The early history of the Hebrews

by A. H. Sayce

The historian of the Hebrews, then, is bound to treat his authorities as the Greek historian would treat Herodotos or Thucydides or any other writer on behalf of whose character and age there is a long line of external testimony. The results of the ‘literary analysis’ may be left to the philologist, as well as the conjectures and theories that have been substituted by scholars of the nineteenth century for early Israelitish history. They have vanished like bubbles wherever they have been tested by the archæological evidence, which, on the other hand, has vindicated the substantial truthfulness of those Old Testament statements which had been scornfully thrown aside.

Where it is possible, the Biblical narratives must be compared with the discoveries of archæological research; where this cannot be done, they must be examined from the historical and not from the philological or literary point of view. We are bound to assume their general credibility and faithfulness, except where this can be historically disproved, and to remember that while on the one hand inconsistencies in detail do not affect the general historical trustworthiness of a document, the agreement of such details with the facts of archæology or geography—more especially when they are of the kind termed ‘undesigned coincidences’—is a powerful argument in its favour. Above all, we must beware of that favourite weapon of literary criticism, the argument from silence, which is really merely an argument from the imperfection of our own knowledge, and which a single instance to the contrary will overthrow. The literary criticism of the Old Testament is full of examples of the argument that have been demolished by the advance of Oriental archæology.

Let this accordingly be the rule of the historian: to believe all things, to hope all things, but at the same time to test and try all things. And the test must be scientific, not what we assume to be probable or natural, but external testimony in the shape of archæological or geographical facts. The history of the past is not what ought to have happened according to the ideas of the critic, but what actually did happen.

Such a manner of treating our authorities does not, of course, exclude our recognition of what the literary critics call their several ‘tendencies.’ No history, worthy of the name, can be written without a ‘tendency’ of some sort on the part of the writer, even though it be not consciously felt. We must have some kind of general theory within the lines of which our facts may be grouped; and however much we may strive to be impartial, our conception of the facts themselves, and our mode of presenting them, will be coloured by our beliefs and education. The historian cannot help writing with an object in view; the necessities of the subject require it.

That the historical books of the Old Testament should have been written with a ‘tendency’ is therefore natural. And literary criticism has successfully pointed out in the case of one of these books what the ‘tendency’ was. If we compare the books of Chronicles with those of Samuel and Kings, the contrast between them strikes the eye at once. The interest of the Chronicler is centred in the history of the Jewish temple and ritual, of its priests and Levites, and the manifold requirements of the Law. His history of Israel accordingly becomes a history of Israelitish ritual; all else is put aside or treated in the briefest fashion. The incidents of David’s reign narrated in the books of Samuel are subordinated to elaborate accounts of his arrangements for the services in the tabernacle or temple; the history of the northern kingdom of Israel, which lay outside that of the temple at Jerusalem, is passed over in silence; and the Passover held in Hezekiah’s reign, about which not a word is said in the books of Kings, is dwelt upon to the exclusion of almost everything else. Nor, had we only the Chronicler in our hands, should we know that the pious Hezekiah had entered into an alliance with the Babylonian king and boastfully displayed to his ambassadors the treasures of the Jewish kingdom, thereby bringing upon himself the rebuke of the prophet Isaiah. All that the Chronicler has to say on the matter is that ‘in the business of the ambassadors of the prince of Babylon, who sent to inquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart’; and even here a theological turn is given to the occurrence by the motive assigned for the embassy. As a matter of fact, we know from the cuneiform inscriptions that the real object of Merodach-baladan was to form a league with the princes of the West against their common Assyrian enemy, to which, as the books of Kings inform us, was naturally added a polite inquiry after Hezekiah’s health.

‘Tendencies’ there are, therefore, in the historical writings of the Old Testament; they would not be human productions if there were not. The authors have had one great object in view, that of showing from the past history of the people that sin brings punishment with it, while a blessing follows upon righteous action. They believed in the Divine government of the world, and wrote with that belief clearly before them. They believed also that Israel was the chosen nation in whose history that Divine government had been made manifest to mankind, and that the God of Israel was the one true omnipotent God. In this belief in a theodicy they were theologians, like most other Oriental writers. But their theological point of view did not prevent them from being historians as well. It did not interfere with their honestly recording the course of events as it had been handed down to them, or reproducing their authorities without intentional change. Doubtless they may have made mistakes at times, their judgment may not always have been strictly critical or correct, and want of sufficient materials may now and then have led them into error. But when we find that no attempt is made to palliate or conceal the sins and shortcomings of their most cherished national heroes, that even the reverses of the nation are chronicled equally with its successes, and that the early period of its history is confessed to have been one of anarchy and crime, and not the golden age of which popular (and even historical) imagination loves to dream, we are justified in according to them, in spite of their theological ‘tendencies,’ a considerable measure of confidence.

It will have been noticed that chronology—the skeleton, as it were, on which the flesh of history is laid—has been alluded to in the previous chapter only in the vaguest possible manner. ‘The age of Abraham,’ ‘the age of the Exodus,’ ‘the Mosaic age,’ are the phrases that have been used in referring to Old Testament events. Israelitish chronology in the true sense of the word does not begin till the reign of David, and even then we have to deal with probabilities rather than with facts. Like Egyptian history, which has to be measured by dynasties instead of dates before the rise of the eighteenth dynasty, the early history of the Hebrews has no chronological record. Before we can attach dates to the events of the patriarchal period or the Exodus, it is necessary to find synchronisms between them and the dated history of other peoples.

It is a commonplace of Biblical students that numbers are peculiarly liable to corruption, and that consequently little dependence can be placed on the numbers given in the text of the Old Testament. But the conclusion does not follow from the premiss. The later dates of Israelitish history are for the most part reliable, and it would be strange if the causes of corruption were fatal only to the dates of an earlier period. Moreover, the numbers fit into a self-consistent system, the several fractions of which agree with the whole summation. Such a self-consistent system would perhaps demand acceptance were it not that there are three such systems, rivals one of the other, and mutually incompatible. One is that of the Massoretic Hebrew text, which makes the period from the Creation to the call of Abraham exactly 2000 solar years (or, 2056 lunar years), 1600 of which extend from the Creation to the Deluge, and the remaining 400 from the Deluge to the call of Abraham. A second is that of the Septuagint, according to which the period from the Creation to the Flood is 2200 solar years (or, 2262 lunar years), 1600 of these elapsing between the Creation and the birth of Noah, and 600 from that event to the Flood, while 1200 are counted from the Flood to the call of the patriarch. The third is that of the Samaritan text which divides the period into two halves of 1200 years each; the first 1200 comprising the time from the Creation to the birth of the sons of Noah, and the second 1200 the rest of the period.

It is obvious that all these systems are like the similar chronological systems of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, or the Hindus, mere artificial schemes of an astronomical character, and differing from the latter only in their more modest computation of time. For historical purposes they are worthless, and indicate merely that materials for a chronology were entirely wanting. The ages assigned to the patriarchs before the Flood, for example, stand on a level with the reigns of the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldæa which are extended over 120 sari, or 432,000 years. The post-diluvian patriarchs are in no better position; indeed, one of them, Arphaxad, is a geographical title, and the Septuagint interpolates after him a certain Kainan, of whom neither the Hebrew nor the Samaritan text knows anything.

Even after the call of Abraham, Hebrew chronology is equally uncertain. The length of life assigned to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is surprising, though not quite impossible, but the dates connected with it do not always agree together. How, for example, can Abraham have had six children after the death of Sarah (Gen. xxv. 1, 2), when the birth of Isaac nearly forty years before had been regarded as extraordinary on account of the patriarch’s age? Or, again, to quote the words of Professor Driver[^[144]]: ‘Do we all realise that according to the chronology of the Book of Genesis (xxv. 26, xxvi. 34, xxxv. 28) [Isaac] must have been lying upon his deathbed for eighty years? Yet we can only diminish this period by extending proportionately the interval between Esau’s marrying his Hittite wives (Gen. xxvi. 34), and Rebekah’s suggestion to Isaac to send Jacob away, lest he should follow his brother’s example (xxvii. 46), which from the nature of the case will not admit of any but a slight extension. Keil, however, does so extend it, reducing the period of Isaac’s final illness to forty-three years, and is conscious of no incongruity in supposing that Rebekah, thirty-seven years after Esau has taken his Hittite wives, should express her fear that Jacob, then aged seventy-seven, will do the same!’