Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/58

 judgement has its value, and one in favour of the historic origin of the tradition is at least as valid as another to the contrary effect.—The two points on which attention now falls to be concentrated are: (a) the personalities of the patriarchs; and (b) the religious significance of the tradition.

(a) It is a tolerably safe general maxim that tradition does not invent names, or persons. We have on any view to account for the entrance of such figures as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph into the imagination of the Israelites; and amongst possible avenues of entrance we must certainly count it as one, that they were real men, who lived and were remembered. What other explanations can be given? The idea that they were native creations of Hebrew mythology (Goldziher) has, for the present at least, fallen into disrepute; and there remain but two theories as alternatives to the historic reality of the patriarchs: viz., that they were originally personified tribes, or that they were originally Canaanite deities.

The conception of the patriarchs as tribal eponyms, we have already seen to be admissible, though not proved. The idea that they were Canaanite deities is not perhaps one that can be dismissed as transparently absurd. If the Israelites, on entering Canaan, found Abraham worshipped at Hebron, Isaac at Beersheba, Jacob at Bethel, and Joseph at Shechem, and if they adopted the cult of these deities, they might come to regard themselves as their children; and in course of time the gods might be transformed into human ancestors around whom the national legend might crystallise. At the same time the theory is destitute of proof; and the burden of proof lies on those who maintain it. Neither the fact (if it be a fact) that the patriarchs were objects of worship at the shrines where their graves were shown, nor the presence of mythical traits in their biographies, proves them to have been superhuman beings.—The discussion turns largely on the evidence of the patriarchal names; but this, too, is indecisive. The name Israel is national, and in so far as it is applied to an individual it is a case of eponymous personification. Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (assuming these to be contractions of Yiẓḥaḳ-el, etc.) are also most naturally explained as tribal designations. Meyer, after long vacillation, has come to the conclusion that they are divine names (INS, 249 ff.); but the arguments which formerly convinced him that they are tribal seem to us more cogent than those to which he now gives the preference. That names of this type frequently denote tribes is a fact; that they may denote deities is only a hypothesis. That they may also denote individuals