Patriarchal Palestine Part 1

Patriarchal Palestine.

by Archibald Henry Sayce.

PREFACE

A few years ago the subject-matter of the present volume might have been condensed into a few pages. Beyond what we would gather from the Old Testament, we knew but little about the history and geography of Canaan before the age of its conquest by the Israelites. Thanks, however, to the discovery and decipherment of the ancient monuments of Babylonia and a.s.syria, of Egypt and of Palestine, all this is now changed. A flood of light has been poured upon the earlier history of the country and its inhabitants, and though we are still only at the beginning of our discoveries we can already sketch the outlines of Canaanitish history, and even fill them in here and there.

Throughout I have a.s.sumed that in the narrative of the Pentateuch we have history and not fiction. Indeed the archaeologist cannot do otherwise. Monumental research is making it clearer every day that the scepticism of the so-called "higher criticism" is not justified in fact.

Those who would examine the proofs of this must turn to my book on _The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_. There I have written purely as an archaeologist, who belongs to no theological school, and consequently readers of the work must see in it merely the irreducible minimum of confidence in the historical trustworthiness of the Old Testament, with which oriental archaeology can be satisfied. But it is obvious that this irreducible minimum is a good deal less than what a fair-minded historian will admit. The archaeological facts support the traditional rather than the so-called "critical" view of the age and authority of the Pentateuch, and tend to show that we have in it not only a historical monument whose statements can be trusted, but also what is substantially a work of the great Hebrew legislator himself.

For those who "profess and call themselves Christians," however, there is another side to the question besides the archaeological. The modern "critical" views in regard to the Pentateuch are in violent contradiction to the teaching and belief of the Jewish Church in the time of our Lord, and this teaching and belief has been accepted by Christ and His Apostles, and inherited by the Christian Church. It is a teaching and belief which lies at the root of many of the dogmas of the Church, and if we are to reject or revise it, we must at the same time reject and revise historical Christianity. It is difficult to see how we can call ourselves Christians in the sense which the term has borne for the last eighteen hundred years, and at the same time repudiate or modify, in accordance with our individual fancies, the articles of faith which historical Christianity has maintained everywhere and at all periods. For those who look beyond the covers of grammars and lexicons, the great practical fact of historical Christianity must outweigh all the speculations of individual scholars, however ingenious and elaborate they may be. It is for the individual to harmonize his conclusions with the immemorial doctrine of the Church, not for the Church to reconcile its teaching with the theories of the individual. Christ promised that the Spirit of G.o.d should guide His Apostles and their followers into "all truth," and those who believe the promise cannot also believe that the "Spirit of Truth" has been at any time a Spirit of illusion.

Oriental archaeology, at all events, is on the side of those who see in the Hebrew patriarchs real men of flesh and blood, and who hold that in the narratives of the Pentateuch we have historical records many of which go back to the age of the events they describe. Each fresh discovery made by the archaeologist yields fresh testimony to the truth of the Old Testament stories. Since the ma.n.u.script of the present work was ready for the press, two such discoveries have been made by Mr.

Pinches, to whom oriental archaeology and Biblical research are already under such deep obligations, and it has been possible only to glance at them in the text.

He has found a broken cuneiform tablet which once gave an account of the reign of Khammurabi, the contemporary of Chedor-laomer and Arioch, of the wars that he carried on, and of the steps by which he rose to the supreme power in Babylonia, driving the Elamites out of it, overthrowing his rival Arioch, and making Babylon for the first time the capital of a united kingdom. Unfortunately the tablet is much broken, but what is left alludes to his campaigns against Elam and Rabbatu--perhaps a city of Palestine, of his reduction of Babylon, and of his successes against Eri-Aku or Arioch of Larsa, Tudghulla or Tidal, the son of Gazza ... and Kudur-Lagamar or Chedor-laomer himself. The Hebrew text of Genesis has thus been verified even to the spelling of the proper names. The other discovery of Mr. Pinches is still more interesting. The name of Ab-ramu or Abram had already been found in Babylonian contracts of the age of Khammurabi; Mr. Pinches has now found in them the specifically Hebrew names of Ya'qub-ilu or Jacob-el and Yasup-ilu or Joseph-el. It will be remembered that the names of Jacob-el and Joseph-el had already been detected among the places in Palestine conquered by the Egyptian monarch Thothmes III., and it had been accordingly inferred that the full names of the Hebrew patriarchs must have been Jacob-el and Joseph-el. Jacob and Joseph are abbreviations a.n.a.logous to Jephthah by the side of Jiphthah-el (Josh. xix. 14), of Jeshurun by the side of Isra-el, or of the Egyptian Yurahma by the side of the Biblical Jerahme-el. As is mentioned in a later page, a discovery recently made by Prof. Flinders Petrie has shown that the name of Jacob-el was actually borne not only in Babylonia, but also in the West. Scarabs exist, which he a.s.signs to the period when Egypt was ruled by invaders from Asia, and on which is written the name of a Pharaoh Ya'aqub-hal or Jacob-el.

Besides the names of Jacob-el and Joseph-el, Mr. Pinches has met with other distinctively Hebrew names, like Abdiel, in deeds drawn up in the time of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged. There were therefore Hebrews--or at least a Hebrew-speaking population--living in Babylonia at the period to which the Old Testament a.s.signs the lifetime of Abraham. But this is not all. As I pointed out five years ago, the name of Khammurabi himself, like those of the rest of the dynasty of which he was a member, are not Babylonian but South Arabian. The words with which they are compounded, and the divine names which they contain, do not belong to the a.s.syrian and Babylonian language, and there is a cuneiform tablet in which they are given with their a.s.syrian translations. The dynasty must have had close relations with South Arabia. This, however, is not the most interesting part of the matter. The names are not South Arabian only, they are Hebrew as well. That of Khammu-rabi, for instance, is compounded with the name of the G.o.d 'Am, which is written 'Ammi in the name of his descendant Ammi-zaduqa, and 'Am or 'Ammi characterizes not only South Arabia, but the Hebrew-speaking lands as well. We need only mention names like Ammi-nadab or Ben-Ammi in ill.u.s.tration of the fact. Equally Hebrew and South Arabian is _zaduqa_ or _zadoq_; but it was a word unknown to the a.s.syrian language of Babylonia.

When Abraham therefore was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a dynasty was ruling there which was not of Babylonian origin, but belonged to a race which was at once Hebrew and South Arabian. The contract tablets prove that a population with similar characteristics was living under them in the country. Could there be a more remarkable confirmation of the statements which we find in the tenth chapter of Genesis? There we read that "unto Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg," the ancestor of the Hebrews, while the name of the other was Joktan, the ancestor of the tribes of South Arabia. The parallelism between the Biblical account and the latest discovery of archaeological science is thus complete, and makes it impossible to believe that the Biblical narrative would have been compiled in Palestine at the late date to which our modern "critics" would a.s.sign it. All recollection of the facts embodied in it would then have long pa.s.sed away.

Even while I write Prof. Hommel is announcing fresh discoveries which bear on the early history of the Book of Genesis. Cuneiform tablets have turned up from which we gather that centuries before the age of Abraham, a king of Ur, Ine-Sin by name, had not only overrun Elam, but had also conquered Simurru, the Zemar of Gen. x. 18, in the land of Phoenicia. A daughter of the same king or of one of his immediate successors, was high-priestess both of Elam and of Markhas or Mer'ash in Northern Syria, while Kimas or Northern Arabia was overrun by the Babylonian arms.

Proofs consequently are multiplying of the intimate relations that existed between Babylonia and Western Asia long before the era of the Patriarchs, and we need no longer feel any surprise that Abraham should have experienced so little difficulty in migrating into Canaan, or that he should have found there the same culture as that which he had left behind in Ur. The language and script of Babylonia must have been almost as well known to the educated Canaanite as to himself, and the records of the Patriarchal Age would have been preserved in the libraries of Canaan down to the time of its conquest by the Israelites.

Perhaps a word or two is needed in explanation of the repet.i.tions which will be found here and there in the following pages. They have been necessitated by the form into which I have been obliged to cast the book. A consecutive history of Patriarchal Palestine cannot be written at present, if indeed it ever can be, and the subject therefore has to be treated under a series of separate heads. This has sometimes made repet.i.tions unavoidable without a sacrifice of clearness.

In conclusion it will be noted, that the name of the people who were a.s.sociated with the Philistines in their wars against Egypt and occupation of Palestine has been changed from Zakkur to Zakkal. This has been in consequence of a keen-sighted observation of Prof. Hommel. He has pointed out that in a Babylonian text of the Ka.s.site period, the people in question are mentioned under the name of Zaqqalu, which settles the reading of the hieroglyphic word. (See the _Proceedings_ of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for May 1895.)

A.H. SAYCE.

_September_ 30, 1895.

CHAPTER I

THE LAND

Patriarchal Palestine! There are some who would tell us that the very name is a misnomer. Have we not been a.s.sured by the German critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. While criticism, so-called, has been busy in demolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade of the excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equally busy in restoring their credit. And the monuments of the past are a more solid argument than the guesses and prepossessions of the modern theorist. The clay tablet and inscribed stone are better witnesses to the truth than literary tact or critical scepticism. That Moses and his contemporaries could neither read nor write may have been proved to demonstration by the critic; yet nevertheless we now know, thanks to archaeological discovery, that it would have been a miracle if the critic were right. The Pentateuch is, after all, what it professes to be, and the records it contains are history and not romance.

The question of its authenticity involves issues more serious and important than those which have to do merely with history or archaeology. We are sometimes told indeed, in all honesty of purpose, that it is a question of purely literary interest, without influence on our theological faith. But the whole fabric of the Jewish Church in the time of our Lord was based upon the belief that the Law of Moses came from G.o.d, and that this G.o.d "is not a man that He should lie." And the belief of the Jewish Church was handed on to the Christian Church along with all its consequences. To revise that belief is to revise the dogmas of the Christian Church as they have been held for the last eighteen centuries; to reject it utterly is to reject the primary doc.u.ment of the faith into which we have been baptized.

It is not, however, with theological matters that we are now concerned.

Patriarchal Palestine is for us the Palestine of the Patriarchal Age, as it has been disclosed by archaeological research, not the Palestine in which the revelation of G.o.d's will to man was to be made. It is sufficient for us that the Patriarchal Age has been shown by modern discovery to be a fact, and that in the narratives of the Book of Genesis we have authentic records of the past. There was indeed a Patriarchal Palestine, and the glimpses of it that we get in the Old Testament have been ill.u.s.trated and supplemented by the ancient monuments of the Oriental world.

Whether the name of Palestine can be applied to the country with strict accuracy at this early period is a different question. Palestine is Philistia, the land of the Philistines, and the introduction of the name was subsequent to the settlement of the Philistines in Canaan and the era of their victories over Israel. As we shall see later on, it is probable that they did not reach the Canaanitish coast until the Patriarchal Age was almost, if not entirely, past Their name does not occur in the cuneiform correspondence which was carried on between Canaan and Egypt in the century before the Exodus, and they are first heard of as forming part of that great confederacy of northern tribes which attacked Egypt and Canaan in the days of Moses. But, though the term Canaan would doubtless be more correct than Palestine, the latter has become so purely geographical in meaning that we can employ it without reference to history or date. Its signification is too familiar to cause mistakes, and it can therefore be used proleptically, just as the name of the Philistines themselves is used proleptically in the twenty-first chapter of Genesis. Abimelech was king of a people who inhabited the same part of the country as the Philistines in later times, and were thus their earlier representatives.

The term "Palestine" then is used geographically without any reference to its historical origin. It denotes the country which is known as Canaan in the Old Testament, which was promised to Abraham and conquered by his descendants. It is the land in which David ruled and in which Christ was born, where the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and the Christian Church was founded.

Shut in between the Desert of Arabia and the Mediterranean Sea on the east and west, it is a narrow strip of territory, for the most part mountainous, rugged, and barren. Northward the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon come to meet it from Syria, the Anti-Lebanon culminating in the lofty peaks and precipitous ravines of Mount Hermon (9383 feet above the level of the sea), while Lebanon runs southward till it juts out into the sea in its sacred headland of Carmel. The fertile plain of Esdraelon or Megiddo separates the mountains of the north from those of the south.

These last form a broken plateau between the Jordan and the Dead Sea on the one side and the Plain of Sharon and the sea-coast of the Philistines on the other, until they finally slope away into the arid desert of the south. Here, on the borders of the wilderness, was Beersheba the southern limit of the land in the days of the monarchy, Dan, its northern limit, lying far away to the north at the foot of Hermon, and not far from the sources of the Jordan.

Granite and gneiss, overlaid with hard dark sandstone and ma.s.ses of secondary limestone, form as it were the skeleton of the country. Here and there, at Carmel and Gerizim, patches of the tertiary nummulite of Egypt make their appearance, and in the plains of Megiddo and the coast, as well as in the "Ghor" or valley of the Jordan, there is rich alluvial soil. But elsewhere all is barren or nearly so, cultivation being possible only by terracing the cliffs, and bringing the soil up to them from the plains below with slow and painful labour. It has often been said that Palestine was more widely cultivated in ancient times than it is to-day. But if so, this was only because a larger area of the cultivable ground was tilled. The plains of the coast, which are now given over to malaria and Beduin thieves, were doubtless thickly populated and well sown. But of ground actually fit for cultivation there could not have been a larger amount than there is at present.

It was not in any way a well-wooded land. On the slopes of the Lebanon and of Carmel, it is true, there were forests of cedar-trees, a few of which still survive, and the a.s.syrian kings more than once speak of cutting them down or using them in their buildings at Nineveh. But south of the Lebanon forest trees were scarce; the terebinth was so unfamiliar a sight in the landscape as to become an object of worship or a road-side mark. Even the palm grew only on the sea-coast or in the valley of the Jordan, and the tamarisk and sycamore were hardly more than shrubs.

Nevertheless when the Israelites first entered Canaan, it was in truth a land "flowing with milk and honey." Goats abounded on the hills, and the bee of Palestine, though fierce, is still famous for its honey-producing powers. The Perizzites or "fellahin" industriously tilled the fields, and high-walled cities stood on the mountain as well as on the plain.

The highlands, however, were deficient in water. A few streams fall into the sea south of Carmel, but except in the spring, when they have been swollen by the rains, there is but little water in them. The Kishon, which irrigates the plain of Megiddo, is a more important river, but it too is little more than a mountain stream. In fact, the Jordan is the only river in the true sense of the word which Palestine possesses.

Rising to the north of the waters of Merom, now called Lake Huleh, it flows first into the Lake of Tiberias, and then through a long deep valley into the Dead Sea. Here at a depth of 1293 feet below the level of the sea it is swallowed up and lost; the sea has no outlet, and parts with its stagnant waters through evaporation alone. The evaporation has made it intensely salt, and its sh.o.r.es are consequently for the most part the picture of death.

In the valley of the Jordan, on the other hand, vegetation is as luxuriant and tropical as in the forests of Brazil. Through a dense undergrowth of canes and shrubs the river forces its way, rushing forward towards its final gulf of extinction with a fall of 670 feet since it left the Lake of Tiberias. But the distance thus travelled by it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee. Here it has cut its way through a deep gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on either side.

The Jordan has taken its name from its rapid fall. The word comes from a root which signifies "to descend," and the name itself means "the down-flowing." We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties. Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses III., who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, enumerates the "Yordan" at Medinet Habu among his conquests in Palestine. In both cases it is a.s.sociated with "the Lake of Rethpana,"

which must accordingly be the Egyptian name of the Dead Sea. Rethpana might correspond with a Hebrew Reshphon, a derivative from Resheph, the G.o.d of fire. Canaanite mythology makes the sparks his "children" (Job v.

7) and it may be, therefore, that in this old name of the Dead Sea we have a reference to the overthrow of the cities of the plain.

Eastward of the Dead Sea and the Jordan the country is again mountainous and bare. Here were the territories of Reuben and Gad, and the half-tribe of Mana.s.seh; here also were the kingdoms of Moab and Ammon, of Bashan and the Amorites. Here too was the land of Gilead, south of the Lake of Tiberias and north of the Dead Sea.

We can read the name of Muab or Moab on the base of the second of the six colossal statues which Ramses II. erected in front of the northern pylon of the temple of Luxor. It is there included among his conquests.

The statue is the only Egyptian monument on which the name has. .h.i.therto been found. But this single mention is sufficient to guarantee its antiquity, and to prove that in the days before the Exodus it was already well known in Egypt.

To the north of Moab came the kingdom of Ammon, or the children of Ammi.

The name of Ammon was a derivative from that of the G.o.d Ammi or Ammo, who seems to have been regarded as the ancestor of the nation, and "the father of the children of Ammon" was accordingly called Ben-Ammi, "the son of Ammi" (Gen. xix. 38). Far away in the north, close to the junction of the rivers Euphrates and Sajur, and but a few miles to the south of the Hitt.i.te stronghold of Carchemish, the worship of the same G.o.d seems to have been known to the Aramaean tribes. It was here that Pethor stood, according to the a.s.syrian inscriptions, and it was from Pethor that the seer Balaam came to Moab to curse the children of Israel. Pethor, we are told, was "by the river (Euphrates) of the land of the children of Ammo," where the word represents a proper name (Num.

xxii. 5). To translate it "his people," as is done by the Authorized Version, makes no sense. On the a.s.syrian monuments Ammon is sometimes spoken of as Beth-Ammon, "the house of Ammon," as if Ammon had been a living man.

Like Moab, Ammon was a region of limestone mountains and barren cliffs.

But there were fertile fields on the banks of the Jabbok, the sources of which rose not far from the capital Rabbath.

North of Gilead and the Yarmuk was the volcanic plateau of Bashan, Ziri-Basana, or "the Plain of Bashan," as it is termed in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. Its western slope towards the Lakes of Merom and Tiberias was known as Golan (now Jolan); its eastern plateau of metallic lava was Argob, "the stony" (now El Lejja). Bashan was included in the Hauran, the name of which we first meet with on the monuments of the a.s.syrian king a.s.sur-bani-pal. To the north it was bounded by Ituraea, so named from Jetur, the son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 15), the road through Ituraea (the modern Jedur) leading to Damascus and its well-watered plain.

The gardens of Damascus lie 2260 feet above the sea. In the summer the air is cooled by the mountain breezes; in the winter the snow sometimes lies upon the surface of the land. Westward the view is closed by the white peaks of Anti-Lebanon and Hermon; eastward the eye wanders over a green plain covered with the mounds of old towns and villages, and intersected by the clear and rapid streams of the Abana and Pharphar.

But the Abana has now become the Barada, or "cold one," while the Pharphar is the Nahr el-Awaj.

The Damascus of to-day stands on the site of the city from which St.

Paul escaped, and "the street which is called Straight" can still be traced by its line of Roman columns. But it is doubtful whether the Damascus of the New Testament and of to-day is the same as the Damascus of the Old Testament. Where the walls of the city have been exposed to view, we see that their Greek foundations rest on the virgin soil; no remains of an earlier period lie beneath them. It may be, therefore, that the Damascus of Ben-Hadad and Hazael is marked rather by one of the mounds in the plain than by the modern town. In one of these the stone statue of a man, in the a.s.syrian style, was discovered a few years ago.

An ancient road leads from the peach-orchards of Damascus, along the banks of the Abana and over Anti-Lebanon, to the ruins of the temple of the Sun-G.o.d at Baalbek. The temple as we see it is of the age of the Antonines, but it occupies the place of one which stood in Heliopolis, the city of the Sun-G.o.d, from immemorial antiquity. Relics of an older epoch still exist in the blocks of stone of colossal size which serve as the foundation of the western wall. Their bevelling reminds us of Phoenician work.

Baalbek was the sacred city of the Bek'a, or "cleft" formed between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon by the gorge through which the river Litany rushes down to the sea. Once and once only is it referred to in the Old Testament. Amos (i. 5) declares that the Lord "will break the bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from Bikath-On"--the Bek'a of On.

The name of On reminds us that the Heliopolis of Egypt, the city of the Egyptian Sun-G.o.d, was also called On, and the question arises whether the name and worship of the On of Syria were not derived from the On of Egypt. For nearly two centuries Syria was an Egyptian province, and the priests of On in Egypt may well have established themselves in the "cleft" valley of Coele-Syria.

From Baalbek, the city of "Baal of the Bek'a," the traveller makes his way across Lebanon, and under the snows of Jebel Sannin--nearly 9000 feet in height--to the old Phoenician city of Beyrout. Beyrout is already mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna under the name of Beruta or Beruna, "the cisterns." It was already a seaport of Phoenicia, and a halting-place on the high road that ran along the coast.

The coastland was known to the Greeks and Romans as Phoenicia, "the land of the palm." But its own inhabitants called it Canaan, "the lowlands."