Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/51

 graphies and their background that the former would be unintelligible if transplanted to other and later surroundings. We should gladly welcome any evidence that this is the case; but it seems to us that the remarkable thing about these narratives is just the absence of background and their general compatibility with the universal conditions of ancient Eastern life. The case for the historicity of the tradition, based on correspondences with contemporary evidence from the period in question, appears to us to be greatly overstated

The line of argument that claims most careful attention is to the following effect: Certain legal customs presupposed by the patriarchal stories are now known to have prevailed (in Babylon) in the age of Ḫammurabi; these customs had entirely ceased in Israel under the monarchy; consequently the narratives could not have been invented by legend-writers of that period (Je. ATLO$2$, 355 ff.). The strongest case is the truly remarkable parallel supplied by Cod. Ḫamm. 146 to the position of Hagar as concubine-slave in ch. 16 (below, p. 285). Here everything turns on the probability that this usage was unknown in Israel in the regal period; and it is surely pressing the argumentum ex silentio too far to assert confidently that if it had been known it would certainly have been mentioned in the later literature. We must remember that Genesis contains almost the only pictures of intimate family life in the OT, and that it refers to many things not mentioned later simply because there was no occasion to speak of them. Were twin-births peculiar to the patriarchial period because two are mentioned in Gen. and none at all in the rest of the OT? The fact that the custom of the concubine-slave has persisted in Mohammedan countries down to modern times, should warn us against such sweeping negations.—Again, we learn (ib. 358) that the simultaneous marriage with two sisters was permitted by ancient Babylonian law, but was proscribed in Hebrew legislation as incestuous. Yes, but the law in