The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

If Western Asia were the home of a long-established literary culture, Egypt was even more so. From time immemorial the land of the Pharaohs had been a land of writers and readers. At a very early period the hieroglyphic system of writing had been modified into a cursive hand, the so-called hieratic; and as far back as the days of the third and fifth dynasties famous books had been written, and the author of one of them, Ptah-hotep, already deplores the degeneracy and literary decay of his own time. The traveller up the Nile, who examines the cliffs that line the river, cannot but be struck by the multitudinous names that are scratched upon them. He is at times inclined to believe that every Egyptian in ancient times knew how to write, and had little else to do than to scribble a record of himself on the rocks. The impression is the same that we derive from the small objects which are disinterred in such thousands from the sites of the old cities. Wherever it is possible, an inscription has been put upon them, which, it seems taken for granted, could be read by all. Even the walls of the temples and tombs were covered with written texts; wherever the Egyptian turned, or whatever might be the object he used, it was difficult for him to avoid the sight of the written word. Whoever was born in the land of Egypt was perforce familiarised with the art of writing from the very days of his infancy.

Evidence is accumulating that the same literary culture which thus prevailed in Egypt and Western Asia had extended also to the peninsula of Arabia. Dr. Glaser and Professor Hommel, two of the foremost authorities on the subject, believe that some of the inscriptions of Southern Arabia go back to the age of the eighteenth and nineteenth Egyptian dynasties; and if they are right, as they seem to be, in holding that the kingdom of Ma’n or the Minæans preceded that of Saba or Sheba, the antiquity of writing in Arabia must be great.[^[133]] The fact that the Babylonian dynasty to which Amraphel belonged was of South Arabian origin supports the belief in the existence of Arabian culture at an early period, as do also the latest researches into the source of the so-called Phœnician alphabet. We now know that in the Mosaic age it was the cuneiform syllabary, and not the Phœnician alphabet, that was used in Canaan, while the oldest inscription in Phœnician letters yet found is later than the reign of Solomon. On the other hand, the South Arabian form of the alphabet contains letters which denote sounds once possessed by all the Semitic languages, but lost by the language of Canaan; and though some of these letters may be derived from other letters of the alphabet, there are some which have an independent origin. The caravan-road along which the spices of the South were carried to Syria and Egypt passed through the territory of Edom; inscriptions of the kings of Ma’n have already been discovered near Teima, not far from the frontiers of Midian; and it may be that we shall yet find records among the ranges of Mount Seir which will form a link between the early texts of Southern Arabia and the oldest text that has come from Phœnician soil.

The Exodus from Egypt, then, took place during a highly literary period, and the people who took part in it passed from a country where the art of writing literally stared them in the face to another country which had been the centre of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence and the home of Babylonian literary culture for unnumbered centuries. Is it conceivable that their leader and reputed lawgiver should not have been able to write, that he should not have been educated ‘in the wisdom of Egypt,’ or that the upper classes of his nation should not have been able to read? Let it be granted that the Israelites were but a Bedâwin tribe which had been reduced by the Pharaohs to the condition of public slaves; still, they necessarily had leaders and overseers among them, who, according to the State regulations of Egypt, were responsible to the Government for the rest of their countrymen, and some at least of these leaders and overseers would have been educated men. Moses could have written the Pentateuch, even if he did not do so.

Moreover, the clay tablets on which the past history of Canaan could be read were preserved in the libraries and archive-chambers of the Canaanitish cities down to the time when the latter were destroyed. If any doubt had existed on the subject after the revelations of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, it has been set at rest by the discovery of a similar tablet on the site of Lachish. In some cases the cities were not destroyed, so far as we know, until the period when it is allowed that the Israelites had ceased to be illiterate. Gezer, for example, which plays a leading part in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, does not seem to have fallen into the hands of an enemy until it was captured by the Egyptian Pharaoh and handed over to his son-in-law Solomon. As long as a knowledge of the cuneiform script continued, the early records of Canaan were thus accessible to the historian, many of them being contemporaneous with the events to which they referred.

A single archæological discovery has thus destroyed the base of operations from which a one-sided criticism of Old Testament history had started. The really strong point in favour of it was the assumption that the Mosaic age was illiterate. Just as Wolf founded his criticism and analysis of the Homeric Hymns on the belief that the use of writing for literary purposes was of late date in Greece, so the belief that the Israelites of the time of Moses could not read or write was the ultimate foundation on which the modern theory of the composition of the Hexateuch has been based. Whether avowed or not, it was the true starting-point of critical scepticism, the one solid foundation on which it seemed to rest. The destruction of the foundation endangers the structure which has been built upon it.

In fact, it wholly alters the position of the modern critical theory. The onus probandi no longer lies on the shoulders of the defenders of traditional views. Instead of being called upon to prove that Moses could have written a book, it is they who have to call on the disciples of the modern theory to show reason why he should not have done so. And it is always difficult to prove a negative.

It may be said that the positive arguments of the modern hypothesis remain as they were. That is possible, but their background is gone. And how conscious the Hexateuchal analysts were of the importance of this background, before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, may be seen from their desperate efforts to rid themselves of the counter evidence afforded by the Song of Deborah. ‘Out of Machir,’ it is there said (Judg. v. 14), ‘came down lawgivers, and out of Zebulun they that handle the stylus of the scribe.’ In defiance of philology, the latter words were translated ‘the baton of the marshal’! But sopher is ‘scribe’ here, as elsewhere in Hebrew; and his shebhet, or ‘stylus,’ is often depicted on the Egyptian monuments. In the Blessing of Jacob, which is allowed to be of early date, like the Song of Deborah, the shebhet is associated with the m’khoqêq or ‘lawgiver’ (Gen. xlix. 10). The word m’khoqêq, however, meant literally an ‘engraver,’ one who did not write his laws on papyrus or parchment, as the scribe would have done, but caused them to be engraved on stone, or metal, or clay.[^[134]] In either case they were written down; and written documents are thus implied not only in the expression ‘the stylus of the scribe,’ but in the word ‘lawgiver’ as well. The Song of Deborah, by general consent, belongs to the oldest period of the Hebrew settlement in Palestine; it belongs also to an age of anarchy and national depression; and, nevertheless, it is already acquainted with Israelitish lawgivers and scribes, with engravers of the laws and handlers of the pen. It is little wonder that its evidence was explained away in accordance with a method which is neither scientific nor historical.

As historians, we are bound to admit the antiquity of writing in Israel. The scribe goes back to the Mosaic age, like the lawgiver, and in this respect, therefore, the Israelites formed no exception to the nations among whom they lived. They were no islet of illiterate barbarism in the midst of a great sea of literary culture and activity, nor were they obstinately asleep while all about them were writing and reading.

But even the analysis of the Hexateuchal critics fails to stand the test of archæological discovery. Nowhere does there seem to be clearer evidence of the documentary hypothesis than in the story of the Deluge. Here the combination of a Yahvistic and an Elohistic narrative seems to force itself upon the attention of the reader, and the advocates of the disintegration theory have triumphantly pointed to the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of the story in support of their views. If anywhere, here, at any rate, the external testimony of archæeology ought to be given on the side of modern criticism.

And yet it is not. It so happens that among the fragments of ancient Babylonian epic and legend which have come down to us is a long poem in twelve books, composed in the age of Abraham, or earlier, by a certain Sin-liqi-unnini, and recounting the adventures of the Chaldæan hero Gilgames. It is based on older materials, and is, in fact, the last note and final summing-up of Chaldæan epic song. Older poems have been incorporated into it, and the epic itself has been artificially moulded upon an astronomical plan. Its twelve books, in each of which a new adventure of its hero is recorded, correspond with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the months of the year that were named after them. The eleventh month was presided over by Aquarius, and was the month of ‘the Curse of Rain’; into the eleventh book of the poem, accordingly, there has been introduced the episode of the Deluge.