name contains the allusion to the fact that in the earliest times people migrated from, the Chaldæan ancestral seat, and the name y states the region in which they settled, viz. Mesopotamia, foray is a frequent designation of the country on the other side of the Euphrates (e.g. Josh. xxiv. 2 sq., 14 sq.)." Mesopotamia is so called from a Palestinian standpoint, while y in its earliest historical sense would designate the passing over the Tigris. The general sense: "advance migration" (Paradies, p. 262), is here, where

transports us close to the great net of the two rivers,

signify in general those (עֹבְרֵי דֶרֶךְ) עֹבְרִים probable. Nor does

who migrate, but those who transmigrate. The name Day however as an ethnographic name of Israel, which would according to the original meaning of the name of their ancestor, y, signify those who came over the Tigris, has in the subsequent usage of the language evidently the meaning: those who came over the river, i.e. the Euphrates,' not (see on xiv. 13) those who came over Jordan (Wellh. Reuss, Stade). Peleg the son of 'Eber, vv. 16, 17: And Eber lived thirty-four years, and begat Peleg. And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. The name means division, and is explained in this sense by the Jahvist, x. 25. Whether the name of the Mesopotamian town Þáλya (Páλiya), situated where the Chaboras flows into the Euphrates, has any kind of connection with it is uncertain. Reu the son of Peleg, vv. 18, 19: And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Ré ú. And Peleg lived after he begat Reú two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters. The name Urhoi (Edessa) has nothing to do with (LXX. 'Payaû, comp. 'Payovýλ=, friendship of God, friend of God); Edessa has been so called from the time when it was the capital of 'Ooponun, or, which is more probable, the name arose from Καλλιρρόη, for Edessa is also called 'Αντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Kaλippón (a fonte nominata, Plin. v. 24). Sprenger strays even

1 Comp. Bereshith rabba, c. xlii. Na in

לשון של בני עבר הנהר : e, as it is correctly glossed. משיח בלשון עברי

رعوة

as far as on the Shammar. Serûg the son of Re'û, vv. 20, 21: And Reû lived thirty-two years, and begat Serûg. And Reû lived after he begat Serúg two hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. The name (comp. Arab. sirág, lamp) has adhered to the Mesopotamian province and town of Sarug, a day's journey north of Harran; the town of Sarug is, according to its Greek name, Bárvaι of Osroëne. Nahor the son of Serûg, vv. 22, 23: And Serûg lived thirty years, and begat Nahor. And Serûg lived after he begat Nahor two hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. The nations of whom Nahor is the ancestor are registered xxii. 20 sqq. ; but no people, country, or place carrying on his name can be pointed out. Terah the son of Nahor, vv. 24, 25: And Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begat Terah. And Nahor lived after he begat Terah one hundred and nineteen years, and begat sons and daughters. The name is perhaps the same word with the Babylonio - Assyrian name of the antelope, turáhu, Syr. tarúha, Arab. arh, urhi. Kn. combines with it (LXX. Oáppa) the town Tharrana southwards of Edessa upon Tabula Pentingeriana, xi. d. Friedr. Delitzsch notes a Mesopotamian name of a town Til-sa-turhi. The sons of Terah, ver. 26: And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran. The genealogy consisting of nine members closes with Terah; it points to Abram, just as v. 32 does to Shem. The date here, as there, designates the first-named as the first-born. The birth years of Nahor and Haran are, like those of Ham and Japheth, without importance for the chronological progress of the history. This genealogy closes with the ninth member, because the following

for the ; תולדות תרח but תולדות אברם were not to be entitled תולדות

chief personage of the section is Abram, the descendant of Terah, whose historical importance consists in his being the father of Abraham. If the section had had for its title, not mn bin, but лn, we should expect the history of Abraham in his descendants, while the history of Abraham is on the contrary essentially his own.

TABLE TO GENESIS XI. 10 SQQ. (comp. xii. 4).

The Post-diluvian Patriarchs to the Ancestor of Israel.

The bracketed figures in the LXX. are the readings of the Cod. Alexandrinus. Only the Samarit. text sums up the durations of life.

'The Book of Jubilees offers at chs. viii.-xi. a fourth computation. It reckons from the birth of Arpachshad to Abram's migration 642 years, by ascribing to Arpachshad 66 years at the birth of his first son, to Cainan (whom he inserts with LXX.) 57, to Shelah 67, to 'Eber 68, to Peleg 61, to Re'û 59, to Serûg 57, to Nahor 62, to Terah 70, and counting thence to Abram's migration to Canaan 75 years.

VI.

THE TOLEDOTH OF TERAH, XI. 27-XXV. 11.

THERE is nothing omitted between xi. 26 and xi. 27. Hence the general anticipatory statement of xi. 26 and the details of what is there alluded to, beginning xi. 27, join closely with each other. This shows us that the previous history of Israel in Q consisted entirely of a series of man, rounded off and yet trenching upon each other. Within this framework however the genealogy passed into historical narrative wherever material was at hand and the scope of the work induced it. Now that the author has arrived at Abram, this material begins to be more abundant. The title

nin belongs to the whole following history of Abraham, down to the new sections of the Toledoth of Ishmaël and Isaac. Hence a good portion of the historical matter in these Toledoth certainly belongs to Q, but as certainly not the whole, for extracts from all sources, of which Genesis consists, are inlaid in the panelling of the Toledoth. It was however regarded as settled that not only the verse, with the title, xi. 27, and xi. 32, which finishes off Terah as a member of the genealogy, belong to him, but also that all between these two verses is Elohistic (e.g. by Kayser, Urgesch. p. 12), until Wellh, and Dillm. here also carried on the unravelling process to such an extent as to leave only vv. 27, 31, 32 to Q as his certain property, with some hesitation as to 8 in

ver. 31. For the view that Ur of the Chaldees as Abram's starting-point does not belong to the oldest form of tradition, and was first inserted by R (the redactor) both here in Elohistic and, xv. 7 and indeed xi. 286, in Jahvistic connection, is more and more gaining ground. There are however,

as we shall see, no valid grounds for thus expunging a fundamental assumption of the previous history of Israel. In ver. 27 we again find ourselves on the soil of purely domestic history, and learn what happened in the family of Terah, Abram's father, down to the migration to Harran in Mesopotamia. The three sons of Terah, ver. 27: And these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor and Haran, and Haran begat Lot. Each of the three is important to the sacred history: Abram as the ancestor of Israel, Nahor by reason of his female descendants, who enter into the line of the promise, Haran as the father of Lot. The names appears also elsewhere in the Babylonio-Assyrian form Abu ramu (see Schrader, art." Ur," in Riehm's HW.). We know as little why Terah gave his first-born this name, as why he gave the second that of in, the snorter, and the third that of, the miner. The contained in this third name does not justify the inference that it was originally meant of a tribe or country. with which Wellh. (Gesch. 325, Proleg. 330) arbitrarily confounds it, is an etymologically different word. The tie which united Terah and his family to their home was loosened by an early death, ver. 28: And Haran died in the lifetime of Terah his father in the land of his birth, in Ur Casdim. He died by of his father, so that the latter could and must behold it, hence while he was yet alive (comp. Num. iii. 4; Deut. xxi. 16). That Haran died in the land of his birth was the more worthy of note, because Terah his father afterwards died in Harran. The land of Haran's birth, and consequently of Terah's dwelling, is It is not surprising that LXX. translates χώρα τῶν Χαλδαίων, since it occurs nowhere else than in the history of Abram as the name of a city. The synagogal and ecclesiastical legend (see Beer, Das Leben Abrahams nach Auffassung der jüd. Sage, 1859) read out of the N, that Abraham was, as a confessor of the one true God and a denier

אוּר כַּשְׂדִּים designated as

'According to this, Nicolaus Damasc. says, in Joseph. Ant. i. 7. 2, that Abraham came ἐκ τῆς γῆς ὑπὲρ Βαβυλῶνος Χαλδαίων λεγομένης, i.e. from the land of the Chaldees, reaching from and around Babylon. Comp. the designation of Ethiopia as ἡ ὑπὲρ Αἰγύπτου in Thucydides, ii. 48.