of
the patriarch. Even in Canaan itself the deities of Babylonia were
worshipped or identified with the native gods. Anu the god of the sky,
Rimmon the god of the air, Nebo the interpreter and prophet of
Bel-Merodach, were all adored in Palestine, and their names were
preserved to later times in the geography of the country. Even
Ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to
be merged, was of Babylonian origin.

Abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of
Babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the
literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. The fact is an
important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern
discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the
credibility of the narratives contained in the Book of Genesis. Written
and contemporaneous history in Babylonia went back to an age long
anterior to that of Abraham--his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the
decline of the Babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there
is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives
connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to
himself and his posterity. His birth in Ur, his migration to Harran and
Palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of
history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all
that we are told of his relationship to Lot or to the tribes of
north-western Arabia.

In Canaan, however, Abraham was but a sojourner. Though he came there as
a Babylonian prince, as an ally of its Amoritish chieftains, as a leader
of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a Babylonian army, his only
possession in it was the burial-place of Machpelah. Here, in the close
neighbourhood of the later Hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the
sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock
for the purposes of burial. The sepulchre of Machpelah was the sole
possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his
descendants.

Of these, however, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah moved southward into
the desert, out of the reach of the cultured Canaanites and the
domination of Babylonia. Isaac, too, the son of his Babylonian wife,
seemed bent upon following their example. He established himself on the
skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the
borders of Palestine, nor on the other from th