Chapter VIII: The Narrative of the Hexateuch (2)

The period between the flood and Abraham is filled up in Q by another ten-membered genealogy, which, to judge from the analogy of Genesis iv., had probably only seven members in JE. It cannot have been wanting there, and may have passed straight from Shem to Heber, and left out the grandfather Nahor (x. 21, 24, xxiv. 15, xxix. 5), who is even less to be distinguished from his grandson of the same name than Adam from Enos. The original dwelling-place of the Terahites is, according to Q, not the Mesopotamian Haran (Carrhae), as in JE (xii. 1, xxiv. 4), but Ur Casdim, which can only mean Ur of the Chaldees. From there Terah, the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran, is said to have emigrated with Abraham and Lot, the son of Haran, who was already dead. If this was so, Nahor must have stayed at Ur Casdim, and Haran must have died there. But neither of these assumptions is consistent with the indications of the narrative. The different aspirates notwithstanding, it is scarcely allowable to separate the man Haran from the town Haran and to make him die elsewhere. It is equally impossible to regard Ur in Chaldaea as the residence of Nahor, whether the grandfather or the grandson of the same name matters nothing; for it is obviously not without relation to real facts that the place, which in any case must be in Syria, where the Nahorides Laban and Rebecca dwell, is called in J the town of Nahor, and in E Haran. Even in Q though Nahor stays in Ur, Laban and Rebecca do not live in Chaldaea, but in Padan Aram, ie., in Mesopotamian Syria. What helps to show that Ur Casdim does not belong to the original form of the tradition, is that even in Serug the father of Nahor, we are far away from Babylon towards the West. Serug is the name of a district which borders Haran on the North; how can the son of Serug all at once leap back to Ur Casdim? What the reasons were for making Babylon Abraham's point of departure, we need not now consider; but after having left Ur Casdim with Terah, it is curious how he only gets as far as Haran, and stays there till his father's death. In Q also it is from Haran that he enters Palestine. Here, if anywhere, we have in the doubling of the point of departure an attempt to harmonise and to gain a connection with JE.

VII.I.3. The view is happily gaining ground that, in the mythical universal history of mankind in Genesis i.-xi., the Jehovist version is more primitive than the priestly one. And we are, in fact, compelled to adopt this view when we observe that the materials of the narratives in question have not an Israelite, but a universal ethnic origin. The traces of this origin are much more distinctly preserved in the Jehovist, whence it comes that comparative mythology occupies itself chiefly with his narratives, though without knowing that it is doing so. The primitive legend has certainly undergone alterations in his hands too; its mythic character is much obliterated, and all sorts of Israelite elements have crept in. Even the fratricide of Cain, with the contrast in the background between the peaceful life of the Hebrews in the land of Canaan and the restless wanderings of the Cainites (Kenites) in the neighbouring desert, quite falls out of the universal historical and geographical framework. Still more does the curse of Canaan do so; here the trait is evidently old, that Noah was the first to make wine, but this has been made a merely subordinate feature of a pronouncedly national Israelite narrative. But in the Jehovist the process of emptying the primitive legend of its true meaning and contents has not gone nearly so far as in the Priestly Code, where it actually creates surprise when some mythic element shines through, as in the cases of Enoch, and of the rainbow.

The mythic materials of the primitive world-history are suffused in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism: as if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4). We notice a shy, timid spirit, which belongs more to heathenism. The rattling of the chains at intervals only aggravates the feeling of confinement that belongs to human nature; the gulf of alienation between man and God is not to be bridged over. Jehovah does not stand high enough, does not feel Himself secure enough, to allow the earth-dwellers to come very near Him; there is almost a suggestion of the notion of the jealousy of the gods. This mood, though in many ways softened, is yet recognisable enough in Genesis ii. iii., in vi. 1-4, and xi. 1-9. In the Priestly Code it has entirely disappeared; here man no longer feels himself under a secret curse, but allied to God and free, as lord of nature. True, the Priestly Code also recognises in its own fashion the power of sin--this we saw in the chapter on sacrifice; but sin as the root of ruin, explaining it and capable of being got rid of, is the very opposite of blind, not-to-be-averted fate. The slavery of sin and the freedom of the children of God are in the Gospel correlated. The mythical mode of view is destroyed by the autonomy of morality; and closely connected with this is the rational way of looking at nature, of which we find the beginnings in the Priestly Code. This view of nature presupposes that man places himself as a person over and outside of nature, which he regards as simply a thing. We may perhaps assert that were it not for this dualism of Judaism, mechanical natural science would not exist.

The removal of colour from the myths is the same thing as the process of Hebraising them. The Priestly Code appears to Hebraise less than the Jehovist; it refrains on principle from confounding different times and customs. But in fact it Hebraises much more: it cuts and shapes the whole of the materials so that they may serve as an introduction to the Mosaic legislation. It is true that the Jehovist also placed these ethnic legends at the entrance to his sacred legend, and perhaps selected them with a view to their forming an introduction to it; for they are all ethical and historical in their nature, and bear on the problems of the world of man, and not the world of nature. /1/

-- Footnote 1 Yet it is possible the selection presented him with no difficulty, since cosmological myths were not popular tales, but priestly speculations, with which he was quite unacquainted. -- Footnote

But with the Jehovist justice was yet done to some extent to the individuality of the different narratives: in the Priestly Code their individuality is not only modified to suit the purpose of the whole, but completely destroyed. The connection leading up to the Torah of Moses is everything, the individual pieces have no significance but this. It follows of course from this mode of treatment that the connection itself loses all living reality; it consists, apart from the successive covenants, in mere genealogy and chronology. De Wette thinks all this beautiful because it is symmetrical and intelligible, and leads well up to a conclusion. But this will not be every one's taste; there is such a thing as poetical material without manufacture.

How loosely the narratives of the primitive history are connected with each other in the Jehovist we see very clearly in the section dealing with the flood. It disagrees both with what goes before and with what follows it. The genealogy Genesis iv. 16-24 issues not in Noah but in Lamech; instead of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the sons of Noah, we have Jabal, Jubal, Tubal, the sons of Lamech, as the inaugurators of the second period. We have also the characteristic difference, that Shem, Ham, and Japhet give us a division of mankind according to nations, while Jabal, Jubal, Tubal give a division according to guilds, which are necessarily those of the same people, as no people consists entirely of musicians or entirely of smiths. And it is undoubtedly the aim of chapter iv. 16 seq. to describe the origin of the present civilisation, not of that which is extinct, having been destroyed by the flood. Tubal-Cain is the father of the smiths of the present, not of those before the flood; Jubal the father of the musicians, Jabal of the shepherds of the narrator's own period; hence they stand at the end of the genealogy and open the second period. But as Genesis iv. 16-24 does not look forward to the flood, so neither does Genesis xi. 1-9 (the building of the tower of Babel) look back to it. This piece is obviously not the continuation of chapter x. That chapter brought us to a point at which the earth was occupied by different peoples and different tongues; and here (xi. 1) we are suddenly carried back to a time when the whole earth was of one language and one speech. Can this have been the time when Noah's family made up the whole population of the earth? or in other words, does xi. 1-9 go back before chap x. and join on to vi.-ix.? Manifestly not: "the whole earth" (xi. 1) is not merely Shem and Ham and Japhet; the multitude of men who seek by artificial means to concentrate themselves, and are then split up into different peoples, cannot consist of only one family. The point of view is quite different from what it would be if chaps. vi.-ix. were taken into account; the narrator knows nothing of the flood, which left Noah's family alone surviving out of the whole world. Nor would it avail to place xi. 1 at a period so long subsequent to the flood that the family might have increased again to a great people; even this would not give the requisite connection with the idea of Noah and his three sons. If the latter united themselves afterwards in one family, and one coherent people thus grew out of them, which was then split up by a higher power into different languages, then Shem, Ham, and Japhet entirely lose their significance as the great heads of the nations.

The fact is simply this, that the whole section of the flood (Genesis vi.-ix.) is an isolated piece without any connection with the rest of the narrative of the Jehovist. Another strange erratic boulder is the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of men (Genesis vi. 1-4). /l/ The connection between

-- Footnote 1 See p. 307, note. -- Footnote

this piece and the story of the flood which follows it, is of the loosest; and it is in entire disagreement with the preceding part of the Jehovist narrative, as it tells of a second fall of man, with a point of view morally and mentally so different from that of the first, that this story can in no wise be regarded as supplementing or continuing that one. In Genesis vi. 1-4 morality has nothing to do with the guilt that is incurred. We have further examples which illustrate the fragmentary character of the Jehovist primitive history as we have it, in the story of the fratricide of Cain, and the curse of Canaan, which indeed ought not to be here at all, but belong by rights to the history of the patriarchs.

We may close this section by reproducing the words in which Buttmann (i. 208 seq.) indicates his disagreement with De Wette in regard to the treatment of the early legends of the Bible: they are well worth noting. "Thoroughly familiar with the antiquities of the race in whose sacred writings these monuments have been preserved to us, De Wette recognises and follows the national spirit of that race in their most ancient records. In this way he discovers amidst these ruins the thread of an old connection, a kind of epos, the theme of which was the glorification of the people of Israel, a theme which finds a prelude even in the primitive history of the human race. This view is of the first importance for the object he has before him, which is the true criticism of these books; and for the moment other considerations must necessarily yield to it. My object in this whole investigation is only to find the universal element in the legends of different nations, and especially to discover what is common property in the myths of the different branches of the great family of nations to which the Hebrews and the Greeks and we ourselves alike belong. Thus each myth reveals itself to me as existing for itself, having a basis and completeness of its own, and even when I find it in other nations I at once assert for it its character as already known to me. Thus De Wette and I come to differ in the view we take of individual myths. To him they commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free inventions in which there is no intention to deceive. I, on the contrary, can allow no invention in these oldest portions of mythology. A true myth is never invented; it is handed down. It is not true, but it is honest. From small elements which fancy offered as true, these myths arose and grew, without any contributor to their growth feeling that he had of himself added to them. Those only had any conscious intention in the matter, who touched up the oldest pure myths, and drew them into the great circle of their national history; and their intention, though conscious, was quite innocent and harmless, as De Wette describes it. Now De Wette sees the chief traces of that unity, or of that national epos which winds its way through the Mosaic history, in the Elohim document. For his critical purpose, therefore, this document is the most important, and it he for the most part follows. My aim forbids me to attend to anything but the inner completeness of the stories taken one by one, and this I see most clearly in the Jehovah fragments; whence I have had to yield the preference to them in the foregoing discussions. Should each of us attain his end, our views will excellently supplement each other."

We may add that just that linked unity of its narrative, which has procured for the Priestly Code the title of the "mainstock," shows that it presents us with a more developed form of the myths; while the Jehovist, just because of the defective connection (in form) of his "fragments," which long caused him to be regarded as a mere filler-up of the fundamental work, must be judged to stand nearer to the fountain.

VIII.II.

VIII.II.1. In the history of the patriarchs also, the outlines of the narrative are the same in Q and in JE. We find in both Abraham's immigration into Canaan with Sarah and Lot, his separation from Lot, the birth of Ishmael by Hagar, the appearance of God for the promise of Isaac, Isaac's birth, the death of Sarah and Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac's marriage with Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Jacob's journey to Mesopotamia and the foundation of his family there, his return, Esau, Joseph in Egypt, Jacob in Egypt, Jacob's blessing on Joseph and his other sons, his death and burial. The materials here are not mythical but national, and therefore more transparent, and in a certain sense more historical. It is true, we attain to no historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the stories about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is here unconsciously projected, in its inner and its outward features, into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like a glorified mirage. The skeleton of the patriarchal history consists, it is well known, of ethnographic genealogy. The Leah-tribes are connected with the Rachel-tribes under the common father Jacob-Israel: then entire Israel is connected with the people of Edom under the old name of Isaac (Amos vii 9, 16). Isaac again is connected under Abraham with Lot, the father of Moab and Ammon. All these nearly related and once closely allied Hebrew tribes are shown to be intimately connected with the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian desert, and sharply marked off from the Canaanites, in whose land they dwelt. The narrative speaks of its characters as succeeding each other in time or contemporary; in this form it indicates logical or statistical subordination and co-ordination. As a fact the elements are generally older than the groups and the smaller groups than the greater. The migrations which are mentioned of peoples and tribes are necessary consequences of the assumed relationship. It would be quite possible to present the composition and relative position of any given people at a given time in a similar way in the form of a genealogical early history. True genealogy can scarcely represent precisely the existing relations. It cannot always be determined as a matter of fact whether a tribe is the cousin or the brother or the twin-brother of another tribe, or whether there is any affinity at all between the two; the affinity can be understood and interpreted in different ways, the grouping always depends to some extent on the point of view of the genealogist, or even on his likings and antipathies. The reason why the Arameans are made so nearly related to the Israelites is probably that the patriarchal legend arose in Middle and North Israel; as indeed the pronounced preference shown for Rachel and Joseph clearly proves to have been the case. Did the legend belong originally to Judah, it is likely that more prominence would be given to the Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the peninsula of Sinai, which, as it is, are too much thrust into the background; for there can be no doubt that in the earliest history of Israel these tribes were of no small importance. Nor are apparent contradictions wanting in the ethnographic genealogy. Ishmael, Edom, and the Cainite tribes first mentioned, come into mutual contact in different ways, which may be quite naturally explained from different views and arrangements of their mutual relationships. And lastly we may add that the genealogical form lends itself to the reception of every sort of materials. In the patriarchal legend, however, the ethnographic element is always predominant. Abraham alone is certainly not the name of a people like Isaac and Lot: he is somewhat difficult to interpret. That is not to say that in such a connection as this we may regard him as a historical person; he might with more likelihood be regarded as a free creation of unconscious art. He is perhaps the youngest figure in the company, and it was probably at a comparatively late period that he was put before his son Isaac. /1/

-- Footnote 1. The stories about Abraham and those about Isaac are so similar, that they cannot possibly be held to be independent of each other. The stories about Isaac, however, are more original, as may be seen in a striking way on comparing Genesis xx. 2-16 with xxvi 6-12. The short nnd profane version, of which Isaac is the hero, is more lively and pointed; the long and edifying version in which Abraham replaces Isaac, makes the danger not possible but actual, thus necessitating the intervention of the Deity and so bringing about a glorification of the patriarch, which he little deserved. All the commentators on Genesis indeed, regard chapter xx. as the original of xxvi.; they do not base their judgment, however, on a comparison of the parallel passages, but merely consider that as the father is older than the son, the story about the father is older than the corresponding story about the son; and they regard Isaac generally as a mere echo of Abraham. The obviousness of this principle is too great, and against it we have to consider that the later development of the legend shows a manifest tendency to make Abraham the patriarch par excellence and cast the others into the shade. In the earlier literature, on the other hand, Isaac is mentioned even by Amos, Abraham first appears in Isaiah xl.-lxvii. Micah vii 20 belongs to the exile, and the words "who redeemed Abraham" in Isaiah xxix. 22 are not genuine; they have no possible position in the sentence, and the idea of the salvation of Abraham (from the fire of the Chaldaeans) is of late occurrence. I certainly do not mean to maintain that Abraham was not yet known when Amos wrote; but he scarcely stood by this time at the same stage as Isaac and Jacob. As a saint of Hebron he might he of Calibite ordain, and have something to do with Ram (1Chronicles ii.). Abram may stand for Abiram, as Abner for Abiner and Ahab for Ahiab. The name Abu Ruham occurs in the Hadith as _nomen proprium viri_. -- Footnote

In the Jehovist this skeleton of ethnographic genealogy is found covered throughout with flesh and blood. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not mere names, but living forms, ideal prototypes of the true Israelite. They are all peace-loving shepherds, inclined to live quietly beside their tents, anxious to steer clear of strife and clamour, in no circumstances prepared to meet force with force and oppose injustice with the sword. Brave and manly they are not, but they are good fathers of families, a little under the dominion of their wives, who are endowed with more temper. They serve Jehovah in essentially the same way as their descendants in historical times; religion with them does not consist of sacrifice alone, but also of an upright conversation and trustful resignation to God's providence. Jacob is sketched with a more realistic touch than the other two; he has a strong dash of artifice and desire of gain, qualities which do not fail to secure the ends he aims at. He escapes from every difficulty and danger, not only safely but with profit: Jehovah helps him, but above all he helps himself, without showing, as we should judge, any great scruple in his choice of means. The stories about him do not pretend to be moral, the feeling they betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue. Of the subordinate figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and the weak-kneed saint, Lot. Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him.

It is remarkable that the heroes of Israelite legend show so little taste for war, and in this point they seem to be scarcely a true reflection of the character of the Israelites as known from their history. Yet it is not difficult to understand that a people which found itself incessantly driven into war, not only dreamed of an eternal peace in the future, but also embodied the wishes of its heart in these peaceful forms of the golden age in the past. We have also to consider that the peaceful shepherd life of the patriarchs is necessary to the idyllic form in which the early history of the people is cast; only peoples or tribes can make war, not single men. /1/ This also must serve to explain why

-- Footnote 1. This consideration is certainly less decisive than the foregoing one. Jacob is a peaceful shepherd, not only because of the idyllic form of the narrative, but in his own being and character. He forms the strongest contrast to his brother Esau, who in spite of the idyllic form is a man of war. Such exceptions as Genesis xiv. and xlviii.'22 (chapter xxxiv.) only prove the rule. -- Footnote

the historical self-consciousness of the nation finds so little expression in the personal character of the patriarchs. It makes vent for itself only in the inserted prophecies of the future; in these we trace that national pride which was the fruit of the exploits of David, yet always in a glorified form, rising to religious exaltation.

In the traits of personal character ascribed to the patriarchs they represent substantially the nature and the aspirations of the individual Israelite. The historic-political relations of Israel are reflected with more life in the relations borne by the patriarchs to their brothers; cousins, and other relatives. The background is never long concealed here, the temper of the period of the kings is everywhere discernible. This is the case most clearly perhaps in the story about Jacob and Esau. The twins are at variance, even in the womb; even in the matter of his birth the younger refuses precedence to the elder, and tries to hold him back by the heel. This is interpreted to the anxious mother by the oracle at Beersheba as follows: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples are separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger." The boys grow up very different. Esau is a rough and sunburnt hunter, ranges about in the desert, and lives from day to day without care: Jacob, a pious, smooth man, stays at home beside the tents, and understands the value of things which his unsophisticated brother disregards. The former is the favourite of his father, the autochthonous Isaac, the latter is preferred by the mother, the Aramaean Rebecca; the former stays in his own land and takes his wives from the original population of south Canaan and the Sinaitic peninsula, the latter emigrates, and brings his wives from Mesopotamia. Thus the contrast is distinctly prefigured, which at a later time appeared, between the rough Edom, sprung from the soil and having his roots in it, and smoother, more civilised Israel, which had more affinity with the great powers of the world. By means of deceit and trickery the younger brother succeeds in depriving the elder of the paternal blessing and of the right of the first-born; the elder, in consequence of this, determines to kill him, and the situation becomes strained. Edom was a people and a kingdom before Israel, but was then overshadowed by Israel, and even subjugated at last by David: hence the fierce hatred between the brother nations, of which Amos speaks. The words of the blessing of Jacob show this quite distinctly to be the historical basis of the legend, a basis of which the Jews were perfectly conscious: we hear in the blessing of repeated attempts of the Edomites to cast off the yoke of Israel, and it is predicted that these efforts will be at last successful. Thus the stories about Jacob and Esau cannot have taken form even in outline, before the time of David; in their present form (Genesis xxvii. 40) their outlook extends to times still later. The roots of the legend being thus traceable in later history, a circumstance which the Jehovist does not attempt to conceal, it is no more than an apparent anachronism when he takes occasion to give a complete list of the Edomite kings down to David, interspersing it with historical notes, as, for example, that Hadad ben Bedad (possibly a contemporary of Gideon) defeated the Midianites on the plains of Moab. In the story of Jacob and Laban, again, the contemporary background shines through the patriarchal history very distinctly. The Hebrew, on his half-migration, half-flight from Mesopotamia to the land of Jordan, is hotly pursued by his Aramean father-in-law, who overtakes him at Gilead. There they treat with each other and pile up a heap of stones, which is to be the boundary between them, and which they mutually pledge themselves not to overstep with hostile intentions. This answers to the actual state of the facts. The Hebrew migration into Canaan was followed by the Aramaean, which threatened to overwhelm it. Gilead was the boundary between the two peoples, and the arena, during a long period, of fierce conflicts which they waged with each other. The blessing of Jacob, in the oracle on Joseph, also mentions the Syrian wars: the archers who press Joseph hard, but are not able to overcome him, can be no other than the Arameans of Damascus, to whose attacks he was exposed for a whole century. Joseph here appears always as the pillar of the North-Israelite monarchy, the wearer of the crown among his brethren, a position for which he was marked out by his early dreams. The story of Joseph, however, in so far as historical elements can be traced in it at all, and not merely the free work of poetry, is based on much earlier events, from a time when the union was just being accomplished of the two sections which together became the people of Israel. The trait of his brother's jealousy of him points perhaps to later events. /1/

-- Footnote 1. It deserves to be considered that at first Joseph is in Egypt alone, and that his brothers came after, at his request. When the notion of united Israel was transferred to the distant past, one consequence was that the fortunes of the part could not be separated from those of the whole. In the same way, Rachel being an Aramaean, Leah must be one too. Perhaps the combination of Rachel and Leah in a national unity was only accomplished by Moses. Moses came from the peninsula of Sinai (Leah) to lead the Israelites there from Goshen (Joseph). The designation of Levite he could not receive in Joseph, only in Leah. -- Footnote

The historical associations which form the groundwork of the stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old. They afford us almost the only information we possess about the great change which must have taken place in the league of the tribes soon after Moses. This change principally affected the group of the four old Leah tribes which were closely connected with each other. Reuben assumes the rights of his father prematurely and loses the leadership. Simeon and Levi make, apart from the others, a faithless attack on the Canaanites, and collective Israel lets them suffer the consequences alone, so that they succumb to the vengeance of their enemies and cease to be tribes. Hence the primogeniture is transferred to Judah. Judah also suffers great losses, no doubt in the conflict which accompanied the settlement in the land of Canaan, and is reduced to a fraction of his former importance. But this breach is made good by fresh accessions from the mother-stock of the Leah tribes, by the union of Pharez and Zarah, i.e. of Caleb, Kenaz, Cain (Ken), Jerahmeel, with the remnant of ancient Judah. The Jehovist narratives about Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, are undoubtedly based on occurrences connected with the period of the conquest of the holy land; but this is not the place to trace the historical interpretation of the stories further. /1/

-- Footnote 1. See "Israel," sec. 2, infra. Genesis iv. 1-15 is a similar tribal history. The old tribe of Cain, the name of which is indicative of settlement and culture, appears to have been broken up and scattered to the four winds in very early times (Judges v. 24) in the same way as Levi, with which it appears to have divided the priesthood. We have already said that Genesis iv. 1-l5 can only have found its way into the primitive legend by interpolation. -- Footnote

It may, however, be remarked, and it is important to do so, that even where true historic motives are indisputably present in the patriarchal legend, it is not exactly a reproduction of the facts as they occurred. In reality Edom always kept up his hatred against Israel and suppressed his feeling of relationship (Amos i. 11); in Genesis he meets his brother returning from Mesopotamia, and trembling with anxiety at the encounter, in a conciliatory temper which is quite affecting. The touch is one to reflect no small honour on the ancient Israelite. To set against this we have the touch, manifestly inspired by hatred, of Genesis xix. 30-38. No one can fail to wonder why the daughters of Lot are nameless, but this shows that they are inserted between Lot and his sons Moab and Ammon purely for the sake of the incest. Sympathies and antipathies are everywhere at work, and the standpoint is throughout that of Northern Israel, as appears most evidently from the circumstance that Rachel is the fair and the beloved wife of Jacob, whom alone in fact he wished to marry, and Leah the ugly and despised one who was imposed on him by a trick. /2. On the whole, the rivalries

-- Footnote 2 This, however, only warrants us to conclude that these legends first arose in Ephraim, not that they were written down there in the form in which we have them. -- Footnote

which really existed are rather softened than exaggerated in this poetical illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation. There is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as, e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to make them advance this or that tendency.

But these stories would be without point were it not for other elements which enter into them and attach them to this and that particular locality. In this aspect we have first of all to consider that the patriarchs are regarded as the founders of the popular worship at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, and Hebron, as we saw above, <I.II.1. "In perfect correspondence...">. A whole series of stories about them are cultus-myths; in these they discover by means of a theophany that a certain spot of earth is holy ground; there they erect an altar, and give it the name of the place. They dwell exclusively at places which were afterwards regarded as primeval sanctuaries and inaugurate the sacrifices which are offered there. The significance of these stories is entirely bound up with the locality; they possess an interest only for those who still sacrifice to Jehovah on the same altar as Abraham once did, under the same sacred oak of Moreh or Mamre. In the same way the patriarchs discover or excavate the caves, or springs, or wells, and plant the trees, which their posterity still count sacred or at least honourable, after the lapse of thousands of years. In some cases also striking or significant formations of the earth's surface receive a legendary explanation from the patriarchal age. Were the Dead Sea not there, Sodom and Gomorrha would not have perished; were there not a small flat tongue of land projecting into the marsh from the south-east, Lot would have directed his flight straight to the mountains of his sons Moab and Ammon, and would not have made the detour by Zoar, which only serves to explain why this corner was not included in the ruin to the area of which it properly belongs. The pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was turned was still pointed out in the days of Josephus; perhaps the smoke of the furnace which Abraham saw from the Jewish shore the morning after the catastrophe has some connection with the town of the same name which was situated there. /1/

-- Footnote 1 Joshua HNB#N xv. 62 is no doubt more correctly HKB#N: the name, having the article prefixed to it, must be susceptible of a clear meaning. -- Footnote

The origin of Mount Gilead is explained from its historical significance: it is an immense mound which was once heaped up by Laban and Jacob in order to serve as a boundary between Aram and Israel. In many instances the names of places gave rise to a legend which does not always hit upon the true reason of the name. The spring of Lahai Roi, for example, is an instance of this. The discovery of this spring saved Hagar and Ishmael from dying of thirst. Hagar called the name of Jehovah who spoke with her, El Roi (God of Seeing), for she said, "Have I seen God, and am I kept in life after my seeing?" Wherefore the well is called Beer Lahai Roi (he lives who sees me); it is between Kadesh and Berdan. According to Judges xv. 18-20, 2Samuel xxiii. 11, a more correct interpretation of Lahai Roi would be " jawbone of the antelope "--this being the appearance presented by a series of rocky teeth standing close together there. /1/

-- Footnote 1 Compare Onugnathos and the camel's jawbone in Vakidi, op. cit. p. 298, note 2: Jakut iv. 353, 9 seq. R)Y is an obsolete name of an animal. For HLM, Genesis xvi. 15, we should read )LHYM (cf. 1Samuel iii. 13), and before )XRY we should probably insert W)XY. -- Footnote

The original motive of the legend, however, as we have now indicated it, appears in the Jehovist always and everywhere covered over with the many-coloured robe of fancy. The longer a story was spread by oral tradition among the people, the more was its root concealed by the shoots springing from it. For example, we may assume with regard to the story of Joseph that, just because it has almost grown into a romance, its origin stretches back to a remote antiquity. The popular fancy plays as it will; yet it does not make such leaps as to make it impossible to trace its course. Miracles, angels, theophanies, dreams, are never absent from the palette. When Rachel eats the mandrakes which Reuben had found, and which Leah had given up to her, and they remove her barrenness so that she becomes the mother of Joseph, we have a story based on a vulgar superstition. Purely mythical elements are found isolated in the story of Jacob's wrestling with the Deity at the ford of the Jabbok. Etymology and proverbs are a favourite motive, and often give rise to lively and diversified tales. Even in pieces which we should be inclined to attribute to the art of individuals, old and characteristic themes may be involved. The story of Jacob and Laban, for example, is entirely composed of such materials. The courtship at the well is twice repeated with no great variation. The trait of the father-in-law's wish to get his oldest daughter first off his hands and craftily bringing her to the son-in-law after the wedding-feast, is scarcely due to the invention of an individual. The shepherd's tricks, by which Jacob colours the sheep as he likes, have quite the flavour of a popular jest. The observance of hospitality or transgressions against it, occupy a prominent place in the Genesis of the Jehovist; Lot's entertainment, and the Sodomites' insulting maltreatment, of the Deity who comes among them in disguise, is an incident that appears in the legends of many races. There is little psychological embellishment, little actual making-up; for the most part we have the product of a countless number of narrators, unconsciously modifying each other's work. How plastic and living the materials must have been even in the ninth and eighth century, we see from the manifold variants and repetitions of the same stories, which, however, scarcely change the essential character of the themes.

One more trait must be added to the character of the Jehovist. Each of his narratives may be understood by itself apart from the rest; the genealogy serves merely to string them together; their interest and significance is not derived from the connection in which they stand. Many of them have a local colour which bespeaks a local origin; and how many of them are in substance inconsistent with each other, and stand side by side only by compulsion! The whole literary character and loose connection of the Jehovist story of the patriarchs reveals how gradually its different elements were brought together, and how little they have coalesced to a unity. In this point the patriarchal history of the Jehovist, stands quite on the same footing with his legend of the origins of the human race, the nature of which we have already demonstrated.

VIII.II.2. It is from the Jehovistic form of the legends that we derive our picture of the patriarchs, that picture which children learn at school and which they find it easy to retain. To compare the parallel of the Priestly Code it is necessary to restore it as a whole, for few are aware of the impression it produces.

"And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came (xii. 4b, 5). And the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together, for their substance was great so that they could not dwell together. And they separated themselves the one from the other; Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the Kikkar. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Where the Dead Sea was afterwards. -- Footnote

And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the Kikkar, that God remembered Abram, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow-, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt... (xiii. 6, 11b, 12ab, xix. 29). And Sarai was barren: she had no child. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And Hagar bare Abram a son; and Abram called his son's name which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram" (xi. 30, xvi. 3, 15, 16) Then follows the covenant of God with Abram, whose name he now changes to Abraham, and the institution of circumcision as the mark of those who belong to the covenant; then the announcement of the birth of Isaac by Sarai, now ninety years old, who is henceforth to be called Sarah, and Isaac's nomination as heir of the covenant in place of Ishmael (chapter xvii.).

"And Sarah bore Abraham a son at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, after eight days, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old when Isaac his son was born unto him (xxi. 2-5). And the life of Sarah was an hundred and twenty seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-Arba, the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan" (xxiii. 1, 2).

Then comes the treaty of Abraham, reported with all due legal accuracy, with Ephron the Hittite, from whom he purchases the cave of Machpelah, which is over against Mamre, for a family burying-place (xxiii.).

"And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, a hundred and seventy five years. And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years; and was gathered to his fellow tribesmen. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron ben Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth; there was Abraham buried and Sarah his wife. And after Abraham was dead, God blessed his son Isaac" (xxv. 7-11a).

Next come the Toledoth (generations) of Ishmael according to the regular practice of first exhausting the collaterals (xxv. 12-17).

"These are the Toledoth of Isaac the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac...and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister to Laban the Syrian....And Isaac was 60 years old when Esau and Jacob were born (xxv. 19, 20, 26c). And Esau was 40 years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob also take such wives of the daughters of Heth, of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do to me? Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; arise, go to Padan-Aram to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father, and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And El Shaddai will bless thee, and make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee, that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob, and he went to Padan-Aram unto Laban ben Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebecca, Jacob and Esau's mother. And Esau saw that Isaac blessed Jacob, and sent him to Padan-Aram to take him a wife from thence, and that as he blessed him, he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Now Jacob hearkened to his father, and went to Padan-Aram. But Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the sister of Nebaioth to be his wife (xxvi. 34 seq., xxvii. 46, xxviii. 1-9). And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for her handmaid. And he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid (xxix.24, 28b, 29). And the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun. The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid: Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah, Leah's handmaid: Gad and Asher; these are the sons of Jacob, which were born to him in Padan-Aram (xxxv. 23-26)....[and Jacob took] all his goods which he had gotten, the gear of his property which he had gotten in Padan-Aram, to go home to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan (xxx). 18). And God appeared unto Jacob when he was coming home from Padan-Aram, and blessed him; and God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And God said unto him; I am El Shaddai; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where He talked with him. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him Bethel (xxxv. 9-13, 15). And they departed from Bethel; and when there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath, Rachel died, and was buried there in the way to Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem (xxxv. 16a, 19, cf. xlviii. 7, xlix. 3I). And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac dwelt as strangers. And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years. And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days; and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (xxxv. 27-29.) Then follow the generations of Esau in chapter xxxvi. /1/

-- Footnote 1. Only part of this chapter, however, belongs to the Priestly Code. -- Footnote

"And Esau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went into the land of Seir from the face of his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might dwell together, and the land of their sojourn could not bear them because of their cattle. And Esau dwelt in Mount Seir; Esau is Edom. And Jacob dwelt in the land of the sojourn of his father, in the land of Canaan (xxxvi. 6-8, xxxvii. 1).

These are the Toledoth of Jacob...(xxxxvii. 2). And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him, his sons, and his sons' sons, and all his seed, brought he with him into Egypt" (xlvi. 6, 7).

Then follows the enumeration of the seventy souls of which his seed was then composed.