336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



have said, been probably gradually taking place for some genera- 

 tions, and what is certain is that the system of female descents 

 had been left so far behind, that the compiler or compilers of the 

 books had ifot the least suspicion that it had ever existed. That 

 they had no knowledge of it is shown by the trouble they took to 

 connect themselves in the male line with the traditional patri- 

 archs by long lists of names of men. They filled up the gaps be- 

 tween persons mentioned in the traditions by lists of names of 

 fathers and sons, as in Genesis, xi, between Shem and Terah ; and 

 that the indications of female descents we have noted were pre- 

 served, was doubtless due to the superstitious regard they had for 

 the actual words of the oral traditions, and to the fact that the 

 compilers had not the slightest conception of the inferences to be 

 drawn from them. It is inconceivable that, after having invented 

 pedigrees to connect themselves in the male line with the tradi- 

 tional patriarchs, they should knowingly have left evidence that 

 affords a prima facie proof that descent was formerly in the 

 female line, and the pedigrees consequently fictitious. 



These pedigrees were no doubt introduced in support of the 

 endogamy of nationality, which the priests enforced after the 

 captivity. They were designed to prove that the Israelites were 

 a chosen people, descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and 

 so all of one blood ; but they were drawn up with so little care, 

 that it is easy to prove from the books themselves that they are 

 inventions of a later date. For example, we read in Exodus, vi, 

 3, that the national god, Jahveh, or Jah, only revealed his name 

 shortly before the exodus, and expressly stated that his name was 

 not known to the patriarchs; yet in Genesis, xlvi, among a 

 number of names compounded of the names of " heathen " gods, 

 we find some compounded of Jah. Reuben (verse 9) has a son 

 named Carmi (Jah makes fruitful). Gad (verse 1(3), himself 

 named after the Phoenician goddess of good fortune, has a son 

 Areli (Jah is powerful). Asher (verse 17), named after the Assyr- 

 ian god, has a son Beriah (Jah is vigorous, or Jah is my maker). 

 Now, either these names must have been put into the text subse- 

 quent to the revelation of the name to Moses, or else the story of 

 that revelation is apocryphal. 



In regard to these pedigrees, the ancient Greeks furnish an 

 exactly parallel example. They, like the Israelites, had arrived 

 at a system of kinship through males, and had connected them- 

 selves by long lists of names of fathers with the traditional 

 heroes and gods. They had so completely forgotten that they 

 had ever had any other system of descents, that Herodotus, 

 speaking of the Lycians, said that they differed from every other 

 nation in the world in tracing descent through mothers. Yet the 

 traditions of the Greeks, like those of the Israelites, contained 



