Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH ,1 I: 27-3 2
,assumption prevails ghat Israel must in all respects be like
,other nations. If other nations had tales from their early
history which were purely legendary, so must Israel’s record
be, Aside from being a begging of the principle, critics of
this stripe are ready to concede Israel’s distinct superiority
in the :matter of .religion. Why cannot the rest of the
life of this people furnish material superior to that found
in other nations,
“One of the most popular methods of dealing with
patriarchal history is to approach it on the basis of the
so-called tribal theory (Stamw%eorie) , This theory
assumes that the patriarchs were not actual historical
characters but fictitious characters which are to serve to
explain the origin of certain tribes. When Abram goes to
Egypt, the tribe in reality went in its earlier days, etc. The
patriarchs are eponymous characters to whom is ascribed
what befell the tribe. The grain of truth involved in this
theory is that, in reality, certain of the names mentioned
in the Table of Nations, chapter ten, are tribal names and
not names of persons. However, in such cases (10: 13, 14,
16, 17, 18) tribal names are used (“Amorite, Girgashite,”
etc.), and no attempt is made to make them appear as
individuals. The claim by which the tribal theory is
chiefly supported is that ethnology has no instances on
record where nations descended from an individual, as, for
example, Israel from Abram. However, on this score the
Biblical records happen to have preserved facts which
ethnology no longer has available. But how a nation may
descend from an individual is traced s’tep by step in the
Biblical record.
“Besides, the Genesis records in their detailed accounts
bear too much of the stamp of records concerning charac-
ters of flesh and blood as we have it. Dillmann may make
light of this fact and say: ‘We need nowadays no longer
prove that the wealth of picturesque details of the narra-
tive is not in itself a proof of the historicity of the things
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