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The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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There is so great a resemblance between this tradition and the Greek legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia that we may well believe that one was borrowed from the other. It may be that Phœnician mariners, or even Israelite prisoners sold into slavery on the coast of Asia Minor, recounted the tragic story of a general who gained the victory at the price of the sacrifice of his daughter. The very name of Iphigenia seems to be no more than a Greek translation of the words “daughter of Jephthah.” The legend is unknown to Homer. Euripides borrowed it from a cyclic poem, the Cypria. According to this poem the sacrifice was not consummated; the goddess substituted a hind for the maiden. Some theologians have tried to extenuate the sacrifice of Jephthah in the same way, and have maintained that his daughter was vowed to perpetual celibacy. This explanation, however, has failed to win acceptance. “The text,” says M. Munk, “leaves no room to doubt that Jephthah did actually offer up his daughter as a burnt offering, and Josephus expressly says so” (Antiq., V, 7, 10).
While the tribes of the north were striving with the Canaanites, and those of the east with the Midianites and Ammonites, the tribes of the south were not always successful in defending their independence against the Philistines. The isolated position of the Israelite tribes made it possible for the Philistines to subjugate those in their immediate neighbourhood. The resistance of Israel to this suppression is personified in Samson, the hero of the tribe of Dan, the Israelitish Hercules.
Samson cannot be considered an historical figure. He appears to bear a strong resemblance to Samdan, the Assyrian Hercules, and, generally speaking, to all solar divinities. Like Apollo, his hair has never been cut; like Hercules he subdues lions and is himself subdued by women. The metamorphosis of an ancient divinity into a local hero is of common occurrence in all mythologies. The existence of a city of the sun, Beth-shemesh, within the borders of the tribe of Dan, leads us to suppose that the oldest inhabitants paid peculiar honours to the sun; it is natural that the Israelites, who held a different religion, should graft the legend of a hero on the fables current in the locality.
As a sequel to the legend of Samson, we find two narratives which form, as it were, an appendix to the Book of Judges. The first seems to refer to the actual period of the conquest, for the tribe of Dan had no territory as yet, and sought an inheritance to dwell in. Five men were sent out to explore the land. “And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol; and said unto them, Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: but keep ye silence, be not slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.”
As they pass through the hill country of Ephraim, their spies inform them that, in the house of a certain man named Micah, there is an ephod, teraphim, and a graven image, under the charge of a Levite. They represent to the Levite that it will be to his advantage to be the priest of a tribe rather than the chaplain of a private individual, and carry him off, taking the graven image, the ephod, and the teraphim with them. Micah pursues him and complains of the theft, they bid him hold his peace or they will set fire to his house. Then the Danites come to Laish: “They came unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the sword; and they burnt the city with fire.… And the children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set them up Micah’s graven image which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.” If we attribute the Decalogue, with its prohibition of graven images, to Moses, we must suppose that the precepts of the lawgiver had been very quickly forgotten, even in his own family.
The story of the Levite of Ephraim throws a yet more melancholy light on the morals of the Israelites. The wife of this Levite is outraged and murdered by a band of men at Gibeah, of the tribe of Benjamin. The husband cuts the corpse into twelve pieces, which he sends to the twelve tribes of Israel. And all men, when they saw it, said, “There was no such deed done since the day when the Children of Israel came up out of Egypt.” The Benjamites are required to give up the culprits, they refuse and take up arms, to the number of twenty-six thousand men. The other tribes put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field, according to the Bible, and inquire of Jehovah who shall march first to battle. Jehovah appoints the tribe of Judah. But twice in succession the Benjamites come forth out of Gibeah and gain the advantage over the enormous army of Israel, which loses forty thousand men in two days. The people go up to Bethel, where the Ark of the Covenant then was; they fast, they offer burnt offerings, and Jehovah promises them the victory. The attacking force surrounds the enemy, and defeats them with such slaughter that only six hundred men escape and take refuge in the wilderness. The victors burn all the cities of Benjamin and put all their inhabitants to the sword.
After this vengeance, however, they regret the annihilation of a whole tribe, and offer terms of peace to the six hundred survivors of the Benjamites.
At the beginning and at the end of this narrative the Bible says that in those days there was no king in Israel, and that every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The author imagines that thus he can explain the atrocities he has related; but there was no king in the Greek cities either, and nothing of this kind took place there.
We may be astonished that a nation which “rose up as one man to punish a crime and blot out a stain from Israel” should not be able to unite to repulse a foreign foe. But this contrast is not enough to cast doubt upon the Bible narrative; it is unhappily true that an age and a country may witness at one and the same time the most merciless reprisals in civil war and the most deplorable weakness in face of the outside world. The Philistines had already subjugated the southern tribes, Dan, Judah, and Zebulun; they were now menacing those of the centre.
The Israelites remembered that after their coming forth out of Egypt the Ark of the Covenant had led them to the conquest of Canaan, and they thought that now again it would insure them the victory. The Ark was at that time at Shiloh, under the charge of the aged Eli, who combined the office of high priest with the title of Judge in Israel. So the Ark was brought from thence in charge of the two sons of Eli. But its presence was after all of no avail. “Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the Ark of the God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.”
Such a blow could not but daunt the spirit of the nation. As a matter of fact, the Philistines did not keep the trophy long; believing that the presence of a hostile god would bring misfortune upon them, they sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the Israelites. But to prevent any attempt at rebellion, they forbade the vanquished to bear arms and carried off all the smiths, so that no Israelite could mend his plough unless he went to the Philistines.
The reawakening of the national sentiment took the form of a revival of religious zeal, as it does among the Arabs of this day. The initiative in this religious movement is attributed to Samuel, of the tribe of Ephraim. From his childhood he had been dedicated to the service of Jehovah, and he was early believed to receive direct communication from God. He was therefore what was called a nabi (inspired person). This word is usually translated by “prophet,” which signifies soothsayer, because such inspired persons were supposed to be gifted with the power of foreseeing the future, and themselves believed that they possessed it.