'Observers of Clouds and Serpents,' as mentioned regularly together (Deut. XVIII. 10). In the same book of law in which the adoration of the sefîrîm is strictly prohibited, it is also forbidden to observe clouds and serpents (Lev. XIX. 26). I am well aware that the connexion of these two verbs with the words for cloud and serpent is denied by some authorities of note; but the objections raised in reference to the first at least lead to the establishment of nothing more tenable.

1

Still there is another question which ought to come under our notice here, the answer to which shall form the conclusion of this chapter. When the nomad Hebrew's Myth of the victory of the night-sky over the day-sky, or of the unjust violence to which the dark sky falls a victim, was converted into a nomadic Religion, in which the mythical figures were individualised and adored as great powers; was not adoration then addressed to the names which had been assigned to the night-sky in the myth of the nomads? In other words, were not the deities themselves called Abram, Jacob, etc., just as among the Aryans the mythical figures when converted into gods were called by the same names as they had in the myth? For it was mainly the appellations becoming unintelligible that occasioned the process of transformation, and so it would be expected that in the resulting religion these names would occupy the centre. It is, indeed, the consequence which we should necessarily infer a priori from all that has been said. We should infer that those names of the sky of night and rain, of which the myth of the nomad was chiefly composed, at the theological stage became names of theological meaning. Yet this does not appear at all clearly in the Old Testament books. The reason is, that most of the historical books belonging to the Bible are coloured by a theocratic concep

1 Most recently by Ewald, Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, I. 234 et seq. On the purpose and importance of the interpretation of winds and clouds among the Babylonians, see Lenormant, La divination et la science des présages chez les Chaldéens, Paris 1875, pp. 64-68.

PATRIARCHAL NAMES ONCE MYTHICAL.

229

tion, and as literary works are advanced even beyond that stage of the national mind at which the mythical figures were converted into Ancestors. For not only religion, but history also, is formed out of myths at a certain stage of their development. But the mythical names really belonged first to theological nomenclature before they became historical, as names of Ancestors. This is proved by the fact, which has been mentioned already for another purpose, on which Dozy, in his book on Jewish-Arabic Religious History, has with excellent tact laid emphasis,' that none of these mythical names occurs as a human name in the whole course of ancient history, and even in modern history not till late, any more than an Indian would be named Sûrya, Ushas or Dahanâ, or a Roman Jupiter or Saturn, or a Greek Herakles or Aphrodite. This proves that the mythical names of the Hebrew nomads possessed a superhuman significance before they became historical names.

2

Yet there is still a fact belonging to the latest age which shows that the memory of a former connexion of theological ideas with the names Abram and Jacob had not even then altogether vanished. The great Prophet of the Hebrew people in the Babylonian Captivity, whose name is unknown to us only that we may admire the more his noble soaring spirit, cries in a prayer to Jahveh: For thou [Jahveh] art our Father; Abraham knew us not,

And Israel [Jacob] acknowledged us not;
Thou, Jahveh, art our Father,

Our Redeemer, whose name was from eternity.-Is. LXIII. 16. It is obvious that here the names of Abraham and Jacob are opposed to that of Jahveh. Therefore it is Jahveh, not Abraham; Jahveh, not Jacob! Jahveh is the omniscient redeemer and protector of the people Israel; the others take no care of it. Can we read in this opposition of names anything else but that the writer wishes to con

1 De Izraelieten te Mekka, Haarlem 1864, p. 29.

2 See my remark in the Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., 1874, XXVIII. 309.

trast the idea of a God recognised as the only true with the memory of something different, which ages ago passed for divine, but is unworthy of adoration now, when the Prophet brings forward the omniscience of Jahveh as an irrefragable argument for the exclusiveness of his divinity? I think not. And it is not stated without a purpose that Jahveh is the redeemer of the Hebrew nation from eternity' (mê ôlâm), i.e. even from that age in which to the popular mind Abraham and Jacob towered over the range of humanity into the sphere of the gods. We ought further to notice the change of the names Abhrâm and Ya'akôbh into Abhrâhâm and Yisrâ'êl (Gen. XVII. 5; XXXII. 29 [28]). The motive alleged for the change of Abhrâm High Father' is, that the historical character of the patriarch as Ancestor may be brought into the foreground: for I have made thee father of multitudes of nations.' To Jacob the later ethnographical name of the people is given. Thus the memory of that to which the ancient Hebrews had paid divine honours was to be suppressed as a thought of something divine but hostile to Jahveh; and its place was to be occupied by the memory of the Ancestors of the nation, in which character the Patriarchs are warmly commended to the people by this very prophet (LI. 1, 2). We must next explain what was the impulse that drove the Hebrews to form out of the nomenclature of their ancient myth the names of their ancestors, or in other words to translate a considerable portion of their mythological phraseology into ethnological.

CHAPTER VII.

INFLUENCE OF THE AWAKING NATIONAL IDEA ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HEBREW MYTH.

§ 1. THE nomadic stage of the Hebrew tribes reached its end at the moment when a large part of them gained a land for themselves on the right bank of the river Yardên (Jordan); and that is the true beginning of the History of the Hebrews. Nomadism holds in itself nothing essential to the world's history. Hence the nomadic age of most great nations fades away into the vague, and there are at most separate and unimportant reminiscences by each tribe of its days of battle,' which give the historian any fixed points for the construction of his picture. There is scarcely any other nomad people that has had greater vicissitudes in its changeful life than the Arabic tribes: yet they scarcely afford any fixed points when we try to survey their history. For it is not tied to any definite limited soil; no geographical unity runs throughout it. A true national history is inseparable from one country, which in peace presents the conditions necessary for the development of civilisation, and in war offers an object for the enthusiasm of assailants and defenders. There can be no history without a definite land to which the events of history cling. The nomad cares less for a particular territory than for his goods and chattels, when he goes to war.1 The Desert, and the roamer who roves over its

Palgrave gives an excellent picture of this state, in his Central and Eastern Arabia, I. 34: The Bedouin does not fight for his home, he has none; nor for his country, that is anywhere; nor for his honour, he never heard of it; nor for his religion, he owns and cares for none. His only object in war is the desire to get such a one's horse or camel into his own possession, etc.'

broad surface, have no history proper. Only isolated vague memories, such as can attach themselves to a great geographical territory, are at our command as points of support for the history of the Hebrew nomads. Their proper history begins with the conquest of Canaan. This conquest was by no means, as is still often assumed, a program of political reorganisation, long nourished in the mind of the people. On the contrary, the fact that we find the tribes on coming from Egypt (whence it cannot be seriously doubted that they came) engaged in roaming about on the left side of the Jordan before they entered Palestine, proves that the Hebrews did not dream of the prospect of exchanging their nomadic life for one in towns. In case they had any such intention, a way from Egypt to Palestine was always open to the people, independently of the route by sea, which could scarcely be thought of from the want of means and adequate preparation. They would have traversed the northern part of the desert al-Tîh, aiming directly at Hebron, on nearly the same track as that taken by the Patriarch's family according to the Biblical narrative in going from Canaan to Egypt. The theocratic historian himself finds a difficulty here, and ascribes to Moses strategic reasons for adopting another course: 'And Elôhîm led them not by the [regular] road to the land of the Philistines, because it is near; for, thought Elôhîm, [there is danger] lest the people should repent when they see war, and return to Egypt' (Ex. XIII. 17).

But the fact is really that on leaving Egypt the people wished to continue in their old mode of life, roving from desert to desert, seeking out one pasture after another; they were indifferent to the cultivated side of the Jordan, and chose by preference the wild eastern side, that is to this day the scene of that restless Beduin life which runs continuously from the bank of the Euphrates to the Sherra mountains. Nomadism is the most conservative life imaginable. For hundreds and thousands of years this plain has been occupied by the same tribes, alter.