Serug is the name of a district which
borders Haran on the North; how can the son of Serug all at once
leap back to Ur Casdim? What the reasons were for making Babylon
Abraham's point of departure, we need not now consider; but after
having left Ur Casdim with Terah, it is curious how he only gets
as far as Haran, and stays there till his father's death. In Q
also it is from Haran that he enters Palestine. Here, if anywhere,
we have in the doubling of the point of departure an attempt to
harmonise and to gain a connection with JE.
VII.I.3. The view is happily gaining ground that, in the mythical
universal history of mankind in Genesis i.-xi., the Jehovist
version is more primitive than the priestly one. And we are, in
fact, compelled to adopt this view when we observe that the
materials of the narratives in question have not an Israelite, but
a universal ethnic origin. The traces of this origin are much
more distinctly preserved in the Jehovist, whence it comes that
comparative mythology occupies itself chiefly with his
narratives, though without knowing that it is doing so. The
primitive legend has certainly undergone alterations in his hands
too; its mythic character is much obliterated, and all sorts of
Israelite elements have crept in.
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