the progenitors of the Hebraic peoples from Mesopotamia to the borders of Palestine. Here in the region east of the Jordan and Dead Sea, a part of the migrating people obtained settlement and became the nations of Ammon and Moab. The others passed to the south of the Dead Sea, where a part found a permanent home in the mountainous district, becoming the people known as Edom. Still others continued in a somewhat wandering state on the high steppe land at the south of Canaan, until a part of them entered the Delta region of Egypt. The fertility of this district has ever attracted those who dwell on the borders of the desert. It seems probable that only a small part of the tribes eventually amalgamated into the Hebrew people actually entered Egypt. Possibly only two closely allied tribes knew Egyptian bondage; there is indication that others remained in the region southward of Beersheba, and that still others were assimilated after entrance into Canaan.

It was not far from 1200 B.C. that the tribes which had settled in Egypt made their escape, after they had been for a time subjected to task work by Ramses II. In the wilderness south of Palestine they became closely affiliated with the kindred tribes that had continued in that region, and entered into covenant relation with the God Yahweh.2 After a somewhat prolonged sojourn in this

1 Cf. Deuteronomy 265.

2 The form Jehovah, the use of which has not been noted earlier than the fourteenth century A.D. (see Moore, Am. Jour. Theol., January, 1908), was certainly not the name of the God of ancient Israel. Jehovah is, however, generally used in the present volume to avoid the interruption of thought occasioned to most readers by meeting the name in an unfamiliar form. The chief exceptions are in translations of poetry when "Jehovah" sadly breaks the metre. The Hebrew name was written Yhwh, and long before the vowel signs were invented, the Jews had come to regard "the name" as too sacred for utterance. In its place, they read usually Lord, sometimes God. When the vowels were inserted in the Hebrew text, those of Lord or God were written. The vowels of the Hebrew word for Lord, with the four consonants of the proper name of Israel's God came finally to be represented in English as Jehovah, though the English versions, prior to the American Revision, generally followed the practice of using the title Lord instead of the proper name, indicating the places where it represented the proper name by printing in capital letters. The vowel sounds were probably originally a and e. The name Yahweh, from

district, movements east of the Jordan offered an opportunity to secure a more settled abode. A king from the region to the northeast of the Sea of Galilee had recently moved down and driven Ammon back to the borders of the Arabian desert. The confederated tribes, making a long detour to the south of Edom and east of Moab, swept down upon the Jordan valley at the northern border of Moab and effectually dislodged the new Amorite settlers.

From the vantage ground of the east Jordan district, favorable opportunity was soon found for the passage of the river and for the gradual occupation of the central ridge of Canaan, which runs from north to south on the west of the Jordan valley. The older portions of Israel's historical narratives, supported by the facts of later conditions, show that this occupation was indeed very gradual and that the newcomers were forced to live for generations in the midst of the older population which continued to hold many of the walled towns and the more fertile valleys.1 Before the close of the twelfth century B.C., the major part of the federated tribes which acknowledged Jehovah as their covenant God had crossed to Palestine proper, although some had found permanent settlement east of the Jordan and north of Moab. A reference on an Egyptian monument seems to make it clear that Asher was settled in Canaan before the exodus from Egypt, and the theory is plausible that the other three concubine tribes 2 were late members of the confederation, perhaps affiliated only after the settlement in Canaan.

We do not know how far the invading tribes may have been familiar with the arts and usages of settled agricultural life when they entered Canaan, nor how much they already possessed of the customs, laws, and traditional lore of their race. Haran in Mesopotamia, whence the Hebraic migration apparently moved down, was an ancient seat of Semitic religion and culture. It may be that the tribes which ultimately became the people of Israel brought from their temporary Mesopotamian home, and

a root meaning to become, may signify either He who is, absolutely, or He who brings into being.

1 See, e.g., Judges 1 20, 21, 27–36 ̧

2 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Genesis 30.

preserved through all their nomad days, more of the traditions of the civilized Semites than pure nomads would naturally possess. It may be that the influential portion of the tribes which sojourned in Egypt absorbed and carried away some elements of Egyptian culture. It will never be possible to determine how much Israel brought with her into Palestine, for she settled in the midst of the highly civilized Semites of Canaan and gradually absorbed their ancient culture. The close kinship of the Canaanite culture with that of Babylonia and the long rule of Egypt in Palestine have already been noted. It is, therefore, impossible to discriminate between Babylonian and Egyptian ideas which Israel brought into Canaan and those which she gained from the earlier inhabitants of the land.

Israel's prehistoric traditions have been subjected to the most searching analysis in the effort to determine their ultimate origin. Some bear on their face evidence of their rise in the TigrisEuphrates district; such are the story of the Garden of Eden and of the Tower of Babel. Some seem to be of Canaanite origin; many of these centre about Hebron or Bethel. Still others indicate something of Egyptian influence. While it is possible thus to determine with much certainty the original habitat of many of Israel's stories, such analysis does not necessarily indicate when the various elements became the possession of Israel. To the sources of uncertainty on this point that have already been indicated, we must add the facts that direct intercourse with Egypt continued throughout all periods of Hebrew history, and, from the middle of the ninth century on, Israel came into contact, first, with Assyria and then, with the new Babylonian kingdom. Assyria conquered and absorbed northern Israel in the eighth century, and later, Babylon subdued Judah and carried into exile the more cultured portion of the people. Of these the greater part never returned to Palestine, and the Babylonian Jews dominated the life and literature of Palestinian Judaism for centuries. These facts may suffice to indicate the difficulty of determining the exact historical relation between Israel's thought and that of the Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, and Egyptians, and also to suggest that all periods of Hebrew literature will show influences from one or several of these sources.

It is possible to distinguish, in large measure, those elements of Israel's literature, both of form and substance, which are a part of her heritage as a division of the great Semitic race and those which are due to her own peculiar genius and national history. Such discrimination will reveal the fact that the literature of ancient Israel has preserved and transmitted to the modern world the rich deposit of whole millenniums of cultural development, so that through it the Christian nations have become heirs to a great Semitic heritage. Yet such discrimination will make it equally clear that the notion of Israel's literature as little more than the retort in which the fine metal was precipitated is quite inadequate.

The study of pre-classical history is making it more and more clear that Greek civilization was not born Athene-like, but that the Hellenes absorbed vast stores of culture, intellectual, moral, artistic, from the nations that had gone before. Greece was heir of Egypt and Babylonia. Greek architecture, law, letters, philosophy, all show the influence of these earlier civilizations; yet a Greek temple is not simply an Egyptian temple, despite its manifest kinship, and Greek stoicism is not simply a Semitic philosophy, though its founder was a Semite. According to their peculiar genius, the Greeks transformed, perfected, and

1 If we agree with the Panbabylonists that "it is evident to the simplest reflection on the nature and origin of human thoughts that the ideas which conquered the old civilized world did not spring up in some remote corner," we may be forced to admit that among the Babylonians "Judaism must have received not only its impulse, but also its entire system," and we may even assent to the sweeping generalization "that the origins of the fundamental teachings of Judaism, not yet discovered in cuneiform literature, shall yet be found there." See Winckler, History of Babylonia and Assyria, Eng. trans., pp. 157-158. Most of us, however, will hardly feel justified in coming to conclusions that leave mere facts so far behind, resting on assumed invariable, historical law that is itself hardly established; if, indeed, it be not contrary to known facts of history. The discussion of the literary history of Israel in the following pages will proceed along the lines already indicated in the text, recognizing that Israel inherited or absorbed much from the closely interrelated world of which she was a part, but that her own national genius is entitled to the credit for those elements of spirit and thought in her literature which have no parallel or close analogy in the writings of other peoples.

made a new creation all that they adopted from preceding ages. Quite as distinctly in certain directions, Israel made her heritage a new creation. Her literature is not only the deposit of millenniums of Semitic history, but something unique in itself inadequately symbolized by the fine metal-rather the finest flowering of the whole Semitic race.