^9^3.1 OF THE PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES. 193 



Our pursuit of the origin of the Joseph-stories has taken us far 

 afield from the discussion of the tribal history of the patriarchs. 

 The accounts of the marriages of the sons of Judah and of an epi- 

 sode in the life of Judah himself in Genesis 38 may easily be under- 

 stood to be alliances made by that tribe with clans previously living 

 in their territory. Judah in all the subsequent history stood apart 

 from the other Hebrew tribes. That she formed in David's early 

 reign and after the time of Solomon a separate kingdom was in part 

 due to the larger element of Canaanite blood in her. 



Similarly the story in Genesis 34 of Simeon and Levi^"' represents 

 an unsuccessful and treacherous attack of those tribes on the ancient 

 city. In this attack they were practically annihilated and their kins- 

 men regarded their punishment as just.^*^ On the view that the 

 patriarchal stories are adumbrations of tribal history, the traditions 

 which ascribe the birth of the patriarchs Gad, Asher, Dan and 

 Naphtali to slave mothers may indicate that these tribes joined the 

 Israelitish confederacy later than the union between the two great 

 groups of Leah and Rachel tribes. If this were the case, these 

 tribes probably came into the confederacy after the settlement in 

 Palestine, and were, presumably, Amorite or Canaanite tribes who 

 were there already. In the case of the tribe of Asher this supposi- 

 tion receives some confirmation from documents outside the Old 

 Testament. 



The father of Aziru, the Amorite, who wrote the letters to Dudu 

 quoted above, was named Ebed-Ashera, Ashera being a goddess. 

 Ebed-Ashera in his time was in frequent war with Gebal, whose king, 

 Rib-Adda, complained to the king of Egypt in many letters pre- 

 served for us in the El-Amarna correspondence. Rib-Adda some- 

 times calls the people over whom Ebed-Ashera ruled Amorites 

 (Amurru), sometimes the "men of Ebed-Ashera" and often the 



" The story appears in two forms ; one is by J and the other by a priestly 

 writer. In the former Shechem appears on one side and Simeon and Levi 

 on the other; Shechem violates Dinah and the brothers take terrible ven- 

 geance upon him. In the latter Hamor, the father of Shechem proposes 

 honorable marriage for his son with Dinah, and all the sons of Jacob are 

 represented as acting as one man. Cf. Carpenter and Harford-BattersI)y, 

 " Hexateuch," 52 fif. 



" Gen. 49 : 5-7- 



