CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF HEBREW LITERATURE (Before 1040 B.C.) THE Tell-el-Amarna tablets and some recent discoveries in Palestine itself have shown that in the fifteenth century B.C. the written language of Canaan was cuneiform Babylonian.1 Just when the alphabetic writing of the people of Canaan superseded this mode of expression is, as yet, undetermined; though it must have been between 1400 and 1000 or 900 B.C. The Moabite Stone, a few Hebrew inscriptions from the age of the monarchy, Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions, show that from the ninth century and probably indicate that from at least 1000 B.C. the peoples of Canaan employed essentially one language and one alphabetic mode of writing. This was already so perfected by the ninth century as to suggest long usage.2 Indications as to the dates of the oldest documents into which the Hebrew histories may be analyzed carry us back to about the same point as the inscriptions. Our earliest Hebrew book (Amos) dates only from the eighth century; but critical analysis of the books of Samuel yields connected prose narratives which must have assumed written form at least a century earlier, and it may be as early as the latter part of the tenth century. Such facts limit the time for the transition from the Babylonian cunei 1 See p. 4. 2 Some date the earliest Phoenician inscription at about 1000 B.C. See Standard Bib. Dict., § Alphabet; Ency. Brit. (11th ed.), § Alphabet. The Moabite Stone, set up by Mesha, king of Moab, to commemorate his deliverance from Hebrew oppression soon after Ahab's reign, dates from about 845 B.C. The bits of inscribed pottery, found in the supposed palace of Omri and Ahab by the Harvard expedition in 1910, indicate that in the first half of the ninth century B.C. Israel used alphabetic writing with the ease and grace of long custom. See Harvard Theological Review, January, 1911. form to Canaanite alphabetic writing to a period of four or five centuries. This extends from two centuries before the exodus 2 to the time of David or the early years of the divided kingdom, soon after Solomon's death. Some poems and many historical traditions concerning the exodus and settlement in Canaan have come down from this period; but we cannot say whether any of these were committed to writing earlier than the time of David or Solomon. We know that some of them were already written and even gathered into books before they were embodied by the historians of the ninth and eighth centuries in their writings; but if they were not written down till a short time before this, none of the extant Hebrew poetry would indicate a period of oral transmission longer than that established for some of the pre-Islamic, Arabic poems - the latter were preserved by oral tradition for at least three or four hundred years. We can only say that a few poetic bits, preserved to us, probably assumed fixed form before the entrance into Canaan, and that several short poems and one of some ninety lines have existed in substantially their original form since the early years of struggle for possession of Palestine. 3 Among the fragments that may have been composed in the wilderness period, the song commemorating the unexpected escape at the Red Sea naturally comes to mind at the outset. In its present form this elaborate poem shows unmistakable acquaintance with later events. Then were the chiefs of Edom dismayed: The mighty men of Moab, trembling taketh hold upon them: These lines presuppose events at the close of the wilderness sojourn, while 1 The significance of the origin of this "Semitic alphabet" is appreciated when one realizes that from it came the Greek and other European alphabets. 2 Present knowledge of Egyptian history and of Egyptian control over Palestine makes it clear that the exodus could not have occurred till about 1200 B.C. See Outlines Biblical Hist. and Lit., Sanders and Fowler, pp. 28-29, where references are given to recent literature. R. A. Nicholson, Literary History of Arabs, pp. xxii, 131. 4 Exodus 15 15. the mountain of thine inheritance, The place, O Yahweh, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, clearly carry us down at least to the time of Solomon, more than two centuries later than the deliverance at the Sea. There is, however, no reason why the nucleus of this poem may not have been composed at the time of the event commemorated. How far this nucleus extended beyond the couplet — Sing ye to Yahweh, for in triumph he rose; Horse and chariot he cast to the sea1 it is impossible to say.2 In the traditions of the Exodus period, the north Arabian tribe of the Kenites is prominent. In their district was the sacred mountain where Moses had his vision of Jehovah and where, after the escape from Egypt, the tribes entered into covenant with the God who revealed himself in thunder clouds, on the mountain's summit. Without committing ourselves to the theory that this was Israel's first contact with Jehovah and that the covenant was simply an adoption of the Kenite God, we may fully recognize that the Kenites became a part of the confederation which ultimately developed into the Hebrew nation, and that their traditional lore became a portion of Israel's heritage. One trace of this 1 Adopting with Cornill (Intro. Canonical Bks., O. T., pp. 118-119) the form of v. 21, "Sing ye," rather than "I sing." Usually where the translations of Hebrew poetry given in this book vary from those of the American Standard Version without special note, it is due to the present author's attempt to approach more nearly to the terseness and rhythm of the original; these qualities cannot be adequately reproduced in a translation. For example, in the second line of the above couplet, the Hebrew has only four words, of seven full syllables in all. The usual English version (both A. V. and R. V.) has thirteen syllables; the above translation has reduced the number to ten and has tried to suggest in each line the four beats of the Hebrew metre. By a slight change of the late vowel points, one may read chariot rather than rider or charioteer. See McNeile, Exodus, Westminster Com., in loc. 2 Consideration of the poem in its relation to the parallel prose narrative of ch. 14, and to the general development of Hebrew language and literature, leads to the conclusion that it was composed, as a whole, not earlier than the Babylonian Exile and perhaps even later. See McNeile, op. cit., p. 88 f. Baentsch in Nowack's Handkommentar, I, 2, p. 128 f. latter fact we may find in "The Song of the Sword." The context suggests the theory that the song utters the fierce joy incident to the discovery of the advantage of sharp-edged weapons of metal. Although there is no adequate ground for believing that these lines took shape in any such remote past as the time when the Kenite ancestors first made this discovery, the song does sound "an echo from the old times of the Bedouins"2 and may give us a true type of the boastful speech of a nomad tribe, a report from the beginning of poetic art.3 Perhaps the shout "Cain shall be avenged sevenfold" was an old Kenite tribal cry. The poem is now commonly interpreted as an expression of the law of blood revenge, so dominant among the Bedouin of to-day and constantly presupposed in Hebrew law and literature. Marti, however, finds in it the voice of an age when "the strict law of the Jus talionis was as yet unknown, when vengeance still had free play." The poem consists of six lines: Adah and Zillah, hear my saying, Wives of Lamech listen my speaking: If sevenfold Cain shall sure be avenged, Then Lamech seventy and seven.o One would like to feel certain that the charming little "Song of the Well" can rightly be ascribed to the same early era of 1 Genesis 4 23. 2 Marti, Religion of Old Testament, p. 46. 3 Budde, Geschichte der Althebräischen Litteratur, p. 14. 4 See Gordon, Early Traditions of Genesis, pp. 188-191. Marti, op. cit. • This translation seeks to indicate the uniform ending of the first four lines and also the shortening from four to three beats in the second members of the second and third couplets. In the Hebrew each line ends in i. A similar effect has been well brought out in the German by Budde (Gesch. Alth. Lit., p. 14). Ada und Zillah, hört meine Stimme, Ihr Weiber Lamechs, lauscht meiner Rede: "Numbers 21 17-18. the wilderness sojourn. The Negeb,' with its traditions of ancient wells on which the possibility of life depended,2 may easily have been its birthplace, but whether it comes from the days of the nomad life or later, it is a true bit of early folksong with idyllic flavor; it has the typical folksong form, a single strophe of four lines complete in itself.3 Budde may be right in finding in it reference to a custom known among later Arabs of lightly covering a well that has been discovered and later formally reopening and declaring it clan property. In this ceremony, symbolic action is performed with the sceptre-like staffs of the Sheiks. Ewald thought of it as belonging to the class "of popular songs accompanying the alternate strokes of hard labor." 5 Such songs of work are known to us from the fourth millennium B.C. in Egypt; such are still the delight of the fellahin as they work their water-wheels. It is noticeable in this folksong that the well is not conceived as the abode of some spirit; at first the opening seems like an example of personification; but, more probably, as Robertson Smith held, the fountain itself was thought of and addressed as a supernatural being; "of all inanimate things that which has the best marked supernatural associations among the Semites is flowing or, as the Hebrews say, 'living' water."7 The lines are: Spring up, O well! Sing to it! Well that the princes dug, That the nobles of the people delved, With sceptre, with their staffs. 1 The regions south of Judah, approximately from the hills south of Hebron to Kadesh. 2 Genesis 21 22., 26 15.; Judges 1 15; Joshua 15 19. See Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, p. 417. 4 A New World (March, 1895), pp. 136-144; Preussische Jahrbücher, 1895, pp. 491-580, referred to by Gray, Numbers, Int. Crit. Com. Ewald, Hist. Isr. (Eng.), II, 203, n. 3. See Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (Eng.), p. 385. 7 See Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 127, 167. For criticism of the last interpretation, and for general discussion of the entire subject with additional references, see Gray, Numbers, Int. Crit. Com., pp. 288 ff. 8 In the Hebrew, the last couplet rimes. One might try to reproduce very freely in English Well that the nobles may now quaff. Opened with their sceptre and their staff. |