The great change from desert life consists in the adoption of agriculture, and when once that was made by the Hebrews any further advance in economic development was dictated by their new surroundings.  The same process had been going on, as we have seen, in Syria since the dawn of history, the Semitic nomad passing gradually through the stages of agricultural and village life into that of the city.  The country favoured the retention of tribal exclusiveness, but ultimate survival could only be purchased at the cost of some amalgamation with their new neighbours.  Below the surface of Hebrew history these two tendencies may be traced in varying action and reaction.  Some sections of the race engaged readily in the social and commercial life of Canaanite civilization with its rich inheritance from the past.  Others, especially in the highlands of Judah and the south, at first succeeded in keeping themselves remote from foreign influence.  During the later periods of the national life the country was again subjected, and in an intensified degree, to those forces of political aggression from Mesopotamia and Egypt which we have already noted as operating in Canaan.  But throughout the settled Hebrew community as a whole the spark of desert fire was not extinguished, and by kindling the zeal of the Prophets it eventually affected nearly all the white races of mankind.

In his Presidential Address before the British Association at Newcastle,(1) Sir Arthur Evans emphasized the part which recent archaeology has played in proving the continuity of human culture from the most remote periods.  He showed how gaps in our knowledge had been bridged, and he traced the part which each great race had taken in increasing its inheritance.  We have, in fact, ample grounds for assuming an interchange, not only of commercial products, but, in a minor degree, of ideas within areas geographically connected; and it is surely not derogatory to any Hebrew writer to suggest that he may have adopted, and used for his own purposes, conceptions current among his contemporaries.  In other words, the vehicle of religious ideas may well be of composite origin; and, in the course of our study of early Hebrew tradition, I suggest that we hold ourselves justified in applying the comparative method to some at any rate of the ingredients which went to form the finished product.  The process is purely literary, but it finds an analogy in the study of Semitic art, especially in the later periods.  And I think it will make my meaning clearer if we consider for a moment a few examples of sculpture produced by races of Semitic origin.  I do not suggest that we should regard the one process as in any way proving the existence of the other.  We should rather treat the comparison as illustrating in another medium the effect of forces which, it is clear, were operative at various periods upon races of the same stock from which the Hebrews themselves were descended.  In such material products the eye at once detects the Semite’s readiness to avail himself of foreign models.  In some cases direct borrowing is obvious; in others, to adapt a metaphor from music, it is possible to trace extraneous motifs in the design.(2)