Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/68

 The Book of Genesis

50 Desert

nomads, and

as

oases

occasional

with

found their

living

easiest

springs

their

the

in

and

water

of

their

and from their heights of unrestrained freeand wander at will, looked down upon the poor Or, if it did not tiller of the soil as an accursed being. originate then, it must have been very soon thereafter, before our ancestors had passed over completely and willingly to the settled, agricultural life, and before their conception of existence had been transformed from the nomadic to the bounteous

dom

trees,

to live

agricultural.

Into

this

story

central

the

author has

and

ingeniously

artistically worked a number of other folk-tales, many no They are all typical folk-tales, doubt of ecjual anti(|uity. such as our ancestors must have once possessed in great little from the folkBut in subject matter they do show immeasurable superiority. For most folk-tales turn about such incidental and superficial (|uestions as "Why the

number.

In

nature they differ very

tales of other primitive peoples.

sea

is

there

salt", is

a

or

man

"How

had many simple

"How

the rabbit got his long ears", or

in the

moon".

tales

like

these,

as

the

the animals got their names", and

crawls upon his belly", show.

But

stories

"Why

parents

for his

"W^hy woman is "Why man must

wife",

inferior lalior

"Why to,

and

"Why

childbirth

is

dependent

so ceaselessly

and

of

they treated

in addition,

divined, such basic problems of life as

here

the serpent

of problems which other primitive i)eoples seldom,

his

"Why

Certainly our ancestors, too,

a

if

man so

ever,

leaves

painful",

man", and the

upon,

bitterly",

like.

These are problems which touch u])on the elemental and and with the solution of which That our the world is still, in a certain sense, wrestling. ancestors should have conceived of these deep, basic, phil-

eternal mysteries of existence,

osophic ])roblems almost at the very begimiing of their intellectual

and cultural evolution, mav well indicate

that,

in