Directly after mention of the Negeb the Scriptures tells us that Abram decided to 'go down' 3 into Egypt. This can be considered as almost standard pastoral practice, and there is considerable archaeological and historical evidence for it. Obviously there can be no question of thinking that Abram's journey was similar to that of the caravan of Ibsha and his thirty-seven Asiatics which has already been mentioned. Abram's Hebrew clan acted from different motives. At the time when the great droughts dried up the wells of southern Palestine and caused the disappearance of pasture the wandering shepherds used to turn their steps towards the eastern frontier of the delta of the Nile to ask for temporary admission. There at the meeting point of Egypt and the Arabian desert were vast grassy spaces which were endowed with a certain fertility by the seepage of the Nile waters. Pharoah's government made little difficulty about admitting these foreigners who, in the expression current at the time came 'to beg for water'. These unfortunate people did not ask for permission to go 'into Egypt' (as the Scriptural text somewhat elliptically allows us to think). Indeed, permission for them to enter the cultivated region was systematically refused; the havoc caused to the farmer by a flock of sheep or goats can easily be imagined. But they were allowed to put up their tents at the extreme boundary of the fields, on the edge of the agricultural region, just as in Mesopotamia the nomads grazed their flocks on the fringe of the steppes. There were certainly no great disadvantages in admitting these shepherds; the Egyptian officials kept a very watchful eye on their movements and, after all, for a time at least they became tax payers providing funds for the treasury of the Pharaohs.

There is considerable evidence for these removals of the Semites to the eastern boundaries of the delta. At the time of the kings of Heracleopolis (ninth and tenth dynasties, 2300-2160) what is known as the Petersburg papyrus tells us of 'nomads endeavouring to go down into Egypt (obviously the frontier zone is meant) to plead for water, according to their custom and to allow their flocks to drink'. At a later period we read in the Papyrus Anatasi (VI. 4, 15) that in the reign of Merneptah (1224-1210) an Egyptian officer, a frontier guard at Wadi Tumilat (in the Goshen region, to the east of the delta) reports that he had allowed certain tribes of Sasu (Bedouins), natives of Edom (on the Moab plateau), to pass through Pithom and this to enable them and their flocks to live on Egyptian territory. Those are two perfectly typical examples, the first about 350 years before Abram's time, the other some six centuries later than the patriarch's journey as described by Bereshith.

This passage in Bereshith, which was recorded in writing in the fifth century B.C., at the time when Yisrael had lost all memory of the daily events of nomad life, undeniably proves for us the remote, indeed the extremely remote origin of the account and, as a result its obvious authenticity.

Abram, Sarai And Pharaoh, And The Egyptian Adventure

When famine came to the land [Canaan] Abram went down into Egypt to stay there for the time, since the land was hard pressed by the famine. On the threshold of Egypt he said to his wife Sarai 'Listen! I know you are a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you they will say, "That is his wife': and they will kill me but spare you. Tell them you are my sister, so that they may treat me well because of you and spare my life out of regard for you.' When Abram arrived in Egypt the Egyptians did indeed see that the woman was very beautiful. When Pharaoh's officials saw her they sang her praises to Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's palace. He treated Abram well because of her, and he received flocks, oxen donkeys, men and women slaves, she-donkeys and camels. But YAHWEH inflicted severe plagues on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram's wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, 'What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, "She is my sister," so that I took her for my wife? Now, here is your wife. Take her and go ! Pharaoh committed him to men who escorted him back to the frontier with his wife and all he possessed (Bereshith 12:10-20).

Philo, Theodoret Procopius of Gaza, Origen, St Yochanan Chrysostom, St Ambrose and St Augustine, and many others besides of the Fathers of the Church have done their best to explain this passage plausibly and to render it acceptable. Nowadays, informed by the history of ancient civilizations in general and of primitive religions in particular, we are in a better position than the theologians of the past to understand the very slow evolution of the human conscience in far off centuries. We are better prepared than our predecessors to grasp the progressive character of the moral ideal down the ages from the remote past to our own days, so that our historical judgment is less likely to be vitiated by anachronism.

Most certainly it is distasteful for us to find this 'righteous man' and 'friend of YAHWEH' (EI-Khalil, as even to this day the Arabs call the patriarch Abram), this man chosen by YAHWEH, agreeing to the revolting action of surrendering his wife for the purpose of ensuring his own safety. It is true, of course, as we have already seen, that Sarai was also his half-sister, the daughter of the same father, not of the same mother. But this explanation could hardly be sufficient to justify Abram's behaviour to the Messianic followers of the first centuries, and still less to our contemporaries. It must be realized; however, that this method of solving Abram's problem was in no way shocking to the men of his times when the moral standard was much lower. In society then the position of a wife, even a legal wife, was not one of any importance. Tribal organization was still founded almost entirely on male supremacy. The female element appeared merely as a superior kind of cattle, destined to provide the offspring necessary for the continuity of the family, but once this function was performed she could expect the minimum of consideration. In addition, the prevalence of polygamy was a constant encouragement to these primitive peoples to regard as of little importance a wife who, after all, could easily be replaced or duplicated. If at this particular moment in time YAHWEH wished to reveal himself to an individual, a family and then to a nation, to assist the whole of humanity subsequently to rise to a higher state of moral enlightenment, it was precisely because humanity was then at a low moral level.

Indeed we can be sure that Abram's conscience was clear. His contemporaries and the men of his race for some generations to come regarded his behaviour as entirely permissible. Indeed they went further than that. The Hebrew story-tellers and their audiences took particular pleasure in this episode. In the evening before the tent, when the heat of the day had subsided, heads of families would go over the story of Abram and Sarai in the land of the Pharaohs, word for word in the form that they had heard it from the mouths of their fathers and grandfathers. They regarded as a stroke of genius the trick by which the patriarch had outwitted the Egyptian, the worshipper of false gods. Abram had not only avoided the many dangers threatening him but the conclusion of the affair had been even better still -there had been an increase in wealth: He received flocks, oxen, donkeys, men and women slaves, she-donkeys and camels.

This way of saving his own life, by giving up his wife and saying that she was not his consort but his sister, was considered so clever that the same anecdote, as related in the Yahwistic version, was to appear only slightly altered in the Elohistic narrative. According to this second version, which is a doublet, Abram was then at Gerar in the southern part of what was afterwards the land of the Philistines, between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean, a short distance from the coast. There he deceived Abimelech, the king of the country, by passing off Sarai as his sister. But this time YAHWEH took care to warn Abimelech in a dream; the latter, fearing for his life, at once returned Sarai to her real husband and, it seemed impossible not to embellish the tale, accompanied the restitution with gifts of 'sheep, cattle, men and women slaves'. It was a clever story indeed, and one that was to figure even a third time in the history of Yisrael. In this instance it concerned Yitschaq (Abram's son) and his wife Rebekah. The story was one that never grew stale.

It is not inappropriate to point out that this curious and somewhat embarrassing episode constitutes an excellent proof of the authenticity of the Scriptural text. For when, after several centuries of oral tradition, carefully preserved in certain religious and secular centres, the various cycles were written down this unseemly adventure was recorded on three occasions: one located it in Egypt, two others place it in Gerar. Now the scribe, who in the fifth century B.C. was entrusted with combining the various traditional texts which were destined to become what we call the Pentateuch, might well have conflated into a single account the three anecdotes which are repeated; or he might merely have ignored them. For at that late period the moral conscience, which had evolved considerably since the time of the patriarchs, could no longer allow Abram's, or Isaac's, behaviour towards their wives to be approved. But in the event the scribe responsible for the text proved himself an honest historian. Not only did he take care not to leave out the 'immoral' chapter, but he was particularly careful to give in full the three versions which have come down to us. No more obvious proof of scriptural authenticity could be desired. Thus we can be certain that the Scriptural text is here offered to us in its primitive purity, without undergoing manipulation at the hands of a prudish compiler over concerned about public morality.

3 Coming from Mesopotamia or Egypt one 'goes up' to Yerusalem. By reason of the geographical relief one 'went down' when, coming from the mountains of Judaea one set out either towards the delta of the Nile or the upper reaches of the Euphrates.

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