VIII.II.

VIII.II.1.  In the history of the patriarchs also, the outlines of the narrative are the same in Q and in JE.  We find in both Abraham’s immigration into Canaan with Sarah and Lot, his separation from Lot, the birth of Ishmael by Hagar, the appearance of God for the promise of Isaac, Isaac’s birth, the death of Sarah and Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac’s marriage with Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Jacob’s journey to Mesopotamia and the foundation of his family there, his return, Esau, Joseph in Egypt, Jacob in Egypt, Jacob’s blessing on Joseph and his other sons, his death and burial.  The materials here are not mythical but national, and therefore more transparent, and in a certain sense more historical.  It is true, we attain to no historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the stories about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is here unconsciously projected, in its inner and its outward features, into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like a glorified mirage.  The skeleton of the patriarchal history consists, it is well known, of ethnographic genealogy.  The Leah-tribes are connected with the Rachel-tribes under the common father Jacob-Israel:  then entire Israel is connected with the people of Edom under the old name of Isaac (Amos vii 9, 16).  Isaac again is connected under Abraham with Lot, the father of Moab and Ammon.  All these nearly related and once closely allied Hebrew tribes are shown to be intimately connected with the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian desert, and sharply marked off from the Canaanites, in whose land they dwelt.  The narrative speaks of its characters as succeeding each other in time or contemporary; in this form it indicates logical or statistical subordination and co-ordination.  As a fact the elements are generally older than the groups and the smaller groups than the greater.  The migrations which are mentioned of peoples and tribes are necessary consequences of the assumed relationship.  It would be quite possible to present the composition and relative position of any given people at a given time in a similar way in the form of a genealogical early history.  True genealogy can scarcely represent precisely the existing relations.  It cannot always be determined as a matter of fact whether a tribe is the cousin or the brother or the twin-brother of another tribe, or whether there is any affinity at all between the two; the affinity can be understood and interpreted in different ways, the grouping always depends to some extent on the point of view of the genealogist, or even on his likings and antipathies.  The reason why the Arameans are made so nearly related to the Israelites is probably that the patriarchal legend arose in Middle and North Israel; as indeed the pronounced preference shown for Rachel and Joseph clearly proves to have been the case.  Did the legend belong originally to Judah, it is likely that more prominence would be given to the Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the