DS CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Edward Moritz Memorial Fund DATE DUE MARe p "4 1368 V f-^^ ^' RR MAY J^ 1 z>^ ■fgOliif — WlH5\ ** ^ ■j^f" i i 1 GAYLORD PRINTEDINU.S A. C,^^' i§^ cy ,■-.,, I Cornell University Library *• ' DS 121.B96 1921 Israel's settlement In Canaan :tte^^^ 3 1924 007 932 746 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007932746 THE BRITISH ACADEMY Israel's Settlement in Canaan The Biblical Tradition and its Historical Background By The Rev. C. F. Burney, D.Litt. . Oriel Professor of the/Interpretation of Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford Canon of -Rochester The Scluveich Lectures 1917 THIRD EDITION London Published for the British Academy By Humphrey Milford, Oxford' University Press ^ (^ Amen Corner, E.G. <^ 1921 ;-:' ."^^ PKINTED AT OXFORD, ENGLAND BV FREDEBICK HALL PRINTER TO THE UKIVERSITy if^W^S^'i TO THE REV. CHARLES JAMES BALL, D.Litt. IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OP MUCH 4NSTBUCTI0N AND INSPIRATION TN BIBLICAL STUDIES PREFACE When I was honoured by the President and Council of the British Academy with an invitation to deliver the Schweich Lectures of 1917, the suggestion was made that I should choose some subject in connexion with the commentary on the Book of Judges on which I have been engaged for some years. The subject which I chose, though not falling within the period of the Judges of Israel as defined by the limits of the Book of Judges, is one which is brought prominently forward by the introductory section to the book, ch. i. 1-ii. 5, which raises immediately the question of the relation of the summary which it gives of the tribal settlement in Canaan to the fuller and in many respects discrepant account of that settlement which we find in the Book of Joshua. Even apart from this preface to the Book of Judges, the narratives dealing with the various Israelite leaders, which form the material of the book as a whole, picture (at any rate in the old sources themselves as contrasted with the editorial framework) so slight a cohesion among the various tribal units of Israel, and their holding of so precarious a footing in Canaan in the midst of alien races, that the question presses itself upon the student whether the theory of a closely organized body of twelve tribes, effecting under a single leader a complete subjugation of the greater part of Canaan — i.e. the theory of the Book of Joshua in its present form-^is at all consistent with such a state of aH'airs in the period immediately subsequent to the settlement. I welcomed I'm opportunity, there- fore, oli examining, as systematically as I was able to do within the brief compass of three lectures, a subject the right understanding of which forms a necessary preliminary to the study of the period of the Judges, and of bringing together and supplementing the vi PREFACE conclusions at which I had arrived in my more or less isolated discussions of particular points as they arose in the course of preparation of my commentary. Fortunately, my larger work is completed, and would ere now have seen the light had it not been for the great difficulties connected with publication at the present time ; and I have utilized material embodied in it for many of the questions which call for discussion in the present lectures. I have cited it tliroughout as Burney, Judges, and have been able for the most part to give reference to the pages in which the points in question receive fuller discussion. Lecture III is based in the main upon work which I have embodied in the introduction to the commentary (§ 6), which will be -found there to stand in a fuller and more detailed historical setting of events in Western Asia so far as they have a bearing on the contemporary history of Canaan ; and I have also drawn largely on the book in stating my views as to the conquest of the Negeb by a northward advance from Kadesh-Barnea (pp. 28 ff. ; cf. Judges, pp. 44 ff.), and as to the fortunes of the tribe of Levi (pp. 44 ff. ; cf. Judges, pp. 436 ff.). The reader of these lectures who expects to find a continuous narrative of Israel's settlement in Canaan must inevitably be disappointed by the scantiness of the material, especially upon the archaeological side,, and the fragmentary character of such con- clusions as can be drawn with reasonable safety. The weaving of a fuller and more connected narrative might have been accom- plished by paying less strict regard to the scientific method and allowing more free play to the imagination ; but a real advance in historical knowledge can only be secured by frankly facing the facts that the sources of information at our disposal are inadequate for the construction of such a connected scheme, and that we can only advance by slow degrees in our endeavour to ascertain the truth. Our best hope for any further gain in knowledge of Israel's early history lies in fresh archaeological discovery ; and if, as we trust, the near future is to witness a new rdgime in Palestine, and the opening up of larger facilities for scientific excavation, the munificent provision of the Schweich Fund, founded in memory of the late Mr. Leopold Schweich, of Paris, for the furtherance of PREFACE vii such excavation will prove of unique value, and the wisdom in placing this object in the forefront of the scheme may receive abundant justification. The lectures are published in the form in which they were given ; though the time-limitation made it necessary to omit considerable portions in delivery. C. F.R March, 1918. CONTENTS SVMBOLS EMPLOYED TO DENOTE THE BlBLICAI, SotXEOES . . . p. xJ LECTURE I Introduction. Choice of subject. An endeavour to reach historical results through evidence of literary and historical criticism combined with evidence of archaeology. Period chosen makes a special call for historical investigation. Position taken by lecturer as to historical value of Biblical sources for period (pp. 1-1 1). The Biblical Tradition examined. Survey of conquest of Canaan as related in Book of Joshua. Southern campaign as related in the old narratives Jti, Deuteronomic redactor of these narratives (R") increases results of successes, making them extend to conquest of all southern Canaan except Philistine plain. Contrary evidence of Judges i. Northern confederation of Canaanites against Israel. Magnitude of this northern campaign and its results again intensified by Rd (pp. 11-16). Judges i portion of old document of first importance for history of Israel's settlement. Describes gradual and partial manner in which settlement was efiected. Due largely to efforts of individual tribes, who in most cases settled down side by side with races which they failed to eradicate. ~ Choice between presentation of settlement as offered by this old document, and that offered by B° in Joshua and by the Priestly author (P) of Joshua xiii. 15-xxi. 42 (account of the division of the land by lot among the tribes) (pp. 16-26). LECTURE II The Biblical Tradition examined (contirvuation). Point in which Judges i seems in present form to agree with conception of R" and P in Joshua. Tribes seem to be pictured as starting from common point, and as having each its special heritage predetermined by lot. Reasons for regarding this conception as unhistorical. Two outstanding illustrations. (1) Judah and Simeon make their settlement by advance from south, not from Jericho as pictured in Judges i. 16, 17. (2) Migration of Manassite clans across Jordan from west to east ascribed by old J narrative to Joshua's initiative, but really a movement which took place at a later period (pp. 27-34). What credence, then, can we attach to tradition of Israelite invasion of conquest under Joshua ? Joshua a genuinely historical figure, but probably leader of the Joseph-tribes only. If this is so, tribes- led out of Egypt by Moses probably not the whole of Israel ; but certain elements which ultimately formed part of the nation gained footing in Canaan independently of Moses and Joshua, and at an earlier period. Sphere of our inquiry thn» extended to traditions of patriarchal age (pp. 34-7). X CONTENTS Simeon and Levi, Genesis xxxiv and xlix. 5-7. Story not a reflection of events in time of Judges, but prior to period when Joseph-tribes occupied central Hill-country. Genesis xlviii. 22. Simeon in far south as sequel to Genesis xxxiv. What became of Levi ? If this tribe followed fortunes of Simeon, we expect to find it in far south on borders of Egypt. This hypothesis would explain (1) connexion of Simeon and Levi with Joseph-tribes in Egypt (Moses a Levite) ; (2) identification of main part of Levi with fortunes of Judah in south. Remaining Leah-tribes, Reuben, Issachar, Zebulun. Earliest positions of Leah-tribes in Canaan. Handmaid-tribes. Tribal names of Handmaid-tribes and full Israelite tribes contrasted (pp. 37-58). LECTURE III External, evidence. Brief outline-sketch of history of Canaan from Hyksos period, giving chronological presentation of all possible allusions to Israel in external sources. Jacob-el a Hyksos chieftain before 1580 B. c. Jacob-el and Joseph-el (?) place-names in Canaan c. 1479 B.C. 'Apuriu mentioned in Egyptian documents from time of Thutmosi III onwards. Habiru pressing into Syria-Palestine c. 1375 B.C. The Habiru question and its importance. Detailed examination of proposed identification with Hebrews. Rival theories. Name Asher occurs in western Galilee c. 1313 B.C. Mineptah defeats a people called Israel in Canaan c. 1223 B.C. (pp. 59-82). Conclusions. Decision as to approximate date of Exodus a necessary pre- liminary before we can form working theory as to relation between Biblical and archaeological data. Biblical evidence bearing on early migrations of Israel's ancestors westward into Canaan. Period at which Israel (the Joseph- tribes) most likely to have entered Egypt. Rival theories as to date of Exodus (pp. 82-94). Table of Dates p. 95 General Index p. 96 Ihdex or Biblical Repeeences p. 102 MAPS I. Western Asia in the Second Millennium B.C. II. The Land of Canaan. To illustrate the sites named in the Lectures. m. Earliest migration of ancestors of Israel (Abraham) into Canaan, dated, according to Biblical tradition, about the time of Hammurabi (c. 2100 B.C.). A migration from S. Canaan into Egypt with the Hyksos may be indicated by the tradition of Gen. xii. 10-20. Of. pp. 78 f., 84 f., 89. IV. Theory of the distribution of the Leah-tribes and Handmaid-tribes in Canaan c. fifteenth century B.C., prior to the arrival of the Joseph- tribe. Cf. pp. 37, 43 f., 50 ff., 85. V. Theory of the distribution of the tribes of Israel during the sojourn of the Joseph-tribe in Egypt, c. fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. Cf. pp. 28 fi'., 34 ff., 44 ff., 87 ff. VI. Final position of the tribes of Israel in Canaan, SYMBOLS EMPLOYED TO DENOTE THE BIBLICAL SOURCES M.T. The Massoretio Text, i.e. the Hebrew Teietus Meceptus as supplied with vowels and accents by the Massoretes or conservators of tradition (mossora = 'tradition'). , E. The Elohistic narrative in the Hexateuch, so termed as exhibiting a preference for the use of the divine title MoMm, ' God '. This narrative probably took shape as a written document not later than the middle of the eighth century B.C. (the period of Amos and Hosea), and emanates from the prophetic school of the Northern Kingdom. It has, however, undergone considerable expansion in places at the hands of a later prophetic writer or writers (usually distinguished as'E'), who worked under the influence of Hosea's teaching. E' is probably not much (if at all) earlier than 700 B.C. J. The Jehovistic (Yahwistic) narrative in the Hexateuch, so termed as characterized by regular use of the divine name Jehovah or Yahweh from the earliest narratives of Genesis onwards ; whereas E avoids use of the name altogether until the narration of the Theophany at Horeb, and from that point onwards uses it but sparingly alongside of MoMm. The date usually assigned to J as a continuous written document is c. 850 B. C. ; and its composition appears to be due to the prophetic school of the Kingdom of Judah. The material utilized by J and E was probably in the main oral tradition of indefinite antiquity, though there exist some few indications of the employment of older written sources. JB. The combined narrative of J and E— a symbol used when it is not possible, or not necessary, to distinguish the sources. Combination of the two prophetical sources was carried out by a redactor whoso symbol is W^, probably in the earlier half of the seventh century B.C. P. The Priestly document in the Pentateuch— the work of the legalistic school of the latter part of the exile and later, though based on older material. The same symbol (P) is usually employed to mark the work of this school as embodied in the Book of Joshua, the most important part of which is the description of the heritages of the various tribes, xiii. 15-xxi. 42. R". The Deutpronomic redactor of JE in the Book of Joshua. The work of this editor was probably carried out not very long subsequently to the promulgation of the Book of the Law (i.e. the nucleus of Deuteronomy) in the eighteenth year of Josiah (621 B.C.). E". See under JB, ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN THE BIBLICAL TRADITION AND ITS HISTORICAL BACKGROUND LECTURE I THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED The terms of the Trust under which I have been invited to deliver these Lectures direct that ' the trust fi^nd shall be devoted to the furtherance of research in the archaeology, art, history, languages, and literature of ancient civilization with reference to Biblical study'; and it is further ordained that the Schweich Lectures shall deal 'with some subject or subjects' coming within the scope of these objects. It is therefore open to a lecturer to concentrate his attention upon a single department of research as thus defined, or to base his arguments and deductions upon a synthesis of results obtained through research in two or more of such departments. It is the second method which I propose to adopt. My lectures will represent an endeavour to reach historical results through the evidence of literary and historical criticism of Old Testament documents combined with the evidence of archaeology. The attempt .has sometimes been made to set Biblical archaeology over against Biblical literary and historical criticism, and to represent the ' facts ' deduced from the former as antagonistic to, or subversive of, the 'fancies' of the latter. This claim, unfair and unwarranted as it is in the main, does serve to emphasize the truth that these two departments of Biblical research cannot rightly be kept apart. Internal examina- tion of the Old Testament writings cannot yield its full results apart from application of the external evidence supplied by archaeology ; nor, it may be added, can the results of archaeology be profitably assimilated without a painstaking and critical examina- tion of the historical documents upon which these external dis- coveries are believed to shed new light. Our task, therefore, B. B 2 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN as students of Biblical history, is to endeavour to advance along both these lines, keeping them, as far as may be, in close touch. In each department we have to deal with a number of ascertained facts — the facts revealed by critical examination of the Biblical documents being no less concrete in character than those unearthed by the spade of the archaeologist: each of these series of facts furnishes material for the elaboration of theories in explanation of them — the one class of theory being in essential character neither more nor less tentative than the other. The criterion for theories of either class is one and the same, viz. whether they are based, step by step, upon reliable inference, and accommodate themselves satisfactorily to all relevant facts by which they may be tested. The period with which I have chosen to deal is one which makes a special call for historical examination. Were we dealing with the period of the Hebrew monarchies we . should find ourselves standing upon comparatively firm ground. The history embodied in the Books of Kings is well attested as a whole both internally and externally. It is true that, in the study of Kings as an his- torical document, we are confronted by many considerable problems, of which at present no adequate solution can be offered. Still, allowing all due weight for these, their eifect upon our general grasp of the history is but small. Critical examination of the documents embodied in the work has proved that their historical value is high ; archaeology, coming to our aid with such external information as is provided by the Assyrian annals, has enabled us to check and corroborate. The same conclusion is true, to a large extent, of the Books of Samuel — especially of 2 Samuel — upon internal grounds. The main part of 2 Samuel consists of a single document, contemporary^ or nearly so, with the events which it narrates, and of unique value as an extended historical record. 1 Samuel contains a double tradition with two somewhat variant standpoints which call for some amount of adjustment. Yet no one would dispute the historical character of the figures of Eli, Samuel, and Saul ; and few would deny that we are able to gather a reasonably clear historical conception of the main outlines of their careers. When, however, we go back to the period imme- diately preceding, which may be said to extend forward from the invasion of Canaan by the tribes of Israel, and to cover their gradual settlement in the land, the case is considerably different. This may readily be seen if, for example, we compare the Biblical chronology of the period with the Biblical chronology of Kings, THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 3 Assyrian chronology proves that the Biblical chronology of Kings', though marked by a few apparently insoluble difficulties, is based on the whole upon sound historical data.^ In contrast, the ' This fact cannot here be illustrated at length ; but it is worth while to notice that, if we take certain dates fixed by Assyrian chronology for events which have Biblical connexions, and measure the intervals from date to date as given in the chronological scheme of Kings, the results tend on the whole to vindicate the Biblical scheme. Thus we have, from Assyrian sources, the following fixed points : 854 B. c. Ahab in alliance with Bir-idri (Benhadad II) of Damascus against Shalmaneser III at Karkar. 842 B. C. Jehu pa^s tribute to Shalmaneser III. 806, 803, 797 b. c. Adad-nirari IV makes campaigns against the west, and receives tribute from Omi-i-land (i. e. Israel) among others. In one of these campaigns he utterly defeats Mari' (Benhadad III), captures Damascus, and receives unconditional submission. 782-745 B. c. A period of internal weakness in Assyria under Shalmaneser IV, Asur-dan IV, Asur-nirari IV. 745 B. c. Tiglath-Pileser IV (Pul) revives the power of Assyria. 738 B. c. Tribute paid to Tiglath-Pileser by Menahem of Israel. Assuming that the battle of Karkar took place in Ahab's last year, we have (on the pre-dating system, i. e. the reckoning of the still unexpired portion of a year in which a king came to the throne at his first reigning year) 854-853 B. o. for Ahaziah (reigned two years), 853-842 b. C. for Jehoram (reigned twelve years), 842 b. c. accession of Jehu. That Jehu should have made himself a vassal of the Assyrian king immediately upon his accession is highly probable. Israel was at war with Hazael of Damascus (2 Kings ix. 15) and was probably already in danger of being badly worsted (cf. 2 Kings x. 32, 33). In addition to this, Jehu may well have stood in dread of a counter-revolution, and so needed a powerful ally to hold his external and internal foes in check. Taking 842 b. c. as the first year of Jehu, we may reckon forward to the crippling of Damascus which enabled Jehoash of Israel to gain successes against Benhadad III (2 Kings xiii. 22-25). This may have occurred on any of the three dates 806, 803, 797 B. c, i. e. from the first year of Jehu to the capture of Damascus may have been thirty-six, thirty-nine, or forty-five years. The lengths given in Kings for the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz are twenty-eight and seventeen years respectively, i. e. on the pre-dating system 27 and 16 = 48 years. The accession of Jehoash would therefore fall forty-three years after 842 b. c. i. e. 799 B. c, two years before the crippling of Damascus, if we take for this the latest of the three possible dates. If we take 799 b. C. for the accession of Jehoash, and he reigned sixteen years, i. e. on the pre-dating system fifteen years, we have 784-744 b. c. for Jeroboam II (reigned forty-one years), who gained such a series of successes against the Aramaeans as enabled him to extend the northern limits of his kingdom to the entering in of Hamath and to inaugurate a period of prosperity for the kingdom of Israel. Jeroboam II's reign was thus practically coincident with the whole period during which Assyria was' unable (through internal weakness) to interfere in the affairs of the west. After Jeroboam II's death, 744 B. c, there followed Zechariah (six months), Shallum (one month), Menahem (ten years), 743-734 B. c. Thus the Assyrian b2 4 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN chronology of the earlier period is characterized by the use o£ round numbers, the figure 40 occurring with suspicious frequency. Thus, forty years represents the period of the' wilderness-wander- ings, of the intervals during which ' the land had rest ' after the victories of Othniel, Barak, and Gideon, of the oppression by the Philistines, of the judgeship of Eli, and of the reigns of David and Solomon. The peace which supervened after Ehud's success against Moab is given as twice forty years, and Samson's judgeship as half forty years. A very late addition to 1 Kings (ch. vi. 1) reckons the period from the Exodus till the building of the Temple in Solomon's fourth year as 480 years, i.e. 40x12. This suggests at once that forty years may have been the conventional reckoning of the length of a generation, and that twelve generations were supposed to cover the period in question ; and this surmise receives striking confirmation from the genealogy of Aaron and his suc- cessors as given in 1 Chron. vi. 3-10, according to which twelve names intervene between Eleaz'ar, Aaron's son, and Azariah, who is specified as ' he that exercised the priest's ofiice in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem '. It needs no extended argument to prove that such a system of reckoning is purely artificial. The average length of a generation, i. e. the length of the period repre- senting the age of a father at the birth of his first-born son, is considerably less than forty years, especially in an Eastern country ; nor are even periods of forty years ever known to recur with the frequency which is represented in the chronology of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. Closer examination of this curious scheme of chro- nology suggests that, late and artificial as it must be deemed in its earliest form, it has been subsequently modified by various influences — notably through the attempt to raise the number of the Judges within the Book of Judges to twelve by the insertion of the 'minor' Judges, thus making them correspond as far as possible to the twelve tribes of Israel ; but the probability is that, in its original form, the twelve generations were reckoned by assigning forty years each to the twelve leaders of Israel between the Exodus and Solomon who are specifically represented as divinely date for Menahem's tribute to Tiglath-Pileser IV, 738 b. c, falls well within his reign according to the Biblical data. • It is true that later on- we meet with various discrepancies between the Biblical and Assyrian data ; but these do not invalidate the fact that the calculations noticed above must be based on sound chronological information. There is thus all the difference in the world between the Biblical chronology of the monarchic period, and the Biblical chronology of the pre-monarchic period with its recurrent round periods of forty years. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 5 appointed, viz. (1) Moses, (2) Joshua, (3) Othniel, (4) Ehud, (5) Barak, (6) Gideon, (7) Jephthah, (8) Samson, (9) Eli, (10) Samuel^ (11) Saul, (12) David.i If this is so, however, we immediately find ourselves confronted by a further historical difficulty. Such a scheme of chronology, in order to 'work', must inevitably presuppose that the stated periods were successive, without any overlapping. The Israelite leaders of whom we are speaking must be regarded as exercising authority over Israel as a whole ; and the chronological scheme is therefore bound up with the theory that Israel as a whole formed a unity of twelve tribes from the period of the Exodus and onward. This is clearly the theory of the editorial parts of the Book of Judges as regards the authority exercised by the Judges ; yet it is no less clear that the old narratives themselves picture a large amount of disorganization among the tribes, and rightly regard the Judges as merely local leaders, not successive rulers of all Israel. This single point — the question of chronology — may suffice to illustrate the difierence between our sources of information bearing on the history of the Israelite monarchies, and our sources of information as to the unsettled times which preceded the establish- ment of the monarchical system. It is a comparatively straight- forward task to write a history of the monarchy-period which shall be at once fairly full, and shall at the same time conform to the strictest canons of historical research as they may be applied to any period of ancient history : it is a far more complicated matter to deal with the earlier period by application of the same methods, and to extract information which may be regarded as giving us , a reliable insight into its history. For, in dealing with this period of Israel's settlement in Canaan, we have to rely upon records which, as written documents, are undoubtedly much further removed. from the period with which they deal than are the records of the monarchy. Events have been handed down across a considerable period in the form of stories told and retold round the camp-fire and beside the well, and have undergone (can we doubt it?) some amount of modification and embfellishment in the process. We are on the borderland between history and legend. All the more keenly, therefore, do we desire to examine and to estimate in the fullest light which can be offered by critical analysis and by archaeology ; and, so doing, to gain all we can for veritable history, ' Cf. farther Burney, Judges, Introauotion, p. liv. 6 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN And now a few words as to my own position. As this discussion proceeds, it may appear that I am adopting views which fail to commend themselves to either extreme among Biblical interpreters. I cannot associate myself with the champions of the absolute historical trustworthiness of Israel's ancient traditions in the form in which they have come down to us ; nor, on the other hand, can I side with those who adopt an attitude of extreme scepticism in regard to the possibility of discovering a genuine historical element in the Old Testament documents relating to the period with which I have chosen to deal. Critical study of the historical books of the Old Testament has proved beyond the possibility of a doubt that they are composite in character, consisting of a substratum of ancient narratives which frequently run parallel in presenting more or less variant traditions of the same series of events. These narratives have been utilized and combined by later editors ; and this editorial work has, in some books at least, been not a single but a repeated process, successive editors, usually separated one from another by considerable periods of years, and belonging, as we are accustomed to say, to different ' schools of thought ', having, in turn, done their part to bring the record of Israel's past history into a form which was calculated to make its appeal to the religious thought of their respective ages. The need for these successive processes of editing Israel's historical traditions will be best under- stood if the fact be clearly borne in mind that their chief con- servators were the religious teachers of the nation — the prophets, and that the main object of their preservation was their religious interest rather than their historical interest pure and simple. This is a fact which is recognized in the title assigned by the Jews to the second division of the Old Testament Canon. As will be familiar to you, that Canon falls into three divisions — the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (Hebrew Kethilbhivi, Greek Hagiographa). The second division, the Prophets, falls again into two sections ; and while the later of these sections, ' the later Prophets,' covers the books which from our modern point of view we naturally regard as prophetic — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, the earlier section, ' the former Prophets,' includes Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings; a fact which proves that, by the founders of the Canon, these historical books were regarded as emanating, no less than 'the later Prophets ', from the circle of Israel's religious teachers, and as possessing an interest and value which, above all other, was a religious one. Now eVen as regards modern history, it is clear THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 7 that tlie philosophy of history is not the same for all ages. Looked at as regards the practical lessons which it has to teach, history has from time to time to be rewritten. The religious and political lessons of (let us say) the Reformation or the Great Rebellion are not quite the same for England of the present day as they were for England of a hundred years ago. Lapse of time brings out new aspects of the history of the past, and enables fresh applications of that history to be deduced. So it was with Israel. There is, however, some amount of difference between the modern method of writing a history of the past and that practised by the historians of Israel. The historian of our own day has had the advantage of a training in scientific method, and does not as a rule (even when his object is the eliciting of the practical lessons which history has to teach his contemporaries) make the mistake of attributing to past ages the social conditions and developed phases of thought which are current at the time of his writing; whereas the IsraeliJ;e historian, not so scientifically trained, was prone to do this, both in the sphere of political organization (the union of the twelve tribes) and in that of institutional religion (the single sanctuary, the laws regulating sacrifice, priesthood, &G.)i Fortu- nately, however, for our knowledge of Israel's past history, there exists another difierence between the modern method of writing history and that practised in the historical books of the Old Testa- ment — a diflference which immediately supplies an answer to two questions which may arise in your minds in regard to the practice which I have attributed to the Israelite historian — 'How do we know that he was not correct in finding the present reflected in the past ? ' and, ' Assuming that he was incorrect, what means do we possess of putting this to the proof, and of arriving at a truer estimate of past history ? ' The modern historian, in utilizing the ancient records upon which he depends, is accustomed first to' master and assimilate their contents to the best of his ability, and then to reproduce the result in his own words, bearing the impress of his own cha,racteristic style, and to some extent at least accommo- dated to the particular presentation of history which he has in view. The ancient Israelite historian used quite a difierent method. He was content to employ, as we may say, the scissors and paste. He gives us, to a very large extent, the ipsissima verba of his old sources, cut into convenient sections and fitted into his own frame- work. If he has* recourse to two parallel sources of history for the same events, he does not work these up into one indistinguishable whole, but divides them up and fits them together like a mosaic, 8 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN only omitting such portions of each as are plainly superfluous side by side with the parallel narrative, and sometimes not even doing that; harmonizing differences here and there by a few touches of his own, but more frequently not even troubling to do this.^ Thus it is more accurate to describe him as a redactor or editor than as an author. The advantage of such a proceeding from the point of view of the conservation of ancient authentic records is obvious. The modem historian's method undoubtedly has the advantage as regards style and literary unity ; but he may, and very often does, misinterpret the evidence of his sources. This does not greatly matter to us so long as we still have recourse to the ancient sources themselves, and can test and check his use of them. But imagine ourselves transported to a period a thousand years hence, the old sources lost, and no means surviving by which we can verify and correct our historian's statements, and we are entirely at his mercy. The Israelite historian's method, crude as it may seem from the modern point of view, has the inestimable advantage of preserving ' If any one who is unfamiliar with the results of literary criticism is inclin'fed to doubt whether the method above outlined was really pursued by the editors of the historical books of the Old Testament, he may test the fact by comparing the narrative of Chi-onicles with that of Samuel and Kings. The editor of Chronicles seems to have had sources at his disposal with which we are other- wise unacquainted ; but his main sources were the older historical books as known to ua, and he incorporates whole sections of Samuel and Kings straight into his narrative in just the same way as we infer, through critical analysis, that the redactors of the Pentateuch and 'the former Prophets' (Joshua — Kings) have done. It will suflSce to take only one example — the account of the reign of Eehoboam in 2 Chron. x ff. We find that 2 Chron. x. 1-xi. 4, which relates the events leading to the division of the kingdom, corresponds nearly word for word with 1 Kings xii. 1-24. The section which follows after in Kings refers to Jeroboam and the northern kingdom, and the editor of Chronicles omits it as alien to his purpose, and instead continues with a narra- tive from another source narrating Rehoboam's building operations and the internal politics of the kingdom of Judah. This continues to the end of ch. xi. The chronicler next, in ch. xii, proceeds to relate the invasion of Shishak, king of Egypt. Now this invasion, as related in Kings, occupies four verses — 1 Kings xiv. 25-28. It will be found that the chronicler has used this short narrative as a source. It has been cut up and interlarded with other matter ; but it is all there, practically verbaHm. Thus 1 Kings xiv. 25 = 2 Chron. xii. 2 a ; 1 Kings xiv. 26, 27, 28 = 2 Chron. xii. 9 b, 10, 11. Here, then, we have a phenomenon precisely analogous to that which is described above. The editor of Chronicles has before him the Book of Kings and another source or sources. He sets to work, not by mastering the contents of his sources and giving put the result in his own words, but by cutting out from his sources just so much as he requires and incorporating verbaHm into his history without acknowledgement, sections from the one source being inter- larded with sections from other sources. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 9 to us, practically unaltered, precious fragments of ancient records which would otherwise have perished. Such, then, is a general sketch of the view which I adopt with regard to the Biblical sources with which we have to deal — a view which is held in all essentials by every representative of the critical school of 0. T. scholars; and the evidence for which is so over- whelmingly cogent, and has been clearly set forth in so many easily accessible works, that I need makd no apology for assuming it as proved. It is obvious that inquiry into historical fact must find its material in the ancient documents which have been utilized by the editors of the Old Testament records, rather than in the interpretations which have been put upon them, and the additions which have been made to them, by these editors themselves. Such inquiry, however, has to go deeper still. The old narratives them- selves are, as we have already remarked, for the most part the out- come of a long period of oral transmission. When they exist in duplicate, there are variations in detail of more or less magnitude which have to be accounted for. Looked at singly, they not in- frequently exhibit some amount of internal inconsistency which postulates the conclusion that they themselves are to some extent composite ; since such inconsistency surely implies that they them- selves are constructed through utilization and combination of still earlier written documents, or more probably (for the most part) of variant oral traditions. Having distinguished these elements so far as is possible, we obtain statements the historical worth of which can only be assessed by the answ6r which we give to the question, * Are they inherently probable 1 ' This answer depends partly upon the relation which each statement bears to other statements in the same record, or in parallel records, within the Old Testament itself, i. e. upon the extent to which it works in with a consistent historical scheme as deduced from many such statements. It depends also — and especially — upon the corroboration ofiered by extra-Biblical evidence, i. e. the evidence of archaeology ; and since such evidence is for the most part contemporary with the period to which it refers, its value to the historian is priceless. The highest form of archaeo- logical corroboration is of course the express mention of a fact as recorded in the Biblical records (such, e. g., as we meet with not infrequently in the Assyrian annals as compared with the history of the Books of Kings) ; but there is also a secondary form which is of very great value, viz. the general conception which external records enable us to form of the conditions of life within the sphere of our inquiry, in so far as the general agreement or non-agreement 10 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN ' of this conception with the Biblical records serves to corroborate or else to invalidate the statements of the latter (a good instance is the conception which the Tell el-Amarna correspondence enables us to form of the condition of Syria and Palestine circa 1400 B. c, which forms an excellent touchstone as to the reliability of the Biblical narratives which presumably deal with about the same period). These remarks may serve to illustrate the fact that the attempt to reconstruct a connected scheme of history for the early period with which we are dealing, and in the light of the material which we have to hand, is a task of very great difficulty. While empha- sizing this difficulty as clearly and impartially as I can, I do not, as I have already remarked, associate myself with those who hold that any such attempt is foredoomed to failure on account of the sparse- ness, or practical non-existence, of a genuine historical element in Israel's early traditions which deal with the pre-monarchic period. Quite otherwise. There are certain considerations which, while lying somewhat apart from the line of investigation which we are attempting to pursue in the present course, yet seem (to my mind at least) to point the fact that the history of Israel's religion (and by 'religion' I here mean, not the heritage of animistic beliefs which was the common property of the Semitic races as a whole, but the birth of a relatively high ethical conception of the nature of God and of His moral requirements) must be carried back at least as far as the age of Moses. I hold that Moses and the theory of religion of which he was traditionally held to be the founder — a theory involving allegiance to a single Deity, Yahweh, upon the basis of a covenant-relation invested with a moral sanction — ^are of the nature of historical postulates from the unique development of Israel's religion as we see it later on in the full light of history. I had occasion, some ten years ago, to argue this in an article which I published in the Journal of Theological Studies;^ and I have since found no reason to go back in any respect from the line of argiiment which I then adopted. If, however, it be a fact that ' Moses is an historical figure, and that we are able to gather some sort of genuine conception of the great work which he accomplished, the expectation is created that, in the early traditions of Israel which deal with his time and after, we ought to be able to trace some elements which may be ranked as veritable history. To this extent, therefore, I approach our subject with a bias in favour of the existence of a real historical kernel in the Biblical sources at our ' 'A Theory of the Developement ot Israelite Religion in Early Times', Journal oj Theological Studies, April, 1908, pp. 321-52. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 11 disposal; if that can be called a bias which is (as I think) the outcome of a sound process of reasoning. The conception which we gather from the Book of Joshua as it stands with regard to the conquest of Canaan by the tribes of Israel under the leadership of Joshua is doubtless very familiar to you, and need not be set forth at leagth. The narrative is a direct continuation of the preceding Pentateuchal narrative, which closes with the death of Moses, leaving the twelve tribes of Israel en- camped at Shittim in the plains of Moab, and ready under their new leader to cross the Jordan and begin the conquest of Canaan. It will be recollected that most of the strip of country east of Jordan is pictured as already won, and as promised by Moses to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, on the condition that they show their willingness first to assist their brethren in the conquest of the territory west of Jordan. After the passage of the Jordan,^ Jericho, in the Jordan valley, is invested, and speedily falls.^ An advance is then made against Ai,^ on the eastern side of the Hill-country, and, after an initial repulse, this city is also captured.* These successes lead the inhabitants of Gibeon,® and three neighbouring cities, Kephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath-jearim ^ — all situated in the central part of the Hill-country still farther west — to send envoys to Joshua who pass themselves off as belonging to a far-distant country, and thus succeed in obtaining an alliance with Israel.''' The kings of five important Amorite cities farther ' south — Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon ' — then * Joshua iii. 1-iv. 20. ^ Joshua vi. The ancient site of Jericho is now known as Tell es-Sultan, a large mound which lies in the Jordan valley five miles 117631 of Jordan, and at the foot of the central range of hills, close to the mouth of the W3,dy el-Kelt, which affords a passage into the Hill-country, and is thought to be the ancient valley of Achor. The modern Jericho (BrihS,) lies one and a half miles south of Tell es-Sultan. " Probably Hirbet Hayyan, about three miles south-east of Bethel (Betin). * Joshua vii. 1-viii. 29. " El-(jib, five miles NNW. of Jerusalem, and one mile due north of Neby Samwil, the ancient Mizpah. * The name Kephirah is preserved in the modern Kefirah, five miles WS W. of el-(jib. Beeroth may be el-Birah, about nine miles north of Jerusalem on the road to Shechem, and four miles NNE. of el-Gib. Kiriath-jearim is probably Kuryet el-'Enab on the carriage-road from Jerusalem to Jaffa, about seven miles WNW. of the former city, and some five miles south-west of el-Gib. For the grounds upon which this identification is based cf. Burney, Judges, p. 430. ' Joshua ix. 3-26. ' Jarmuth was situated in the Shephelah (Joshua xii. 11, xv. 35). Its site 12 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN make an attack upon Gibeon on account of its defection to the invading Israelites ; Gibeon sends an urgent summons to Joshua for assistance; and the Israelite leader immediately makes a forced night-march from his camp at Gilgal in the Jordan valley, and falling suddenly upon the Amorites at Gibeon succeeds in routing them, and pursues them westward by the way of Beth-horon as far as Azekah and Makkedah, in, or bordering on, the lowlands to the west of the central range,i capturing and executing the five Amorite kings.^ All this narrative of the campaign in southern Canaan, in so far as it gives us a description of the course of military events, is formed by combination of elements from the two old narratives J and E, emanating respectively from the Southern and Northern Kingdoms, which can be traced throughout the Pentateuch ; though literary analysis makes it clear that in the Book of Joshua the composite narrative from J and E, constructed as in the Penta- teuch bj^ a redactor R"', has been subsequently re-edited by an historian of the Deuteronomic school, whom we may call BP is commonly supposed to be marked by the modern Hirbet el-Yarmuk, sixteen miles WSW. of Jerusalem. Lachish has almost certainly been identified in the important site Tell el-Hesy, some thirty-four miles south-west of Jerusalem, where the Shepheiah meets the maritime plain : cf. Petrie, Tell el-Hesy ; Bliss, A Mound of many Cities. Two miles north of Tell el-Hesy is Hirbet 'Agl§,n, which accurately preserves the name of Eglon. The site, however, shows few traces of ancient remains, and it is likely that the name may have been shifted to a new site after the destruction of the ancient city : cf. Cheyne in Encyclo- paedia Biblica, 1204. ' The two Beth-horons — still distinguished, as in Biblical times, as Upper Beth-horon (Bet-'ur el-foka) and Lower Beth-horon (Bet-'ur et-tahta) — lie, the former five miles, the latter somewhat under seven miles, WNW. of Gibeon (el-Glb), and command one of the most important roads from the maritime plain into the Hill-country, the route being one of the three employed by General Allenby in his attack upon the Turkish position at Jerusalem (cf. Dispatch, § 18). Azekah and Makkedah are unidentified. As the site of the latter, Sir Charles' Warren has suggested el-MugS,r ('the Caves') in the vale of Sorek, some twenty-five miles west of Gibeon and two and a quarter miles south-west of 'Ekron ('Akir), upon the ground that 'at this site alone, of all possible sites for Makkedah in the Philistine plain, do caves still exist ' (cf. Hastings, Diet, of the BiUe, iii, p. 218 a), the existence of a well-known cave at this site being postulated by the nai-rative in Joshua x. 16 if. If, however, the Azekah with which Makkedah is coupled is the city of that name mentioned in 1 Sam. xvii. 1 as in the vale of Elah (WMy es-Sunt) not far from Sooho (Hirbet Suwekeh) , the inference is that the Amorites did not extend their flight far out into the maritime plain, but turned left-handed in order to regain the shelter of the hills by one of the southern passes. ^ Joshua X. 1-27. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 13 (Deuteronomic Redactor). This editor's additions, however, which are easily distinguishable by their strongly-marked Deuteronomic phraseology,^ do not up to this point modify the course of military operations as narrated in JE; his comprehensive statement in ix. 1, 2 that ' all the kings that vsrere beyond Jordan ', from the Lebanon southward, ' were gathered together to fight with Joshua ' immediately after the capture of Ai, and before narration of the events which led to the limited league of the five Amorite kings in the south against Gibeon,»being so obviously without sequel in the succeeding narrative that it hardly afiects our conception bf it in the slightest degree. After the narrative of the defeat of the Amorite kings, however, we have, from the hand of R'', a summary account of the conquest of southern Palestine,^ in which it is stated that Joshua captured Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, and Debir.^ Finally, the editor concludes with the state- ment that the whole of southern Palestine, except the maritime plain belonging to the Philistines, fell into Joshua's hands. He mentions ' the Hill-country ' or central range ; ' the Negeb ', i. e. the arid steppe-region extending from a little south of Hebron, where the hills gradually sink, to Kadesh-Barnea about fifty miles south of Beer-sheba ; ' the Shephelah ' or Lowland, i. e. the range of low hills or downs lying between what was subsequently the Judaean Hill-country to the east and the maritime plain to the west, and extending as far north as the vale of Aijalon;* and 'the Slopes', i. e. the fall of .the Hill-country to the maritime plain north of Aijalon, where no Shephelah or Lowland intervenes." It is, how- ever, to be noticed that Judges i. 16, 17 attributes the conquest of the Negeb to the tribes of Judah and Simeon acting in concert apart from the co-operation of the other tribes ; and the capture of ^ Cf. Drivei, Introd. to the Literature of the 0. r.(9thed.), pp. 99ff., 105 tf., IIC. " Joshua X. 28-43. ' Libnah is unidentified. The site commonly accepted for Debir is ez- Zahariyyeh, about eleven miles south-west of Hebron, but the identification is purely conjectural, and is open to more than one objection. Conder's statement {Tent Work, p. 245) that Debir 'has the same meaning' as ez-Zahariyyeh is wholly incorrect: cf. Burney, Judges, pp. lOf. On Gezer cf. p. 20, and on . the other cities mentioned p. 12, foot-notes. * This (as pointed out by G. A. Smith, Historical Geography, pp. 201 ff.) seems to represent the proper usage of the term Shephelah, though there are indica- tions of a wider and looser usage including under the term the maritime plain of Philistia. Cf. Burney, Judges, pp. 7 f. = On the difference of physical configuration south and north of the vale of Aijalon, which is accurately indicated by the distinction in nomenclature, cf. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography, pp. 203 f. 14 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN Debir, or Kiriath-sepher, and Hebron is represented in Joshua xv. 14-19 = Judges i. 10-15 as due to Caleb the Kenizzite. It can hardly be doubted, therefore, that R" ascribes to Joshua more than he actually carried out, and that we have in his summary a mere generalization for which no facts from ancient sources were forth- coming. This conclusion we shall presently substantiate through examination of the document embodied in Judges i. We next hear, in ch. xi, of a confederation of the kings of northern Palestine under Jabin, king of Hazor.^ The kings of the cities of Madon, Shimron, and Achshaph ^ are specified in v. 1 ; but V. 2 adds inclusive reference to ' the kings that were on the north, in the Hill-country, and in the Arabah to the south of Chinneroth, and in the Lowland, and in the heights of Dor on the west, the Canaanites on the east and on the west, and the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Jebusites in the Hill-country, and the Hivvites under Hermon in the land of Mizpah '.^ It seems clear that this verse, with its allusion to six out of the ' seven nations' of Canaan, including the Jebusites who are otherwise known only as inhabitants of Jerusalem in the south, is, to some extent at least, an editorial amplification. On this occasion for the first time the Israelites had to encounter a foe equipped with chariots and horses. Joshua met and defeated them at the waters of Merom,* the defeat was followed up and turned into a rout, their horses were captured and destroyed and their chariots burnt. The ' The name Hazor seems to be preserved in the modern name of the valley Mer^ (' meadow ') el-Hadirah on the northern side of the Wady "Auba -which runs into the lake of Huleh, and in Gebel (' hill ') Hadirah immediately to the east of the ' meadow '. There are no traces of an ancient city upon this hill, and it is therefore supposed that Hazor may have been one of the ruined sites upon the hills still farther east : cf. Buhl, Geographie des alien Palastina, p. 236. 2 The name Achshaj^jh is accurately reproduced in Hirbet Iksaf a little south of the great bend of the river Litany, though it may be doubted whether this identification suits the mention in -Joshua six. 25, where a city of this name is enumerated as belonging to Asher. The other two cities are unidentified. ' It is probable that ' Hittites ' and ' Hivvites ' have here accidentally changed places (cf. LXX, Cod. B), and the same change is to be made in Judges iii. 3 (cf. Burney, Judges, ad loc). ' The land of Mizpah ' seems to be the same as ' the valley (Hebrew hik'a) of Mizpah ' in v. 8, i. e. probably the southern portion of the great plain between the two Lebanon-ranges now called el-Buka'. On the use of the term Shephelah, ' Lowland ', in application to a region in northern Canaan cf. G. A. Smith, Historical Geographij, p. 203, n. 3. •' The site is uncertain, identification with the lake of Huleh being very pre- carious. Cf. S. A. Cook in Encyclopaedia Biblica, 3038. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 15 remainder of the chapter (w. 10-23) is from the hand of R". In vv. 10-15 this editor generalizes the effect of Joshua's victory in the north, just as he has already done in the case of southern Palestine. It is stated that Joshua captured and burned the city of Hazor, and then proceeded to take the cities of all the kings who had joined in the confederation, together with the kings themselves, placing them and their subjects under the ban, and utterly destroy- ing them. The chapter closes with an editoriaL summary of the conquests of Joshua throughout Palestine. . Thus we have reviewed the account given in the old (JE) narrative of Joshua's conquests in Canaan. We find that these conquests are divided into two campaigns: (1) a campaign in southern Palestine in which the cities of Jericho and Ai are cap- tured, and a coalition of five Amorite kings is defeated and cut to pieces ; and (2) a campaign in northern Palestine in which Jabin, king of Hazor, heads an indefinite number of the kings of the north, and the arms of Israel are again victorious. We have seen, further, that R" regards Joshua's conquests as more far-reaching than the old narrative seems to warrant, assuming that he not only defeated the northern and southern confederacies in pitched battle, but also followed up his victories by capturing the cities of the north and south so»thoroughly that practically the whole of the Hill-country of Palestine fell into Israel's hands through Joshua's exertions and during his lifetime. A list of the kings conquered by Israel under Moses and Joshua is given by R° in ch. xii ; and in ch. xiii. 2-6 we have a notice from this editor of the territory still remaining un- conquered, which may be summarized as the southern part of the maritime plain from the border of Egypt ^ as far north as Ekron, the most northerly of the five principal cities of the Philistines; the Phoenician coast-land stretching from Accho northwards ; ^ and * 'From' the Shihor which is before (i. e. eastward of) Egypt.' The refei^ ence probably is to the eastern (Pelusiac) branch of the Nile. The usual defini- tion of the south-western boundary of Canaan is ' the wady of Egypt ' (.TU Q11SD), i. e. the modern Wady el-'Aris. 2 Reading ' and from Accho which belongeth to the Zidonians, unto Aphek '. We amend iajfOI (a suggestion not hitherto offered) in place of the incompre- • hensible nnVCT of M. T. (R. V. ' and Mearah '), where the D is clearly the pre- position [D defining the starting point (cf. v. 3 IHT'ETI [D). Sennacherib's enumeration of the Phoenician cities makes Accho the southernmost: — ' Great Sidunnu, Little Sidunnu, Bit-zitti, Sariptu, Mahalliba, DSu, Akzibi, Akku ' (cf. Taylor Cylinder, col. ii, 1. 38). Aphek is probably the modern Afka, near the source of the Nahr Ibrahim. 16 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN the Lebanon with its environs.^ This practically represents the ' state of affairs during the greater part of the monarchy-period. Let us now turn to Judges i, which offers us a portion of an old document of the first importance for the history of Israel's settle- ment in Canaan. As the chapter now stands in the Book of Judges, it professes to give us an account of events which happened 'after the death of Joshua' (v. 1), as related in Joshua xxiv. 29, 30 (E). The editor who prefixed this statement to the chapter assumes that he is taking up the narrative from the point reached in the closing chapter of the preceding book. The proper continua- tion of Joshua xxiv is found, however, in Judges ii. 6ff., where w. 6-9 (narrating Joshua's dismissal of the people after his fare- ' well-address recorded in Joshua xxiv, the fact that the people served Yahweh during the lifetime of Joshua and the elders who survived him, and the death and burial of Israel's great leader) are almost verbally identical with Joshua xxiv. 28, 31, 29, 30. So far from dealing with events which happened subsequently to Joshua's death, the old narrative incorporated in Judges i. 1-ii. 5 pictures Israel as still encamped at Gilgal (ii. 1), or close by at Jericho (i. 16), shortly after the passage of the Jordan, and before the tribes had entered upon their inheritances. Judges ii. 6-iii. 6 isj;he real introduction to Judges as the book left the hand of the main editor, and ch. i. 1-ii. 5 has been added by a later editor for the purpose of explaining the unsettled condition of affairs as related in the narrative of Judges by the addition of details known to him which had not been incorporated by the main editor in his introduction. From examination of the phraseology of the old narrative embodied in Judges i. 1-ii. 5 the fact emerges that it is derived from the Judaean document J.^ Extracts from the same narrative ' Reading 1133^3 nbajn H??! '^^^ *^® ^^^^ which bordereth on the Lebanon ' (i. e. Coele-Syria), with Buhl and Steuernagel, in place of M. T. ti33?n"731 v33n pxm. in which the first two words will not construe (R. V. ' and the land of the Gebalites ' demands an original V??? TWO- ' The following words and phrases in Judges i. 1-ii. 5 are characteristic of J :— 'the Canaanites' as a general term for the inhabitants of Palestine (E uses • the Amorites ' in the same general sense), i. 1 ; ' the Canaanites and the Perizzites' coupled, i. 5; 'at the first' (npnna), i. 1 ; 'deal kindly with' (lit. 'do kindness with', DS? IDH n'ffV), i. 24; 'dependencies' (lit. 'daughters', 71133), i. 27 five times ; 'and it came to pass, when' Q2 '. 18, with its five-times-repeated *3 and its apparent ascription of iron chariots to the Canaanites inhabiting the Hill- countiy, appears in its present form to be due to the Priestly editor as a weak summary of his view of the situation, viz. that what is contemplated is a further extended conquest west of Jordan. Other editorial additions are v. 15a ' And Joshua said . . . great people ' (from v. 17), ». 16 a 'And the children of Joseph said ' (an addition necessitated by the dislocation of i». 15), v. 17 'to Ephraim' and to Manasseh ', explanatory. The order of the remainder is w. 14, 16, 17, 18a (down to 'thine'), 15. 22 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN villages of Jair. And Nobah went and took Kenath and its depen- dencies, and called it Nobah after his own name. But the children of Israel did not dispossess the Geshurites and the Maachathites ; but Geshur and Maachath dwelt in the midst of Israel, unto this day.' ^ The remainder of the old narrative refers to the very indifferent successes of four other tribes in establishing themselves west of Jordan ; viz. Zebulun and Asher in the north ; Naphtali possibly in the north, where we find the tribe in later times; but more probably south-west of Ephraim in the neighbourhood of Dan, which is the fourth tribe mentioned. Zebulun, north of Manasseh in the plain of Esdraelon, failed to dispossess the inhabitants of Kitron and Nahalol, 'but the Ganaanites dwelt in the midst of them, and became labour-gangs' {v. 30). Asher was even less successful. Failing to drive out the Ganaanites from the coast- cities of Phoenicia, from Accho northwards, they ' dwelt in the midst of the Ganaanites inhabiting the land; for they did not dispossess them ' (vv. 31, 32). The phrase ' dwelt in the midst of the Ganaanites ' — in contrast to ' the Ganaanites dwelt in the midst of them ', as is said of Ephraim and Zebulun — embodies a distinc- tion with a difference, implying that the Phoenician Ganaanites all along continued to hold the upper hand. The case was similar with Naphtali, who failed to dispossess the inhabitants of Beth- shemesh and Beth-anath, and ' dwelt in the midst of the Ganaanites inhabiting the land ' ; though the narrative adds the statement that the inhabitants of these cities ' became labour-gangs for them ' (v. 33). As for Dan, we are informed that the Amorites — or, as we should probably read, the Ganaanites^ — pressed them out of ^ In favour of the conclusion that the settlement of half Manasseh east of Jordan took place through an overflow-movement from the west of .Jordan, we may note the fact that, according to the narrative of Num. xxxii. 1, it is the tribes of Reuben and Gad only that petition Moses to allow them to settle east of Jordan in the portion of Gilead already conquered (south of the Jabbok) ; though reference to half Manasseh is introduced at the end of the narrative {v. 33) by the hand of the redactor, and Deut. iii. 13 if. makes the assigning of east-Jordan territory to part of this tribe the work of Moses. The kernel of Num. xxxii is clearly old (JE), though it has been worked up with portions of the document P by a late redactor. Cf. Gray, Numbers {Intemat. Crit. Comm.), p. 426 ; Carpenter and Harford-Battersby, Hexateuch, ii, p. 289. An old allusion to Gad's claim to territory east of Jordan, and to his undertaking to assist in conquering the west-Jordan territory, is perhaps to be found in the so-called ' Blessing of Moses ', Deut. xxxiii. 21. ' The use of the term ' Amorites ', here and in v. 35, as a general designation for the inhabitants of Canaan felsewhere in the narrative called 'Ganaanites', THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 23 their settlements in the Shephelah and maritime plain into the Hill-country, 'for they did not suffer them to come down into the Vale' (v. 34). The original continuation of this notice is found in Joshua xix. 47, which (with a necessary emendation ^) runs as follows : ' So the border of the children of Dan was too strait for them ; and the children of Dan went up, and fought with Leshem, and took it, and smote it at the edge of the sword, and took posses- sion of it, and dwelt therein; and they called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father.' This migration is further related in Judges xviii, where the conquered city is called Laish (i;u. 7, 27). Thenceforward Dan figures in the phrase ' from Dan to Beersheba ' as the northernmost limit of Palestine. We have left discussion of the position occupied by Naphtali, as pictured in our old narrative, until after mention of the enforced movements of the tribe of Dan. It is usually assumed that the tribe was occupying its northern home as defined in the late Priestly document Joshua xix. 33-39, a district to the north of Zebulun, bounded by the territory of Asher on the west, and by the Jordan on the east. Prof. Steuernagel ^ has suggested, how- ever, with considerable plausibility that, since Naphtali and Dan were originally ofishoots of a single stock (sons of the handmaid Bilhah ; i. e. probably, originally forming a single tribe known as Bilhah), and since Dan at first dwelt south-west of Ephraim, Naphtali's early home was probably in the same neighbourhood, and he, like Dan, was obliged eventually to seek a home farther north. Thus, in the statement that ' Naphtali did not dispossess the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath ' (v. 33), the refer- ence may be to the southern Beth-shemesh, i.e. the modern 'Ain- sems which stands on an eminence south of the Wady Sarar (the ancient ' vale of Sorek ') and within sight of the Danite city Zorah on the northern side of the wady. The mention of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath in the north (where neither has been identified) in Joshua xix. 38 is then a later assumption, based on the fact that Naphtali eventually occupied a northern position. This view gains some support from the blessing of Naphtali in Deut. xxxiii. 23 in accordance with the regular practice of J) is strange. Probably the term has been substituted by a later hand, under the influence of the textual cor- ruption 'Amorites ' for ' Edomites ' in v. 36. Cf. discussion in Bumey, Judges, ad loc. '' Bead DHO . . . ns'l ' was too strait for them ', in place of DnD , , , ^5S*1 B. V. ' went out beyond them '. ' Die Einwanderuna der israelitischen St&mme in Kanaan, pp. 28 f. 24 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN ' — ' Possess thou the Sea and the South ' (riB'T n'n^^ Di). Here Naphtali (according to Steuernagel) appears, like Dan, to be hard pressed by foes, and the wish is expressed that he may exert his power and conquer the Philistine maritime plain (yam), and the ddrSm or South, i.e. the Shephelah, which is so designated in later Jewish usage .^ On the ordinary assumption that Naphtali is here pictured as occupying his final northern position, ' Sea ' is explained as the sea of Galilee ; but no commentator has succeeded in offering a plausible explanation of ddrdm. Following on the notice of the fortunes of Dan, the statement is made that 'the Amorites persisted in dwelling in Har-heres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim ; yet the hand of the house of Joseph prevailed, and they became labour-gangs' (v. 35).^ The only one of these cities which has been certainly identified is Aijalon, the modern Yald on the southern side of the vale into which the pass of Beth-horon opens out (the vale of Aijalon, Joshua x. 12). The other cities were doubtless in the same district, and must have formed, with Gezer and Jerusalem, a belt of strongholds more or less shutting off the Joseph-tribes from Judah on the south. This con- cludes our information from this old J document, in so far as it concerns the settlement of Israel within the land of Canaan. The conception which we have formed from our survey of this old narrative of Israel's settlement in Canaan may be summarized, then, as follows : In the southern Hill-country the tribe of Judah, with certain Kenizzite (Caleb, Othniel) and North Arabian (Kenite) elements which were subsequently reckoned as part of the tribe, and with the tribe of Simeon, makes its way by gradual conquest, especially in the Negeb ; but is debarred from expansion into the western maritime plain by the Philistines with their iron chariots, and has in the Hill-country to the north the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem still unreduced, and, we may suppose, to some extent at least, dominating the district in its vicinity. In the centre the Joseph-tribes successfully occupy the Hill-country, but are shut off from the plain to the south-west by Canaanite strongholds ; the Canaanites in this direction, who were themselves doubtless feeling the pressure of the Philistine immigrants on their western side, having succeeded in ousting the main part of Dan, and possibly . ^ Cf- Neubauer, Oiogmphie du Talmud, pp. 62 f. ; Buhl, Geographie des alien Paldstina, p. 85 ; and references in Onomastica Sacra (' the name-lists ' of Eusebius and Jerome, ed. P. de Lagarde) to Daroma, where we find such cities as Eleutheropolis, Eshtemoa, and Ziklag assigned to this region. ' On the use of the term ' Amorites ' cf. p. 22, n. 2. THE, BIBLICAL TRADITIOiSr EXAMINED 25 also Naphtali, from positions which these tribes had at first attempted to occupy-j and in compelling them to seek a fresh home in the extreme north. North of the Joseph-tribes is a belt of Canaanite cities extending right across the land where the Hill- couqtry falls to the plain of Esdraelon, and continued to the coast in the maritime plain south of Carmel. North of this, again, the remaining west-Jordan tribes live as best they can among the Canaanites whose strong cities they are (so far as our information goes) quite unable to reduce. Dan indeed succeeds in obtaining a new home in the far north by right of conquest ; but Zebulun and Naphtali, in so far as they eventually gained a position of pre- dominance, seem to have done so by peaceful penetration rather than by more drastic means. ^ Asher always remains subordinate to the Canaanites upon the northern coast-land (the Phoenicians). Issachar is unmentioned in this narrative, probably through acci- dental editorial omission; but, if we may repair this omission through the allusion to this tribe in 'the Blessing of Jacob', Gen. xlix. 14, 15, it seems to have been no better off than Asher, for there we read : • 'Issachar is a strong ass, Couching down between the sheep-folds: And he saw a resting-place that it was good, And the land that it was pleasant; So he bowed his shoulder to bear. And became a toiling labour-gang.' In later times the population, of this northern district remained largely foreign. It is called by Isaiah (viii. 23) GHil hag-gdyim, 'the circuit (or district) of the heathen'; and is elsewhere dis- tinguished as hag-6dlil, 'the circuit' (Joshua xx. 7, xxi. 32; 1 Chron. vi. 61 ; 1 Kings ix. 11), i.e. the Galilee of New Testament times. CompaEing this ancient presentation of the character of Israel's settlement in Canaan with that which we have in Joshua i-xii as edited by K", it is obvious (1) that the two cannot stand side by side as equally authentic narratives of the course of events, and (3) that, in making our choice between the two presentations, we are bound to attach far greater weight to that which pictures the conquest as gradual and partial than to the other which conceives of it as comparatively thoroughgoing and complete. For, sup- posing the theory of E." in Joshua to be correct, we can offer no ^ Cf. however the interpretation of the tradition as to the battle with Jabin, king of Hazor, and his allies offered on p. 53. 26 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN " explanation why the theory of J in Judges i should ever have been put forward ; but, on the other hand, supposing the account of the old J document to represent the historical course of events, we can explain the existence of R"'s theory as the reading of the conditions of a later time (David's reign and onwards) into the period of Israel's first occupation of the Promised Land. It is even more obvious that we cannot make use of the Priestly document^ incorporated in Joshua xiii. 15-xxi. 42, which defines the heritages of each of the tribes, as historical evidence for the state of afiairs existing at the close of Joshua's lifetime. This document is of immense value for the topographical information which it afiords, and as an indication of the districts occupied by the different tribes at a period when Israel became practically dominant in Palestine and the tribes had been welded into a nation, i. e., we may say approximately, from the reign of David and onwards ; but the view which regards Joshua as settling by lot the districts to be occupied by the tribes in such a thorough and final manner as to define with precision the boundaries between the different heritages, is of a piece with the view which supposes the whole of Palestine with the exception of the maritime plain occupied by the Philistines and Phoenicians to have fallen completely into the hands of the Israelites as the fruits of Joshua's victories — a view which, as we have seen in the light of earlier evidence, does not represent the historical course of events. ' This document, though of the same character and age as the document P in the Pentateuch, cannot be shown to have belonged originally to the same source. It may very well have originally formed an independent document. The part which is borne by the Priestly writer in Joshua seems to be somewhat different to that which is fulfilled by P in the Pentateuch. In. GeA.-Num. the narrative of P is to a large extent complete in itself, and forms as it were the framework of the narrative. In Joshua i-xii, on the other hand, the traces of the Priestly hand are comparatively insignificant, amounting in all to some lOJ verses. LECTURE II THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED [Continuation) In my first lecture I contrasted the picture of Israel's settlement in Canaan drawn by the old J document in Judges i with that which we find in Jodhua i-xii as edited by E.". We noticed that, while the former represents this settlement as gradual and partial in character, afiected mainly by the efforts of individual tribes, and only meeting at first with a very limited measure of success, the latter exhibits it as a well-organized and victorious campaign of the whole of the Israelite tribes under the leadership of Joshua, resulting comparatively speedily in the reduction of all Canaan from south to north, with the exception of the sections of the maritime plain and coast occupied by the Philistines and Phoenicians and the Lebanon - district with its immediate environs. Our conclusion was that J's view is more nearly authentic than that of W in the Book of Joshua, the latter resulting from the reading of the conditions of later ages, from David onwards, into the earlier history of Israel in Canaan. If, however, E^'s conception of the thoroughgoing character of the conquest and settlement of the tribes under Joshua was not to be regarded as historical, still less were we able to accept as historical the theory of the Priestly document in Joshua xiii. 15-xxi. 43, which regards the accurate delimitation of the whole of Canaan among the tribes as Joshua's crowning achievement. We now have to notice that there is one particular in which the J narrative of Judges i seems, as it stands, to agree with the con- ception of the Deuteronomic redactor and the Priestly writer in the Book of Joshua. The tribes of Israel, however isolated and single-handed they may appear according to this narrative in winning each a footing for itself, yet seem to be pictured as starting from a common point in the Jordan-valley — Gilgal (Judges ii. 1) or Jericho (Judges i. 16), and as having each its special heritage predetermined by lot, and therefore, we may assume, under the direction of a common leader and arbiter, viz. Joshua. Judah, at 28 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN any rate, is pictured as saying to Simeon his brother, ' Go up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites, and I also will go up with thee into thy lot' (v. 3). There exist weighty reasons for holding this conception of an early organized unity of the tribes as the reading of later conditions back into a period when they were not so existent. Evidence, when carefully weighed, seems to postulate the conclusion that Joshua was not the leader across Jordan of a united body of twelve tribes, but of a certain section only — the Joseph-tribes, and that the remaining tribes entered Canaan and won their heritages by other means and at other periods. The evidence for this conclusion depends partly upon internal Biblical indications and partly upon the external indications supplied by archaeology. The latter we shall have to notice in the final lecture. To-day we must more closely examine the Biblical evidence ; and we will begin by taking two outstanding instances in which tribal settlements clearly seem to have been made independently of Joshua. The account of the conquest of Arad * in the Negeb by Judah . and Simeon, which is given in Judges i. 16, 17, cannot be considered apart from the very similar narrative which is found in Num; xxi. 1-3 (J). This latter narrative states that, during the period of 'Israel's sojourn in the wilderness, the king of Arad advanced against them, apparently because they were encroaching upon his territory, fought against them, and took some of them prisoners. Israel thereupon vowed a vow to Yahweh that, if Yahweh would deliver up the Canaanites into their hands they would place their cities under a ban (herein), and utterly destroy e^ery inhabitant. On the successful issue of the battle the vow was performed ; and the name of the district was thereafter known as Hormah, a name in which there is an assumed connexion with herem. This narrative, which implies a northward advance of Israel into the Negeb, is at variance with the preceding narrative in Numbers (xx. 14-21 JE), which seems to picture the whole of the Israelites as turning southwards fsom Kadesh in order to compass and avoid the land of Edom. It is also difficult to understand why an immediate settlement in the conquered territory was not effected by at least a portion of the Israelites, when the whole of the Canaanites inhabiting it had been put to the aword. The author ' The modern Tell 'Arad, described by Robinson (Biblical Researches in Pales- tine, 3rd ed., ii, p. 101) as a ' barren-looking eminence rising above the country- round '. The site lies seventeen miles nearly due south of Hebron. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 29 of the introduction to Deuteronomy, who apparently bases his information upon E, gives, in i. 41-6, an account of a disorganized attempt made by the Israelites to conquer the Negeb, after the failure of the mission of the spies, and against the express command ' of Moses. This was repulsed by ' the Amorite who inhabited that Hill-country ', Israel being put to the rout, and beaten down ' in Seir as far as Hormah'. This narrative corresponds with Num. xiv. 40-5, which apparently combines elements from J as well as from E, and in, which the foe appears not as 'the Amorite', but as ■the Amalekite and the Canaanite' (vv. 43, 45). No mention is made in Deuteronomy of Israel's subsequent success, and their extirpation of the inhabitants of the district ; and we are probably correct in inferring that these details were not contained in the E source. The question is further complicated by the account of the conquest of Arad which occurs in Judges i. 16, 17. Here it is the tribes of Judah and Simeon, together with the Kenites, who are related to have effected the conquest, moving southwards from the Oity of Palm trees (i. e. Jericho) subsequently to the passage of the Jordan under Joshua. As in the narrative of Numbers, however, the origin of the name Hormah is explained by the fact that the Canaanites inhabiting a city (previously named Zephath) were smitten, and the city placed under the ban and utterly destroyed. The narratives of Num. xxi. 1-3 and Judges i. 16, 17 are obviously parallel, and cannot, as they stand, be reconciled. It is easy to supply a reason for the occurrence of the narrative of Judges as a duplicate to that of Numbers, viz. the view that all conquests and annexations of Canaanite territory by Israel took place under the direction of Joshua as part of a single organized campaign, and that no settlement of Israelite tribes in any part of Canaan can ex kypothesi have taken place prior to, or apart from, this one big movement ; but, if the narrative of Judges be taken to be correct in its present position, it is not easy to divine why the narrative of Numbers should have pictured an incident of Joshua's cam- paign — the outcome of a movement southward from Jericho — as taking place during Israel's stay at Kadesh-Barnea, as the result of a northward movement from that district. Adopting, then, the view that the position of the narrative as it stands in Numbers is the more correct, and that the conquest of Arad in the Negeb took place through a tribal movement northysrard from the neighbourhood of Kadesh, the inference becomes plausible that this movement was effected, as related in Judges, by the tribes 30 ISEAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN of Judah and Simeon in alliance with the Kenites. It is a well- known fact that the tribe of Judah consisted of mixed elements ; the genealogy of 1 Chfon. ii includes among the descendants of Judah the North Arabian tribes of the Kenites and Jerahmeelites, and the clan of Caleb which was of Kenizzite, i. e. of Edomite, origin (cf. Gen. xxxvi. 11, 15, 43). Whether or not these clans origin- ally formed an integral part of the tribe of Judah, it is clear that so early as the days of David they were regarded as standing in a very intimate relation to the tribe. In 1 Sam. xxvii. 7 if., which relates David's stay as an outlaw with Achish, king of Gath, we read that David made pretence to Achish that his occasional raids were directed ' against the Negeb of Judah, and against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites, and against the Negeb of the Kenites ' ; and Achish remarks to himself with satisfaction, ' He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him ; therefore he shall be my servant for ever.' Again, in 1 Sam. xxx. 26-31, David sends presents ' of the spoil of the enemies of Yahweh ' to the Judaeans of the Negeb, including the Jerahmeelites and the Kenites. If, then, clans which originally inhabited the region south of the Negeb are subsequently found occupying the Negeb and forming part of the tribe of Judah, what is more probable than that this change of locality was effected through conquests gained in the Negeb by a movement directly northwards, as is suggested by the narrative of Num. xxi. 1-3 1 We seem, in fact, to be upon the track of an ancient Calibbite tradition, embodied in the Judaean document J, which originally narrated the way in which this northward movement was effected by the clan of Caleb, and probably other kindred clans.^ It may be conjectured that this tradition lies at the bottom of the older (JE) narrative of the mission of the spies which is combined with the P narrative in Num. xiii and xiv. In this older narrative (in contrast to that of P) it is the Negeb only which is explored ; Caleb is the only spy who is mentioned by name ; and it is Caleb only who maintains, against the opinion of the other spies, that the conquest of the district is quite a feasible undertaking, in spite of the race of giants — the sons of Anak — inhabiting it : 'We can easily go up and possess it,' he says, ' for we are well able to overcome it ' (Num. xiii. 2>Q)? » Cf. Stanley A. Cook, Critical Notes on 0. T. History, pp. 38 f., 81 f. " P's narrative of the spies, as compared with that of JE, is an instructive example of the reading back into earlier history of the conception of the organic unity of the twelve tribes, as realized in later times. While in JE the THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 31 As a matter of fact, the conquest of these sons or clans of Anak and their cities is directly ascribed to Caleb in Joshua xv. 14-19 = Judges i. 20, 10 b (in part), 11-15, from the narrative of J. Is it not, then, at least a plausible theory that the original Calibbite story related that Caleb, after first spying out the Negeb, then proceeded to go up and conquer it ? It seems probable that the present form of the combined JE narrative of the spies, which makes the project of conquest fail in spite of Caleb's protests, is due to the theory that the conquest of any part of Canaan did not take place until the country as a whole was invaded by a combined movement from the east made by the whole of the tribes under the leadership of Joshua. This theory, as we have seen, accounts for the present form of Judges i. 16, 17, .which makes the conquest of the Negeb to have been eflfected through a movement which took its start from Jericho. It is the Judaean document J which embodies the Calibbite tradition in Num. xxi. 1-3. The Ephraimite E, on the other hand (which is naturally the principal repository of the Joshua-tradition), from which is drawn the narrative which is found in Deut. i. 41-6, while mentioning the defeat of the Israelites, knows nothing, or at any rate will have nothing, of the subsequent victory as narrated by J. Our inference, then, is that clans which went to form the tribe of Judah (including North Arabian clans then or subsequently embodied in the tribe) advanced northward from Kadesh-Bamea ; and, in combination with the remnant of the tribe of Simeon (which, as we shall see later, after a disastrous attempt to effect a settlement in Central Palestine, appears to have moved south- ward), conquered the territory of Arad, and settled down in it, afterwards advancing their conquests farther north, into the country which is known to us later on as the Hill-country cf Judah, If this inference be correct, it will help to explain to us a very ' number of spies is not mentioned and only Caleb is named, in P they are twelve, one from every tribe (so in Deut. i. 23), and tbeir names are given ; in JE they confine their investigations to the Negeb and the Hill-country to its immediate north, as far as Hebron (xiii. 22), but according to P they explore the land ' from the wilderness of Zinunto Rehob, to the entering in ofHamath' (xiii. 21), i. e. the whole of the territory which subsequently belonged to Israel, when the kingdom was at the zenith of its prosperity (the reigns of David and Solomon). For an analysis of the narrative cf. Carpenter and Harford- Battersby, Mexatench, ii, pp. 204 fF.; Gray, Numbers {Internat. Crit. Comm.], pp. 138 ff. 32 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN striking fact in the later history, viz. the isolation of Judah and Simeon from the rest of the tribes. From the Song of Deborah, which celebrates the great victory over the forces of Siserai, it is clear that an organized attempt was made on that occasion to unite the tribes of Israel against the Canaanites. Ten' tribes, including the tribes from the east of Jordan, are mentioned, either for praise as having taken part in the contest, or for blame as having held aloof. Judah and Simeon alone remain unnoticed. We must infer, therefore, that at that period they were so far isolated from the rest of the tribes that they were not even expected to take part in the common interests of Israel, and therefore received no call to arms. This single instance is in itself so striking that we need do no more than allude briefly in passing to the fierce rivalry which is pictured as existing between the men of Israel and the men of Judah in the days of David (2 Sam. xix. 41-3), and to the fact that the superficial union between Judah and the rest of the tribes which was effected upder Saul, David, and Solomon, was readily dissolved at the beginning of Rehoboam's reign. Another striking instance in which our old J narrative ascribes to Joshua's initiative a movement which almost certainly took place independently of him — in this case at a later period — is seen in the migration of clans of Manasseh across the Jordan from west to east. The evidence which we have to notice concerns the important clan of Manasseh which bore the name of Machir. Machir is men- tioned in the redactional passage Joshua xvii. 1 b. 2 R^ as the first- born son of Manasseh, and in Num. xxvi. 29 P as the only son — a description which clearly implies that it was the predominant clan of its tribal group. Both passages associate Machir with the land of Gilead east of Jordan : in Joshua he is ' the father of Gilead ' p^psn < the Gilead ', i. e. clearly the district and not a person), and is termed 'a man of war', possessing 'the Gilead and the Bashan'. In the same passage of Numbers {vv. 30 ff.) six grandsons (sons of Gilead) are assigned to Machir, of whom at any rate Shechem ^ and I'ezer, i. e, Abi'ezer (cf. Joshua xvii. 2), pertained to the territory of the western division of Manasseh. In Joshua xvii. 1 b. 2 we find that the six grandsons of Machir according to P in Numbers are set down as his younger brothers. If this -late evidence were all the information which we possessed with regard to Machir, we should naturally, infer that this pre- * Vocalized DiB', whereas the city is always DSB* ; but the identity of the two cannot be doubted. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 33 dominant section of Manasseh settled first in Gilead, and that it was only subsequently that some of its clans made their way into central Canaan west of Jordan. If, however, the reconstruction of the original J narrative of the tribal settlement in Canaan which we adopted in the first lecture ^ is substantially correct, and Num. xxxii. 39, 41, 42 forms the sequel of Joshua xvii. 14 ff. which certainly belongs to this narrative, then Manasseh first of all effected a settlement in the Hill-country west of Jordan, and it was only subsequently to this that the clan of Machir, together with Jair and Nobah, finding their west-Jordanic territory too exiguous, pushed theit way to the east of Jordan and made settlements there, acting, as we have seen (according to this narrative), at the advice of Joshua. There is, however, another reference to Machir which is most important of all, since it comes from a document which is regarded, on good grounds, as contemporary with the events which it narrates. The Song of Deborah alludes to Machir among the patriotic tribes which responded to the call to arms. The passage in the poem (Judges v. 13-15) which refers to these tribes runs, as I read it,^ as follows : Then down to the gates gat the nobles ; Yahweh's folk gat them down mid the heroes. From Ephraim they spread out on the Vale; 'After thee, Benjamin!' mid thy clansmen. From Machir came down the commanders, And from Zebulun men wielding the truncheon. And thy princes, Issachar, were with Deborah; And Naphtali was leal to Barak: To the vale he was loosed at his heel. Here we have Machir mentioned among west-Jordanic tribes, immediately after the other Joseph- tribes, Ephraim and Benjamin. It can hardly be doubted that the allusion is to west Manasseh. If this is not the case, there is no allusion at all to this part of Manasseh ; and supposing that a tribe so intimately associated with the scene of the battle had refused its aid, it would certainly have been bitterly censured in the Song. On the other hand, Gilead east of Jordan is mentioned, independently of Machir, and is censured for holding aloof (v. 17) ; the reference probably being to the tribe or Gad, which inhabited the southern portion of Gilead (south of > Cf. pp. 20f. ' For the emendations adopted in this passage cf. Burney, Judges, ad loo. 34 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN the Jabbok). We seem, therefore, to have choice of two hypotheses. Either the term ' Machir ' isused in the Song, by poetic licence, of Manasseh as a whole, and here refers to west Manasseh to the exclusion of Machir in Gilead ; or, the Manassite settlements at this period were west of Jordan only ; and the migration of Manassite clans (Machir, Jair, Nobah) to the east of Jordan, which the J narrative of the settlement supposes to have been carried out under the direction of Joshua, really only took place later than the victory of Barak and Deborah. This latter hypothesis is certainly to be preferred ; and, if correct, it forms a second illustration of the fact that our old J narrative of the settlement assigns to the direction of Joshua movements which were really undertaken independently of him, and at a different period. These facts being so, we now have to ask what credence we can attach to the tradition of an Israelite invasion of conquest from the east of Jordan under the leadership of Joshua. That Joshua is a genuinely historical figure, and that he actually did lead tribes across Jordan to the conquest of central Canaan, I see not the slightest reason to question. The combined J E tradition of a thrust from the east right across the Hill-country, along the line marked out by Jericho, Ai, Gibeon, Beth-horon, the vale of Aijalon, is certainly not pure invention. It may very likely have gained accretions and embellishments during the oral stage, in the course of telling and retelling ; but that there underlies it a substratum of actual history is inherently probable to say the least. This much might be afiSrmed with some confidence if we were dependent merely upon J and E with the long course of oral transmission which must be presupposed for the traditions which they offer us relating to these early times. It must not, however, be overlooked that we have, in Joshua X. 12, 13 (probably from the narrative of E), one of those precious fragments from an ancient song-book which we meet with here and there in the old narratives. The narrator tells us that, during the pursuit of the Amorites, Joshua said in the sight of Israel, , '"Sun, over Gibeon halt! And thou moon o'er the vale of Aijalon ! " Then halted the sun, and the moon stood still, Till the folk requited its foes;' and he adds the comment that the passage is derived from a written source, the Book of Jashar, from which are also derived David's Lament over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Sam. i. 17 ff., and (according THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 35 to the LXX text ^) the words ascribed to Solomon at the dedication of the Temple in 1 Kings viii. 12, 13. Though the compilation of the Book of Jashar is obviously not earlier than the reign of Solomon (assuming it to be a fact that 1 Kings viii. 13, 13 was drawn from it), yet many of the poems contained in it were doubt- less indefinitely ancient, and are more likely than prose-narratives to have been handed down substantially unchanged. Whether it be the product of a ballad-maker who sang of the traditions of a much earlier time, or (as is quite possible) a contemporary composition like the Song of Deborah and David's Lament, the poetical frag- ment in any case ofiers us an additional source of confirmation for the events to which it refers, and that in written form certainly older than the prose-traditions of J and E. Who, then, were the tribes that, under the leadership of Joshua, made this bold and comparatively successful bid for supremacy in Canaan by force of arms ? Not Judah and Simeon in the south, as we have seen. Hardly, again, the tribes which Judges i simply pictures as there in Canaan maintaining a precarious footing in the midst of the Canaanites, whose fortified cities they could not reduce, and to whom they appear at first, to some extent at least, to have been subordinate. The fact is surely noteworthy that, apart from Judah and Simeon (with whom we have dealt), the only tribes to whom our old J narrative attributes any conquest are the central group, the Joseph-tribes, whom we find attacking and capturing Bethel, two or three miles north-west of Ai, which was captured, according to the Joshua-narrative, by Joshua's forces. The passage in Judges i certainly seems to picture an independent attack made by the Joseph-tribes upon the Hill-country, to which they go up, i. e. presumably, from the Jordan-valley after the passage of the river ; ^ and it is not improbable that it originally formed part of a longer account in which this section of Israel carried out its campaign under the leadership of Joshua. This is the view of Budde, who suggests that J's narrative originally ran, ' And the house of Joseph went up to Ai ', and then followed on with an account of the capture of Ai, as in Joshua viii, before mentioning * This adds the words oIk ISov avrrj yiypairrm iv /3^^\^al (var. in\ ^i^Xiov) rrjs eoSrjs • Here r^s (aS!js = T'ETI, a transposition of "lE^n. * This is the natural implication of the verb VV^ (cf. ch. ii. 1, where we should read 'Bethel' in place of 'Bochim'). The expression 'to go up' is sometimes used, however, in a more general way of a military expedition : Cf, Judges xii. 3, xviii. 9 ; 1 Sam. vii. 7 ; Isa. xxi. 2, xxxvi. 10. d2 36 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN the reconnaissance and capture of Bethel.^ In the statement of V. 22, ' and Yahweh was with them,' some uncertainty attaches to the reading ' Yahweh ', if we are to assign any importance to the evidence of one of the two Greek versions reprasenting the text of the LXX, which offers the reading ' Judah ' in its place.^ Budde has suggested, with some boldness yet not without considerable plausibility, that under both readings, 'Yahweh' and 'Judah', there lies an original ' Joshua ' — ' and Joshua was with them '. A sufficient reason for the excision of the name of Joshua, and the ^ substitution of the reading of our text, is furnished by the fact that the late editor who prefixed Judges i. 1-ii. 5 to the Book of Judges, and who, as we have seen, was responsible for a number of additions to the narrative, professes to be giving an account of events which happened ' after the death of Joshua ' (i. 1). Assuming, then, that it was the Joseph-tribes only that were led by Joshua across Jordan to the conquest of a settlement in Canaan, it follows in all probability that, if tradition is correct in making Joshua the successor of Moses in the leadership of Israel, the tribes whom Moses led out of Egypt at the Exodus were not the whole of Israel as the term was subsequently understood ; but that certain elements which eventually formed part of the nation must have gained their footing by other means and at other periods. This is a conclusion which, as we shall see in the next lecture, seems to be forced upon us by external evidence ; and it agrees with the con- ception, such as it is, which we gather from Judges i of the other tribes that are mentioned — a conception which suggests that they were settlers on sufferance among the Canaanites who held the fortified cities, and that it was not till they had made their way as much by racial vigour and productivity as by anything else, that they eventually gained the predominance. We shall probably not be far wrong if we picture them at first as forming part of the floating semi-nomadic population, pressing in from the barren steppes to the north-east, which has always formed an element in the settled life of Canaan. This at any rate is the conception which we form of the position of Israel in Canaan from the patriarchal legends of Genesis ; and it is to these legends that we shall have in ^ Cf. Richter und Samuel, pp. 57 f. ' ^ 'loiiSas is the reading of Abcgklntvwxz(mg)fLEus (notation of Brooke and McLean). This group represents the version which is the more independent of the Massoretic text, and which offers many readings which are intrinsically of high value (ef . Burney, Judges, Introd. p. cxxvii). The other version reads Kupior. THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 37 Bome degree to extend our investigations, if, as has now become evident, we cannot limit it to the era which begins with Joshua's invasion. Let us first examine the earlier fortunes of Simeon, the tribe which we have already found in the extreme south of the Negeb, seeking, in alliance with Judah, a more settled footing in southern Canaan through a northward move against the king of Arad. , In the story of Gen. xxxiv Simeon, together with Levi, gains an un- enviable notoriety through a treacherous massacre of the Canaanite B^ne-Hamor inhabiting the city of Sheehem in the Hill-country of central Canaan. The story is one in which beyond a doubt we are dealing with the doings of tribes under the guise of individuals. Sheehem, the son of Hamor, who contracts an alliance with Jacob's daughter Dinah, is clearly not an individual, but the personification of the city whose name he bears. We Qan hardly picture two ifnen effecting, without extraneous aid, the massacre of all the males of one of the most famous cities of ancient Canaan, even if these latter were placed by circumstances in a semi-defenceless state. The terms of Jacob's expostulation with his 'sons' let us at onco into the true meaning of the tale : ' Ye have troubled me, to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and Perizzites, / being a few men ; and they will gather themselves together against me and smite me ; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house ' {v. 30).^ The inference which we may justly draw as to the true meaning of the tale is as follows : The small Israelite tribe of Dinah enters into terms of friendly alliance and intermarriage with the B'ue-Hamor of Sheehem, an event which excites the resent- ment of the tribes of Simeon and Levi.^ Under cover of friendly overtures these tWo latter tribes treacherously attack the Sheehe- mites when off" their guard, and effect a general massacre. That the action of the Simeon and Levi tribes was repudiated by the remainder of Israel is apparent from Jacob's words which have just been quoted; but it is still more evident from the section dealing with this tribe in the old poem of Gen. xlix, a passage ' We here shift the principal break in the verse (yLthnah) from ''nS31 to "}3D» iflD, and connect the circumstantial clause 'Vi 'JW with the worda which precede it, as is natural to do. ° It is of course possible, as suggested by Dr. Skinner (Genesis in Intemat. Crit. Comm., p. 421), that Dinah was not a weak Israelite clan, but that 'a literal outrage of the kind described was the cause of the racial quarrel which' eivsued'. Skinner refers to Doughty, Arabia Deserta, ii, p. 114, for a modern parallel. 38 ISRAEJ^'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN which throws light on the ultimate issue of the treacherous act, suppressed in the prose-narrative. • The opening couplet of these verses {vv. 5-7) offer us one of the great cruces of Old Testament textual criticism ; and though many- attempts have been made to solve it, no one of these can be re- garded as affording satisfaction. It is perhaps too much to hope that I have succeeded in solving finally a problem which has puzzled the ingenuity of Hebrew scholars for two thousand years ; but I trust that I may be thought at any rate to have thrown some further light upon it. I read the passage thus : ' Simeon and Levi are hyenas ; Fully have they shown the ruthlessness of their stock. Into their council let not my soul enter ! In their assembly let not my spirit^ join! For wrathfully they slew a man, And wantonly they hamstrung an ox. Cursed be their wrath, for it was fierce, And their fury, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel.' Here the emendation ' hyenas ' (D^nx) for ' brethren ' (D'''?^) has already been suggested by Dr. Ball.^ It is supported by the ' Beading '153, lit. ' my liver ' (LXX to. rJTrara. /xou), for ''li33 ' my glory ' — a correction which is doubtless to be made also in Ps. vii. 6, xvi. 9, xxx. 13, Ivii. 9, cviii. 2. Among the Hebrews, as among the Babylonians (cf. the use of habittu), the liver seems to have been regarded as the seat of feeling and mental disposition. ^ Cf. Genesis in SBOT., p. 107. □'•nx only occurs once besides in the Old Testament (Isa. xiii. 21), where it denotes an animal haunting desolate ruins. The yord is perhaps the same as the Babylonian ahU, a synonym of the Sumerian UR-BAR-RA (Brunnow 11274) which may mean ' savage dog' (animal of the dog-class) — a suitable designation for the hyena— if BAR has here the sense ahU ' hostile', la mdgiru 'not amenable ', which is assigned to it in syllabaries. The reference to the UR-BAR-RA which one naturally calls to mind occurs in the Babylonian Flood-legend (Gilgames-epic XI, col. iv, 11. 20 flF.), where the god Ea, in expostulating with the god Enlil for causing the Flood, says: ' Instead of thy causing a flood. Let lions attack and diminish mankind. Instead of thy causing a flood. Let UR-BAR-RA attack and diminish mankind.' Here UR-BAR-RA (commonly read as barbaru, a synonym of ahti ; cf. Brunnow 11276) has been variously explained as the leopard (Ball, Zimmern) or panther (Jeremias), wolf (Ungnad, Rogers, Barton), wild dog (Jensen), hyena (Sayce), jackal (Delitzsch, Jastrow). We may remark that animals of the cat-s'pecies, such as the leopard, cannot be ruled out owing to the fact that Sumerian UR THE BIBLICAL TRADITION EXAMINED 39 fact that four or five of the other tribes (Judah, Issachar, Dan, Benjamin, and perhaps Naphtali) are compared with animals ; and it certainly relieves the difficulty of the Hebrew text, the explana- tion ' brother-spirits in character and disposition ', or the like, being somewhat forced. The emendation of stichos 2 (which is involved in the greatest obscurity) makes but a very slight change of the original,^ and offers us a good Hebrew sentence, explaining the means ' dog ' ; the lion itself being regularly denoted by the ideogram UR-MAG (' great dog ' ; Babylonian nSsu, labiu, urmahhu). Yet the leopard, though one of the fiercest of beasts when wounded or cornered, and a great pest to flocks, is not usually dangerous to man if unmolested, nor does it ordinarily develop man-eating propensities (of., however, Jer. v. 6, and Roosevelt, African Game Trails, p. 285). The jackal and wild dog are obviously inadequate to the situation depicted. Wolf and hyena remain ; but the ordinary Babylonian name for wolf is zihu {— Heb. 3N]), which is written ideographicallyUi^BI-KU, 1. e. perhaps ' ravenous dog ' (the same group of ideograms stands for dUlu, 'eater'; cf. Brunnow 11289-90), or NU-UM-MA. In view of the modern example cited on p. 41, n. 1 (the sleeping-sickness camp), it is clear that hyenas can become a frightful scourge to a primitive community reduced by disease or famine (we have to think of children and other weaklings as much as of grown men) ; and in any case, where man-eating lions aboun ded (as pictured), we may be quite sure that hyenas would not be far off, and would form a good second in carrying out the loathsome task upon which Ea suggests that the beasts might be employed. Thus the identification of HK with the hyena is not c«rto4«, though it is entirely suitable. Even if Babylonian dhA could be proved to mean 'wolf, this would not necessarily militate against Heb. ns meaning ' hyena ' ; for while Bab. zthu, Heb. 3N*, Syr. diba, Ar. d'tb denotes the wolf, the same word in Ethiopic, ze'eb, is applied to the hyena (cf. Dillmann, Lex. Ling. Aeth. 1056). If we are right in reading D'HS in Gen. xlix. 5, the meaning ' wolves ' is excluded by the fact that Benjamin is compared with this animal (3N1) ; while the meaning 'jackals' for D'riN in Isa. xiii. 21 seems equally to be excluded by the occurrence of Cillil, the ordinary term for this beast, in ». 22. It is probable that Q'ySS means ' hyenas ' (cf. Arabic dabu) in the place-name Qi^'DSn 'jl (1 Sam. xiii. 18) ; but this does not tell against HN denoting the same animal. Cf. the analogy of the place-name D^apyB', papyB*, which proves that Hebrew (or Canaanite) possessed the word 3?J?B' = Arabic talab, ' fox ' ; whereas the ordinary Heb. term for fox is bv^^. Some animals, e. g. the lion, are denoted by several different names. The explanation of the name Simeon (pSJlpB') as identical with the Arabic sim, an animal supposed to be the offspring of the male hyena and the female wolf, might, if correct, have formed a contributory reason for the Hebrew poet's taking the hyena as typical of the tribe. The Aijaba believe that certain men have peculiar affinities to the hyena (cf. Robertson Smith, Kinship, 2nd ed., pp. 231 f„ 237). * In place of Dn'^ri'iaD Dan \^3 read Dn'n')3» D»n V?3, a change of one con- sonant only (the frequently confused 1 and '') in the unpointed text. '?? 40 ISRAEL'S SETTLEMENT IN CANAAN- point of comparison with these loathsome beasts, and fitly intro- ducing what follows. I take the meaning to be ' They are hyenas ; and they have exhibited the inborn hyena-characteristic (ruthless ferocity of the most cowardly kind) to the utmost extent'. If, however, these two tribes are compared to an animal, the analogy of the other tribal comparisons leads us to expect that some habit of the animal selected should be explicitly indicated, in explanation of the comparison selected. We have this, e.g. in the case of Judah (v. 9): 'Judah is a lion's whelp; From the kill, my son, thou art gone up: He couched, he lay down like a lion, And like a lioness ; who shall rouse him up ? ' in place of ''b'2 is presupposed by LXX trwerekeaav, and by the paraphrase of Targum Onkelos NnU3 nnj; (= DDH i1j3). For n^3 in the sense ' complete, do to the full, exhaust the possibilities of the object denoted, cf. the applica- tion to the wrath of Yahweh : e. g. Lam. iv. 11, inDHTIK '' n?3 ' Yahweh Tiaih given full play to His wrath ; ' so Ezek. v. 13, vi. 12, vii. 3, xiii. 15, xx. 8, 21. ni^^D ' origin ' or ' source of extraction ' (perhaps literally ' place of digging out' from 113 ; cf. Isa. li. 1) occurs in Ezek. xvi. 3, xxi. 35 (plural as in our passage), xxix. 14 (singular): and the rendering 'stock' or 'strain' seems adequately to express the meaniiig. Pesh. . ooiX*^ »i.a5 seems to be a rendering of Dn''n^2G)[p] , and possibly Dn''n'l3Dr3l underlies the paraphrase of the Targum of Onkelos, Iinnunin 5JnN3, though this may imply Dn'-nhlJDS. This is the opinion of Rashi, who, after explaining the difBcult term from the Greek, adds a reference to Ezek. xvi. 3 in connexion with the Targum-rendering (inti T'mi'iDi ^