Prolegomena to the History of IsraelWellhausen, Julius
Religion
Prolegomena to the History of Israel
Wellhausen, Julius
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
Of the remaining tribes, so far as they belong to Israel and not
to Judah, the next in the series after Reuben are the
trans-Jordanic (v. 11-26). They are said to have been numbered
in the days of Jotham of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel, on which
occasion 44,760 warriors were returned; they took the field
against the Hagarenes, Ituraeans, Nephishites, and Nabataeans,
gaining the victory and carrying off much booty, "for they
cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them because
they put their trust in Him." But afterwards they fell away
from the God of their fathers, and as a punishment were carried off
by Pul and Tiglath-Pileser to Armenia by the Chaboras and the
river of Gozan. Apart from the language, which in its edifying
tone is that of late Judaism, and leaving out of account the
enumeration "the sons of Reuben and the Gadites and half of the
tribe of Manasseh," the astonishing and highly doubtful
combinations are eloquent: Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, the Chaboras
and the river of Gozan, are hardly distinguished from each other;
Jotham and Jeroboam, on the other hand, make so impossible a
synchronism that the partisans of Chronicles will have it that
none is intended,--forgetful, to be sure, of Hosea i. 2, and
omitting to say what in that case Jotham of Judah has to do here
at all in this connection. The Hagarenes and Ituraeans too,
instead of (say) the Moabites and Ammonites, furnish food for
reflection, as also do the geographical statements that Gad had
his seat in Bashan and Manasseh in and near Lebanon. As for the
proper names of families and their heads, they are certainly
beyond our means of judging; the phrases however of the scheme
they fill (anshe shemoth rashe l'beth abotham, migrash, jahes)
are peculiar to the Priestly Code and Chronicles, and alongside of
elements which are old and attested from other quarters, occur
others that look very recent, as for example (v. 24) Eliel,
Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, Jahdiel.
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