Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations

by A. H. Sayce

Most of the Semitic languages—or dialects if we like so to call them—are now dead, swallowed up by the Arabic of Mohammed and the Qorân. The Assyrian which was spoken in Assyria and Babylonia is extinct; so, too, are the Ethiopic of Abyssinia, and the Hebrew language itself. What we term Hebrew was originally "the language of Canaan," spoken by the Semitic Canaanites long before the Israelitish conquest of the country, and found as late as the Roman age on the monuments of Phoenicia and Carthage. The Minæan and the Sabæan dialects of southern Arabia still survive in modern forms; Arabic, which has now overflowed the rest of the Semitic world, was the language of central Arabia alone. In northern Arabia, as well as in Mesopotamia and Syria, Aramaic dialects were used, the miserable relics of which are preserved to-day among a few villagers of the Lebanon and Lake Urumîyeh. These Aramaic dialects, it is now believed, arose from a mixture of Arabic with "the language of Canaan."

On the physical side, the Semitic race is not so homogeneous as it is on the linguistic side. But this is due to intermarriage with other races, and where it is purest it displays the same general characteristics. Thick and fleshy lips, arched nose, black hair and eyes, and white complexion, distinguish the pure-blooded Semite. Intellectually he is clever and able, quick to learn and remember, with an innate capacity for trade and finance. Morally he is intense but sensuous, strong in his hate and in his affections, full of a profound belief in a personal God as well as in himself.

When Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees the power and influence of Babylonia had been firmly established for centuries throughout the length and breadth of western Asia. From the mountains of Elam to the coast of the Mediterranean the Babylonian language was understood, the Babylonian system of writing was taught and learned, Babylonian literature was studied, Babylonian trade was carried on, and Babylonian law was in force. From time to time Syria and Canaan had obeyed the rule of the Babylonian kings, and been formed into a Babylonian province. In fact, Babylonian rule did not come to an end in the west till after the death of Abraham; Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, entitles himself king of "the land of the Amorites," as Palestine was called by the Babylonians, and his fourth successor still gives himself the same title. The loss of Canaan and the fall of the Babylonian empire seem to have been due to the conquest of Babylon by a tribe of Elamite mountaineers.

The Babylonians of Abraham's age were Semites, and the language they spoke was not more dissimilar from Canaanitish or Hebrew than Italian is from Spanish. But the population of the country had not always been of the Semitic stock. Its first settlers—those who had founded its cities, who had invented the cuneiform system of writing and originated its culture—were of a wholly different race, and spoke an agglutinative language which had no resemblance to that of the Semites. They had, however, been conquered and their culture absorbed by the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians of later history, and the civilisation and culture which had spread throughout western Asia was a Semitic modification and development of the older culture of Chaldæa. Its elements, indeed, were foreign, but long before it had been communicated to the nations of the west it had become almost completely Semitic in character. The Babylonian conquerors of Canaan were Semites, and the art and trade, the law and literature they brought with them were Semitic also.

In passing, therefore, from Babylonia to Canaan, Abraham was but passing from one part of the Babylonian empire to another. He was not migrating into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. The road he traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and civil officials, by Babylonians making their way to Canaan, and by Canaanites intending to settle in Babylonia for the sake of trade. Harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a Babylonian name, and its great temple of the Moon-god had been founded by Babylonian princes after the model of the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the birthplace of the patriarch. Even in Canaan itself the deities of Babylonia were worshipped or identified with the native gods. Anu the god of the sky, Rimmon the god of the air, Nebo the interpreter and prophet of Bel-Merodach, were all adored in Palestine, and their names were preserved to later times in the geography of the country. Even Ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to be merged, was of Babylonian origin.

Abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of Babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. The fact is an important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the credibility of the narratives contained in the Book of Genesis. Written and contemporaneous history in Babylonia went back to an age long anterior to that of Abraham—his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the decline of the Babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to himself and his posterity. His birth in Ur, his migration to Harran and Palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all that we are told of his relationship to Lot or to the tribes of north-western Arabia.

In Canaan, however, Abraham was but a sojourner. Though he came there as a Babylonian prince, as an ally of its Amoritish chieftains, as a leader of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a Babylonian army, his only possession in it was the burial-place of Machpelah. Here, in the close neighbourhood of the later Hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock for the purposes of burial. The sepulchre of Machpelah was the sole possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his descendants.

Of these, however, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah moved southward into the desert, out of the reach of the cultured Canaanites and the domination of Babylonia. Isaac, too, the son of his Babylonian wife, seemed bent upon following their example. He established himself on the skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the borders of Palestine, nor on the other from the block of mountains within which was the desert sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. His sons Esau and Jacob shared the desert and the cultivated land between them. Esau planted himself among the barren heights of Mount Seir, subjugating or assimilating its Horite and Amalekite inhabitants, and securing the road which carried the trade of Syria to the Red Sea; while Jacob sought his wives among the settled Aramæans of Harran, and, like Abraham, pitched his tent in Canaan. At Shechem, in the heart of Canaan, he purchased a field, not, as in the case of Abraham, for the sake of burial, but in order that he might live upon it in tent or house, and secure a spring of water for his own possession.

In Jacob the Israelites saw their peculiar ancestor. His twelve sons became the fathers and representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel, and his own name was changed to that of Israel. The inscribed tablets of early Babylonia have taught us that both Israel and Ishmael were the names of individuals in the Patriarchal age, not the names of tribes or peoples, and consequently the Israelites, like the Ishmaelites, of a later day must have been the descendants of an individual Israel and Ishmael as the Old Testament records assert. Already in the reign of the Babylonian king Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Amraphel, the contemporary of Abraham, a high-priest in the district of northern Chaldasa assigned to "Amorite" settlers from Canaan, bore the name of Sar-ilu or Israel.[¹]