198 BARTON— THE HISTORICAL VALUE [April 17, 



nected with Abraham grew up in Palestine around certain shrines. 

 They were the instruments by which Israel justified her use of these 

 shrines. Other stories, like that in Genesis 18, 19, arose as the 

 explanation of natural phenomena, such as the existence of the 

 impressive gorge of the Dead Sea, and probably in their earliest 

 form had no connection with Abraham. One can hardly believe, in 

 view of all the evidence presented, that Abraham was the real an- 

 cestor of all the peoples said to be descended from him, any more 

 than he can believe that all Egyptians were descended from one, 

 Mizraim, but it is no longer unthinkable that the stories collected 

 about Abraham have been attached to the name of a real man, who 

 once migrated from Babylonia. 



This paper cannot conclude without some remarks about the 

 historical character of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. Critics 

 agree that it does not belong to either of the four great documents 

 of the Hexateuch, and a considerable unanimity of critical opinion 

 has been reached in recent decades, that it is later than all of them, 

 and that it is a kind of Jewish midrash of a thoroughly unhistorical 

 character. On the other hand, a large group of conservative 

 scholars have endeavored to show from Babylonian texts that it is 

 real history — history the authenticity of which is confirmed by the 

 monuments. What are the facts as they appear to an unprejudiced 

 mind ? They are as follows : 



Hammurapi, the great Babylonian lawgiver, one of the most im- 

 portant of all the Babylonian kings, reigned from 2123 to 2081 

 B.C., and claimed sovereignty of Mar-tii, or the Westland, probably 

 Syria and Palestine. Many scholars have held that Hammurapi was 

 the same as Amraphel of Gen. 14: i. The names would exactly 

 correspond were it not for the / at the end of Amraphel. By no 

 known philological equivalence does that letter belong there, and i'f 

 Hammurapi is intended by Amraphel, Gen. 14 must have been 

 written so late that the name had become corrupted in a way similar 

 to the corruption from which good Hebrew names have sufifered in 

 the angelic lists of the Ethiopic Enoch. ^- 



" See the writer's article, " Origin of the names of Angels and Demons 

 in the Extra-Canonical Apocalyptic Literature to 100 A. D." in Journal of 

 Biblical Literature, XXXI., 156 ff. 



