarious, and to imply such reshaping and rewriting of the presumed facts that the cautious reader can place little reliance on them. Whatever future research may bring, it cannot remove the internal peculiarities which combine to show that Genesis preserves, not literal history, but popular traditions of the past. External evidence has proved the antiquity of various elements, but not that of the form or context in which they now appear; and the difference is an important one. We have now a background upon which to view the book, and, on the one hand, it has become obvious that the records preserve—as is only to be expected—Oriental customs, beliefs and modes of thought. But it has not been demonstrated that these are exclusively pre-Mosaic. On the other hand, a better acquaintance with the ancient political, sociological and religious conditions has made it increasingly difficult to interpret the records as a whole literally, or even to find a place in pre-Mosaic Palestine for the lives of the patriarchs as they are depicted.[1] Nevertheless, though one cannot look to Genesis for the history of the early part of the second millennium B.C., the study of what was thought of the past, proves in this, as in many other cases, to be more instructive than the facts of the past, and it is distinctly more important for the biblical student and the theologian to understand the thought of the ages immediately preceding the foundation of Judaism in the 5th century B.C. than the actual history of many centuries earlier.
A noteworthy feature is the frequent personification of peoples, tribes or clans (see Genealogy: Biblical). Midian (i.e. the Midianites) is a son of Abraham; Canaan is a son of Ham (ix. 22), and Cush the son of Ham is the father of Ramah and grandfather of the famous S. Arabian Fusion of diverse features. state Sheba and the traders of Dedan (x. 6 sq., cf. Ezek. xxvii. 20-22). Bethuel the father of Rebekah is the brother of the tribal names Uz and Buz (xxii. 21 sqq., cf. Jer. xxv. 20, 23). Jacob is otherwise known as Israel and becomes the father of the tribes of Israel; Joseph is the father of Ephraim and Manasseh, and incidents in the life of Judah lead to the birth of Perez and Zerah, Judaean clans. This personification is entirely natural to the Oriental, and though “primitive” is not necessarily an ancient trait.[2] It gives rise to what may be termed the “prophetical interpretation of history” (S. R. Driver, Genesis, p. 111), where the character, fortunes or history of the apparent individual are practically descriptive of the people or tribe which, according to tradition, is named after or descended from him. The utterance of Noah over Canaan, Shem and Japheth (ix. 25 sqq.), of Isaac over Esau and Jacob (xxvii.), of Jacob over his sons (xlix.) or grandsons (xlviii.), would have no meaning to Israelites unless they had some connexion with and interest for contemporary life and thought. Herein lies the force of the description of the wild and independent Ishmael (xvi. 12), the “father” of certain well-known tribes (xxv. 13-15); or the contrast between the skilful hunter Esau and the quiet and respectable Jacob (xxv. 27), and between the tiller Cain who becomes the typical nomad and the pastoral Abel (iv. 1-15). The interest of the struggles between Jacob and Esau lay, not in the history of individuals of the distant past, but in the fact that the names actually represented Israel and its near rival Edom. These features are in entire accordance with Oriental usage and give expression to current belief, existing relationships, or to a poetical foreshadowing of historical vicissitudes. But in the effort to understand them as they were originally understood it is very obvious that this method of interpretation can be pressed too far. It would be precarious to insist that the entrances into Palestine of Abraham and Jacob (or Israel) typified two distinct immigrations. The separation of Abraham from Lot (cf. Lotan, an Edomite name), of Isaac from Hagar-Ishmael, or of Jacob from Esau-Edom scarcely points to the relative antiquity of the origin of these non-Israelite peoples who, to judge from the evidence, were closely related. Or, if the “sons” of Jacob had Aramaean mothers, to prove that those which are derived from the wives were upon a higher level than the “sons” of the concubines is more difficult than to allow that certain of the tribes must have contained some element of Aramaean blood (cf. 1 Chron. vii. 14, and see Asher; Gad; Manasseh). Some of the names are clearly not those of known clans or tribes (e.g. Abraham, Isaac), and many of the details of the narratives obviously have no natural ethnological meaning. Stories of heroic ancestors and of tribal eponyms intermingle; personal, tribal and national traits are interwoven. The entrance of Jacob or Israel with his sons suggests that of the children of Israel. The story of Simeon and Levi at Shechem is clearly not that of two individuals, sons of the patriarch Israel; in fact the story actually uses the term “wrought folly in Israel” (cf. Jud. xx. 6, 10), and the individual Shechem, the son of Hamor, cannot be separated from the city, the scene of the incidents. Yet Jacob’s life with Laban has many purely individual traits. And, further, there intervenes a remarkable passage with an account of his conflict with the divine being who fears the dawn and is unwilling to reveal his name. In a few verses the “wrestling” (’-b -ḳ) of Jacob (yăʽăqōb) is associated with the Jabbok (yabbōq); his “striving” explains his name Israel; at Peniel he sees “the face of God,” and when touched on his vulnerable spot—the hollow of the thigh—he is lamed, hence “the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh unto this day” (xxxii. 24-32). Other examples of the fusion of different features can be readily found. Three divine beings appear to Abraham at the sacred tree of Hebron, and when the birth of Isaac (from ṣāḥaq, “laugh”) is foretold, the account of Sarah’s behaviour is merely a popular and trivial story suggested by the child’s name (xviii. 12-15; see also xvii. 17, xxi. 6, 9). An extremely fine passage then describes the patriarch’s intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah, and the narrative passes on to the catastrophe which explains the Dead Sea and its desert region and has parallels elsewhere (e.g. the Greek legend of Zeus and Hermes in Phrygia). Lot escapes to Zoar, the name gives rise to the pun on the “little” city (xix. 20), and his wife, on looking back, becomes one of those pillars of salt which still invite speculation. Finally the names of his children Moab and Ammon are explained by an incident when he is a cave-dweller on a mountain.
To primitive minds which speculated upon the “why and wherefore” of what they saw around them, the narratives of Genesis afforded an answer. They preserve, in fact, some of the popular philosophy and belief of the Hebrews. They furnish what must have been a satisfactory origin of the names Edom, Moab and Ammon, Mahanaim and Succoth, Bethel, Beersheba, &c. They explain why Shechem, Bethel and Beersheba were ancient sanctuaries (see further below); why the serpent writhes along the ground (iii. 14); and why the hip sinew might not be eaten (xxxii. 32). To these and a hundred other questions the national and tribal stories—of which no doubt only a few have survived, and of which other forms, earlier or later, more crude or more refined, were doubtless current—furnish an evidently adequate answer. Myth and legend, fact and fiction, the common stock of oral tradition, have been handed down, and thus constitute one of the most valuable sources for popular Hebrew thought.
The book is not to be judged from any one-sided estimate of its
- ↑ See the remarks of W. R. Smith, Eng. Hist. Rev. (1888), pp. 128 seq. (from the sociological side), and for general considerations, A. A. Bevan, Crit. Rev. (1893), pp. 138 sqq.; S. R. Driver, Genesis, pp. xliii. sqq.
- ↑ Cf. Amos i. 11; 1 Chron. ii. iv. (note iv. 10), the Book of Jubilees (see above), and also Arabian usage (W. R. Smith, Kinship and Marriage, ch. i.). For modern examples, see E. Littmann, Orient. Stud. Theodor Nöldeke (ed. Bezold, 1906), pp. 942-958.
