This accordingly determines the form impressed on the myths, which had already suffered several modifications, by the rise of a religious and theocratic course of ideas; and I deem it unnecessary to exhibit in detail every portion of the matter constituting the Hebrew legendary lore in which this stratum of development is observable. Scarcely any part of the stories of the Patriarchs is free from this new force of development, and we should have to reproduce them all in their fullest extent to give a collection of examples of what has been said. It must, however, be added, that this impulse to the further development of the legends is not confined to those relating to Canaan. The same impulse draws the history of the Hebrews in Egypt also into the sphere of its operation. For, independently of the fact, that the conception of the residence of the Hebrews in the land of the Pharaohs receives a theocratic modification, the later mutual relation of the Hebrew and the Egyptian nations is prefigured in the patriarchal story, and gains a prototype in the relation of Abraham to Pharaoh. A famine in Canaan obliges Abraham to move into Egypt; and this journey is made the reason why ‘Jahveh plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues’ (Gen. XII. 17), until ‘Pharaoh gave an order to some men concerning him, and they escorted away Abraham and his wife, and all who belonged to him’ (v. 20). This foreshadowing of later historical events and the insertion of them into the body of old stories is, as we see, an important factor in the development of Hebrew stories. Each epoch works into the old legendary matter whatever preeminently occupies the mind of the age, in such a manner as to indicate the intellectual attitude and tendency of the later time. § 4. There is still another feature of the development of legends to be mentioned—one which is closely bound up with an important alteration of the political institutions of the Hebrew nation. This feature, though nearly connected with the National transformation of the legends, historically belongs to the age with which we have to do in this chapter. This stage of development of the legends may best be termed the _Differentiation_ of the National Legends.