The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

The historian, however, is inclined to look with suspicion upon historical results which rest upon purely philological evidence. It is not so very long ago since the comparative philologists believed they had restored the early history of the Aryan race. With the help of the dictionary and grammar they had painted an idyllic picture of the life and culture of the primitive Aryan family and traced the migrations of its offshoots from their primeval Asiatic home. But anthropology has rudely dissipated all these reconstructions of primitive history, and has not spared even the Aryan family or the Asiatic home itself. The history that was based on philology has been banished to fairyland. It may be that the historical results based on the complicated and ingenious system of Hexateuchal criticism will hereafter share the same fate.

In fact, there is one characteristic of them which cannot but excite suspicion. A passage which runs counter to the theory of the critic is at once pronounced an interpolation, due to the clumsy hand of some later ‘Redactor.’ Thus ‘the tabernacle of the congregation’ is declared to have been an invention of the Priestly Code; and therefore a verse in the First Book of Samuel (ii. 22), which happens to refer to it, is arbitrarily expunged from the text. Similarly passages in the historical books which imply an acquaintance on the part of Solomon and his successors with the laws and institutions of the Priestly Code are asserted to be late additions, and assigned to the very circle of writers to which the composition of the Code is credited. Indeed, if we are to believe the analysts, a considerable part of the professedly historical literature of the Old Testament was written or ‘redacted’ chiefly with the purpose of bolstering up the ideas and inventions either of the Deuteronomist or of the later Code. This is a cheap and easy way of rewriting ancient history, but it is neither scientific nor in accordance with the historical method, however consonant it may be with the methods of the philologist.

When, however, we come to examine the philological evidence upon which we are asked to accept this new reading of ancient Hebrew history, we find that it is wofully defective. We are asked to believe that a European scholar of the nineteenth century can analyse with mathematical precision a work composed centuries ago in the East for Eastern readers in a language that is long since dead, can dissolve it verse by verse, and even word by word, into its several elements, and fix the approximate date and relation of each. The accomplishment of such a feat is an impossibility, and to attempt it is to sin as much against common sense as against the laws of science. Science teaches us that we can attain to truth only by the help of comparison; we can know things scientifically only in so far as they can be compared and measured one with another. Where there is no comparison there can be no scientific result. Even the logicians of the Middle Ages taught that no conclusion can be drawn from what they termed a single instance. It is just this, however, that the Hexateuchal critics have essayed to do. The Pentateuch and its history have been compared with nothing except themselves, and the results have been derived not from the method of comparison, but from the so-called ‘tact’ and arbitrary judgment of the individual scholar. Certain postulates have been assumed, the consequences of which have been gradually evolved, one after another, while the coherence and credibility of the general hypothesis has been supported by the invention of further subordinate hypotheses as the need for them arose. The ‘critical’ theory of the origin and character of the Hexateuch closely resembles the Ptolemaic theory of the universe; like the latter, it is highly complicated and elaborate, coherent in itself, and perfect on paper, but unfortunately baseless in reality.

Its very complication condemns it. It is too ingenious to be true. Had the Hexateuch been pieced together as we are told it was, it would have required a special revelation to discover the fact. We may lay it down as a general rule in science that the more simple a theory is, the more likely it is to be correct. It is the complicated theories, which demand all kinds of subsidiary qualifications and assistant hypotheses, that are put aside by the progress of science. The wit of man may be great, but it needs a mass of material before even a simple theory can be established with any pretence to scientific value.

There is yet another reason why the new theory of the origin of the Mosaic Law stands self-condemned. It deals with the writers and readers of the ancient East as if they were modern German professors and their literary audience. The author of the Priestly Code is supposed to go to work with scissors and paste, and with a particular object in view, like a rather wooden and unimaginative compiler of to-day. And so closely did the minds and methods of the authors of the Hexateuch resemble those of their modern European critics, that in spite of their efforts to conceal the piecemeal nature of their work, as well as of the fact that it actually deceived their countrymen to whom it was addressed, to the European scholar of to-day it all lies open and revealed. When, however, we turn to other products of Oriental thought, whether ancient or modern, we do not find that this is the way in which the authors of them have written history, or what purports to be history, neither do we find their readers to be at all like those for whom the Hexateuch is supposed to have been compiled. The point of view of an Oriental is still essentially different from that of a European, at all events so far as history and literature are concerned; and the attempt to transform the ancient Israelitish historians into somewhat inferior German compilers proves only a strange want of familiarity with Eastern modes of thought.

But it is not only science, it is common sense as well, which is violated by the endeavour to foist philological speculations into the treatment of historical questions. Hebrew is a dead language; it is moreover a language which is but imperfectly known. Our knowledge of it is derived entirely from that fragment of its literature which is preserved in the Old Testament, and the errors of copyists and the corruptions of the text make a good deal even of this obscure and doubtful. There are numerous words, the traditional rendering of which is questionable; there are numerous others in the case of which it is certainly wrong; and there is passage after passage in which the translations of scholars vary from one another, sometimes even to contradiction. Of both grammar and lexicon it may be said that we see them through a glass darkly. Not unfrequently the reading of the Septuagint—the earliest manuscript of which is six hundred years older than the earliest manuscript of the Hebrew text—differs entirely from the reading of the Hebrew; and there is a marked tendency among the Hexateuchal analysts to prefer it, though the recently-discovered Hebrew text of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to show that the preference is not altogether justified.

How, then, can a modern Western scholar analyse with even approximate exactitude an ancient Hebrew work, and on the strength of the language and style dissolve it once more into its component atoms? How can he determine the relation of these atoms one to the other, or presume to fix the dates to which they severally belong? The task would be impossible even in the case of a modern English book, although English is a spoken language with which we are all supposed to be thoroughly acquainted, while its vast literature is familiar to us all. And yet even where we know that a work is composite, it passes the power of man to separate it into its elements and define the limits of each. No one, for instance, would dream of attempting such a task in the case of the novels of Besant and Rice; and the endeavour to distinguish in certain plays of Shakespeare what belongs to the poet himself and what to Fletcher has met with the oblivion it deserved. Is it likely that a problem which cannot be solved in the case of an English book can be solved where its difficulties are increased a thousandfold? The minuteness and apparent precision of Hexateuchal criticism are simply due, like that of the Ptolemaic theory, to the artificial character of the basis on which it rests. It is, in fact, a philological mirage; it attempts the impossible, and in place of the scientific method of comparison, it gives us as a starting-point the assumptions and arbitrary principles of a one-sided critic.[^[129]]

Where philology has failed, archæology has come to our help. The needful comparison of the Old Testament record with something else than itself has been afforded by the discoveries which have been made of recent years in Egypt and Babylonia and other parts of the ancient East. At last we are able to call in the aid of the scientific method, and test the age and character, the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Old Testament history, by monuments about whose historical authority there can be no question. And the result of the test has, on the whole, been in favour of tradition, and against the doctrines of the newer critical school. It has vindicated the antiquity and credibility of the narratives of the Pentateuch; it has proved that the Mosaic age was a highly literary one, and that consequently the marvel would be, not that Moses should have written, but that he should not have done so; and it has undermined the foundation on which the documentary hypothesis of the origin of the Hexateuch has been built. We are still indeed only at the beginning of discoveries; those made during the past year or two have for the student of Genesis been exceptionally important; but enough has now been gained to assure us that the historian may safely disregard the philological theory of Hexateuchal criticism, and treat the books of the Pentateuch from a wholly different point of view. They are a historical record, and it is for the historian and archæologist, and not for the grammarian, to determine their value and age.

The investigation of the literary sources of history has been a peculiarly German pastime. Doubtless such an investigation has been necessary. But it is exposed to the danger of trying to make bricks without straw. More often than not the materials are wanting for arriving at conclusions of solid scientific value. The results announced in such cases are due partly to the critic’s own prepossessions and postulates, partly to the imperfection of the evidence. It is easy to doubt, still easier to deny, especially where the evidence is defective, and the criticism of the literary sources of a narrative has sometimes meant an unwarrantable and unintelligent scepticism. To reverse traditional judgments, to reject external testimony, and to discover half-a-dozen authors where antiquity knew of but one, may be a proof of the critic’s ingenuity, but it does not always demonstrate his appreciation of evidence.

Criticism of the literary sources of our historical knowledge is indeed necessary, and a recognition of the fact has much to do with the advance which has been made during the present century in the study of the past. But it must not be forgotten that such criticism has its weak side. Internal evidence alone is always unsatisfactory; it offers too much scope for the play of the critic’s imagination and the impression of his own idiosyncrasies upon the records of history. It resembles too much the procedure of the spider who spins his web out of himself. It is wanting in that element of comparison without which scientific truth is unattainable. To determine the age and trustworthiness of our literary authorities is doubtless of extreme importance to the historian, but unfortunately the materials for doing so are too often absent, and the fancies and assumptions of the critic are put in their place.