Human Origins

by S. Laing

Many of the events recorded of Abraham's life, though not so wildly extravagant as those attributed to Noah, are still clearly unhistorical. That a woman getting on towards one hundred years old should be so beautiful that her husband passes her off for his sister, fearing that, if known to be his wife, the king would kill him in order to take her into his harem, does not seem to be very probable. But when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred twice over to the same man, once at the court of Pharaoh and again at that of Abimelech; and a third time to his son Isaac, at the same place, Gerar, and to the same king Abimelech, the improbability becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. Nor is it very consistent with the character of the pious patriarch, the father of the chosen people, to have told such lies, and apparently connived at his wife's prostitution, so that he could save his own skin, and grow rich on the "sheep and oxen, asses, manservants, maidservants, and camels" given him by the king on the supposition that he was Sarah's brother.

Nor can we take as authentic history, Abraham talking with the Lord, and holding a sort of Dutch auction with him, in which he beats down from fifty to ten the number of righteous men who, if found in Sodom, are to save it from destruction.

On the whole, I do not see that there is anything in the account of Abraham and his times which we can safely assume to be historical, except the general fact that the Hebrews were descended from a Semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of Ur in Lower Chaldæa probably about the time, and possibly in consequence, of the Elamite conquest, about 2200 b.c., which set in motion so many wars, revolutions, and migrations in Western Asia.

The chronology from Abraham to Moses is hopelessly confused. If Abraham is really an historical character, his synchronism with Chedorlaomer or Kudur-lagomer, the Elamite King of Chaldæa, must be admitted, which fixes his date at about 2200 b.c. Again, if the narrative of the Exodus is historical, it is generally agreed that it took place in the reign of Menepthah, or about 1320 b.c. The interval between Abraham and Moses therefore must have been about 900 years. But if we take the genealogies as authentic history, Jacob, in whose time the Hebrews went into Egypt, was Abraham's grandson, and Moses, under whom they left it, was the son of Jochebed, who was the granddaughter of Levi, the son of Jacob, who was a man advanced in life when he came to Egypt. The genealogies therefore do not allow of more than five generations, or, at a high average for each, about 200 years for this interval between Abraham and Moses.

The tradition respecting this seems to have been already very confused when Genesis was compiled, for we find in chap. xv. vers. 15, 16, the Lord saying to Abraham, that his descendants shall come back to Palestine and possess the whole country from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after Abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried in a good old age"; while only one verse before it is said, "thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for four hundred years."

Even if 400 years were allowed for the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt, it would not extend the interval between Moses and Abraham to more than 500 years, or 400 years less than is required by the synchronism with Chedorlaomer. It is needless to say that neither in the fourth or in any other generation did the descendants of Abraham "possess the whole country from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates."

There is no period of Jewish history so obscure as that of the sojourn in Egypt. The long date is based entirely on the distinct statement in Genesis xii., that the sojourning of the children of Israel was 430 years, and other statements that it was 400 years, both of which are hopelessly inconsistent with the genealogies. Genealogies are perhaps more likely to be preserved accurately by oral tradition than dates and figures, which Oriental races generally deal with in a very arbitrary way. But there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting either date as historical. There is no mention of any specific event during the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt between their advent in the time of Joseph and the Exodus, except their oppression by a new king who knew not Joseph, and the building of the treasure cities, Pi-thom and Ramses, by their forced labour. The latter fact may be taken as probably true from the monuments discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie; and if so, it occurred in the reign of Ramses II. But there is no other confirmation, from Egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the Pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from Manetho by Josephus, which describes how the unclean people and lepers were oppressed; how they revolted under the leadership of a priest of Hieropolis, who changed his name from Osarphis to Moyses; how they fortified Avaris and called in help from the expelled Hyksos settled at Jerusalem; how the Egyptian king and his army retreated before them into Ethiopia without striking a blow; and the revolters ruled Egypt for thirteen years, killing the sacred animals and desecrating the temples; and how, at the end of this period, the king and his son returned with a great army, defeated the rebels and shepherds with great slaughter, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria.

This account is evidently very different from that of Exodus, and does not itself read very like real history, nor is there anything in the Egyptian monuments to confirm it, but rather the reverse. Menepthah certainly reigned many years after he was said to have been drowned in the Red Sea, and his power and that of his immediate successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of suzerainty over Palestine and Southern Syria. It is said that the Egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but this is distinctly untrue, for Manetho records events such as the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos without a battle, and the retreat of Menepthah into Ethiopia for thirteen years before the impure rebels, which were much more disgraceful than would have been the destruction of a pursuing force of chariots by the returning tide of the Red Sea.

The question therefore of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus has to be considered solely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the books of the Old Testament. The long period of 430 years is open to grave objections. It is inconceivable that a people who had lived for four centuries in an old and highly-civilized empire, for part of the time at any rate on equal or superior terms under the king who "knew Joseph"; and who appear to have been so much intermixed with the native Egyptians as to have been borrowing from them as neighbours before their flight, should have carried away with them so little of Egyptian manners and relics. Beyond a few rites and ceremonies, and a certain tendency to revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing to show that the Hebrews had ever been in contact with Egyptian civilization. This is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the Egyptian people. Temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the Decalogue down to the comparatively late period of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon the wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." Even down to the Christian era the Sadducees, who were the conservative aristocracy who stood on the old ways and on the law of Moses, and from whose ranks most of the high priests were taken, were opposed to the newfangled Pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection. How completely foreign the idea was to the Jewish mind is apparent from the writings of the Prophets and the Book of Job, where the obvious solution of the problem why goodness was not always rewarded and wickedness punished, afforded by the theory of a judgment after death and future life, was never even hinted at by Job or his friends, however hardly they might be pressed in argument.

If the sojourn in Egypt really lasted for 430 years, it must have embraced many of the greatest events in Egyptian history. The descendants of Jacob must have witnessed a long period of the rule of the Hyksos, and lived through the desolating thirty years' war by which these foreign conquerors were gradually driven back by the native armies of Upper Egypt. They must have been close to the scene of the final campaigns, the siege of Avaris, and the expulsion of the Hyksos. They must have been subjects of Ahmes, Thotmes, and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed up the fugitive Hyksos, and carried the conquering arms of Egypt not only over Palestine and Syria, but up to the Euphrates and Tigris, and over nearly the whole of Western Asia. They must have witnessed the decline of this empire, the growth of the Hittites, and the half-century of wars waged between them and the Egyptians in Palestine and Syria.