The Evolution of Old Testament Religion. W. E. Orchard
Read, as Introduction to this Lecture, the Tenth Chapter of Genesis.
This is one of the most interesting documents in anthropology. It is an attempt at a scientific ethnology, and seems to have been expanded from the closing verses of the preceding chapter. It will be noticed that those verses are in poetical form (R.V.), and are likely to be very ancient.
Note the principles of classification:—
(1) Geographical. It is a very incomplete summary of the peoples of the earth. Only those nations are mentioned that fill the horizon of the writer's knowledge. That horizon will be found to correspond very largely with that of the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
(2) Prejudice. The evident kinship of some peoples is denied on the ground of dislike; for the same reason, Moab and Ammon, who are well known, are simply omitted.
The real test of kinship is language, which is here ignored.
The names are not to be taken as individuals. Of this the very form is witness: Ludim is plural, Mizraim is dual, Tarshish is the name of a place, and Amorite is gentilic.
Notes:—
Verse 2. Madai = Medes. Javan = the Greeks, or more particularly, the Ionians.
Verse 4. Tarshish is probably Spain. Kittim = the Cretans. Dodanim (read Rodanim 1 Ch. i. 7) = the inhabitants of Rhodes.
Verse 6. Mizraim: the name for Egypt. Canaan: here and elsewhere said to be descended from Ham. Beyond all doubt the Canaanites were a Semitic people and spoke a language akin to Hebrew. Religious antagonism and the fact of their conquest demanded in the popular imagination a different ancestry.
Verse 14. "Whence went forth the Philistines" is misplaced, and should follow after "Caphtorim" (Amos ix. 7).
Verse 21. Eber: the name of the supposed ancestor of the Hebrews.
Verse 22. Elam = Persia. Racially the Elamites were quite distinct from the Semites. This inclusion may be a clue to the date of this Table of Nations; friendship with Persia dates from Cyrus (Sixth Century B.C.).
(See Driver's "Genesis.")
Lecture I
THE SEMITIC RACES
The Hebrew nation forms a branch of that group of the human family known as the Semites. Their relation to the other great racial divisions of mankind is far beyond the reach of our enquiry, and we cannot even penetrate to a period when the Semites formed an unbroken family. At the remotest date to which history can take us we find the family already widely dispersed, with distinct national characteristics well developed, and their common ancestry quite forgotten in their violent hatreds of their unrecognised kinsmen. Indeed it is only the test of language which still preserves for us an indisputable proof of their common origin. Their existence can be traced back to a very remote date, for fragments of their literature and other evidences of civilisation have been discovered that have been dated 5000–4000 B.C., and even at that period the language shows signs of phonetic degeneration that require a still further period for the process to have reached this stage.
The primitive home of the Semites cannot have been, however, where these ancient remains have been found, namely, in the Euphrates valley, for the records themselves show that they were only immigrants there and had replaced the original inhabitants, who came of Sumerian stock. Neither was it in Palestine, as our own Bible will tell us; but it is probably to be sought in Arabia, where the purest Semitic stock is still to be found. In this desert home the race was bred that was destined to have such a tremendous influence on the history of the world, and it is largely to this desert training that we can trace influences which have made them what they are. The battle for life in that inhospitable land would mould a physique capable of extraordinary endurance, and to this we can perhaps trace the virility of the modern Jew, who has resisted for centuries the poisonous ghettos of European cities and remains far healthier than his indigenous neighbours. This hard training fitted them for an exacting life, and in the Phœnicians they became the traders of antiquity, and in the Carthaginians and Saracens, warriors not to be despised. Hardness easily becomes cruelty, and purely Semitic empires, such as Assyria, developed a barbarous cruelty, the story of which is told on their inscriptions and in the denunciations of the Hebrew Prophets. There is something in the Semitic character that is disliked by Western nations, and the Jews have been subjects of relentless persecution in mediæval times, and are still capable of arousing bitter hostility, as may be seen from those violent eruptions of anti-Semitism which occasionally burst through the cosmopolitanism of Western Europe. The well-defined limitations of their primitive home—crushed in between the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, the neutral ground of the Eastern and Western worlds—seem almost to be reflected in the limitations of their mental development. The Semitic tongue is crude in its simplicity and incapable of expressing an abstract idea, and it is natural to find as a result that the philosophical faculty is almost entirely missing. Although they have given to the world an alphabet, a system of numeration which has made mathematics possible, and the beginnings of measurement and of the science of astronomy, yet their mind is not scientific in the modern sense. They possess, as perhaps no other race, the gift of telling stories of wonder and mystery, and for a simple tale of love and pathos they are unsurpassed. They have produced the finest lyrical literature of the ancient world, but have contributed hardly anything to dramatic or epic poetry, and their achievements in art have been cramped by their religious prejudices.
But in the realm of religion they are supreme, and have become the high-priests of humanity, for from them have gone forth three great religions, and one of these capable of development into the universal religion of mankind. These faiths have not been slowly evolved from the national consciousness, but have both sprung from and been embodied in inspiring personalities; for have they not given to the world Moses and the Prophets, Mahomet, and the Son of Man?
The Semites are divided by anthropologists into the following groups: Southern Group—North Arabians, Sabæans, Abyssinians; Northern Group—Babylonians, Assyrians, Aramæans, Canaanites, Hebrews; and all these groups seem to have been formed from the original stock by migrations from their home in Arabia. The contracted area of the Arabian peninsula, the inability of the land to support a large population, coupled with their restless spirit and the constant feuds between the tribes, made emigration a necessity at a very early period. The exact history and order of these migrations it is now impossible to trace, but it would seem that the first great movement was eastward, whither they were drawn by the culture and wealth of the Sumerian civilisation in the Euphrates valley. It is quite possible that this movement commenced 6000 years before Christ. At a later date they seem to have invaded Egypt and left some traces upon the language and customs of that land.
The land of Syria would offer a near and easy home for the emigrants, and yet the first Semites to arrive in Palestine seem to have come from the Euphrates. The inhabitants they displaced were the Hittites, who probably came from Asia Minor; they were Turanians, and were akin to the present inhabitants of Armenia. It is only lately that excavation has revealed the remains of a Hittite Empire in Palestine. The first Semitic tribes to reach Palestine pushed down to the seaboard, where they developed a wonderful maritime civilisation and became the daring traders and explorers who are known in history as the Phœnicians; the other tribes occupied the hill country and became the Canaanites of Bible story. Of the next migration westward, the Bible preserves a popular account in the story of the journey of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. Now Abraham and his descendants were called Hebrews, and this name is traced to an ancestor who was called Eber or Heber. It is doubtful whether an individual so named ever existed. The name "Hebrew" means "one from the other side," and would therefore have been a suitable name for those who crossed the Euphrates, coming from Arabia; but of this movement the Bible knows nothing. Some have supposed that the name was given much later to the tribes who entered Palestine across the Jordan. The discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has somewhat complicated our understanding of these events. These tablets were letters written by the vassal-kings