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OSEPH JACOBS
, Studies in iblical Archseology
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STUDIES
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BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
STUDIES
IN
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY
BY
JOSEPH JACOBS
Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of History, Madrid.
LONDON : DAVID NUTT, 270—71, STRAND
1894
LONDON :
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA & CO.,
CIRCUS PLACE, LONDON WALL.
Id lb
To S. SCHECHTER,
Reader in Kabbinic in the University of Ca?nbridge.
Dear Schechter,
I can scarcely hope that you can take more than a friendly interest in the following essays : your concern is with the inner strivings of the spirit ; mine, on the present occasion, with the outward forms or institutions of social life. Yet you yourself will be the first to confess, I fancy, that the one has an influence not altogether indirect upon the other ; so these studies, in that way, may perhaps have an indirect interest for you.
Still I like the good old custom of dedication and dedicatory epistles, and should be loth to leave you out of the circle of my friends to whose address I have, at different times, directed letters prefixed to my books. For the present this seems to be the least inappropriate occasion on which I can publicly express my esteem and admiration for your fine qualities of heart and head. I am delighted that you have found in my old Uni- versity a position from which you can bring your genial influence to bear on the young men of Jewish race who are best qualified to form — who knows ? — a New School of the Prophets.
I remain, dear Schechter,
Yours very sincerely,
JOSEPH JACOBS.
PREFACE
During the short existence of the Archeeological Review^ the sole English Journal which has paid particular attention to the history of early institutions as part of Archaeology, I contributed a number of essays dealing with various aspects of Biblical Archaeology from that point of view. These attracted some attention at the time of their appearance, and I have been frequently asked since to make them more accessible to the student of the Old Testament and of institutional Archaeology in general. I have accordingly collected them together mainly in the form in which they originally appeared ; only in a few cases have I added in square brackets, references relating to subsequent publications, while I have attempted in the Introduction to bring the whole of my researches, so far as possible, up to date. I have added at the end of the volume my review of the Revised Version of the Old Testament which originally appeared in the Athenaum^ as, by a curious chance, this happened to be the earliest criticism of that im- portant publication which appeared.
I have to thank the editor and proprietor of that periodical for permission to include this article, and owe the same obligation to the editors of the Archceological Review^ of Folk-Lore^ and of the Babylonian and Oriental Record^ in which the other articles appeared.
CONTENTS,
PAGE.
Introduction ,,, ... xi.
I. — Recent Research in Biblical Archaeo- logy. {Arch. Rev.j March, 1889) ... i
II. — Recent Research in Comparative Religion. (i^^/i - Lore, September, 1890) ... ... ... ... ... 35
III. — ^Junior Right in Genesis. {Arch. Rev.,
July, 1888) 48
IV. — Are there Totem-Clans in the Old
Testament. {Arch. Rev., May, 1889) 64
V. — The Nethinim. {Babylonian and Oriental
Record, February, March, 1888) ... 104
VI. — The Indian Origin of Proverbs,
Chap. XXX. ... ... ... ... 123
Vll. — Revised Old Testament. (Jthenceum,
May 15th and 22nd, 1885) 129
INTRODUCTION.
In reviewing the progress of Biblical Archaeology during the past four years, the first word must be one of regret at the loss of Professor Robertson Smith, i have ventured to disagree with him on several points in the following pages, but none could fail to recognise the well equipped scholarship and fecund suggestiveness of his researches. It is more especially from the point of view advocated in these pages that his loss causes so great a gap. His earlier work was in the main a transplantation to English soil of Wellhausen, but more lately, especially in his " Burnett Lectures," he struck out a line which connected Biblical Archaeology with the English methods of research in Anthropology. This was a union which I have been advocating for some years in the essays contained in the present volume. My advocacy became less necessary when a master like Robertson Smith had taken up the cause. His death has left us the method as a legacy, but I fear we must wait long before the rightful heir to his work and his method can claim the inheritance.
I. R.ESEARCHIN BiBLICAL ArCHJEOLOGY, 1889-94.
Something has been done during the past five years to
xii INTRODUCTION.
fiil up the gaps in the Old Testament research to which I refer in the first essay contained in the following pages. The new edition of " Gesenius " now being published by the Clarendon Press, promises to bring Hebrew lexico- graphy up to the level of modern philological require- ments. Yet even with its excessive and Teutonic condensation of material, it still falls short of a true "Thesaurus"; it is still a " Handworterbuch." Then again, the ambitiously planned edition of the Old Testa- ment Scriptures, designed by Professor Haupt, will do something towards establishing a final text of the Hebrew Scriptures. The plan upon which it is conceived is different from that to which I had pointed as being the one needed in the present state of Old Testament research. Judging from the specimen volume. Professor Siegfried's yob^ it will add a number of ingenious, and in some cases, satisfactory emendations to the text. But it will not contain the much needed " variorum conspectus " of the " varias lectiones " derived from the versions and the commentators. This is the work still to be done towards which the new edition of the Septuagint by Professor Swete, and the new " Tromius " planned by the late Professor Hatch will afford invaluable material. Till the f/r-Septuagint has been settled, the text or texts which lie at the back of it and of the Massora must remain enigmatical. Professor Driver's admirable Notes on the Text of Sa?7iuel (Clar. Press, 1890), are sufficient to indicate how far we are yet off from an authentic text. Literary criticism seems now to have come to an end of its tether with regard to the "slicing" of the Hexa- teuch ; the reconstructions of Genesis by Fripp and
INTRODUCTION. xiii
Bacon, and of the whole Hexateuch, by Addis, and the exhaustive work of Holzinger, all serve to show this. They all confirm my contention — that on this line of research we cannot further go. Literary research per se cannot solve the problem of the Hexateuch, so far as that problem is concerned with the development institutions of the ancient Hebrews. And here I would venture to interpose in the discussion on this point which has taken place between Professors Sanday and Cheyne on this point in which my suggestions have been brought into discussion. Professor Sanday did me the honour to refer to my appeal to Institutional Archaeology as pointing to a decisive criterion of the higher criticism. Professor Cheyne in his Founders of the Old Testament Criticism (page 330), retorts that the higher criticism has always used Archaeology, and that I am an amateur. Professor Cheyne has failed to observe the distinction between what I should call Physical Archaeology, the study of the material remains of man on the earth, and Institutional Archaeology, the study of the survivals of his Social Organisation. The higher criticism may have used the scanty remains of Semitic civilisation. Till Fenton and Robertson Smith it has not used the comparative study of early institutions, on which subject, so far as I am aware, it is Professor Cheyne who is the amateur. Indeed, I am unaware that Professor Cheyne has pub- lished anything showing that he has something novel to say on the separation of literary sources in the Penta- teuch. On this point I can only claim that nearly fifteen years ago I had worked through Wellhausen's epoch-making articles in the Zeitschrift fur Protest an-
XIV INTRODUCTION.
tische TI?eologie and have followed the specialist literature on the subject up to the present day.
Professor Sayce has recently summed up all that " Physical Archaeology," as I have termed it, has to say on Biblical Antiquities in his The Higher Criticism and the Monuments (London: 1893). This labours under the disadvantage of not specifying what the higher criticism is, and still less who the higher critics are ; the only names mentioned seem to be those of MM. Havet and Vernes, v/ho are scarcely dominating influences in the study of Hebrew Antiquity. Professor Sayce's chief point seems to be that the compilers of the Pentateuch could have had early or even contemporary records of the events they relate, since recent research has shown the very early use of writing among the surrounding nations. But while he proves that the Hebrews might have had such records, he cannot claim to have proved that they did actually have them. The book, however, puts in handy and accurate form the most recent lisrht from the ancient monuments. Another useful summary of the whole subject of Hebrew Archseology has been recently pub- lished by Dr. Benzinger as part of one of the many series of theological text books which are being poured forth from the German presses. The book contains no less than one hundred and fifty-two illustrations, showing the remarkable advance in our knowledge of the Physical Archeology of the Hebrews during recent years. But it must be owned that many of the illustrations are derived from Egypt, Syria, and Phoenicia rather than from Judaea. Still, the Holy Land itself is beginning to yield its material treasures of the past under the competent guid-
INTRODUCTION. xv
ance of Professor Flinders Petrie, whose excavations at the ancient site of Lachish have performed much and promised more. Dr. Benzinger's w^ork is only a further confirmation of the need for comparative research in Institutional Archaeology as throw^ing light on that of the Hebrews. Whenever a question of the development of institutions arises, his only method of settlement is to appeal to the hypothetical separation of sources by Well- hausen and his followers. It is characteristic in this collection that in dealing with Sacrifice (§§ 62-68) he never deigns to notice the theory of Mr. Robertson Smith, whose views on this subject, be they right or wrong, must be the point d'apput for research for many a long day to come.
The only treatise which has appeared on Biblical Archaeology, considered in any way from the point of view advocated in these pages, is a booklet on Hebrew Idolatry and Superstition^ its place in Folk-Lore^ by Mr. E. Higgens (London, 1893). ^" ^^^^ ingenious little volume, in order to differentiate the Canaanite and Hebrew elements in Biblical antiquities, Mr. Higgens employs the method advocated and utilised by Mr. G. L. Gomme in his Ethnology in Folklore. He boldly seeks for elucidation of ancient Hebrew ritual from the con- temporary folk-lore of South India, Livonia, or even Devonshire. He attempts by this means to distinguish among the idolatrous and superstitious practices men- tioned in the Old Testament, those which had been introduced into Canaan by the Amorites and by the Hittites, as well as those common to Semitic tribes including the Edomites. Incidentally he contends
xvi INTRODUCTION.
that the animal sacrifice of the Arabs, on which Professor Robertson Smith laid such great stress {infra^ p. 33), far from being the typical Semitic form of sacrifice is not Semitic at all, as it has analogies in full force in South India, and is still found in survival even in England. He identifies the fire-worship of Moloch with the Amorites and the blond race of the Indo- European world generally, while the various forms of divination, witchcraft, and enchantment, even in the Old Testament are assorted among various races of Palestine with unhesitating certainty.
Mr. Higgens' few pages will thus be seen to raise many questions, and his book, altogether, reminds one of Mr. Fenton's in its suggestiveness, but also in its sketchiness. He follows, as it seems to me, too rigidly the method introduced by Mr. Gomme in discrimina- ting the racial elements of folk-lore. The problem is probably much more complicated than either thinker has taken account of. There is an assumption of purity of race and separation of races in the original stocks for which evidence is still wanting, and there alsa seems to be an assumption with both thinkers that the Aryans in one case, and the Hebrews in the other, had no superstitions of their own. All probability, and a good deal of evidence is against the assumption that everything idolatrous mentioned in the Old Testament, was necessarily borrowed by the Hebrews from some- body else. Finally, Mr. Higgens would probably be the first to own that our knowledge of the distinction of races in Palestine is still very rudimentary, and our knowledge of the special rites of the various races has not even arrived at the rudimentary stage.
INTRODUCTION. xvii
Notwithstanding these demurrers to Mr. Higgens' method and main position, I still welcome most cordially the appearance of his very suggestive pages, which show, at any rate, what is the class of problems which Institu- tional Archaeology has to deal with in the case of the Hebrews, and, to a certain extent, what are the methods by which these problems can be solved. I do not think the time has even approached when we have sufficient materials for the comparative treatment of Hebrew antiquity as contrasted with that of the surrounding nations, of which we know so little ; but it is on that line, I am convinced, that the future battles of Biblical Archaeology will have to be fought.
II. Comparative Religion. — Nothing has ap- peared since the publication of Mr. Fraser's and Pro- fessor Robertson Smith's books in any way equal to them in importance. Work on this subject is now pre-eminently specialist, and no wide-sweeping theories are brought before the world, as they were in the earlier stages of the study. The enormous extent of ground over which this subject now spreads is obviously bringing forcibly home to students of the day that there can be no single key of all the Mythologies. Generally speaking, there is a marked retrogression, if I may call it so, to the position which assigns a certain amount of uniqueness to the religion of the Hebrews. After all our incursions into the faiths of the world we come back to the sacred records of the Hebrews, having failed to find their fellow. Analogies, faint or strong, there are of course elsewhere, but the difference in
xviii INTRODUCTION.
intensity is so marked as almost to amount to difference of kind, A sense of communion with the supreme Lord of the Universe, regarded as the moral Governor of mankind, this is found alone in the religion of the Hebrews or in the two daughter-religions derived from it ; and this is what we of the Western world mean by religion. How to account for its special appearance among the Hebrews is the problem ; the solution is not yet.
III. Junior Right in Genesis. — This paper, when it first appeared, gave rise to somewhat heated discus- sions in the Jthenaum and the Academy. In the former, Professor Almaric Rumsey, of King's College, brought forward some objections, of what I ventured to term a Sunday School type, against my statement that the early heroes of the Hebrews were represented by tradition as the younger sons. Professor Rumsey seemed to regard the genealogies of Genesis as a sort of glorified Dehrett^ and could not conceive of them as successive growths of traditions about imaginary ancestors of the Israelite tribes. I have not considered it necessary to modify my general paper to meet objec- tions that could be raised from such a standpoint, which is not likely to be adopted among readers of the following pages. In the Jcadefny^ on the other hand. Dr. Neu- bauer put me some shrewd questions as to primogeniture among the children of Aaron, of which I have taken account in revising my essay.
IV. Totem Clans in the Old Testament. —
INTRODUCTION. xix
In reprinting this essay I have added to it the list of personal and place names derived from animals and plants in the Old Testament w^hich form the basis of my dis- cussion of the question raised by Mr. Robertson Smith, in the Journal of Philology^ 1880. Professor Smith never explicitly disavowed the conclusions he came to in that essay, but in his work on Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia^ which appeared after my paper had been read (though before it was published), he implicitly abandoned two of the chief points to which I took objection. His book, which is practically an essay on the origin of the family among the Western Semites, has not a word to say about David as belonging to the Serpent Clan, and it puts an interpretation on the crucial passage in Ezekiel which robs it of any connection with a Totem Clan organisation at so late a period. He also explicitly places back any Totemistic organisation of the Hebrews in pre- historic times, and thus in all directions confirms the demurrers which I took to be his original position of 1880. His book adds one important piece of evidence in confirmation of his general position. He now con- nects the name of Leah with the Arabic Laj^^ "ante- lope." This, if substantiated, would be an important corroboration of the Totemistic origin of the Israelite tribes, as we could thus trace them all back to two animal Matriarchs, the Sheep (Rachel), and the Ante- lope (Leah). I am unable to say how Professor Robertson Smith's views in this direction have obtained the adhesion of the few competent authorities. Stade appears to accept them in his Geschichte^ but both Wellhausen and Dillmann rejected the conclusions of the
XX INTRODUCTION.
earlier paper. I do not know how far either of these scholars have been influenced by the later book. I observe from an addendum to Benzinger that Well- hausen has recently dealt with the same subject as Professor Smith's book, in the Gottingen Nachr'ichten for 1893, ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ Arabern. But as the British Museum, by a very short-sighted policy, does not as a rule allow one access to specialist journals in the first two, that is, in the two most valuable, years of their existence, I have been unable to ascertain how far his recent essay agrees or otherwise with the conclusions of Robertson Smith.
In discussing this question myself I was careful to lay stress upon the fact that the question was not one which could be determined by Hebrew evidence alone, or turned on the "if " of my first proposition in the summary of my results on page 94. " If Anthropology teaches that the Totemistic arrangement is a necessary stage of national development," was my preamble of the first Thesis (p. ), and the final word is still with the general science of Anthropology. Just at present there appears to be a slight re-action against the views of McLennan, on which Robertson Smith's views were founded. Dr. Westermarck's History of Human Marriage has brought weighty objections against the too hasty acceptance of McLennan's views, so far at least as they relate to the early history of the family. While these are still suh judice^ his Totemistic theory of the origin of society must also be held in suspense. In reporting, as I am doing here, on the progress of the various questions raised in the following essays, I have therefore to state that the science
INTRODUCTION. xxi
of Anthropology is at present not so favourable to Professor Robertson Smith's views as it was when I originally wrote ; but I fancy it is only one of the usual swings of the pendulum of opinion, and shall not be surprised if both McLennan's original views and Robert- son Smith's special application of them are taken up into the Science of Anthropology, though perhaps in some modified form as part of a wider induction.
V. The Nethinim. — I cannot claim to have fluttered the dovecotes of Biblical criticism by my views on the Nethinim^ revolutionary as they may be. The fact that the journal in which they originally appeared is not one which often opens its pages to essays on Biblical subjects may have something to do with this neglect, if it needs any explanation. Possibly, also, some of my excursions into the etymology of the personal names of the Nethinim may have deterred the professional Biblical critic, who is rather apt to assume that if any of your etymologies is v/rong, nothing of your reasoning can possibly be right. I venture to disagree respectfully to this too sweeping canon of criticism. On the present occasion, at any rate, my main line of argument is altogether independent of my etymological excursion. As I pointed out in my essay, the degraded position of the Nethinim in the post-Biblical literature of the Jews, as evidenced by Talmud and Midrash, is by itself sufficient to prove their originally degraded status. Taking into consideration that they were attached to the Temple, this leads at once to the conclusion that they were connected with the Kedishoth or sacred prostitutes,
xxii INTRODUCTION.
who defiled the precincts of the Temple up to the Exile.
The speculation may seem a somewhat unimportant one, and the subject rather nauseous j but it may have important bearings in explaining the purification of the old Hebrew religion by the Prophets. Human nature has in itself the antidote against such practices, and the Hebrew prophecy is, in one of its aspects, explained by being regarded as a natural reaction against the degrading practices typified by the Nethinim.
VI. Indian Origin of Proverbs XXX. — I have thought it worth while to add to this volume an inquiry into the literary origin of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs which formed a part of a more elaborate argument in my History of the Aisopic Fabk (London, 1889), pp. 130-6. It was not likely to attract the atten- tion of Biblical scholars in the place in which it originally appeared, and I am glad of this opportunity of bringing it once more before their notice. The remarkably close parallels between several passages in that particular chapter of Proverbs — which is obviously a separate appendix to the book — with very early portions of Indian literature deserve fuller attention than have hitherto been given to them.
VII. Revised Old Testament. — My estimate in the Atheriisum of the revisers' version of the Old Testa- ment, the first that appeared, has been on the whole confirmed by the general drift of special and general criticism. The specialist has recognised that the re-
INTRODUCTION. xxiii
vision by no means fully meets his wants ; the general public have had little to complain on the score of wanton change. So little indeed is the complaint on this score that the tendency is rather to refuse to see any striking superiority over the Authorised Version. During the nine years that have elapsed since the appearance of the version it cannot be said to have grown in popularity. This is to be regretted, since the arrangement in para- graphs of the prose books and in verses of the poetical books is such a distinct advantage for the better under- standing of the often complicated lines of thought in the Bible, that the Revised Version on this ground alone is a distinct advance on the Authorised, Still, on the whole, my description of it as "a paragraph Bible with revised margins," is not altogether unfair.
There is an ever-increasing tendency for Biblical study to get more and more into the hands of specialists. This means, it would appear, that the Bible is losing its appeal in modern life. One of the reasons of this is a significant example of the general line of thought contained in this volume. Up to last century, European institutions, like those of the Bible, v\^ere based on agricultural and pastoral life. The Bible is a country book, modern life is town life. European institutions are, nowadays, based on an economic social condition, in which the dominating factor is manufacture ; hence an ever widening gap between the social conditions at the basis of Biblical life and those which rule modern society. Tiie process of translation from one social condition to another is
xxiv INTRODUCTION.
needed to apply the eternal truths of the Bible to the conditions of modern life. For such translation a more thorough acquaintance with the Institutional Archaeo- logy of the Hebrews is needed on the lines which I have endeavoured to sketch in the following pages.
RECENT RESEARCH IN BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY. 1
To the antiquary of the older school, " the man of bones and stones," as he has been irreverently styled, the Old Testament oiFers practically nothing on which to exercise his industry and ingenuity. The boundary stone of Gezer, discovered by M. Clermont Ganneau ; the Siloam inscription ; a seal of one Haggai, of doubtful age ; a jar, which is probably Phoenician, and the remnants of the Ophel Wall " that lieth out" (Neh. iii. 26) — this is the scanty yet complete list^ of the remains of Hebrew antiquity. There is obviously no field here for the " bones and stones man." ^ The Hebrew past is included between the covers of a single Book, and the study of it must be based on that book. The study of Hebrew antiquities is rightly named Biblical Archaeology.
' In this paper the term " Biblical Archaeology " is confined to the Old Testament.
2 Taken from Major Conder's Syrian Stone Lore, cc. iii. and iv. [Mr. Flinders Petrie's finds at Lachish must now be added. See Introduction.]
^ An incisive instance of this is the fact that the Society of Biblical Archaeology, while doing excellent work in Assyriology and Egyptology, scarcely ever, by any chance, has anything to say about Biblical Archaeology.
B
2 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
At first sight there seems no reason to complain of any want of activity in this field of research. So numerous have become the essays, the treatises, the reviews, and even the special journals devoted to the subject, that it would be impossible for any one person to follow all that is being done in the subject, or even in any branch of it, without some organisation by which these multifarious researches should be duly noted. Bibliography, which in these days has grown to be the scientia conservatrix o?nnium scientiarum^ has at last come to the aid of Biblical Archaeology. Many tentative attempts have been made to supply the Biblical student with an orderly record of the work that is being done in his subject. For two or three years the German Oriental Society, familiar to the Orientalist as the D.M.G., gave a yahresbericht of the progress of all departments of Oriental research, and included an admirable summary of Old Testament research from the pen of Prof. Siegfried. But the "Jahresherichte became more and more "verspatet" in publication, and ceased after, I think, three issues.*^ This fault is avoided by the excellent Theolog'ische "Jahreshericht^ which now always appears in the year following the literature reviewed. Celerity of reference is also afix)rded by the book-lists of the Zeitschrift fur alttestamentUchen JVissemchaft^ edited by Prof. Stade ; and at the beginning of each year Prof. Zockler reviews the Old Testament literature of the past year in the Zeitschrift fur Kirchen- wissenchaft^ and Prof. Cheyne usually appraises recent work in The Expositor with his unique combination of
' The Historical Society of Berlin also issues a Jahresbericht , including a section devoted to O. T. history, but only after five years' interval.
RECENT RESEARCH. 3
scholarship and literary insight. But, for the student's purposes, all these reviews have been superseded by the quarterly issues of the Orientalhche Bibliographie^ especially since the accession of Dr. Gottheil to the staff has caused the English and American notices to come up to the level of the rest of the w^ork. Here w^e have recorded, within three, or at most six months of its appearance, every book, article, or even review that has appeared on the Old Testament. It is true that there is no indication given of their relative value, and too little of their contents, but one soon acquires the biblio- grapher's instinct, and recognises the names from which good work may be anticipated ; while the amount and character of the reviews which a book or article receives serve as a measure of its importance. Yes, Biblical Bibliography^ is organised, and we can now know definitely where we are in any branch of the subject.
I have thought it would be of some interest to estimate the amount of literature chronicled by the Orientalhche Bibliographie. Taking the last two numbers accessible to me (those that appeared in July and October of 1888), I give the numbers of articles, etc., under each notice :
Bnd. ii, hft. i. Bnd. ii, hft. ii.
Palestine ... ... Nos. 996-1026, 31 Nos. 2427-2449, 23
Hebrew Language ... 1027-1038, 12 2450-2457, 8
Old Testament —
General ... ... 1039-1089, 51 2458-2490, 43
Special Books ... 1090-1152, 63 2491-2543, 53
Reviews of preceding ... ... ... 53 ... ... 64
Total ... ... ... ... 210 ... ... 191
It is just to add that the Orientalische Bibliographie does the same
B 2
4 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
Or an average of two hundred books, articles, and reviews per quarter, or eight hundred a year, nearly two-and-a-half a day, not to speak of the articles, etc., on Phoenicians, Assyriology, Hittites, Egyptology, and so on, that bear more or less directly on the subject.
And yet with all this activity I have no hesitation in saying that there is scarcely a subject in the whole range of scholarship that is in so backward a condition as Biblical research, considering the attention it has attracted for so many years. I have spoken above of the fact that Hebrew antiquity is included within the covers of one book, but as a matter of fact that book includes thirty-six works,^ ranging in point of date over close upon a thou- sand years. Yet there is very little attempt as yet to specialise on periods or on subjects. A Biblical scholar is supposed to be equally au fait with the problem of the Pentateuch, with the apocalypse of Daniel, with the book of Kings, and with Job. It is as if one should expect good work on the Sophoclean drama from an editor of the Republic^ or look for instruction on Ovid from an authority on Gaius. The qualifications required for
work for post-Biblical Judaism, for Egyptology, Assyriology, and for all the Oriental languages and literatures. It has been, however, a little too complete in including King Solomon'' s Mines in its list. It is now issued annually. ' Thirty-eight, counting Isaiah II. and Zechariah II. separately. Psalms and Proverbs could be divided up into separate collections. Burke put the case well when he spoke of the Bible as " a most venerable but most multi- farious collection of the records of the divine economy . . . carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes." (Speech on the Acts of Uniformity, quoted by Dean Bradley,y(j^, Pref., p. x.)
RECENT RESEARCH. 5
one of these subjects are quite different from those required for another.
As a consequence of this habit of regarding the Old Testament as one book instead of forty, we are at present at a standstill for special "indices verborum" of the separate books. If one wants to know if Ezekiel uses a certain word, one has to go to a concordance of the whole Bible, and Fiirst's, the best, is by no means satisfactory j while if one wants to get a general impression of the prophet's vocabulary and style, one can only work it out by oneself-^ Then the lexicography of Hebrew is still represented most completely by Gesenius' Thesaurus^ planned more than half a century ago. Fancy a Greek scholar content with the first edition of Passow, or a Latin one with Facciolati. And for proper names the onomastica of last century, with their always faulty and often ludicrous etymologies, are our only aids in this important subject.
But it is in the condition of the text that the backward state of Old Testament scholarship is most conspicuous. It is in a worse position than that of the New Testament before Griesbach. It is only within the last ten years that the materials for determining one aspect of the text have been given in Dr. Ginsburg's edition of the Massora. Baer has also within the last twenty years brought out editions of separate books which give us an adequate idea of the Massoretic
* Notwithstanding all the literary activity of the past fifty years on the Pentateuch problem, there is no such thing as an " index verborum " of the Jahvist, Elohist, Sec. For the matter of that, there is no edition of them in Hebrew.
6 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
redaction of the text, for redaction it is, as Geiger was the first to point out in his Urschrift. When we do get the Massoretic text in a final form,^ we shall still be far off from a text that can form a sure foundation for re- search into the Hebrew past, though the Massoretic text will always represent the Bible as it has influenced the world. But there is yet to be desired the text that underlies the Septuagint, and before that can be done, the text of the Septuagint itself has to be settled. According to Lagarde, there are three main versions of this, and he has only given us half of one of them. The time seems far off before we can hope to approach anything re- sembling the f/r-text of the Old Testament.
And yet without this approach to the L/r-text, how can we hope to be on firm ground in Biblical Archaeo- logy ? How often have we not seen a whole scaffolding of theory come down headlong when one prop based on a faulty reading has been perforce removed ? Just at present. Biblical Archaeology is as Classical Archaeology was in the days of the Scaligers and Casaubon, before Bentley had given the impulse to the purifica- tion of the classical texts. Many books, e.g.^ Jo^ are in as bad a state as the Eumenides^ and though something has been done sporadically, as by Lagarde on Proverbs, Wellhausen on Samuel, Graetz'' and
' I have heard it stated that Baer, the greatest living Massorite, and pro- bably the greatest Massorite that has ever lived, was unable to get a publisher for a contemplated edition of the Massora. Such a thing could scarcely happen in classical scholarship.
^ I am inclined to think that Jews, to whom Hebrew is still in some sort a living language, into which they are born, may be expected to do most for this need of Biblical science, while for other purposes their very nearness to
RECENT RESEARCH. 7
Bruston on the Psalms, Cornill on Ezekiel, there is no adequate recognition of this primary need. It is characteristic that the only collection of the most plausible emendations is that contained in English in the Queen's Printers' Bible. Just at present the emendations that are offered are generally arrived at in the interests of a " tendency." The author or opponent of a theory finds some passage which does not agree with his views ; he looks up the LXX. on the point, and finds the passage is corrupt. What we want is textual criticism, which shall be conducted on definite and general principles based on the largest possible induction of the facts, and entirely indifferent whether its results tell for Dillmann or for Wellhausen.
The need for a sound text as the basis of Biblical Archaeology has to be emphasized, because it is the mark of modern research into the past, when this rests on documents, to lay stress on the need of pure texts. Another need that requires just as much emphasis is that of a defined system of chronology. Of course it is too much to ask this for the so-called " mythical " period, but from Samuel onwards we ought to have trustworthy dates. Yet, as a matter of fact, we cannot say for certain within twenty years when any event happened in Judah or Israel before the fall of Samaria. While this uncertainty lasts, what history of Israel can we have worthy of the name ? What should we say of a history of the British Constitution in which it was
the Bible is a disadvantage. In this branch they are likely to be more fertile in suggestion than others, as indeed is proved by the remarkable extent of Prof. Graetz's emendatory suggestions.
8 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
uncertain whether Charles I, died in 1620 or 1660 ? As we want a Bentley for the text, so we need a Scaliger for the chronology.
Hitherto we have been dealing with what has not been done in recent research in Biblical Archaeology. The lexicographical helps, the state of the text, the system of chronology, are all in a state of confusion, and yet they are the foundation of any adequate treatment of Hebrew as of any antiquities. Let us now turn to branches of the subject where Biblical science does not present so unsatisfactory an aspect. In the statistics of Old Testament literature given above, the proportion devoted to purely geographical items is very large, some- thing like one-eighth of the whole literature being devoted to this subject. This is characteristic of our own times and of the present state of Biblical research. The amount of scholarship which is nowadays being devoted to geography, especially historical geography, is remarkable. Running through the table of con- tributors to the Encyclopaedia Britannica for example, one sees almost the very first names in contemporary scholarship devoted to the geographical articles. And with reason : places and towns are, as it were, huge documents that preserve their identity through the centuries more completely than any others. Round them can be grouped all the knowledge of the past that we possess, and the light thrown is mutual. In Biblical research the localities of the Holy Land are practically the only records remaining of the Bible events, the sole puces justificathes^ if we may so term them. Hence the great activity that has been displayed for many years
RECENT RESEARCH. 9
past in investigating all that appertains to the soil of the Holy Land. In that work the Palestine Exploration Fund has taken a foremost part, and though its work cannot yet be said to be ended, it is nevertheless true that it has already done most of what it set out to do some twenty-five years ago. This may be divided into two great divisions : the Map, or rather Ordnance Survey, of the Holy Land, with the Memoirs that illustrate it, and the identification of Biblical sites. The former is scarcely recent enough to be considered here, though the almost universal praise of geographical experts is sufficient to indicate that for Western Palestine that work has been done once for all. What greater praise can any work have ? Somewhat different is the case with the work of identification, of which a useful summary was issued by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1888. This enables us to judge of the direct elucida- tion of Scripture geography, for which we are indebted to the Fund. The results are somewhat meagre. The list of names and places includes some 1500 in the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Those which are claimed in the list as having: been identified bv those connected with the Fund, with more or less probability, amount only to 144, if I have calculated aright. But of these the very large number of 97 are queried even by the suggestors, leaving only a nett accession of knowledge amounting to 47 sites identified. Of course, the cream of the work of identification had been removed by the admirable and thorough work of Robinson,^ and of
' After all, considering Its expenditure of over ;r7o,ooo, the total work of the Fund does not contrast so favourably with that of private investigators like Robinson and Guerin.
10 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
what he left unidentified the majority of the names are not provided with any sure marks in the Bible narratives. Still it must be confessed that the work of the Fund in this line of research is somewhat disappointino;, especially as so much must have been hoped from it in this direction by its most enthusiastic supporters, the searchers after " confirmations " of Holy Writ. The Committee, however, have always denied any responsibility for this side of the work of their officials, who have been geographers first and have become Biblical scholars in the course of their geographical research. Meanwhile, the interest of what has already been done in the way of identification lies as much as possible in the remarkable identity of so many of the modern and ancient names. Many of the villages mentioned but once in Joshua still exist, after all changes under Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arabic conquerors, with practically the same names, allowing for slight phonetic detrition. This fact gives great hopes for the most recent departure of the Palestine Exploration Fund — the issue of anthropological and folk-lore notes and queries about the various sections that make up Palestine society. The significance of this will be again referred to ; but it was right to connect it with the remarkable fact of the persistence of place-names in Palestine for nearly 3,000 years.
Some assistance in Palestine geography has of recent years been given by the cognate studies of Egyptological and Assyriological topography,^ and more may be expected in the near future, especially as to the geo-
' I use this term for want of a better. What name are we to give to the growing study of place-names and their identifications?
RECENT RESEARCH. ii
graphical horizon of the Hebrews at different stages of their contact with the greater monarchies surrounding them. Not much, however, has been done here since DeHtzsch and Lenormant, the former in his TVo lag das Parad'ies ? the latter in his Origines^ which remains, like too much of his work, a colossal fragment. Of the more direct elucidation of Hebrew antiquities from the Assyrian records, Schrader's well-known " K AT," recently Englished by Rev. O. C. Whitehouse, still represents the high-water mark of Assyriological research. It is from this quarter alone that we may expect a solution of the pressing difficulties of Biblical chrono- logy to which I have referred above. Of other more sporadic contributions to Biblical Archaeology from Egyptological and Assyriological research, I do not feel myself competent to speak. ^ But I would like to refer to two memoirs in the ^Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ which develop lines of research which, if not entirely novel, have reached stages of development that constitute a new departure. These are papers by Prof. R. Stuart-Poole [Journ. Anth. Inst.^ May, 1887) and Mr. G. Bertin {ih., Nov., 1888), on the race-types found on the Egyptian and the Assy- rian monuments respectively. The latter especially has direct bearing on the racial provenance of the Israelites. Mr. Berlin's results are expressed with a somewhat naive dogmatism which is obviously not justilied by the materials at hand for his most startling suggestion that the most characteristic racial marks of the Hebrews come
' [A useful summary of the more recent additions from these sources, has been lately given by Prof. Sayce. See Introduction.]
12 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
from the Nairi, or inhabitants of Armenia. But his paper shows that the materials at our disposal are soon likely to lead to definite results as to the race-types of Assyria and Syria. -"^
After all is said and written, little can be learnt of the archaic life of the Hebrews outside the pages of the Book that causes that life to be of exceptional interest to us. Hence the literary criticism of the Bible must always form the propaedentic to Biblical Archaeology. Hence the enormous amount of critical analysis that has been devoted during this century to the so-called problem of the Pentateuch. No book, except perhaps Homer, has been submitted to so much " slicing," to use a term of Mr. Gladstone's, as has the Pentateuch at the hands of German and Dutch scholars. And the results have not been discordant so far as the mere division of the literary strata is concerned. De Wette, Ewald, Hupfeld, Kuenen, and Wellhausen, have each added his quota to the settlement of the question of attribution.^ Every verse, even every half-verse in the Pentateuch and Joshua, known conjointly as the Hexateuch, is now referred to one of five sources. It is indeed remarkable what unanimity now prevails as to the attribution of every section of the Hexateuch. To a dispassionate observer, the criteria employed do not seem sufficiently trenchant
1 Here, again, is a point on which the new departure of the Palestine Exploration Fund may throw light. Collections of race-types of the present inhabitants of Canaan may show the same kind of continuity as has been observed in Egypt [see Tylor, Anthropology, p. 79).
2 I am referring here solely to the determination of the various Qiiellen, and the parts belonging to them. For their relative ages we should have to add such names as Vater, Reuss, Graf, and Dillmann,
RECENT RESEARCH. 13
to justify such confidence. The distinction of the Divine names " Elohim " and "Jahveh," which formed the starting-point of the whole investigation, only or mainly applies to Genesis, and in that book only applies generally and with exceptions. The linguistic tests applied to distinguish the different sources are rendered uncertain by the very small extent of Hebrew literature that remains extant. And the whole method of analysis is made insecure by the possibility that the divergences in the narratives, both in matter and form, may be due not to differences in written accounts, but to divergences in oral tradition. Much of the narrative portion is still attributed to "JE," in which the Jahvist and Elohist sources seem inextricably mixed. It does not seem to have occurred to any investigator that these passages might have been written down by a narrator who was familiar with, or who had collected different accounts of the same stories. The additions of the " Redactor," to which such frequent and such suspicious resort is made by the literary analysers, would then be natural additions of the first hand that put the stories on parchment. If the brothers Grimm, instead of giving the variants of their Mdhrchen separately, had chosen to combine them into one version, I fancy that something similar would have occurred.^ This hypothesis allows for divergences of tradition as much as the prevalent one ; but it accounts for their appearance in the written narrative much more
' It might be worth trying to read out, with an interval between them, a couple of variants of a Greek myth to a set of intelligent schoolboys (using perhaps " Zeus " in one case and "Jupiter " in the other), and getting them to reproduce the story from memory a short time afterwards.
14 BIBLICAL ARCHtEOLOGY.
plausibly, as it seems to me, than the current views which make the various "redactors" suspiciously similar to a modern sub-editor with his shears and paste. Curiously enough, none of these investigators have taken the trouble to inquire how literary redactors do proceed when they have divergent written narratives before them, though the mediaeval chroniclers afford over-abundance of examples. To take an instance near at hand, the relations of Roger of Howden to Benedict of Peter- borough, or of Matthew Paris to Roger of Wendover, afford instances of what I mean, where the later "redactor" takes over the previous writer's work en bloc^ adding to it, but not "slicing" it about in the manner assumed by the German and Dutch critics. A minute study of Holinshed and his sources would probably throw as much light on the problem here raised as any- thing I can think of. At the same time it must be owned that the literary critics have in several places, as in the story or stories of Creation, and in that of Joseph, produced evidence which seems to indicate the existence of literary material in the hands of the redactors. And certainly their work is conclusive as to the existence of divergent tradition, whether preserved orally or in writing. The only difference which would be made by regarding the sources as oral would be to make their origins more indefinite in point of time than they are regarded at present.
Be all this as it may, literary criticism proceeding on the assumption of Redaction of literary, and neglect- ing the possibility of the Amalgamation of oral, tradi- tion, has now done its minutest. On the whole, it is
RECENT RESEARCH. 15
remarkable what unanimity has been arrived at by the analysers. There is scarcely a verse in the whole Hexa- teuch that is not referred to one of the following five sources : —
(i.) The Jahvist, whose work is distinguished by the use of the name "Jahveh" (Wellhausen and Kuenen's J, Dillmann's B).
(2.) The Elohist, using the name "Elohim" (Well- hausen's E, Dillmann's C).
(3.) The Deuteronomist, who compiled Deutero- nomy and "redacted" (i) and (2) (Wellhausen D, Dillmann D).
(4.) The Priestly Narrative, beginning with Gen. i.-ii. 3 (Wellhausen Q, Kuenen P2, Dillmann A).
(5.) The Priestly Laws, containing the legislative sections of the middle books (Wellhausen PC, Kuenen Pi, Dillmann S).i
Besides these, there are various redactors and different stages of the various sources Ji, Jo, J3, etc., Qi, Q2, Q3, etc., to enable the analysts to overcome difficulties raised by their own methods. Apart from minor disagree- ments, the chief representatives of the critical school — Wellhausen and Kuenen on the one side, Dillmann on the other — are at one as to the sorting out of the whole contents of the Hexateuch into these five pigeon-holes. Where they differ — and the divergence here is funda- mental— is as to the dating of the various sources
' Profs. Kautsch and Socin have just edited Genesis so as to bring out the differences of sources by different types, of which they use no less than eight. For an example of minute division of the text, see Gen. xxxiii.
17-20.
i6 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
regarded as literary compositions. The chief sources in dispute are the last two, the Priestly Narratives and Laws, about which there is a difference of no less than four centuries, Wellhausen and Kuenen placing them after the Exil, Dillmann in the ninth century B.C. There is also some difference as to the localisation of those sources, which are admitted to be early by both sides. I have thought it would be interesting to exhibit in a graphic form the views of the two schools which now divide Biblical criticism as to the dates of the sources of the Pentateuch. The latest utterances in complete form^ are contained in the second edition of Kuenen's Onderzoek (excellently Englished by Rev. P. H. Wicksteed), and in the concluding essay of Dill- mann's commentary on Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, in the Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch (which is not likely ever to see the light in English, though by far the most important aid to the understand- ing of the Old Testament). From these I compile the subjoined Table.
The main points of argument are as to the date of Deuteronomy, the Israelite origin of the Jahvist, and the late date of the final redaction. The steep gradients of the dotted lines indicate the wide divergence between the two schools as to the date of the Priestly portions of the Pentateuch. It is difficult to state the present tendency of opinion on this important point. Herr Kittel and M. Renan, in their recent histories of Israel, would seem
' We have not yet got any complete reply from Kuenen or Wellhausen to Dillmann's weighty statement of his case in the third volume of his Com- mentary on the Pentateuch,
RECENT RESEARCH.
17
to incline to Dillmann's side. Stade, on the other hand, in his history, is equally emphatic as a Wellhausenianer .
Composition of the Hexateuch.
Kuenen-Wellhausen. Dillmann.
B.C. Israel. Judah. Judah. Israel.
900 „
800
700
600
500
400
A * S'^-''"'
J ^^
e_-
(A+B+C)2
(abc+ d)
ABCOS
' Dillmann is not very precise in his determination of the date of the Priestly Legislation.
2 Brackets, dark lines, or multiple letters, represent stages of redaction of two or more sources into one. The dotted lines connect the same five sources differently dated by the two schools.
C
i8 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
It is safe to say, perhaps, that the triumphant progress of the Kuenen-Wellhausen school is at present barred by Dillmann's Pentateuch commentary, one of the finest pieces of purely literary analysis that even Germany has produced.
Meanwhile, it deserves being pointed out in these pages that the only criteria relied upon in these struggles are purely literary, and therefore in large measure sub- jective. The main question at issue is connected at every point with the archaeology of institutions : the Priestly Legislation whose date is to be settled bristles with intricate points of institutional development. Yet no account is taken by the disputants of the light that might be thrown on their problem by the application of the modern methods of archaeological research. Kittell's work is preceded by an elaborate account of the present state of Biblical criticism, and a reconstruction of the tradition up to Joshua, in which the literary resources are his only resort. Renan's first volume does the same, with the difference only that he indulges in philological etymologising to a greater extent ; and in his second volume he gives a resume of Elohist and Jahvist, in which, against all probability, he attributes to the writers the actual origination of the narratives they report. The conditions under which oral tradition works, the normal order of social development, the traces or " survivals " which, as we now begin to know in other cases, are invariably left by past stages of society — all these things are left out of the purview of the literary critics in deciding questions in which these should be the creat criteria.
RECENT RESEARCH. 19
Here seems to me the great opening for English research in the field of Biblical criticism. Where Germany holds the pre-eminence in literary analysis, Eno-land possesses almost a monopoly in the m^ethods of sociological research. Literary analysis has done its best, and resulted in a cul de sac. Institutional archaeology must be called in to carry on the investigation further. Men that live in civil society must do so under certain conditions which can be observed in analogous cases. We are beo;inning to know^ some thing of the bonds that bind men together ; the beginnings of tribal and family life are being determined with some degree of precision on the lines laid down by Maclennan. We speak of the "tribes of Israel" as if all were known as to the conditions which constituted a man a tribesman of Dan or Benjamin, as the case may be. As a matter of fact, we know nothing of the kind. It is surprising how little we know of the tribal constitution of the early Hebrews. Even as early as Solomon we find it overriden by a svstem of local government which divided his territories into twelve divisions, presided over by officers ( i Kings iv. 7-19). Yet, when the origin of Numbers xxxvi. is to be discussed, in which the question of female inheri- tance to tribal land is raised with regard to the daughters of Zelophehad, and decided by an evident afterthought, no literary critic thinks of appeaHng to the archaeology of institutions in order to apply the comparative method. The " Mosaic " ordinance is, as will be remembered, that heiresses shall be forced to marry their cousins, so as to keep the property in the tribe. Such a statement raises a number of problems in the mind of any one trained
c 2
20 BIBLICAL ARCHtEOLOGY.
in the methods of Maclennan and Tylor. Does this indicate a general custom of exogamy to which a particular exception had to be made in the case of heiresses ; and if so, was exogamy between tribe and tribe or between family and family ? The heiresses were to be married to their " father's brother's sons." Here to the English archaeologist is certain proof that the custom arose after the matriarchal stage had been passed through, long after the time, therefore, when stress was laid on descent from Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens. None of these considerations enters the mind of the literary critic, who contents himself with pointing out identities of language with other sources, the whole vocabulary of which does not, perhaps, exceed 400 or 500 words.
Another instance of the queer shifts to which the neglect of archaeological considerations leads literary critics may be taken from Mr. Fenton's admirable little book [Early Hebrew Life^ Pref., p. xvii.). Wellhausen, in trying to prove that the Priestly Codex is later than Deuteronomy, comes to the question of tithes. " It is absolutely astounding" [History of Israel^ Ei'^g- Tr., p. 157), "that the tithe, which in its proper nature should apply only to products of definite measure, such as corn, and wine, and oil (Deut. xiv. 23), comes to he extended in the Priestly Code to cattle also." I leave out of account the fact, strangely omitted by Wellhausen, that cattle are also mentioned in the passage from Deuteronomy. But the surprising thing is that he never thinks for a moment of the obvious fact that cattle are the earliest possessions of man, and we might therefore expect tithes of them in
RECENT RESEARCH. 21
the very beginning of legislation. Nor does Dillmann, so far as I can see, make any use of this obvious answer to his opponent. Engrossed in the purely literary questions, they leave out of account the decisive criteria of institu- tional archaeology.
It may be replied that after all it is not much loss if we do not learn much as to the social institutions of the early Hebrews. That may or may not be the case, but speaking here of recent research in Biblical Archaeology, I could not avoid pointing out the inadequateness of the present methods employed. As for the possible light that may come from such application, it is surely the faith in which we students of the past live that sound and thorough work in any department cannot fail to have its influence on the whole sphere of inquiry. And experience has fully justified that faith by numerous examples where the thorough study of a subject seemingly of little impor- tance has turned out to be the opening up of entirely novel sources of elucidation. Who would have thought that Maclennan's investigations into the original mean- ing of that simpering nonentity, the " best man " at weddings, were destined to result in a complete trans- formation of our views about the origin of society ? As an instance of the light that seemingly antiquarian inquiries may throw on the deeper problems of the Old Testament, I may perhaps refer, for want of a better example, to my own paper on "Junior Right in Genesis," which first appeared in the pages of the Archaolog'ical Review^ ]^^Y-) 1888.^ Primarily my views
^ See infra, pp. 46-63. The controversies to which it gave rise (see Atheii., July 7, 14, 21, Aug. 4, Acad., Sept. 15, Oct. 27, Nov, 3, 10, 17)
22 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
seem to refer to a point which, even if established, would only be a curiosity of no significance. But, as I show, the existence of Junior Right among the early Hebrews would account for the existence in Genesis of almost all the so- called " immoral" narratives of the book, and would thus throw more light on the composition of the latter part of the book than any amount of literary analysis, which fails altoirether to determine the motives with which such narratives were introduced.
That is the peculiar merit of the method of " survivals," that it enables us to recover a whole social system by means of a single relic of it. As a fossil enables us to determine approximately the fauna and flora of a geological period, so a " survival " gives us information as to the whole stages of social develop- ment. It is accordingly from the method of survivals that we are to look in the immediate future for most of our information about the Hebrew past. And it is by the method of "survivals" that what little has been reached in the past has been arrived at. Mr. Fenton's excellent little book on " Early Hebrew Life," Prof. Robertson Smith's article on " Totem Clans " in the Old Testament, in the yoiirnal of Philology for 1880, and my own paper, almost exhaust the list, so far as I am aware. ^ Nothing has as yet been done on such promising subjects as the tribal constitution of Israel, the
have only confirmed me in the soundness of my original position. But my experience in this regard is probably not unique.
' Much of Dr. Maybaum's work on Priests and Prophets depends on the method of survivals. There are also some points touched upon by Mac- lennan in his " Patriarchal Theory."
RECENT RESEARCH. 23
relation between the sessile and nomad sections of the inhabitants of Canaan, the hereditary character of crafts (Prof. Sayce once threw out a luminous hint on smiths), the whole economic constitution of early Israel, with special reference to the system of agriculture. The difficulty in all these cases lies in the scanty character of our materials, but this is all the more reason why we should have resort to the method of " survivals," which is at its strongest in dealing with isolated and seemingly discordant facts.
And in our search for " survivals," there is no reason why we should conHne ourselves to the bare Biblical records. Hebrew life and institutions did not cease at once on the close of the Biblical canon. Centuries of development intervened before the continuity of the national life was altogether destroyed by the Diaspora under Hadrian in the second century. The post-Biblical records are much more voluminous and full on all archaeo- logical matters than the Old Testament, yet the Talmud remains a closed book to Biblical archaeologists, and its rich stores of information remain unused ; or rather, I should say, that the Talmud, though once opened for this very purpose, has been closed again from a quite mis- taken conception of its claims and authority as a guide to Biblical Archaeology. The scholars and divines of the seventeenth century knew how to utilise the further stages of development in the Talmud better than those of to-day. Selden, Spencer, Vitringa, and the rest, were better evolutionists than they are given credit for. They used the Talmud uncritically, it is true, but even then with such excellent results that their works are still of
24. BIBLICAL ARCHtEOLOGY.
utility. Spencer's De Legibus Hebneorum is still the highest authority on the sacrifices. Yet, in considering the development of the Hebraic legislation, no one seems to think of carrying on the process a step beyond the Biblical epoch by tracing the connection between that and the Talmudic phase. Even in the development of legend, something might be learnt in this way, nor is it improbable that the Midrash contains elements that existed in Bible times.^
And if " survivals " existed in Talmudic times, there is reason to hope that some may still be found among the Palestine peasantry at the present day. To take a simple example, the English distaste for horse-flesh, they say, is a "survival" of religious tabu o? the animal sacred to Odin. Conversely, may we not find traces of the reasons why the coney, for example, was included among the for- bidden food of the Hebrews, among the Bedawin and Fellahin of to-day ? It is this chance of reflex light on Bible customs by means of "survivals" existing at the present day that makes the new departure of the Palestine Exploration Fund, which has already been referred to more than once, of such extreme interest to those who look to institutional archaeology for the key to Biblical difliculties that the literary criticism, now almost ex- hausted, has been unable to solve.^
Another reason why the method of "survivals" is
' The only attempt that I know of to show traces of early legends among the mass of Talmudic ones, is by Dr. Giidemann, in an essay " Midrasch und Midrasch-Haggada," in the T,Vinz J nb else hr if t.
^ It is to be regretted, however, that the questions issued were not sub- mitted to specialists in sociology, or that the Anthropological Notes and Queries were not more utilised.
RECENT RESEARCH. 25
likely to prove so light-giving in the study of Hebrew antiquities, is because it is especially in the region of religious feeling that vi^e find previous stages of develop- ment showing most tenacious vitality. And our interest in Biblical Archaeology is concentrated on the religious aspects. " Israel for religion, Greece for art and science, Rome for law, England for institutions " — this is the formula which guides us to the particular portions of each nation's life from which we may expect greatest enlighten- ment. In the case of Israel, we have to remember that religion only began to be differentiated from ritual, from patriotism, from social economy, even from hygiene, at a late stage, and traces of the intermixture are to be found even in the prophetic writings which did most to disentangle religio from the other bonds of men in archaic society. In approaching the religious development of Israel from the institutional standpoint, we are to expect as much enlightenment from the non-relio-ious element which still remained as from the purer tendencies which were struggling to emerge from the midst of elements which are now seen to be alien by us, but were not so recognised at the time of their emergence. One can see at once how direct a bearing on religious problems would be afforded by an adequate study of tabu in early Israel, of the relics of ancestor worship (Gen. xxxi. 42), even of animism. The whole of Hebrew ritual is permeated by such " survivals," as indeed was recognised by philo- sophic Jewish authorities like Maimonides, who declares \ that Moses adapted idolatrous practices to a purer worship.
There is another aspect from which the study of
26 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
survivals of savage life in the Old Testament is instruc- tive in the highest degree. The whole tendency of modern criticism is to lay stress on the Prophets rather than upon the Law as the significant thing in Israel's religious development. M. Renan, who reflects well the tendencies of modern scholarship in this direction, makes this the keynote of his whole treatment of the history of Israel. Now the whole activity of the Prophets is directed against these " survivals of savage life," which can only be adequately studied by anthropological methods. Implicitly this has always been recognised in the statement that " the Prophets thundered against idolatry." But it is the commonest experience that violent opposition of this kind only occurs when there is common ground between the disputants, and we shall have to recosnise this common ground in the case of the Prophets.^ Where they differed was in things which they saw affected the nation in matters of livelihood and of morals. M. Renan points out that the Prophets were the first Socialists ; it was social injustice that fired their souls. And in their opposition to idolatry it was the amount of social degradation encouraged by the foreign or the ancient cults that moved their fierce indignation. As good citizens they opposed "adding field to field" ; as fathers of families they protested against the worship of Moloch and Ashtaroth. As a source of explanation
* It has been remarked that the official declaration of monotheism, " Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord ! " (Deut. vi. 4), contains an implicit recognition of polytheism in its emphasis on our God. M. Renan sees a survival of this in the German Emperor's phrase, " Unser Gott," during the Franco-Prussian war.
RECENT RESEARCH. 27
of the prophetic activity, the " method of survivals " becomes " the method of opposition."^
All this will seem distasteful to many who object to having things held sacred for so many generations sub- jected to analysis and shown to have undergone a course of natural development. As regards the former objection, it may be replied that we claim to understand what we are called upon to revere. Such understanding would probably only give us new causes for sympathy with the prophets and their work. The worship of Ishtar has never disappeared among men, and that of Moloch seems to have suddenly revived. The socialistic aspect of the prophets' work connects it at once with one of the most pressing problems of the hour. With regard to the objection which some persons seem to entertain against tracing development in things sacred, nothing can ever get rid of the fact of individual development, which is equally mysterious, and yet taken as a matter of course. The old Rabbis were wiser in this regard. " Akabiah ben Mahalaleel said, Consider three things, and thou wilt not come into the hands of transgression. . . . Know whence thou camest : from a fetid drop 5 and whither thou art going : to worm and maggot ; and before whom thou art about to give account and reckoning : before the King of kings, blessed is He" (Mishna, Aboth^ iii. i).
' In an essay on the Nethinim, uifra, I have endeavoured to apply both methods. From the exceptional degradation of the Nethinim shown in Talmudic " survivals," I was led to conjecture that they were descendants of the hietodidi of the Temple. Their existence was then used to account for much of the sccva indignatio of the prophets by the method of opposition.
28 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
But we need not dilate further on these high themes ; the homiletic method is monopolised in other quarters. It is sufficient for our purposes to point out that the present state of Biblical Archeology shows the urgent need of the application of the methods of institutional archaeology. There is at present, as we have seen, a pause in Biblical research, because the old methods of literary criticism have been worked out to their minutest results. It scarcely seems possible that the " slicing " process can be carried any further, and matters are now at a deadlock between two opposite schools, who have failed to find any crucial test to decide between them by any further application of purely literary criticism. I fancy I can discern some traces of misgiving on this point in the character of the changes which Prof. Schultz has made in the fourth edition of his standard work on Old Testament Theology. He is by no means so sure as heretofore as to the exact stages of development in the earlier periods. The manner, too, in which he emphasises in his Preface the scantiness of the sources, is significant in this regard.
The time seemed opportune, therefore, to plead the cause of other methods which have proved efficacious in tracing out those very developments of archaic law which form the points in dispute between the two dominant schools of Biblical criticism. Such an appeal should come home to English scholars, for the new methods have been chiefly developed in England.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 29
RECENT RESEARCH IN COMPARATIVE
RELIGION.
The Relif^ion of the Semites : Fundamental Institutions, by W. Robert- son Smith. 1889. (Black.)
The Golden Bough : A Study in Comparative Religion, by J. G. Frazer.
(Macmillan.)
The Fre-Historic Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, by O. Schrader. (Griffin.)
The Origin of the Aryans, by Isaac Taylor. (Scott.)
The first two books on our list are a veritable triumph for folk-lore, and especially for that conception of the science which has been consistently advocated by the Folk-Lore Society. Here we have two books dealing with the primitive religion of the two great groups of nations from which civilisation has obtained its chief spiritual material, and both avowedly appeal to folk-lore for methods of investigation and for corroborative criteria. Both use freely the analogy of savage custom and ritual to explain those of Semites and Aryans. Both apply with confidence the method of "survivals," in order to reconstruct the primitive systems from which the " sur- vivals " derive. The two books deal with the deepest problems of human thought, and neither disdain, in seeking for their solution, the light that may be obtained
30 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
from folk-tales, superstitions, and even games, those seem- ingly trivial remnants of older ways of thinking vv^hich folk-lore collects or investigates.
Of the two books, we may deal with Prof. Smith's first, as it appeared earlier, and is, perhaps, the more important. Though professedly dealing v/ith the Reli- gion of the Semites, it is mainly concerned with an hypo- thetical history of the ritual practices of the early Arabs in their relations to those of the Old Testament. Assyriological evidence is rejected as of too advanced and hieratic a character to throw light on origins. The evidence relating to Phoenicians and Syrians is too scanty and precarious to be of much value, though Prof. Smith refers to it now and again. So that, practically, all we have to go upon for the religion of the Semites is pro- vided by the Old Testament and the traditions of Arabia in the times of ignorance before Mahomet. With regard to the latter, the evidence is very late, being mainlv derived from the songs and anecdotes of pre-Islamite Arabs contained in the Hamasa and the K'ltah Al Aghani. To these are added a few notices in the commentators and geographers, as well as those contained in classical sources. One of the latter, indeed, an account of the habits of the Sinaitic Arabs in the fourth century a.d., by Nilus, does Prof. Smith yeoman's service, as we shall see.
It is thus obvious, by a recital of Prof. Smith's sources, that he adopts fully one of the main principles of the anthropological method. He seeks for origins among the primitive conditions of savage or quasi-savage life, and does not go on the assumption that the earlier in date
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 31
is necessarily the earlier in development. His implicit assumption throughout his book is, that the practices of the nomad Arabs, even though recorded much later, are more primitive and nearer the common source than the customs of the sessile and more civilised Hebrews. It need scarcely be said that such an assumption will meet with no demurrer from any follower of Dr. Tylor. And equal welcome will be accorded to Prof. Smith's practice in resorting for confirmatory evidence to savage nations among non-Semites ; it would have been well, indeed, if he had drawn more largely on this class of evidence.
On the subject of sources, it is strange that Prof. Smith has not had more frequent recourse to the Talmud and kindred literature of the later Hebrews. Here, if anywhere, we should expect to find " survivals " of archaic custom ; and much of Talmudic ritual carries on the face of it evidence of more archaic practice than the more ideal codes of Ezekiel and the Pentateuch. Prof. Smith rightly praises the works of Spencer and Selden in the seventeenth century, but he would have done well to have followed their example in using the Talmud, He would, besides, have been able by this means to test the current hypothesis of the sequence of the three codes into which the Pentateuch has been divided by the Dutch and German critics. If these point to a development in a certain direction, we ought to find that development carried still further in the same direction in Talmudic times. As a matter of fact, literary analysis is of little use in archaeological research, and is scarcely mentione more than once or twice by Prof. Smith.
Another point in which Prof Smith adopts the
32 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
methods of the anthropological school, is, that he seeks for his origines in early practice rather than in early- thought or theory. In other words, he looks for the religion of the primitive Semites in the ritual of Semites less primitive, and not in their creed, if indeed any ancient religion can be said to have a creed. Thus the present instalment of his work deals in the main with the ritual of Sacrifice, and its meaning among the primitive Semites ; and the subject of Semitic mythology is left for the second series of the Burnett Lectures. Here, ao-ain. Prof, Smith is at one with Mr. Spencer, Dr. Tylor, Mr. Lang, and all those who have treated of early religion from an anthropological standpoint.
So much for method, which is entirely that of the English schools. Scarcely a year previously, I expressed a hope in the pages of the Archceological Review that Biblical Archaeology would be treated by anthropological methods, and even as I wrote. Prof. Smith was applying those methods with signal mastery. I need not say how cordially I welcome Prof. Smith's weighty contribu- tion to Biblical Archaeology, and if in the sequel I demur to some of his conclusions, it is on the under- standing that in a field of such complexity and precarious footing the first and foremost thing is right method, and herein — let me emphasise the fact from the start — Prof. Smith has found salvation.
The subject of this first series is, as I have said, mainly the ritual of Semitic sacrifice and its meaning. Prof. Smith has a few preliminary lectures on the nature of the Semitic gods, in which he has an ingenious suggestion explaining the Baalim as divine lords of the manor, so to
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 33
speak, and a still more ingenious explanation of the yinn (the Genii of our youth and of the Arabian Nights) as " potential totems " of the waste places of the desert. But all this is only introduced to emphasise the conception of the Semitic gods being regarded as of the same kin as their worshippers, and so to lead on to Prof. Smith's theory of Semitic sacrifice.
This is, briefly, that sacrifice is a common meal of the god and his worshippers, by which their community of blood (in a literal sense) should be re-enforced from time to time. Prof. Smith shows that a similar conception governs the blood-bond made between two individuals. He gives instances where blood is used on the altar or sprinkled on the worshipper. He minimises the import- ance of vegetable offerings, and sees in them the quite late and advanced modes of approaching the god. Except, however, in the one instance, given by Nilus, and referred to above, he fails to find an actual sacred meal in which the absorption of blood into the worshippers seems part of the rites. ^ Nor has he been able to show any analogous rites with such an avowed object among savages. Mr. Eraser, indeed, in his new book, gives numerous examples of such meals, but none in which the object is to restore communion between god and wor- shipper. The whole idea of communion seems to me too theologically abstract to be at the basis of savage rites of sacrifice. For these we must look to some utilitarian
' As the passage from Nilus is of such crucial importance for Prof. Smith's views, it would have been well if he had reprinted it in an Ap- pendix. It is not everyone who has access to Nili opera qiKEdam inediia, Parisiis, 1639. It is given in Wellhausen Reste, p. 57. A Latin version is given ia the Acta Sand., Jan. 14.
D
34 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
motive, based, it may be, on some savage and seemingly absurd idea, but logically deduced from it. Now, it is difficult to see what advantage a savage can derive from being made one with his god, by eating the same flesh as he. One could understand the use of " eating the god," by which to obtain the divine qualities and powers : Mr. Fraser gives many examples of this. But what is the use of eating the same thing as the god ?
Even in the totem systems there does not seem to be any attempt to renew a tribal bond with the totem, though there is, in initiatory ceremonies, an attempt to give blood-communion with the fellow-tribesmen (Frazer^ Totemism^ pp. 45, 46). At the basis of Prof. Smith's views, indeed, there is an assumption of the existence of totem- ism among the primitive Semites, the evidence for which he has brought forward in his Kinship and Marriage in Ancient Arabia. Now, this is a question still sub judice^ and there are extremely few judices. I cannot think of more than four men in Europe who are competent, from knowledge of pre-historic Arabia, to pass judgment on the success of Prof. Smith's attempt to prove totemism in Arabia ; and of these, two, Wellhausen and Goldziher, are adverse to his claims. But even assuming Arabic totemism to be proved. Prof. Smith has still to show that in totemistic communities sacrifice is of the character of a communion. The blood-communion between god and worshipper cannot be regarded as a vera causa till it has been shown to exist among savage tribes with the avowed object of restoring communion between the totem or god and his worshipper.^
' I may refer the reader to my discussion of the question, " Are there Totem Clans in the Old Testament?" Infra, pp. 64 seq.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 35
With regard to the application of Prof. Smith's theory to the Semites, there is the further difficulty that those Semites whose ritual we know best — the Hebrews — were rigidly scrupulous in avoiding the taste of blood. No reason is given for this tabu^ and this is just one of those seemingly irrational practices that are most likely to be primitive, or at least archaic. And on the ordinarily accepted view of the origin of sacrifice — which regards it as a gift to propitiate a superior being — this can be easily understood as the avoidance by the worshipper of taking what belongs especially to the god, the essence of the victim's life, the blood. In a similar way, almost all the practices of Hebrew ritual may be explained on the tributary theory of sacrifice,^ where we do have a utili- tarian basis for the practice. As a savage, I give the most precious gift I can to the god, my own blood, the life of an animal, or the most precious food I know, in order to prevent him injuring me, or to induce him to do me good. The analogy is with a tribute to a king, not, as Prof. Smith would have it, with a carouse with a comrade.
It will thus be seen that Prof. Smith's theory traces religion to a sort of friendship, rather than, as on the older tributary theory of sacrifice, to a feeling of fear. *' It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers," he says, p. 55, " but with a loving reverence for known gods, who are knit to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship, their religion in the true sense of the word
^ It is, perhaps, worth while remarking that the most general Hebrew term for sacrifice, Corban (familiar to the reader from the New Testament), simply means offering or gift, and there is no doubt about the etymology.
D 2
36 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
begins." That is an attractive picture, but it scarcely answers to what we know of savage practice and feeling about the higher beings. It does not answer, for the matter of that, to the feeling of the majority of men who are not savages. And it is met by the further difficulty of the facts of magic, which are certainly wor- ship, and are as certainly dominated by fear. To this Prof. Smith objects that magic is never religion, nor its source. But surely its simplest explanation is that it is the survival of an older religion, and its gloomy aspect is due to its antinomianism with regard to the later and generally purer creed.
Another obstacle that stands in the way of Prof. Smith's theory is the fact of human sacrifice. That cannot be a common meal of god and worshippers, and accordingly Prof. Smith has to make the most ingenious hypotheses to explain the late origin of human sacrifices among the Semites, among whom it certainly existed. But if ever a practice bore on the face of it the marks of primitiveness, it is that of human sacrifice, and its existence stands in the way of the loving reverence for a kindred god postulated by Prof. Smith's theory.
Finally, it would not be impossible to explain away much of the crucial significance attached by Prof. Smith to Nilus' account of the morning rites of the Sinaitic Arabs. Thus the importance attached to the completion of the sacrificial meal between the rising and disappear- ance of the day-star seems to point to some form of astral worship which we know to have been current among the Northern Arabs.^ And even with regard to the blood-
* Wellhausen, who first drew attention to the passage of Nilus, brings it into connection with star- worship, l.c.^ p. 37.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 37
drinkino;, I notice an important discrepancy in Prof. Smith's account. On page 263, the flesh was eaten " half-raw, and merely softened over the fire " ; on p. 320, the company " hack off pieces and devour them raw." In the former case the significance of blood is practically nil.
Thus altogether for these reasons I cannot consider that Prof. Smith has made out a complete case for his view that sacrifice among the Semites was in its origin a blood-bond between god and worshipper. The most favourable verdict that can be given for such a contribu- tion is the Scotch one of " Not proven." Perhaps some of the want of conviction which Prof. Smith's book pro- duces is due to its style and arrangement. The retention of the lecture-form has given a dogmatic tone to the presentation which is signally inappropriate in a field where facts are so scanty and theories so hypothetical. Little attention has been paid to the reader's needs for explanation, and the book, as a whole, is decidedly hard reading.
Prof. Smith's book suffers much by contrast with that of Mr. Frazer, whose literary skill is to be recognised throughout, both in arrangement and his clear and careful summaries at appropriate pauses of his argument. So great is his skill in this respect that one scarcely notices that his book is made up of somewhat incongruous ele- ments. The avowed object of the book is to explain the curious rule of succession to the Arician priesthood, the priest of Aricia being succeeded by the man who managed to slay him after plucking the Golden Bough from the tree under which he lived. But besides this, Mr. Frazer
38 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
has desired to make known to English readers Mann- hardt's remarkable views and facts about agricultural deities. And bevond this, it is clear that Mr. Frazer has also seized the opportunity of putting into print some of the vast materials of primitive custom and belief that he has been collecting for many years. In noticing his book we may, perhaps, separate these three threads of his cunningly woven weft.
Mr. Frazer's explanation of the Arician rule is, briefly, that the Priest-king of Aricia had to be slain by his successor, as he represented the sacred life of the fields around him, and this would be kept at its highest point of efficiency by being passed on when the priest's powers began to fail. He gives elaborate parallels for the exist- ence of priestly kings or royal priests, and for their being regarded as incarnations of the forest or field divinities. He points out similar cases where king, priest, or even god is slain, so that he should not die a natural death with his powers enfeebled. There can be little doubt that he has proved this part of his case up to the hilt. I am not so convinced, however, of his success with the bough that plays the title role to his book. This he considers to be the "external soul" ("Life-Index" was Capt. Temple's very apt title for it) of the tree, and probably of the grove. So far so good, but why should a would-be suc- cessor of the Arician priest have to pluck it before beginning the fight with the present possessor ? There can be two or more external souls of a being, answers Mr. Frazer, and both must be slain or annihilated before the soul can pass in fresh to a new external home. The moral of that would seem to be, rather keep one of the
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 39
external souls vigorous, and all will be well. As one of Mr. Stevenson's characters remarks, " It's not much use killing a man if he's got another life." The Golden Bough may be the mistletoe, and the external soul of the oak, but why it had to be plucked before the combat in the grove of Nemi, is, I confess, to me a mystery still.
So much for the nominal subject of the book, which, after all, is but one of the curiosities of custom that are interesting to solve indeed, but yet seem by-paths in the search after mythological truth. But those who re- member Mr. Frazer's first and still most brilliant piece of work in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ for 1885, on Burial Customs, will know that it is his vv^ay to tack on to such seeming trivialities an enormous mass of well-digested facts bearing on his nominal subject, but really of more interest than it. He has pursued the same course on the present occasion. He has incorporated in this book the greater part of Mannhardt's researches on agricultural customs and their significance, with additions from his own unrivalled collections. The most remark- able of these is that deduced from Harvest Home Games, which would seem to render it probable that human sacrifices were common in archaic times to ensure the fertility of the soil. If the inferences of Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer are to be trusted, there is scarcely a field in Europe that has not at one time or another been reddened by the blood of such a sacrifice. I would, myself, hesitate before accepting such a sweeping assertion, simply on inference from folk-lore " survivals." We should have somewhat more explicit evidence of such general carnage
40 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
before we can assert its general existence all over the countries where the folk-lore customs extend. Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Frazer seems to me to overlook the imitative nature of man, and the possible spread of the customs and the rhymes from one centre.^
Mr. Frazer, again following Mannhardt, applies these ao-ricultural customs to explain some of the most archaic myths, as, e.g., those of the deaths of Osiris and Adonis. These he connects with the habit of killing the " corn- demon " to ensure its vigorous life in another personality. Mr. Frazer confesses, in his preface, to some misgivings that he has pushed his hypothesis too far, and in the cases of Attis, Osiris, and Dionysus this seems to be the case, their connection with agriculture being of the slightest. Mr. Frazer might have taken more account of the thesis of Von Hehn, who suggests that the association of certain plants with certain deities — e.g., the olive with Athene — was really due to its introduction by the priests of the god or goddess. However, it is the duty of every hypothesiser to push his theory to its furthest extent. Someone has said that the use of philosophical systems is in their weak places. So, too, the strength of an hypo- thesis is best shown in its weak places. Mr. Frazer's views have some plausibility, even when stretched and strained to their utmost.
But the merit of Mr. Frazer's book resides, not so much in his theories, ingenious as they are, as in his facts and in his co-ordinations of them. The Golden Bough is really a series of monographs on folk-lore and
' I have given an instance of this in the notes to " Punchkin," in my Indian Fairy Tales.
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 41
mythological subjects. Some of these attain almost to the rank of treatises, e.g.^ the section on royal and priestly taboos in Vol. L, and that on the external soul in Vol. 11.^ Mr. Frazer's mastery of the whole literature of folk-lore and savage life is something remarkable, and is clearly based on a thorough and systematic search through all likely sources (the Dutch reports on their Eastern possessions are a quite unworked field). One quite envies Mr. Frazer the hours of happy work which must have been passed in compiling this mass of infor- mation. He must often have felt the supreme joy of the researcher in finding his chaotic materials slowly rounding themselves into an intelligible whole. He must, by this time, have pigeon-holed the greater part of savagism and folk-lore (if we can distinguish between the two), and The Golden Bough from this point of view oifers greater promise than even its very great performance.
Looking back on the two books, which I have now, perhaps, sufficiently though summarily characterised, a few general remarks suggest themselves. Though to a certain degree the authors have worked together, it is somewhat curious to find them tending to opposite con- clusions on the same point. Thus Prof. Smith traces the theocracy, or the conception of God as king, to the establishment of monarchy in Israel ; Mr. Frazer, on the other hand, regards kingship as primarily incarnate deity on earth. Royal taboos, according to Mr. Frazer, are strictly the divinity that doth hedge a king. Prof. Smith regards taboo as the origin of holiness. I have already
> Mr. Clodd's "Philosophy of Punchlcin," F.-L./., ii., might have been referred to in this connection.
42 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
referred to the different attitudes of the two authors as regards human sacrifice, though it is fair to remember that Mr. Frazer is speaking mainly of the agricultural stage, Prof. Smith of the nomad or pastoral.
The two books, indeed, suggest that in the very near future we may see the very desirable application of insti- tutional archaeology to mythology. The gods and rituals of a nomad or pastoral people will differ from those of an agricultural type of society, and we should find traces of the difference in the passage of one nation through these stages. Prof. Smith at times makes use of this criterion, but the institutional archaeology of the Semites is in too immature a state to be of much use in this direction at present.
Both books are slightly old-fashioned in assuming a unity and solidarity among both Aryans and Semites, which all recent research tends to disprove. In all branches of pre-historic and folk-lore research, the ten- dency is to regard customs, language, and institutions as having a definite origin at a fixed place and epoch, and their spread is to be explained through diffusion by borrowing. I have already referred to this in connection with Mr. Frazer's book, but the point is important enough to deserve reiteration. The borrowing hypo- thesis is clearly applicable to mythology, since the religions of the whole world have been borrowed from opposite races, the Buddhism of the Mongol races from the Aryans of India, the Christianity of Europe from the Semites of Judaea, and the Mahommedanism of Turkey, India, and Africa from Semitic Arabia. Those are borrowing facts which lend great plausibility to the
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 43
borrowing hypothesis on a smaller scale and in less wide areas.
The last two books on our list deal on a large scale with this borrowing process, in language, custom, and institutions among the early Aryans. Dr. Schrader's book gives the facts of the pre-historic antiquities of the Aryan peoples, as deduced from their languages and their material archaeology, with German thoroughness ; but, alas ! with German unreadableness. Though professing to review and revise the facts of philology by the facts of archaeology, the book is, in the main, philological. It chiefly interests us here as giving the latest word on the original Aryan mythology, which, twenty years ago, was going to give us the key to all the mythologies. Judging from Dr. Schrader's results, the key has broken in the wards. He declines to grant a single god common to the whole of Aryan-speaking peoples.
The resemblances in names are reduced to two or three notably, Zeus == Dyaus, and these are explained away without the resort to the hypothesis of a common worship of the early Aryans. Thus, of the great mythological myth of the sixties one great stronghold is taken. The Aryans had no common gods. Dr. Schrader is even so heretical as to deny that they ever had a common home, and certainly not in Asia. This is a theme taken up with great skill by Canon Taylor, whose lucidity is a pleasant contrast to Dr. Schrader's painstaking piling up of materials for a book. Canon Taylor adds to the sub- sidiary aids of philology the use of anthropology. His craniology strikes one as somewhat amateurish, but his ethnological treatment of the subject brings out the main
44 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
thesis of his book with great skill. This I take to be that the Aryan tongue was imposed upon the peoples now speaking Aryan by conquest, and was not a common possession of six or seven sets of races. In short, there was only one Aryan race and tongue, and the latter has been passed on to various races by conquest. Authorities are disagreed as to the Ur-Aryans : some are for the Scandinavians, some for the Celts. Canon Taylor him- self has a brief for the Letts ; but all seem to agree that that there never was such a thing as a common Aryan race from whom Celts, Teutons, etc., "swarmed off" as they increased in numbers. The whole outcome is a remarkable lesson against precipitate decision in such inquiries. Twenty years ago we could all have sworn that the original home of the Aryans was in Asia, that they were all of one blood, that they had a common culture and worship, and that they passed into Europe westwards. All this was presented to us with such con- fidence, eloquence, and insistence, that denial seemed ignorant presumption. Now all this is changed, and great is the fall of the originators thereof. And with their fall has gone the folk-etymology theory of the origin of the early mythologies.
No one theory has taken the place of the sun-myths and the rest. A wise syncretism is taking the place of the single key that was to fit all wards. There are gods of the woods and of the fields, there are totem-gods and ancestral gods, the generative powers were worshipped, stocks and stones received their cult, even the sun and moon had their votaries. Few would nowadays be pre- pared to reduce all these forms of man's reverence for
COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 45
the Divine to any one single principle. And even in details, the passion for explaining away the facts as given in ancient records is fast disappearing. When the sacri- fice was given " as a sweet savour unto the Lord " the modern inquirer does not desire to explain this away. He thinks the ancient who spoke thus meant what he said, and no more or less. The results thus reached may often seem ludicrous, but they are not more so than facts observed every day in savage life. We ought not perhaps to be surprised to find that as man has risen from the beasts we can catch him at times in stages of mind which can be but little higher than the beast's.
The hope that the study of comparative religion would throw some Hght on religion itself seems to be fading away. It seems, in fact, as if the mythological show has somewhat disappointed the sightseers. They have been invited by eloquent showmen to enter and take their seats, and they would see what they would see. What they have seen has been a curtain covered with figures, some beautiful and some grotesque, but all of lower orders of art. Many have been the guesses as to the meaning of these figures, and as to what was behind the curtain. But the curtain has never been raised, and some among the audience are beginning to ask, " Is the curtain the picture, and is there nothing behind the veil, behind the veil ? "
46 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS.
The term Junior-right implies a system of tenure in which a father's property descends to the youngest son. It thus forms the exact contrast to primogeniture, and to express this opposition the term " ultimogeniture " has been suggested [Elton, Origins ^ 185), while in Germany the usual name is "Jiingsten-recht. The special English expression is " borough-English," which is said to have been derived from a local use at Nottingham where there were two tenures of land in I Edw. III., "and the usages of these tenures were such that all the tenements whereof the ancestor died seised in burgh-Engloyes ought to descend to the youngest son, and all the tenements in burgh- Frauncoyes to the eldest son as at the common law." Mr. Elton, from whom I take this quotation, devotes a learned chapter to this subject in his Origins of English History (Chdip. viii., pp. 183-221). He has traced the custom in South-East England, Wales, France, where it is termed Mainete^ parts of Germany, Friesland, Hungary, and among the Tchuds, and Mongols, while Liebrecht, Ziir Folks kunde (pp. 431-2) refers to further examples in Scandinavia, New Zealand, Australia, and Zululand. To these I would add the Todas, Mrus, Kolhs, and Cotas (Reclus, Prim. Folk, p. 200).
' Not droit de jiiveignerie which is merely a " cadet appanage." Mr. Lang, who uses this term by preference, has overlooked Liebrecht's correc- tion in the Nachtrage to his Ziir Volkskunde, p. 514.
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 47
On the origin of this custom learned opinion is not yet decided. Mr. Elton connects it with another custom of a similar nature, by which the sacred hearth passes by preference to the youngest, but this only leaves an open- ing for an explanation which will concurrently explain both customs. Sir H. S. Maine connects it, as usual, with the P atria Potestas [Hist. Instit.^ p. 223) ; the elder sons having established households of their own, the home-staying youngster is the only one left to carry on the Patria Potestas. Against this is the doctrine of " survivals," which sees in the sparsely scattered instances of junior-right a more archaic institution than that of primogeniture. Mr. Lang is inclined to see in it the natural preference for the son of the latest and, ex hypothesis best-beloved wife in polygamous marriage ; (Grimm- Hunt, Introd., p. lix.). Unfortunately primogeniture is as often as not the rule among polygamous nations (Hindus, Chinese, Jews, Arabs), and the explanation would still leave unexplained why the youngest son of the youngest wife was the heir. I would venture to suggest that the custom would naturally arise during the latter stages of the pastoral period, when the elder sons would in the ordinary course of events have " set up for them- selves " by the time of the father's death. The youngest son would under those circumstances naturally step into his father's shoes, and acquire the patria potestas^ and with it, the right of sacrificing to the family gods by the paternal hearth.^ Its occurrence nowadays is chiefly
• I observe that this is also Mr. Gomme's explanation in ArchcEoIogia., Vol. I., 214. Cf. too Robinson's Gavelkind : Appendix, quoted by Elton, 199. It was also Blackstone's suggestion, according to Maine, Hist, of Instit., 222-3.
48 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
among nomad tribes, and when found elsewhere it bears evident marks of a " survival." The English custom might have arisen in an analogous way during the time that the Teutonic invaders were successively founding " tun " after " tun " as the Paddings, the Kennings, or the Islings grew up and left the settlements of their father Padd, Kenn, or iEsel, to found new ones at Paddington, Kennington (where the custom is still to be traced, Blount-Hazlitt, Joe. Tenures^ '^ll\ or Islington (where it also occurs, Elton, p. 193).
As with other instances of ancient laws and customs which have died away into mere "survivals," junior-right has its item of interpretation to offer to the meaning of folk-tales. Mr, Lang in particular has extorted yeoman's service from a conception which tells so strongly for his main hypothesis (Grimm-Hunt, l.c.^ Cupid and Psyche^ p. xxxii., Perrault, pp. xcvi-ix). The "formula" of the youngest born who succeeds with tasks which elder children have failed to accomplish is familiar to us in " Cinderella" and in " Puss-in-Boots," and is included by Hahn in his summary of incidents occurring in Aryan folk-tales as "No. III. Geschwister-formeln. Formel vom besten Jiingsten" Allan, und neugr. Mdhrchen^ i. 51 ap. Liebrecht, I.e. 432). It is natural to connect this with junior-right which is a legal " Formel vom besten Jiingsten." At the same time, Mr. Lang points out, with scientific caution, that these tales involve preliminary failures which would naturally be undergone by the elders (Perrault, I.e.). I may add that at the root of their undertaking the exploits first, is involved rather the right of primogeniture. And generally the reason why
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 49
the success of the youngest is striking, is because of its opposition to our preconceived notions of the right of the eldest to succeed in life.^
The same opposition is, I am about to suggest, at the root of a number of tales with which we are even more famihar. The traditions of the beginnings of their race given by the Hebrew sages in the boolc of Genesis are full of the formula " the youngest is best." This does not show itself in the very earliest history of all, for reasons which may later detain us. But the moment we begin with the history of the sacred family of the Terahides we find almost at every stage the youngest son possessing the birthright, as may be seen from a short abstract of their genealogy on the next page, in which the youngest children are printed in thick type.
According to this genealogical tree, all three patriarchs were youngest sons. And the position of Jacob (Israel), the eponymous father of the race, is especially note- worthy ; speaking algebraically, he is a youngest son to the seventh power. He is the youngest son of Isaac, who was the youngest son of Abraham, Terah's youngest son, and of Rebekah, who was the youngest child of Bethuel, who was the youngest son of Nahor,
The other names printed in thick type will come up
• This prepossession seems scarcely justified by facts. Among the eminent " English Men of Science " whose nature and nurture were investigated by Mr. F. Gallon, 26 out of 99 were eldest sons and 25 youngest, while 22 were both eldest and youngest, i.e., only sons (p. 33). I may perhaps add here that from a very large induction I have made of the occurrence of suc- cessful youngest sons and daughters in folk-tales, I am rather inclined to doubt any connection with junior-right. No question of succession occurs in them as in the stories of Genesis.
50 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
GENEALOGY OF THE TERAHIDES. Terah.
Haran. I
Nahor. //
I
I Lot. 3 Iscah. 2 Milcah.
I Abraham.'
Hagar. '- Sarah.
I I
I I
Ishmael. IsaaC.
Seven other Sons (xxii. 21, 22) Bethuel.
Laban.
Rebekah.
1
Leah. Rachel. Esau. Jacob.
Leah. — ^ — Rachel.
^ I I
I I I I I I
Reuben. Simeon. Levi. Judah. Joseph. Benjamin.
Amram.
I
I I I
Aaron Miriam. MoseS.
I
Manasseh. Ephraim.
Er. Onan. Shelah.^ = Tamar = Judah.
L Pharez,
. Zarah.
I
Tesse. _l I
Seven other Sons (i Sam. xvii. 12, 14) David. = Bathsheba.'
1 \ \ I
Shimea. Shobab. Nathan. Solomon.
' Abram must have been younger than Haran since he is everywhere re- garded as a contemporary of his nephew Lot. The order " Abram, Nahor,
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 51
for treatment in due order and, when necessary, with the evidence by which their " ultimogeniture " is established. But at present I would call attention to the general law which comes out so clearly in the above genealogical table. Almost every name of importance in early Hebrew history is that of a youngest son or daughter : Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, Rachel, Judah, Joseph, Benjamin, Ephraim, Moses — the whole sacred history of the early Hebrews is here. And these names are con- nected for the most part with a question of succession of the most vital importance for the whole religious future of the world, as the Hebrews thought, and as history shows they were justified in thinking. The birth- right question forms the kernel of the whole patriarchal history, and yet it invariably goes with the youngest son. Surely these traditions must have arisen in a state: of society in which succession went by junior-right.
Yet by the time these traditions were written down, the impression in favour of the eldest son was firmly established.^ This is shown not alone by references in
Haran" occurs in the latest source of the Pentateuch (Gen. xi. 27). How- ever it is immaterial for my argument if he were not the youngest : Abraham starts the birthright, not inherits it.
^ Theoretically, I presume, on the Levirate principle Pharez and Zarah would count as sons of Shelah though begotten by Judah. Or would they have been regarded as carrying on the rights of Er ?
^ Besides six other wives whom he married before at Hebron (i Chr. iii. 1-3), and by each of whom he had offspring presumably all older than Bath- sheba's children.
■* Into the once vexed question whether Hebrew law sanctioned primo- geniture in the modern sense we need not enter. The Deuteronomic legisla- tion clearly gave the preferential share of a double portion to the eldest son. (Deut. xxi. 17).
E 2
52 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
the genealogies of Genesis (xxii. 21 ; xxv. 13 ; xxxv, 23 ; xlvi. 8), but still more by the attitude taken up by the narrators towards cases where the first-born did not obtain the birthright. They felt bound to show that what was seemingly the rule in patriarchal times — the birthright of the youngest — was really the exception to the rule with which they were familiar — the birthright of the eldest. ^ It was important to show this from the sacerdotal point of view, since the whole maintenance of the priests depended on the system of first-fruits (Deut. xviii. 4). This sacro-sanctity of the first-born comes out strongly in the principle laid down in the earliest legislation (Ex. xxxiv. 19) : " All that openeth the matrix is mine," i.e.^ belonged to the priests ; ^ this is extended in the next verse even to the children of men when it is said, " All the first-born of thy sons thou shalt redeem."^ The origin of this sanctity of the first-born among the Semites is obscure, as is remarked by Prof. Robertson Smith [Religion of the Semites^ p. 445), and has scarcely been cleared up by his own suggestions. The sacrifice of
' Maine attempted to derive Primogeniture and Borough English from two different conceptions (Instit.., p. 223) ; the former from the rule of succession to chieftainship, the latter from the rule of inheritance of the patria potestas. The Hebrew evidence is clearly against him.
^ Wellhausen {Hist07y, p. 155) and Kuenen {Hexateuch, pp. 29, 30) argue elaborately that, in this legislative code, the priests had no more share than anyone who joined the sacrificial banquets. We would ask : What did they live upon then ? At any rate the passage is sufficient to show the sanctity attaching to the first-born in the earliest written legisla- tion.
^ This custom is kept up to the present day by orthodox Jews, who pay a small sum as a "redemption of the [eldest] son." An instance occurs in Mr. Zangwill's Childrai of the Ghetto, Pt. I., chap, vi., where the ritual is given.
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 53
the first-born among the Semites as in Moab (2 Kings iii. 27) is found also among non-Semitic peoples (Frazer, Golden Bough^ p. 236-7). On the other hand Abdalmat- talib vows to sacrifice his tenth son if he has ten sons [Tabari^ i. 1073, ap. Wellhausen, Reste^ p. 112), and this became a "leading case" among the Arabs. It is clear at any rate that the sanctity of the first-born must in Israel have come in with the establishment of a priestly caste, and it is significant in this regard that alone among the eponymous heroes of the race, Aaron was a first-born, and was succeeded in his office by his eldest son Eleazar. It is difficult to conceive that the legends about the remaining names in the sacred genealogy of the Terahides could have arisen when the sanctity of the first-born was established ; in each case tradition points to the youngest as the heir, or in other words Borough English,
Thus while all the legislation went towards the sanctification of the first-born, the earliest traditions were in favour of the youngest. It was thus of crucial impor- tance to the sacerdotal scribes from whom we have received these traditions to reconcile them with the sanctity of the eldest, on which all Jewish society and especially the whole system of the priesthood rested. It says something for their general trustworthiness that the traditions — though telling against them — have reached us unfalsified, and that the reconciling stories can be separated from the traditions to which they were applied. It is not suggested that all or any of these reconcilinp- stories were invented for the purpose. Our hypothesis explains only why they were inserted in the sacred narra- tive. The need of reconciliation, it is contended, caused
54 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
then to be selected from the mass of legends which no doubt existed about the early fathers of the race. In particular our hypothesis would explain the admission of many narratives in the sacred text which seem at present to be purposeless or worse until we place ourselves in the position of the narrators, and appreciate the necessity they felt of explaining away the junior-right system so mani- fest in the earliest traditions. It is otherwise difficult to explain their existence in a book which from the first was intended to be a moral guide.
The expedient adopted for the purpose of reconciling tradition and law varies in different cases. With Ishmael and Isaac the inferiority of the handmaid to the mistress is the leading idea which serves to solve the difficulty. This should not obscure to us the fact that Ishmaelites are included as of natural right among the Abrahamides (xxv, 1 2- 1 8),^ and that many touches of tradition show Ishmael of equal legitimacy with Isaac (xvii. i8, 20, 26 ; xxv. 9). The touching prayer of Abraham, "O that Ishmael might live before thee" (xvii. 17), and the fact that Ishmael joins with Isaac in arranging the burial of their father (xxv. 9) is sufficient to establish this.
The next case of Jacob is especially interesting, because he is himself such a striking instance of a youngest son whose parents and grandparents are also youngest children. There are no less than two accounts to explain why, though the younger, he has the birth- right. One of these, told with admirable skill, is probably founded in the last resort on a folk-etymology
1 Where quotation is merely by Roman and Arabic numerals, these refer to the corresponding chapter and verse of Genesis.
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 55
of the name "Jacob, the Supplanter^ or Deceiver," and tells how Jacob supplanted Esau by deceiving their father Isaac (ch. xxvii.).^ But there is another and probably later version (xxv. 29-34), in which Esau's privileges were disposed of to Jacob in a legitimate way by pur- chase, though under circumstances which fully confirm Jacob's reputation for cunning. The object of both narratives is clear^ — to explain why the birthright passed to the younger brother against the pre-possession of the narrator and of his audience in favour of the elder. The later custom and the earlier tradition had to be reconciled; both were sacro-sanct to the minds of the narrator, and any explanation that reconciled them would commend itself as " what must have been." ^
The sons of Jacob afford, strange to say, several instances of junior right. Different traditions repre- sented different sons as youngest. This fact clears up, to my mind, some of the most puzzling of the narratives in Genesis. When we are dealing with Jacob's sons,
' It is possible that this name of the patriarch may be due to the Canaanites calling the Israelites, very appropriately, " sons of the supplanter " =:accorciing to Semitic idiom, supplanters. Our own " Whig " and " Tory " are sufficient to show that an opprobrious epithet may ultimately be adopted by the persons on whom it was first bestowed by opponents. It is certainly significant that there is no patronymic in Hebrew corresponding to Jacob as there are such derived from Israel and Judah ("Israelite, Jew").
2 It would be interesting to ascertain the exact advantage supposed to be derived from a father's " blessing." There is certainly some folk-lore con- ception lying at the root of it, as in the analogous case of cursing. Well- hausen just touches on the point {^Reste, p. 125O
* Much of the Hagada or Talmudic legends about Biblical personages is due to the same kind of logic which is by no means yet extinct among us, and is, indeed, perfectly justifiable if hypothesis be distinguished from fact.
56 BIBLICAL ARCHtEOLOGY.
the realities underlying the narratives are the tribes in actual existence in Canaan. The *' sons of Leah " and the "sons of Rachel" probably indicate early confedera- tions of the tribes,^ while the " children of the hand- maids " indicate some inferiority of the position of their respective tribes in the respective leagues. There is also some priority or superiority involved even in the tw^o batches into which Leah's children are divided by the narrative of the mandrakes (xxx. 17-21). Now of the first batch Judah is the youngest, and with Judah was to be the sceptre. Hence the need in later tradition to account for his elder brothers Reuben, Simeon and Levi, being disinherited.^ Two of the most unedifying of the Biblical stories are told in order to explain this. Reuben had defiled his father's handmaid (xxxv. 22) ; Simeon and Levi had used treachery towards their sister's betrothed (ch. xxxiv.). I may add here that another Biblical narrative of the same complexion is probably connected with junior-right. The obstetric details about the birth of Pharez and Zarah (xxxviii. 27-30) evidently depend for their interest upon the fact that Pharez, from whom was descended David — himself a youngest son — was really the younger though he makes his appearance first. The still less edifying details about Onan earlier in the chapter, may also be possibly explained in a similar way.
' See Map 6, in Fripp's Genesis.
"^ The entry in i Chron. v. i, shows how anomalous it seemed to later conceptions to find the birthright not with the eldest. " For he was the first-born, but inasmuch as he defiled his father's couch, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph, the son of Israel j and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright." (R. V. may also be rendered " but he [Joseph?] is not to be reckoned in the genealogy as first-born."
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 57
With Rachel and her children the case is somewhat different, though Rachel herself may remind us that junior-right occurs, at any rate in "Cinderella" and other folk-tales, among daughters as well as sons. It is therefore natural that Jacob should wait longer for the more important sister, the heiress Rachel ; Laban's substitution of Leah (xxix. 23) would otherwise lose all point. It is Rachel too who takes away the Teraphim or ancestral gods of the hearth (xxxi. 19, 30) — a distinct point of connection with junior-right (cf. Elton, I.e. pp. 2ii-i6and especially p. 221). But as regards her sons there seem to be " survivals " of two traditions which would tend to give the birthright to each. Benjamin seems to be in every respect an afterthought among the tribal heroes. His very name "son of the right hand " seems to imply heirship, if we may judge from the quaint legend of Jacob's blessing Ephraim by putting his right hand on the lad's head (xlviii. 13-19). It is difficult to say what underlies the idea of Benjamin's having been born in Canaan, after Joseph had gone down into Egypt. But it may be suspected that the import- ance thus given to Benjamin, who under the junior-right system would have the birthright, may be dated during the brief supremacy of the Benjamite Saul at the begin- ning of the eleventh century B.c.^ If so, this would be the only Hebrew tradition the origin of which can be definitely dated.
* That junior-right may have lasted on to this time is shown by the fact that David himself vv'as the youngest son of Jesse, and Solomon seemingly David's. It is natural that an archaic mode of succession should linger on latest in the royal family. I may add that Moses was the youngest son of Amram.
58 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
But it is round Joseph that Hebrew tradition clings most lovingly, Joseph the eponymous hero of the Kingdom of Israel par excellence. His very name indicates his importance, "he that adds," Mehrer des Reich s. It is therefore only natural that in the earliest traditions formed under a junior-right system, he is regarded as the youngest and therefore the rightful heir. And equally natural is the attempt to explain his position from the later standpoint of primogeniture by means of special interference of Providence in his dreams, &c. Yet the " coat of many colours " (really the "coat with long sleeves " suitable for the pampered heir who did no work) and the jealous envy of his brothers would be clearly, on our hypothesis, elements in the earliest traditions about him. It may also have been a touch of the earliest account which represents, in one of the two versions of which our text is composed, the next heir, Judah, chivalrously desiring to save his rival. That is a touch worthy of the Ha?nasa or the Kitab al-Aghanl. The other tradition, which makes Reuben the would-be rescuer, was probably formed later when primogeniture had become the ruling conception.
There is yet another narrative of Genesis which receives an explanation from the conception of a change of tenure from junior-right to primogeniture as the Israelites exchanged their roving life for one in which sons became more stay-at-home, and the more experienced one would naturally fill his father's place. The narra- tive relates to Joseph's sons or the tribes they represent. Of the two, Ephraim, though smaller in territory, was by far the more influential. Yet tradition once more
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 59
represents the best son as the youngest. And, once more, later conceptions felt that this needed an explana- tion in a society where the eldest son had prior rights and the eldest generally was sacred to the Lord. The explanation is afforded in the quaint scene in which Jacob persists in blessing Ephraim with the right hand, the hand of might and power, though he had to cross his hands in order to do so, and though Joseph calls attention to the seeming mistake (xlviii. 13-19).
Thus we have seen that many of the out-of-the-way incid:nts in the lives of the patriarchs, and almost all those that have especially shocked the theologians, receive an explanation on the hypothesis that junior-right was once the rule of succession in early Hebrew society, and that these tales are introduced to explain the superiority of the youngest in tradition when that of the eldest had been established in law. Indeed, if the truth of an hypothesis can be measured by the number of facts it can explain, our hypothesis would compare favourably with any of the multitudinous suggestions that have issued from German seats of learning during the past half-century. A well-merited suspicion attaches to ex- planations which seem to explain too much.^ I hasten to disarm this in the present case by pointing out that
1 It may not be discreet, but it is certainly fair, that I should point out the weightier objections. The cases where junior-right does not occur in the genealogies of Genesis deserve attention, and it would be desirable to have some confirmatory evidence of the existence of junior-right among other Semites. The larger question of the so-called authenticity of the narratives of Genesis I assume to be settled in the sense given to it by all scholars whose views deserve attention in the present state of Biblical science.
6o BISLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
our hypothesis does not apply to any of the earlier narratives of Genesis. The reason for this is tolerably obvious. A nation has legends about its eponymous heroes long before it deals with cosmological problems. This is only one of many indications which serve to show that the Hebrews had traditions about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob long before they speculated about the origin of the world (i.), of man (ii.), of sin (iii.), of death (iv. 1-15),^ of the arts (iv. 20-22), and of the diversity of language (xi. i-io). The absence of any reference to junior-right in these legends would seem to indicate that they arose after the nomad stage, and in Canaan probably under Assyrian influences.
I was at one time in hopes that this theory — now propounded for the first time — would serve as a crucial test to distinguish between the rival hypotheses which now divide the world of Biblical criticism as to the composition of the Pentateuch, or " Hexateuch " as it is the fashion to say. Of some fourteen passages relating to the subject, Dillmann and Wellhausen agree as to the attribution of all but two (xxii. 25, xlvi. partly, cf. Dill- mann ad locos) : they differ only as to the relative ages of the sources. Our theory, if substantiated, scarcely en- ables us to decide between them. The two divergent stories how Jacob got the birthright seem to come from the same source, so that the divergencies of tradition existed prior to any literary fixation. But even had it not been so, it would not necessarily follow that the source that contained the earlier tradition was written down earlier. Mr. Fenton, in the preface to his ad-
' But there seems here some preference shown for Abel, the younger son.
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 6i
mirable little work, Early Hebrew Life — the most sus;- gestive contribution to Hebrew Archaeology made of recent years in England — has pointed out analogous cases in India, where later codes contain earlier customs. The fact is, literary criticism per se tells us but little as to origins : hence the unproHfic character of recent Biblical work. If a tithe of the industry and acumen that have been expended on the discrimination of the parts of the Pentateuch respectively due to the Jahvist and the Elohist, had been devoted to the Realien of the Old Testament, Biblical Archeology would not be in its present chaotic condition. It is on the application of the methods by which Dr. Tylor and his school have done so much to elucidate origins that the future of Biblical Archaeology depends.
It may help to reassure some of my readers if I go on to say that, in my opinion. Biblical Archeology has very little bearing on Biblical Theology. Whether junior- right prevailed in early Israel or not, does not affect one jot the ethical genius of the greater prophets and their significance in the world's history. The idylls of the patriarchs will always have their charm, whatever be the discoveries we may make as to the ideas underlying them. If to some persons it may seem jarring to find " Cin- derella" or "Puss in Boots" adding their quota of elucidation to the Book of Books, I would remind them that the most elaborate of recent works on The Origins of English History seeks instruction from similar folk-tales.
As I have somewhat wandered into general topics in the last few paragraphs, I may perhaps be allowed to summarise the special inquiry in which we have been
62 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
en^a^ed in the form of a number of Theses which I seek to establish or connect together.
(i.) It is assumed that the Hebrews, Hke other nations in the pastoral stage, had a system of succession corre- sponding to " Borough English," by which the youngest son succeeded to his father's flocks and property, the elder ones having probably provided for themselves before their father's decease.
(2.) It is known that under the Israelite theocracy the eldest son had preferential rights, which were supported by the priesthood, who depended for their maintenance on the sanctity of the first-born.
(3.) It is known that the patriarchs and tribal heroes were represented by tradition as youngest sons — certainly in the cases of Isaac, Jacob, Benjamin, Ephraim ; pro- bably in those of Abraham, Judah, Joseph. It is more likely that such traditions arose under (i) than (2).
(4.) It is assumed that, in order to reconcile (2) and (3), the priestly writers of the Pentateuch adopted the following narratives : —
(a) The illegitimacy of Ishmael.
(b) The winning of the birthright by Jacob (two
versions).
(c) The disgrace of Reuben.
(^) The offence of Simeon and Levi. [e) The death of Onan.
{/) The prenatal struggle of Pharez and Zarah. is) Jacob blessing Ephraim.
I shall be curious to see what kind of anti-Theses or rival hypotheses can be supplied to explain, in an equally
JUNIOR-RIGHT IN GENESIS. 63
natural manner, the same series of seemingly unnatural occurrences.
I may add that our hypothesis, if substantiated, would enable us to distinguish between earlier and later elements in the stories relating to Ishmael, Jacob, Rachel, and Joseph. It would likewise fix a terminus a quo for the rise of the legends relating to Benjamin in the eleventh century B.C. It would establish the important principle of Biblical criticism that traditions in the hands of the priests were not falsified, but only others added in order to make them chime in with current conceptions. Finally, it would confirm earlier opinions as to the great age of the main body of the patriarchal legends, since it tends to show that they arose in the pastoral or pre- Canaanite period, when succession went by junior-right.
64 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
ARE THERE TOTEM-CLANS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ? i
In the Journal of Philology^ No. 17 (Vol. IX., 1880), Professor Robertson Smith, the eminent Orientalist and Biblical critic, contributed a paper entitled, " Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Ancient Arabs and in the Old Testament" (pp. 75-100). In this he applied Maclennan's views ^ to show that a tribal arrange- ment existed among the early Hebrews, analogous to the totem-clans of the North American Indians, and gave reasons for considering David to be a member of a Serpent clan, worshipping the serpent as an eponymous ancestor, and united by ties of kinship with other branches of the clan among the Ammonites. He also saw traces of totem-worship about the Temple even as late as the time of Ezekiel, and ingeniously explained the abstinence from unclean beasts, birds, and fishes among the Hebrews as survivals of totem-worship, since every member of a totem-clan religiously abstains from eating the eponymous animal, or only eats it eucharistically. Startling as these applications are, they have found un-
' Parts of the following paper were read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1885.
2 Maclennan had already suggested the application of his theories to the Hebrews [Fortnightly Revieiv, 1870, i. p. 207), but Professor Smith has the merit of developing the suggestion.
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 65
usually ready acceptance among Biblical scholars ^ and anthropologists. Prof. Cheyne, who is ordinarily very cautious, welcomes the suggestion in his admirable edition of Isaiah (I., p. 99 ; II., pp. 103-4, 303), and Prof. Sayce does the same [Jnc. Efnptres of East^ pp. 203-5). Prof. Stade also adopts it in his Geschichte Israels (I., p. 408). The school of McLennan, who regard totemism as the earliest stage of the family, have naturally welcomed confirmatory evidence from Semitic sources (J. F. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory^ 1885, p. 229) ; and Mr. Andrew Lang, who tends to find in animal worship the key to all the mythologies, refers to Prof. Smith's memoir as undoubted evidence (^Custom and Myth^ 1885, pp. 115, 261). Dr. Wilken, of Leyden, developed one side of the evidence so far as it relates to kinship through females among the early Arabs, founding himself on the results reached by Prof. Robertson Smith (German translation, Das Matriarchat bei den alien Arabern^ 1884).^ Prof. Smith has followed this up by an elaborate work on Kinship and IVlarriage in Early Arabia^ 1885, in which, however, he does not deal again with the Biblical aspects of the question except inci- dentally. His paper in the journal of Philology still remains the sole authoritative utterance of the Professor on the subject, and I deal with this in the following remarks, in which I shall endeavour to show that con- siderable caution must be observed before accepting Prof.
' Professor Dillmann, however, rejects them rather cavalierly, Genesis, p. 368.
- The late Mr. Redhouse, however, disputed very warmly the validity of Wilken's views in ihtjourn. Ji.A.S., 1885.
F
55 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
Smith's ingenious theories, at any rate in the unrestricted form in which he has posited them. Though I have widely extended the evidence by which his conclusions might seem to be established, I am unable to recognise definite traces of the actual existence of totem-worship and totem-clans in historic times among the Israelites.
But first, what is a totem-clan. It is a collection of men and women who reckon themselves of the same kinship traced originally through their mothers only, v/ho worship some animal or plant which they regard as their ancestor, and bear tattooed on their skin. All the members bear the totem-name, must seek mates in another clan, and must abstain from eating the totem- animal or plant, while they are all obliged to avenge injury done to one of their number. It will thus be seen that this organisation is of a highly complex nature, and it is a priori improbable that it would occur very widely, except among tribes closely connected with animals, i.e.^ nomads. Totemism, in the full sense of the word, is only known to exist among North American Indians and among the Australian tribes, where the totem is termed " kobong." One characteristic of the totem organisation deserves fuller treatment owing to its importance, and I cannot explain this better than in the words of Mr. Lang.
" Among races which are still in the totemistic stage, i.e.^ which still claim descent from animals and from other objects, a peculiar marriage law generally exists, or can be shown to have existed. No man may marry a woman v/ho is descended from the same ancestral animal, and who bears the same totem-name, and carries the same
TOTE.VI-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 67
badge or family crest as himself. A man descended from the Crane, and whose family name is Crane, cannot marry a woman whose family name is Crane. He must marry a woman of the Wolf, or Turtle, or Swan, or other name, and her children keep her family title, not his. Thus, if a Crane man marry a Swan v/oman, the children (boys) are Swans, and none of them may marry a Swan ; they must marry Turtles, Wolves, or what not, and their children again are Turtles or Wolves. Thus there is necessarily an eternal come and go of all the animal-names known in a district." (A. Lang, Custoin and Adyth^ p. 106).
Now Prof. Smith claims, as I understand him, to have proved that totem-clans of a kind like those just de- scribed existed in Canaan and in Israel in historic times. That animal-,o-ods were anions the numerous forms of idolatry practised at various times by the Israelites, is a perfectly recognised fact : the golden calf, the brazen serpent, Dagon the fish-god, and Beelzebub the fly-god, are perhaps the most familiar figures in Biblical idolatry. The new points contributed by Professor Smith's paper are that these or similar gods were regarded as ancestors that gave nam.es to clans, tracing descent through females. We must seek, therefore, for traces of all the above " notes " of totem-clans before deciding upon the truth of Prof. Robertson Smith's hypothesis. I proceed to investigate these under the following rubrics :— I. Names derived from animals and plants. II. Worship of ancestors and of animals.
III. Exogamy and kinship through females.
IV. Forbidden food.
F 2
68 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
V. Tattooing and clan-crests. VI. Blood-feud and wergild.
I, — Animal and Plant Names.
Prof. Smith gave a selected list of about thirty persons and towns which bear names derived from animals and plants. I have expanded this into a list^ of i6o such names, which I believe practically exhaust the subject, and enable inductions to be based on the widest collection of facts.
At first sight so large a number seems to show a pre- ponderating proportion of animal and plant names among the personal names of the Old Testament ; but, as a matter of fact, the proportion is considerably less than is found in England at the present day. There are some 120 persons^ bearing this class of name among the 15,000 whose names are recorded in the Old Testament, less than one per cent. Now among English surnames, as represented by Mr. Bardsley's excellent book on that subject, I find that nearly three per cent, are derived from plants, birds, beasts, and fishes ; among them. Brock (badger). Kite, Lyon, Dove, Lovel (wolf). Wolf, Buck, Hart, Todd (fox). Marten (weasel). Stoat {tde?n)^ Mouse, Kenn (dog), Pigg, Gait (pig), Sugden (sow), Purceli [porculus)^ Fish, Nokes (oak). Snooks (Seven oaks), Lind, and other names that occur in the list rrom the Hebrew.^
This list is published at the end of the paper. Many of the names are mentioned in the body of the paper.
- Nearly forty of these are, besides, found only in the very late books, Chron. (Ezra, Neh.) and Esther.
* Cf. Pott, Pel sonal-Nameti, i860, p. 104, and Ploss Das Kind, 1883,
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 69
Similarly, in Miss Yonge's History of Christian Names^^ 1885, two out often sources from which she traces their origin are animals and plants^ (p. 5). As, therefore, we find animal and plant names among the ancient Hebrews even less frequently than among modern Englishmen, who are certainly not totc^m-worshippers,^ the argument from such names cannot be regarded as proving much. So, too, it certainly seems unnecessary to see in Oreb (raven), and Zeeb (wolf), the princes of the Midianites, names of clans, as Prof. Smith would wish us to do, as they would in that case have personal names in addition to these gentilicia.
Indeed, when examined carefully, very few of these names turn out to be family names at all, as they should be on Prof. Smith's hypothesis. In fact, only thirty of the persons with these names are named as fathers or mothers, so that they might be regarded as surnames ; and of actual gentilicia ending in the patronymic ytid there are only the following : Bechorites (Camel tribe), Calebites (Dog tribe), Arelites (lion), Arodites (ass), Elonites (oak), Shaphamites (serpent), Tolahites (worm), Shomathites (garlic), Zimrites (chamois), Zorites (hor- net). Of these more than half occur in the remarkable
I., p. 30. We can understand that Esther should be called Hadassah (myrtle), and Tamar, the Palm, without resorting to any violent hypothesis.
' Cf. the legal luminaries John Doe and Richard Roe.
* Mr. Grant Allen {Anglo-Saxon Britain, p. 79) suggested that some of the Anglo-Saxon settlers were totem-clans, but without much evidence. The question has, however, been recently put on another footing by Mr. Gomme, as the readers of this Review will shortly have an opportunity of judging.
-o
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
list of the clans of the tribes of Israel given in Num. xxxvi., and in another connection will engage our attention later,^
But it would be unfair to assume that all the personal names in the Old Testament derived from animals and plants are merely personal. As is well known, the Hebrews, and indeed all early nations, preferred to put their geographical and ethnographical knowledge in the form of genealogies. Thus, when it is said (Gen. x.) " Canaan begat Sidon," it is as if one should say "Wales beo-at Monmouth, and Flint, and Glamorgan," etc. And there is one genealogical table in Gen. xxxvi. which will well repay our attention in connection with our immediate subject. More than one third of the Horites,
' The following table gives a classification of the persons mentioned in our list, according as their names may be regarded as personal or sur- names : —
(A). PERSONAL.
|
F |
ROM Israel. |
|||
|
Sons |
51 |
(17) |
||
|
ii. |
Males (father unnamed)... |
20 |
..- |
(12) |
|
iii. |
Daughters |
4 |
... |
|
|
iv. |
Females (parent unnamed) |
8 |
... |
(0 |
Total
83
(30)
!. Fathers ... ii. Mothers ... iii. Patronymics Towns
Total
(B). SURNAMES.
|
Fron: |
! Israel |
|
|
22 |
... |
(4) |
|
5 |
... |
|
|
12 40 |
... |
(4) (40) |
79
(48)
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 71
the descendants of Seir (the he-goat), bear animal names ; and we also find that those clans of the Edomites who were connected with the Horites had also animal names, as a glance at the genealogies on the next page will show. Nay more, wherever we trace a connection with these Horites and Edomites we may expect with confidence to find animal or plant names. It is a disputed question what was the real name of Moses's father-in-law, whether Jethro, Reuel (Raguel), or Hobab, but from Judges iv. 1 1, we conclude that he had some connection with the Kenites, and the name of his daughter Zipporah [Little Bird)^ occurs in our list.-"^ So, too, when the tribe of Judah received the powerful accession of the Dog tribe (Calebites),^ in its career of conquest, it is from the country of Kenaz (the Hunter), the son of Edom, that Caleb comes." The importance of the Calebites in the making of Palestine is shown by the great attention paid to their genealogy by the chronicler, who gives no less than five different accounts of the tribal and local relations of the Dog tribe (i Chron. ii. 18-20, 42-49, 50-55; iv.
' Cf. on the relations of the Midianites, Moabites, and Edomites, Baker- Greene, The Hehretv Migration froin Egypt, p. 162. Job was a son of Uz, one of the Horite tribes, and his daughter Kezia bears the name of the cassia tree.
^ The following is a rough classification of the distribution of the personal names in our list : — Horites, etc. ... 11 Israelite clans ... 16 Early miscell. ... 6
Kenites... ... ii Hittite and Hivite 2 Late ... ... 9
Midian, and Moab 6 Women... ... 7 Sporadic... ... 10
* Cf. Mr. Fenton's reconciliation of the accounts in Josh. i. and ix., in his excellent Early Hebre-tu Life ; also WeUhaussn, £)e EamitiisJ^udaids, 1870,
72
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
N
— JH '^ — .2 «
M
C/5 M
O
a:
w .
H § (J
O ^
o '^ <
w O
- CO -v* ■
< ^
N
(J '--1
O <
' o
i4
M
w
o
a:
|
--/ |
|
|
^-^ |
=!:5s |
|
c 2 |
tfjr:: |
|
o s |
^ |
|
li ^ |
|
|
-^ .^ |
■>— .^ |
|
n5- |
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|
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03 -V4 |
|
|
/-^ |
■•<i< |
|
. .'^ |
^-^ |
|
_«<! |
|
|
- C t>/) |
|
|
_c s |
|
|
c/3 a |
S |
|
a |
|
|
o |
|
|
a: |
|
|
c |
|
|
- ^ . |
|
|
4-» |
|
|
O |
|
|
J |
, |
|
u< |
|
|
- o |
|
|
ffi |
|
|
-s |
|
|
II |
i |
o
■ OJ
w
■ >
<
§3
.2 §
|
OO |
|
|
w |
, |
|
H |
• ^ |
|
1— 1 |
-S <s |
|
^ |
V. O |
|
O G |
J5 O |
|
w |
-A" W |
|
2M^ |
|
|
|T| |
|
|
K |
wS^ |
J5 s
3 ■-
J3 - ;-<
N
-j3
J3
- cu-
W
c O
-s
E — ~- ^
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 73
11-12, 15). Though occurring in so late a book as Chronicles, these genealogies are clearly old, as the writer goes out of his way to say " these are ancient things" (iv. 22). Now, in these various accounts of the Calebites, many names occur from our list, viz. : Ardon (great ass), Elah (oak), Shobal (lion), Shuma- thites (garlic), Zorites (hornet), Tappuah (citron). And, in fact, when we review the names and persons given in our list, it will be found that over a third of all the names belong to the tribes which wandered about the Land of Seir, from the Arnon to the eastern head of the Red Sea.
Here, then, if anywhere, we may expect to find our totem-clans in the Old Testament, and it is hence that Prof. Smith has drawn his chief examples. Undoubtedly the aggregation of such a number of animal names cannot be accidental. Prof. Dillmann, a very great authority, but one rather biased against the school of Wellhausen, remarks that it is only natural that nomad tribes should elect names from the objects with which they are most immediately concerned. To the nomad, animals are friends, foes, servants, and pets to a greater degree than with other men. It might therefore be a natural result of this familiarity, that one-third of the Horite clans should have animal names. And, indeed, if Prof. Smith trusted entirely to the evidence of names, we might point out to him that it is the main boast of the anthropological school of prehistoric inquirers, that they have opposed the unfounded conclusions based by philologists on the mere etymologies of names. Un- fortunately, the Bible gives scarcely any information
74 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
about the habits of these tribes which would enable us to ascertain whether the Horites presented the other properties of tot>;m-clans — exogamy, female descent, the totem worshipped as ancestor, and regarded as tabu^ etc. The learned professor has, however, ingeniously extracted some evidence on the first point merely from the arrange- ment of the clan-names in Gen. xxxvi. Before we turn to examine this, there is a remark worth making which bears on the whole method of his examination. Suppos- ing him to have succeeded in proving the existence of totem-clans among the Horites, his success would carry with it certain conclusions which bear with negative force against their existence among the Israelites, in whom he and we are more deeply interested. The Horites were nomads, and totemism in its full force has only been found among tribes of hunters. With agricultural nations, the importance of wild beasts largely disappears, and the very fact that the Professor seems to have shown the existence of full totemism among the nomad Horites, tells strongly against its being found as anything more than a survival among the agricultural Hebrews. With this remark we turn to his and our evidence for the existence in the Old Testament of the remarkable social arrans:ements known as
II. — Exogamy and Descent through Females.
The term "exogamy" was given by the late Mr. J. F. McLennan to the curious but widely spread custom by which men were prevented by a law of quasi-
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 75
incest from marrying within their own clan, i.e.^ to women of the same surname as themselves. The custom is still extant in China and India, and forms a characteristic part of the customs of the North American Indians and Australians.^ It is mostly found combined v/ith the equally curious custom of tracing descent only through females. This latter practice is traced by anthropologists to a state of society where what is euphemistically called " promiscuity," or " communal marriage," is prevalent, and where the cynical epigram, " Maternity is a matter of fact, paternity a matter of opinion," exactly represents the state of kinship.
Prof. R. Smith attempts to find these customs indicated by the names of the Horite tribes. Anah (wild ass) is said to be (i) "the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite " (Gen. xxxvi. 2), (2) a child (son) of Zibeon [ibid.^ 24), (3) a son of Seir [ibid.). In the first passage he emends with all scholars " Hivite " into " Horite," but does not take into account that most authorities read with Samuel LXX. and Peshito, "son" for "daughter." From the latter word he deduces kinship throuo-h females among the Horites on extremely slender grounds. And from the existence of a sub-clan, Anah.^ among the Zibeonites as well as among the Seirites, he concludes that there was exogamy, so that no members of the Anah clan could intermarry. This seems at first sight a somewhat wild conclusion from very slight data, but it is really a fair working hypothesis to account for sub-clans of the same name among different Horite
' J. F. McLennan, Studies m Ancient Society, pp. 74-82 ; Sir J. Lub- bock, Origin of Civilisation, p. 122.
76 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
tribes, of which we find another instance in the Dishon sub-clan. If kinship were traced through the father, all members of a clan would have the same clan-name. But if kinship were traced through mothers only, and exogamy prevailed, the same clan-name could easily be spread through the tribe. There still remain two difficulties: (i) some members of the Anah clan would also be members of the Dishon sub-clan, and it is difficult to see how they could have two clan-names ; (2) the system of sub-division and of animal nomen- clature is not systematically carried through all the tribes. These difficulties are not perhaps insurmount- able, as only implying the decadence of the totem system in Edom ; and we may allow that Prof. Smith has shown the existence of animal names amono; the Horite tribes, has rendered it probable that exogamy and descent through females existed among them, and has thereby raised a presumption that, if we had further evidence, we should find the other marks of totem-clans among the Edomites.
Can he prove the same for Israel ? It cannot be said that the arguments he himself gives are very conclusive. He explains the remarkable disappearance of the tribe of Simeon from history as being due to its keeping up the system of exogamy, while the other tribes settled down into a local habitation and a name. He bases this, in the first place, on Hitzig's rather forced connection of the name Simeon with the Arabic S'un'^^ a cross between a hyaena and a wolf. He then contends that Shimei and Simeon are identical, and points out that there were Shimeis among the Levites (Ex. vi. 17), the Reubenites
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 77
(i Chr. V. 4), and Benjamites (the well-known curser of David). Besides the uncertainty of the various identifi- cations, we shall see that other tribes had clans of the same name amona; them without disappearing, and he overlooks the continued existence of the tribe of Simeon to the time of Hezekiah (i Chr. iv. 41). Their nomad habits, and liability to attack from other nomads, are a sufficient explanation of their disappearance, without any resort to far-fetched etymologies and hypotheses.
And, indeed, he could have found other evidence of exogamy among the Israelites without resorting to the tribe of Simeon. The remarkable twenty-sixth chapter of Numbers^ does for the Israelites what Genesis xxxvi. does for the Horites and Edomites, gives the clans of the Tribes. Of this there can be no doubt, as the names of the clans are in almost every case adjoined to their epony- mous ancestor. It is formed on the plan laid down in the opening words: "The children of Reuben, Hanoch, of whom came the family of the Hanochites, of Pallu, the family of the Palluites," and so on (Num. xxvi. 5). Altogether seventy-two clans are mentioned, and of these at least ten occur in two tribes — the Nemuelites, a sub- clan of the Palluites, in Reuben and in Simeon ; the Zarhites, in Simeon and in Judah ; the Hezronites, among whom the Calebites were adopted, in Reuben and in Judah ; and, most striking of all, the Arodites, or wild-ass clan, both in Gad and in Benjamin, where they
' It may be observed that the early date of this chapter would not be necessarily established by the marks of ancient organisation, which I at- tempt to show in it. Such lists are frequently handed down from time immemorial.
78 BIBLICAL ARCHtSOLOGY.
appear under the dialectic form of Ardites. It is also possible that the Jeezerites of Gilead, of Manasseh, were connected with the Jeezerites of Naphtali. And besides this, other clans have animal names, as the Shallimites, or Fox clan, of NaphtaH ; the Shaphamites, or Serpent clan, of Benjamin ; the Bochrites, or Camel clan, of Ephraim (and, according to i Chron., also of Benjamin); the Elonites, or Oak clan, of Zebulon ; the Tolahites, or Worm clan, of issachar ; and the Arelltes, or Lion clan, of Gad. Nor is this all. In the enumeration of the Spies (Numb, xiii.) the names of their fathers are clearly patronymics of clans or families {e.g., Shaphat b. Hori, Nahbi b. Vophsi, Geuel b. Machi, Gabriel b. Sodi), and among them are the families of the Gemal- lites, or Camel clan, of Dan, and the Susites, or Horse clan, of Manasseh. So, too, in the two lists of the princes of Israel (Numb. i. and xxxiv.), there are mem- bers of the clan Ammihud in Simeon, Ephraim, and Naphtali. And, if we might assume that the Israelites called the towns they founded after their own names, we might observe that there were Ajalons, Stag towns, in Dan, Ephraim, Zebulon, and Benjamin. Of direct evidence of the existence of exogamy I can only adduce one striking passage, the tradition about Ibzan the judge, of whom the only thing recorded is that he "had thirty sons and thirty daughters, whom he sent abroad, and took in thirty daughters from abroad for his sons " (Ju. xii. 9).^ A better description of exogamy could
' It is, perhaps, worth while remarking that of the twelve judges (Sham- gar being a doublet of Samson), Tola, Deborah, Elon, and Samson have totemistical names, and the former is clearly identified with the eponym of
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 79
not well be given. But, as it is impossible to consider this practice as being introduced so late, this tradition possibly records the popular memory of the last clan that kept up the practice. Exogamy is regarded by McLennan as a further stage from totemism, though co-existing with it, and we may therefore conclude that totemism, as a bond of connection of the Israelites, had lost its vitality, and we should only expect to find " survivals " of it in the later history.^
Exogamy and totemism are mostly found connected with the custom of tracing descent through females, to which we now turn. This, as we have said before, is a relic of the time when marriage of the modern type hardly existed, and the research of paternity was forbidden or impossible. Prof. Smith, and before him. Mr. Fenton {Early Hebrew L'tfe^ 1 881), notices several survivals of this stage of society. When descent is only reckoned through the mother, half-brothers and sisters may be regarded as having no relationship to one another, and may marry, as we know they did in the case of Abraham and Sarah, and could have done in the case of Tamar and Amnon (2 Sam. xiii.). Presents were given to Rebecca's mother and brother (Gen. xxiv. 53). Abimelech appeals to his mother's kin as being of his flesh (Ju. viii. 19). Mr. Fenton even explains the relations of Lot and his daughters as innocent, since on the earlier system of
the Tolaites. Notice, too, the " nunation " of the names Gideon, Elon Ibzan, and Samson.
' Marriage by capture is legislated for Dcut. xxi. lo, seq.., and a celebrated case of the whole tribe of Benjamin gaining their brides in tliis way occurs, Ju. xxi.
8o BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
kinship fathers were no relations to their daughters. It mio-ht be added that Naomi tells Ruth to return to her "mother's house " (Ruth i. 8), and the Shunamite speaks of her mother's children (Cant. i. 6). David's three heroes are called after their mother Zerujah (2 Sam. xvii. 25 ; I Chron. ii. 16).^ Much of this seems to me the natural result of polygamous conditions, and scarcely to prove a state of kinship only reckoned through females, though it certainly bears with great force against Sir H. S. Maine's patriarchal theory, according to which the wife is practically non-existent in reckoning kinship (agna- tion). McLennan, however, gives strong reasons for believing the Levirate to be a survival of what he terms Tibetan polyandry [Pair. Theory^ pp. 157-9). The standing term for clan, " father's house," is against the assumption that kinship through females existed among the Israelites in historic times.
To sum up this branch of our inquiry, we have found traces of exogamy dying out in Israel at the time of Judges, and also evidence that when they settled in Canaan, the Israelite tribes had something answering to the totem arrangement among their clans. But it is highly improbable that this arrangement could be kept up when the Israelites became mainly an agricultural people, and we can only expect to find " survivals " of it in the times of the Kings.
* The case of the Nethinim and Solomon's servants (Ez. ii. 43-60 ; cf. Neh. vii.) is somewhat different. No less than three-quarters of the names of parents seem to be those of women, but this is probably because they were the children of the Kedishoth, or hiero-dulcE, who were only removed in Josiah's time. (See Babyl. and Orient. Record-, Feb.-March, 1888.)
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 8i
III. — Ancestor Worship and Animal Worship.^
There can be little doubt that the Teraph'nn were of the nature of ancestral gods ; they were clearly gods of the household, as distinguished from the deities of public worship, and we find in Rome and Greece the cult of the Lares and Penates having a distinctively ancestral cast. Distinct reference to worship of the dead is made in Isaiah viii. 19 : " Are not the people wont to speak unto their gods [Elohim]^ unto the dead instead of to the living?" [Cheyne] ; in Psalms cvi. 28: "They joined themselves unto Baal Peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead " ; and the practice is referred to even at so late a date as in the Mishna, in a saying attributed to R. Simon b. Jochai [Pirq. Aboth^ edit. Taylor, III., 15). When Jonathan seeks to explain David's absence to his father, his words seem to bear a reference to some kind of sacrifice to family gods. David is made to say, " Let me go, I pray thee. Our family hath a sacrifice in the city (Bethlehem), and my brother he hath commanded me to be there" (i Sam. xx. 29).
Prof. R, Smith has proposed an ingenious explanation of the family worship of David, though, strangely enough, he does not bring it in connection with the passage I have just quoted. Among the ancestors of David is Nahshon, or the Great Serpent. Abigail, his sister, is said to be the daughter of Nahash, the Serpent, which must therefore, according to the Professor, be a name of
' On ancestor worship among the Arabs, cf. Goldziher, La Ctilte des Ancetres chez les Arai>es, Paris, 1885, from the Revue de C Histoire des Religions.
G
82 BIBLICAL ARCHiEOLOGY.
Jesse or of the family.^ In the royal courtyard after- wards stood the great Brazen Serpent, which received divine honours, and Adonijah was crowned at the Serpent stone. Putting all these facts together, Prof. Smith suggests that David was a member of a Serpent totem- clan. He connects with this the fact that the shepherd- king was on good terms with Nahash, king of the Ammonites, although the Israelites in general were at ^/ar with him, the tie of clanship overruling national antipathies. All this seems to me far-fetched, and based in large measure on incomplete grasp of the totem arrangement. For, first, the names Nahshon and Nahash are personal, not clan-names. Then there is no sign that the Brazen Serpent was intimately connected with the Davidic dynasty : tradition terms it the " serpent of Moses." Again, there is no trace in the genealogy of David's descent being traced through females, as would be required if it was desired to connect him with the Ammonites — though, on the other hand, Ruth was a Moabitess. And, finally, David's friendship with Nahash can be easily explained by the fact that they were common enemies of Saul, and is paralleled by David's connection with Achish. As soon as David becomes King of Israel, the Ammonites cease to be friendly towards him. We must therefore, I think, reject the instance of David which Prof. Smith regards as a proof of the existence of totem-clans among the Israelites in historic times, even though we may recognise traces of ancestor-worship in David's family.
' Von Baudissin suggests that it might be the name of her mother. [Stud. z. Semit. Keligionsgeschichte).
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 83
Animal Worship. — And similarly with regard to animal worship among the Hebrews. There can be no doubt that it existed. The legend of the Golden Calf and of the Brazen Serpent are among the most prominent of Biblical stories. Prof. Smith brings in the second com- mandment as showing that animal worship was the great rival of the worship of the true God — " Thou shalt not make unto thyself any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above (birds), or that is in the earth beneath (animals), or that is in the waters under the earth (fishes)." This has been in a measure always recognised. But it has never been suggested before Prof. Smith that this worship was connected in any way with the tribal arrangements of the Canaanites or the Hebrews. What proof has he of the connection between this worship and the family organisation of the Hebrews ? He makes for this purpose an ingenious use of a passage of Ezekiel, which is indeed a most striking one, and has been, so far as I can observe, the cause of Prof. Smith's views being so widely accepted. It therefore deserves our closest attention. It runs as follows (Ez. viii. 7-11) : An ano-el carries Ezekiel from his place of exile to Jerusalem, and shows him the image of jealousy being worshipped in the north court of the Temple, and then promises to shov/ him even greater abominations. " And he brought me to the door of the court, and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto me, Son of Man, dig now in the wall : and when I had digged into the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me. Go in and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw : and behold every form of creeping things,
G 2
84 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah ben Shaphan (the Coney), with every man his censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up."
Here we have clearly animal worship. But how can we conclude that these animals were regarded as ancestors or totems ? Prof. Smith points to the name of the officiating priest in these idolatrous rites, Jaazaniah ben Shaphan, "son of the Coney." Now, the Coney, or rather Rock badger, was an abominable beast of the Hebrews, one regarded with religious horror by true Israelites (Lev. xi.), and therefore might have been regarded by religious veneration by idolatrous Jews, and it seems to be implied in this passage of Ezekiel that all the elders of Israel, i.e.^ the chiefs of the clans, had similar totems. It seems possible to suppose that the troubles which had befallen the Israelites had sent them back to the superstitions of old, and caused a reversion to totem- worship. All turns upon the name "ben Shaphan." If this is a family name, we have here a connection, the one hitherto wanting, between animal worship and family organisation. We have worship of animals and families with animal names combined together. We must, how- ever, remember that in the first place it is a vision. Then, as regards the name "ben Shaphan," it is either real or fictitious. If real, we can explain it with tolerable ease in accordance with the ordinary Hebrew usage, as referring to the name of Jaazaniah's father, and not his family. We know of at least one Shaphan of the pre-
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 85
ceding generation, the well-known scribe of Josiah (2 Kings xxii.), who was certainly no totem-worshipper, and who might naturally name his son Jaazaniah " {Jah will hear ?ne). If the person mentioned by Ezekiel was a real person and a son of this Shaphan, we can easilv understand why the prophet selected him as a typical figure. Here was the son of one of the principal figures in the Jahvistic reformation of Josiah's reign turning to idolatrous practices. If, again, the name was invented by the prophet — as is more likely, since real names of persons occur most rarely in the book — I think we can explain it better as a piece of irony than as a reference to any family connection with this worship of animals. The prophet calls the officiating figure Jaazaniah [Jah hears) ben Shaphat (son of the Coney), to emphasize the contrast between the true and the false worship. He is called "Jaazaniah," "God hears me," and yet he is a son of the Coney," or worships the Coney, for ben is used in a very wide sense in Hebrew for a member of a guild or a worshipper of a god, as the well-known " sons of Belial." It is something like an author of a political satire nowadays calling a Tory who had turned Radical "William Ewart Disraeli," or a writer inveighine against fox-hunting parsons naming a typical figure " Rev. Theophilus Reynard." And, again, as regards the source of the animal worship mentioned by Ezekiel, the other kinds of idolatry mentioned in the eighth chapter are in each case extraneous, the image of jealousy'
' Dr. Neubauer has suggested that the ?DD mentioned here is a proper name, the prototype of the Greek Semele {Atben., Sept. 19th, 18S5). He was anticipated by St. Jerome {Oiiom. Sacr., ed. Lagarde, p. 58) in taking the word as a proper name.
86 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
being probably Canaanitish, the worship of Tammuz certainly Phoenician, and that of the sun being possibly a Persian importation. It seems natural therefore to assume a foreign source for the remaining idolatry, animal worship. Now we know the wide extent of this kind of idolatry in Egypt, and exegetists have hitherto taken our passage to refer to this especially, as it is particularly mentioned in ch. xxiii. that Judah had gone back to the idolatry of her youth, " wherein she played the harlot in the land of Egypt " (Ez. xxiii. 19). I do not see sufficient reason, therefore, in the mere presence of the name ben Shaphan for departing from this usual and natural interpretation. It seems to me most unlikely that we should find the prophet referring to totem- worship in its strict sense unless we found other signs of the totem-organisation widely spread among the Israelites of Ezekiel's time.
IV. — Forbidden Food.
But Prof. Smith has not exhausted all his resources in laying such stress, and, as I think, unwarranted stress, on the name of the imaginary officiating priests at Ezekiel's imagined temple-rites. One of the charac- teristics of the totem-organisation is the fact that the totem-animal is regarded as tabu; it must not be eaten except in some instances eucharistically as a religious rite. Now we find distinct reference to the eucharistic use of what the Israelites call " unclean animals " even as late as the second Isaiah, 100 years later than Ezekiel. This prophet speaks of men "which remain among the graves
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 87 and lodse in the monuments, which eat swine's flesh and
CD '
broth of abominable things in their vessels" (Is. Ixv. 4) ; and again, " they that sanctify themselves .... eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse" (//'., Ixvi. 17). Prof. Smith points out that both swine and mouse occur as proper names. But the former, //<?z/r, is used only of a priest, and of a covenanter of Ezra's time, who cannot be connected with totem-worship, and Achbor^ or mouse {cf. the Roman family of Mus^^ is used of a king of Edom of early date, where we have seen totemism to be most probable, and in Israel only of one of Josiah's friends, who was certainly unconnected with totem-worship. It cannot, therefore, be regarded as proven that the sacrificial use of swine's flesh was con- sciously connected with any tribal arrangement at the time of the second Isaiah, though it is possible that it was in some way a " survival " of an earlier organisation of the kind.
Prof. Smith sees a whole series of such survivals in the well-known lists of forbidden food in Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv. Let us see what this assumption involves. It implies that at an early period, say before the Exodus, the Israelites were organised on the basis of families or clans tracing through the mothers, and called after her Hezir (swine), Achbor (mouse), A'lah (kite), Arod (wild ass), Shaphan (coney), and so on, each of the clans re- fraining from eating the totem-animal. Thus in a polygamous family it might happen that there were members of all these clans in one family which would therefore abstain from eating all the animals mentioned. As the totem-organisation declined, the origin of this
88 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
abstinence would be lost ; but the custom of abstinence by the natural inertia of customary procedure might last on, and a natural horror be developed against eating these particular animals. When the legislation was codified these customs might well be incorporated in the code, and raised, as it were, to a higher power by being con- nected with a purer worship. The Jewish theory of sacrifice, as interpreted by Maimonides, recognised that something of the same kind was done in the case of sacrifice as a kind of concession to human weakness. It is, therefore, impossible to deny that the tabud food of the Israelites may show survivals of totem-organisation. The hypothesis would certainly explain certain anomalies in the list, notably the presence in it of the Coney (or rock badger), for which no plausible explanation has hitherto been given. The division into clean and un- clean by the two tests of cloven-foot and rumination would then be a later induction from the animals re- garded as tabu : this is, to some extent, confirmed by the want of any such systematisation in the list of birds given Lev. xi. 13-19. All this is extremely ingenious, and is by far the most plausible explanation given of the seem- ingly arbitrary solution of forbidden food, and at the same time of the religious horror with which the "abominations" were regarded. But, here ao;ain I fail to find evidence of the actual existence in historic times of the connection of tabu and totem required by Prof. Smith's hypothesis. The evidence from names is rather against than for the hypothesis, the whole category of plant-names, so frequent as totems, is absent from the Levitical list. Indeed, taking the eighty-five separate
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 89
names contained in our list, I find forty-three of these " clean " as against forty-two " unclean," ^ showing at least that the connection, if it ever existed, had been for- gotten in historic times : — Zimri, the Chamois ; Jonah, the Dove ; Epher, the Hart, Ezra's son, could have no connection with totem, since neither Chamois, Dove, nor Hart are taboo'd. Nor would it be impossible to explain the whole list as being rather the rough induction of folk-medicine collected by the priest, who combined in ancient times all the learned professions, including medi- cine. This latter explanation would, however, not account for some of the anomalies of the list, especially that of the coney, and would also fail to account for the religious aversion which must have existed prior to the compilation of the list. I think it, therefore, not un- likely that the list of forbidden food contains in it some survivals of the old totem-worship and totem-clan organi- sation, though I am unable to agree that they are in historic times anything more than survivals, resembling the case of the horse in England, which anthropologists say we do not eat because it was once sacred to Odin, and thus tahud.
' The following table gives the distribution of the personal and town names, according as they are " clean " or " unclean." Only those town-names are reckoned which do not occur among persons —
Clean. Unclean. Clean. Unclean.
Animals | P^-"^""^ - '^ - 5° Birds \^'''°''' - 5 - ^
\ Towns ... 3 ... I I Towns ... — ... —
_, , (Persons ... i^ ... — r, .•, f Per
Plants I rj, ' Reptiles ^ ™
(Towns ... z ... — (lo
Persons ... 3 ... 7 wns ... I ... 2
In all, 43 clean against 42 unclean, of which there are 37 of former and 39 of latter applied to persons.
90 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
V. — Tattooing and Clan Crests.
Another mark of the totem-clan is, that the members of the clan bear the totem tattooed on their skin. Can we trace signs of this in the Old Testament ? We have here the negative evidence that it w^as forbidden in the Levitical legislation (Lev. xix. 28), "Ye shall not make any cuttings on your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks uponyour Most of the parallel passages (Deut.xiv. i ; Jer. xvi. 6; xli. 5 ; xlvii. 5; xlviii. 27) seem to s\\ovf that this cutting w^as chiefly done as a sign of mourning ; but the " printing of marks " seems to have been different, and to be more of the character of tattooing, the ^p2p being probably a caustic. There seems to be some refer- ence to this in Isaiah xliv. 5 — " Another shall inscribe himself by his hand unto the Lord," and perhaps in the " mark " that was to be set upon true Israelites in Ezekiel ix. 4 (cf. Gen. iv. 15, "mark of Cain"). It has even been suggested that the " mark on the hand " and the sign "between your eyes" (Exod. xiii. 9) were either originally tattoo-marks, or that the phylacteries were adopted to win the Jews away from this practice. Mr. Herbert Spencer [Prim. Sociology^ p. 364) has sug- gested an explanation of the diflicult passage, Deut. xxxii. 5 — " They have corrupted themselves ; their spot is not the spot of his children" (A. V.), which would bring it in connection with our subject. He suggests that the poet's complaint was that they had tattooed themselves with a mark of another god. He seems to trust here too much to the Authorised Version, which makes more sense out of the passage than really can be
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 91
found in it. Litenlly, the words run, " Corrupted unto him, not his sons their spots " — whatever that may mean.* That the practice of tattooing was carried on among Semites seems to be shown by the fact that it still exists among the Cabiles (L. Geiger, /. r., p. 177), and that at the time of Ptolemy Philometor apostate Jews were ordered to be branded with an ivy-leaf in honour of Bacchus (3 Mace. ii. 29). And everyone will remember the mark of the beast in Revelations, where it is clearly used in a relifrious or idolatrous sense. But there are no indications of a direct relation between tattooing and totems, and here again we find at best only " sui-vivals."
Clan Crests. — The totem serves as a rallying sign for the gens^ hence it is only natural that it should be used as a crest or standard in war time. The Israelites, we know, had standards (Num. i. 52 ; ii. 2 seq.; x. 14 seq.)^ and the Rabbis have given detailed accounts of the crests of the tribes^ (cf. Winer Realworterbuch^ s. v. Fahne). These were in all probability derived from the animal metaphors contained in the blessings of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) and of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.). In the former, Judah is compared to a lion, Issachar to an ass, Dan to a serpent, Naphtali to a hind, Benjamin to a wolf, Joseph
' On the whole subject cf. L. Geiger, Z. A. M. G., 1869, 166 seq. Kalisch Lev. ii., 429-30. The Arabs still have sacred marks on their faces. The late " Mahdi " had them ; cf. J. Darmesteter, Tke Mahdi, p. iii.
* Mediaeval heraldry made out elaborate coats of arms for the various tribes, and they are figured down the dexter side of the title-page of the Editio Princeps of the Authorised Bible, 161 1. As specimens, I may quote Fuller's quaint descriptions {Pisgah Sight) : Zebulon, " a ship argent, with mast and tackling sable '' ; Simeon, '•'•gules, a sword in pale with the point thereof ended aigent"; Issachar, "an ass couchant argent, in a field vert." Cf. Fort. Kev., 1. c.
92 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
to a bough. In Moses' blessing only four of these com- parisons occur — Ephraim to a bullock, Manasseh to a bison, Gad to a lion, and Dan to a lion's whelp. The temptation is strong to take these for the leading totems in each tribe ; and this suggestion is particularly interest- ing, because it was on this that McLennan argued for totemism among the Israelites, ten years before Prof. W. R. Smith [Fort. Rev.^ 1870, I. p. 207). Unfortu- nately the lists disagree, Dan being a serpent in Jacob's blessing, a lion's whelp in Moses'. It is possible that the head clan in Dan had changed from one with a serpent to another with a lion's cub in the interval. But the natural imagery of poetry will explain all the circum- stances of the case without any resort to the totem hypothesis.
VI. — Blood Feud.
To conclude our investigation, we must consider the practical side of the totem-clan organisation. The utility of this arrangement in ancient times was, that a man would find, almost everywhere he went, kinsfolk who would take his part in any quarrel, avenge his death, and support his children if he were killed. A tribe composed of families made of totem-clans could not be dissolved, since in each family there would be members of the different clans, and all that tended to keep family life together would aid the consolidation of the tribe. The blood-feud, or vendetta.^ is represented in the Pentateuch by the "avenger of blood," whose functions are only referred to as well known in ordinary cases, the law
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 93
treating of the exceptional circumstance of an accidental homicide (Deut. xix., xxi, ; Num. xxxv.). But we know from the charming idyll of Ruth of another function of the Goel^ or " near kinsman," to marry the childless widow of his kinsman, as Boaz, the kinsman of Elime- lech, did for Ruth, the widow of Mahlon, Elimelech's son. Here we have a tie of kindred, but it is reckoned through the male line, and there are no signs of a connec- tion with totemism.
Thus, throughout our inquiries we have found pheno- mena in the Biblical records which may be regarded as "survivals" of totemism, but not of the actual existence of the totem-clan itself. Prof. Smith's specific instances of David as a member of a Serpent clan, and Jaazaniah ben Shaphan surrounded by creeping beasts and abomina- tions, and all the " totems " of the house of Israel, we have had to reject as based on insufficient evidence, and having no weight against the great a priori improbabili- ties of totemism in its full force existing among a people in the main agricultural. On the other hand, we have seen indications like the arrangement of the Israelite clans (Num. xxvi.), the forbidden food of the Hebrews (Lev. xi.), tattooing (Lev. xix. 28), and the existence of animal names among them, which may be regarded as "survivals" of a previous totemistic organisation among the Israelites before their entry into Canaan. We have also seen a great probability of totemism, where we should be more prepared to find it, in the nomad tribes of Edomites and Horites. Thus this, like many other lines of contemporary investigation, points to an early identity or connection of the Israelites and the nomad tribes of
94
BIBLICAL ARCFIiEOLOGY.
Edom, such, indeed, as is expressed in the BibHcal records, which make them all B'ne Abraham^ or in the triumphal opening of Deborah's song —
" Lord, [when] thou wentest forth from Seir, Thou marchedst out of the field of Edom."
We may then give a definite answer to the question we have set ourselves, Are there Totem-Clans in the Old Testament ? by saying —
(i.) If anthropology teaches that the totem arrange- ment is a necessary stage of national development, there are sufficient indications of such arrangement in the names of the Edomite clans (Gen. xxxvi.).
(2.) There are sufficient "survivals" of totemism in the names of the Israelite clans, their forbidden food, per- sonal names, tattooing, family feasts, and blood avengers, to render it likely that they once had a totem-organisation like the other B'ne Abraham.
(3.) But there are not any signs of the actual existence of totemism in historic times among the Hebrews, such as Prof. Smith contends for in the cases of David and the crucial passage, Ez. viii. 11.
I.— LIST OF ANIMAL AND PLANT NAMES BORNE BY PERSONS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.
n'N, Aiah, Kite (cf. Lev. xi. 14 j Deut. xiv. 13).
Son of Zibeoii, Gtn. X'cxvi. 24 ; cf. i Chr. i. 40 (name of Horite clan).
Rizpah bath A., Saul's concubine, 2 Sam. iii. 7; xxi. n?X, Ela, Terebinth, Oak (cf. Nokes, Eng. surname).
Duke of Edom, Gen. xxxvi. 41.
E. b. Caleb, i Chr. iv. 15 (prob. clan name).
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? gs
Shimei b. E. [xW], i K. iv. i8.
E. b. B.iasha, King of Israel slain by Zimri, i K. xvi.
Hosea b. E., King of Israel who slew Pekah, 2 K. xv. 30; xvi. 1; xviii.
E. b. Uzzi b. Michri, i Chr. ix. 8. One of the returned exiles.
11^\X, Elon, Great Oak.
Hittitc father of Bashemath, Esau's wife. Gen. xxvi. 34 ; xxxvi. 2.
E. b. Zebulon, Gen. xlvi. 14; also patronymic clan D'J"i?''{<, Nu. xxvi. Judge of Israel, tribe Zebulon, Ju. xii. 11, 12.
n3N, Anah, Wild Ass.
A. bath Zibeon, Gen. xxxvi. 2 (prob. false reading for \2, as Sam. in
LXX.). A. b. Seir, Gen. xxxvi. (prob. clan name). A. b. Zibeon, ibid. (prob. clan name).
n^DN, Asena, Bramble.
Bene Asena, returned with Zerubbabel, Ezr. ii. 50 (family of Nethinim).
vN"IX, Areli, Lion my God.
A. b. Gad, Gen. xlvi. 16 ; Nu. xxvi. 17. Patron, a tribe name, Nu. xxvi. 17.
niS, Ard, IVild Ass.
Son of Benjamin, Gen. xlvi.
A. b. Bela b. Benjamin, Nu. xxvi. Patron, ibid, (a clan name). jmX, Ardon, Great Ass (J. J.).
A. b. Caleb, i Chr. ii. 19 (prob. clan name). nnX, Arod, Wild Ass ; cf. Ard and Ardon.
Son of Gad, Gen. xlvi. 17; Nu. xxvi. 17. Patron, ibid, (clan name), njlli?, Arunah, Ash.
A Jebusite, 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 18.
n^N, Ariah, Lion.
Conspirator agninst Pekahiah, 2 Kings xv. 25.
■Jinx, Arioch, Mighty Lwn.
King of EUasar, Gen. xiv. i, 9.
pS, Aran, IVi/d Goat.
A. b. Dishon, Edomite, Gen. xxxvi. 28; i Chr. i. 42 (clan n:ime). pS, Oren, Pitte.
O. b. Jerahmeel, i Chr. ii. 25 (prob. clan name). |3"1N, Oman, Mighty Pine.
A Jebusit;, i Chr. xxi., xxii. ; 2 Chr. iii. i.
96 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
"133, Becher, Young He-Camel.
B. b. Bmjimin, Gen. xlvi. 21 (prob. clan name).
B. b. Ephriim, Nu. xxvi. 35. Patron, ibid, (clan name).
■•"13 3, Bochri, Caniel-son.
B. b. Sheba, a Benjamite, 2 Sam. xx.
■"toJ, Gemalli, Camel-son.
Ammiel b. G., Danite spy, Nu. xiii. 12.
mm, Debora, Bee.
Rebecca's nurse, Gen. xxxv. 8.
The Prophetess, wife of Lapidoth, Ju. iv., v.
ptrn, Dishon, Gazelle.
D. b. Se ir, Dake of Horites, Gen. xxxvi. 21, 26, 30. D. b. Anah b. Seir, G-'n. xxxvi. 25 (prob. clan name).
IB'H, Dishan, Gazelle.
Duke of Se'ir, Horite, Gen. xxxvi 21, 28, 30. ; of. i Chr. i. 41.
n^pn, Deklah, Palm.
Son of Joktan, Gen. x. 27.
riDTn, Hadassah, Myrtle.
Esther's Jewish name, Esth. ii. 7.
3NT, Zeeb, Wolf.
Sheikh of the Midianites, Ju. vii. ; viii. 3 ; '^. Ixxxiii. 1 1.
IJT'T, Zethan.
Z. b. Bilhan of Benjamin, i Chr. vii. 10 (prob. clan).
*"IDT, Zimri, Chamois.
Z. b. Zerah b. Judah, I Chr. ii. 6 (prob. clan).
Z. b. Salu, Simeonite, Nu. xxv. 14.
Descendant of Benjamin, i Chr. viii., ix.
Kings of Israel, i Kings xvi. ; 2 K. ix. 31. pDT, Zimran, Chamois.
Son of Abraham by Keturah, Gen. xxv. 2 ; i Chr. i. 32 (prob. clan). DDT, Zetham, Olive ; cf. Zethan.
Z. b. Laadan, i Chr. xxiii. 8.
Z. b. Jehiel, Levite, i Chr. xxvi. 22.
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 97
23n, Hagab, Grasshopper.
Bene H. Nethinim returned with Zerubbabel, Ezr. ii. 46. n3Jn, Hagaba, Grasshopper.
Bene H. Nethinim returned with Zerubbabel, Ezr. ii. 45 ; Neh. vii. 48
(xaan).
n?jn, Hoglah, Partridge.
Daughter of Zelophehad of Manasseh, Nu. xxvii. i (clan name ?). T*Tn, Hezir, Soiv, Lev. xi. 7; Deut. xiv. 8.
Priest of 17th lot, i Chr. xxiv. 15.
One of covenanters, Neh. x. 20. m^n, Huldah, Weasel.
The Prophetess, wife of Shallum, 2 K. xxii. 14 j 2 Chr. xxxiv. 22 lIDn, Hamor, He-Ass.
Hivite, "father" of Shechem, Gen. xxxiii. 19 ; xxxiv. j Jos. xxiv. 32 ; Ju. ix. 28.
nJV, Jonah, Dove.
J. b. Amittai, Prophet, 2 K. xiv. 25.
Prophet, hero of Book of Jonah, /aj'j. (same as preceding). e'iy\ Jeush, Lion (? W.R.S.).
Son of Esau by Aholibamah, Gen. xxxvi. 5 (clan name).
Son of Bilhan of Benjamin, i Chr. vii. 10 (clan name).
Descendant of Jonathan (i Chr. viii. 39).
Son of Shimei, Gersonite, Levite, i Chr. xxiii. 10.
Son of Rehoboam, 2 Chr. xi. 19. >>y\ Jael, Ibex.
Wife of Heber the Kenite, Ju. iv., v. N^y\ Jaale, Ibex (J.J.).
Bene J. returned with Zerubbabel (Solomon's servants), Ezra. ii. 56, xhT, Jaalam, Ibex (J.J.).
Son of Esau by Aholibamah, Gen. xxxvi, 5 (clan name),
3^3, Caleb, Dog.
C. b. Hezron, i Chr. ii. (clan).
C. b. Jephunneh, Nu. xiii. Patron. I Sam. xxv. 3,
C. b. Hur, I Chr. ii. 50 (clan). PD, Cheran, Lamb.
Ch, b. Dishon, Gen, xxxvi. 26 (Edomite clan),
H
98 BIBLICAL ARCHiEOLOGY,
nj27, Libanah, Poplar.
Bene L. returned with Zerubbabel, Nethinim, Ezr, ii. 45. y7, Laish, Lion.
Phalti b. L., i Sam, xxv. 44 ; 2 Sam. iii. 15.
J13, Nun, Fish.
Joshua b. N., Moses' successor, ^axj. BTU, Nahash, Serpent.
King of Ammonites, David's friend, i Sam. xi. ; xii. 12 j 2 Sam. x. 2 j 1 Chr. xix. I, 2.
Abigail bath N., David's sister (N.=: Jesse ?), 2 Sam. xvii. 25.
Shohi b. N., son of K,ing of Ammonites, 2 Sam. xvii. 27. I"l!^*n3, Nahshon, Serpent.
N. b. Amminadab, head of tribe Judah, Ex. vi. 23 j Nu. i. 7 } ii- 3 J vii. 12, 17 ; X. 14.
*D1D, Susi, Horsey.
S. b. Gaddi, a Manassite spy, Nu. xiii, ii.
rhvi, Eglah, Heifer.
Wife of David, 2 Sam. iii. 5 ; i Chr. iii. 3. P^jy, Eglon, Ox.
King of Moab, Ju. iii.
TI'I?, Ira.i, Wild Ass.
I. b. Enoch, a Cainite, Gen. iv. 18.
■|13Dy, Achbor, Mouse.
Baal-hanan b. Achbor, King of Edom, Gen. xxxvi. 38, 39; i Chr. i. 49. A. b. Micaiah, 2 Kings xxii. 12, 14 (with Shaphan and Huldah).
Elnathan b. A., Jer. xxvi. 22 5 xxxvi. 12. |Dy, Achan, Serpent (? Simonis).
A. b. Carmi, the thief at Jericho, Jos. vii. ; xxii. 20. n:y, Anah, WHd Ass.
A. b. Se'ir, Edomite, Gen. xxxvi. 20 ; 1 Chr. i. 38 (clan).
A. b. Zibeon, Edomite, Gen. xxxvi. 2, 14, 18 (clan), "131?, Epher, Young Hart.
E. b. Midian, Gen. xxv. 4 (clan).
Son of Ezra, i Chr. iv. 17.
Manassite prince, i Chr, v, 24.
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 99
msy, Ophrah, Gazelle.
O. b. Meonothai, i Chr. iv. 14. P"1Dy, Ephron, Fawn.
E. b. Zohar, Hittite, Gen. xxiii. any, Oreb, Haven.
Sheikh of Midian, Ju. vii.; viii. 3; *■. Ixxxiii. 11 ; Is. x. 26. my, Arad, Wild Ass ; cf. Irad.
A. b. Beriah, Benjamite, i Chr. viii. 15 (prob. clan). *jny, Othni, Lioness.
O. b. Shemaiah b. Obed-Edom, i Chr. xxvi. 7, ^J<''jny, Othniel, Lion of God.
O. b. Kinaz, Caleb's brother, Jo. xv. 17; Ju. i. 13; iii. 9, 11.
TVyi, Zibiah, Gazelle.
Mother of Joash, 2 K. xii. i; 2 Chr. xxiv. i.
Z. b. Hodesh, i Chr. viii. 9. pyaV, Zibeon, Gazelle.
Sheikh of Horites, Gen. xxxvi. ; i Chr. i. 38 (clan). "IID^*, Zippor, Little Bird.
Balak b. Z., King of Moab, Nu. xxii. ; xxiii. iS ; Jos. xxiv. 9 j Ju. xi. 25. iTlDV, Zipporah, Little Bird.
Wife of Moses, Ex. ii. 21. nyiV, Zorah, Hornet.
Patron., i Chr. ii. 53 (clan).
nS")S, Piram, Wild Ass.
Canaanite King, slain by Joshua, Jos. x. 3. K'ynS, Parosh, Flea.
Beni P. returned from Babylon, Ezr. ii. 3 ; viii. 35 x. 25 j Neh. vii. 8
|*1p, Koz, Thorn.
Anub. b. K., i Chr. iv. 8 (prob. clan).
Priestly family, Ezr. ii. 61 ; Neh. iii. ; vii. 63. n'Vp, Kezia, Cassia.
Second daughter of Job, Job xlii. 14. TT^, Kore, Partridge.
Meshilimiah b. K., i Chr. xxvi. i.
Shallum b. K. b. Eliasaph, i Chr. ix. 19.
K. b. Juma the Levite, 2 Chr. xxxi. 14.
H 2
100 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
?m, Rachel, Ewe.
Wife of Jacob, Gen., pass. ; Ru. iv. 1 1 ; i Sam. x. 2. )10^, Rimmon, Pomegranate.
Beni R. kill Ishbosheth, 2 Sam. iv.
^iSK', Shobal, Young Lion (Dillmann).
S. b. Se'ir, Gen. xxxvi. (clan).
S. b. Caleb, i Chr. ii. (clan). ^yi:j>, Shual, Fox.
S. b. Zophah, i Chr. vii. 36 (clan of Asher). D^QIEJ', Shuppim, Serpents.
S. b. Ir b. Benjamin, i Chr. vii. 12, 15 (clan).
Levite in West of Temple, i Chr. xxvi. 16. ''nDE^', Shumathite, Garlic.
Descendants of Caleb b. Hur, I Chr. ii. 53 (clan), n^ytr, Seir, He-Goat.
The Horite, Gen. xxxvi. ; i Chr. i. 38. JSIQtJ', Shephuphan, Seypent.
S. b. Bela b. Benjamin, i Chr. viii. 5 (clan). JStJ^, Shephan, Rock-Badger.
Josiah's scribe, 2 K. xxii. ; 2 Chr. xxxiv. ; Jer. xxxvi. 10-12.
Ahikam b. S., 2 K. xxii. 12, 14 ; 2 Chr. xxxiv. 20 ; Jer. xxvi. 24 ; xxxix. 14 5 xl., etc.
Elasah b. S., Jer. xxix. 3.
Jaazaniah b. S., Ezek. viii. 11. 5|"15J', Saraph, Serpent.
Descendant of Judah in Moab, i Chr. iv. 22 (clan).
y^in, Tola, Worm.
T. b. Issachar, Gen. xlvi. 13. Patron,, Nu. xxvi. 23.
T. b. Puah, the Judge, Ju. x. i. tiTin, Thahash, Badger, Nu. iv. 6.
T. b. Nahor, Gen. xxii. 24. IIDD, Tamar, Palm.
Judah's daughter-in-law. Gen. xxxviii. j Ru. iv. 12 ; I Chr. ii. 4.
Daughter of David, 2 Sam. xiii.
Daughter of Absalom, 2 Sam. xiv. 27. man, Taphuah, Citron (A. V., apple).
T. b. Hebron, i Chr. ii. 43 (clan).
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? i
or
pi'
II.— PLACE NAMES DERIVED FROM ANIMALS AND PLANTS.
nmS, Oboth, Serpents (?).
Station in the Wilderness, Nu. xxi. lO. prN, Elon, Fine Oak.
Town in Dan, Jos. xix. 43. n^N*, Elah, Oak.
Valley where David slew Goliath, i Sam. xvii. 2. 'N, Ajalon, Great Stag.
Valley in Dan, Jo. x. 12.
Levitical city in Ephraim, i Chr. vi. 69,
City in Zebulon, Ju. xii. 12.
City in Benjamin, i Chr. viii. 13. D?*N, Elim, Oak Grove.
Station in Wilderness, Ex. xv. 27. n^^N, Elath, Terebinths.
City of Edom, Deut. ii. 8, etc.
T\\yi \h^, Allon Bachuth, Oak of Weeping.
Burial place in Bethel, Gen. xxxv. 8. ^IDIJ'N, Eshcol, Grape Cluster.
Valley in South Palestine, Nu. xiii. 23.
n?3n Tl^l, Bethhoglah, City of the Partridge.
City in Benjamin, Jos. xv. 6. ntSt^n JT'Q, Beth Shittah, House of Acacia.
Town on Jordan, Ju. vii. 22. niN2? n^2, Bethlebaoth, Home of Lionesses.
City in Simeon, Jos. xix. 6. m03 IT'S, Beth Nimrah, House of Leopard.
Town in Gad, Nu. xxxii. 36. Cf. Nu. xxxii. 3, and Is. xv. 6. msn IT'S, Beth Tappuah, House of Citrons {Apples).
City in Judah, Jos. xv. 53.
|y?^, Dilean, Cucumber.
Town in Judah, Jos. xv. 38.
\\Crs nnn, Hadad Rlmmon, Pomegranate.
City of the Plain, Zee. xii. 11. hvV:^ 1^*n, Hazur Shual, Village of the Fox.
Town in Simeon, Jos. xix. 3.
102 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
ntDOn, Himtah, Lizard.
City in Judah, Jos. xv. 54.
D"'K?t3, Telaim, Lambs.
Place in Judah, 1 Sara, xv. 4.
3^D, Caleb, Dog.
Region in Judah, i Sam. xxx, 14. Cf. i Chr. n. 24.
{^V, Laish, Lion.
City in Dan, Ju. xviii. 7.
jlVjy, Eglon, Bull Calf.
City in Judah, Jos. x. 3. n3 |''y, Engedi, Fountain of the Kid.
Town in Judah, Jos. xv. 62. D^!?3y rV, En Eglaim, Fountain of the Two Stags.
Town of Moab, Ez. xlvii. 10. |1D"1 py, En Rimmon, Fountain of the Pomegranate.
Town in Simeon, Neh. xi. 29. Cf. Jos. xix. 7. 33y, Anab, Grape Cluster.
City in Judah, Jos. xi. 21. msy, Ophrah, Fawn.
Town in Benjamin, Jos. xviii. 23.
Town in Manasseh, Ju. vi. 11. insy, Ephron, Fawn.
Town in Judah, Jos. xv. 9. D'npy, Akrabbim, Scorpions.
Mountains South of Dead Sea, Nu. xxxiv, 4 ; Ju. i. 36. my, Arad, Wild Ass.
City in South Canaan, Nu. xxi. r.
D^y3^, Zeboim, Hyenas.
Town and Valley in Benjamin, i Sam. xiii. 18. nyiV, Zorah, Nest of Hornets.
Jos. XV. 33. Cf. I Chr. ii. 54.
jIDI, Rimmon, Pomegranate. City in Judah, Jos. xv. 32. City in Zebulon, Jos, xix. 13. Cf. i Chr. vi, 77.
TOTEM-CLANS IN THE BIBLE? 103
}*"1D pOI, Rimmon-Parez, Pomegranate- Breach.
Station in the Wilderness, Nu. xxxiii. 19. nOm, Rithmah,y««;)^ifr.
Station in the Wilderness, Nu. xxxiii, i8.
^yit^, Shual, Fox.
District in Benjamin, i Sam. xiii. 17. ■•S/yt^', Shaalabbin, Place of Foxes.
City in Dan, Jos. xix. 42. Cf. Ju. i. 35 ; 2 Sam. xxiii. 32.
[The above lists have been derived from the usual Onomastica., which are by no means up to date in their philology. Dr. Neubauer has kindly pointed out to me a few cases in which the etymology given by my sources is doubtful, but on reflection I have left them in, as the statistical data would have been falsified if I had removed them. In a few cases I have made a suggestion as to the etymology myself, appending my initials. Those due to Robertson Smith have W. R. S. attached to them.
To the local list I might have added some names con- nected with objects like the sun (Beth Shemesh) which occur elsewhere as totems. But if the case is not proven by the animal and plant names, these additional totems would not help.]
I04 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
THE NETHINIM.^
Who were the Neth'ini?n whose names are given in detail in Ezra ii. and Neh. vii. ? This is a problem which cannot be said to have been satisfactorily solved. The usual answer is that they were war-captives dedicated to the service of the temple, whence their name □*'3*'n3 [Dati so. Deo vel Templo) : it is also generally added on Rabbinic authority that the main body was formed of descendants of the Gibeonites (Jos. ix,). This answer is so far right that it recognises that the Nethinifn were attached to the Temple and were descendants of captives taken in war. But it leaves out of account and fails to explain the abnormally degraded position of these Nethinim. Other captives were ultimately amalgamated with the Jews, who were allowed to take a female captive to wife (Deut. xxi. 10-13) : these Nethinhn and their descendants, male and female, were interdicted from marriage with the Israelites for all time (Mish. Jeb. viii. 3). They were thus a class oi pariahs and yet were attached to the Temple, which would, one should have thought, cast some shadow of its sanctity over all persons connected with it. This union of sacred service and
' The original form is probably the passive participle given in the Khetib of Ezr. viii. 17, D''Jin3, a word which is likewise applied to the Levites, Num. viii. 19. The singular JTIJ does not occur in the Bible, but is not infrequent in the Mishna.
THE NETHINIM. 105
social degradation is the puzzle connected with the Nethiniin : the following remarks are intended as a solution.
We may first put in some evidence as to their degraded condition. The fact that they are enumerated separately in the list of the returned exiles is sufficient to show that they were a class set apart. And if the same care was taken with their genealogy as with that of the Priests and Levites, this can only have been in order that marriages with them might be avoided. Herzfeld [Gesch. d. Volkes Israel^ II. ii. 243-4) urges from the silence of Ezr. ix. I, Neh. xiii. 23, that the prohibition against marriage with Nethinim is of later date, though the Talmud states it was established by David {Jeh. 78 b), and the Midrash [Bam. R. viii.) by Ezra. He gives, however, no account of its later origin, and the argumen- tum e silent'io may be turned the other way, if we can show that the Nethinim were so despised that no legisla- tion would seem necessary to preserve the Jews from the pollution of such marriages, no more than if they had been idiots or lepers. This was certainly the case in the time of the Mishna. In Jeb. ii. 4 we read : "no^'N
-iTDDi ]\i3b bsiK?^ nm bsna^^b m^nDi ry^'^i^iJ^
" A female bastard and a fe?nale Nathin are prohibited (to marry) an Israelite^ and a daughter of Israel to a Nathin or a bastard." Further in Jeb. viii. 3, it is said that the prohibition against Moabites and Ammonites, Egyptians and Edomites, though mentioned in the Bible, only applies for a certain number of generations, and does not apply at all to their daughters, but it is added : ^"'"iTDa
n^'y^i insi Dn^T inw nb^i^ mo^s ^mo^s rD\"i3*i
io6 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
'■^Bastards and Nethintm are prohibited (to marry Israelites) and this prohibition is perpetual^ and applies both to males and females y^ A table of precedence in Jer. Horaioth iii. 5, 48"* classifies the people in fifteen classes, of which the first three are, ( i ) the sage, (2) the King, (3) the high-priest, and the last four (12) a bastard, (13) a Nathin^ (14) a proselyte, (15) a freedman.^ All this, and the evidence might be considerably amplified,^ will be sufficient to show the degraded position of these un- fortunate beings, who were put on the same level as bastards,'* and regarded as moral lepers.
No explanation of this degradation is given in the Talmud. For the explanation given {Jeb. 79 a ; Bam. rabba^ § viii.) that the Gibeonites were for ever separated from Israelites, because they did not possess the three distinctive qualities of a Jew — hospitality, modesty, and mercy — cannot be said to bear the stamp of authentic history. And the Rabbinic identification of Gibeonites and Nethinim is only founded on one of those combina- tions of which the Rabbis were as lavish as an extra- ordinary professor at a German University. In Jos. ix.
' In Kidd. viii. 3, it was explained whom the Nethinim might marry,
: nrn nr ni'? jnniro d'pid ■'Didsi '•pin^' *yn:i nrno nnm nj
'■''Proselytes and freedmen, bastards and Nethinim, those whose father was unknown, and foundlings, can intermarry.'''' This would account for the disappearance of the Nethinim as a class as soon as their services were no longer required after the destruction of the Temple.
* Similarly in Jer. feb. vii. 5, the Nathin comes eighth out of the classes inclusion in which renders a woman unable to marry a priest.
* Cf. Sota iv. I ; Mace. iii. i ; Hor. iii. 8.
■* In Tos. Kidd,. v. i (ed. Zuckermandel, p. 341), an abstract term niJ^DJ is given, indicating the status of a Nathin and corresponding to nniDD, "bastardy,"
THE NETHINIM. 107
27, the Gibeonites are said to have been made by Joshua " hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congrega- tion and for the altar of the Lord unto this day in the place where he should choose^ This description answered well enough to the position of the Nethinim for the identification to be made by the Rabbis, and it would doubtless be associated by the paronomasia involved in the use of the word mrT'l in the passage of Joshua. There is no confirmation elsewhere in the Bible. In 2 Sam. xxii. 19, David permits the Gibeonites to revenge themselves on Saul's children for injuries done to them by Saul, and this implies that they held no such degraded position as that of Nethinim. And in Ezra's time we have distinct evidence^ that the Gibeonites were separate from the Nethinim. For " the men of Gibeon " with " Melatiah the Gibeonite " at their head, repaired a piece of the wall of Jerusalem near the Old Gate on the west side of the city (Jer. iii. 7), while the Nethinim dwelt at Ophel on the east side {ibid. 26). Altogether, the Talmudic identification of Gibeonites and Nethinim utterly breaks down on close examination, and, even if better established, fails to account for their degradation lower than any of the other Canaanites.
Nor does the Bible account of them help us out of the difficulty. All we learn from this source is that the Nethinim returned to Palestine from Babylon in two batches, the first numbering 392 souls (Ezr. ii. 58), the
' On the other hand, these Gibeonites might be Israelites of Gibeon, having no connection with the old Gibeonites of Canaan. But even so, the Chronicler, if acquainted with the identification of Gibeonites and Nethinim, would have used some qualifying word to distinguish the old from the new Gibeonites.
io8 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
second, 220 (Ezr. viii. 20 ). The names of the former are given in dupHcate (Ezr. ii,, and Neh. vii.), but not those of the latter, though it is mentioned that "«// of them luere expressed by na?ne^^ (Ezr, viii. 20 ) : this second batch came from a place (in Persia) called Casiphia, nov/ unknown [ibid. 5, 16), and were persuaded to come by *' their brother " Iddo. They were located " at Ophel over against the water-gate toward the east and the tower that Ueth out'''' (Neh. iii. 26),^ though, curiously enough, no part of the wall is said to have been actually built by them, unless " the house of the Nethinim^'' mentioned in verse 31, was so called from being built by them, which is very improbable. The Nethinim were doubtless placed there to be near the Temple, where they served under the Levites (Ezr. vii. 20), and like all those attached to the Sanctuary they were freed from all tolls [ibid. vii. 24) from which indeed they must have been supported, as Herzfeld elaborately argues (/. c. II. i. 140). Inci- dentally Ezra mentions (vii. 20) that they had been '•^appointed by David and the princes to serve the Levites^' but who they were, why they were appointed, what were their functions, and, above all, why they were so de- graded, is still left unexplained. Thus neither Bible nor Talmud give us an explicit answer to the puzzling question : Who were the Nethinim F
No one seems to have thought of solving these diffi- culties by subjecting to a critical analysis the names ol the Nethinite families given in Ezr. ii. 43-58, Neh. vi.
' Remnants of the " tower which lieth out " near which they dwelt, hav; been recently discovered by Sir Chas. Warren, Palestine Exploration Fund— Jerusalejn, p. 229.
THE NETHINIM. 109
46-60. The latter list, in my opinion, best preserves the original orthography, and may be here given as the list of
I. The First Batch of Nethinim,^
(i) Kn!5"^3n, (2) sDiti^rr % (3) msjnra 'n, (4) D-i>p % (5) S37^n '2, (6) piD % (7) mab 'n [Baer, -uw/^^s^nb], (8) wn^n '2, (9) ^72^w % (10) i^n % (u) bi2 'a, (12) nm '2, (13) n>«n '2, (14) r'-^i '2, (15) snp: '2,
{16) CW '2, (17) ST27 '2, (18) nOQ '2, (19) ^D2 '2,
(20) c^3im '2, (21) a^na^iD^ '2 [np 'n^a^^Ds], (22) '2 pi2p2, (23) sDiprr '2, (24) -limn '2, (25) n>V.i2 '2, (26) sTnn '2, (27) stt^nn '2, (28) Dip-i2 '2, (29) '2 s-io^D, (30) nan '2, (31) n^'iz '2, (32) «D^:on '2.
and to these w^e may add, as they are counted w^ith them,
The Sons of Solomon s Servants. (33) ^I21D '2, (34) mSD '2, (35) «T-13 '2, (36) sbr> '2,
(37) PP^f % (38)':'-f2 '2, (39) n^tDStt? '2, (4o)b>iDn '2, (41) m2D 'D, (42) n^^2!5n '2, (43) r^« '2.
In Neh. xi. 21 it is mentioned that Ziha and Gispa were over the Nethinim (nn'^^i, S!:tt?2). Bertheau, in commenting on the list in Ezr. ii. assumes that this Ziha w^as the same as No. i, and that therefore all the names contained in the list are those of men living at the
' Varies Lectioms in Ezra ii.— (i) Nn*^, (4) Dip, (5) NHXID, (8)
nDjn, (9) ^"po-j* [np '•n'pi*'], (21) did^sj [np D'-D'-Di], (25) ni'pvn
(33) ^DD, (34) n-lDDH, (35) mnD, (36) r\-»i\ (37) omitted, (43) >DN. Between (8) and (9) 21py '3 and 3jn '2 are inserted, and between (19) and (20) n:DiS '2.
no BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
time. If this were so, I may say at once that much of my argument falls to the ground. But several reasons render this improbable. There are only forty-two families to the 392 souls ; this gives nine per family, much too high an average for a father and his children. Then some of the names do not appear to be those of persons at all. The Bene Tabdoth (No. 3) had probably charge of the rings (mi^^n) connected with the Temple (cf. Ex. XXV. 12, xxvi. 24, xxviii. 28), and the next name Bene Keros suggests that the persons indicated by it took care of the hooks (D~ip) also used in it (cf. Ex. xxvi. 6, xxxv. 11). The Bene Gaz-zam (No. 16) possibly sheared the sheep offered for use in the Temple. The Sophereth (Nos. 34) might have been connected with the writing of the sacred rolls ; the article attached to the name in the parallel passage in Ezra would indicate that it was an official name, not a personal one. And other names though not of office, are yet clearly not personal. The Me'unirn (No. 20) were an Arab tribe with whom the Jews had fought (2 Chr. xxvi. 7) ; and we may conclude that the Bene M. were captives made during the campaign ; a similar conclusion holds good of the next item, Bene Nephisim (No, 21), though no tribe of that name is elsewhere mentioned. Again, Rezin was the name of a well-known king of Syria (2 Kings xv. 37), and the Bene Rezin (No. 14) were probably descendants of prisoners captured in the Jewish war against this King {ibid. xvi. 5). The same might apply to the Bene Sisera (No. 29) if this did not indicate too distant a date (Jud. iv.). But the most remarkable thing about the list is the large number of
THE NETHINIM. iii
names ending in Sr (Nos. I, 2, 5, 8, 15, 17, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, 35, 36). Now St is the usual Aramaic ending for feminines (cf. Kautzsch, Granifn. d. bibl. Aramahchen^ § 50, Anm. 3, p. 84), and it would be highly improbable that so large a number of men's names should have this feminine ending.^ And with this clue to guide us, we observe other names equally feminine in form, n33;b (No. 7), n^Vin (No. 25), and n"^2D (No. 34). Remembering, too, that Sara was Sarai when in Aramaea, we may include '^nh^D (No. 9), "'Dn (No. 19), and ^tilD (No. 33), among our feminine forms, while the instance of Athaliah shows us that forms like rr^Sn (No. 13), and rT't^DIi? (No. 39), might be as much feminine as masculine. Nor need we depend solely upon mere forms in drawino; the conclusion that the names of those from whom the Nethinim traced their descent were women. We know the fondness of the Hebrews for giving " biological " names to their women, e.g.^ Rachel {ewe\ Debora {hee\ Jael {chamois\ Huldah {weasel)^ Kezia (cassia\ Hadassa (myrtle). In our list we find no less than four names of this kind : Libanah (No. 7, poplar ^)j Hagaba (No. 8, grasshopper)^ Bakbuk (No. 22, gourd)^ and la'ala (No. 36, chamois). Again, Harsha (No. 27, witch\ and Hatipha (No. 32, female captive\ are scarcely names to be applied to men, and many of the remaining
• Among the 1 1 1 Jews whose names were mentioned as having put away their strange wives (Ezr. x. 18-43), o^^ly ^^o end in Nt : XfTN (v. 27) and NJiy (v. 30).
^ Or moon, equally suitable for a wonian in Semitic. The exceptional use of the Hebraic ending Ht instead of Kt, well established by MSS. and early editions, may be due to the fact that the original was an Israelite or perhaps Phcenician woman 5 cf. Schroder, Phbniz. Sprache, p. 172, n.
112 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
ones are more appropriate for women, e.g.^ Padon (6, rede?nption\ Hanan (lo, grace\ Thanah ^joy\ Neziah (victory)^ and altogether there are only six of the personal names (Nos. ii, I2, 24, 28, 37, 38) which are not feminine either in form or in meaning, and none of these is necessarily a man's name.
Nor is this all. I fancy I can restore the name-list of the second batch of Nethinim^ and this, we shall see, presents the same characteristics. It is distinctly men- tioned of these (Ezr. viii. 20), '•^ all of them were ex- pressed by name^'' yet we have no further mention of them in the Bible. It is probable, however, that their genealogy was preserved, and it may be conjectured that the three additional names of the first list con- tained in the parallel passage of Ezra, inp^, ;22n, and n3DS, came from this source. This conjecture is con- firmed by the fact that the Greek apocryphal book of Esdras (v. 29-34, ed. Fritzsche) contains these, as well as six additional names, Kadovd^ Ovrd, Krjrd^^ "Aaaply ^apaKe/jb^ KovBa^ among the Nethinim^ and it adds no less than eight names at the end of the sons of Solomon's servants, ^apoodi^ MiaaLa<;j Pa?, '^SSou?, ^0T/3a, "A^ep'pd^ Bapo)Bl<ij I!a(f)d<y. It is extremely unlikely that the Greek writer took the trouble to invent these outlandish names, and he must have obtained them from some more complete edition of the Biblical Ezra. If we may identify the 'A88ov<i of the Apocrypha with the ITS of Ezr. viii. 17, this gives a point of connection between these additional names and those of the second batch. Further, as Ziha and Gispa were over the Nethinim^ and the Bene-Ziha were at the head of the first
THE NETHINIM. 113
batch, the Bene-Gispa were probably at the head of the second. We may now proceed to restore to the pages of the Bible the name-Hst of
II. — The Second Batch of Nethi
NIM.
(i.) sDB?:i ^3^, (ii.) mp!7 'n, (iii.) n^n '-2 or sn^n
[^77a^a, Esd.], (iv.) n3DS '3, (v.) mTOp 'n [?], (vi.) NI212; '3, (vii.) nn3 '3, (viii.) [nJn-iC^W, (ix.) n^^^ '^ (x.) «Di3 '3, (xi.) ^rvnw '3, (xii.) n^^;a % (xiii.) nn '3,
(xiv.) "TTN '3, (xv.) «31D '3 [r/: Ezek. xxiii. 42], (xvi.)
N"I327 '3, (xvii.) nmn3 '3, (xviii.) -f2tt; '3
If this were the complete list, it would give an average of twelve to each family, not too far removed from the average of nine in the first batch. If this average of nine persons to a family also applied to the second batch, there would be about six names missing from the above list. But whether complete or no, or whether these names are of the second lot or no, there can be little doubt that they were names of Nethinhn^ and it is of interest to our inquiry to observe how closely this new list resembles the old one. We have names of office in the writers (No. vii.), and the pourers of libation (No. xviii.), names of enemies from whom slaves had been captured (Nos. viii., ix., xiii.), names ending in St (Nos. i., iii., v., vi., x., xv., xvi.), or n^ (No. iv.), in \ (No. xi.), r\^ (No. xvii.), and n^ (No. xii.), three " biological" names, Hagaba (grasshopper)^ Azna {bramble\ and Oplira {fawn)^ and only two names, IIS and 3"'ipi7, are not clearly those of women. Our previous suspicion is raised to positive conviction by this remarkable confirmation
I
114 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
from an unlooked-for quarter, and we state with a con- siderable degree of confidence that the Nethinim could only trace their ancestry up to women}
Having reached the result that the Nethinim could only trace their genealogy to women, the most probable con- clusion as to their origin almost presents itself spontane- ously. Men who could not trace their paternity, attached to the Temple and yet degraded to the level of bastards — who could the Nethinim have been but the children of the Kedishoth or sacred prostitutes attached to the Temple before the exile ? These were attached to the worship of Astarte and of Ashera, if these two are not identical (Baudissin, siih voce^ in Herzog-Plitt). Now we know that the worship of Ashtoreth was introduced by Solo- mon (i Kings xi. 5), and as the Temple was simply the Chapel Royal while the kingdom lasted, the rites of Ashtoreth were doubtless performed in the Sanctuary. These rites may possibly explain the large number of his harem, and we can only account for the title '^1:2^ ''iS nabli7 given to some of the Nethinim by connecting it with this worship. Manasseh introduced an Ashera into the Temple (2 Kings xxi. 7), which was removed by Josiah (ibid, xxiii. 4-6). Even if we did not have this evidence of these lascivious rites in connection with the Temple, we could assume them from the existence of still worse abominations in the D"'JZ7~rp, or cincedi sacri. These are first mentioned in the reign of Rehoboam
' The list of the first batch is immediately followed by those who could not trace their father's house, three clans of 642 souls bearing the names Btni Delaiah, Tobiah, Nikoda, also seemingly names of women (Ezr. ii. 60 J Neh. vii. 62).
THE NETHINIIVI. 115
(i Kings xiv. 24) ; they were removed by Asa [ibid. XV. 12), but not so completely that they had not to be removed by Jehoshaphat [ibid, xxii. 47). And, notwith- standing these abolitions, we read that Josiah " broke down the houses of the C^JiJlp, which were by the house of the Lord where the women wove hangings for the Ashera" (2 Kings xxiii. 7). This is clear evidence of the existence of these rites in direct connection with the Temple. And where the D'^tt^lp were, there can be no doubt that the lesser vice also prevailed. In the Deutero- nomic legislation, which all critics recognise as the out- come of the Jahvistic reaction in Josiah's reign, the two classes of unfortunates are coTipled together in the pre- cept : " There shall be no HCT'ip of the daughters of Israel, nor a anp of the sons of Israel" (Deut, xxiii. 17) ; and, as if to mark the ecclesiastical character of these terms, the next verse refers to the same classes among the common people [ibid. 18).^ We have no explicit reference to these rites later than Josiah, but they are in all probability referred to when it is said that Jehoiakim (2 Kings xxiii. 37), Jehoiachim {ibid, xxiv. 9), and Zedekiah {ibid. 19) "did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that their fathers had done." And even as late as Ezekiel we have a vivid and detailed account of the rites connected with the mtZ7"Tp
' " Thou shall not bring the hire of a whore, or the wages of a dog into house of the Lord thy God." The meaning of 3?3 here Is settled by the use of the same term □''1173 in the Phoenician inscriptions Corp. Ins. Sem. I., No. 86. But as ilJI? is a secular nL'np, so 2'?3 was probably £^'^p apart from the Temple. It was possible that the ordinance of Deut. xxii. 5 was directed against these practices.
I 2
Ii6 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
within the Temple, which can only have been described from events that had happened within the prophet's life- time (Ez. xxiii. 36-48). With this evidence before us, we can scarcely deny the existence of sacred prostitutes in connection with the Temple of Jerusalem throughout the separate kingdom of Judah and up to the Exile. Now, though such women are mostly infertile, the children which these had would doubtless be brought up to the same vile life as themselves before the Exile (the sons as D-tt^lp, the daughters as mii^lp), and after the Exile became the Nethinbn^ whose origin we are here investigating. This account of it explains their con- nection with the Temple, their degraded position, and the fact that they could only trace their ancestry up to women.
It may be fairly asked why the Nethln'im should consent to return to occupy such a degraded position, and Herzfeld (/. r., II. ii. 140) urges this point in arguing that the prohibition against intermarriage with them did not exist in Ezra's time. He had not the present suggestion before him, or his objection would indicate complete misconception of the psychology of pariahs. No one who has read M. Michel's painful but fascinating book, Les races maudites^ can have failed to notice the sullen patience with which the outcasts of humanity submit to their lot : they do not appear to have sufficient imagination to sever themselves entirely from their persecutors. In the case of the Ncthin'im we have an additional and more prosaic reason for their return to Palestine : they had hereditary right to part of the dues paid to the Temple (Ezr. vii. 24). Again :
THE NETHINIM. 117
to modern notions it seems difficult to understand why the Jews, when once freed for ever from the vices of which the Nethinhn were a hving embodiment should have permitted them to return to take up their old quarters near the Temple. But it was the most natural thing in an ancient and an Oriental State that the status quo ante should be restored : what would need explanation would be any departure from it. The Jews returned with touching fidelity to the villages they had occupied before the Exile ; the Nethinim had been attached to the Temple before, they were attached to it as a matter of course after ; they were degraded before, they were even more degraded amid the New Israel.
It is right that this investigation should conclude with the chief objections which may be urged against the identification here proposed, I believe for the first time.^ In the first place we have assumed that the names of the ancestors of the Nethinim which end in Wt are those of women. Yet the only names of individual Nethinim (except the Iddo of Ezr. viii. 16) are those of the two leaders Hn:^ and H!:ti?3, the former the leader of the Beni Ziha at the head of the first batch, the latter, I have suggested, the chief of the Be'ni Gispa at the head of the second.
As regards the argument that there was an Aramaic tendency after the exile for the names of men to end in Sr, this has been deduced from the very list of names we are considering, and would thus be a circular argu-
' The latest and, I think I may add, the most absurd suggestion about the Nethinim was by Rosenzweig, in his [ahrhunderC nach dcm Exit, 1885, who sees in them the forerunners of the Essenes !
ii8 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
ment. At any rate the tendency is not shown among the long list of names of Jews who put away their strange wives (Ezr. x. 18-43). This objection, at any rate, cannot apply to the names ending in n"^ (Nos. 25, xvii.) and n~ (34, 41). These are the names usually relied on to explain the term Koheleth : if the present view is correct, this must be abandoned ; and we have not only depended on the forms of the words in con- cluding that these were women : their " biological " character was, among others, an independent proof of their meaning. Another difficulty is suggested by the difficult word D"^S31D the Khethib of Ezek. xxiii. 42, which exegetes nowadays take to mean " drunkards from the wilderness " (cf. Deut. xxi. 20) though this scarcely gives a good sense. Now it is, to say the least, a remarkable coincidence that this word, occurring in the midst of a description of the rites connected with the Kedishothj should resemble so closely the smD '^D3 which we have ventured to restore to the second batch of Nethinlm (No. xv.) from the vloi Sov/3d of the Apo- cryphal Ezra. While this identification confirms in a most unexpected manner our general hypothesis, it causes some difficulty as to the origin and meaning of the words ending in St. For here we have a word of this kind referring not to a woman, but to a place or tribe. It is, however, extremely improbable that the remaining seventeen words ending in H" (excluding Nos. i and i.) should refer to places or tribes without our being able to identify them. Altogether I am inclined to think the evidence in favour of the majority of the names in the list of Ncthinim being those of women is overwhelming.
THE NETHINIM. 119
I would, however, remark that, even if this were not so, the hypothesis I have put forward as to the nature of the Nethinim would not suffer : as an explanation of their degradation it would be satisfactory even if the names of the Nethinim at the time of the Return did not bear traces of the status of their ancestors.
Another more formidable objection still remains to be overcome. If the origin of the Nethinim were as we have suggested, why does no hint of it occur in Bible or Talmud ? To this it may be replied that no hint was required if the name Nethinim carried its own story with it, and implied the same to men speaking Hebrew as lepoBovXot implied to men speaking Greek. For this we have direct evidence. In the two cardinal passages, Ezr. ii. and Neh. vii., the name is transliterated NaOivaioc in the LXX., but elsewhere the word is translated lepoSovXoi (Ezr. ii. 58, iiv. 24, viii. 20; 3 Esdr. v. 53-58, viii. 22-51), and the same word is used by Josephus (y/nt. XL V. i) in the only passage where he refers to them. Now there is no ambiguity in the meaning of lepoSouXoL (v. Smith, Diet. Class. Ant.^ s. v. HieroduU^ Herrmann ; Gottcsdienst. Alt-ert. d. Hellenen^ § 27, n. 13-16) : it almost invariably means the ministers of lascivious rites in connection with the temples of Aphrodite (really Astarte in Greece as in Judaea). The LXX. and Josephus would not have used a term of so insulting a meaning if they had no tradition of the origin of the Nethinim to depend upon. As regards the use of the name Nethinim as corresponding to hieroduli^ we have an exact analogue in the corresponding class in Indian life, the Bayadet'eSj who are technically called Deva-dasi
120 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
(deodatcs). There are also special reasons why the doctors of the Mishna would be chary of entering into details about this somewhat unsavoury subject. As the Temple increased in sanctity, it was decidedly impolitic to remind the people that the holiest spot on earth had been tainted by the most unholy of rites. The Sopherim developed a special sense of delicacy about these and kindred subjects, as we know from the Biblical passages which " were nut to be read " in the synagogues. The Chronicler, whom Zunz has shown to be identical with the writer of Ezra, completely avoids all mention of the Kedishim or Kedishoth. Though he is careful to point the moral of his tale by referring the downfall of Judah to the abominations committed by the kings, he is reticent about details, and passages like i Kings xiv. 24 ; 2 K. XV. 12, xxii. 47, xxiv. 7, find no parallel in Chronicles. Neither in Mishna nor Gemara, so far as I am aware, do we find in any mention by name of any individual Nathin^ and it is probable that they disappeared as a class after the destruction of the Temple. The memory of their origin then seems to have died away, and the Rabbis of the Talmud found and exercised an oppor- tunity for displaying their ingenuity in combination which has obscured the origin of the Nethin'im ever since.
We moderns might well imitate this delicacy and reticence but for one consideration. We can best know the religion of Israel by contrasting it with with the cults opposed to it : all those who are nowadays investi- gating the religions of Syria recognise this truth. Yet here we have, in the existence of these Nethinim^ evidence
THE NETHINIM. i2r
of rites as repulsive as any found elsewhere, existing in the Temple right up to the Exile. Scholars had of course known of this previously (though not later than Josiah), but the discovery that the Nethinhn were the ministers of those rites gives a vividness and concreteness to our ideas on the subject which cannot fail to light up many points on the religious development of Israel. When we read the description of the peasants in La Bruyere we understand the French Revolution ; when we think of the Nethin'im and all that they imply we understand the Jahvistic reaction under Josiah. Imagine a Nathin slinking by Isaiah in the courts of the Temple, and we have a vivid picture of the lowest and the highest form of worship which arose in Syria and spread thence throughout the ancient world, the one disintegrating society, the other destined to bring the germs of salvation. Nor are the two forms so disconnected as might appear : healthy human nature has in itself a safeguard against such extremes of viciousness as are implied in the Nethinhn. The mere force of moral repulsion will explain much of the Sisva indignatio with which Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel inveigh against practices which strike not alone at all spiritual religion but at the very roots of social and family life. And certainly our investigation, if substantiated, enables us to appreciate the force of the terms " whoredom " and " abomination " applied by these prophets to the idolatrous practices of their time. They seem mere pieces of bad taste if we take them metaphori- cally, as modern exegesis too complacently assumes {e.g.^ Gesenius, Thes.^s. v. n3T, p. 422). Our knowledge of the continued existence of these Nethinim shows these
122 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
expressions to be the natural utterances of earnest and right-thinking men. It is on account of the lurid but instructive Hght which is thus thrown upon the reHgious development of Israel that I have thought it desirable to raise for a moment the veil which for nearly two thousand years has rested on the origin of the Nethinim.
PROVERBS XXX., INDIAN ORIGIN. 123
INDIAN ORIGIN OF PROVERBS XXX.
Much recent research renders it probable that India was by no means so isolated from the outer world in early days as has been assumed. As the result of a somewhat elaborate investigation of the fables by JEsop I have come to the conclusion that a certain number of Indian fables had percolated to Greece, even before Alexander's Anabasis to India.^
This result renders it desirable to consider the possi- bility whether Indian thought or literature had any influence on Biblical literature. Hitherto, the only trace of this influence has been with reference to Solo- mon's judgment.
There is a curious piece of evidence which seems to show that the Jataka stories were connected with the western world. Among the Buddhist Birth-Tales is one (translated by Rhys - Davids, pp. xiv. — xvi.) in which a Takshinij or female demon, seizes a child left by its mother for a moment, and claims it as her own. The two claimants are brought before the future Buddha, who draws a line on the ground, orders the women to stand on each side of it and hold the child between them, one by the legs the other by the arms. Whichever of the two, he decides, shall drag the
' See my History of yEsofs Fables, vol. i. of my edition of Caxton's /Esop.
124 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
child over the line shall possess it. They begin hauling, but the infant cries, and the mother lets her child go rather than hurt it. Then the future Buddha knows who is the true mother, gives her the child, and makes the Takshini confess her true nature, and that she had wanted the child to eat it up. In short, we have the Judgment of Solomon attributed to Buddha. It is not impossible that the two may be connected. If the incident really occurred in Israel, as is possible, for it bears the stamp of Oriental^ justice, it would be just the kind of story to be carried out to Ophir, which we now know to be Abhira at the mouth of the Indus, whence came the peacocks, monkeys, and almug trees — all with Indian names — to bedeck the court of Solomon.
M. Gaidoz, however, in an interesting set of papers on the variants of Solomon's Judgment [Melusine^ 1889), traces the Hebraic from the Indian form, basing his con- clusion on the late date at which the Book of Kings was redacted, and I am inclined to agree with him, for the additional reason that I think it highly probable that another section of the Bible connected with Solomon's name is derived from an Indian source. The following parallels will at least serve to render this probable : —
' A recent instance occurred in Persia during the absence of the Shah. A farmer complained that a soldier had eaten his melons without payment. " Which soldier ? " asked the Shah's son, who was dispensing justice. The man was pointed out and denied it. " Rip him up," said the Persian prince, "and if it is found that he has been eating melons, you shall be paid, if not, woe betide you." Sure enough the soldier had been eating melons.
«•
PROVERBS XXX., INDIAN ORIGIN. 125
15-
19-
Proverbs XXX.
Who has gone up to heaven and
come down ? Who has gathered the wind in
his fists ? Who has bound up the waters
in a garment ? Who has established all the ends
of the earth ? What is his name, and what
his son"s, if thou knowest?
The horseleech has three
daughters,^ they say alway,
" Give, give." There are three things never
sated. Yea, four that never say
"Enough": Sheol is never sated with dead. Nor the womb's gate with men, Earth never sated with water, And fire says never "Enough."
There be three things too won- derful for me, Yea, four which I know not ; The way of an eagle in the air. . . The way of a ship through the sea.
Rig Veda and Bidpai.
Who knows or who here can
declare Whence has sprung — whence this
creation — From what this creation arose, Whether any made it or not ? He who in the highest heaven is its
ruler, He verily knows, or even he knows
not. Rig Veda, x. 129 (Muir, Sansk. Texts, V. 356).^
Fire is never sated with fuel, Nor Ocean with the streams. Nor the god of death with all crea- tures. Nor the bright-eyed one with men. Pants., I. str. 153; also Ma- habh. iv. 2227.'
The path of ships across the sea, The soaring eagle's flight Varuna knows. Rig Veda (cf. Muir's Metr. Trans. 160).*
' I owe the reference to Prof. Cheyne,_/b(^, 152.
* From Bickell's reconstruction of the text.
* Prof. Graetz [Gesch. i. 348) notices the closeness of the parallel which, he agrees, argues borrowing from one side or the other. He decides for Jewish priority owing to the late date of the Hitopadesa, being unaware of the other parallels, and that it occurs in the Bidpai and the Mahabharata.
* Quoted as a coincidence by Prof. Cheyne, I.e.
126 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
Proverbs XXX. Rig Veda and Bidpai.
21. Under three things earth
trembles. A bad woman wedded.
And four it cannot bear : A friend that's false,
22. Under a servant when master, A servant become pert.
And a fool filled with meat, A house full of serpents,
23. Under an odious woman wedded, Make life unsupportable.
And a handmaid heir to her Hitopadesa, ii. 7 (cf. Pants,, I. str, mistress. 472).
It is, to say the least, remarkable that all the Indian parallels that have been found to the Old Testament, so far as I am aware, should occur in this one chapter. The second parallel again is so close that, as Prof. Graetz admits, there must have been borrowing on one side or the other. The arrangement in fours, which is distinc- tive of this chapter, is, I may add, a common Indian literary artifice ; I have counted no less than thirty instances among the strophes of the First Book of the Pantschatantra}
Considering that the chapter is, according to all critics, of very late origin, and the text itself attributes a foreign origin to it,'^ and that there is plenty of other evidence for foreign elements in the Old Testament,^ it becomes
I Str. 3, 46, 72, 114, 115, 140, 141, 144, 153, 171, 172, 180, 188, 192, 253,269,301,310, 312, 322, 335, 337, 385, 386, 420, 425,442,467. Besides there are many triads (str. 51, 84, 113, 174, 234, 257, 263, 280, 292, 364, 449), in some cases beginning like " There are three that win earth's golden crown : the hero, the sage, and the courtieri" (str. 51) ; " There are three things for which men wage war : land, friends, gold " (str. 257).
* "The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh of Massa," i.e., an Arabian.
' There are Sanskrit words in Kings, Greek words in Daniel, Arabisms in Job, the scapegoat (Azazel) is a Persian importation, and Mr. Tyler has
PROVERBS XXX., INDIAN ORIGIN. 127
highly probable that the proverbs of Agur were derived from India via Arabia, and that we must allow for an earlier^ as well as later " Libyan " influence on Hebrews, as we have seen reason to allow it for Greeks. And all this confirms the possibility that Solomon's Judgment is an adaptation of an Indian folk-tale to the Jewish monarch.
But be all this as it may, we have iconographic evi- dence of an interesting kind, that the Judgment became known to the Greeks and Romans. By an interesting coincidence, two ancient representations of the Judgment were found within two years. One brought to light by M. Longperier in 1880 was engraved on an agate that could be traced back to Bagdad via Bucharest ; its age cannot, however, be decided with any great accuracy. But the other was found at Pompeii, and cannot, there- fore, be later than 79 a.d. M. H. Gaidoz, who has figured the two in Melusine for 1889, comes to the con- clusion that the Roman version is not derived from a Jewish or Christian source.- If so it must have come from the Jatakas, and as we know that other Jatakas came to the Hellenic world, this too may have been among them. I have found a slight piece of evidence from Rabbinic sources, which confirms this conclusion. The
sought to prove with some plausibility traces of Epicureanism and Stoicism in Ecclesiastes.
' The Two Pots occur in Ecdus. xiii. 2.
* He leaves out of account, however, the fact that both representations have the bisection test as in the Jewish and not the hauling, as in the Indian form. It is possible, however, that the latter is a tender Buddhistic softening of the original Indian folk-tale preserved in the Jewish legend.
128 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
great difference between the Jewish and the Indian form of the story is that in the latter the non-mother is a Rakshasha or demon. In commenting on the story, Rab, a teacher of the second century, declares that the mother's opponent was a demon {cf. Jellinek, Beth Hame- drash, vi., p. 31).
After all, it should not surprise us to find evidence of Buddhistic influence percolating into the Greco-Roman world. A movement which disturbs to its depths a whole ocean of human feeling will naturally radiate its influence, if only in ripples, to all parts in continuity with it.
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 129
THE REVISED OLD TESTAMENT.^
The revision of the Old Testament is a literary success, but it has no pretensions to scholarly completeness. That is the general impression which the new version niakes. There have been practically no alterations in the text, the variants of the Septuagint, even when undoubtedly superior, being relegated to the margin. The literary merits of the Authorised Version have been retained and on the whole enhanced, and its majestic rhythm has not been disturbed, and has even been allowed fuller play by the arrangement of the prose books in paragraphs, and of the poetical books in separate lines. The revisers are to be congratulated on the satisfactory result of their fifteen years' labour. There can be little doubt as to the wisdom of their decision in declining to make a new text of the Old Testament as the other company did with the New. The textual criticism of the Old Testament stands nowadays where that of the New did before the days of Griesbach. Even the Massorah is not settled ; the Septuagint does not exist in a critical edition ; its Hebrew original has only been sporadically restored, as in Proverbs by Lagarde, and in Samuel by Wellhausen after Thenius.
• The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments. Trnnslated out of the Original Tongues, being the Version of 1611 Revised. (Cam- bridge, University Press.)
K
130 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
Still less progress has been made in working back from the Targum and Peshitto to the text which stood before the Chaldaic and Syriac translators. Under these circum- stances it would have been little less than madness to have attempted the huge task of settling the earliest accessible text of the Old Testament. The revisers have produced what was really wanted — an amended version of the Bible as it has affected the religious and literary life of England for the past three hundred years. This is as it should be. The Old Testament is in itself a nation's literature, and depends for its effect far more on literary form than the narratives of the Gospels or the impassioned meta- physics of St. Paul. And it is just this literary form that the English version has caught better than any other translation in existence. It would have been a literary sin of the highest order if the revisers had destroyed this effect in any pedantic straining after an original text, consistency of rendering, or any other of the Dryasdust's excuses. The revisers have rather erred on the right side in their timidity in alteration, and even Mr. Matthew Arnold, we should fancy, would be satisfied with their work.
But our readers will be impatient for details. From the soberly written and business-like preface, dated July, 1884, may be selected a few general principles of render- ing. " The Lord," in small capitals, has been retained for the Tetragrammaton, while the nondescript " Jeho- vah " appears in the margin. Of technical terms from the Hebrew, only three seem to have been generally introduced. The meaningless " groves " has been re- placed by " Ashera " {e.g.^ Judges vi. 28), with its plurals
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 131
" Asherim " (Ex. xxxiv. 13) and "Asheroth" (Judges iii. 7). In the poetical books "Sheol" has taken the place of "hell" {e.g., Ps. ix. 17), which has been turned in prose passages by " the grave " and " the pit," with " Sheol " in the margin. " Abaddon " has been introduced in three passages : once in Job and twice in the Book of Proverbs. " Tent of meeting " has re- placed the misleading " Tabernacle of the Congregation " as a rendering of l'S'\T2 bms in the Pentateuch, and " meal offering " is an ingenious variant for " meat offer- ing " (nn2'2), " meat " having ceased to be a generic name for all food. " Ear " in the sense of " to plough " {e.g.y Deut. xxi. 4) has been dropped as not understood even by persons of intelligence, while " boiled " (Ex. ix. 31) has been retained as still in provincial use and without any literary equivalent. A new plural, " peoples," has been introduced to render □'^")2, though at times this be- comes " Gentiles" (e.g. Mai. i. 11), when the contrast to the chosen people is marked. A landmark in the history of the language has been removed by a general change of "his" into "its" when applied to neuter nouns. All headings of chapters have been dropped, as in the Revised New Testament, and the text is divided into paragraphs corresponding to the Massoretic signs D and D, though there appear to be certain deviations from these. The several days of creation are made to stand out more dis- tinctly, paragraphs ending with verses 6, 9, 14 and 24. The same expedient has enabled the revisers to suggest the dialogue form and dramatic character of the Song of Songs, the first chapter, for example, having breaks at verses 5, 8, 9, 12, 15, and 16, thus splitting it up into
K 2
132 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
seven speeches. The Psalms are now definitely divided into five " Books," the last four beginning at Pss. xlii., Ixxiii., xc, and cvii.
But the greatest improvement of a general nature is the printing of poetical passages in poetical form. Not only has this been done in the so-called Poetical Books, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and Canticles, but w^herever poeti- cal passages occur, though the prophets have been left as prose, however passionate and sustained their oratory. Thus the songs of Lamech, Jacob, Miriam, Moses, Deborah, and Hannah, the psalms of Jonah and Habak- kuk, and David's lament (2 Sam. i.) appear as verse. And even slight snatches of song like
Saul hath slain his thousands And David his tens of thousands
are given apart from the context, with much heightening of their effect. There would probably have been much less discussion about Joshua's miracle if it had always appeared as it appears in the Revised Version : —
And he said in the sight of Israel :
Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon,
And thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still and the moon stayed
Until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies. Is it not written in the book, of Jasher ?
So, too, the ballad origin of the famous jawbone wielded by Samson comes out clearly when his triumphal cry is printed (Judges xv. 16) : —
With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of an ass have I smitten a thousand men.
Further, the quotation from "the book of the Wars of the Lord" (Num. xxi. 14) is printed poetice. The
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 133
title of the book is very doubtful ; the Septuagint takes " the war of the Lord " as part of the quotation. These instances will illustrate the exegetic value of this seem- ingly mechanical improvement. This will probably prove the most popular change in the revision.
The revisers, however, deserve, and will receive, most praise for the evident care they have taken in preserving intact the many household words of the Old Testament. We have examined over a hundred of the most familiar phrases and passages, and in the large majority of cases have found them unchanged amid their new surround- ings. We may still talk of " a land flowing with milk and honey," "a still small voice," "a tale that is told," *' balm in Gllead," " house appointed for all living," " darkness which may be felt," " pen of a ready writer," " vanity of vanities," " law of the Medes and Persians," "man of unclean lips," "precept upon precept," "a lamp unto my feet," *' wife of thy bosom," " apple of his eye." Our " lines " may still continue to be " fallen in pleasant places " ; we may " eat, drink, and be merry," " take sweet counsel together," " grind the faces of the poor," " cause the widow's heart to sing for joy," " make a covenant with death," " heap coals of fire," and be " weighed in the balances and found wanting," " Cast thy bread upon the waters " and " escaped with the skin of my teeth" are also retained. The old saws have not been modernised. " Put not thy trust in princes," " Go to the ant, thou sluggard," " Answer a fool according to his folly," " A wise son maketh a glad father," " Be not righteous over much," " A soft answer turneth away wrath," " The race is not to the swift," " Love is strong
134 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
as death," " In the multitude of counsellors there is safety," " Righteousness exalteth a nation " — all these, and more also, retain, we are glad to observe, their old familiar faces. Longer passages are seldom retained so accurately in memory that slight changes would be no- ticed ; but in the best known of these much remains absolutely unaltered. "Naked came I," etc. (Job i. 21), "Man that is born of a woman" {jbid. xiv. i), "The heavens declare " (Ps. xix.), " The days of our years are threescore and ten" {ibid. xc. 10, though here the revi- sion reads pride for " strength "), " They that go down to the sea in ships," " We hanged our harps," and other passages of like familiarity have lost none of this at the hands of the rightly reverent revisers. Few, probably, would recognise the touches that have altered the well- known passage : —
But I know that my Redeemer liveth
And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth,
And after my skin hath been thus destroyed
Yet from my flesh shall I see God,
Whom I shall see for myself
And mine eyes shall behold and not another.
We have omitted the marginal notes, but may remark that it is to be regretted that the technical term " Goel," introduced into the margin here, has not been inserted elsewhere, as it refers to such a characteristic trait in Hebraic culture.
So far so good. No one can say to the revisers, " Ye have robbed us of our Bible." But not all the familiar features of Scripture have escaped unscathed. The high priest no longer casts lots "for the scapegoat," he
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 135
does so " for Azazel." " Selah " is no longer joined to the text, but is placed apart in square brackets — as a musical direction, we presume. The summary of each day's work at the creation now runs according to the formula : " And there was evening and there was morn- ing, one day," " a second day," " a third day," and so on, giving a suggestion of successive stages with long inter- vals. "The sweet influences of the Pleiades" only appears in the margin ; the text has simply, " Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades ? " (Job xxxviii. 31.) The "apples of gold " of Prov. xxv. 11 are now encased " in baskets of silver," not in " pictures." " Vanity and vexation of spirit" (Eccl. ii. 17) has, — horribile d'lctu ! — become " Vanity and a striving after wind." Reuben's curse (Gen. xlix. 4), " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," now reads, " Unstable as water, thou shalt not have the excellency," with little change of meaning and much increase of harshness. On the other hand, a fine archaism in Eccl. xii. i shows the revisers more Eliza- bethan than the Authorised Version: "Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The disturbance of rhythm involved in the change, " Remember also," for " Remem- ber now," may be excused on the o-round that it connects
' •)
may
the thought better with xi. 9, and, at any rate, the variant, " or ever the evil days come," for " while the evil days come not," suggested probably by the same idiom in xii, 6, has an extremely happy effect. The following changes have perhaps been necessary, but grate sadly against literary associations : —
1,36 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
Authorized.
Gen. vi. 4. There were giants in the earth in those days.
Job
!5-
Oh.
.that mine
aiiversary had written a book.
Ps. viii. 5. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.
Ps. cxvi. II. I said in my haste, All men are liars.
Eccl. xii. 13. Let us hear the con- clusion of the whole matter ; Fear God, &c.
Prov. xiv. 9. Fools make a mock at sin : but among the righteous there is favour.
Revised.
The Nephelim were in the earth in those days.
O that I had the indictment
which my adversary had written.
For thou hast made him but little lower than God.
I said in my haste, All men are a lie.
This is the end of the matter : all hath been heard. Fear God, &c.
The foolish make a mock at guilt ; But among the upright there is good will.
The above, however, are nearly all the passages in which a shock is given to old associations, and the vast majo- rity of familiar quotations remain unchanged — to the great advantage of the version so far as its chances of popularity go.
As a specimen of longer passages we may take the most striking passage in prophetic literature. Is. Hi. 13- liii. 12, where almost every word offers temptations to rash alteration. Yet the following will be found to include most of, if not all, the variants of the two versions : —
Authorized.
lii. 13. deal prudently extolled
and be very high.
14. As thee 5 his visage
men.
15. The kings, liii. I. is the arm.
Revised.
deal wisely lifted up and shall
be very high.
Like as thee (his visage. .....
men).
kings.
hath the arm.
REVISED OLD
Authorized.
2. we shall see.
3. is despised and we hid as
it were our faces from him ; he was despised.
7. he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth : he is brought as a
lamb to the slaughter so he
openeth.
8. He was taken from prison and from judgment : and who shall de- clare his generation ?
9. he made because he had
done.
11. for he shall bear.
12. and he bare.
TESTAMENT. 137
Revised.
we see.
was despised and as one from
whom men hide their faces he was despised.
yet he humbled himself and opened not his mouth, as a lamb that is led to the slaughter yea, he opened.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who among thetn con- sidered that
they made although he had
done.
and he shall bear.
yet he bare.
Except in verses 3, 7, and 8, the changes are very slight from a literary point of view, but the theological import- ance of the change of tense in the first three verses may be observed, though this is minimised by the future in verse 11. Indeed, the Christology of the Old Testament is almost entirely unaffected by the revision. The crucial passage. Is. vii. 14, " Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," remains unchanged, except that the margin suggests " the virgin is with child and beareth." So, too, in Ps. ii. 12, "Kiss the Son" remains, but without the capital, and references to the entirely different versions of the translations are given in the margin. Similarly, in Gen. xlix. 10, "Until S'hiloh come" is kept, but "Till he come to Shiloh " is noted as an alternative in the margin. In all these cases, as in many others, there seems to have been a strong minority which held out for the
138 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
correct reading, and succeeded at least in putting it into the margin, which, we may say at once, contains most of the scholarship of the revision.
So far we have commented rather upon what the revisers have not done than upon the manner in which they have performed the actual task of revision, to which we now turn. We have only observed one case where anything has actually been added to the text without warrant from the original Hebrew. In i Sam. xiii. i, which now reads " Saul reigned one year," the revisers have boldly conjectured " Saul was [thirty] years old." The Hebrew certainly cannot bear the former meaning, but why did the revisers insert " thirty " ? The late S. Sharpe, and others before him, suggested that Saul's age was originally expressed by a letter-numeral, thus, ''2 72 blMtt? TOti?, and that the first nun dropped out ; if so, the age would be fifty. The LXX. omits the verse and gives no help. Another case where the Massoretic text has been departed from, though only as regards the vowels, is in Joshua iv. 24, where the obvious correction *' that they might fear " instead of " ye " has been made. But we must not linger to discuss details. Let us offer a number of examples where the Bible has been really re- vised where it was needed : —
Authorized. Revised.
Gen. xxii. 14. In the mount of In Lord it shall be provided.
the Lord it shall be seen.
xxxi. 53. By the fear of his father By the Fear of his father Isaac. Isaac.
Ex. xiv. 20. And it was a cloud And there was the cloud and the
and darkness to them, but it gave darkness, yet gave it light by night, light by night to these.
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 139
Atithorized. Job xxviii. 4. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant ; even the waters forgotten of the foot : they are dried up, they are gone away from men.
xxxi. 35. Behold my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me.
xxxvi. 18. Beware lest he take thee away with his stroke.
Ps. xii. 5. I will set him in safety from him that pufFeth at him.
Ixviii. 4. Extol him that rideth upon the heavens.
19. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us 7aith dene/its.
30. Rebuke the company of spear- men.
Ixxxvii. 7. As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there: all my springs are in thee.
cxli. 5. Let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head.
Is. xl. 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. Prepare ye pare ye in the wilderness the way of the way of the Lord. the Lord.
Amos v. 26. But ye have borne Yea, ye have borne Succith your the tabernacle of your Moloch. king.
The passages, too, describing the building of the Tabernacle, or, as we must now say, " Tent of Meet- ing," as well as those dealing with Solomon's temple, are much more clearly rendered, but must be read in their entirety. Some of the renderings are ingenious, but invalid. The difficult passage Deut, xxxii. 5 affords an example. " They are not his children, it is their
Revised. He breaketh open a shaft away from
where men sojourn ; They are forgotten of the foot that
passeth by. They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. (Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty answer me.)
Beware lest thou be led away by thy sufficiency.
I will set him in safety at whom they puff.
Cast up a high way for him that rideth through the deserts.
Blessed who daily beareth our
burden.
Rebuke the wild beast of the reeds. As well the singers as they that
dance say : All my fountains are in thee. And let him reprove me j it shall be
oil upon the head. Let not my head refuse it.
The voice of one that crieth, Pre-
140 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
blemish," is better than " Their spot is not the spot of his children " (A.V.), which Mr. Herbert Spencer quotes as a reference to tattooing. But one cannot make a whole sentence out of the single word DXSia, which had better be taken adverbially, as Dr. Friedlander takes it in his scholarly and moderate revision, which deserves to be better known. In Moses's blessing, the revisers went to the original text about Reuben, which sounds more like a curse : "Yet let his men be few" (Deut. xxxiii. 6). The witch of Endor now sees only " a god," not " gods," ascending (i Sam. xxviii, 13); but the accom- panying participle is in the plural. As a general rule, however, the revisers have evaded such difficulties by leaving them severely alone. We have tested the revision in some hundred passages which are really difficult, and have only found any attempt at solution in about a quarter of them, and then mostly in the margin. And of passages where the versions, especially the Septuagint, easily help us out of insoluble difficulties in the Hebrew text, only a few have been considered, even in the margin.
The whole future of the new version turns on the question whether it is really an adequate revision of the Authorized Version or not. The reason why a revision was deemed necessary was because it was recognised that many errors existed in the old version, and that it should be amended so that the translation should answer the needs of modern scholarship. The chief condition of
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 141
the work was that while necessary revisions should be made, the language of the old version should be as far as possible retained. Herein consisted the Scylla and Charybdis of the revisers' voyage of investigation : adequate revision on the one hand, reverence for the style on the other. From the chorus of congratulation from the daily press — very fair judges on such a matter — it is clear that the revisers have not materially injured the rhythm or style of the earlier version. But the suspicion remains that in their efforts to conserve the style, they have managed to preserve many of the errors, and have preferred putting their emendations in the margin, where for all practical purposes they are non-existent, as is certainly the case with the marginal references of the Authorized Version. It might be unfair to describe the new Bible, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, as a paragraph Bible with revised margins, but that is certainly the impression that it leaves, though only continual use will determine how far the text has been sufficiently revised.
A letter from the secretary to the Company of Revisers throws light on the history of the version, and helps to explain the very large number of marginal references which is one of the most characteristic traits of the new version. Mr. W. A. Wright complains of some errors of citation^ which occurred in the attempt to lay before the reader at the earliest possible date, a description of the Revised Version. But incidentally he lets out that the revisers reverted in the third reading to
' These have been removed from the present reprint of the former part of the article.
142 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
many a rendering of the Authorized, which they had discarded in their second. It is not difficult to read between the lines and discern the motive of this recanta- tion. Between the second and third readings appeared the Revised New Testament, which was universally blamed for wanton departure from the Authorized Version. It seems that the other company, with this example before their eyes, hastened to repair the ravages they had made, and restored the old readings in many passages, placing their previous alterations in the margin. Like Brummel's valet, they may point to them, and say, " These are our failures." The revisers have thereby averted from themselves the fate that has befallen their fellow revisers ; but it remains to be seen whether in so doing they have failed to fulfil their appointed task.
It is not for a moment to be denied that much has been done in the way of revision of the more obvious blunders of the old version. Many of these have been noted by the newspapers in the reviews of the translation of the literature of ancient Israel, which they managed to produce between midnight Friday, and the dawn of Saturday.^ A few additional examples may be added to those already given : —
Authorized. Revised.
I Kings X. 28. And Solomon And the horses which Solomon
had horses brought out of Egypt, and had were brought out of Egypt ; and
linen yarn : the king's merchants the king's merchants received them
received the linen yarn at a price. in droves, each drove at a price.
' The Revised Version was to have been issued to the critics on mid- night, Friday, May 15th, 1885. Owing to the appearance of the earlier part of this review in the AtlientBiim at midday on Friday, the issue of review copies was, I believe, expedited.
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 143
Authorized. Revised.
Ps. xxxvi. 2. For he flattereth For he flattereth himself in his
himself in his own eyes, until his own eyes that his iniquity shall not
iniquity be found to be hateful. be found out and be hated.
Cant. vii. 8, 9. The smell of thy And the smell of thy breath like nose like apples ; and the roof of thy apples,
mouth like the best wine for my And thy mouth like the best wine
beloved, that goeth down sweetly. That goeth down smoothly for my
beloved.
Dan. xi. 39. Thus shall he do in And he shall deal with the strongest
the most strong holds with a strange fortresses by the help of a strange
god, whom he shall acknowledge and god ; whosoever acknowledgeth him
increase with glory. he will increase with glory.
The improvement in these passages is obvious, and similar examples might be multiplied to almost any extent. It would be, indeed, strange if fourteen years' work, with the aid of nineteenth century scholarship, had not been able to effect many changes. But what was wanted was that the ordinary reader should be able to feel confidence in the revision as representing throughout the best results of modern scholarship. Otherwise what advantage has the Revised over the Authorised Version ? Now, if a large number of the unintelligible passages of the older version remain as incomprehensible as before, the reader's confidence in the revision as a whole is shaken, and its purpose is frustrated. It will be a matter for experience to decide whether the number of passages not amended are sufficient to produce this result, but the excessive number of marginal alternatives cannot fail to arouse a feeling of uncertainty about the whole revision in the ordinary reader. It would have been far better to have referred this uncertainty to its true cause, the obscurity
144 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
of the text, than to leave the impression that the un- certainty was in the minds of the revisers. The revisers might have adopted as a regular formula in such cases the marginal " Text obscure," which they give now and then, but far too rarely to leave the proper impression on the reader's mind. It would perhaps have been worth trial to leave a few passages blank, with the remark that they gave no sense, rather than leave them untouched, full of resonant rhythm, but signifying nothing. The confusion of pronouns, " thy," " your," " their," " him," " himself," in 2 Sam. vii. 23, may serve as an illustration, or Judges v. 22 : —
Then did the horsehoofs stamp
By reason of the prancings, the prancings of their strong ones.
In both these cases we believe a satisfactory meaning could have been arrived at : in the former by the omission, with the LXX., of " for you" ; in the latter by translat- ing the second line " In the charges, the charges of their strong ones." But if they were to be left in an in- comprehensible state, some indication of the fact might have been given. Again, it was careless to leave the absurd finish of 2 Sam. xiii. 39, "For he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead," without making the obvious emendation " he was comforted concerning the death of Amnon " (lit. concerning Amnon that he was dead). At times the revisers have even introduced new difficulties, as in Job xxxix. 13, where the epithet " kindlv " would mislead anyone who did not know the pun oi the original. The question how to deal with the obsolete words was undoubtedly difficult, and on
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 145
the whole the attitude of the revisers towards such words as "seethe," "raiment," " chapmen," " noisome," ".poll," against the modern equivalents suggested by the American revisers, is to be commended. But the word "abjects" in Psalm xxxv. 15, might have been changed with advantage. The headings of the Psalms, " Shosh- anim," "Muthlaben," and the like, might have been elucidated in the margin by Aben Ezra's ingenious suggestion " To the tune of Shoshanim," &c. Among other passages which needed alteration or explanation, but which have been left untouched, may be mentioned 2 Sam. iii. 39 ; 2 Kings iii. 25 ; Ps. xiv. 5, xlv. 12, Ixxiii, 10 ; Prov. xiii. 5, xxviii. 16, xxxi. 3, 4.
Again, in the use of the versions in the margins (and very rarely ;in the texts) there seems to be no uniformity. Besides the instances already quoted, we have noticed the text emended according to the versions at Ruth iv. 4 (b«2n for ^sa^) and i Sam. vi. 18 (pS for b^S). But no attempt has been made to change the " I Deborah arose " of Judges v. 7, into " Thou didst arise," with the simple alteration of the points suggested by Gratz. And while the variants of the LXX. are at times put in the margin, the light-giving and important variant in i Sam. xiv. 41, which gives so much information about the use of the Urim and Thummim, is conspicuous by its absence ; and the additional nationalities given by the Seventy in Gen. x. are likewise omitted. So, too, with passages like Judges xix. 18 ("my house" for "house of the Lord"), 2 Sam. vi. 21 ("It was before the Lord that I danced"). Job xxxi. II, Ps. Ixxiii. 7. But these inconsistencies are
L
146 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGY.
the natural results of revision by a committee. It is thus we may explain the fact that while the company have adhered stoutly to the Massoretic text as a whole, they have discarded the Massoretic paragraphs, which are much earlier than the vowel points, and regarded by the Jews as of so much importance that a mistake in one of these vitiates a synagogue roll.
Again, in their treatment of the tenses, which have received so much elucidation from Prof. Driver's work, the revisers show considerable variation. At times, as in Jer. XX. 9, Ezek. xxvii. 33-6, they have made much- needed changes — in the former from past to present, in the latter from future to past — whereas in Ps. xxii. 30, no change of tense has occurred, nor has any attempt been made to give the inceptive force of the participle nS!Jia in Gen. xxxviii. 25. Nowhere is there greater room for improvement in the Authorised Version than with regard to a more consistent rendering of the Hebrew tenses.
The revisers have been more successful with the subject-matter of the book — the Realien as the Germans call it. This is especially the case with the geographical passages, particularly in Joshua, where the influence of Dean Stanley and Sir George Grove is clearly marked in such passages as xi. 16, xiii. 16. Everywhere an attempt is made to give local colour to the narrative, often with great success, by the use of technical terms like " the Arabat," " lowlands," " plot of ground," " bare heights " (''^JJ?, Is. xli. 18), etc. Why, however, retain the incon- sistency of calling Job's Uz by the name of Huz in Gen. xxii. 21 ? The revisers show great skill in carpentering
REVISED OLD TESTAMENT. 147
details in their treatment of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Of other archaeological points we may refer to the details of dress in Is. iii., which would now satisfy De Quincey. Why, however, did the revisers retain Joseph's " coat of many colours," which has no signi- ficance, when " long-sleeved tunic " would indicate the pampered darling who had no work to do ?
Let not the drift of the preceding remarks be mis- understood ; they are merely the jottings of first impres- sions made by the new version, and though passages selected at random often give a surprisingly accurate estimate of the whole, this may not be the case in the present instance. All we wish to point out is that it depends on the number of such omissions as we have indicated whether the version of 1885 will be regarded as an adequate revision, and then take the place of the faulty, but magnificent rendering of 161 1. Its future in this respect is bound up in more senses than one with that of the New Testament. The conditions of the two versions were vastly different : the Old Testament revisers had to deal with works mainly literary in form ; the New Testament Company had to deal with docu- ments charged with theological and dogmatic signi- ficance. It was obvious that the former had to take care that the literary beauties of the Authorised Version should not be impaired at their hands. The New Testa- ment revisers on the other hand had to see that the Christian world was not called upon to believe more or otherwise than the earliest documents suggested ; their aim was theological and scientific, that of the Old Testa- ment revisers more of a literary nature. Both have been.
148 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY.
in their way, successful ; but it is natural that the task of the latter should be the more popular. And when we suggest that their scholarship might have been more freely displayed, they may perhaps retort that they have shown the highest scholarship, which deals with literary form as well as literary material. Of their success in preserving the literary beauties of the original Old Testa- ment of 161 1 there can be no doubt. And this is so great a service that it overbalances any amount of faulty scholarship or insufficient courage, which may, after all, be only another name for taste. The revisers at any rate have not been scholarly overmuch, and for this they will be heartily thanked by all who value the Oriental hyper- bole, antique wisdom, vivid narration, passionate oratory, tender devotion, and profound searchings of the heart which have made the Bible the book of humanity.
WERTHEIMER, LEA AND CO., PRINTERS, CIRCUS PLACE, LONDON WALL.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
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