194 BARTON— THE HISTORICAL VALUE [April 17, 



" sons of Ebed-Ashera." It would be easy in course of time for 

 the Ebed to drop out and the tribe to be called "sons of Ashera " 

 or " sons of Asher."" As this tribe in the period covered by the 

 El-Amarna correspondence (1400-1350 B.C.) was in the same re- 

 gion in which the Hebrew tribe of Asher was afterward settled, it 

 seems probable that the Hebrew tribe was the same as the earlier 

 Amorite tribe. This would fit in well with the conclusion to which 

 the tribal interpretation of Jacob's marriage points. 



When the investigation moves back a generation in the patri- 

 archal genealogies, the same principle holds, but new perplexities 

 appear. It is clear that Esau is the personification of the Edomite 

 nation, and Israel that of the nucleus of the Hebrews. Already in 

 the time of Merneptah there was an Israel, which was a nation. 

 Probably it consisted of the Leah tribes. But the Hebrew patriarch 

 is also called Jacob, and most of the stories concerning him are told 

 of him as Jacob. There is reason to believe that the name Jacob 

 had an origin similar to the name Joseph. 



In the reign of the Babylonian king, Apil-Sin (2161-2144 B.C.), 

 two witnesses to a contract, Shubna-ilu and Yadakh-ilu gave the 

 name of their father as Yakub-ilii or Jacob-el. ^^ Another witness, 

 Lamaz, had a Jacob-el as his father.^" In the reign of the next king, 

 Sin-muballit (2143-2124 B.C.), a witness named Nur-Shamash was 

 the son of Yaknh-iln, or Jacob-el, -° while another witness, Sin- 

 erbiam. gave his father's name simply Yakuh, or Jacob. ^^ Seven 

 hundred years'later Thothmes III. records among the names of cities 

 which he conquered in Palestine a city Va'ke-b'-ra," the Egyptian 

 equivalent of Jacob-el. The probability is that some Babylonian 

 who bore the name migrated to the west, and in course of time 



"See, e. g., Schrader's " Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek," Nos. 53. 54, 55, 

 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 6i. 64, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 92, 

 loi. 



^"'Cuneiform Texts, etc., in the British Museum," IV., 2,3, 22b. 



^' Meissner, " Altbabylonische Privatrecht," 36, 25. 



""'Cuneiform Texts," VIII, 25, 22. 



''"Cuneiform Texts," IL, 8, 26. 



"^ MitteUuiigen der vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, 1907,. p. 27. 



The city seems to have been east of the Jordan and was, perhaps, the 

 same as Penuel, Gen. 32: 31. 



