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.]
The eminent historian, Bernhard Stade, takes a view of Israelitish traditions far less confiding than that of Max Löhr. According to the oldest tradition, he says, the people of Israel came from northern Mesopotamia; and Kharran (Haran), the city of Nachor (the Carrhæ of the Greeks and Romans on the south of the Armenian Mountains), was, according to the Yahvist and Elohist texts, the home of Abraham. Also Jacob’s two wives, Leah and Rachel, i.e. the Hebraic families of those names which early became extinct, came out of Kharran. There seems accordingly to have been an old tradition that certain Hebraic clans migrated from those districts to Palestine. Moreover, one can suppose that they there found family connections with whom they amalgamated; and this would be the interpretation of the marriage of Jacob with Leah and Rachel.
This tradition would not be at all incredible in itself, but another reason also can be cited for the emigration of Hebraic tribes from the district lying south of the Armenian Mountains. After the Hebrews, the Aramæan tribes came from the northwest into Syria, pushing on and absorbing parts of the Hebrew population, as the Hebrews drove on the Canaanites. The pressure of these Aramæan people may have already burdened the Hebrews and have driven them to migrate towards the southwest. But after all there is no historical certainty about these things, on account of the fragmentary character of the traditions and their complete mixture with mythological elements.
According to the sacred legend, the fathers of Israel (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), who were of Mesopotamian origin, dwelt for three generations in the country west of Jordan, settling in different places; but the third generation emigrated to Egypt, where Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, had already reached a high position. But the Hebrew legend tells us no more of the history of the emigrants while in Egypt until the time of their departure from the country, than do the Egyptian accounts thus far found.
THE EGYPTIAN SOJOURN
[ca. 1270-1250 B.C.]
Israel comes to Egypt a single family, and leaves the country a populous nation. Tradition connects the migration from Egypt into the land east of Jordan with the Levites, Moses and his brother Aaron, the forerunners and founders of the Israelitish priesthood. Moreover, the oldest form of the legend, as the Yahvistic text gives it, mentions only Moses. He is in it the liberator, leader, and priest of Israel. Neither the residence of the Patriarchs in the country west of Jordan, nor the stay of the Israelites in Egypt, have been historically proved, and the former is quite improbable.
Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are heroes of the race, the first two being at the same time tribal names. The last three have been revered at celebrated sanctuaries; and it must not be overlooked that the sanctuary of the first ancestor is the least important one. Moreover, it is a fact, proved by the history of different sanctuaries of the land, that those of Israel were considered sacred by the original inhabitants. This is the case at Sichem and Gibeon; Bethel was likewise a Canaanitish town in earlier times. Hebron was Edomitish, probably in the first place Horitish, and the very name of Beersheba shows its Canaanitish origin.
If the ancient Israelites took over the sanctuaries from the original Canaanitish inhabitants, as we know definitely concerning some and must surmise in the case of others, and if they nevertheless maintain that these sanctuaries were founded by their fathers, the object of this assertion is merely to gain a legal title to the possession of these pre-Israelitic sacred spots, and to obliterate the fact of their non-Israelitish origin. We shall have to go even farther and say that the Israelites either adopted from the Canaanites the hero that was honoured in those places, or that they there localised a certain Hebraic hero. But in both cases there is no evidence of a pre-Egyptian sojourn of Israelitish families in the land west of Jordan. Moreover, the comparatively recent origin of the patriarchical tradition must be borne in mind.
It is not quite so bad, though not essentially better, with the question of the residence of Israel in Egypt before its migration to the land east of Jordan. That, in spite of the most anxious search of apologetic Egyptologists and theologians, no trace of Moses and the Hebrews has been found in the Egyptian records is just as suspicious as the fact that the Hebrew account says nothing about all that happened between the time of Joseph and that of Moses.
It seems as if the flight of story-spinning imagination had been sufficient to transpose both the historical personage of Moses and the eponymous hero, Joseph, together with the eponyms of the two tribes descended from him, to Egypt, but not to fill out the intervening period. Egypt has, however, been too often for longer or shorter periods the residence of Semitic families for one to dare to deny the possibility that some Hebrew tribes or families stayed in Egypt. But that the Hebrew people, to say nothing of the race of Israel, did not do so, follows necessarily from the origin of these terms.
So it is easily seen why the search of the Egyptologists for traces of the residence of the Children of Israel or the Hebrews in Egypt must be fruitless. If any Hebrew clan did stay there, its name is unknown, and the Egyptologists would not recognise it, even if they understood more of Hebraic antiquity. But in any case the search for the Pharaohs, under whom Israel entered and left Egypt, is a useless jugglery with dates and names; and it is also useless to attempt to discover the route by which Israel left Egypt.
Tradition makes the institution of the Jewish religion on Mount Sinai contemporaneous with the emigration from Egypt; and it has been often surmised, especially by Egyptologists, that Moses imposed upon Israel elements of Egyptian theology. But there is no basis in fact for this theory. It is not known what the Hebrews may have borrowed from the Egyptians. Part of that which has been put under that category is entirely foreign to the old Jewish religion, and was gradually and spontaneously evolved, and the rest plays no part in it at all. It is especially absurd to attribute the idea of the unity of God to Egyptian influences.