A HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT ISRAEL CHAPTER I ISRAEL IN THE ANCIENT SEMITIC WORLD WHEN the Hebrews became a nation, the history of Semitic civilization in Babylonia already spanned a period as long as that from the opening of the Christian era to the present century. The most ancient records found in the Tigris-Euphrates valley indicate that the Semites had conquered and settled among earlier inhabitants of another race, who had developed a high degree of civilization before their conquerors came into the region. When the earliest written records begin, two races are intermingled, with the Semites dominant, and two languages exist side by side, the one an agglutinative tongue, the other Semitic. Both languages are written in the cuneiform characters which had evidently been borrowed by the Semites. Civilization was far removed from savage or pastoral conditions; a pure agricultural stage had been A few years ago most students of Babylonian history were agreed that our knowledge of it extended back at least as far as 4500 or 5000 B.c., and that the culture then existing testified to a long period of development far removed from anything that could be styled a state of savagery. See Goodspeed, A History of the Babylonians and Assyrians; Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria; Sanders and Fowler, Outlines of Biblical History and Literature; etc. More recent discoveries, however, indicating that some of the later Babylonian dynasties overlapped, have made it probable that our earliest actual historical knowledge of Babylonia does not greatly antedate 3000 B.C., although it is true that the civilization then existing clearly indicates a long period of previous development. See Winckler, History of Babylonia and Assyria; King, History of Sumer and Akkad. reached, with walled cities inhabited by people familiar with many of the arts. The prevalent type of government was that of the city state; but a tendency toward consolidation through conquest was soon manifest, resulting in the formation of more or less extensive kingdoms. Most investigators of the subject believe that the Arabian peninsula was the region whence the conquerors came into the fertile valley. It has recently been contended that, whatever may have been the earlier home of the common Semitic stock, the conquerors of Babylonia moved down from the northwest, from a great centre of Semitic civilization in Syria which antedated that in Babylonia.1 The arguments adduced hardly prove the thesis, but under either hypothesis, early in the third millennium B.C., civilized Semites controlled the entire fertile crescent of territory extending from the Persian Gulf to the borders of Egypt, northward of the plateau of Arabia. Southern Semites occupied the great interior of Arabia and developed civilized states on its southern shores, many centuries before the Christian era. Thence some, at an early date, crossed Sea and settled in that part of Africa These may be passed by with brief northern Semites that the student of the lower end of the Red which we call Abyssinia. mention, for it is with the Hebrew history is concerned. According to the view usually held, a second irresistible wave of expanding population brought new hordes from Arabia into the region about its northern end during the third millennium. To this so-called Amorite migration is ascribed the coming of the early Canaanites and Phoenicians into the regions which they secured and so long held. Here they displaced a non-Semitic, cave-dwelling people.2 At an early date Egypt was influenced by Semitic culture, and, in turn, Egyptian influence greatly affected Canaan. About 1675 B.C. an Asiatic dynasty, known as the Hyksos, ruled in Egypt, and when the native Egyptians succeeded in expelling the foreigners, a century later, the impulse of the movement carried the conquering Egyptian armies into Canaan and brought the land 1 Amurru, the Home of the Northern Semites, Albert T. Clay. 2 Canaan d'après l'exploration récente, H. Vincent, pp. 373-426. under the sway of the Pharaoh. Before 1450 B.c. Egypt's power extended as far as the Euphrates, or even into Mesopotamia. The discovery at Tell-el-Amarna in Egypt (1887-1888) of a large collection of letters and despatches to the Egyptian kings, Amenophis III and IV, has given a vivid picture of conditions in Canaan at the opening of the fourteenth century. It appears that the land was under local governors responsible to the Pharaoh ; these officers were at feud with one another, and the Egyptian power in the land was evidently weakening. Some of the letters are frantic appeals from the various governors for the king to send troops, before the land and cities are entirely lost to Egypt. One of the Jerusalem letters will serve as an example. "To my lord, the king::- Abd-hiba, your servant. At the feet of my lord, the king, seven and seven times, I fall. What have I done against my lord, the king? Some one has slandered me before my lord, the king, (saying): 'Abd-hiba has revolted from his lord, the king.' Behold, neither my father nor my mother appointed me in this place. The strong arm of the king inaugurated me in my father's territory. Why should I commit an offense against my lord, the king? True as the king lives, because I said to my lord, the king's officer:-Why are you favorable to the Habiri and unfavorable to the (native feudal) princes, for this reason they slander me before my lord, the king. Because I say:-The territory of my lord, the king, will be ruined, for this reason they slander me before my lord, the king. "Let my lord, the king, know that my lord, the king, had stationed a garrison, but Janhamu has taken (it) ... Egypt... my lord, the king... there is no garrison there. Let the king care for his land, and [pay some heed] to his land; the cities of my lord, the king, belonging to Ili-milki, have fallen away, and the whole territory of the king will be lost. Let my lord, the king, therefore, care for his land. I think I will go to the court to my lord, the king, and see the tears 2 of my lord, the king, but the enemies are powerful against me, and I am not able to go to court, to my lord, the king. May it seem good therefore to my lord, the king, to send a garrison, in order that I may go to court and see the tears of my lord, the king. As long as my lord, the king, lives when an officer goes forth, I (always) 1 The letters include diplomatic correspondence between the kings of Babylonia and Mesopotamia and the Pharaoh, messages from subject rulers of Phoenicia and northern Syria, as well as from various cities of Palestine, Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Gezer, Lachish. 2 Perhaps an error for "face." 2 say: The land of the king is going to ruin. If you do not listen to me, all the dependent princes will be lost, and my lord, the king, will have no more dependent princes. Let the king therefore turn his attention to the princes, and let my lord, the king, send troops. The king has no longer any territory, the Habili have devastated all the king's territory. If troops come in this year, the territory will remain my lord, the king's, but if no troops come, the territory of my lord, the king, is lost. To the scribe of my lord, the king:- Abd-hiba, your servant. Bring plainly (aloud) before my lord, the king, (these) words: 'The whole territory of my lord, the king, is going to ruin.'”1 Frequent mention is made of a people called Habiri who are rapidly getting a foothold in the land. In these we may possibly be justified in finding the forerunners of the Hebraic migration. The language used, even when a local governor of Syria or Canaan is writing to Egypt, is the Semitic Babylonian, and the script is the cuneiform. Whatever may have been the course of the early migrations and settlement, it is clear that the language and mode of writing of the Babylonians had spread throughout the entire region from the lower Euphrates valley to the borders of Egypt. Recent discoveries at the old Hittite capital in Asia Minor show that the same mode of writing was familiar there, even though the Hittites had their own written language. At the time of the Egyptian conquest of Syria, the political power of Babylonia had waned. The next three centuries saw the north Semitic world in much confusion. A people styled the Mitanni ruled in Mesopotamia, and the Hittites moved down into Syria. While these two seem to have been kindred peoples, they were mutually hostile. Spreading from an original centre on the east side of the upper Tigris, the new Semitic kingdom of Assyria extended itself into Mesopotamia and waged bitter war with the Babylonians on its south. The Hittites forced Egypt out of northern Syria and limited her Asiatic territory to the region south of the Lebanons. During these centuries of confusion, there seems to have come another overflow from Arabia, styled the Aramean migration. By 1300 B.C. the Arameans were moving up the Euphrates valley and westward. It was probably this movement which brought 1 Winckler, The Tell-el-Amarna Letters, pp. 303-305. |