I must here refer to a very ingenious theory concerning the matter in hand, which was propounded not long ago by A. Bernstein.[[685]] He imagines the differentiation of the mass of Hebrew stories to have been such that the story of Abraham, the Patriarch of Hebron, belongs to the Southern kingdom, whilst that of Jacob, the Patriarch of Beth-el, was produced by the political tendencies of the Northern realm. Before these more recent stories he supposes the oldest of the Patriarchal stories, which was connected with the worship at Beer-sheba, to have existed, but to have been afterwards obscured by the later legend about Abraham. Bernstein leaves these stories of political tendency to fight it out together, and entangles them in the antagonism between North and South, until at last after the disappearance of the opposition they become common property and are blended together. Although from what has been said there appears to be no question but that in the treatment of the legendary matter, the political situation was no insignificant factor, yet it is impossible to set up the three Patriarchs as products of mere political tendencies. For we have proved that the origin of their names goes back to the very earliest age when myths were first created. No doubt this or that feature in the tout ensemble of the story took a different character according as it was handed down by the inhabitants of the Northern or of the Southern kingdom; and sensible interpreters have long paid particular attention to these differences. But the names are not later inventions or fictions; they are primeval, and among the oldest elements of the Hebrew language; and, similarly, the most prominent features of the stories, derived from the ancient myth, are free from all that national or political tendency which attached itself in much later times to the ancient material.
§ 5. In general the Northern kingdom, in which no theocratic tendency seized on and transformed the existing mass of stories, held the legends, which were guided in a national direction, firmer, and felt more affection for them. Besides the Patriarchal stories, those which fill up the age of the Judges (Shôpheṭîm) gave the most scope to national pride. There the stories of the true Hebrew national heroes and their heroic battles with the Philistines are found. In respect to theocracy this whole age has little importance, and the stories were utterly incapable of a theocratic transformation. For the very aim of Hebrew theocracy was, first to prefigure the theocratic destiny of the Hebrews in the history of the primeval age, and then to show in as favourable a light as possible the beneficent revolution brought on by the house of David. But for this purpose it was essential that this period of theocratic movement should contrast advantageously with an untheocratic time, unfavourable to any such movement, and that the spirit of David’s rule should be the very opposite of the preceding administrations. Consequently, the stories of the Judges suffered no theocratic transformation. But transformation and development constitute the very life of Legend, which, if not accommodated to the new current of feeling, is abandoned, and ceases to live; having in its old form no meaning to a new age.
There are unequivocal testimonies which prove that to the theocratic mind the stories of the Judges were utterly dead, and were consequently neglected by it. Two of these testimonies deserve especial mention. The Book of Chronicles (dibhrê hay-yâmîm), which we have been long accustomed to regard as a history written in a strictly sacerdotal spirit, enumerating by name all the priests, Levites, singers and door-keepers of the central sanctuary of Jerusalem, utters not a syllable respecting the entire period of the Judges, but commences the history proper at the death of Saul and accession of David. And another part of the Canon, the Book of Ruth, the object of which is to connect David’s genealogy with an idyl, and which expresses the moderate theocratic ideas of the restoration, while the matter of its narrative occupies no determinate chronological position, indicates this very chronological vagueness by the words wa-yehî bîmê shephôt hash-shôpheṭîm, ‘it was in the days when the Judges ruled,’ i.e. it was once in the olden time (Ruth I. 1). The ‘Judges’ time' here denotes an indeterminate period, whose chronology is effaced. That period, in fact, does labour under an indefiniteness which almost baffles the chronologist, and the Biblical Canon itself could only be drawn up by leaving an excessively lax connexion between the three periods—the occupation of Canaan by the Hebrews, the monarchy after David, and the untheocratic period lying between the two.
But the Northern spirit was strongly attracted to the period of the Judges and the stories belonging to it, since it felt itself to be the continuator of the homogeneous spirit of the history of the times before David; and thus literature is indebted to an author belonging to the Northern kingdom for the ground-work of the Book of Judges.[[686]] Thus then was accomplished the division of the mass of legends of the Hebrews.
CHAPTER IX.
PROPHETISM AND THE JAHVEH-RELIGION.
§ 1. The most brilliant point in the history of Hebrew Religion is distinguished by an ingenious original idea, imported by the Hebrews into the development of religion—a single thought, yet in itself sufficient to secure for that short history a permanent place on the pages of universal history. The idea of Jahveh is what I allude to.[[687]]
To the question, when this idea was born, the sublimity of which exerted so powerful and irresistible an influence over the noblest minds, it can only be answered that we labour in vain if we try to find the exact point of time of its origin. As the Nile, to which those who have been cradled on its banks ascribe a great magic force, cannot be easily traced to its source, so with the idea of Jahveh: we do not see it spring into life, we only see it after its creation, and observe how it works and kindles new spiritual life in the souls of those who acknowledge it. The Mohammedan idea of Allâh is the only one which may perhaps vie with the sublimity of that of Jahveh; yet even that is far from occupying so lofty an eminence of religious thought as the idea of Jahveh.
If, translating the word Jahveh into a modern European language, we say that he is the one who ‘Brings to be,’ produces and works out Being, we do not in the most distant manner indicate the fulness of meaning which is embodied in that religious technical term. To appreciate it, a sympathising soul must be absorbed in all that the Prophets bring into connexion with the expression Jahveh. Shall I translate all that these inspired men declare of Jahveh? I should have to interpret the entire prophetic literature of the Hebrews, and yet should produce only a pale reflex of all the splendour which envelops Jahveh with glory in the speeches of the Prophets.
I have mentioned the Mohammedan idea of Allâh. Although etymologically identical with Elôhîm, that name may afford a parallel to the Hebrew idea of Jahveh, not only in its essence and meaning, but also in its history. It was not unknown as a technical religious expression to the Arabs before the time of Moḥammed. To the Preislamite or heathen system of Arabic theology, which had its centre in the sanctuary at Mekka, the Divine name Allâh was familiar. But with what a new meaning did the preaching of the epileptic huckster of Mekka inform it! Through the gospel of the Arabian Prophet Allâh became something quite new. Yet even in this respect Jahveh appears still grander. For, while the Mohammedan idea of God clings close to the etymological signification of the word Allâh, insisting primarily on might and unlimited omnipotence, in the Hebrew Prophets’ idea of Jahveh the name becomes a mere accident and accessory, and the true meaning presses with its full weight in a direction quite distinct from the signification and etymology of the word, which was formed in an earlier age. I have already declared my opinion as to the period in which the Divine name Jahveh may have emerged into notice among the people (p. 272), and the impulse which produced it. We can also demonstrate the existence of the name after that period from many proper names which are compounded with the name Jahveh, either full or abbreviated (into Jâhû or Jâ), that name forming either the first or the second member of the compound. From the fact that such names occur in the Northern as well as in the Southern kingdom, it is also evident that the name Jahveh itself had been formed before the separation.[[688]] On the other hand, we ought not to infer too much from the early occurrence of such names in the canonical books. For, in the first place, not every Jô- at the beginning of proper names is an abbreviation of the Divine name; if our knowledge of the ancient forms of Hebrew speech could be extended, this Jô- would probably in many cases be degraded into the first syllable of a verb, as has been shown by M. Levy to be probably the case in the name Yôʾêl (Joel);[[689]] secondly, it must be remembered that there is a possibility that many of these names received a Jahveistic colouring only from the theocratic writers. The possibility of this is seen in the fact that even the name Yôsêph, in which the first syllable has nothing to do with Yahveh, once occurs in the form Yehôsêph (Ps. LXXXI. 6 [6]),[[690]] and still more clearly in the conversion of the name Hôshêaʿ into Yehôshûaʿ (Joshua), which the Biblical narrator certainly refers to a very high antiquity (Num. XIII. 16).[[691]] But at all events, we must not seek the origin of the name Jahveh outside the Hebrew circle, and endeavour to explain it from foreign elements, as those did who used to see in Jov-is a namesake of Jahveh,[[692]] and even went to China to find the origin;[[693]] and as is still done by some in the interest of Egyptian antiquity, who find in the Egyptian nuk pu nuk, ‘ego qui ego,’ the prototype of the Hebrew Ehye asher ehye ‘I am who I am.’ But the identification of the Egyptian with the Hebrew formula was recently justly attacked by Tiele,[[694]] who, however, at the same time, has a private hypothesis of his own on the origin of this idea of God. After proving it to be neither Egyptian, nor Canaanitish, nor Aryan, he refers its origin to the Kenites; supposing the Hebrews to have borrowed the idea of Jahveh from that desert tribe, then to have forgotten it in Canaan, and subsequently to have made it their own again, when the Prophets had revived its use.