*************************************** I Riehm, “die s.g.  Grundschrift des Pentateuchs” in Studien und Kritiken, 1872, p. 296. ***************************************

or indeed Oriental, history began with the historical notices and traditions inserted in the tribal or family catalogues.  Yet we know positively that in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, there are no genealogical statistics at all, while Chronicles, and what belongs to Chronicles, is full of them.  We know also that songs such as those in Josh. x. 12, 13; Jud. v.; 2Samuel i. 19 seq., iii. 33 seq. are the oldest historical monuments, and that a number of them are found in JE and not a single one in Q. Herder’s theory of the development of history out of genealogy will not apply here, 2 but indeed what we have

*********************************** 2 Nor in the case of the Arabs, as has been well shown by Sprenger against Caussin de Perceval (Essai, preface, p. ix.). ***********************************

to do with here is not history proper at all, but folklore.

It is true that with the Jehovist also the genealogy underlies the narrative as its skeleton.  It is the natural chain to link the different stories together, and even at a time when the latter were still separate and only circulated orally, the genealogy was not unknown to the people.  When stories were told of Isaac and Ishmael, and Lot and Esau, every one knew at once who these personages were, and how they were related to Israel and to one another.  But this was merely the presupposition of the narratives, known as a matter of course to the hearers; the interesting element in them consisted in those traits which the Priestly Code omits.  Stories of this kind compel attention because they set forth the peculiarities of different peoples as historically and really related to each other, not according to an empty embryological relation.  It is the temper displayed by different races, not the stem of their relationship, that makes the point of the stories; their charm and their very life depend on their being transparent and reflecting the historic attitude of the time which gave them birth.  The clearer the traces they display of love and hatred, jealousy of rivals and joy in their fall, the nearer are we to the forces which originated the tradition about early times.  In the Priestly Code all those stories are absent in which there is anything morally objectionable,—­ those for example in which the cowardice of the patriarchs endangers the honour of their wives, those of Sarah’s cruel jealousy of Hagar, and of the unlovely contention of Leah and Rachel for husband and children, of the incest of Lot’s daughters, of the violation of Dinah.  All hatred, and strife, and deceit in the patriarchal family disappear:  Lot and Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, agree to separate:  of the tricks of Laban and Jacob to each other, of the treachery of Simeon and Levi to Shechem, of the