004. I. The Old Testament World

I THE OLD TESTAMENT WORLD

I.The Influence of Environment. The character and history of a people are largely determined by the nature of the land in which they live. Mountains, valleys, desert, sea, cold and heat inevitably and indelibly mould the life of men. The fundamental characteristic of the Semitic race, to which the Hebrews belong, is its openness to the influence of environment. The striking contrast between the small, wizened Jew of Jerusalem, who has lived for centuries under an oriental despotism, and the tall, stalwart Jew of Spain, where conditions have been more favorable, is a familiar illustration of this susceptibility to external influences. To understand early biblical history it is therefore necessary to know the birthplace and home of the Hebrews and the races with which they came into closest contact.

II.The Scene of Earliest Human History. No portion of the earth’s surface has more marked and significant characteristics than that limited territory in southwestern Asia which was the scene of the earliest human civilization and the background of Old Testament history. Its general form is that of a triangle. It is bounded on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the east by the Zagros Mountains, which rise on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. Its southern base runs from the head of the Persian Gulf about twelve hundred miles across the northern end of the Red Sea and the Nile to the Desert of Sahara. Its centre is the great Arabian Desert, which occupies nearly half of this Old Testament world and ever dominated it. Nearly three-fourths of this entire area is either desert or dry, rocky, treeless pasture land. No high mountain ranges cut across this vast level expanse, which is hemmed in on its three sides by sea and mountains and burning sands.

III.The Lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley. In the eastern part of this natural home of the nomad are the flat, alluvial plains of the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Here, natural conditions all favored the development of an early and sturdy civilization. The Tigris, which flows thirteen hundred, and the Euphrates nearly eighteen hundred miles from their mountain sources before reaching the sea, brought down each year rich deposits of earth, and floods of water to irrigate the fertile soil. The clay of the river banks furnished the bricks from which were made temples, palaces and fortresses. The channels of the rivers and the intersecting canals were the highways of the merchant. The attractiveness of the territory and its exposure to attack on every side forced its inhabitants early to unite in common defence and to build up a strong and aggressive civilization.

IV.Mesopotamia. To the north, the Tigris and Euphrates are separated by the great level plain of limestone and selenite, commonly known as Mesopotamia. The arid pasture lands gradually merge into more fertile mountain regions in the north and west. Except, however, at a few favored sites beside the rivers, this ancient land of Aram simply supports a wandering, nomadic population. It is the connecting link between the richly productive lands along the lower waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the series of elevated plateaus and fertile valleys and coast plains that skirt the Mediterranean Sea.

V.Syria and Palestine. The eastern Mediterranean coast-land, known in later times as Syria and Palestine, was divided by natural barriers of desert, river and low mountain range into seven or eight distinct divisions. Each of these had its different products and interests. No one great river provided the background for a strong, centralized, conquering civilization. Instead, the Orontes, the longer of its two chief rivers, after flowing to the north only about one hundred and fifty miles, finds its way into the Mediterranean; while the Jordan, rising not far from the Orontes, flows a little over a hundred miles in the opposite direction to lose itself in the Dead Sea, far below the surface of the earth. About four hundred miles long from north to south and from seventy-five to one hundred wide, this little world, like ancient Greece, was, by virtue of its peculiar physical contour and character, destined to support many petty, independent, warring peoples, engaged in a great variety of occupations, and representing many different stages of civilization.

VI.The Nile Valley. The third large fertile area in the ancient Semitic world was the lower Nile valley. That remarkable river, fed by the melting snows and great lakes in the heart of Africa, flows northward over three thousand miles into the Mediterranean. The last thousand miles it runs through a desert of rock and shifting sands; but out of this desert the river, by its deposits of rich black earth, has created an oasis which man’s industry has transformed into a paradise. The real Egypt of the past, as of to-day, was but a ribbon of fertile river land, not more than eight thousand square miles in area. Shut in by desert sands on the east and west, its closest and almost only point of contact with the outside world was with Asia to the northeast. From northern Egypt the great highways of commerce ran eastward along the Mediterranean, through Canaan and Syria, to the populous valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.

VII.The First Chapter in Divine Revelation. Thus the encircling barriers of sea and mountain and desert bound closely together the ancient Semitic world and protected it from too early or too close contact with its more barbarous neighbors. Natural conditions along the lower waters of the Nile in the west, and the Tigris and Euphrates in the east, fitted these river basins to become the two earliest centres of human civilization. The favorable physical conditions also largely determined the character of that civilization. Palestine and Syria, standing midway between the Arabian desert, Babylonia and Egypt, were clearly destined in time to receive and absorb the powerful political, social and religious influences emanating from each of these older centres. In the geographical background of early Hebrew life, therefore, is written in clearest characters the first and in many ways the most suggestive chapter in the history of divine revelation.

VIII.The Original Home of the Semites. Northern Arabia appears to have been the original home of the primitive Semites. There they lived as nomads, roaming, as do their descendants, the modern Arabs, from place to place in search of water and pasture for their flocks and herds. Their wandering life made it easy for them, when the desert steppes did not supply enough to support their increasing numbers, to pass over and seek permanent homes in the more attractive river valleys that encircled them. This process of transition began long before the dawn of history and has gone on without interruption to the present day. Usually the transition was gradual, but at times great hordes rushed forth with the sword to conquer and rule their more civilized but less virile agricultural neighbors.

IX.Semitic Races of Arabia and Africa. The fertile plains of central and southern Arabia doubtless early attracted Semitic immigrants. There they built up a rich and advanced civilization. It was, however, so completely isolated that, except through the medium of trade, it made little impression on the rest of the ancient world. From this land later came the Queen of Sheba with her costly gifts. To this southern group of Semitic races belong the nomadic Arab tribes, the highly civilized Sabeans, the Mineans and the later Nabatheans. From southern Arabia colonists crossed the southern end of the Red Sea to Africa, and founded the nation of the Cushites or Ethiopians, of whom are descended the modern Abyssinians. Other Semites early found their way to the lower Nile valley and, mingling with the native races, are known to history as the Egyptians.

VII.Babylonians and Assyrians. Originally the lower Tigris- Euphrates valley appears to have been occupied by a non-Semitic people, called by modern scholars the Sumerians. The ruins of their ancient cities testify to the greatness of their art and culture. Their oldest tablets contain references to the advance of Semitic peoples from the north and west. The invaders, who settled in the south, assimilating the art and culture of the conquered, were later known as the Babylonians. Those who later went farther north and found a home on the upper Tigris, ultimately figure in history as the Assyrians.

VIII.Arameans. Other groups of Semitic nomads crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia and are later known as the Arameans. Most of them retained their wandering habits; some of them in the northwest built cities; others pressed on westward into Syria and Palestine. Largely as the result of their intermediate position between Babylonia and Assyria on the one side, and Syria, Palestine and Egypt on the other, the Arameans became the great overland traders of the ancient world.

IX.Amorites and Canaanites. Probably from northern Arabia, the common home of the early Semites, came the ancestors of the Amorites and Canaanites. The earlier immigrants settled among the hills of central Palestine. On the fertile plains, which run along the eastern Mediterranean and intersect the hills and mountains that lie between the sea and desert, the later immigrants found their homes. Here they developed an agricultural civilization, which was a reflection of that of Babylonia.

X.Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. Centuries later there came from northern Arabia and Mesopotamia another wave of nomadic immigration, which brought to this western land the ancestors of the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites and Hebrews. The Ammonites settled east of the Jordan in the border between tillable land and desert, retaining their older nomadic institutions and acquiring also the arts of agriculture. The Moabites found their permanent abode on the more fertile headlands east of the Dead Sea. In the narrow valleys and rocky hills south of the Dead Sea the Edomites established themselves, depending for subsistence chiefly upon their flocks and the plunder which they seized from passing caravans.

XI.Hebrews. The ancestors of the Hebrews appear to have at first crossed the Jordan into Canaan and to have found a temporary abode in the unoccupied uplands. They retained, however, their nomadic habits, and gravitated in time into the country to the south of Canaan. Thence a part of them at least pressed on to the borders of Egypt. Their return and conquest of Canaan are recorded in their earliest traditions. Of all the Semitic races they were the last to find a permanent abode and to crystallize into a nation. About them and in their midst were kindred peoples whose institutions had been developing thousands of years. Compared with that of Babylonia and Egypt and Phoenicia, their history is modern rather than ancient. By race, as well as by virtue of conquest and geographical position, they were heirs of that which had already been acquired through countless centuries of human effort and experience. The second chapter, therefore, in the record of divine revelation is the history of the great nations that preceded and deeply influenced the Hebrews.