'913.1 OF THE PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES. 187 



inscriptions. Javan is the twv of iwves, the lonians. EHsha (v. 4) 

 is the Alashia of the El-Amarna letters, or the Island of Cyprus ; 

 Kittim, the Kiti or Kition, on that island. Tarshish is Tartessos, 

 the Phoenician mining and trading camp in Spain. Similarly in v. 

 22 Elam, Asshiir and Aram are clearly the names of well known 

 countries. In v. 26 most of the persons mentioned are known to be 

 tribes or towns in south Arabia. In v. 15 it is stated that Canaan 

 begat Zidon. Zidon is the city. Its name means " fishing." The 

 name was not derived from a man, but from an industry. 



We derive from this chapter, then, partly composed of J material 

 (ninth century) and P material (fifth century) the general prin- 

 ciple that patriarchal names are probably not personal names, but 

 are personified tribes, nations, or places. This is in accord with 

 modern Arabian custom. The Arabs make alliances with other 

 tribes under the fiction of kinship, and then to justify the supposed 

 kinship trace their descent from a common ancestor.^ In combining 

 the personifications of two documentary sources in Genesis 10 con- 

 fusion has, in at least one case, resulted. To the J writer (v. 8) 

 the Cush who begat Nimrod was the Kash of the Babylonian in- 

 scriptions, i. e., the Kassites or Cossaeans, who, entering Babylonia 

 from the East, conquered it about 1750 B.C. and established a dynasty 

 that ruled for 576 years. To the P writer of v. 6 Cush was Nubia, 

 as already pointed out. The combination of these narratives by a 

 later editor has made the two Cushes appear to be the same, so that 

 some interpreters, not recognizing the difiference, feel compelled to 

 claim that the Assyrians are descended from a Hamitic race.- 



We are, then, on safe historical ground, if we assume that at 

 least a part of the patriarchal narratives consists of tribal history 

 narrated as the experiences of individual men. To assume that all 

 patriarchal story is tribal history, would be to create for ourselves 

 new difficulties. When once a man, or a supposed man, has caught 

 the popular imagination, tradition frequently attaches to his name 



^ Cf . Sprenger, " Geographic Arabiens " and " Lectures and Essays of 

 W. Robertson Smith," 461. The position set forth in the text is not new. 

 Many scholars have taken it. 



* See Kyle, " The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criticism," 

 ic6. 



