verbs are characterized by the addition of a native infinitive termination ten, tum. A more complete knowledge of the early history and connection of these languages will be obtained by a closer study of their dialects. Let the reader compare the following examples:— Heb. afa, to cook, affu-natan; Heb. shak'a, to drink, shaku-natan; Heb. shabak', to set, shabku-natan; Heb. pasak', to cut off, pasku-natan; Heb. mut, to die, maitu-natan; Heb. adam (man), admu-natan, to make of earth; In this original affinity of the languages cannot be included either the later foreign words in Genesis, or its myths belonging to central Asia, which are manifestly of extraneous origin, and cannot have been adopted until a later period, when the Hebrews became acquainted with those countries. Indeed all proper names in Genesis which must be considered as derived from foreign sources, appear to be just as little in accordance with the Semitic. family of language, as are for instance the elementary sounds of the Romanic dialects in German forms of expression, although these two languages have been allied for centuries. In the following genealogy, which extends down to Abraham, we are on the boundary that separates two distinctly marked national traditions; in the first, the ancient home of the Israelites is recognized by the Hebrew narrator, and oriental views of primæval times, intermixed with the ideas of the compiler himself, are faithfully pourtrayed; but afterwards the writer proceeds to limit his narrative to his own people, and in most of the later part of the book of Genesis he dwells on that locality to which the legend originally belonged, following out however the patriarchal history in an independent manner after the time of Isaac. - We may also observe, that there is a less frequent mention in the latter chapters of the name of Elohim as applied to the Deity, or of any allusions to the more ancient and polytheistic original of that sacred name1. Abraham himself is a Chaldæan, and as such, the meaning of his first appellation of Abram may be traced to a foreign source2. ་ 1 See above, vol. i. chap. xxiv. 2 See chapter xvii. 5-15. [Von Bohlen observes in the note on chap. xvii 4, 5, that Ewald considers Abram, according to another pronunciation, to be synonymous with Abraham; but these older and obsolete names (Abram and Sarai) are usually explained, after the example of Iken†, by Ab Ram “father of height, high father, patriarch,"-(a more simple expression perhaps would have been Ab Aram "father of Aram,"-and Sarai, pronounced in the Arabic manner Sara, Zapa (as LXX. Ziva), after the Arabic Sara “ numerosam prolem habuit,”—as a "fruitful" woman. Sara however was at an earlier period barren, and the signification would not properly have agreed with the expression" father of nations," until a later period. Amid these unsatisfactory derivations therefore, we venture to suggest the probability, that both names might rather have been unSemitic, and handed down together with the Upper-Asiatic tradition; and indeed Volney ‡ inclines to consider Abram as a *Compos. der Genes. p. 246. Dissert. de mutatione nominum Abrahami et Saræ,' in his Dissert. Philolog. vol. i. [Volney says of Abram, "The name Abram is composed of two words, Ab-ram, signifying 'father of the elevation'; thus exemplifying the way in which, in Hebrew as well as in Arabic, the superlative, very elevated or very high, is expressed. Volney does not consider Abraham to have been an historical individual, but regards him as a mythical personage, known under different appellations among the ancient Arabians, thereby including both the Phoenicians and Chaldæans, as well as among their successors the Medes and Persians."-Volney, Recherches Nouvelles sur l'Histoire Ancienne, chap. xiv.] The author of Genesis has regarded Abraham as a purely historical personage; he writes of him with an evident predilection, and views him in the light of a righteous and pious emir, similar in rank and character to Job, and deemed worthy by Jehovah himself of being favoured with repeated promises. Abraham appears indeed to have been the ideal of a pious worshiper of Jehovah, and is gifted with all the virtues to which the devout Israelite attached the greatest importance. And thus, whatever fiction may have been at the basis of the legend, the narrative itself retains a high permanent moral value throughout all ages. collective name. We have observed, in reference to the names Noah, Seth, Enoch, &c., that the similarity in sound to the Hindoo myths, which were spread abroad by the Assyrians, was too striking to be overlooked; and we shall in all probability be reminded, in the passage now before us, of Brahmâ and his wife Sará, or Sarasvati*; indeed, the earlier missionaries in India frequently mentioned this striking similarity of names, from a very different motive. We may likewise remark, that Berosust speaks (kai rà ovρávia eμπερos) of a pious man among the Chaldæans, in the tenth century after the Flood, (consequently referring to Abram) as an astronomer, and that in the East astronomical knowledge is ascribed to Abram in the same way as to Brahma. But above all it is important to bear constantly in mind that there is in Genesis a manifest design to represent and treat Abram as an individual person. * Verbally speech, and signifying the same as the goddess Vâch, who, according to the Veda, assisted in the creation: see Bopp, Conjugationssyst. p. 290. In Euseb. Præp. Ev. 9, 16. See Koran, Sur. 6, 75. APPENDIX TO VOLUME II. 1. General Summary of Genesis, Chapter X., on the Genealogy of Ancient Nations, by Professor Francis Newman, (p. 273). ["Sons of Japheth :--the Cimmerians, Scythians, Medes, Armenians, Phrygians, etc., Greeks, Cyprians, Sicilians, Spaniards, etc. etc. "Sons of Ham:-Ethiopians, Arabians of the south and east, Egyptians, Philistines, Libyans and Canaanites, Phoenicians. Among these Arabians descended from Cush was Nimrod, founder of the first Babylonian empire. "Sons of Shem:-Elymaans, Assyrians, etc., Syrians, Northern Arabs (sons of Joktan)." Judged of by the test of language, this table of national pedigrees does not wholly satisfy modern criticism. We place the Assyrians, Syrians, and Northern Arabs in the same class with the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Philistines; since the difference of language between the Syrians and Canaanites can scarcely have been greater than that of mere dialect. On the contrary, the language of the Egyptians seems to be separated from that of Canaan and Assyria by a great chasm. The sons of Japheth, as above assigned, comprehend the nations named by us Indo-European, from the remarkable connections of lan VOL. II. T guage; and if by "Magog" is understood the ancient Scythians (whom the Latins called Sarmatians, and who seem to have been progenitors of the modern Sclavonians), no exception can be taken to this arrangement. Concerning "Gomer" (the Cimmerians) we know too little to assert anything. It may be questioned whether the nations of "High Asia,” i. e. the Tartars, Mongols, Tungusians, etc., are mentioned at all in the enumeration. They were wholly unknown in Palestine until after Mahommed. Of Europe only the southern coasts were known to the Hebrews, and those discontinuously; so that Greece, Sicily, or Italy, as well as Spain, were spoken of as islands. The sons assigned to Javan (or Ion, Iáwv in old Greek) are Elishah (i. e. Hellenes, or Æoli ?), Tarshish (i.e. Tartessus or southern Spain), Kittim (Cyprians and other islanders ?), and Dodanim (quite uncertain). There is no impropriety in treating the colonists of the greater part of the northern coast of the Mediterranean as of the same great stock, the Indo-European, or indeed as belonging to one branch of it, the Pelasgian or Italo-Greek division. It is going further to call them all descendants of Iáwv; yet out of the darkness of Greek antiquities even this cannot be absolutely disproved. Much more open to exception is the mention of Tarshish as a son of Javan; for we have every reason to doubt whether Tartessus contained more than two classes of inhabitants: 1st, the native Spaniards, or Iberians, whose language survives in the Basque, and proves them to be a race wholly opposed to the Greeks or to the Indo-European tribe; 2nd, the Phoenician or Carthaginian colonists, who belong to Ham in the Biblical register, and to the Syro-Arabians in our estimation. If there was any third element in the Tartessian population, it is likely to have been Libyan or Numidian, but certainly not Greek. It was natural for a Hebrew writer, who knew nothing of Tarshish but its general geographical position, to take for granted that its population was allied by blood to that of Sicily and Greece.] |