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 Mediterranean coast on the W. The world outside these limits is ignored, for the simple reason that the writers were not aware of its existence. But even within the area thus circumscribed there are remarkable omissions, some of which defy reasonable explanation.

The nearer neighbours and kinsmen of Israel (Moabites, Ishmaelites, Edomites, etc.) are naturally reserved for the times when they broke off from the parent stem. It would appear, further, that as a rule only contemporary peoples are included in the lists; extinct races and nationalities like the Rephaim, Zuzim, etc., and possibly the Amalekites, being deliberately passed over; while, of course, peoples that had not yet played any important part in history are ignored. None of these considerations, however, accounts for the apparent omission of the Babylonians in P,—a fact which has perhaps never been thoroughly explained (see p. 205).

From what has just been said it ought to be possible to form some conclusion as to the age in which the lists were drawn up. For P the terminus a quo is the 8th cent., when the Cimmerian and Scythian hordes ($2f.$) first make their appearance south of the Caucasus: the absence of the Minæans among the Arabian peoples, if it has any significance, would point to the same period (see p. 203). A lower limit may with less certainty be found in the circumstance that the names and  (Persians and Arabs, first mentioned in Jer. and Ezk.) do not occur. It would follow that the Priestly List is pre-exilic, and represents, not the viewpoint of the PC (5th cent.), but one perhaps two centuries earlier (so Gu.). Hommel's opinion (Aufs. u. Abh. 314 ff.), that the Table contains the earliest ethnological ideas of the Hebrews fresh from Arabia, and that its "Grundstock" goes back to Mosaic times and even the 3rd millennium, is reached by arbitrary excisions and alterations of the names, and by unwarranted inferences from those which are left (see Je. ATLO$2$, 252).—The lists of J, on the other hand, yield no definite indications of date. The S Arabian tribes ($25-30$) might have been known as early as the age of Solomon (Brown, EB, ii. 1699),—they might even have been