Because most of the nations whose descent is traced from Shem, in Genesis x., speak languages alike in structure and entirely different from other languages, we have accustomed ourselves, ever since the days of Eichhorn, to call these nations and languages Semitic. And because peoples who speak analogous languages are always, to a certain extent, connected by similarity of descent, and consequently, by physical and mental resemblances, we likewise speak of a Semitic race. Under this heading we class all the nations that speak languages of the Hebrew type, and these are the Aramæans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phœnicians, Arabs, and a large proportion of the Abyssinians. Hence the phrase Semitic peoples or languages is, like so many that are used in science, merely a conventional term.
As far back as history goes, the inhabitants of Palestine have always been people of Semitic speech, i.e. of a language of the Hebrew type. In the very earliest times to which historical research can give us any clew, the period before the immigration of the Israelites into the land west of Jordan, the population of Palestine varied, exactly as it does now, according to the character of the various parts of the country. Moreover, then as now, the Jordan and the Jordan Valley constituted the main barrier between these Semitic peoples. To the west of Jordan dwells an agricultural population, divided up into numerous small tribes, which we are in the habit of calling Canaanite. The collective term Canaanite had of course been extended from a single district or tribe named Canaan to the whole body of cognate peoples. The inhabitants of the Phœnician maritime cities are of the same race, and so are those of the kingdom of the Hittites, which lies to the north of Palestine.
On the farther side of Jordan, however, dwell Semitic tribes, in many cases still nomadic, speaking the same language as the rest, but inferior to them in civilisation, who are each and all styled “Ibrim” (Hebrews), i.e. “those beyond” or those that dwell beyond Jordan.
But along the southern, no less than on the eastern, frontier of the land west of Jordan, wandered nomadic tribes (intermingled to a great extent with Canaanite and Hebrew tribes), who are classed, according to common opinion, under the general heading of Arab, a view to which the few remains in the shape of proper names which have come down to us, offers no contradiction.
This order of things was disturbed when one of the aforesaid Hebrew tribes began to migrate by degrees into the country west of Jordan, to settle there, and ultimately to take possession of it more and more completely. During the process it mingled freely with the original Canaanite population, whose civilisation it gradually assimilated, while at the same time some other Hebrew and Arabian tribes were merged in it.
The product of this intermixture is the people of Israel. It first came into being by the immigration into the country west of the Jordan, which consequently has a perfect title to pass in legend for the Promised Land. It did not come out of Egypt as an organised nation, and arrive on the west of Jordan after many wanderings to and fro. It was as little a nation of pure blood as any on earth, for it admitted persons of Aramæan and Egyptian descent as well as the Canaanite, Hebrew and Arabic elements already mentioned.
The people of Israel never succeeded in possessing themselves of the whole country west of Jordan. And only on that condition could it have grown into one of the greater nations and established a homogeneous state of commanding importance. Nay, it could not so much as permanently hold its own in its old territory east of Jordan. That would only have been possible if it had been able to occupy the regions northwards from the plain of Megiddo to Lebanon and the opposite districts on the east of Jordan with a dense population of settlers. There no obstacle interferes with intercourse between the two halves of the country. There a compact population could have developed, a unit in customs and interests; and by this means the southern portions of the country, divided by the river Jordan, would have been held together. But in those parts of the country west of the river, which lie to the north of the plain of Megiddo, the Israelite population was never numerous in the days of the kingdom of Israel. It had always a strong intermixture of Canaanite elements which it was unable to assimilate. Hence many of the Israelite families which settled there were early lost to the nation.
But since the people of Israel were not numerically strong enough to win these regions for Israelite nationality, and since a compact body of Israelitish inhabitants existed on the highlands south of the plain of Megiddo to the southern margin of the Dead Sea, and these parts accordingly became the nucleus of the kingdom of Israel; the latter bore the seeds of destruction within itself from the beginning. And there was another factor to add to the difficulties of the situation: before the regions which afterwards formed the nucleus of the Israelite state had passed into the whole possession of the immigrants, before the fusion of Canaanite, Hebrew, and Arabian families with the tribes of Israel was everywhere complete, before, that is, they could contemplate the conquest of the coast, two other claimants of the land west of Jordan appeared on the scene. From the northeast, Aramæan tribes pressed forward as far as Anti-Lebanon, from the southwest came the warlike nation of the Philistines. Like the Israelites, they both amalgamated with the original Canaanite population of the territory they conquered. They, and not the Canaanite population of the coast, were for centuries the real adversaries of the state of Israel. Nay, the nation was first called into being by the danger that menaced it from the Philistines.
Thus the strength of the Israelite nation was exhausted in the struggle for the possession of the land west of Jordan. A people less tenacious, less valiant, less persevering, would never have maintained its national existence so long under the circumstances. By holding its own against Philistines and Aramæans, and succumbing only to the onset of the great Asiatic empires, Israel gave proof of its high capacities in the sphere of politics.
But how did an Israelite state come into being at all under such circumstances? Why did not the Hebrews who migrated to the west of Jordan join themselves to the original Canaanite population which spoke the same language and was ethnologically so closely akin to them? Why did not a Canaanite state arise, seeing that in all points of civilisation the Canaanites were the instructors of the Hebrew immigrants? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the immigrant Hebrew clans who gave the first impulse to the creation of the nation of Israel, were prevented from so doing by the difference between their religion and that of the Canaanites. Before their migration across the Jordan they had separated from the rest of the Hebrew tribes and adopted a religion of a far higher type than that of the original Canaanite dwellers west of Jordan. By this means they had already become one people. Concerning the process by which it came to pass we have nothing but myth and legend. But if we compare these with the observations we have been able to make in the case of religion, civilisation, and customs of other Hebrew tribes, we can at all events draw general conclusions as to the course of the movements which led to this result. Let us therefore next consider the relation in which the children of Israel stand to other Hebrew peoples. According to what has been said in the foregoing pages, there are three things which distinguish the children of Israel from the rest of the Hebrews. Firstly, the large intermixture of Canaanite blood—in one, at least, of the latter races there was a larger measure of Arab blood than in the children of Israel. Secondly, their adoption of Canaanite civilisation, and, as a consequence, a more complete transition to agricultural life. Thirdly, the worship of Jehovah as their national god.