The Historians' History of the World 02

From the foregoing considerations it is clear how the second title of honour, the name of Jacob, must be explained. This, too, was in the first instance the name of a clan and of the eponymous hero from whom it claimed descent. He was worshipped in various places west of Jordan, more particularly at Bethel. But the use of the name Jacob to denote the whole nation of Israel is confined to prophets and poets, no historical document ever applies it to Israel. Possibly the name of Israel had become the name of the nation before the migration west of Jordan. Moreover, we cannot even assert that the figure of Jacob is of necessity Hebrew. It may have been associated with Bethel before the immigration and transmitted to the Hebrews by the original Canaanite inhabitants.

Even before its migration west of Jordan, Israel was distinguished from all other Hebrews by the worship of Jehovah as the national divinity. It is a right instinct, therefore, which makes the rise of Israelite nationality and the rise of the religion of Jehovah coincide in the mythical reminiscences of the people of Israel. Legend alone, and no historic document, records the rise of this worship. But legend, rightly interrogated, gives us hints as to how we should suppose it to have come to pass. And legend connects it with the immigration into the Holy Land and more particularly with the conquest of the land east of Jordan.c

Hebrew Dolmen at Ala-Safat

CHAPTER II. ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY

It is a matter of some delicacy to speak of the origin of the Hebrews. But whatever the historian’s individual bias, he has no resource but to treat the early history of this race exactly as he treats the early history of other races. It has already been pointed out again and again, that history knows nothing of racial beginnings.

We have noted that modern historians are disposed to begin their accounts of the history of the Israelites with the Egyptian sojourn. It is impossible, however, to avoid questioning as to the home of the people prior to that period, and at least a brief reference must be made to the traditional wanderings of the race in the earlier epoch. Whoever is disposed to feel that the modern historian in his iconoclastic treatment of the Hebrew records is passing beyond justifiable bounds, may be reminded that some of the greatest of living scholars are able to separate their ideas as to it into two classes, and to entertain two seemingly antagonistic sets of judgments regarding the entire subject of Hebrew history. As archæologists and historians they study the Hebrew records as human documents, to be judged by ordinary historical standards; while as theologians, they view the same documents through a prism of faith that gives them an altogether altered position. Perhaps this attitude of a certain school cannot be better expressed than in the words of the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, who is recognised everywhere as one of the highest authorities on oriental archæology.

In the preface to his Early History of the Hebrews Professor Sayce points out that “There is no infallible history any more than there is infallible philology; and if we are to understand the history of the Hebrews aright, we must deal with it as we should with the history of any other ancient people. The Old Testament writers were human; and in so far as they were historians, their conceptions and manner of writing history were the same as those of their oriental contemporaries. They were not European historians of the nineteenth century, and to treat them as such would be not only to pursue a radically false method, but to falsify the history they have recorded. No human history is, or can be, inerrant, and to claim inerrancy for the history of Israel is to introduce into Christianity the Hindu doctrine of the inerrancy of the Veda. For the historian, at any rate, the questions involved in a theological treatment of the Old Testament do not exist.” But after making these statements, Professor Sayce continues: “The present writer, accordingly, must be understood to speak throughout simply as an archæologist and historian. Theologically he accepts unreservedly whatever doctrine has been laid down by the Church as an article of the faith. But among these doctrines he fails to find any which forbids a free and impartial handling of Old Testament history.”

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.]