Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/292



the pl. (Rodanim, Ludim, etc.). Where the distinctions between national and geographical designations, between singular, plural, and collective names, are thus effaced, the only common denominator to which the terms can be reduced is that of the eponymous ancestor. It was the universal custom of antiquity in such matters to invent a legendary founder of a city or state; and it is idle to imagine any other explanation of the names before us.—It is, of course, another question how far the Hebrew ethnographers believed in the analogy on which their system rested, and how far they used it simply as a convenient method of expressing racial or political relations. When a writer speaks of Lydians, Lybians, Philistines, etc., as 'sons' of Egypt, or 'the Jebusite,' 'the Amorite,' 'the Arvadite' as 'sons' of Canaan, it is difficult to think, e.g., that he believed the Lydians to be descended from a man named 'Lydians', or the Amorites from one called 'the Amorite' ; and we may begin to suspect that the whole system of eponyms is a conventional symbolism which was as transparent to its authors as it is to us. That, however, would be a hasty and probably mistaken inference. The instances cited are exceptional,—they occur mostly in two groups, of which one ($16ff.$) is interpolated, and the other ($13f.$) may very well be secondary too; and over against them we have to set not only the names of Noah, Shem, etc., but also Nimrod, who is certainly an individual hero, and yet is said to have been 'begotten' by the eponymous Kush (Gu.). The bulk of the names lend themselves to the one view as readily as to the other; but on the whole it is safer to assume that, in the mind of the genealogist, they stand for real individuals, from whom the different nations were believed to be descended.

The geographical horizon of the Table is very restricted; but is considerably wider in P than in J. J's survey extends from the Hittites and Phœnicians in the N to Egypt and southern Arabia in the S; on the E he knows Babylonia and Assyria and perhaps the Kašši, and on the W the Libyans and the south coast of Asia Minor. P includes in addition Asia Minor, Armenia, and Media on the N and NE, Elam on the E, Nubia in the S, and the whole