i88 7 ] KENAN S &quot; HISTOIRE D ISRAfiL &quot; 611 



it would be difficult to specify a single feature of resem 

 blance between the patriarchal life, as described in Genesis, 

 and the life of the modern Bedouin, which is not either 

 superficial or part of the general difference between 

 eastern and western society. And, on the other hand, the 

 points of difference between the life of the patriarchs and 

 the ordinary life of a nomad group are many and funda 

 mental. On this question an appeal may confidently be 

 taken to every one who either knows the modern Bedouin 

 or has made any serious study of the &quot; Aghanl &quot; and other 

 documents of Arabian life before Islam. But, indeed, it is 

 enough to appeal to the Bible itself. The Hebrews knew 

 the wild men of the desert, and the patriarchal history 

 draws their type in the person of Ishmael. The author 

 who drew this figure was certainly not of M. Kenan s 

 mind as to the identity of the patriarchal and the nomadic 

 life. The picture of the patriarchal age is an ideal picture, 

 but it is not idealised from the life of the Semitic nomads, 

 whose hand was against every man and every man s hand 

 against them. If we accept the picture presented in 

 Genesis literally, it displays a miraculous life. And the 

 miracles in the history of the patriarchs are not mere 

 garnishing which can be stripped off and still leave the 

 image of a real state of society. That Abraham, Isaac, 

 and Jacob could roam at large through Palestine without 

 fear and without war, though they were aliens from their 

 own kin, and had not become the protected dependants 

 of another kin, is a standing miracle, and on this miracle 

 everything else in the history of Genesis depends. If the 

 supernatural explanation is given up, the whole notion of 

 a patriarchal age falls to the ground ; we must then assume 

 with the Dutch and German critics that the picture in 

 Genesis is idealised, in a way quite unhistorical, from 

 the conditions of Hebrew life in the ninth and tenth 

 centuries B.C., when the nomadic past of Israel already lay 

 hid in the mists of antiquity, and we must hold that the 

 actual condition of the Hebrews in the nomadic age was 



