scended from common Semitic
originals. For we have now recovered some of those originals, and they
are not Semitic but Sumerian. The question thus resolves itself into an
inquiry as to periods during which the Hebrews may have come into direct
or indirect contact with Babylonia.

There are three pre-exilic periods at which it has been suggested the
Hebrews, or the ancestors of the race, may have acquired a knowledge
of Babylonian traditions. The earliest of these is the age of the
patriarchs, the traditional ancestors of the Hebrew nation. The second
period is that of the settlement in Canaan, which we may put from 1200
B.C. to the establishment of David's kingdom at about 1000 B.C. The
third period is that of the later Judaean monarch, from 734 B.C. to 586
B.C., the date of the fall of Jerusalem; and in this last period there
are two reigns of special importance in this connexion, those of Ahaz
(734-720 B.C.) and Manasseh (693-638 B.C.).

With regard to the earliest of these periods, those who support the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch may quite consistently assume that
Abraham heard the legends in Ur of the Chaldees. And a simple retention
of the traditional view seems to me a far preferable attitude to any
elaborate attempt at rationalizing it. It is admitted that Arabia was
the cradle of the Semitic race; and the most natural line of advance
from Arabia to Aram and thence to Palestine would be up the Euphrates
Valley. Some writers therefore assume that nomad tribes, personified
in the traditional figure of Abraham, may have camped for a time in
the neighbourhood of Ur and Babylon; and that they may have carried
the Babylonian stories with them in their wanderings, and continued to
preserve them during their long subsequent history. But, even granting
that such nomads would have taken any interest in traditions of settled
folk, this view hardly commends itself. For stories received from
foreign sources become more and more transformed in the course of
centuries.(1) The vivid Babylonian colouring of the Genesis narratives
cannot be reconciled with this explanation of their source.

(1) This objection would not of course apply to M. Naville's
suggested solution, that cuneiform tablets formed the medium
of transmission. But its author himself adds that he does
not deny its conjectural character; see _The Text of the Old
Testament_ (Schweich Lectures, 1915), p. 32.

A far greater number