ABSTRACT
More important than the family as a social organism in primitive times among the Semites, in its influence upon and its power over life, was the clan. Despite the position taken by the great anthropologists and sociologists of two or three decades ago, we are coming, under the guidance of later investigators, to see that primitive man was dominated very largely by the clan, while the family in its influence upon him played a subordinate part. The clan as an organisation seems to have antedated the family. Primitive man probably lived under a matriarchate. 1 Kinship was constituted by uterine ties, and descent was reckoned through female lines, the father's relation to his children being ignored. Traces of this origin of the Hebrew clan may be seen in the fact that the harlot had apparently some social position, and in such names as Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, which among the Hebrews were apparently clan names. What are called the sadiqa marriages of the period of the Judges point in the same direction. A study of early Arabian life, though such study cannot by any means take us back to the time under consideration, may be regarded as revealing not only the conditions that existed in the centuries immediately antedating Mohammed, but also with tolerable accuracy the conditions for many centuries anterior thereto. It points in the same direction. In those times, as Robertson Smith has shown, the family was subordinate to the clan. Industry, religion, marriage, and nearly the whole social life of the people, came under the surveillance of the clan. Property rights were vested in the clan, and only the clan had any legal existence practically. A man might marry without the clan only upon such terms as the clan might permit by its customs or by its action in a particular case; a woman might be allowed, where compensation was made, to marry and leave her clan, or she might contract through father or other male relative with a man of another clan, a sadiqa union or marriage, 1 and so remain with her people and bear children for her clan. Unmistakable traces of such unions of members of different clans are found in the old folk-lore tales of the Book of Judges. Jerubbaal contracted, according to story, a sadiqa alliance with a Canaanite woman of Shechem, to whom Abimelech was born. 2 As the fruit of such a marriage Abimelech was supposed to belong to the Shechemites. He took advantage of this fact in seeking to win over the men of Shechem. The Samson story in its simplest form is probably very old. In it the Canaanites of the plain southwest of the vale of Aijalon, in or near which dwelt the clan of Dan, must have figured rather than the Philistines, who later came into this region. This semi-mythical Danite is said to have contracted with a woman of Timnath such an alliance, which was not, however, maintained because of her breach of faith in giving to the Timnathites the answer to his riddle. In the same way, though marriage was usually between members of the same clan, unions may have been formed between members of the different clans among the Hebrews themselves. This seems the more likely from the fact that among these clans, as among the Arabs at a much later day, there were women who as harlots received into their tents or dwellings men of other clans and were not looked upon with disfavour, because they bore children to their clans. The strength of the family tie among the early Hebrews as known to us may be admitted in spite of the predominance of the clan even at this time. Never apparently among the Hebrews was the family tie as loose as in Arabia, where the husband would put a favourite wife with her tent at the disposal of his guest. 1 But despite the growing importance of the family the clan at the time of the settlement had great importance in their eyes, and life was lived chiefly with a view to its aggrandisement. As the clan developed it became incorporated in great tribes, and the family, as the tribe increased in size, became of more importance as a social organisation, but even then new clans were formed within the tribal group, and others incorporated from without.
