If so great an authority finds this attitude justifiable, surely it is open to every one to read the history of the Hebrews as interpreted according to modern ideas, and then to apply to it whatever prism of faith may suit his own fancy.[a]
THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS
[ca. 2300 B.C.]
The age of the patriarchs, according to Max Löhr, belongs to the prehistoric period of Israel, to the childhood of the nation; and nations, in their childhood, are like children, colouring everything with the brilliant hues of their imaginations and transforming the commonplace events of the beginnings of their national existence into marvellous fairy tales, narrating the deeds of the founders of the nation. This is as true of Israel as of other nations; and it is in this light that the modern historian reads the accounts of the patriarchs as recorded in Genesis, almost our only source of information, and endeavours to extract the small kernels of historic truth, which nearly all of them contain, from the surrounding mass of the legendary shells.
Abraham is the central figure in the record of the patriarchs. Some historians would take from him his historical personality. They believe that he was originally a local deity of Hebron, or other place; and that in the course of time he was transformed, through legendary alchemy, into one of the fathers of his race. But the chief value of Abraham’s character is not historical; it is religious. The Old Testament makes him the hero of faith, whose confidence in the goodness and justice of God cannot be shaken. The words of Goethe, in his fourth book of Poetry and Truth, concerning the patriarch can be applied especially to Abraham, and they indicate the source of his lofty religion:
“Their mode of life on the sea, the desert, and the pasture land, gave breadth and freedom to their convictions. The star-sown vault of heaven, under which they lived, ennobled their emotions; they were more than active and skilful hunters, more than industrious home-loving husbandmen; they believed that God was confiding in them, visiting them, taking an interest in them, leading and saving them.”
Even at the beginning, religion was the motive power in the history of Israel. Unshaken faith in God was the characteristic of all the patriarchs; and even if their knowledge of God was crude and imperfect, their faith in him was sublime.
If we consider the patriarchs as nomadic chiefs, at the head of one or more pastoral races, who willingly submitted to the command of men of superior wealth, courage, and energy, then we must look upon the wanderings of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and their successors, as a series of great racial migrations, extending over centuries, and resulting in frequent changes and reorganisations, with its final culmination into the historic nation of Israel.[c]
EARLY MOVEMENTS OF THE ISRAELITES
[ca. 2300-1270 B.C.]