WHAT these upheavals meant in the history of Hebrew literature and culture can only approximately be gauged. One thing is certain: they all and one dealt the death-blow to the old Hebraic culture. When the excavator sinks his spade beneath the ground of a sleepy Palestinian village, he lays bare to view from under the overlaid strata, Roman and Greek and Jewish and Israelitish, the Canaanite foundation with its mighty walls and marvellous tunnels, its stelæ and statuettes, its entombed infants sacrificed to the abominable Moloch. Similarly if we dig below the surface of the Scriptures, we uncover glimpses of the civilization of the Amorite strong and mighty, which generations of prophets and lawmakers succeeded in destroying root and branch. On the ruins of the Canaanite-Amorite culture rose in the latter days Judaism triumphant; the struggle--prolonged and of varying success--marked the ascendancy of the Hebraic culture which was a midway station between the indigenous Canaanite civilization on the one hand and that mighty spiritual leaven, Mosaism in its beginnings and Judaism in its consummation, on the other. The Hebraic culture was a compromise. It began by absorbing the native civilization. The danger of succumbing to it was there, but it was averted by those whom their adversaries called the disturbers of Israel. And even to the last, when the sway of Judaism was undisputed, the Hebraic culture could not be severed from the soil in which it was rooted. It was part of a world-culture just as it contributed itself thereto. Whether living in amity or in warfare, nations influence each other to a marked degree. They exchange the products of their soils and their industry--they also give and take spiritual possessions. Culture is a compound product. The factors that are contributory to its make-up are the soil and the racial endowment recoiling against the domination from without which, though not wholly overcome, is resisted with might and main. Cultures are national amidst an international culture. They express themselves in a variety of ways, chiefly in language and literature. For while blood is thicker than water, the pen is mightier than the sword. Out of a mass of myth and legend and worldly wisdom the Hebrews constructed, in accordance with their own bent of mind, their cosmogonies and ballads and collections of proverbs. At every shrine the priests narrated to the throngs of worshippers the marvelous stories of local or national interest. _The Difference Between Hebraic Culture and Judaism_