Family Affairs
The story of the Book of Genesis is that of a single family, with their herds, retainers and tents, which left their home somewhere in the north of Mesopotamia, in the valley of the Balikh, east of Euphrates, and moved to Canaan. The Old Testament presents this fact as divine instruction. There is no way to prove or disprove it. As it was said many times, one does not prove theological arguments. One accepts them, or not. But then, there is no need to touch the question at all. The story is an important historical document, and no argument for or against its divinity could change its basic importance. So, the story is presented in its basic format. The theological parts of the Old Testament are disregarded here, except when they are part of the historical narrative, and similarly disregarded the mythological parts of the story.
There are many obvious mythological arguments in the story, especially in the matter of the ages of the participants. So, the treatment of the story will disregarded the fact that Ishmael was sixteen when Abraham sent him away into the wilderness, and it is difficult to accept that Hagar could hoist a sixteen years old boy unto her shoulder and walk away. It will also be disregarded that according the Bible Jacob was about a hundred when his mother decided that he had slim marriage prospects in Canaan.
The basic story, which is evaluated in this book, is the story of a family wandering from the north to the south, in search of a new home. Apart of the story of their wanderings, there are the common problems of all families, that of marriages, children, conflicts and feuds inside and outside the family, and deaths. As far as the simple story goes, the plot of the Book of Genesis is trivial, and exactly that is what makes it probably the most important stories of early civilizational times. No heroic posturing, as in the poems of Homer, and no endless philosophical wandering, as in the books of the Avesta and the Rig-Veda.
This chapter analyses one by one the subjects that are purely simple family affairs. They are:
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The adoption of an heir by Abraham
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Wives and sisters
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The story of Sarah and Hagar
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The purchase of the burial cave
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Marriages in the family
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It should be added here, that although the stories are about simple family affairs, they contain priceless information about the possible period of the stories and also about the possible ethnic origin of the family.
The adoption of an heir
Chapter 15 of the Book of Genesis starts with a dialogue between God and Abraham, in which Abraham complains about being childless, and that he is compelled to adopt an heir. God answers to his complaints that he will have children of his own and many descendants. The rest of the chapter is about the renewal of the Covenant.
The parts about the question of adoption are confused. It is not entirely certain who is the intended heir, and whether that adoption was already done, or is it only contemplated?
The exact translation of the line Chap. 15.2 is the following:
"A son of my household is Damascus Eliezer. As you have not given me a heir, a son of my house will inherit me.".
The Authorized Version translates the same sentence as:
"Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house if this Eliezer of Damascus…Behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and, lo, one born in mine house is mine heir."
There is an obvious confusion here. First, it is not clearly stated that Eliezer of Damascus is that son of the household who will inherit Abraham, and second it is not stated whether the adoption was already done, or is it only contemplated. It is a difficult question. There are some that suggested that the sentence does not mean the town of Damascus, but it is an Aramaic word "Dameshek" meaning "of my household". It is a farfetched assumption to bring an Aramaic expression into a context of late 3rd millennium BC; it is an anachronism. Most of the scholars who studied the problem, decided on the meaning:
"My heir is Eliezer of Damascus, a son of my household."1
Most of the scholars also accepted that it was a common practice in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC for a childless couple to adopt a 'son' who looked after his foster parents and in time inherited from them. The arrangement could be reversed to a certain degree if a real heir was subsequently born. The adopted son could be a stranger or one of the household, even a slave.2
There are a number of weak points in the consensus. The first is that Abraham was a man of substance. If he could field 318 armed retainers against the coalition of 4 Eastern Kings, he could have taken care of his old age. He was a rich and powerful man. Second, he had a family. Lot, his nephew was near him, and he had family back in Haran too. Third, Abraham was not barren, Sarah was. He fathered Ishmael with Hagar, and he had 6 more sons from his second wife, Keturah, whom she married after Sarah's death. If he was a Semite with an approved custom of having more than one wife, then the barrenness of one wife could not have been a cause for lack of an heir. Rachel was also barren at the beginning of her marriage, still Jacob did not become desperate. So, Abraham should not have problems of heirs, if he was a Semite.
In the Semitic Middle East, it was a common practice then, and in modern times too, that a man can marry more than one wife. For Muslims the limit is four. This practice can solve problems of barrenness, provided that it is not from the husband's side. Abraham did not choose that solution. He had a single wife, Sarah, and a second wife after her death. His son, Isaac, also had a single wife. The practice of polygamy started in the family only in the generation of the grandsons. Both Jacob and Esau married two wives. There seems to be a process here that ought to be investigated.
The previous chapters stated a hypothesis that the tribe or clan of Abraham originated in northern Mesopotamia, north of the dividing line between the Semitic and the non-Semitic world. He was a pastoral nomad with large herds of cattle. He wandered south to reach Canaan, sometimes at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, when that country was mostly depopulated because of climatic conditions. He traveled on a trodden path; people similar to him arrived to Canaan in previous generations, settled down and became local people of substance. It cannot be known how far they traveled along the road to total assimilation. They must have had contacts with people in the old country, as they recognized Abraham as an important person when negotiating with him for the sale of the burial cave.
However, judging from the contents of Chapter 13, the Hittites who settled in the hill country of Canaan, gave up their earlier way of life and at least in this respect, were in the process of assimilating to the local people. If they had remained with their herds of cattle, then in addition to the strife between the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot, other herdsmen too would have joined the fray. However, the chapter tells only about the Canaanite and the Perizzite.
It seems that with Abraham and his descendants there was a similar process. Abraham has kept to the old customs, so did his son. Among others, they had a single wife, they were monogamous. It seems that in the third generation the assimilation has advanced to such a degree that they did not look back to the customs of the old country. However, Abraham was the first generation and he kept the customs. What were those customs?
It was shown that there was some confusion in the ethnic composition of the upper Euphrates valley. At the time of Abraham, and before him too, there was a mixture of Hittites and Hurrians. The first was an Indo-European tribe that separated from the main body of the proto-Indo-Europeans after the deluge of the Euxine Lake. The second was a tribe of Caucasian origin. The Hurrians were the main bulk of the population, while the Hittites and probably other Indo-European tribes formed the local aristocracy. As the territory had an ethnic mixture, it is probable that Abraham, and his contemporaries, had traditions and social customs from both elements of the ethnic mixture. Indeed, so it was.
If we wish to examine that question of adoption, we should look at the customs of the Hittites and the Hurrians, and not the customs of the Semites. Although the Hittites separated from the main body of the Indo-Europeans by three millennia, the basic religious and social customs survived bigger temporal and spatial distances than that. The customs of marriages, citizenship and adoption remained identical as far away from each other as the Romans, Greeks and Indians, which was far greater distance than the Hittites. As for temporal distance, the present western Civilization still has the same principles that Abraham was considering in his time.
The attitude of the Indo-Europeans was that marriage is monogamous and sacred, and only a male offspring of the sacred marriage can continue the family. The Indians said:
"He to whom nature has denied a son can adopt one, so that the funeral ceremonies may not cease.3
The Greeks had the same attitude. There is a curious plea of an Athenian orator in a case where the legitimacy of the son's adoption was question. The orator decided to make the plea in the name of the deceased father who adopted the son:
"If you annul my adoption, you will leave Menendes, who is dead, without a son; and consequently no one will perform the sacrifices in his honor, no one will offer him the funeral repast, and thus he will be without worship."4
For Hittites and Indo-Europeans in general, the question was not whether Abraham and Sarah will have someone to take care of them in their old age, but whether there will be someone to ensure the continuity of the family, and conduct the necessary rites to worship the ancestors of the family, called 'manes' by the Romans. It is not known under what name Abraham and his family knew the ancestors, the Old Testament calls them 'teraphim', but according to his belief, the ancestors were part of the family and they had rights as any other member of the family.
According to Fustel de Coulanges, the primary religion of the Indo-Europeans was the worship of the ancestors and that of the family hearth, with the sacred fire, which had to be maintained at all cost. In historical Rome, the sacred fire was maintained by the Vestal Virgins, who continued in their task long into Christian times. The religion of the ancestors, which had its own rites and prayers in each family, was shaped in very early times. Probably, it occurred when the Indo-Europeans still lived in their homeland, somewhere in southern Russia or Central Asia. It was an early development, possibly even before the Neolithic Revolution. All subsequent religions were only a superficial gloss over the basic belief. Indeed, the social concepts of Western Civilization are still based upon those beliefs. Monogamous marriages, continuation of the family by a firstborn son, etc. are still the base of many of the western practices. It seems that they were the bases of Abraham's actions too.
If it is accepted that Abraham was guided by the principles of his origin, then the problem of the inheritance becomes clearer. The worship of the ancestors and the continuity of the family were the main principles of the domestic religion; the question of the family property belonged to the same category. Abraham as Terah's firstborn son had the responsibility for the survival of the family, he had the control of the family property too. Lot had his own religion, inherited from his father. He had no right to anything Abraham owned, unless Abraham adopted him. The right to the property, and the religious duty to worship the ancestors, was always of the legal heir, or whoever could prove that he is the legal heir. Until late historian times, neither Romans nor Greeks or Indians had the right to prepare a will. The stewardship of the property and the accompanying religious duties could have settled only by religious principles. There were strict rules, and no human whim could interfere with them
However, Abraham did not have to go through with the adoption. He was promised a son of his own, and eventually he received one. That was a veritable 'deus ex machina'.
Wives and Sisters
There are three stories in the Book of Genesis that are nearly identical. All three concerns the Patriarchs and their wives, and all three put the Patriarchs in less than flattering posture. It happened only with the first two Patriarchs, who were monogamous. As in the previous discussion about the case of adoption, marriage, and inheritance in general, here too there is a hidden meaning that ought to be investigated. The three stories are:
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When Abraham visited Egypt, he has hidden the fact that Sarah is his wife and presented her as his sister. (Gen. 12.10-20).
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Abraham sojourned in Gerar (in the south of Canaan, between Gaza and Beer-Sheba.) He told Abimelech, the king of Gerar, that Sarah is his sister. The beauty of Sarah smote Abimelech, so he sent to summon her. (Gen. 20. 1-5). Eventually the problem was solved by divine intervention. However, the gist of the matter was that Abraham said of Sarah: She is my sister, and Sarah said of Abraham: he is my brother. |
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Similarly to Abraham's experience in Gerar, Isaac went to Gerar, claiming that Rebeccah, his wife, is really his sister. One day, Abimelech, the king of Gerar (probably the son of Abimelech of Abraham) looked out the window of his palace and saw Isaac behaving with Rebeccah in a definitely unbrotherly way. (Gen. 26. 6-9). |
There are three stories here with a common theme. A relationship of husband-wife is disguised as a relationship of brother-sister. The causes for the disguises were identical. In all three cases the husbands were afraid that the beauty of their wives will cause problems with the rulers of the places where they were staying; once in Egypt and twice in Gerar, in the south of Canaan.
The same story is told three times. It can mean that either it was a 'topos', one of those common themes, like virgin birth, exposure after birth, persecution by an old king, etc., so beloved by ancient storytellers, or they indeed happened so, and the happenings were brought on by some ancient custom and by similar external circumstances. After all, the Patriarchs were chiefs of wandering pastoral clans, and in their wandering with their herds, retainers and families, they must have encountered many similar welcomes.
The first possibility that the stories were a retelling of some existing 'topos', motivated by the storytellers wish to insert an interesting episode' is not really feasible. First, Abraham might have been vary in Egypt; after all he was a chief of a wandering tribe of nomads and his opponent might have been Pharaoh himself. But it certainly was not the case in Gerar. The king of Gerar was a local chieftain of a not very important town. Abraham was a chief of a tribe, who some time before his visit to Gerar led a coalition against the 4 Eastern kings. It is doubtful that a local chief of a small town could match Abraham's strength. In this respect, Abraham had not much to fear to expose Sarah as his wife.
There is another possible reason why the storytellers inserted the subject of the fear of exposure. Marrying one's sister was one of the strongest incest taboos of the Jews. As it seems to be more than probable that they did not know the reasons why Abraham and Isaac have presented their wives as sisters, they had to invent some plausible story to cover any possible charge of incest.
It seems that the root of the stories should be looked for elsewhere. According to a number of scholars, led by E. A. Speiser and Ignatius Hunt, there was an ancient Hurrian custom, of adopting one's wife as one's sister. In Hurrian society the bonds of such a double union were the strongest and regarded as most solemn when the wife had also the juridical status of a sister.5 It was a practice not shared by the Hittites nor by the Semites. They were known to the Hurrians and to those who used the Hurrian practices. It was shown that the area of Haran and Ur was a territory with a solid Hurrian population, and with Hittite aristocracy.
There is a practice, known in Islamic law, which is known as a temporary divorce, or separation as the concept is known in the Western world. The Islamic formula for such a case is to say before witnesses: 'You are my sister' and the declaration would temporarily suspend the marriage.6
According to Hurrian concepts, this type of marriage was much stronger than marriage between two strangers, who did not fortify their legal position by an adoption. So, if it was indeed the case with Abraham and Isaac, then the statement 'She is my sister' was certainly correct from the legal point of view. Of course, even in this case they might have deemed it useful to hide the real situation. Neither Pharaoh nor the king of Gerar might have been aware of Hurrian legal concepts, so they might have accepted it as an incestuous union. It might not have disturbed Pharaoh as their concept of inheritance compelled the Pharaohs to marry their sister, but it was certainly incestuous to the king of Gerar.
Not every scholar accepted the solution of Speiser, Hunt and others. Gordon J. Wenham7 lists a number of scholars who objected to that interpretation because of two main reasons.
They claimed that the collators of the Book of Genesis did not understand the patriarchal marriages that way and they also doubted the validity of the Nuzi documents on which Speier based his ruling. This book is not prepared to argue on scientific grounds about the validity of clay tablets, but it has much to say about later interpretations and editorial license.
There are a number of books about the subject of the Old Testament. They seem to be a variation of the Holocaust denial; they certainly seem to be motivated by the same basic antagonism. They can be categorized into two types.
The first is the crude type. It states that there were no Jewish people in Palestine at all; it is all fabrication and somehow Christianity grew out of a rock without any Jewish roots. The second approach is subtler. It says in effect that 'yes, there was a Jewish people, which somehow congregated in Palestine after the Babylonian captivity, and the Old Testament was created by the leaders of that people, who were excellent storytellers but had no knowledge about the past, and not much of their own period.
As far as the first approach is concerned, one cannot argue with it. It is on the level of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and on those of the absolute deniers of the Holocaust. The second is subtler, but motivated exactly as the first. Here, at least, there is place for an argument, although it seems to be a futile exercise. Still, the material for counterarguments is accumulating with each new excavation and decipherment of more clay tablets.
There seems to be no doubt that there was some editorial process when the canon of the Old Testament was established. It certainly must have removed a number of contradictions, and leaving there sufficient quantities to cause problems to modern scholars. So, when they found the stories with the wife-sister relationship, and had no knowledge of the underlying legal principles, they changed the stories to make them more palatable to their contemporaries.
However, they left in the final version of the Old Testament many details, which in their time was unintelligible and very incorrect. Why they left one and corrected the second? It is possible that to leave for the patriarch an unexplained wife-sister relationship would expose them to an incestuous practice of marriage. This they could not leave. The other invalid data, as far as their knowledge about the world was concerned, would not expose the patriarchs to unnatural practices.
In Chapter 10 of the Book of Genesis, the descendants of Noah were presented. It was the picture of the ethnic composition of the world, as it was at the time when the Old Testament was composed. In that list of peoples there were a number of statements unsuitable to the 1st millenium BC.
According to the list, Mizraim (Egypt in Hebrew) was one of the sons of Ham, which was accepted even in their time, but so were Canaan, the Philishtim and the Caphtorim too. The contemporaries of the editorial process knew the Canaanim and the Plishtim very well. They were in close, although not very friendly, relation with them. They were able to communicate with them without translators, and they knew that they were the descendants of Shem. About Caphtor (Crete) also there were no doubts. They were the descendants of Yapheth, they spoke Greek as they do today. Only now, in the second half of the 20th century, it was discovered that the Old Testament was right and all the others, from the contemporaries of editors of the Old Testament until a short while ago, were wrong.
Only in the 60s and the 70s of the 20th century was it found that at the time of the Patriarchs, the people of the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean, including Plishtim, Canaan, Sidon, etc. were of Egyptian origin, and so were in Cyprus and Crete too.8 Not from the Hamitic Egyptians, but connected to those from the Delta of the Nile, who spoke a northwestern Semitic dialect. As the ethnic assignment of the Old Testament was done upon territorial belonging, and not upon race or language, then they were indeed Hamitic.
After the completion of the decipherment of the Minoan B writing, which showed that the language was a proto-Greek dialect, they deciphered the Minoan A script too, and found that the language was a northwestern Semitic dialect. The Phaistos disc is still waiting for decipherment, but it is already clear that it has a clear relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The example above shows that accepting the Old Testament, as a contemporary document with priceless historical data is a correct decision. There are still unsolved questions but as the example above shows, it is a question of time, until modern science will be able to find answers to the outstanding questions.
The story of Sarah and Hagar
Despite the divine promise, Sarah was still barren. The weight of being childless must have been heavy, but it was heavier on Abraham. He had the responsibility to ensure the continuity of the family, and time was slipping by. No wonder that he was contemplating to adopt an heir. He had concubines and had sons from them too, but according his principles those sons could not be his heirs. Indeed, when the time came, he gave them gifts and sent them away.
They both had a problem that was well understood and well documented. For a woman to remain childless was a stigma; it is so even today in that part of the world. When Sarah decided to offer Abraham, Hagar, her Egyptian handmaid as a surrogate mother, she followed Semitic and Hurrian practices that were even codified in laws. It was an accepted practice in Nuzi, which was solidly Hurrian, it was so in the Semitic world of their time.9
The story of Hagar is rather confused in the Book of Genesis.. Seemingly, there were two versions of the story and the editors used both versions. In the first version, after the union with Abraham, Hagar became haughty with her mistress, who dealt hardly with her, so she fled to the desert. An angel of the Lord found her and informed her that she is pregnant, so she returned. In time she gave birth to Ishmael, who grew up in Abraham's household. He was circumcised together with the whole household, as a sign of the Covenant. He was thirteen when he was circumcised.
After the new covenant with the Lord, Sarah conceived and in due time Isaac was born. After Isaac grew and was weaned, the old problems with Hagar, and her son, surfaced again. This time Sarah demanded that Hagar and Ishmael to be expelled, saying:
"Cast out this bondswoman and her son; for the son of this bondswoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac." (Gen. 21.10)
Hagar was expulsed to the wilderness, but was saved by the Lord, as Ishmael was also Abraham's son, and as such he was destined to be a father of nations.
So far is the story in the Old Testament. It ought to be examined how the story stands up against the prevailing legal practices of the period.
It seems that to search for surrogate mothers was a common practice. It happened to Sarah, to Rachel, when she was barren at the beginning of her marriage, even to Leah, when she had a kind of lull in her childbearing abilities. (Gen. 30.9) The practice was common in the Middle East, where the ability to bear male children was, and still is, the primary requirement from a wife.
However, the expulsion of Hagar was definitely against the various laws and practices. The laws of Nuzi, of Hammurabi, and of Lipit-Ishtar of Assyria, considered human nature and realized that the sight of a fertile slavegirl may be an irritation to the barren wife, so they added relevant provisions to the laws. The Codex of Laws of Nuzi states:
1. A barren wife must provide her husband with a surrogate, normally the wife's slave girl.
2. The status of the slavegirl and her offspring is protected against the jealousy or whims of either the wife or the husband.
The birth of Ishmael and later expulsion with his mother were highly irregular. First, in normal circumstances, when the wife brought a slavegirl to her husband to conceive a child, and when the child was born, it was immediately placed on the wife's knees, so that the child's first vision would be the wife's face and not of the biological mother. It happened that way with Rachel, but the Old Testament gives no confirmation that it so happened with Hagar and Ishmael.
Second, Hagar's expulsion was irregular and even illegal. The laws have foreseen the possibility that after having a child from a surrogate mother, the barrenness of the wife may cease and bear a legitimate child. This has happened with Abraham and Sarah. In this case, the legitimate child will be the 'firstborn', as it was with Isaac, but the rights of the son of the surrogate mother were safeguarded. Moreover, the surrogate woman could not be expelled, even for cause. Paragraph 146 of the Code of Hammurabi reads:
"…If a man takes a priestess and she gives to her husband a maid-servant and she bears children, and afterwards that maid-servant would take rank with her mistress, because she has born children, her mistress may not sell her for money, but she may reduce her to bondage and count her among the female slaves."10
Priestesses were probably allowed to marry but not to have children. The Code of Lipit-Ishtar of Assyria ruled that the child of the surrogate mother was to become an heir, but the concubine could not dwell in the same home as the principal wife:
"…as long as his wife is living, the concubine (who had brought forth a child to a man whose wife was sterile) shall not dwell in the house with his wife."11
Sarah caused Hagar and her child to be expelled, which was against all customs. Moreover, God gave Abraham permission to allow Sarah to do what she wished with Hagar. What could have been the cause to bring about the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael? After all, Ishmael was already sixteen and Isaac three. Sarah did put up with Hagar in her position as mother of Abraham' child for sixteen years, and with Ishmael as a possible challenger for her son's position, for three years. What brought on the sudden boil?
"And the child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking…"(Gen.21.8-9)
This is how the Authorized Version of the Bible translated the sentence. The Hebrew word that was translated as 'mocking' is a curious use in Hebrew. It is 'm'tzachek', meaning make someone laugh or happy. The root of the word is 'tz ch k' – meaning laugh. The grammatical format 'm'tzachek' is rare, unused in modern Hebrew, and only very seldom in the Old Testament. The expression is used twice in the Book of Genesis. Once, in Chap. 19.15 when describing the attitude of the sons-in-law of Lot when warning them to get out of the city, where the same meaning 'mocking' is used. The second is in Chap. 26.8, when describing what Abimelech, king of Gerar saw when looking out of his window. There the translation is that Isaac was 'sporting' with his wife, who was introduced to the king as his sister. Here is an expression with two meanings: one meaning is to make someone laughable, i.e. to mock, and the second is to make someone laugh, or to make someone happy. In the context of a three-year-old child, both meanings can cause for the parents to be inflamed and to act as they did. There are modern scholars who put meanings in the use of the word, but there is no need for it. There is no way to find out what meaning was intended.
The purchase of the burial cave
>Chapter 23 of the Book of Genesis tells the story of Abraham buying the Cave of Machpela in Hebron to be used as the burial cave of the family. The first to be buried in the cave was Sarah, who died at the age of 127.
This chapter has some significance in that it was the first purchase of territory made by Abraham in Canaan. Buying a burial cave meant that the center of the family was from then on in Canaan. Abraham and Isaac were buried there, so were Rebeccah and Jacob, who died in Egypt and was brought back to Hebron to be buried with his ancestors.
The purchase itself had two important points. The first was that the Hittites of Hebron, where Abraham was looking for a burial cave, recognized and greeted him as a 'mighty prince among us' and the second that they sold him the burial cave, together with field where the cave was located. The sale was at an exorbitant price. Abraham paid 400 shekels for the field and the cave, while Omri paid 6000 shekels for the whole city of Samaria. (I Kings, 16.24)
There are scholars who put importance to the fact that Ephron the Hittite refused to sell the cave alone, but only together with the surrounding field. They claimed that it was caused by the wish of Ephron to be freed of Hittite feudal responsibilities. According to Hittite laws (Sections 39,46 and 47), there were feudal obligations on fields, even if part of the field was sold. Only a complete sale freed the previous owner from paying taxes or doing military service. Hittite law regarded the land itself as producing service to the king and not to the owner.12
It seems that there is a mistake in these assumptions. It is entirely possible that under the rule of the Hittite kings, those were the laws and the customs. However, the Hittites of Hebron, and Hebron itself, were not under the rule of Hittite kings, not then and not ever, although they might have used Hittite customs amongst them. As far as the Hittite authorities were concerned, if one can speak about authorities at such an early period, the Hittites of the highlands of Canaan were emigrants or expatriates, who left their country for greener pastures or for less taxes and obligations. If the land had obligation when owned by Ephron, then it had the same obligations when owned by Abraham. There is no sign of that. It is doubtful that at that time, anybody paid tax without the presence of an armed authority to enforce it. There was no such authority in Canaan, neither of the Hittites nor of anybody else. It was a straightforward commercial transaction with a good measure of oriental haggling.
Marriages in the Family
The tribe of Abraham arrived to Canaan from the north and settled down in the uplands of the country, somewhere between Hebron and Beer-Sheba. After Sarah's death Abraham bought a plot of land with a burial cave. The first member of the family to be buried in the cave was Sarah, but eventually the rest of the family, including Abraham himself, was buried there. Abraham married again after Sarah's death. The name of his second wife was Ketura. They had six sons together. However, Abraham's attitude to his children was consistent. Isaac was his firstborn and the designated head of the family after Abraham. According the principle of the primogenitura, Isaac was the heir and the next head of the family. The rest of his sons, from his second wife and from his concubines, were given gifts and sent away eastwards. Chap.25.6 says:
"…sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, unto the east country".
Presumably, eastward meant east of the river Jordan. But before that, when he was already old, he wanted to arrange a suitable marriage for Isaac. As he did not want Isaac to marry anyone from Canaan, he sent one of his trusted servant to his kindred in the old country to find a wife for his son; that in order to prevent Isaac marry any girl from Canaan. There are two important points here:
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His son's wife should come from his own kindred back from the old country
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His concept of marriage remained that of a single wife, the form of the sacred marriage of the Indo-Europeans.
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The servant reached the 'city of Nahor' and met Rebeccah, the daughter of Bethuel and the granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham's brother. It was family, but not near enough to be prohibited. The servant has returned with Rebeccah. That was the story of the continuation of the family in the first generation after Abraham.
The story of the second marriage was far more complex. Isaac and Rebeccah had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. As they were male twins, the law of primogeniture could not be easily applied. In addition, there was a fair amount of sibling rivalry, aided and abetted by their mother, who preferred Jacob over Esau. The rivalry was, of course, about the right of being the firstborn and about the paternal blessing. Jacob has won both by a fair amount of underhand dealing. As a result, Jacob and his mother have decided that it was time for a family visit to Haran, where Laban, Rebeccah's brother was living with his family. The result of the trip was that Jacob has married Laban's two daughters, Leah and Rachel. He did not plan to stray from the family custom, but the bigamous marriages were caused by Laban's underhand trick, this time on Jacob.
Although Jacob fled to Haran from his brother's wrath, it was an inevitable trip. Esau, the second son, has married two Hittite girls from Beer Sheba, much to the grief of his parents. In order to appease them, he married also Ishmael's granddaughter, who was family. Rebeccah told Isaac that she is aggrieved that Esau has married Hittite girls, and she could not bear that Jacob should do the same. But, in Canaan, there were Canaanites, Hittites and Amalekites. All of them were unacceptable to Rebeccah and Isaac, so for Jacob remained only a family visit to Haran and marry there.
There were no more visits back to Haran. The fourth generation, the children of Jacob and Esau, were at home in Canaan and found marriage partners closer to home. The importance of the monogamous marriages has also disappeared, the new generation had new principles.
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This chapter – Family Affairs – presented a clear picture of a family, which reached a new country and eventually settled down. At the beginning it kept the customs of the old country, even by sending his sons to find brides there, until the fourth generation already felt at home, with new customs and habits. There were no more trips back to Haran.
How long did it take to be assimilated to the new country? Of course a calculation based upon the Book of Genesis cannot form a rule, but still it can be an indication. According to traditional chronology, Abraham reached Canaan in 2091 BC. Jacob and Esau were born about 2006 BC and married in 1966 BC. Accordingly, the first 125 years the family kept the old customs and family connections. After that there was a process of assimilation and when the children of Jacob went down to Egypt, they were already a Semitic tribe.
There is another aspect that should be evaluated . The tribe of Abraham was not ordinary immigrants, looking for better conditions in a foreign country. In fact, they were conquerors. As far as one can understand from the stories of the Old Testament, the conquest was very partial, meaning that they did not take over the whole country, at least not then, and it was in two waves. The first wave was that of the tribe of Abraham that succeeded to infiltrate Canaan in a peaceful way; probably because it was depopulated as a result of adverse climatic conditions. The second wave was the return of Jacob, with his sons. The case of the rape of Dina, and the revenge for the affront by her brothers, Simon and Levi, was probably the cover story of a violent conquest. Similar to the stories of the Greek mythology, here too the story covers an actual event. It is possibly that the eventual split in the united Monarchy, after the death of Solomon, was a residual effect of the original conquest. The kingdom of Israel, in the central highland, was probably the area of the violent conquest. The kingdom of Judah, was the continuation of the original peaceful infiltration of the tribe of Abraham.
In the story of the Book of Genesis, there is a clear description of how conquest of territories was made in the ancient world by cattle-nomads, using method of peaceful infiltration or violent invasion, and how ethnicity was defined or changed.
The story of conquest by northern cattle-nomads was explained both in general and in specific forms. The general description explained the roots of the permanent conflict between farmers and cattle breeders, and why the farmers could never stop the cattle-nomads, and the specific part described the route of Abraham and Lot, and their tribes, from the north to the south as one single part of the general picture. The divine voice, urging Abraham to leave his ancestral land and go to Canaan, was active all along humane history, urging people to find a better life, greener pastures and obedient serfs to toil for their masters. There is no doubt that Canaan was not an exception. Those of the cattle-nomads, who overran Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Iran, India, China and others, also followed voices and searched for their destinies.
Why did they need excuses for what they did? If they would be judged according to our modern ethical standards, then we would say that they were aware that they are taking away something from other people and they need some religious justification. However, luckily for them, not one of the cattle-nomad tribes seemed to have anything resembling conscience, so they did not need justification.
If so, then why the divine guidance? The simplest answer is that at that time everything was under divine guidance; there was no other. If the weather, storms, child births, yield of crops and everything else, were controlled by unseen deities, then such an important action as pulling up stakes and invading a country must have been not only divinely approved, but divinely ordered.
The Book of Genesis tells a story of a family, which went through a number of transformations. First, it changed its residence from somewhere in historic Armenia, through the Euxine Lake catastrophe to the valley of the upper Balikh river, on the northern reaches of the Euphrates, and finally to Canaan. Second, it became a clan from a single family, from there to a tribe and finally to a nation. Third, it changed its livelihood because of external causes, from comfortable hunter-gatherer existence to agriculture, from there to husbandry, and back to agriculture again. Last but not least, it underwent a major religious revolution.
The transformation was not solely a change from a family into a nation, and from cattle-nomads into settled people, but also a change of ethnicity. Here, there is a major problem. It is difficult to define with any measure of accuracy the original ethnicity of those people, lacking proper technical terms. Archaeologists can point to an excavation and say that the people who lived there belonged to the Cro-Magnons or to the Ubaids. Then they point to a village on top of the excavations and claim that those who were living there were Celts or Sumerians. So, when did the change occur?
Nobody was able to give a satisfactory answer to that question. Small hunter-gatherer groups were moving around the prehistoric landscape, trying to make a living in a hostile world. Eventually, because of increased demographic pressure or because of increased hostility of the environment, the groups remained in one area instead of moving around as in the good old days. The change gave them common memories, language, customs, religion and finally common enemies. Where were the enemies? In the next valley, of course.
So, when we ask a question about the ethnicity of the family in the Book of Genesis, no definite answer can be given, because the beginning of the story is so far back in time, that there were no Indo-Europeans, Caucasians or Semitic around. They arrived much later.
The area, where the Book of Genesis pointed out as the original home of the family, was in historic Armenia, which today is in Iranian Azerbeijan. They might have been from any of the peoples milling around there at that time, Indo-Europeans, Caucasians, Ural-Altaians and even Dravidians. Judging from their customs as reflected in the Book of Genesis, they were probably Indo-Europeans. Robert Graves thought them to be Armenians, he called Abraham a "much-traveled Armenian tribe". This book does not put much importance on specific ethnic definitions, so it assumes that they belonged to that part of the family of the speakers of Indo-European languages, who were cut off from the main body of the family by the deluge of the Euxine Lake. But from whatever it was in its origin, eventually it turned into a nation with a northwestern Semitic language, and probable with a suitable ethnic composition.
It must be pointed out that the Book of Genesis does not tell a unique story. In the turn of the third and second millennia BC, the map of the Middle East was full of city-states where the rulers had Indo-European or Hurrian names. There were even more places where the names were a combination of Semitic theophoric and one of the northern languages, Indo-European or Hurrian. There seems to be no doubt that the ethnic composition of the ruling aristocracy corresponded to the names of the rulers.
Despite all that, and despite the fact that Indo-European encroachment continued in classical times, in the form of Greek and Roman colonization, the area today is solidly Semitic. The meaning here is about the Middle East proper, what is called today the Arabic world, from Egypt to Iraq. East of Iraq, between Iran and India, it is solidly Indo-European. West of Egypt, it is Hamitic or Berber. So, if the family whose life and doings were described in the Book of Genesis, were probably Indo-Europeans in origin, just like the other cattle-nomad tribes who left their traces in the archives of clay tablets, they changed into Semites as did all the others. How did it happen and what was the mechanics of the change?
The Book of Genesis gives a clear and definite answer to that question. As it gave demonstration to the question how the cattle-nomads became the dominant power over the farmers; how the transplanted nomads became part of the settled population; it also showed the exact method by which the change of ethnicity occurred. The answer is here in this chapter; it is marriages and children.
Abraham and Sarah came to Canaan, fought their battles and established themselves as an aristocracy over the people. They did it by the only legitimate way an aristocracy could receive the allegiance of the people; they saved it from foreign invasion of the 4 Eastern Kings. However, when they sought a bride for their son, they had to send a trusted servant back to the old country to fetch a bride from there. The same has happened in the next generation too. The bride, who herself was brought from the old country, refused to see his son to marry at home, and sent him away to find a proper bride. When her second son married two local girls, she objected to the union, despite the fact that the girls were from similar origin to her. Or were they indeed?
The Book of Genesis told that Abraham was a man of substance. He had to separate from his nephew because their herdsmen came into conflict. The land was too tight to contain them. Abraham also could raise 318 armed retainers in his war against the 4 eastern kings. The number of 318 is rather suspicious; that number appears in too many historical reports. It is probably some kind of a mythological code, meaning 'very many'. But even so, with 318 or with many retainers, the problem was there. Abraham and Sarah sent their servant to bring a bride for their son from the old country. Where did the 318 retainers and the herdsmen find their brides. If they had brought their wives with them on the road, then probably there would not have been a need to bring a bride from far away. The camp of Abraham would have been full with young nubile girls of the same stock as Abraham and Isaac, and human nature would have done its usual work. It does not seem likely that Abraham's, and later Rebeccah's, objection were based on social origins. They probably saw the girls in the camp as half-breeds, and that was the main cause of the objection.
According the analysis of this book, and many other researches too, Abraham belonged to the Indo-European cattle-nomads, which moved south to settle in Canaan. Other Indo-Europeans, like Abraham, moved to India, overcame the resistance of the natives, the dasyus' and established the caste system that still plagues India. The Sanskrit word for caste is 'varna'. That word has a second meaning, which is 'color'. There are scholars who claim that the dasyus who opposed the Aryans in the invasion were not native Dravidians but descendants of an earlier Aryan invasion. The idea is not so far-fetched, if one compares it to the situation in Canaan.
In the second generation, the same situation returned. Jacob traveled to Haran to find a bride, but what about the rest of the tribe? Even Esau, who was tricked out of his inheritance, had to find local Hittite girls. It was not the same as girls from the old country, but they were Hittites, or so the Old Testament said. Rebeccah and Isaac should have been satisfied but they were not. So what was wrong with the local Hittites? Probably the same as with the retainers and the herdsmen of Abraham. They intermarried with local girls and they became half-breeds or worse. The Old Testament says that they were Hittites; their names say otherwise. The Hittite fathers of Esau's brides were named Beeri and Elon, good Semitic names, but so was the name of Ephron, who sold Abraham the burial plot.
The names are important here, as the same process that occurred with Abraham and his descendants, was identical to others who were in the same situation that he was. They came from the north, probably in the form of a raiding party, without wives at all, or nearly so. They remained and took local wives. As the transmissions of language and social customs is done by the mothers and not by the fathers, in a few short generations the ethnic composition, including religion, language and customs changes entirely. Accordingly, the future of an invasion does not depend on the ratio of the invading force to the total population, but whether the invasion is in a form of a raiding war party, or whether it is the result of a real transmigration of a whole people; warriors, women and children.
The story of Abraham and his sojourn in Canaan belonged to the first category, but then most of the ancient and even the modern colonization belong there. The waves of the Indo-Aryan invasions of India were of that category, so did those in the Middle East too. But it was not only an effect between Indo-Europeans and Easterners. The Danish Vikings turned into French Normandians in a short time, and those became English in turn. The same process must have been at work there. The aristocracy in Danemark may have provided brides to their kin in Normandy and England, but not to the soldiers and sailors. The same way, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, Burgundians and Vandals disappeared as ethnic entities in Europe in a short time. So did the Bulgarians, a Turkish tribe, convert into a Slavic people, in language, religion and customs.
The second type of invasion is when the invaders assimilated the host people. It is much rarer than the first type, because a people does not pull up stakes and move with women and children, only if there are very serious environmental conditions to compel it. The attempted invasion of the Cymbri and Teutoni of Italy, which was defeated by Marius, was of that type, so was the invasion of the delta of the Nile by the Lybians and the Peoples of the Sea, which was defeated by Ramses III.
Such an invasion was in modern times that of the Finns into Finland and the Hungarians into Hungary. Both were tribes of Finn-Ugor origin. They were no more than 10 % of the total population. Present mtDNA tests conducted by Prof. Cavalli-Sforza proved that in those countries 90 % of the people have DNA compositions compatible with European origin and 10 % of Asian origin. Still, both countries are solidly Finn or Hungarian. It means that the 10 % assimilated the 90 % and became the ruling elite. In time, the elite may have changed but the assimilation remained.
The story of the Book of Genesis provides a priceless illustration and proof of these rules, which are the most basic laws of the ethnic composition of nations.
Notes
| 1. |
Gordon J. Wenham, op.cit.,p.328
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| 2. |
Werner Keller, op.cit.,p.68, Howard F. Vos, op.cit.,p.69, Ignatius Hunt,op.cit.,p.54
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| 3. |
Fustel de Coulanges, op.cit.p.54 quotes Laws of Manu (India), IX.10
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| 4. |
Idem, ibid, quotes Iraeus, II.10,46
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| 5. |
Ignatius Hunt, op.cit.,pp.55 – 58; E. A. Speiser, Genesis, Introduction,Translation and Notes, The Anchor Bible Vol.I., Doubleday and Company, New York, 1964, p.93
G.W. Anderson, A History and Religion in Israel, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989, p.17;
Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1 – 17, in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1990,p.62 compares the cases with legal practices in Nuzi
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| 6. |
Ignatius Hunt, op.cit.,p.57
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| 7. |
Gordon J. Wehnam, op.cit. p.288
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| 8. |
Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg,The Bible and the Ancient Near East, W.W. Norton, New York, 1997, p.13
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| 9. |
Ignatius Hunt, op.cit.,pp. 58 – 59, Werner Keller, op.cit. p.68
Code of Hammurabi, No. 140-146,171,181; G.W. Anderson, op.cit., p.17
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| 10. |
George Barton, op.cit. p.390
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| 11. |
Ancient Near East Texts (2nd ed.), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, pp.159-161, Law No.27
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| 12. |
Idem, pp. 190-191, quoted by Ignatius Hunt, op.cit.p.42; O.R.Gurney,op.cit.,p.50
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