The evolution of the Hebrew people and their influence on civilization

Preface

This book is the result of several years of teaching sophomores who come to college with no adequate conception of what the Bible stands for. It is designed for beginners, to help them get their bearings. It attempts to relate Bible study to the great fields of knowledge that command a modern student's attention, to show something of the fascination of Bible study pursued in this way, and to leave a positive conviction of the surpassing value of the great prophetic thoughts handed down to us. If it serves to arouse interest and stimulate further study it will have accomplished its purpose.

I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness for helpful criticism to Dr. Frank K. Sanders, to Professor Charles F. Kent, and to Mr. Henry A. Sherman.

LAURA H. WILD.

June 25, 1917.

Contents

WAttU

Introduction 1

Part I— The Cultural Background Of Hebrew Life Chapter

I. How Ancient History Has Been Rediscovered 7

II. The Older Background of Hebrew Life as

Revealed by the Archaeologist 18

III. Prehistoric Man and the Rise of the Great

Racial Groups 28

IV. The Great Racial Groups 35

V. The Nursery of Civilization 44

VI. A Comparison of Semitic and Indo-European

Characteristics 52

Part Ii— A Sketch Of The Development Of Religious Ideas

VII. Primitive Animism 63

VIII. Fetichism and Ancestor-Worship 73

IX. Magic and Witchcraft 83

X. Primitive Methods of Communicating with

the Gods 90

XL The Philosophic Basis of Early Theology . . 101

ix

CONTENTS

BAPTEB PAG«

XII. Traces of Primitive Beliefs and Customs

in the Bible 110

XIII. The Prophet's Contribution to the Devel-

opment of Religion 122

Part Iii— The Influence Of Physical En- Vironment Upon The Development Of The Hebrew Race

XIV. The Physical Characteristics of Pales-

tine 131

XV. The Influence of Palestine upon the Hebrews 139

XVI. The Geographic Position of Palestine and

Its Consequences 147

Part Iv— Israel's Economic And Social Development

XVII. The Relation of Israel's Political History to Her Social Development 157

XVIII. The Record of Israel's Economic and Social Development 163

XIX. The Nomadic Stage 168

XX. Influence of the Nomadic Life on Hebrew

Life 177

XXI. The Agricultural Period and Its Social

Transition 186

XXII. Hebrew City Life Before the Captivity. 199

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTKH FAOI

XXIII. Effect of the Changed Conditions upon

the Nations 209

XXIV. City Life Immediately After the Captiv-

ity 216

XXV. The Social and Ethical Ideals of This

Period 228

XXVI. The Greek and Maccabean Periods 236

XXVII. The Point of View of the Times 246

XXVIII. The Economic and Social Background of

the Life of Jesus 252

XXIX. The Political and Social Background of

the Apostolic Age 266

Part V— The Place In World Thought Of The Great Hebrew Prophetic Teachers

XXX. The More Enduring Messages of the Old

Testament Prophets 275

XXXI. The Two Great Prophetic Teachers of

the New Testament 291

A Brief List of Books of Reference 297

Index 303

LIST OF MAPS

Physical Map of Palestine to face page 131

The Babylonian, Persian, and Alexander's Empires to face page 147

Introduction

It was not so very many years ago that the word evolution was occasioning much discussion, especially in the circles of Bible students. Violent opposition was aroused to the idea. Bible teaching was supposed to be overthrown if the thought of evolution was accepted. All that has passed away, at least among intelligent people. Evolution is an accepted fact not only biologically but in a much wider sense than its original meaning seemed to signify. Men are applying it to every branch of knowledge. When one approaches any subject of investigation the immediate presupposition is that the present is evolved out of the past. Moreover, the future is wrapped up in the present. Whatever the future is to be in any line of work or life depends upon what the present holds. Upon no branch of knowledge has this idea thrown greater illumination than upon history. History is simply the unfolding of this evolutionary process; it is the story of the evolution of races and nations. And at no point in the study of history has this idea been more enlightening than at the point of Bible history. Thus the meaning of the Bible itself has become so much more significant that within the last few years the Bible has become a new book, and to-day the desire to approach it from the modern point of view is manifest not simply among scholars but in churches and Bible schools, in literary clubs, and among people at large.

If Hebrew history were the mere history of an ancient race it would, indeed, be interesting when approached from this standpoint. Where did Abraham come from? Why did he leave his native land? How did he become the father of a nation? All are questions doubly fascinating to any eager student of history. The evolution of any ancient race, as, for example, the Cretans or the Hittites, is a problem affording keenest pleasure to any historically trained mind of the present

2 INTRODUCTION

day. But it would hardly be reasonable to suppose that Hebrew history viewed thus would be of any especially vital interest to the layman. And many a layman has asked himself honestly why he should care particularly about what Abraham or Moses or David did when the thing that interests him is society as he finds it.

The modern Bible student can answer such a question, not apologetically by trying to defend the Bible as a holy book, but enthusiastically as having a vital connection with modern social ideals. Society to-day, our own community life that affords the possibilities for living as we do live in a civilized land, is the product of the past. We are debtors to many sources for the influences that have made our communities what they are. Not the least of these is the influence that has come from the social and spiritual ideals of the Hebrew people. The Bible is the source book we study to show the development of such conceptions. To try to discover whether we have really seen them clearly and grasped their import for our own future is an interesting study quite worthy of a busy person's spare time.

We no longer read the Bible simply because we are told it is a holy book. It must prove itself to be holy to us, because by its grip upon the ideals of our own souls it draws out our reverence and enlarges those very ideals. In other words, it must appeal to us, it must establish its right to be called sacred; and it inevitably is sacred when it touches and inspires the best there is in us. Thus the word sacred as applied to the Bible has gradually changed in the content of its meaning. It is sacred because it is the record of a vital current that has sanctified and uplifted civilization and opened up a pathway toward ethical and spiritual possibilities.

We have been opening our eyes to this very slowly since the Reformation, but we have hardly yet grasped it from the largest point of view, the racial point of view. That the teachings of the Bible, especially of the New Testament, could sanctify the individual and help him through life, could even bless a local community and make it a desirable place in which to

INTRODUCTION 3

live, has been accepted more or less. But that the Bible reveals great vital currents of life and thought evolved in the history of a race, the acceptance or the rejection of which means the hindrance or the progress, the life or the death of the race as a race, has been very faintly apprehended. Otherwise we never could have had such a wholesale disregard of biblical teachings as the present awful international war has exhibited. If out of this war we learn the lesson that the Bible has an international message and not simply one of local and individual import, we shall have learned something worth while and the Bible will become more sacred than ever before. It will no longer be considered a mere talisman for the safety of the individual but as a great source book of social, political, and national, nay even international, ideals. And these spiritualized national concepts will affect our intellectual outlook.

So many different streams of thought have been pouring in upon us of the Occidental world to make us what we are that the result is at present rather confusing. The New World has been swayed this way or that, quite impulsively or blindly, not very thoughtfully, not taking account of the springs from whence these currents of influence have started, not considering whether our impulses were prompted by our pagan or our Christian ancestry, whether they were on the lower plane of primitive, more or less barbaric instincts or on the higher plane of spiritual insight. But it is the part of common sense for us to weigh carefully the import and the worth of such conflicting ideas. In order to do that we must carry them back to their sources and discover through what kind of a life these ideas have evolved and toward what sort of a goal they are pointing. Such racial contributions are made vital to us only as we see them in the process of their evolution. Thus we are able to discriminate crude beginnings from mature conceptions and the whole as a great deposit of human life from which the roots of our modern civilization are drawing their life-giving sap.

The Bible viewed as the source book of one nation's contribution ceases to be a fetich or an oracle whose utterances

4 INTRODUCTION

are to be slavishly followed. It is a guide-book because it marks danger spots and points toward ideals. The Bible is of tremendous importance to-day because its social programme, touching directly upon political, national, and international policies, is not a cut-and-dried effort of some particular person's brain superimposed upon society, but the gradual working out, through the terrible birth pangs of racial development, of vital racial truths. Even the teachings of Jesus himself can only be seen in their right perspective when viewed as the climax of the evolution of the life of a whole people. That people perished as a nation but their teachings have survived for the benefit of the world.

Thus the study of Hebrew history means more than the study of the history of an ancient race because it has had a place in permanent thinking and life, a unique place which must be reckoned with in trying to steer our course to-day on the uncharted seas of world internationalism. It is from such a point of view that this book attempts to approach the teachings of the Bible.

Chapter I How Ancient History Has Been Rediscovered

The Fascination of Discovery. There is an irresistible passion for discovery in the human breast. Life is teeming with interesting quests, making the lure of the trail so strong that youth cannot resist its attractions and even old age gives it up with reluctance. But discovery does not concern itself entirely with new inventions and wonders ne'er heard of on sea or land. There is a discovery of the past quite as fascinating as exploration into the future, and in one sense even more alluring, for the past holds completed work, ideas fully wrought out, while the best we can do in prying into the future is to get something started, crude and imperfect at first, to bear fruit later. By going back along the trail of dim tradition men have been led into marvellous fairy-lands where they have discovered civilizations rivalling our own, even surpassing us in many respects. To discover this real world of the past becomes the irresistible desire of the archaeologist; the attraction of the "find" he expects to make when the next mound is laid open by the spade is constantly luring him on. It is like prospecting for gold in the Rocky Mountains. An old prospector never gives up. He has once seen the glitter of the precious metal; he will see it again, he thinks, in the next vein of rock, and he stakes his claim confidently and digs perseveringly. Rewarded beyond expectations or disappointed innumerable times, he only goes on and on with the true gold-seeker's fever. Not less of a compelling power does the archaeologist feel when once the fever of discovery has gripped him as he stands over the very places where men of thousands of years ago walked and talked and wrought out their schemes for the future.

One of the first lessons that history teaches us is our indebtedness to the past. The fascination of ancient history is due to the fact that the world has not always been as it is now, that the part of the world upon which we may even now be standing did not always present the same picture, and that many ancient civilizations, so different from ours and yet with so many striking similarities, helped to produce the world we so calmly take for granted to-day. The true historian, however, does not regard the present simply in the light of the immediate past, but with the help of long-distance views as well, so that such modern history as that of Rome and Greece falls into its proper niche away down the scale, comparatively near to our own day. This rearrangement of our historical perspective the archaeologist has accomplished. Many scholars have been at work digging up layer after layer of historical fact. It has not all been done chronologically, one stratum at a time, but in whatever country an archaeologist's interest centred, there he has dug away and unearthed the story of one civilization after another. Sufficient time has now elapsed to see quite clearly the general relationship of all these discoveries, and thus the entire early background of the ancient history which has affected our own civilization to any marked degree has been filled in and enriched.

Following the Trail of the Archaeologist. But the history which we may learn need not be our only share in these researches. We may share the pleasure of the discoverer as well. If we may not ourselves blaze the trail of discovery and make original archaeological finds, we may follow some trail already blazed and feel in imagination much of the excitement of the discoverer. One of the earlier adventurers was interested in the well-known classic myths of Greece. The clues he began to follow have finally, in recent years and under other leaders, shed light upon Old Testament history. More recently an expedition of discovery was launched not far from Greece in Asia Minor. This captain's log-book fits in with the writings of the Bible, and it is interesting to observe how fields primarily investigated for other purposes have shed light sooner or later upon biblical history. Egypt has been one of the most fruitful fields of abiding interest to the student of ancient history.

THE TRAIL OF THE ARCHAEOLOGIST 9

Babylonia is the country which contains some of the earliest strata of civilization but a more recent archaeological field. Between Egypt and Babylonia lies Palestine, the home of the Bible, and all three of these countries are closely connected with its early history. Behind the historic data that has been unearthed in any of these lands there lies a prehistoric era. It is called the era of troglodytes or cavemen, the discovery of the remains of which is making it possible for the modern scholar to see the whole history of mankind as a panorama. In sharing the pleasures of the historical discoverer we shall, therefore, take a swift journey around the Mediterranean Sea and down the Euphrates River and then a rapid glance over whole continents to look at the ancient cavemen.

Dr. Schliemann and Ancient Troy. Of course, the archaeologist must possess the scientist's curiosity. He must be eager to know what secrets the earth holds. He must have faith in the clues he gets and power to arouse the enthusiasm of his workmen. But his eagerness for the undertaking may not appear all at once; it is a love that grows. The flame may be very slight at first, but as it is fanned by little finds it grows to be a consuming passion. Indeed, some may be born archaeologists, like the famous Dr. Schliemann (1822-1890), the noted discoverer of old Greek days. When he was a boy his father gave him a Universal History. In it was an engraving of Troy in flames. "If the walls were as thick as those in the picture/' said the boy, "there must be some remains of them; and I shall excavate them some day." He heard that the old Roman city of Pompeii had been uncovered and the life of the people laid bare, showing them as they were going about their daily duties more than eighteen hundred years ago, when the terrible disaster struck them. This fired his soul to attempt the discovery of the old Greek city of Troy. He began to dig on the mythical site described by Homer in the northwest corner of Asia Minor, south of the Hellespont. Up to this time the tale had been considered purely imaginary, but Dr. Schliemann proved that it was founded upon fact, that there had been a real city of Troy.

Old Mycenae. For twenty years Dr. Schliemann continued digging, unearthing treasures in many places. Mycenae, in Greece, attracted his attention, and by degrees his efforts revealed a whole ancient civilization of the greatest importance for the understanding of the development of Greek life. His house at Athens was filled with wagon-loads of relics. Imagine his excitement at the opening of a tomb at Mycense on finding the body of a man who lived thousands of years ago with a crown bound around his head, or on finding in another tomb heavy golden bracelets and in another golden masks over the faces of the bodies.

Crete and the Empire of the Sea Kings. But Mycense was only the beginning of the discoveries of ancient Greek life. What had always been considered mere legend in Homer's poems is proved now to have a basis in real history, for over on the island of Crete the palace of the mythical King Minos has been found and within it a beehive chamber which may have been the famous Labyrinth of Homer's tale, where the daring Theseus could find his way out only by means of a thread. Numerous relics showing the civilization of that time have been unearthed. Crete is one of the most recent and exciting of archaeological fields. One day the excavators found the king's gaming-board. It is over a yard in length and more than half a yard broad. Its framework is of ivory overlaid with gold plate and covered on top with a mosaic of strips and disks made of rock crystal. Its back is of silver and blue enamel paste, and around its margin runs a border of marguerites with bosses of rock crystal. There are reliefs of nautilus shells, medallions of crystal, and ornaments of gold-plated ivory. Its dazzling show of gold and silver, ivory and crystal, is indescribable. Imagine the king of Crete some four thousand years ago sitting down with one of his courtiers at this glittering game-board for a game something like our game of chess. We can now tell also how the ladies looked, for there are frescoes of them on the walls of the palace, in very lownecked dresses with puffed sleeves, slender, wasplike waists, and flounced skirts. Their hair is elaborately dressed and

THE EMPIRE OF THE SEA KINGS 11

curled, and they present altogether quite a Parisian appearance. In another place in the great building there was found a whole carpenter's kit just where the workman had dropped it. It contained saws, chisels, awls, nails, files, and axes. And because these are of bronze material, this period of (J reck civilisation is known to belong to the Bronze Age. These wonderful remains of a former civilization, which have been found lying just a few feet below the surface of the earth, have revealed a Cretan kingdom of long ago to which has been given the name of the Empire of the Sea Kings, or the Minoan Kingdom, for the name Minos is supposed to be a generic name for a whole family of kings, like the word Pharaoh in Egypt.

Connection of Bible Stories and Pre-Greek History. This Cretan or Minoan civilization is considered by some scholars to be the most highly developed and modern of all the ancient world, and it affected to some extent the life in Palestine. The last of the Minoans appear to have been the Philistine tribe of which we hear so much in the Bible. In Crete they were called the Peleset tribe. The attractiveness of the Coast Plain on the eastern shore of the great sea had perhaps first lured their traders over there to establish commercial relations with the Canaanites; or perhaps they had been scattered by an invasion of Crete. At any rate, they established five independent cities on the coast — Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron, Ashdod, and Gath.

The biblical account of the Philistine life in these cities indicates the type of civilization they brought with them, a civilization strong and active and well developed in the culture of city life and the arts of war, a great contrast to the neighboring shepherd races. When the wandering tribe of Israelites crossed the Jordan and tried to get possession of the territory lying between it and the sea their most difficult foes were the Philistines, who had no notion whatever of being ousted from their new home and who were skilled in the arts of fighting and of fortification beyond anything the Israelites had ever dreamed of. It was a Philistine, a descendant of the Sea Kings, who stood out in the valley one day, clad in armor and with a spear in his hand, and defied the armies of Israel. He laughed in derision at the shepherd stripling David who came against him with nothing but a sling. His prototype may be seen upon a Cretan vase dug up by the archaeologist, called the Boxer Vase, upon which there is a swaggering warrior clad in bronze armor boasting over the weaker Orientals around him. The Bible story of David and Goliath represents most graphically these two types of civilization that were clashing now in a mighty contest for supremacy. The Israelites had begun to feel the strength and skill of these foreigners and were "dismayed and greatly afraid," the Bible tells us. No wonder there was such great rejoicing when David, with his sling, slew the giant, clad in his coat of mail and his brass helmet and greaves, and that this achievement raised the young David immediately to the highest pinnacle of popular favor. No wonder either that when "the battle went sore against the Israelites" and Jonathan was slain and Saul in his despair killed himself, David sang in his immortal dirge:

Tell it not in Gath,

Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon;

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.

This struggle of the Israelites lasted several hundreds of years. The stories begin with the time when these degenerate descendants of the Sea Kings captured Samson, the country athlete and hero of the Israelites living in the hill towns near the coast. They brought him to their city of heathen culture, Gaza, and exhibited him for sport in their so-called temple, which was half shrine and half palace. From the balconies above their ladies doubtless looked down in amusement, dressed in the latest Cretan style of frills and flounces, as their ancestresses had looked on years before at a boxing contest or bullfight at the Minoan capital. Like the Cretans, the Philistines had a taste for splendid buildings. The skill of the Cretan goldsmiths is seen among the Philistines when, because of superstitious fear, they sent back the sacred ark of the Israelites filled with golden mice and tumors, for at the old shrine

DISCOVERIES AT EPHESUS 13

in Crete they had been accustomed to make votive offerings of

the images of animals and diseased human organs.

Thus the very natural connection between the Bible itori I and pre-Greek history has been made clear through the recent discoveries of archaeologists. And when we remember that the Philistines were not Semites, but of an entirely different race from the Hebrews, this struggle for the little territory between the Jordan and the sea becomes most interesting. It was not merely a fight for land but a struggle for racial supremacy. The Philistines succeeded in handing down to posterity their name for the country, for it is now called Palestine, which is a direct transference of the name Philistine through the Greek Palaistine and the Roman Palsestina. But that is all that has come down to us from them, a mere name, unless, indeed, the art of writing, formerly supposed to have been transmitted to the Greeks from the Phoenicians, came by way of the Cretans and their descendants. Undoubtedly, they influenced the Israelites in art and architecture, since their civilization had advanced to the Iron Age when the Israelites were still in the Bronze Age.

Discoveries at Ephesus. The man who first struck this trail of discovery, which has led on to finds of which he himself never dreamed, we have called a born archaeologist. This enthusiasm, however, is not always a gift; it comes sometimes as a result of cultivation. Mr. D. G. Hogarth, who was sent by the British Museum to unearth the great temple to the goddess Diana at Ephesus, has described how, as a young Oxford graduate, he gained, under the leadership of Sir William Ramsay, experience in conducting excavations and how his enthusiasm grew with his knowledge of the work. Sir William Ramsay is a famous Scotch scholar, one of the authorities on Paul's journeys in Asia Minor and one who has done much to make archaeology a science.

The temple to Diana, which was to become the scene of Mr. Hogarth's labors, is referred to in the New Testament. Demetrius, a silversmith of Ephesus, became very much disturbed, we are told, at the time of Paul's visit there, for he and his fellow tradesmen made silver shrines of Diana which "brought no little business unto the craftsmen." He thought that Paul's preaching of another religion was going to injure his trade, and, as a shrewd tradesman of to-day would do, he tried to avert such disaster by persuading the people that "not only is there danger that this our trade come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana be made of no account, and that she should even be deposed from her magnificence whom all Asia and the world worshippeth." In 1874 the pavement of this temple had been unearthed.

The discovery of this temple and the Great Altar where was worshipped that Diana who received the homage of the whole cultured world of Paul's time is of great interest to the student of New Testament history. It was not, however, until 1904 that the British Museum decided to prosecute the work further and sent Mr. Hogarth to conduct the investigations. Under Dr. Ramsay he had learned that archaeological research includes all sorts of things, such as seeking material, copying inscriptions, noting characteristics of the finds made, measuring land and building spaces, mapping and photographing territory. It includes also knowledge of workmen and skill in managing them, for unless the diggers have enthusiasm they are likely to find little, to smash into bits what they do find, or to be generally lackadaisical in their work. Some of them, too, must be assiduously watched lest they carry away or conceal something they think is especially valuable or tell wrong stories about where they found certain objects. All this oversight takes keenness and experience and the eagerness which makes a real archaeologist, for the rewards are "according to the measure of your caring."

It was with great enthusiasm that Mr. Hogarth went to work on the floor of the temple at Ephesus. He hired a hundred men, as well as mule-carts, horse-carts, asses with panniers and asses with sacks, wheelbarrows, and close-woven baskets carried by boys. There were a half-dozen different races, all jabbering together and working in the pit with pick, shovel, or knife. For weeks they kept at it, turning up nothing of

DISCOVERIES AT BPHESUS \r,

great importance, only broken fragments or trifles (>r various sorts, until they were almost discouraged. Hut they had go1 down to the pavement itself and must dig a hole through tinmasonry if they went farther. What would they find underneath? While they were wondering, they came upon the Great Altar previously discovered, which was the centre of the Diana worship. Upon examining it they found an outer shell of marble filled in solid with small limestone slabs. It was easier to remove these and thus get through the floor than to make a hole through the solid pavement. After the first slabs were removed they began to see bright flakes of leaf gold, which had evidently fallen from some gilded object. Then a plate of gold turned up and Mr. Hogarth's imagination began to work. These must have come from the ornaments the goddess wore. He sent for sieves and the excitement began. Every handful of the material was washed out. They found earrings of all patterns, beads from necklaces, pins for the hair, brooches for the shoulder and throat, some of them of very fine Ionian work, and many coins. Soon they had a halfthousand jewels, and then the winter rains began. In the spring they used an engine and pump to get the water out and continued their search. As many more jewels were found, with statuettes made of ivory, bronze, terra-cotta, and wood, confirming the account in the book of Acts of the trade of Ephesian craftsmen. There were gold, electron, and silver fragments and amber objects, in all not less than three thousand treasures.