1903.] JASTROW — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. 193 



under his general view that the latter represent the accursed nations. 

 If we turn to Hebrew history, we will find in the relations exist- 

 ing between the Hebrews and the Babylonians and Assyrians the 

 all-sufficient motive for this hostility. Babylonia which exercised 

 a control over Syria and Palestine at a very early date as the Tel 

 El Amarna tablets show/ until she was obliged to yield to Egypt 

 and to concentrate her efforts on the endeavor to check the growing 

 power of Assyria, must have been regarded as a natural menace to 

 the Canaanitish settlers in Palestine even before the Hebrews entered 

 the land. The latter therefore inherited from their predecessors a 

 feeling of hostility towards Babylonia and not differentiating Baby- 

 lonia sharply from Assyria, the bitler feeling towards both would 

 be accentuated by the subsequent course of events.'^ From the 

 ninth century on, the two Hebrew kingdoms were exposed to fre- 

 quent attacks from the military expeditions undertaken by the 

 Assyrian conquerors. The fall of the northern kingdom in 722 

 B.C. and the practical subjection of the southern by Sennacherib 

 and his successors further strengthened this hostility, which found 

 a forcible expression in the utterances of the pre-exilic prophets 

 and is reflected in the grouping of Babylonia and Assyria with the 

 ** accursed " nations in J. It is not necessary for our purposes to 

 assume that the form given to the feelings of resentment against 

 Babylonia and Assyria actually presupposes the destruction of the 

 southern kingdom, for long before this catastrophe the feelings 

 must have been sufliciently strong to prompt a writer to regard 

 Babylonians and Assyrians as '^ accursed " in the eyes of Jahweh, 

 so that the little section inserted in J verses 8-12 may be, like J's 

 list, of pre-exilic date; but we may well suppose the post-exilic 

 redactor who combined J with P to have been still further incensed 

 at the recollection of the havoc wrought by Assyria and Babylonia, 

 the one in bringing about the downfall of the northern kingdom 

 and the other the extinction of political life in the south, to prompt 

 him to preserve from J — in its final form — the notice which groups 



iSee Winckler, Keilinschriften tind das alte Tesfcimejit, pp. 23-25 and 192 

 seq. 



" See for the general relationship between Babylonia and Assyria, and the two 

 Hebrew kingdoms, Winckler, Knlinschrifteji und das alte Testajueni,^^. 2^?>- 

 280 ; also for the cuneiform texts bearmg on the subject Schrader's Cuneiform 

 Inscriptions and the O. 7], i, 176-ii, 59, and Winckler, Keilinschriftliches 

 Textbuch zum alten Testament (2d ed., Leipzig, 1903), pp. 14-55. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XLIII. 176. M. PRINTED JULY 13, 1904. 



