s
on the coast were driven towards the sea, and had to seek in maritime
enterprise the food and wealth which their own land refused to grant.
Palestine was essentially formed to be the appropriator and carrier of
the ideas and culture of others, not to be itself their origin and
creator.

But when the ideas had once been brought to it they were modified and
combined, improved and generalized in a way that made them capable of
universal acceptance. Phoenician art is in no way original; its elements
have been drawn partly from Babylonia, partly from Egypt; but their
combination was the work of the Phoenicians, and it was just this
combination which became the heritage of civilized man. The religion of
Israel came from the wilderness, from the heights of Sinai, and the
palm-grove of Kadesh, but it was in Palestine that it took shape and
developed, until in the fullness of time the Messiah was born. Out of
Canaan have come the Prophets and the Gospel, but the Law which lay
behind them was brought from elsewhere.

CHAPTER II

THE PEOPLE

In the days of Abraham, Chedor-laomer, king of Elam and lord over the
kings of Babylonia, marched westward with his Babylonian allies, in
order to punish his rebellious subjects in Canaan. The invading army
entered Palestine from the eastern side of the Jordan. Instead of
marching along the sea-coast, it took the line of the valley of the
Jordan. It first attacked the plateau of Bashan, and then smote "the
Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in the
plain of Kiriathaim." Then it passed into Mount Seir, and subjugated the
Horites as far as El-Paran "by the wilderness." Thence it turned
northward again through the oasis of En-mishpat or Kadesh-barnea, and
after smiting the Amalekite Beduin, as well as the Amorites in
Hazezon-tamar, made its way into the vale of Siddim. There the battle
took place which ended in the defeat of the king of Sodom and his
allies, who were carried away captive to the north. But at Hobah, "on
the left hand of Damascus," the invaders were overtaken by "Abram the
Hebrew," who dwelt with his Amorite confederates in the plain of Mamre,
and the spoil they had seized was recovered from them.

The narrative gives us a picture of the geography and ethnology of
Palestine as it was at the beginning of the Patriarchal Age. Before that
age was over it had altered very materially; the old cities for the most
part still remained, but new