6i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1887 



relations of the Israelites to their Canaanite neighbours in 

 the cities that were not conquered, he appeals to the 

 relations between the Metawila of Syria and their neigh 

 bours of other races. &quot; One must see these mixed or 

 rather double villages, where two populations live side by 

 side, hating and yet tolerating one another. Almost all 

 Turkey presents the same spectacle.&quot; But surely every 

 one who knows Syria is aware that this state of things 

 could not be maintained except under the sovereignty 

 of the Turkish empire. Both parties fear the pasha. 

 Modern Syria is a good analogy to illustrate the condition 

 of Palestine under the Achaemenians, but it is no analogy 

 for the age of the judges, when there was no external power 

 pressing on Hebrews and Canaanites alike. At that time, 

 where Hebrews and Canaanites lived together, the relation 

 of the two races must have been much more similar to 

 the relation between Arabs and Jews in Medina before 

 the Hijra, and this is the conception which all the texts 

 bear out. 



The period of the judges is treated in the volume before 

 us in a spirit of superficial eclecticism which is somewhat 

 surprising. On M. Kenan s own view that real definite 

 history begins with David, one is necessarily led to con 

 clude that the preceding period lies enveloped not in ab 

 solute darkness but in a semi-historical penumbra. Here, 

 therefore, if anywhere, exact historical criticism, the 

 laborious separation of primary and secondary sources, 

 is indispensable. It is impossible that fable should end 

 and history begin quite abruptly, and equally impossible 

 that the transition should take place in a narrative so 

 visibly composite as that of the Book of Judges, without 

 history and legend overlapping each other in a way which 

 can be detected by a careful analysis of the texts. In the 

 story of Deborah and Barak, where a contemporary 

 poetical document stands side by side with a later prose 

 narrative, or in the story of Gideon, where two parallel 

 records have been carefully distinguished by modern 



