Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/296

 propriately enough assigned to Javan, the most westerly of the sons of Japheth. It can only be the assumption that Shem represents a middle zone between N and S that makes the position of Kittîm appear anomalous to Di. Even if the island of Cyprus be meant (which, however, is doubtful; p. 199), it must, on the view here taken, be assigned to Japheth. It is true that in J traces of politico-historical grouping do appear and in $8-12$;,  in $13f.$).—As to the order within the principal groups (of P), it is impossible to lay down any strict rule. Jen. (ZA, x. 326) holds that it always proceeds from the remoter to the nearer nations; but though that may be true in the main, it cannot be rigorously carried through, nor can it be safely used as an argument for or against a particular identification.

The defects of the Table, from the standpoint of modern ethnology, are now sufficiently apparent. As a scientific account of the origin of the races of mankind, it is disqualified by its assumption that nations are formed through the expansion and genealogical division of families; and still more by the erroneous idea that the historic peoples of the old world were fixed within three or at most four generations from the common ancestor of the race. History shows that nationalities are for the most part political units, formed by the dissolution and re-combination of older peoples and tribes; and it is known that the great nations of antiquity were preceded by a long succession of social aggregates, whose very names have perished. Whether a single family has ever, under any circumstances, increased until it became a tribe and then a nation, is an abstract question which it is idle to discuss: it is enough that the nations here enumerated did not arise in that way, but through a process analogous to that by which the English nation was welded together out of the heterogeneous elements of which it is known to be composed.—As a historical document, on the other hand, the chapter is of the highest importance: first, as the most systematic record of the political geography of the Hebrews at different stages of their history; and second, as expressing the profound consciousness of the unity of mankind, and the religious primacy of Israel, by which the OT writers were animated. Its insertion at this point, where it forms the transition from primitive tradition to the history of the chosen people, has