Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

The grave of Rachel is also marked out by tradition, which puts it in the neighbourhood of Ephrâth, subsequently and still called Bêth-lechem (Beth-lehem). This sepulchre is to the present day the object of pilgrimage to the adherents of three religions. The myth calls Joseph the son of Rachel, and we know of Ephrayîm (Ephraim) as son of Joseph. Now the name Ephrayîm seems to belong to the period of the differentiation of the national legends, and to be a secondary form to Ephrâth, which passes for the burial-place of his ancestress. For we find also the derivative noun Ephrâthî, i.e. ‘belonging to Ephrâth,’ in the two senses ‘a man from the place Ephrâth’ and ‘a descendant of Ephraim;’ and Ephraim himself is called Ephrâthâ in a passage in the Psalms.[680] The prophet Samuel and his ancestors are also said to have been Ephrâthî-men (1 Sam. I. 1).[681] This identity between the name of the burial-place of Joseph’s mother and the name of his son is probably not accidental, but produced under the influence of the national tendencies of the North; and the reaction of the spirit of the South may have suppressed the old name of the place and substituted the modern Bêth-lechem. Now in my view the name Ephrayîm was originally not a personal but a national name. After the separation the Northern Hebrews called themselves ‘those belonging to Ephrâth.’

For the word Ephrayîm has the form of a plural of a so-called relative adjective (Arabic nisbâ), derived from Ephrâth by throwing off the feminine formative syllable ath and attaching the new formative syllable directly to the base of the word. Of this Semitic mode of formation the Arabic gives a good instance; there the feminine ending of the proper name (t) is regularly cast off in forming the nisbâ, and the relative termination is attached to the body of the word: e.g. from Baṣratun not Baṣratî but Baṣrî, ‘a man of Basrâ.’ In Hebrew, the feminine termination is cast off when it appears in the shortened form â; e.g. Yehûdâ (Judah), whence Yehûdî; Timnâ, whence Timnî. But an instance occurs in which even the termination th is cast off before the formation of the relative. Instead of Kerêthî, the form generally used in the phrase hak-Kerêthî wehap-Pelêthî ‘the Kerethites and the Pelethites,’ the form Kârî is found (2 Sam. XX. 23 Kethîbh); the th[682] being discarded, and the vowel of the first syllable lengthened by way of compensation (productio suppletoria). I assume the same formation in the present case (though the regular Ephrâthî is also used), the termination of the relative adjective being attached directly to the base Ephr, after the rejection of the th. We know further that the idiom of the Northern part of the region covered by the Hebrew language contained much that is generally called Aramaism. The Aramaic relative adjectives are formed in ay, and they are occasionally met with in Hebrew also;[683] Ephray, forming the plural Ephrayîm, is an instance.

This latter form accordingly signifies ‘those belonging to Ephrâth,’ and is the national name of the Hebrews of the North, used afterwards as a designation of their ancestor. Many instances of a similar proceeding occur in the Biblical genealogies.

Thus the Northern Hebrews possess national memories connecting them with Joseph-Ephraim. It is therefore quite natural that, as the national difference which parted the Northern from the Southern people became more evident, vivid and acknowledged, the mind of the former was more occupied with the cycle of stories about the person and adventures of Joseph. The existing mass of stories offered abundant opportunity for this, and more productive matter could scarcely be imagined than the story of the hatred of the brethren towards Joseph, the Patriarch of the North. The Northerns consequently seized this portion of the Patriarchal history, and worked it out in the interest of their national separatism, always contriving to let the supremacy of Joseph above Judah clearly appear. They take pleasure in representing Judah crouching in the dust before Joseph the ruler, and owing his life entirely to the will of the generous brother, towards whom he had formerly borne such bitter ill-will. Joseph is brought forward with satisfaction and pride as the brother whom the aged father treated with the greatest favour and distinction, and whose life alone was able to revive his fainting spirits; while Joseph’s mother was the only woman whom the Patriarch really loved, whereas the Southerns were descended partly from the ugly Leah, Judah’s mother, who became Jacob’s wife only by deceit and craft, and partly from slaves.

National stories are created by the awaking consciousness of opposition; and, as we have seen, they transfer to primeval times the national spirit of opposition, which is an affair of the present, and ascribe a reflex of it to the respective ancestors. This is the spirit of the stories of Joseph, worked out by the Northern in opposition to the Southern Hebrews. The enmity of the two Hebrew kingdoms is transferred to the earliest times, and prefigured in the picture of the relation between Joseph and his brethren. The chief portions of this mass of Northern stories which were reduced to writing at a later time, and thus fixed in a definite form, were contained in the ancient document distinguished by most critics as the ‘Book of Uprightness’ (Sêpher hay-Yâshâr).[684]

I must here refer to a very ingenious theory concerning the matter in hand, which was propounded not long ago by A. Bernstein.[685] He imagines the differentiation of the mass of Hebrew stories to have been such that the story of Abraham, the Patriarch of Hebron, belongs to the Southern kingdom, whilst that of Jacob, the Patriarch of Beth-el, was produced by the political tendencies of the Northern realm. Before these more recent stories he supposes the oldest of the Patriarchal stories, which was connected with the worship at Beer-sheba, to have existed, but to have been afterwards obscured by the later legend about Abraham. Bernstein leaves these stories of political tendency to fight it out together, and entangles them in the antagonism between North and South, until at last after the disappearance of the opposition they become common property and are blended together. Although from what has been said there appears to be no question but that in the treatment of the legendary matter, the political situation was no insignificant factor, yet it is impossible to set up the three Patriarchs as products of mere political tendencies. For we have proved that the origin of their names goes back to the very earliest age when myths were first created. No doubt this or that feature in the tout ensemble of the story took a different character according as it was handed down by the inhabitants of the Northern or of the Southern kingdom; and sensible interpreters have long paid particular attention to these differences.

But the names are not later inventions or fictions; they are primeval, and among the oldest elements of the Hebrew language; and, similarly, the most prominent features of the stories, derived from the ancient myth, are free from all that national or political tendency which attached itself in much later times to the ancient material.

§ 5. In general the Northern kingdom, in which no theocratic tendency seized on and transformed the existing mass of stories, held the legends, which were guided in a national direction, firmer, and felt more affection for them. Besides the Patriarchal stories, those which fill up the age of the Judges (Shôpheṭîm) gave the most scope to national pride. There the stories of the true Hebrew national heroes and their heroic battles with the Philistines are found. In respect to theocracy this whole age has little importance, and the stories were utterly incapable of a theocratic transformation. For the very aim of Hebrew theocracy was, first to prefigure the theocratic destiny of the Hebrews in the history of the primeval age, and then to show in as favourable a light as possible the beneficent revolution brought on by the house of David. But for this purpose it was essential that this period of theocratic movement should contrast advantageously with an untheocratic time, unfavourable to any such movement, and that the spirit of David’s rule should be the very opposite of the preceding administrations. Consequently, the stories of the Judges suffered no theocratic transformation. But transformation and development constitute the very life of Legend, which, if not accommodated to the new current of feeling, is abandoned, and ceases to live; having in its old form no meaning to a new age.

There are unequivocal testimonies which prove that to the theocratic mind the stories of the Judges were utterly dead, and were consequently neglected by it. Two of these testimonies deserve especial mention. The Book of Chronicles (dibhrê hay-yâmîm), which we have been long accustomed to regard as a history written in a strictly sacerdotal spirit, enumerating by name all the priests, Levites, singers and door-keepers of the central sanctuary of Jerusalem, utters not a syllable respecting the entire period of the Judges, but commences the history proper at the death of Saul and accession of David. And another part of the Canon, the Book of Ruth, the object of which is to connect David’s genealogy with an idyl, and which expresses the moderate theocratic ideas of the restoration, while the matter of its narrative occupies no determinate chronological position, indicates this very chronological vagueness by the words wa-yehî bîmê shephôt hash-shôpheṭîm, ‘it was in the days when the Judges ruled,’ i.e. it was once in the olden time (Ruth I. 1). The ‘Judges’ time' here denotes an indeterminate period, whose chronology is effaced. That period, in fact, does labour under an indefiniteness which almost baffles the chronologist, and the Biblical Canon itself could only be drawn up by leaving an excessively lax connexion between the three periods—the occupation of Canaan by the Hebrews, the monarchy after David, and the untheocratic period lying between the two.

But the Northern spirit was strongly attracted to the period of the Judges and the stories belonging to it, since it felt itself to be the continuator of the homogeneous spirit of the history of the times before David; and thus literature is indebted to an author belonging to the Northern kingdom for the ground-work of the Book of Judges.[686] Thus then was accomplished the division of the mass of legends of the Hebrews.