The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

in whom we have the later name of the Israelites, transformed into a patriarch. To Eber two sons are allotted. The name of the elder, Peleg, means division, "because in his time the earth was divided." From this we may draw the conclusion that the division of the descendants of Noah and the separation of the nations was transferred to the fifth generation after him. But another meaning may also be given on linguistic grounds to the name Peleg (Phaleg), and at the juncture of the Chaboras and the Euphrates we find a place of the name of Phalga.[586] Joktan, the second son of Eber, we know already as the father of those Arabian tribes who dwell from Mesha to Dshafar, and in Kachtan we have already found his name in Arab tradition (p. 326). The descendants of Peleg, the elder son of Eber, are Reu, and Serug the son of Reu. The name Serug appears to have been retained in the district of Serug, and the modern Serudsh, south-west of Edessa, in the neighbourhood of the Euphrates. Western writers speak of the district of Osrhoene, and give this name to the south-west of Mesopotamia.[587] Serug's son is Nahor, i.e. "the river," the Euphrates. Nahor is followed by Terah, who had his home at Ur.

      If this series of the first text preserved a genuine historical recollection, a portion of a Semitic tribe, settled in the mountains of South Armenia, or even the whole tribe—the sons of Arphaxad—journeyed to the south, after leaving nothing but their name in the mountain valley. The separation from their kindred was signified by the name Salah, i.e. "leaving." At first the sons of Arphaxad pastured their flocks at Serudsh, in the north-west of Mesopotamia, and from thence they passed to Ur on the lower Euphrates, while another branch, the sons of Joktan, turned away from the mouth of the Euphrates in the direction of Arabia. At a later time the sons of Arphaxad settled at Ur must again have marched up the Euphrates to Carrhae. Then followed a second division; one portion, the Nahorites, i.e. the people of the river, remained at Carrhae, while others, the Abrahamites, wandered to Canaan, or rather into the deserts bordering on Canaan. Moreover, since the first text denotes Abraham's eldest son Ishmael, as the progenitor of the Ishmaelites, i.e. of a considerable number of tribes of North and Central Arabia, and since the revision derives the Midianites, who wandered on the peninsula of Sinai, and further in the East, and other Arabian tribes, from the sons of Keturah, the younger sons of Abraham (pp. 324, 393), it follows that on the borders of Canaan a portion of the Abrahamites must again have broken off, and passed on to the peninsula of Arabia.

      However this may be, the kinship of the Hebrews with the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Aramæans, the derivation of their tribe from the river-land of the Euphrates and Tigris, is beyond a doubt, and we must regard the districts of Arphaxad and Serug, of Ur and Carrhæ, as the original home of the tribe, which afterwards grew up to be the Hebrews. In any case it is clear from this genealogical table that the Hebrews considered themselves closely allied to the Nahorites of Haran, but more especially to a considerable number of the Arabian tribes, or Ishmaelites, i.e. the Nebajoths, the Kedarites, the Temanites, the Jeturites, and finally the Midianites. This is proved, not only by the derivation of the Ishmaelites from the eldest son of Abraham, but also by the close relationship in which the Edomites, the brothers of the Hebrews, are represented as standing to the Ishmaelites. The names Ishmael and Israel are similarly formed; the first means "God (El) hears," the second, "God strives," or "God rules."

Within this circle of kindred nations, the Hebrews occupy the foremost place. The Ishmaelites are descended, it is true, from the eldest son of Abraham; but not from a legitimate or equal marriage; the mother of their tribe is a maid-servant and an Egyptian. Ishmael's wife also came from Egypt, and, in this there may linger a dim recollection of the ancient supremacy of the Hyksos in Egypt.[588] The Midianites, on the other hand, spring from a younger branch than the Hebrews; and they too are not born from the true wife of Abraham, and hence are not his genuine heirs. To the Moabites also, who pastured their flocks to the east of the Dead Sea, and the Ammonites, whose land lay to the north-east of this sea, the Hebrews held themselves akin. These tribes are the descendants of Lot, Abraham's brother's son; and therefore they, like the Hebrews themselves, spring from those who had moved from Carrhae to the West. But Lot had separated from Abraham, and chosen the region of Jordan. And when Jehovah rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, because the sins of their inhabitants were grievous, and overthrew these cities, and the whole land around them, Lot with his two daughters escaped towards the East; but because all the men of Sodom were destroyed, there was no man to dwell with Lot's daughters. Then they gave their father wine to drink, and lay with him, and the elder bore Moab, and the younger Ammon. Thus although the Moabites and Ammonites are closely allied to the Hebrews, and are of the pure stock—they were begotten in incest. A dark stain rests on their origin. Obviously the bitter hostility which afterwards prevailed between the Hebrews, and the Moabites and Ammonites, and the severe wounds which the Hebrews suffered from the attacks of these nations, have had their influence in forming and moulding the story of their origin. The Judæan text narrated quite simply the separation of Abraham and Lot, the choice of the land of Jordan, the destruction of the cities, and Lot's escape.[589] The broader details and motives given in the narrative are the work of the prophetic revision, to which the account of the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites exclusively belongs.

      To the Hebrews, the wanderings and fortunes of their forefathers appeared compressed into the lives of the patriarchs, whose mighty forms are also to them the patterns of morality, piety, and a life pleasing to God, the expression of the genuine national character. The name Abraham means, in the form ab-ram, "high father;" in the form ab-raham, "father of the multitude." Sarah means "princess." Their right to the possessions, which they won in Canaan by the sword, they saw in the command given to their ancestors to go thither, and in the promise that the land should belong to his seed, which is given to Abraham, even in the first text. Moreover, the purchase which Abraham concluded with the Hittites of Hebron of a burying-place for his wife and himself in the cave of Machpelah—this narrative is a part of the Judæan text—and the services rendered by Abraham to Canaan gave to his descendants a claim to the possession of Canaan. Abraham planted the trees at Beersheba, and dug wells; he defended Canaan against Kedor-Laomer, and recovered from the kings of the east the booty taken, without keeping back any for himself. These services of the progenitor also constituted a claim for his descendants.

The accounts in Genesis[590] of campaigns of Elamite rulers towards the west, and the supremacy of a king of Elam, one of the Kudurids, over Syria, are founded on events and circumstances which occurred about the year 2000 B.C., as has been already pointed out in detail (p. 251). The connection into which Abraham is brought with them is the work of the Hebrews, and belongs to the Ephraimitic text.[591] The account which puts the Horites, who occupied Mount Seir before the Edomites, among the nations conquered by the Elamites, and beside these certain extinct and mythical tribes—the Rephaites, Susites, and Emites—shows plainly that the events must belong to a very distant past.

When the rights of the Hebrews to Canaan had been proved, when at the same time it was ascertained that the kindred tribes of Moab and Ammon could establish no claim to the land, after the voluntary renunciation of their progenitor, it remained to be shown that the ancient inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites themselves, had been from the first destined to give way to the Hebrews. We found that the Canaanites, like the Hebrews, belonged to the great family of the Semitic nations; but they were distinguished from them in character, in dialect, and religious conceptions. Hence they were not derived from Shem, but from Noah's second son, Ham; and they were also burdened with the curse of Noah—a trait which the prophetic reviser has added to the narrative.[592] After the flood, Noah planted a vineyard, and he became