[THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN]
As an introduction to Lecture IV. the reader is advised to make a careful study of Judges i. 1–ii. 5, a mutilated fragment of a very early and reliable account of the invasion of Canaan. The opening words (verse 1) refer the events which follow to the period after the death of Joshua; but the Book of Joshua has already recorded the complete conquest of Canaan, so that there can be no place for this further invasion on a far less ambitious plan, and apparently with less successful results. It will be noticed, however, that this account easily falls away from the main body of the narrative; Judges ii. 6 follows naturally after Joshua xxiv. 28, and ignores what comes between. We have, therefore, in this account another history of the conquest of Canaan, which contradicts altogether the impression—which we get from reading the Book of Joshua—that the conquest of Canaan was effected by the tribes acting in unison, that it was complete, and that the conquered were exterminated; it records a movement of tribes acting independently, there is no "conquest" in the ordinary sense of the term, but a footing is obtained alongside the original inhabitants of the land.
This account of a gradual immigration of tribes is confirmed by the discovery of inscriptions, which seem to show that there were some tribes of the Hebrews in Palestine before the traditional date of the Conquest, and even before the Exodus.
Until quite lately the history of Egypt has thrown no light on these events. It has not even been possible to identify with any certainty the Pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place. One identification is now fairly certain. The Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites was Rameses III., for discoveries have proved that it was he who built Pithom (Exod. i. 11); the Exodus has therefore been referred to the reigns of Merneptah or Seti II., his immediate successors. The objection to this is that in these reigns both the peninsula of Sinai and the land of Palestine were under full Egyptian control, and therefore the Exodus must be put later on, when this control slackened. This would bring the Exodus to the date of 1200–1180 B.C. and the Conquest some fifty years later.
The latest discoveries tend to throw this result into confusion. Names, which it is proposed to identify with tribes of the Israelites, have been found in inscriptions belonging to earlier reigns. On an inscription of Rameses II. the name of Asher is found as dwelling in North Palestine. In a list of Thotmes III. (still earlier, Sixteenth Century, B.C.) we find the names Jacob and Joseph in the significant combination, Jacob-el and Joseph-el, used to describe the Dan-Ephraim district of Palestine. This makes it more likely that the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (dated Fourteenth Century, B.C.) refer to the Hebrews. In these letters, addressed to Amenophis IV., the King of Jerusalem appeals for help against an invasion of the Habiri, who are led by Abd Ashera. The invasion is not by a large force, as may be seen from the fact that it is thought thirty or forty Egyptian soldiers will be sufficient for the purpose of resisting their attacks. More certain than any of these references is the occurrence of the name of Israel on a Stele of Merneptah, in connection with a recital of his triumphs in Syria. The form in which this reference is made leaves no doubt that, by this period, Israel was already settled in Palestine. ("Israel is laid waste, its corn is annihilated.") There is no confirmation of a Syrian campaign under Merneptah, and it may be that in accordance with the fashion of the age, he is including among his victories the exploits of his predecessors; this would agree with the earlier date for the occupation of Canaan by Israel which the previous references seem to require.
The exact bearing of these discoveries has yet to be determined, but they either require us to put the date of the Exodus earlier, which would in itself be difficult, or, what would bring light on many problems, assume that not all the tribes were in bondage in Egypt, and that the invasion of Canaan by various tribes, only long after welded into a nation, was spread over a long period.
[Lecture IV]
THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN
If the nation of Israel may be said to have been born in captivity, baptised in the Red Sea, and awakened to national consciousness at Mount Sinai, then the settlement in Canaan corresponds to the no less critical period of adolescence, when, training and tutelage being over, youth must choose its own path and fight its way in the world. Certain it is that the entrance into Canaan largely determined the future of this people, for it must have profoundly modified the national character, turning as it did nomadic tribes into a settled and civilised people; but above all, and what more concerns us, it proved extremely critical for the fate of that as yet untried revelation of Jehovah, which had still to win its way against the heathenism of the common people, and was now by this new experience called upon to measure its strength against the attraction of a competing faith.
The peculiar and pathetic love of the Jews for Canaan is largely due to the remembrance that it was not their own land but the long promised gift of Jehovah, standing therefore to all time as the material proof of His love for Israel; while their estimate of it was intensely deepened by the wilderness experience which preceded. That estimate seems to us somewhat exaggerated, for to-day Palestine has almost given up the struggle against the always threatening advance of the desert. It has certainly changed for the worse under neglect and misrule, but it can never have been a too indulgent land; only comparison with the bare and awful desert can have called forth the description, "a land flowing with milk and honey." With the long memory of restless nomadic life and the bitter thought of bondage, any land would seem welcome that offered them freedom and safety; while to those approaching it from the desert it seemed as fair and fruitful a land as men could desire.
All lands have contributed largely to the character of the nations they have reared, and the wilderness ancestry and the character of Canaan have played their part in the development of Israel.
The very geographical position of Canaan helps us to understand the Hebrews, and even to see how it was that in this land it was possible to nurture from such unpromising beginnings the wonderful development of religion that was to make this smallest of all lands one of the most sacred spots on earth, and this strange and limited people among the greatest contributors to the moral and religious ideas of humanity. Crushed in between the sea and the desert, hemmed in by great military powers, the little buffer state itself the very crossways of East and West, its roads never long at rest from the tramp of armies; here was a land in which all dreams of fame and empire were hammered out, and nothing left possible save an empire of spiritual power and the fame of a unique religion. A people strangely proud and passionately exclusive, they could never rest under the dominion of their great neighbours, however light the burden imposed; and since sustained resistance was out of the question by reason of their inferior numbers and lack of military power, they resorted to irritating acts of rebellion, or intrigued with the enemies of their overlords, and so brought down on their land frequent vengeance. Such was their untameable nature that the only practical policy open to Babylon, if she wished to insure the loyalty, or at least, the neutrality of Palestine, was to deport the Jews bodily to where they could be under observation.
So we find the greatest heroes of Jewish history—from Moses, through Gideon and Samson, to David and Judas Maccabæus—are those who deliver the nation from oppression; while Israel's prayers are largely cries for succour against enemies, or for Divine vengeance on the oppressor; only too eloquent a witness of the sense of their own impotence. Yet it was precisely this experience that forced their religion to rise above the common type, to conquer its natural tendencies, and to become the most magnificent faith in God that the world has seen. Of this they themselves were not ignorant; for one of their writers points to the easy lot of Moab as the cause of their irreligion (Jer. xlviii. 11), and one of the Psalmists says that it is the men who have no changes who fear not God (lv. 19). We need not consider the utterly feeble objection that all this makes the religion of Israel the outcome of natural necessity, rather than of Divine revelation; for God made the land that made Israel.