The Israelites traced back to Abram the rite of circumcision which they practised. The rite, however, was not confined to Israel. So far as Western Asia is concerned, it seems to have been of African origin. It is to be found among most of the races and tribes of Africa, and in Egypt the institution was of immemorial antiquity. According to Herodotos (ii. 36), the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, and the Kolkhians alone observed it ‘from the beginning,’ the Phœnicians and Syrians of Palestine having learned it from the Egyptians, and the Cappadocians from the people of Kolkhis. But the knowledge of the world possessed by Herodotos was limited, and his anthropology is not profound. The practice is met with in various parts of the world; it owes its origin to considerations of chastity, its maintenance to sanitary reasons. It is true that Africa was peculiarly its home, and that it seems to have been common to the aboriginal tribes of that continent, but it is also true that it was known to aboriginal tribes in other parts of the globe among whom—so far as our evidence can tell us—the practice originated independently.[[42]]
Whether it was originally a Semitic as well as an African rite, we do not at present know. We have as yet no certain evidence that it was practised among the Babylonians. Indeed, the fact that Abraham was not circumcised until after his arrival in Canaan would imply that it was not. Even in Canaan itself there were tribes, apart from the Philistine immigrants, to whom it was unknown, as we learn from the story of Hamor and Shechem (Gen. xxxiv. 14, sqq.). And though the inhabitants of Northern Arabia were circumcised in their thirteenth year, as we are told by Josephus, it is doubtful whether the same custom prevailed in the southern half of the peninsula. So far as Midian was concerned, we have express testimony (Exod. iv. 24-26, cf. ii. 19) that the rite was regarded as peculiar to the stranger from Egypt.
It seems probable, therefore, that Herodotos was right in declaring that circumcision had been introduced into Palestine by the Egyptians. Intercourse between Canaan and the Delta went back to the early days of Egyptian history, and it would not be surprising if Egyptian influences had found their way into Canaan at the same time. Canaanitish slaves were carried into the valley of the Nile, and doubtless Egyptian slaves were at times kidnapped into Canaan.
The circumcision of Abraham and his household may, consequently, have been in accordance with a custom which had already grown up among the Amoritish population around him. But whether this were the case or not, the rite received a new meaning and assumed a new form. It became the sign and seal of a religious covenant. Those who had been circumcised were thereby devoted to the God of Abraham and his descendants. Henceforth there was not only a division between the circumcised and the uncircumcised, there was also a division between those who had received the circumcision of Abraham and those who had not. It is noticeable that the narrative expressly includes among those who were thus outwardly dedicated to the God of Israel not only the ancestor of the Ishmaelite tribes of Northern Arabia, but also the foreign slaves who belonged to the household of the patriarch. They had left the home of their fathers, and his God accordingly had become theirs. The fact is paralleled by the law relating to another seal of the covenant between Israel and its God; the Sabbath had to be kept not only by the Israelite, but also by the ‘stranger’ within his gates.
A change of name accompanied the rite which the patriarch performed. The Babylonian Abram became the Palestinian Abraham. To the native of the old Oriental world the name was not merely the representation of a thing; it was, in a measure, the thing itself. Even Greek philosophy failed at first to distinguish between an object and its expression in speech. A thing was known only through its name, and in the name were to be found its qualities and its essence. A name which brought with it unlucky associations was itself the bringer of ill-luck, but the ill-luck would turn to good if once the name were changed. The belief has lingered on into our own times, and the change of the Cape of Storms into the Cape of Good Hope is an illustration of its influence. The name meant personality as well as a thing. The man himself was changed when his name was changed. Hence it was that the Canaanites or Karians, who settled in Egypt, and there became Egyptian citizens, at once assumed Egyptian names. They had left Canaan and Karia behind them, with the gods and the habits of their ancestors, and had adopted the religion and manners of another country. They had, as it were, stripped themselves of their old personality, and had clothed themselves with a new one. It was thus a new personality that was assumed by the Babylonian Abram when he became the Abraham of Western Asia. It cut him off, as it were, from the land of his birth, and gave him a new birth in the country of his adoption. The merchant-prince of Babylonia, who had overthrown the rearguard of the host of Chedor-laomer, and whose maid had borne to him the ancestor of the Ishmaelites, thus passed into the forefather and founder of the Israelitish race.
The etymology and meaning of the new name are unknown. It would seem that they had been forgotten even at the time when the book of Genesis was written. At all events, the explanation of the name given there (xvii. 5) is one of those plays upon words of which the Biblical writers, like Orientals generally, are so fond. ‘Ab-(ra)ham,’ it is said, is Ab-ham(ôn), ‘the father of a multitude,’ in total disregard of the second syllable of the name. It may be, however, that there was still a tradition that in raham we have a word which had a similar signification to that of hamôn, ‘a multitude,’ though the attempts that have been made to discover any word of the kind in the Semitic languages have hitherto been unsuccessful. We must be content with the fact that Ab-ram, ‘the exalted father,’ was transformed into the Israelitish Ab-raham.[[43]]
The change of name was followed by the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael from his father’s house. Closely allied in blood as the Ishmaelites of north-western Arabia were to the house of Israel, it was only in part that they shared in the covenant made with their common father. Circumcision indeed they also possessed, but to Israel alone was granted the Law. To Israel alone did God reveal Himself under His name of Yahveh.
The inscriptions of a later age, which have been found in the Ishmaelite territory, show that the language then spoken by the Ishmaelitish tribes was Aramaic rather than what we call Arabic.[[44]] From the borders of Babylonia to the Sinaitic Peninsula, and as far north as the mountain-ranges of the Taurus, Aramaic dialects were used. How far the difference in language meant that the populations who spoke these Aramaic dialects differed also in blood from the other members of the Semitic family, we do not know, but it is probable that the difference in blood was not great. The Semitic family seems to have been as homogeneous in race as it was in speech, and the differences in speech were comparatively slight. In fact, the Semitic languages do not differ more from one another than the languages of modern Europe which claim descent from Latin, and it is probable that the speaker of an Aramaic dialect would not have had very great difficulty in making himself intelligible to the speakers of what we term Hebrew.
Hebrew was, as Isaiah tells us (xix. 18), ‘the language of Canaan.’ The fact became clear to European scholars as soon as the Phœnician inscriptions were deciphered. Between the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Phœnician of the older inhabitants of Canaan the differences are less than those between one English dialect and another. Chief among them is the absence in Phœnician of the Hebrew article and waw conversivum. But the idiom to which grammarians have given the latter name seems to have been an independent creation of Hebrew itself, and even in Hebrew it disappeared in the later stage of the language. The article is found in the so-called Lihyanian inscriptions of Northern Arabia,[[45]] and we may regard it as one of the indications that the Israelites had been Bedâwin before they entered Palestine and made their way from the desert into the Promised Land.
The Tel el-Amarna tablets have carried the history of Canaanitish or Hebrew beyond the age of the Exodus. In some of the letters written from Palestine the writers have added the Canaanitish equivalents of certain Assyrian words and phrases. They show that from the pre-Mosaic epoch down to the period of the Exile the language changed but little; the words and phrases that have thus been preserved being substantially the same as those which we find in the pages of the Old Testament.[[46]]