Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/155

Rh GENEALOGY so called, are rather to be sought for in these m'3‘?,11"1 .1. V. “ generations,” Gen. ii. 4; v. 1 ; vi. 9 ; X. 1, &c._; E.x. vi. 16, 19, &c.; N um. iii. 1) so frequently met with in some other canonical books, and so specially characteristic of the first book of the Pentateuch as apparently to have suggested to the Alexandrian translators its distinctive name of yévcms. These begin with the antediluvian period, and indeed with “ the generations (or genealogy) of the heavens and of the earth.” The descendants of Adam are traced through the lines of Cain and of Seth respectively to the seventh and to the ninth generation. In the two lists the frequent similarity of the names has not escaped observa- tion; nor has the symmetry of the numbers (in one case, a series of seven, the seventh branching into three; in the other a series of ten, in which the seventh is peculiarly prominent, while the tenth branches into three). The very ancient tradition which they embody is not at present so generally believed to convey actual personal history as once it was, but by those who view them as more or less ideal in their character their signiﬁcance has been very variously cs-timated,—some seeing in them the survival of ancient myths, perhaps solar in their character; others interpreting them as representing successive dynasties, or immigrations, or stages of culture within a given area in prehistoric times ; while such interpreters as Philo allegorize them in a purely spiritual sense. The same differences of View ﬁnd expres- sion when the genealogies of the immediately post—diluvian period come to be considered. In Gen. xi. a series of nine generations (or, according to the LXX., ten) from Shem to Abraham is given ; the symmetrical number again attracts notice, and in the list some names at least can be identiﬁed as having belonged to special nationalities; Arphaxad, for example, is probably equivalent to the Arrhapachitis of Ptolemy (vi. 1). That this “genealogy” was in intention etlmographical rather than personal ﬁnds conﬁrmation from the expansion which it receives in the very interesting sketch of a genealogia mziversalis in Gen. x., where the sons of Shem, besides Arphaxad, are said to have been Elam, Asshur, Lud, and Aram, while from Aram were descended Uz, Hul, Gether, a11d Mash or Meshech (compare 1 Chron. i. 17) ; and again, among the sons of J oktan, the (younger) brother of Peleg, are found Hazarmaveth, Sheba, Ophir, and Havilah. Throughout Gen. x., indeed, a thorough con- sciousness of a purely ethnographical purpose is manifest, and in many instances the device of using personal names to convey ethnological statements is entirely dropped (Gen. x. 13, 14, 16-18). Historians and critics are not yet entirely at one as to the view which ought to be taken of the genealogies which begin with Abraham. As is well known, these follow the line of Isaac, but give also the collateral lines of Ishmael and of the children of Keturah, and again trace the descendants not only of Jacob but also of Esau; and so mucl1 at least is unanimously held that, even if strictly historical so far as the children of Israel are concerned, they cannot be supposed to be complete for the centuries of the sojourn in Egypt. There seems no reason to doubt, however, that t_l1e distribution into tribes (-"Ff"-3’? or D‘i.35,1i?) families (n'in§_i,3’79,) and houses (W3-,"n_‘.3.1) lay at the basis of the organization of the Israelites from the earliest period of their independent nat.ional life, so that at any given time each man would be able to tell what house he belonged to, what other houses belonged to the same family, and what other families belonged to the same tribe with himself. There are indications of repeated censuses, in which the people were systematically enrolled for ﬁscal and military purposes ; but, on the other hand, it must be said_ that there seems to be no adequate evidence that the D"‘.f-:3?‘/, or “ officers,” so frequently mentioned in the Pentateuch, had functions at all corresponding to those of a heralds’ college, if indeed it can be regarded as made out 143 that they were scribes at all. The statements which are continually made as to the unbroken continuity and exhaus- tive fulness of the genealogical records of the twelve tribes of Israel are not borne out by any sober reading of the facts of history, as these have come down to us; and, even in the case of the Aaronic and Davidie families, there are some circumstances that warn against too absolute conﬁdence in the strict literality of the lists which have reached our hands. It is certain, indeed, that from the beginning of the post-exile period (Ezr. ii. 62, N ch. vii. 64) great im- portance was attached to purity of lineal descent in the case of priests ; and even in the time of Josephus (Cont. .41)., i. 7) members of the priestly caste were in the habit of prov- ing their legitimacy by means of public documents, which he refers to as 87;,uom’at 8e’)x-roe. But a comparison of the pedigree (whether oﬂicial or personal) of J ehosadak (l Chr. vi. 3-15 ; cf. Ezra vii. 1) with the enumeration of Aaron's successors in the high priesthood, as given by Josephus and repeated in the Seder Olam, suggests that, for the period preceding the captivity at least, the materials for a com- plete list must have been somewhat defective. That in the case of the house of David, in like manner, some real uncer- tainty existed would seem to be a legitimate inference, not only from the Chronicler’s obscurity, but also from the not easily reconcilable discrepancy between the genealogies given in Mat. i. and in Luke iii. And this is not inconsistent with the fact, of which there are many indications in the New Testament (and even, though more faintly, in the Mishna), that among the Jews the consciousness of tribal distinctions disappeared very slowly. When Anna is repre- sented as belonging to the tribe of Asher and Elizabeth as a daughter of Aaron, Paul as a Benjamite and Barnabas as a Levite; or when, as is vouched for by a not very late tradition, the “desposyni” in the time of Domitian claimed to have the royal blood of David in their veins, it would ob- viously be just as rash to infer (as Jerome seems to have done) that every successive link in the long series of their genealogies was accurately known to the persons themselves, or recognized by their contemporaries, as it Would be unscientiﬁc altogether to ignore the presumption arising out of the very fact that tribal distinctions were asserted. With reference even to the most undisputed of the Biblical genealogies, it is important to remember, in the ﬁrst place, that in them phrases implying sonship are not to be interpreted so strictly as they would be with us ; and, secondly, that, in order to aid the memory by means of successions of symmetrical numbers, it was quite usual to manipulate a long list by dropping or even by introducing names at discretion. Classz'cal.—A passing reference only is needed to the intricate genealogies of gods and sons of gods which form so conspicuous a feature in classical literat11re. In every one of the numerous states into which ancient Greece was divided there were aristocratic families who were accustomed to claim descent, through eponymous heroes, from the primitive deities. Many of these families were, as families, undoubtedly of great antiquity even at the beginning of the historical period; a11d in several instances they con- tinued to maintain a conspicuous and separate existence for centuries. The element of family pride is prominent in the poetry of the Megarian Theognis ; and in an in- scription belonging to the 2d century B.C. we ﬁnd a member of the Spartan family of Gytheates represented as the thirty-ninth in direct descent from the Dioscuri and the forty-ﬁrst from Hercules. Even in Athens, long after the constitution had become thoroughly democratic, some of the clans continued to be known as dm-a1-pL'8aL ; and Alcibiades, for example, as a member of the phratria of the Eurysacidze, traced his origin through many generations to Eurysaees, who was represented as having been the ﬁrst of the/Eacidae