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 THE PRESBYTERIAN 
 AND REFORMED REVIEW 
 
 No. 21— January, 1895. 
 
 Edwi-n Coii^-'' 
 
 ~ij \ DO^ 1 I 
 
 ORIGIN AJSTD COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE CRITICISM TO THE RISE OF THE 
 GRAFIAN HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 THE first book of the Bible, perhaps equally with the last, de- 
 serves the title of Revelation. The revelation of the past alone 
 furnishes the key to that of the future. Genesis is second to no 
 book of the Old Testament in its announcement of great truths. 
 These truths are confessedly fundamental ; hence the book itself is 
 fundamental. During the last century and a half critics have been 
 busy with it, as with other books of the Bible. They have started 
 concerning it many questions which perhaps will long await an an- 
 swer. At the same time, continuous and brilliant discoveries in 
 the sphere of Biblical science are quickening the hope that the fas- 
 cinating problem of the origin of Genesis in history is approaching 
 a solution. 
 
 The true point of view in investigating the subject should be the 
 scientific. By this we do not mean that, for the time, we should 
 lay aside our faith in Christ or denude ourselves of every prepos- 
 session. Clearly that would be impossible, were it desirable. We 
 simply mean that we should make an honest, and, as far as the cir- 
 cumstances will permit, a thorough study of the facts involved, and 
 let the facts determine the conclusions reached. This might seem, 
 perhaps, an unnecessary statement or at least a matter best assumed 
 and left unsaid. Under some conditions this would be true ; but so 
 many assumptions enter into the critic's work, and the result is 
 such a variety of types of criticism, that it has become customary 
 1 
 
2 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 to define one's point of view at the very outset of such an investi- 
 gation. 
 
 Kuenen begins his treatise on the Religion of Israel* with an 
 introduction on "our standpoint " and " our sources." His stand- 
 point, in substance, is that Israel's religion is one of the principal 
 religions of the world, " nothing less, but also nothing more." He 
 admits that it purports to be something more ; that its sacred books 
 are unanimous in claiming divine origin. But the same is true, he 
 says, of Islam and Buddhism. No one expects the investigator of 
 the latter religions to start with that belief; why do so then in the 
 case of the former ? Hence he sets out with the fixed rule that the 
 whole class of passages presupposing the supernatural origin of Is- 
 rael's religion are to be ignored. They do not concern the object he 
 has in view. Kuenen contracts still more the limits of his pro- 
 posed research. The Bible, he says, contains " a concatenated his- 
 tory of Israel's fortunes from the earliest times down to the second 
 half of the fifth century B.C." What are we to make of it ? Can 
 we use the Old Testament accounts of the history of Israel as a 
 foundation for our review of its religious development? Can they 
 serve us for a frame into which to fit, each in its place, the memo- 
 rials which have been preserved to us elsewhere — in the prophetic 
 and poetical books? "This is the way," he remarks, "in which 
 the history of Israel and of Israel's religion was formerly written. 
 Are we at liberty to go on this method? Our answer must be in 
 the negative. We must strike out a path for ourselves." Some of 
 the reasons given by our frank critic for this remarkable course Ave 
 will simply name, with no attempt here to test their weight. They 
 are such as these : The narratives of Israel's earliest history " pre- 
 sent all sorts of phenomena which forbid us to recognize them as 
 historical." They did not proceed from contemporaries, but were 
 written centuries after the events of which they treat. We have 
 contradictory accounts of the same event. Sometimes we shall 
 find ourselves at liberty to sacrifice one account to the other. " But 
 very frequently .... we can accept neither of the accounts as 
 trustworthy ;" their only difference being in the fact that one is 
 further from the truth than the other. The representation concern- 
 ing Israel " presented to us in the books named after Moses and 
 Joshua must be rejected as in its entirety impossible." Their prin- 
 cipal element is legend. " Independently of the question whether the 
 Israelites were fed with manna and quails, the account of their forty 
 years' wandering through the peninsula of Sinai must be put aside 
 as unhistorical." " To be acknowledged as real every fact must fit 
 into its place in the historic connection^ By this Kuenen means 
 
 * London, 1874. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 3 
 
 the critic's conception of the connection, not that of the historian. 
 ■"We shall often have to admit," he adds, "that the connection of 
 occurrences can be established in more than one way, but we shall 
 frequently arrive in any case at this position : Such and such cannot 
 have been the sequence of the facts." " Of course, the narratives are 
 what we must start from. How far soever they may be removed 
 from the historical truth, we can deduce from them the whole or 
 a part of that truth, if we only know and observe what meta- 
 morphoses it must have undergone before it assumed the shape it 
 presents in the narratives." Not a little is usually wanting, how- 
 ever, to our knowledge of those metamorphoses. The historical 
 image which we frame (with the best of material) is, to no small 
 extent, the result of our own personality, and therefore the picture 
 hung up by one historian will never entirely agree with that of an- 
 other. How much greater becomes the influence of these personal 
 peculiarities when (as is the case with the Bible) the historical docu- 
 ments are few in number and cannot possibly be taken as they 
 stand 1 Still, he thinks, " we are never left altogether without a test 
 for the results which we have obtained. Our representation of the 
 historical reality may have been formed from conjecture ; neverthe- 
 less it remains susceptible of control. It has been made up from 
 the narratives ; the proof of its truth lies in the fact that it explains 
 in its turn the origin of those narratives ;" that is, of course, that it 
 explains them in a way satisfactory to the critic. 
 
 These are the wide-reaching assumptions with which Kuenen 
 begins his history of Israel. We admire the frankness and clearness 
 with which they are stated, and we make no apology for citing them 
 at length. Other critics who have the same general standpoint 
 are much more reserved in speaking of their mode of treating Bib- 
 lical history. But it is easy to see that, in substance, it is one with 
 his. Prof. Driver,* for example, says, though in a footnote : " Two 
 principles, once recognized, will be found to solve nearly all the diffi- 
 culties which, upon the traditional view of the historical books of 
 the Old Testament, are insuperable, viz.: (1) That in many parts of 
 these books we have before us traditions, in which the original rep- 
 resentation has been insensibly modified, and sometimes (especially 
 in the later books) colored by the associations of the age in which 
 the author recording it lived ; (2) that some freedom was used by 
 the ancient historians in placing speeches or discourses in the 
 mouths of historical characters. In some cases, no doubt, such 
 speeches agreed substantially with what was actually said ; but 
 often they merely develop at length, in the style and manner of the 
 narrator, what was handed down only as a compendious report, or 
 
 * Introduction, p. xiii. 
 
4 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 what was deemed to be consonant with the temper and aim of 
 a given character on a particular occasion. No satisfactory con- 
 clusions with respect to the Old Testament will be arrived at 
 without due account being taken of these two principles."* Our 
 own conviction is that no really satisfactory and lasting conclu- 
 sions can be reached with them. That is the radical difference 
 between the two standpoints ; and that is the reason why in inqui- 
 ries of this sort it is so necessary that there should be a clear under- 
 standing at the start what one's position is with respect to them. 
 Even so much of an idealist as Hegel had quite another conception 
 from Kuenen and Driver of the sphere of the historical critic and 
 wrote with some warmth: "Among us the so-called 'higher criti- 
 cism ' which remains supreme in the domain of philology has also 
 taken possession of our historical literature. This ' higher criti- 
 cism ' has been made the pretext for introducing all the anti-histor- 
 ical monstrosities that a vain imagination could suggest. Here we 
 have the other method of making the past a living reality : putting 
 subjective fancies in the place of historical data, fancies whose 
 merit is measured by their boldness ; that is the scantiness of the 
 particulars on which they are based, and the peremptoriness with 
 which they contravene the established facts of history."f 
 
 The terms " scientific " and " historic," it is evident, are used in 
 widely different senses, in our day, by parties to the same debate. 
 We mean by a scientific examination of the origin of the Book of 
 Genesis, first, a careful ascertainment of all the facts it contains; 
 and, second, a correct, that is to say, a strictly logical, method of 
 
 *The view lield by Hermann Schultz {Old Testament Theology, i, pp. 17-31, 
 passim), like that of Driver, is but a modification of Kuenen's. He says that 
 the " stories about pre-Mosaic times are authorities as to religion as it was in the 
 age of their authors." The Holy Spirit "does not render impossible forms of 
 presentation which may not appear to us quite permissible, but which were, 
 nevertheless, in perfect harmony with the view of the period in question, as, 
 for example, history written with a purpose (Tendenzgeschichte) and pseudonym- 
 ity. For it is only the moral standard actually in force at the time that can be 
 taken into consideration." The Holy Spirit " does not exclude error or ignorance 
 regarding matters of fact." It "illumines the moral and religious life." "Of 
 the legendary character of the pre-Mosaic narratives, the time of which they 
 treat is a sufficient proof." It is also "indicated by their disregarding historical 
 probability, and by the easy tolerance of contradictions in many passages of 
 Genesis which, nevertheless, retain to the full their evidential value in spite of 
 the ridicule which infidelity has frequently cast upon them." "The first three 
 chapters of it (Genesis), in particular, present us with revelation-myths of the 
 most important kind, and the following eight, with mythical elements that have 
 been recast more in the form of legend. From Abraham to Moses we have 
 national legend pure and simple, mixed with a variety of mythical elements 
 which have become almost unrecognizable." 
 
 \Philosop7iy of History, trans, by Sibree, in Bohn's Lib. (London, 1892), 
 pp. 7 and 8. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. » 
 
 deducing conclusions from them. Bj facts "we mean the statements 
 of occurrences as found in the narrative, judged by the ordinary 
 rules of language and subject to the modifications called for by dif- 
 ferent species of literature. In other words, we accept, until clearly 
 disproved, the absolute veracity of the narrator. This seems to be 
 a necessary condition to any proper historical or critical estimate of 
 his work. We do not feel at liberty, with Kuenen, to strike out a 
 path for ourselves ; to say that " such and such cannot have been 
 the sequence of the facts." 
 
 We are equally loth to assume, with Driver, that the account 
 has been " insensibly modified " and freedom used in putting lan- 
 guage into the mouths of historical characters. For, first of all, we 
 regard this method as unscientific. Too much room is left for the 
 play of mere apriorisms. We cannot see how wholly just results 
 are possible by it. Certainly they will have none of the stringency 
 or claim to universal acceptance that attaches to strictly logical 
 reasoning. Does not Kuenen himself in substance acknowledge 
 this when he says that the historical image which we frame by it is 
 " to no small extent, the result of our own personality," and that 
 here, where the documents " cannot possibly be taken as they stand," 
 the influence of one's personal peculiarities reaches its maximum ? * 
 It is true, if certain critics are agreed upon a theory and proceed to 
 adjust the record to it, every fact being made to fit into its place in 
 the assumed historic connection, that a general consensus concerning 
 it among these critics may no doubt be achieved. But the proba- 
 bility of its being upset by the starting of another theory is always 
 imminent. Nothing is more common than a change in one's his- 
 torical or philosophical standpoint. That is all that would be need- 
 ful. It would be otherwise were the basis of agreement objective 
 like the credibility of a narrative. 
 
 Prof. Driver, be it observed, does not fail to see the possibility of 
 evil consequences resulting from the method he adopts if appHed to 
 historical narratives generally, even to those of the Bible. Those 
 who might fear that the foundations of the Christian faith would 
 be imperilled by it, he assures of the contrary. " The records of 
 the New Testament," he says, " were produced under very different 
 historical conditions." " While in the Old Testament, for example, 
 there are instances in which we can have no assurance that an event 
 was recorded until many centuries after its occurrence, in the New 
 Testament the interval at most is not more than thirty to fifty 
 years." 
 
 * "Es ist wahr, dass, wie Ranke sagt, nur die kritisch erforscUte Geschichte 
 gelten kann. Aber, wenn die Geschichte kritisch vernichtet wird, was bleibt da 
 iibrig als die Fiillung der tabula rasa mit modernen Mythen ? "— Delitzsch, Com. 
 uber Genesis (1887), p. 6. 
 
6 2 HE PRE SB JTERIAN AND REFORMED R E VIE W. 
 
 That is not the apparent hope and expectation, however, of man j 
 of Prof. Driver's distinguished colleagues on the continent of 
 Europe ; and it just as little harmonizes with actual results to date. 
 The popular and growing opinion, if it be not yet the prevailing 
 one there, is rather of the sort represented in a recent periodical : — 
 
 " We can know, not what Christ and His work in themselves are, 
 but only what they are worth to us. The seat and source of 
 authority are not the Scriptures as such, but the convictions and 
 certainty aroused through them in the hearts and minds of men. It 
 is accordingly possible to hold the most radical views in regard to 
 the origin, character and history of the Biblical books without 
 thereby endangering their religious worth. Thus in the recent 
 controversy on the Apostles' Creed the representatives of the new 
 views assembled at Eisenach offici§.lly declared that the much 
 discussed, ' conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,^ 
 i. e., the supernatural and preexisting character of Christ does not 
 belong to the fundamentals of the Christian system. 
 
 " This is what this same class of theologians mean by their ' his- 
 torical Christ,' who is placed in the centre of their system. It is 
 Christ, not the eternal equal of the Father, but the son of Joseph 
 and Mary endowed with rich gifts and abilities as a religious teacher 
 of men. In this way the old theological termini technici acquire 
 quite a different significance in the hand of this school, and Luthardt 
 is doubtless correct when he attributes to it as a fundamental error 
 the entwertung of Christian doctrine, that is, depriving the teachings 
 of Christianity of their objective basis."* 
 
 Let it be carefully noted that it is not on dogmatic or religious 
 grounds at all that we here call attention to the disastrous conse- 
 quences of adopting the modern critical method in the New Testa- 
 ment, although, as Driver intimates, it might be a perfectly legiti- 
 mate argument to ply in certain circumstances. We adduce its use 
 and results there rather as further evidence of its unscientific char- 
 acter ; to show that it has less to do with the nature of the material 
 with which it deals, whether it be Genesis or the Gospels, Homer 
 or Paul, than with the hypothesis involved and a certain peculiar 
 way of getting it established and approved. It certainly argues a 
 low estimate of the value of the Bible to set any mere theory of 
 its origin and structure above its credibility : to be willing to sub- 
 stantiate the former at the expense of the latter.f 
 
 *See The (N. Y.) Independent, May 11, 1893, p. 16. 
 
 \ Cf. Kurtz, Die Einheit der Genesis (1846), p. xix : " So lange die destructive 
 Kritik das Judenthum als rein natiirlichen Entwicklungsfortschritt ansieht, so 
 lange sie Wunder und Weissaguagen, Gotteserscheinungen und dgl. fiir reiu 
 uninoglich halt verzichten wir darauf, alls einzelnen ErscLeinungen des alten 
 Test, mit diesem ihrem Standpunkte in cine ihr geniigende Uebereinstimmung 
 
OMIQIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 7 
 
 For our own part, we choose what we conceive to be the true his- 
 torical method over against a palpably false one. It will, at least 
 enable us to secure a complete collection of the facts, and a thor. 
 oughly logical induction from them. Accordingly, until the con- 
 trary shall be found true through the clearest evidence, we shall 
 assume, as in the case of any other book, that the record of Genesis 
 has been honestly made. We have no prejudgments against super- 
 naturalism in the Bible, or against the view that one religion might 
 be essentially different from every other. We are not conscious of 
 being unfitted for Biblical criticism by implicit faith in Jesus 
 Christ. Quite the contrary. He is the supreme Master of truth and 
 every servant of His is, first of all, a servant of truth in its broadest 
 sense. We deny the competency of any man to say that as 
 " believers " we cannot be fair-minded critics. Unbelieving critics, 
 it is true, we cannot be. We claim that the whole spirit of the 
 Bible is against sophistical reasoning, even though it may be 
 brought to its own defense ; yes, especially then. It disowns 
 beforehand the apologetic which does not square with the rules 
 of logic. We believe that candor and humility, united with 
 earnest prayer to God for light and guidance, are necessary con- 
 ditions to the highest success in Biblical investigation as well as 
 in every other undertaking. This, in brief, is our point of view, 
 our working platform. It seems to us to offer the broadest and 
 fairest possible basis for the work in hand. It provides for 
 taking due account of what other critics of every school have 
 done ; it leaves us free, consequences apart, for the widest con- 
 ceivable deductions that are in harmony with the phenomena of 
 our book. 
 
 Even in the seventeenth century and earlier, as is well-known , 
 critical excursions began to be made into the book of Genesis. On 
 the people of that time they had little or no influence. They are 
 chiefly valuable in present discussions as showing a certain drift of 
 sentiment 250 years ago. They had to do mostly with the question 
 of the authorship of Genesis or the Pentateuch, being reasons for or 
 against the view that the author was Moses. The evidence cited 
 for the negative opinion was alleged anachronisms and lack of order 
 in the material. Aben Ezra,* Bonfr6re,t Hobbes,:): and Le Clerc,§ 
 taken together, refer to most of the passages which are quoted in our 
 
 zu bringen, und glauben genug getlian zu haben, wenn uusere Arguinentatioa 
 uas und alien denen, die mit uns auf gleichem historischen und religiosen Bodeu 
 stehen, geniigt." 
 
 * Co7n. in Deut., xxxviii. 5. 
 
 f Pentateuchus 3Josis Com. lllustratua, 1625. 
 
 X Leviathan, 1685, 1839-45. 
 
 § Seniimens de quelgues theologiena de HoUande, 1685. 
 
o THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 day as showing an anachronistic or post-Mosaic coloring. They 
 noted the following: Gen. xii. 6 (cf. xiii. 7), "And the Canaanite 
 was then in the land ;" xiii. 18 (cf. xii. 8), where the name Hebron 
 is given to the earlier Kirjath-arba ; xiv. 13 (cf. xxxix. 14, xii. 12), 
 where Canaan is called " the land of the Hebrews ;" xiv. 14, where 
 the name Dan is given to Laish ; xx. 7, where Abraham is called a 
 nabi^ prophet, a title claimed to be of later origin ; xxxv. 19, where 
 it is said of Ephrath that " the same is Bethlehem ;" xxxvi. 31, 
 where occurs a list of Bdomitish kings of whom it is said that they 
 lived "before a king ruled in Israel;" 1. 10, where is found the ex- 
 pression " beyond Jordan," alleged to be a technical term for the 
 east side of the river. 
 
 Besides these familiar instances, Le Clerc regarded the naming of 
 Cush in ii. 13, and the " tower of Eder " in xxxv. 21, as anach- 
 ronisms, under the mistaken assumption that by the former Ethiopia 
 is meant, and by the latter a tower of the same name in the neigh- 
 borhood of Jerusalem. Texts of a similar kind, apparently over- 
 looked by these earlier explorers, but made use of since, are these : 
 Gen. xii (cf. xiii. 14, xxviii. 14), where an expression supposed 
 to be peculiar to Palestine, and so out of harmony with Mosaic au- 
 thorship, is employed for west and westward, south and southward ; 
 XX. 7, xxvi. 5, where in a narrative of Abraham's time is used an 
 alleged Deuteronomic expression, " my charge, my commandments, 
 my statutes and my laws ;" xxxiv. 7, where it is said of the sons of 
 Jacob that they were wroth because Shechem, the son of Hamor, 
 had " wrought folly in Israel," Israel being then a quite new name 
 for Jacob ; and xxxviii. 8, where the Mosaic law of the levirate is 
 said to be anticipated. 
 
 All that it is necessary to do with these passages just now is to 
 epitomize the results reached. A first glance shows that they are of 
 a superficial character. They are, for the most part, loosely attached 
 remarks, the fuzz of the garment rather than a part of the web and 
 woof. Were it to be conceded that they mean, in each case, what 
 they are supposed to mean by those who cite them for the purpose 
 named, their bearing on the authorship or compilation of Genesis 
 would be but slight. Quite a number, however, cannot be given 
 the sense assigned. Others are simply indications of old customs on 
 which subsequent Mosaic institutions were founded. Others still 
 may be due to prolepsis, a somewhat later occurrence being antici- 
 pated by the still later narrator who need not have been other than 
 Moses. This could have been done in perfect good faith and in per- 
 fect harmony with accepted rules of composition. A verj'^few may 
 be glosses, or editorial accretions, dating from a later period than 
 Moses. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 9 
 
 The most recent theory of the origin of Genesis is by no means able 
 to dispense with the hypothesis of glosses and editorial additions. 
 Taking the work of Kautzsch and Socin as a standard, there are more 
 than a score of the former required in the adjustment of the analysis, 
 while the editorial matter occupies no inconsiderable part of the book. 
 There are at least a hundred instances where the editorial hand is 
 said to appear. The statement often made that, to free the book of 
 Genesis of anachronistic matter, if referred to the Mosaic period, one 
 would need to assume the existence of glosses, may be admitted as 
 valid. The book was subject in its transmission to many of the vicissi- 
 tudes of other ancient books. But if these are the only signs of it, it 
 seems to have suffered to only an infinitesimal degree. The forerun- 
 ners of modern Biblical criticism were not themselves disposed, gener- 
 ally speaking, to claim more for these passages than that they show 
 a later touching up of Genesis, and that in its present form it did not 
 come wholly from the hand of Moses.* So far from being surprised 
 that glosses and editorial remarks appear in a work of great an- 
 tiquity, the real wonder is that in this case they are so few. "When 
 compared with other Biblical works even, they appear as a minimum. 
 
 With respect to certain other features of Genesis, a more radical 
 attitude was assumed by Spinoza f and by Richard Simon,:|: who is to 
 be distinguished from rabbi Simon, a contemporary of Aben Ezra. 
 Spinoza looked upon the whole Pentateuch as a sort of miscellany, 
 the debris of a primitive literature collected by a pious editor of 
 later times and annotated by Ezra. Simon held that the historical 
 portions of the Pentateuch, including Genesis, had been produced, 
 under Moses' direction, by public annalists after Egyptian models. 
 Undoubtedly Simon was correct as it respects the natural effect of 
 Egyptian culture on Moses and his times. The hieratic method of 
 writing came into vogue about 1700 B.C. It greatly stimulated 
 composition of all kinds. The official inscriptions of ihe kings, 
 aside from other and weightier reasons, might readily have sug- 
 gested to the leader of the exodus a similar method of preserving 
 the history of his people. Although the so-called scribe (in the 
 English Bible) and recorder, sopher^ first appears in the time of 
 David, it is interesting to notice the presence of an official of this 
 sort while Israel was still in Egypt (Ex. v. 6) and often later. He 
 was called shoter,^ writer, and we find him associated now with 
 
 * Cf. remark of Weslplial, Les Sources du Pentateuque, p. 59 : " Ces objections 
 de detail sontde celles que I'oa pent reaouveler au sujet des o^uvres les plus in- 
 conlestoes de la litterature antique, sans que rauthenlicil6 de leur auteur soil 
 pour cela mise en question." 
 
 f Tractatus Theologicopoliticus, 1G70. 
 
 X Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, 1678. 
 
 §This word, in the same sense, is at home in the Assyro-Babylonian language. 
 
10 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 the elders (Num. xi, 16), again with the leaders of the army (Deut. 
 i. 15) and with the judges (Deut. xvi. 18). 
 
 Simon based his view as to the mode in which the earlier 
 Biblical history was recorded on the form in which it now appears. 
 For example, he finds, like later critics, though to a much less ex- 
 tent, double accounts of the same event in Genesis. He instances 
 the creation of man and woman in chaps, i and ii. At the same 
 time he suggests a shrewd reason for supposing that one account 
 presupposes the other. The language of the woman to the serpent, 
 quoted in the context, implies that she, as well as her husband, 
 had been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil. If, with some, however, the narrative in chap, ii is held to a 
 strict chronological sequence, she was not created when the com- 
 mand was given and in the language of our later courts might 
 easily have proved an alibi. In the account of the Flood, too, 
 Simon saw, as he thought, evidence of compilation ; but it is not 
 of a sort to help the present-day analysts. In vii. 17 it is said that 
 " the waters increased and bare up the ark and it was lifted up 
 above the earth." In each of the three verses next succeeding es- 
 sentially the same thought of the increase of the water is repeated 
 in somewhat different terms, altogether four times ; but three of 
 these repetitions occur in the document now known as P. So in 
 each of the verses 21-23 of the same chapter Simon notices that 
 the destruction of animal life by the Flood is described in 
 slightly variant forms. Two of these repetitions, likewise, occur 
 in P. These examples indicate a style here and there in Genesis 
 which peculiarly adapts it to the kind of analysis now so popular. 
 At the same time, and equally, they suggest a serious doubt whether 
 the current analysis has been made along really logical lines.* 
 
 The beginning of modern Pentateuchal criticism is generally 
 dated from Astruc (1753).t It certainly attracted to itself from his 
 day a more continuous attention from Biblical scholars. Though 
 Astruc did not himself make the discovery of the peculiar alterna- 
 tion of the divine names, Elohim and Jehovah, in the earlier chap- 
 ters of Genesis, he was the first to use the fact in the interests of 
 critical analysis. It is known that he divided the book principally 
 between two sources represented, as he supposed, by these two titles, 
 holding that only a few minor sections were of other origin. The 
 analysis he made on this basis is not simply interesting in itself, it 
 
 * Astruc also in his Memoires noted this fact of repetition in the matter now 
 ascribed to P in the account of the Flood, and referred vii. 20, as well as vss. 
 23 and 24, to a third document, which he named C. 
 
 f Conjectures sur les memoires originmtx dont il parait que Mo'ise s'est servi 
 pour composer le livre de la Genese, Bruxelles, 1753. 
 
ORiaiN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 11 
 
 is of value for purposes of comparison. Tlie most recent form of 
 it also purports to be closely guided by the use of these titles of Deity. 
 How then does the earliest form compare with the latest? 
 
 We find but a single section where Astruc's division of the Elohim 
 document exactly accords with that of Kautzsch and Socin (chap, 
 xxiii). There are whole chapters which he gives to the Elohist which 
 by them are assigned to the Jehovist ; in which, iu fact, he finds 
 the most of the material. In the other principal document the dis- 
 agreement is not so nearly total, but it is wide. Another thing that 
 is noticeable is the actual dominance given by the earlier critic to 
 the divine names in their control of the material. The later pro- 
 fess to recognize such dominance. But as matter of procedure, they 
 either change the names in numerous instances to suit their ideas of 
 the material (vii. 9, xiv. 22, xvii. 21, xxi. 1, xxii. 11, xxviii. 21, 
 xxxi. 50); or allow them, as historical settings, in instances still more 
 numerous only bare excerpts from the text (v. 29, vii. 16, xix. 29 
 XX. 18, xxi. 1, 33, xxii. 14-18, xxvii. 28, xxx. 24, 27, xxxi. 3 
 xxxiii. 5, 11), ordinarily a single verse and from that down to half a 
 dozen words. It is strongly suggestive of the growth of theory be- 
 yond the bounds of fact. 
 
 Other respects in which Astruc differed from modern critics are : 
 (1) He did not feel absolute confidence in his own analysis, es- 
 pecially that he had just the right number of documents. (2) He 
 did not refer any apparent disorder which he found in Genesis to the 
 original compiler, but to later wholly natural vicissitudes. Moses, 
 he thought, had left his sources in their entirety side by side. These 
 in process of time became more or less confounded with one an- 
 other. (3) His aim in the analysis which he made was to secure a 
 greater harmony in the book, or at least to show where the present 
 supposed disagreements originated. He thought his theory recon- 
 ciled some discrepancies in chronology. With the later critics, on 
 the other hand, the greater number of discrepancies appear only 
 after the analysis is made. (4) If Astruc really achieved, as he 
 fancied, harmony in the chronology by means of his analysis, 
 then the original confusion remains with the present one ; for it 
 differs from the former in the parts the most essential * to such 
 harmony. 
 
 The time has not yet come, perhaps, for a wholly conclusive dis- 
 
 * Speaking of differences of this sort in the life of Abraham, he says : " Tout 
 se trouve en regie pour la suite de la narration et pour I'ordre de la chronologie, 
 parceque le vers. 19 du chap, xxv, qui appartient au m^moire B, va se joindre a 
 la fin du chap, xxiv, qui appartient au nieme memoire et dont il est une suite, et 
 que les dixhuit versets du commencement du chap, xxv se rangent d'eux-memes 
 soux deux autres memoires auxquels il est Evident qu'ils appartiennent." Com- 
 pare the analysis of Kautzsch and Socin. 
 
12 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 cussion of the question why Elohim and Jehovah and other divine 
 titles are used as they are in Genesis. There are certain things, 
 however, which will be among the decisive factors of such a dis- 
 cussion when it comes. (1) Genesis much more than any other 
 Biblical book emphasizes the significance of all proper names. 
 {2) In certain places the same source discriminates between the 
 titles Elohim and Jehovah on the ground of sense or usage. This 
 all allow. For example, in the dialogue of Eve with the serpent, 
 both she and the serpent use throughout Elohim, although before 
 and after this episode the double title Jehovah-Elohim is employed 
 (xiii. 1-6 ; cf. iv. 25, vi. 2, 4, ix. 27, xxxii. 30, 31, xxxix. 9, 
 xliv. 16). (3) Whenever a new name of God is first introduced, 
 like El Elyon, Adonai, El Shaddai, El 01am (xxi. 33), Jeho- 
 vah, apparently for purposes of identification, is associated with 
 it (xiv. 22, XV. 2, xvii. 1), just as, on the same principle, in chaps, 
 ii and iii, where Jehovah first comes into use, it is itself associ- 
 ated, for about a score of times, though put first, with Elohim. 
 (4) Any peculiar alternation of the titles Elohim and Jehovah in 
 successive sections of the text are confined to a little more than the 
 first third of the book ; and in that portion the practice is not uni- 
 form. There are relatively few continuous passages, like chaps, i, ii, 
 iii, xvii and xviii, which are without exception ascribed to one or the 
 other of the documents. In the last ten chapters the name of God 
 is used altogether but forty times, over against thirty-four in the 
 first chapter alone. Of these forty occurrences, thirty-six have the 
 word Elohim, three El-Shaddai, that is, God Almighty, and 
 one Jehovah. While this fact is due, no doubt, to the character 
 of the material, being mainly the history of Joseph in Egypt, it is 
 also evident that less importance is attached now than in the begin- 
 ning to the matter of emphasizing the distinction between Elohim and 
 Jehovah, as titles of Deity. That lesson had already been sufficiently 
 impressed. This is a most important fact of which far too little 
 has been made. It has a most significant bearing, not only upon 
 Astruc's partition of Genesis on the basis of the divine names, but 
 especially upon the present one which, starting with it, carries the 
 analysis through the whole Hexateuch. Moreover, the variations 
 of the Samaritan Pentateuch, given elsewhere, particularly those of 
 the LXX., to which our critics are so prone to resort when it will 
 serve a purpose, and those of the Peshito version, introduce a dis- 
 turbing element into the calculation with which it would be unwise 
 not to reckon. (5) Usage in Genesis shows, and it is to be assumed 
 as fact until disproved, that the title Jehovah is not only pre-Mosaic 
 but pre- Abrahamitic, as Wellhausen and others of his school admit.* 
 
 * OescMcMe der Hebraer, i, 157. Cf. "Wellhausen, Oescldchte, etc., i, 359, and 
 Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, 1893, pp. 53, 53. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. IS 
 
 In addition to the reasons given in a previous work* why Ex. vi. 3^ 
 is not to be understood literally, to the efi'ect that God was not known 
 to the patriarchs under the name Jehovah, one suggested by Kittel 
 and others may be stated. To have sent Moses, he says, to the 
 Israelites with a name for God, the God of their fathers, with which 
 neither they nor their fathers were familiar, would not only have 
 been unexpected in itself, but would most certainly have served to 
 defeat the purpose of his mission. Still further, while such an 
 exegesis of the passage is directly in the face of the usage of Gen- 
 esis, as we have said, and is properly the product of the theory 
 which it is brought to sustain, it is also precarious in view of other 
 recently discovered facts. Much reliance has been placed upon the 
 circumstance that before Moses only one proper name has been found 
 in the Bible compounded with that of Jehovah, namely, Jochebed, 
 the mother of Moses (Ex. vi. 20). This is true, but it is also true 
 of the three other titles of God besides El used in Genesis, and hence 
 is not to be looked upon as singular.f As it respects Jehovah, it is 
 not true of extra-Biblical names. In a private letter received in 
 answer to an inquiry. Prof. Pinches, of the British Museum, writes 
 that he has discovered on the Assyrian monuments many names 
 compounded with the Babylonian equivalent for Jehovah. That 
 is, Jah, Jahu. This is no other than the so-called poetic or shorter 
 form of the Bible. It occurs as early as the twenty-third century 
 B.C. on the monuments. In a text dated 2380 B.C., out of sixteen 
 names of witnesses there is one which has that syllable, and the 
 words thus compounded occur increasingly often after that period. 
 This would carry us back to a time several hundred years before 
 Abraham ; who might easily thus, if in no other way, have become 
 acquainted with the word. If this were the Palestinian origin of 
 the title, as it might well have been, it would help explain the 
 many frequent and peculiar uses of it in the twenty-fourth and 
 some subsequent chapters of Genesis,:}: which have always been 
 
 * Genesis Printed in Colors, p. vi. 
 
 fCf. Nestle, Die Israelitischen Eigennamen, 1876, pp. 44ff. 
 
 X We refer to the circumstance of its extraordinarily frequent use in chap, 
 xxiv, and afterwards whenever there is contact with I^aran. It is even found 
 in the mouth of Laban (xxx. 27 ; of. xxxi. 29. etc.). This fact suggests further, 
 that were Jah to be talten as the earlier form of Jehovah, as some hold (Fried. 
 Delitzsch, Wo lag das Paradies, p. 159ff.). and as now seems not unlikely, instead 
 of a shortened form, then Ex. vi. 3 might be accepted in a literal sense and still 
 not be out of harmony with the usage of Genesis. It would then only be 
 necessary to suppose that the writer of Genesis— who need not have been later 
 than Moses— used this form proleptically in place of the earlier form having 
 the same etymological, but not the same specific sense. Then, too, Ex. iii. 14 
 would furnish a natural transition to Ex. vi. 3. 
 
14 IRE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 somewhat of a puzzle.* (6) There is no evidence in Genesis, or any- 
 other Biblical book, that a distinction of person or authority is recog- 
 nized between Elohim and Jehovah ; but, on the contrary, their 
 identification is complete. (7) If the titles Elohim and Jehovah, 
 severally, are to be understood as characterizing documents, then 
 Elohim should naturally be found with the supposed earlier docu- 
 ment,t and, by every consideration, Jehovah should dominate in the 
 so-called Priests' Code and in all matter of the Hexateuch relating 
 to distinctively religious institutions. And the alleged ^ir-s^ intro- 
 duction of the title Jehovah, in connection with Moses (Ex. vi. 3), 
 were it to be taken as fact, cannot alter this conclusion ; it rather 
 •confirms it. Against this clearly normal arrangement, the assump- 
 tion of a sentiment or usage to the contrary in the later times is 
 without force. Both titles for God were at the service of both 
 writers and of all writers. 
 
 The two principal titles of God occur in Genesis about three 
 hundred and fifty times. The great majority of these occurrences 
 may be readily classified under these three divisions. (1) Elohim 
 is used rather than Jehovah because of the natural difference in 
 the conception of God as Creator and Euler in nature and God in 
 human history, or as Theocratic Ruler. (2) Elohim is used appella- 
 tively, especially to mark the distinction between God and man as 
 such. Here is to be included a considerable number of instances 
 where the word for God is in the construct relation and Jehovah as 
 a proper name would be unsuitable. (3) This name or that is used 
 on the ground that, for one of the above reasons, it has been 
 
 *Cf. Eichliorn, Einleitung, p. 146 : "Gott bat dort (Ex. vi. 3) die Absicht, 
 Mosen, und durcb ibn das bebraiscbe Volk zu versicbern, dass er nun im Begriff 
 «ei, sein altes ibrea Vorfabren gegebenes Wort zu erfiillen — dies ist der Inbalt 
 der nacbslfolgenden Verse (3-7), wie alle Ausleger einmutbig beicrkeanen — wie 
 iinpassend ware im Eingang zu diesem Versprecben eiae Nacbricbl von deni 
 Namen, dea er bei den Patriarcben getragen babe ? Unterscbeidet man nur 
 Satz und Einkleidung, so scbliesst slcb Eingang und Versprecben selbst aufs 
 genaueste an einander an. Nun bedeutet El Sbaddai den almacbtigen Gott, 
 und Jebovab den der unveriinderlicb derselbe bei seinen Gesinnungen bleibt 
 (Ex. iii. 14) ; und mit einem Namen benannt werden bedeutet oft so viel als das 
 wirklicb sein was der Name ausdriickt. Leicbt und naturlicb ist also der 
 Sinn des Verses : ' E*re Vorfabren kannten micb nur als den allmacbtigen 
 Gott, nicbt aber als den, der bei seinen Gesinnungen unveranderlicb bleibt.' " 
 
 fThe circumstance tbat ba-Elobim is used as tbe subject of a sentence in 
 some passages (xx. 6, xxii. 1, 3, 9, xxvii. 28, xxxv. 7, xli. 25, 28, 32, xliv. 16, 
 xlv. 8, xlviii. 15— the last tbree=J) and tbat Elobim is sometimes employed 
 witb a plural verb (xxxi. 53, xxxv. 7) are hardly worth naming as characteris- 
 tics of a document over against another supposed to be, in general, of tbe same 
 age. Tbe fact of Jehovistic and Elobistic Psalms has no direct bearing on the 
 question of the adaptation in Genesis of tbe name of God to the matter in the 
 midst of which it is found. Cf. Konig, Einleit., p. 194. Cf. Lagarde's view 
 <Cheyne, Founders of Criticism, p. 184). 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 15 
 
 employed in a previous section, to which evident though tacit ref- 
 erence is thus made. There are a very few places where the titles 
 are interchanged for one another on grounds not now specially ap- 
 parent ; but, with a single exception, they are all in the last part of 
 the book. Making due allowance for errors in judgment and varia- 
 tions of the text, this is a remarkable result and comes as near as 
 could reasonably be expected of any theory, perhaps, to an expla- 
 nation of the facts. The theory of three continuous documents now 
 current certainly holds, as we have seen, no comparison with it. 
 
 Astruc's theory of two principal sources in Genesis based on the 
 alternation of the divine names found a powerful supporter in Eich- 
 horn.* This scholar, too, greatly extended Astruc's list of alleged 
 duplicated passages, and made much of points of style and phraseo- 
 logy as characteristics of the same. Not a little of his reasoning has 
 been thought worthy of reproduction in later discussions and will be 
 noticed in its place. In other respects Eichhorn as directly antago- 
 nized present positions. For example, like Simon, he discovered 
 duplication in the material where critics now recognize but one 
 document (vii. 21, 22, P) ; pronounced J's narrative cold, P's warm 
 and full of hyperbole — for which, perhaps, his ascribing E's matter 
 to P is a partial excuse (p. 93) ; regarded the genealogical lists of 
 Genesis as a marked sign of antiquity (p. 28) ; disputed, against 
 Ilgen, the existence of E, or the second Elohist altogether (p. 75) ; 
 saw no reason, as is well known, for bringing down the composition 
 of the book below the age of Moses, and agreed with Eeuss f and 
 Wellhausen \ in looking upon chaps, i and ii (?) as an interpola- 
 tion, while most modern critics regard them as the tap-root of the 
 Jehovistic source (p. 134). Eichhorn's chapter on the genuineness 
 of Genesis is very interesting reading and by no means antiquated. 
 
 The next most important critic was Ilgen, § who has been already 
 named. His work was characterized by great independence. He 
 stands at the point of transition between the first theory, of docu- 
 ments, represented by Astruc and Eichhorn and that of fragments, 
 chiefly represented by Vater and Hartmann. Much has been made 
 of Ilgen's original discovery of a so-called second Elohist, of which 
 Hupfeld afterwards availed himself. It has been generally over- 
 looked that it was not of Ilgen's second Elohist that Hupfeld availed 
 himself. The correspondence, for the most part, was only in name ; 
 Ilgen not only did not seek to harmonize his theory with the divine 
 
 * Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1833. 
 \ Oescldchte der Ileiligen ScJiriften, p. 255. 
 X Composition des Eexateuchs, p. 13. 
 
 § Die Urkunden des Jerusalemitischen Tempelarchivs in ihrer Urgeatalt, etc., 
 1789. 
 
16 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 titles, but, as it might almost seem, to establish it in direct spite of 
 them. He assigned most of the matter which before and since has 
 been given to the Jehovist to his second Elohist. What is even 
 more curious, such being the case, he mixed up beyond recogni- 
 tion this Elohist with the first, even in the opening chapter of 
 Genesis (vers. 5, 8, 13, 23, 31). 
 
 The Jehovist, on the other hand, he made begin with the twelfth 
 chapter, and allowed him but an insignificant portion of the material; 
 nothing beyond chap, xxxviii. To cap the climax, he gave to this 
 source the name of first Jehovist for the naive reason that another 
 Jehovist might be discovered in the future. Most remarkable of 
 critics ! He did not look upon his own work as a finality. Still 
 Ilgen did not lack self-assertion. In the minuteness of his analysis 
 he probably outstripped all his colleagues. The division of single 
 verses between different documents may be almost said to have 
 been a rule rather than the exception with him. In sections which 
 he ascribes to the first Elohist alone there are fifty-two such frag- 
 ments of verses and thirty-nine in the second Elohist. He has been 
 commended * for anticipating in the history of Joseph, some of the 
 best results of modern analysis. This is true in any sense to an ex- 
 ceedingly limited extent. Taking chap, xxxvii as an example, we 
 find that he assigns to the first Elohist, that is P, vers. 1-3, 4 in 
 part, 18 in part, 21, 22, 23 in part, 24, 25 in part, 29-31, 32 in part, 
 34, 36, and the rest to the second Elohist. Kautzsch and Socin on 
 the other hand ascribe only ver. 1 and part of 2 to P, the rest to J 
 and E ; and the line of separation dividing the matter assigned the 
 second Elohist agrees only in a single instance with that of Ilgen. 
 A second respect in which Ilgen marks a transition is in his view 
 of the credibility of Genesis. He was at considerable remove from 
 the platform of Astruc and Eichhorn. He began to show what in 
 the parlance of modern criticism, as we have already noted in the 
 case of Kuenen, is known as the " historic sense." This seems to be 
 a kind of preternatural sixth sense which enables its happy possessor 
 to see what others do not, and, at the same time, not to see what it 
 does not wish to. 
 
 If the hitherto peaceful course of the criticism was violently dis- 
 turbed by Ilgen, it received an almost fatal shock from Yater.f 
 Genesis, he maintained, was a heterogeneous collection of single 
 pieces of composition. The line of a vague chronology might, in- 
 deed, be detected running through the separate parts ; but it did not 
 bind them into one connected whole. To prove this Yater used, in 
 
 * Cheyne, The Founders of Criticism, p. 30. 
 
 \ Com. uber den Pentateuch, 1805. Vater was much iafluenced in his views 
 by the works of Geddes, London, 1793, 1800. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 17 
 
 general, the arguments urged in favor of the original theory of docu- 
 ments, the peculiar recurrence of the divine names, repetitions in 
 the narrative, and the numerous superscriptions and subscriptions. 
 To the objection that such a mass of fragments in written form 
 could hardly be conceived of as circulating among the people of 
 Israel, he replied : "Difficult, to be sure, it is ; but it is a difficulty 
 which inheres in the subject, that is, in the form of the Pentateuch 
 as it now appears. And it is far less difficult, and a great deal less 
 artificial, than the theory of two documents covering the same 
 ground, the parts of which have been patched together to make up 
 Genesis."* 
 
 Yater's views were ably supported by Hartmann,f but other- 
 wise had a small and unimportant following. In one respect 
 however, they mark an epoch. Neither Astruc nor Bichhorn had 
 been disposed to detach Genesis from the age of Moses. Ilo-en also 
 left that question untouched, though querying its trustworthiness. 
 But Vater and Hartmann both claimed that it arose long after 
 Moses' time, and that its matter had been greatly affected by tradi- 
 tion ; and from now on the veracity of Biblical statements began to 
 be seriously and persistently called in question, until, at present, its 
 lack of credibility is a fundamental assumption, tacit or outspoken, 
 of a growing number of investigators. 
 
 Naturally the theory of fragments brought the whole subject of 
 Pentateuchal criticism into the greatest confusion; almost every 
 thread of connection was broken. The original elements only re- 
 mained. When DeWette took up the subject anew, he was at a 
 loss, at first, which of the two paths hitherto marked out to follow.;}: 
 In the same work he speaks of the " Jehovah-fragmentist " and of 
 " the plan and style of our Elohist." On one point, however, he was 
 clear. Genesis was no history. A narrator who tells incredible things 
 of this sort, even though he have good intentions, is no historian. He 
 is rather a poet. Genesis is an epic. Our first business with such a 
 book is not with its sources and the question of their arrangement ; 
 it is to determine its essential character as historic or otherwise. 
 
 Ewald, on the other hand, with the majority of scholars, had 
 been strongly repelled by the extreme positions of Vater. In 1823 
 he published a book on the Composition of Genesis, in which he de- 
 fended, on internal grounds, its unity, systematic construction and 
 natural literary growth. He was supported by Drechsler who, a 
 
 * It will be noticed that the epithet " patchwork " applied to tlie compilation 
 theory did not originate with conservative critics (cf. ibid., p. 514). 
 
 \ Historisch-kritische Forschungeti, etc., 1831. 
 
 if It was not till the fifth edition of his Einleitung that DeWette adopted the 
 supplementary theory. 
 
 
18 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 few years later, wrote a book on the Genuineness and Unity of 
 Genesis* Ewald afterwards f partially changed his ground, ac- 
 cepting, in a modified form, the theory of supplements. Clearly 
 this change affected his former reasoning only so far as it rested on 
 insecure hypotheses rather than unalterable facts. As a collection 
 of such facts his work is still of great value. 
 
 The works of Ewald, Drechsler and others determined, to a large 
 extent, the form of the next, that is to say, the third critical the- 
 ory of the composition of Genesis. It assumed the relative unity 
 of the book, one principal source, the Elohistic, being at its basis. 
 This, it was held, had been supplemented from a Jehovistic source. 
 From this fact the theory took its name — the supplementary the- 
 ory. There was a difference of opinion among its adherents as to 
 the Jehovistic sections. Some held that the Jehovist was the 
 author of the entire work. Others, that an editor had added the 
 Jehovistic portions from an original source. All were agreed on 
 one point : the absolute identity in style and point of view every- 
 where of the Elohistic portions, including, of course, the second 
 Elohist. Yet this principle was precisely the opposite of that which 
 had controlled the second theory ; it is hardly less repugnant to 
 that which is now in vogue. The supplementary theory rallied 
 to its standard, first or last, a large proportion of the leading 
 scholars of Germany. It contained enough of truth, moreover, to 
 make its hold comparatively lasting. Even now it is the favorite 
 theory of so clear a thinker as Principal Cave,:}: and one of Ger- 
 many's most noted critics is inclined to give it his preference.! But 
 in 1853 another effort to reshape the material of Genesis was at- 
 tempted. On former occasions a change had been brought about 
 by contradiction, as electric energy is evoked by the contact of 
 opposites. So it Avas to be again. Hupfeld 1| denied the truth of 
 the then universal postulate on which the supplementary theory 
 rested — the unity and homogeneity of the so-called Elohistic source. 
 There were, he held, really two Elohistic sources : one of them, 
 however, being more Jehovistic than Elohistic in its literary and 
 historical character, while both were incrusted with much foreign 
 material. This theory of Hupfeld, as we have shown, is no return 
 to that of Ilgen. Hupfeld used Ilgen's title of second Elohist, but 
 he assigned to it an almost entirely different portion of the text. 
 He found, in short, as he supposed, three independent accounts of 
 
 * Die AchtJieit und Einheitder Genesis, 1838. 
 
 \Jahrbuc7ter fur ^issenscliaftUche Kritik, 1831; Stud, und Kritiken, 1831, 
 
 1833. 
 
 X Inspiration of the Old Testament, 1888. 
 IKlostermann, Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1891, p. 693. 
 )| Quellen der Genesis, 1853. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 19 
 
 the early history of the race of Israel in Genesis. An editor, using 
 a large liberty of adding, subtracting and changing, had merged 
 them in one. 
 
 This new theory of documents, as it respects Genesis, is essen- 
 tially the one advocated to-day by the majority of European critics. 
 The difference is mainly one of chronological order, not of analysis. 
 The sources of Genesis are a first and second Elohist and a Jehovist, 
 with an editor who arranged them in their present form. How 
 radical its departure is from previous theories will appear at a glance. 
 We have already seen that, by its assumption of two Elohists, it 
 denies pointblank the formative principle of the supplementary 
 theory. But, more than that, Hupfeld held, as just noted, and it is 
 now also universally maintained by the adherents of the theory, 
 that the second Elohist is Elohistic only in name. His matter so 
 nearly approaches that of the Jehovist that not a few of the most 
 clever of those holding the theory declare themselves unable to 
 separate one from the other. That is to say, the two Elohistic 
 sources are more unlike one another than the second is unlike the 
 Jehovist. 
 
 Is not this virtually to abandon the position that the titles Jeho- 
 vah and Elohim are, respectively, characteristic signs of distinct 
 sources ? Ilgen was more consistent, in giving up his dependence on 
 the peculiar occurrence of these titles as soon as he adopted the the- 
 ory of three sources. Jehovah and Elohim alike appear in his 
 second Elohist, and may be said to be characteristics of it. His pro- 
 vision for a future second Jehovist is another sign of the same 
 proper concession. Who will deny the possibility of separating 
 from the Jehovistic sections, as they now appear, a second Jehovist 
 who will satisfy, at least as well as the second Elohist, the conditions 
 of an independent source ? Indeed, it has been actually done in 
 the first and last parts of Genesis, and such an hypothesis is an essen- 
 tial part of the current theory. As soon as one yielded the origi- 
 nal assumption that the word Elohim distinguished one source and 
 the word Jehovah another, there was scarcely a limit to which an- 
 alysis along these lines might not readily be carried.* 
 
 Throughout this brief sketch of the early history of tlie criticism, 
 we have been conscious of limitation in the necessity of confining our 
 survey to the book of Genesis. It began with Genesis, but soon spread, 
 as we have seen, to the Pentateuch ; and it now covers a large part of 
 the Old Testament. The view taken of Genesis among our critics, 
 has, no doubt, been seriously affected at times, whether consciously or 
 not, by such a connection. Probably Vater would not have gone so 
 
 *So Cheyne {Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 30) saj's : "The Yah. 
 vists were, in fact, perhaps a school of writers." 
 
20 TEE FBESBTTEBIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 far as he did in his theory of fragments if his view had been confined 
 to Genesis alone. Again, possibly, there would have been a less ex- 
 treme reaction from Vater's theory in the case of Ewald and 
 Drechsler if their point of view had not been chiefly Genesis. It 
 seems at least clear that in the matter of fair treatment Genesis has 
 suffered much more than it has gained, by being regarded as simply 
 one of a class of books similar in material, structure and composi- 
 tion. This was especially true in the chronological adjustment of 
 the supposed sources which was the next problem of the criticism. 
 
 Graf,* entering into the labors of other critics, came to the con- 
 clusion that the Levitical legislation in its present form originated 
 after the Babylonian exile. No special thought of Genesis was 
 then in his mind. His attention was directed at once, by more than 
 one scholarjf to the fact that, by hypothesis, this legislation formed a 
 chief part of one of the great Elohistic sources whose historical 
 material begins with the opening chapters of the Bible. He ac- 
 cepted the suggestion and proceeded to adjust himself to it. " That 
 was my mistake," he replied. " The whole document, inclusive of its 
 editorial additions " — for so he himself regarded this early history — 
 " belongs together and should alike go after the Exile, where I have 
 already put its essential part." With such relative haste, and on 
 such extrinsic and subsidiary grounds, this large portion of Genesis 
 was originally consigned to this distant age with which it apparently 
 had so little afl&nity. 
 
 It was noted above that with Vater and De Wette there entered 
 more generally into the discussion of critical questions another factor 
 having the value of an axiom, which has since greatly affected all 
 conclusions reached — the assumption of the legendary character of 
 earlier Pentateuchal narratives, excepting possibly a substratum of 
 historic fact. The reasoning of Graf and his colleagues, one of whom 
 was Kuenen, was based on such a premise. Hence they felt at 
 liberty to refer the Levitical laws, which by their superscription are 
 Mosaic and by their outward form throughout are actually localized 
 in the wilderness of Sinai, to the time of the Exile. 
 
 This was not, however, the only peculiar principle which was 
 operative with them. A second mighty factor at about this time 
 slipped almost unperceived into the discussion — the theory of historic 
 evolution. Institutions grow ; they never rise spontaneously. That 
 was its watchword. Laws for men do not come down from heaven, 
 though they have often been thought to do so. They spring up 
 
 * Die Oeschichtlichen Bucher des Alten Testaments, 1866. 
 
 \ Archiv Jur musenschaftUche Forschungen, i, p. 466, etc. Notably by 
 Riehm, Stud, und Kritikea, 1868, pp. 350-371). Cf. Kuenen, Ilex. Introd., p. 
 xxxiii. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 21 
 
 gradually and are coincident with the popular need. At some time 
 later still they assume the form of codes. Bible institutions and 
 laws are no exception to this rule. The so-called Mosaic enactments 
 are of too developed a character to be the product of so rude an 
 age. Hence, if we are to have an orderly sequence of the history, 
 they must be transferred to one more befitting their nature. This 
 is the deus ex machina. This explains, as nothing else can, how so 
 tremendous a change of base could take place with so little apparent 
 reason or preparation. " Nothing is simpler," said one of the later 
 critics,* " than the theory of Graf. It was only needful to place a 
 single original authority, which is generally called the ' fundamental 
 document ' .... in the post-exilic times, in the days of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, in order with one blow to put the ' Mosaic period ' out 
 of existence." There is a proverb for which we are indebted to the 
 reformer Huss which seems to be in point : " If you have offended 
 a clergyman, kill him ; or else you will never have peace with him." 
 And there is another preserved among the Jews, not inappropriate: 
 " When the tale of bricks is doubled, that is, when Israel is op- 
 pressed, Moses comes." f 
 
 On the basis of this new adjustment of the documents, the current 
 form of the critical analysis arose. As far as it applies to Genesis, 
 it is as follows : The oldest portions of the book consist of two prin- 
 cipal sources, a Jahvist and an Elohist, together with still earlier 
 Jahvistic fragments. Their date as actual compositions is put at 
 about B.C. 800. A Jehovist compiler united these works into one. 
 The youngest portions of Genesis are represented by the document 
 which begins the Bible, now generally known as P. With many 
 critics chap, xiv stands by itself as of peculiar origin. Subsequent 
 to the Exile, an editor with the style of the latest work, united P 
 with the already combined J E ; and, bating glosses, to him is due 
 the form of Genesis as it now is, including a considerable amount of 
 original matter. It will be seen that this theory, though including 
 the three documents of Hupfeld, is, in one respect, at a wide remove 
 from it. The question of the order of the documents, though passed 
 so lightly over by Graf and his collaborators, is one of vital im- 
 portance in many respects. It involves within itself, indeed, every 
 principle of literary and historical criticism. If it were a trifling 
 thing to sunder from its context one-half the matter of Genesis and 
 transfer it bodily to a period seven centuries away, the whole sub- 
 ject of the criticism would be unworthy the serious attention of 
 scholars. That it is not so regarded even by critics is evidenced by 
 the fact that on this very question, accepting the current analysis, in 
 
 * Duhm, Die Theologie der Propheten, p. 17. 
 t Cf. French, Lessons in Proverbs, pp. 69, 82. 
 
22 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 its general features, they are divided into two opposing camps. No 
 inconsiderable number among them, having a reputation scarcely 
 second to that of Kuenen and "Wellhausen, have never ceased to re- 
 gard Graf's proceeding as a simple tour de force^ justified neither by 
 reason nor necessity. They find it impossible, on any fair critical 
 principles, to harmonize this supposed relation of the sources with 
 their actual contents. And this it is which makes the difference of 
 so great importance. It touches the vital question of the analysis 
 as such at a vital point. It cannot fail to awaken a deep distrust of 
 the methods adopted. 
 
 This completes our hasty sketch of the earlier stages of the 
 criticism. As will at once appear, our object has been less to give a 
 minute and consecutive history of the matter than to show the rela- 
 tion which its several stages hold to one another and to the theory 
 now in vogue. Critics of our day often speak of the generations of 
 similar work which have preceded theirs, whose fruits they now 
 enjoy. They speak of the principles they hold as " dearly bought," 
 being at the expense of weary years of toil and sacrifice. Others 
 have labored and they have entered into their labors. Pentateuchal 
 criticism, moreover, it is alleged, has been a growth, a true develop- 
 ment : first the blade in Simon and Astruc, then the ear in Hupfeld 
 and Graf, and now the full corn in the ear in Wellhausen and 
 Driver. 
 
 If this were a just representation, it would be of considerable sig- 
 nificance. It would have a direct bearing in favor of the correct- 
 ness and the permanence of the scheme of criticism now dominant. 
 Our review has clearly shown that it is not just. There has been 
 no real development. The connection of the present scheme with 
 those which have preceded is outward and at a few points ; not in- 
 ward, organic and vital. Progress even in the spiral form, such as 
 is sometimes predicated of the Church, cannot be claimed ; the 
 criticism swinging alternately from one extreme to another with a 
 slow and steady movement onward and upwgird. Bare continuity 
 has often been singularly wanting. It is not denied that the criti- 
 cism of to-day has received a certain legacy from the past ; but this 
 is mostly of a purely negative character. It has been shown the paths 
 that are not to be followed. So far it has a positive content. It has 
 come to it in a form almost unchanged and with none of the ele- 
 ments of vital increase characterizing a germinal force, moving 
 necessarily and steadily onward towards bloom and fruit. The 
 matter in Genesis to-day held to be post-Mosaic is essentially that 
 pointed out by Aben-Ezra and Le Clerc. The terms Jehovist, 
 Elohist and Redactor are old, it is true, but have become confusing 
 in the new adjustments and are of questionable value. The list of 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 23 
 
 duplicate passages and other literary data, made the ground of the 
 analysis, have no doubt considerably increased with the lapse of 
 time, but it cannot be denied that many of them have been com- 
 pelled to serve contrary purposes by different critics and once and 
 again brought to support conclusions now held to be false. 
 
 There are two things and two only which have come down from 
 the past that are really important. These do greatly modify, may 
 even be said to control the criticism of our day ; but they are 
 assumptions, not facts. There is, first, the assumption that the 
 Bible's own account of Israel's religion is incredible. This pre- 
 pares the way for the second, that Israel's religion arose like other 
 religions about it. They are the two things, moreover, which most 
 stand in the way of reaching scientific results in this direction. To 
 be scientific, of course, one may only assume as a premise what has 
 been proven to be true or is admitted on all sides to be so. Here 
 the other party in the debate, and the one still in possession of the 
 goods, lays strenuous and unabated claim to the very thing which 
 the new, Avithout debate, assumes to be false. It claims that the 
 account which the Bible gives of itself is fact ; that Israel's religion 
 did not arise like other religions about it. And it professes to be 
 able to show that while this view is in itself simpler and more nat- 
 ural than any other proposed in its place, it also accounts far better 
 for the sum of the phenomena involved. 
 
 In conclusion, now, glancing backward for a moment at the 
 course of the criticism as Ave have found it, we fail to discover that 
 order and development which, from current representations, we 
 had been led to expect. On the contrary, it presents a series of 
 opinions so mutually antagonistic and self-destructive that it is dif- 
 ficult to think of them as consecutive parts of the same brief his- 
 tory. To begin with Vater, it is evident that he showed no mercy 
 either to his predecessors' methods or their results. With precisely 
 the same data, he reached results diametrically opposed to theirs. 
 Ilgen, in turn, made use of the divine names to guide his analysis 
 just as Astruc and Eichhorn had done, but differentiated them 
 otherwise, and attached them to the literary material in a way 
 acceptable to no other critic before or since. The third theory was 
 of a more sturdy type than either of those which had gone before 
 it. Ewald and Drechsler, as its precursors, advocated a view of 
 Genesis which as directly antagonized that of Astruc, Eichhorn and 
 Ilgen as it did that of Vater and Hartmann. The best scholarship 
 of Germany gave itself for a long period of time to the discovery 
 and delimitation of a Grundschrift^ a fundamental document sup- 
 posed to lie at the basis of Genesis. The names of Deity were 
 employed in connection with it somewhat as in the theory of Astruc 
 
24 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 and their lines of division now and then coincided. More often 
 they collided and the essential principle of the division was almost 
 entirely another. To Vater's theory, of course, it offered a polar 
 contrast. After the so-called Orundschrift had been completed and 
 generally accepted, Hupfeld appeared to give it a stab in its very 
 vitals. He denied that it was anything of the sort supposed. It 
 was itself a compilation from two exceedingly unlike sources. 
 Hupfeld's theory, notwithstanding the fact that it cut athwart the 
 entire consensus of the ruling criticism and, in addition, brought 
 seriously into question the original and most patent mark whereby 
 sources were distinguished, the use of the names Jehovah and Elo- 
 him, displaced temporarily its predecessor. He had won his way 
 by a bold innovation. Graf, who followed, outdid him in the same 
 tactics. He adopted Hupfeld's documents, but dislocated them in a 
 manner to play havoc with almost every critical principle hitherto 
 advocated. Even Yater admitted a thread of chronological con- 
 nection running through his collection of fragments. Graf virtually 
 denied any literary or logical connection between a quarter of 
 Genesis, taken out in the form of fragments here and there, and the 
 other three quarters, dating their origin centuries apart. 
 
 Again, taking the final outcome of this series of critical efforts 
 as exhibited in the present theory of documents, and comparing it 
 with the varying phases that have preceded, there is, perhaps, an 
 even greater impression of contrariety made. The vital thing in 
 Astruc's theory was the absolute control of the material given to 
 the names of Deity. The present one subordinates these names to 
 other and obscurer tests, and confounds, beyond the recognition of 
 many critics, its Jehovistic and Elohistic matter. The vital thing 
 in Vater's theory was the denial of any real connection among the 
 constituent parts of Genesis. The present finds not simply one con- 
 secutive history therein but three, having each an obvious and close 
 connection of parts. The vital things in the theory of supplements 
 were, first, the fact of its strictly homogeneous Elohistic basis of wide 
 extent and great historical importance ; second, that this Elohistic 
 material bore throughout the marks of the highest antiquity; third, 
 that it was the foundation of Genesis, being itself supplemented, never 
 the reverse. The present theory, taking from this source the larger 
 part of its matter, leaves it the most jejune and uninteresting of docu- 
 ments, scarcely more than a bare coordination of genealogies and sta- 
 tistical statements, with scattered facts from the lives of the patri- 
 archs. From being the oldest, it makes it b}'- centuries younger than 
 either of its companion sources; from being the supplemented original, 
 it is made an adjunct and suppleraenter. The vital thing in Hup- 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 25 
 
 feld's work was his separation of the second Elohist from the first, 
 in contravention of the ripest convictions of contemporaneous 
 scholarship. One of the most serious problems of the present 
 theory, strange to say, is to keep this same second Elohist apart from 
 the Jehovist, so strikingly is it said to resemble it in material and 
 literary form. Finally, the most marked element in the work of 
 Graf was his removal of Hupfeld's Elohist primus to the third 
 place in chronological and literary sequence. It represented a 
 movement in which only a part of those thus far engaged took 
 part. It has left a division in the critical ranks, which is beyond 
 the hope of healing ; a division of such proportions and so involv- 
 ing the fundamental canons of critical judgment as hitherto applied, 
 that along with the so-called consensus should always, in fairness, be 
 named the dissensus of Pentateuchal criticism in the present day. 
 
 McCoRMicK Theological Seminary. Edwin Cone BisselL. 
 
OBJECTIOISrS TO APOSTOLIC AUTHORSHIP 
 
 OR SANCTION AS THE ULTIMATE 
 
 TEST OF CANONICITY. 
 
 IN a former paper the present writer sought to show that apos- 
 tolic origin or sanction is the only valid test of the canonicity 
 of a writing * In his opening paragraph he called attention to the 
 objections so confidently urged against this position, and intimated 
 a purpose to examine them. Unforeseen and unavoidable delays 
 have prevented the execution of that purpose until the present 
 time. 
 
 Pkeliminary Considerations. 
 
 Before considering particular objections, it will be proper to 
 ask the reader's attention to some propositions, the relevancy and 
 importance of which will be seen as soon as stated, and will become 
 more and more manifest as the discussion proceeds. 
 
 I. It will be found that most, if not all, the objections urged grow 
 out of a wrong conception and definition of the term Canon. For 
 instance, if we define the Canon as " a list or catalogue setting forth 
 what books are inspired,"! it will be comparatively easy to fall into 
 the Komish error that ecclesiastical sanction is the ultimate test of 
 canonicity. For, if there be a body authorized to set forth a list or 
 catalogue of inspired books, then there arise two questions only: 
 Where is the body possessed of this authority ? and. What books 
 does it include in its list ? The inquirer might not find it easy to 
 obtain an answer to the first question. Tli'at answered, however, his 
 difficulties would be at an end. The same remark applies, if we 
 adopt the definition of Dr. Gladden. He says : " This word (^. e., 
 Canon) as used in this connection means simply an authoritative 
 list or catalogue. The Canon of the Bible is the determined and 
 of&cial table of contents.":}: If so, we have only to find the party 
 or the Church which has the authority to draw up such a catalogue, 
 
 * Vide The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, April, 1893, p. 246. 
 t Bishop Lynch : vide Thornwell's Collected Wi'itings, Vol. iii, p. 754. 
 X Who Wrote the Bible ? p. 298. 
 
THE FORMATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 261 
 
 stone ; railroads must transport these to their destination ; labor- 
 ers must excavate the ground ; masons trim and set the stone ; car- 
 penters throw the beams and joists, and a score of other kinds of 
 workmen must contribute their shares to the final result. But when 
 the building is at last complete, we turn to the architect and super- 
 intendent, whose intelligence devised and directed every part of the 
 structure, and congratulate him on the building he has given us. 
 In a much more real sense does the New Testament appear to be the 
 work of a Spiritual Architect and Superintendent ; and when we 
 have traced its historical formation, and compare the result with 
 the needs of men, our conclusion can only be, This is indeed both 
 the Work and the Word of God. 
 / i 
 
 Princeton. / ! - GEORGE T. PURVES. 
 
n ^ 1 
 
 Edlwi'm Cor\€ ^i^^«^' 
 
 ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 
 
 CURRENT THEORY OF THE ORIGIN AND STRUCTURE 
 OF GENESIS. 
 
 AS shown in the preceding paper,* the theory of the origin and 
 structure of Genesis, now most widely current among Euro- 
 pean critics, is that it is principally a compilation from three 
 sources. They may be named, in harmony with common usage, J, 
 E and P, the last letter standing for the Priests' code, so called on 
 account of the priestly laws of the middle books found in it. In 
 Genesis it is identified with what we have hitherto known as the 
 first Elohist. It is claimed that none of these sources originated, 
 in a written form, before the tenth century B.C., the date for J and 
 E varying, with different critics, between 1000 and 800 and being 
 sometimes carried even lower. On the other hand, the point of 
 time fixed by Wellhausen, representing the dominant school, for 
 the promulgation of P as a whole, is 444 B.C. 
 
 There is a difference of opinion among critics as to the chrono- 
 logical order of the first two documents, whether it should be J, E, 
 or E, J, though this is a matter relatively unimportant, since the 
 great majority agree that they arose at about the same time. It is 
 not necessary in our consideration of Genesis by itself to enter 
 largely into this subject of the dates of supposed documents. We 
 are more particularly concerned with the analysis ; but the two 
 subjects are more or less involved in each other, a post-Mosaic and 
 relatively late date for all the documents being a necessary corollary 
 to the acceptance of the analysis in its present form. 
 
 Now, at the outset, it is a perfectly fair, and indeed necessary, 
 inquiry whether there were likely to be current in Israel during 
 the periods named, or at any other time, documents of this sort ; 
 and if so, whether it is probable that they were combined in the 
 way supposed. We shall consider these questions before taking up 
 the principal arguments by which the theory is supported. 
 
 Once more, then, and in brief, the current theory may be stated 
 as follows : There were three narratives of Israel's early history, 
 
 * The Pkesbytekiax and Reformed Review, Jauuary, 1895, pp. 1 sq. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSJllON OF GENESIS. 263 
 
 covering much the same ground, which arose centuries after most 
 of the events they profess to record, two of them from three to 
 five, and one of them eight centuries. From these histories our 
 present Genesis was compiled. The compilation was begun about 
 the eighth or ninth century and completed after the middle of the 
 fifth. 
 
 Over against this theory let certain facts be noted. It is at 
 present admitted, on all sides, that the art of writing was well 
 known as early as the Mosaic period. Hence there was no neces- 
 sity on that account for a delay in the record. Neither was it 
 because of a lack of interest on Israel's part in its own history ; for 
 such interest is everywhere apparent. Still further there is an 
 extended list of lost writings, more than a score in all, quoted or 
 referred to in the Old Testament, including all kinds of literature, 
 especially histories. Some of them cover the very period in which 
 our three are supposed to have arisen. To no one of the three has 
 there been discovered the remotest reference. That the earlier and 
 later kings kept annals of the events of their reigns and preserved 
 them with the greatest care there is no doubt. There is just as 
 little doubt that the prophets, in addition to their prophecies, wrote 
 histories of their times. It is also clear, whatever may be thought 
 of the Pentateuch, that several books of the Old Testament are 
 compilations from various sources. But in all cases, as far as we 
 know, the sources are particularly named in the compilations made 
 from them. It would be wholly contrary to analogy, therefore, to 
 expect works of this kind to be made on any other plan, particu- 
 larly at so late a period as from 800 to 400 B.C. It must accord- 
 ingly be looked upon as a suspicious circumstance that Genesis and 
 its companion books, if compiled, were compiled without formal 
 reference to authorities, and that although a score of lost works 
 are cited in the Old Testament the existence of no one of our three, 
 or anything like them, is anywhere hinted at. The later their ori- 
 gin is put, the more mysterious do these facts become. 
 
 There is another fact of importance. A comparison of the three 
 alleged sources of Genesis shows the most remarkable correspon- 
 dence among them as to the chrocological order of occurrences. 
 This is most strikingly illustrated in J and E, which are the fullest ; 
 but is also observable in the outline of P preserved to us. How 
 did it happen that all three adopted in this respect, as far as they 
 go, precisely the same literary form ? A single thread of narrative 
 appears in all, running from Abraham to Isaac and from Isaac to 
 Jacob and from Jacob to Joseph, who is unanimously made gover- 
 nor of Egypt and the rescuer of his family. This connection of 
 the sources is not a matter of main features simply, but extends to 
 
264 2'HE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 single incidents. Step bj step through Abraham's history and that 
 of Jacob in Haran and of Joseph in Egypt, J and E take up the 
 same events and make them follow one another in the same 
 sequence and logical dependence. This is equally true of P at 
 points where he touches the history. In fact, it is this circum- 
 stance chiefly that makes it possible for our critics to divide the 
 text into three so-called parallel accounts. It is strange that it has 
 not occurred to them to ask whether it is at all probable that three 
 independent histories would be constructed on a method showing 
 such a striking and universal likeness. A far more natural postu- 
 late would seem to be, under the condition in which they are 
 found, that the three supposed histories are really mutually sup- 
 plementary parts of one and the same history, and if it be not our 
 present Genesis, it must have been an original work extremely 
 like it.* 
 
 Again, supposing that there were three parallel accounts of the 
 same events, arranged in the same order, actually combined in 
 Genesis, how is their existence severally to be explained ? Works of 
 this sort are not written to-day without a reason ; much less could 
 they be expected to arise without one in the times of Jeroboam II 
 or the Exile. What then was the motif behind each ? We have 
 seen already how the historical matter given to P came to be 
 assigned to the Exile by Graf. It was only as an after-thought 
 and under the compulsion of his theory. He did not look upon it 
 as in itself a connected history ; but as merely prefatory editorial 
 matter. And Graf was right. It is not a history. It is safe to 
 say that it is wholly unlikely that any one at the time of the Exile 
 would have set out to write a work of the importance of P with 
 such an introduction. It is a bare projection without the filling. 
 It is an imperfect skeleton without flesh and blood to complete or 
 make significant the organism. 
 
 It begins with an account of the creation, which is both dispro- 
 portionate and has little direct bearing on the main theme. It is 
 largely made up of genealogical lists, which we could understand 
 as the foundation of a national history, but which are out of place 
 as preparatory to laws of worship. As the document now appears 
 in Genesis, the life of Abraham has no propor beginning and con- 
 tains no clear evidence of the purpose of his being in Canaan. Far 
 too much prominence is given relatively to Lot, Ishmael and Esau, 
 with their families. Isaac's birth is unnoticed, and there is no 
 
 *Prof. Mead calls attentioa to the following circumstance (Journal of Sacred 
 Literature, Vol. x, Part i, p. 50): Tiie Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX. 
 exhibit no variation in the text. The LXX., however, indicates variation in the 
 books of Samuel and Jeremiah. Within a century, tlierefore, after the recen- 
 sion was made the older writings were completely lost. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 265 
 
 record of any divine appearance or pronaise to him. Jacob's life 
 in Paddan-aram, including his marriage and the birth of his chil- 
 dren, is passed over in silence. Joseph is abruptly introduced as 
 being in Egypt without explanation of how he came to be there. 
 A few sentences only are devoted to the entire contents of the last 
 twelve chapters of the book. These are logically disconnected, 
 unintelligible without the accompanying matter, and suggest but 
 the slightest connection with such a work as the Priests' code 
 should be. 
 
 Some critics, it is true, allege that this document was originally 
 fuller than it now is, and contained, in substance, much of the matter 
 now found in the others. This is a wholly unsupported allegation. 
 Were it true, it would serve to bring critics only the more com- 
 pletely into the difficulty just noticed, that of postulating three 
 documents of like contents, arranged in the same chronological 
 order throughout, to supplant a book of the acknowledged external 
 unity of Genesis. Supposing then that the antecedent history of P 
 contained in Genesis is with reference to its legislation, we must say 
 that it is not to the point. It has no real growth, only stages. It 
 is said, indeed, that a progressive revelation in P is shown in the 
 institution of the Sabbath, followed by the Noachic covenant, the 
 law of bloodshed and circumcision, all contained in it. It is true, 
 however, only as the intervening history of J is taken into account. 
 Each of its ten sections is introduced by the same formula : "These 
 are the generations." The code is distinctively religious, ritualistic, 
 and adapted to a congregation ; the introduction is chronological, 
 discursively genealogical and statistical, with only remote sugges- 
 tions of religion and, as the critics say, no worship whatsoever. 
 
 Of the two other works, by hypothesis concerned in the compila- 
 tion, there is much in dispute. First, the place of their origin sev- 
 erally ; secondly, to which the priority belongs ; thirdly, and most 
 important, the matter that is to be referred to each. It is seriously 
 discussed whether one or both originated in the northern kingdom. 
 Dillmann, Kittel and Riehm claim that E preceded J; Kueuen, 
 Wellhausen and Stade, the contrary. Ndldeke, Driver, Strack, 
 and many others, while holding to the existence of two such sources, 
 confess that the task of distinguishing them from one another is 
 beyond them. Strack, in the Preface to his recent Commentary on 
 Genesis, declares that " to separate J and E is, at present at least, 
 absolutely impossible." This fact is all the more important that on 
 their existence as distinct sources depends the validity of the pre- 
 vailing theory of documents over against that of supplements which 
 it superseded ; and indeed the distinction between Elohistic and 
 Jehovistic sources after the twentieth chapter of Genesis. 
 18 
 
266 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 No good purpose would be served by an attempt on our part to 
 harmonize these conflicting views. It is plain, however, that if 
 there were two such works, so nearly alike in contents, order and 
 style that the most acute German and English critics despair of dis- 
 criminating one from the other, and they arose at about the same 
 time in the same neighborhood, at least in the same limited circle, 
 the occasion for both is not apparent. We do not say that their 
 separate existence is impossible, but that it is improbable. That 
 one prefers Elohim as a title for God is no sufficient reason ; and 
 just as little the fact that the Elohist presents, if he does, a nobler 
 conception of God ; makes Him appear in dreams (xx. 3) ; act 
 through the ministry of angels (xxi. 17) ; represents Abram as a 
 prophet and intercessor (xx. 7) ; mentions Jacob as putting away 
 the strange gods and amulets (xxxv. 4) ; shows an antiquarian interest 
 (xxxv. 19) ; and, although he has much to say of Beersheba in the 
 south, generally makes his stories of the patriarchs centre around 
 the sacred places of northern Israel. 
 
 On the other hand, even if we look upon the sources, over against 
 P, as essentially one, as is common, we are not free of difficulties. 
 It must be admitted that JB supplies just the literary and espe- 
 cially the ethical material required to fill up in P what is otherwise, 
 as we have shown, bare projection ; to clothe a mere skeleton with 
 the flesh and blood needful to make it a thing of life and meaning. 
 While, taken by itself, it almost wholly lacks the unity, definiteness 
 of aim and progression of thought which characterize proper his- 
 tory. It is significant that the critics themselves are wont to speak 
 of it as a collection of stories or, as many say, myths and legends, 
 concerning the patriarchs. 
 
 But we are not yet done with our preliminary inquiry whether 
 documents of this sort are likely to have arisen in Israel at the 
 periods named or at any other time. We have seen that with 
 respect to theme, general contents and order of presentation, there 
 is extraordinary agreement among them ; an agreement so remark- 
 able as to make the proposed theory of their origin on that account 
 improbable. An even more surprising circumstance is their dis- 
 agreement in matters of detail. The number of discrepancies and 
 contradictions they contain, when taken out of their present setting 
 and looked upon as separate documents, is simply prodigious. 
 Genesis regarded as essentially a unit presents difficulties, and difficul- 
 ties, to some extent, of the same kind. They are almost infinites- 
 simal when compared with those which a division into three sources 
 compels us to face. Let it be noted, moreover, that no eftbrt is 
 made by the adherents of the theory to conceal or belittle these dis- 
 agreements. With the exception of a few scholars like Strack, they 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 267 
 
 are not only zealously culled out and displayed ; they are made a 
 leading part of the evidence in support of the theory. The follow- 
 ing examples are taken exclusively from the published works of 
 critics supporting this form of the analysis, and to some extent are 
 presented in their own language.* 
 
 We begin with the accounts of the creation of which we are said 
 to have two, one each from P and J f (i-ii. 4'', ii. 4:''-25). P's 
 account, it is claimed, proceeds from lower to higher forms of life. 
 J's, on the contrary, starts with the highest; according to him man 
 first appeared, then vegetation, and then the animals. In P there 
 is a superabundance of water at the beginning, which must be re- 
 moved before vegetation is possible : in J there is too little ; the 
 earth is an arid plain, and water must be first produced. In P man 
 and woman are created together ; so much together, it is said, as to 
 lead some to suppose the writer meant to describe a single individ- 
 ual as combining the peculiarities of both sexes. In J woman is 
 formed the last of the series, after the animals. In P man is made 
 in God's image and given supremacy over the earth at once. In J 
 (chaps, ii, iii) it is a sin for him to seek to be as God, and he is ex- 
 pected to reach supremacy only after deterioration and degradation. 
 
 The second section to be considered is concerned, principally, 
 with a genealogy (chaps, iv, v). Unlike that just noted, 
 where the same event is said to be duplicated, here, what was 
 originally, as supposed, an identical list of names is incorrectly given 
 to two different ancestors : to Cain by J, to Seth by P. It is true 
 that there are only two names alike in the separate lists, and they 
 appear in a different connection ; but this is a slight obstacle. The 
 differences are held to be sufl&cient only to show that the names 
 passed through different hands. Be that as it may, these are the 
 names and the discrepancies the theory involves : Cain, Enoch, Irad, 
 Mehujael, Methushael, Lamech, Jabal, Jubal, Tubal in J; Kenan, 
 Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, 
 Japheth in P. Furthermore " the section iv. 2-16 relates," it is 
 said, " how Cain becomes a murderer, a fugitive, an outcast from 
 the society of men, dreading even to meet men, a typical nomad ; iv. 
 17-24, on the other hand, presents Cain as an agriculturalist, build- 
 ing a city (vs. 17, 18), as if there never had been an event like that 
 narrated in verses 2-16." 
 
 We next come to the narrative of the Flood. There are through- 
 out, it is said, parallel accounts from P and J ; though they clash 
 
 *Cf. especially Hehraica from 1888 Harper's articles on "The Pentateuchal 
 Question." 
 
 t We follow here as elsewhere the analysis of Kautzsch and Socin : Die Genesis 
 mit Aeusserer Unterscheidunrj der Quellenschriften, etc., zweite Aufl., 1891. 
 
268 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 at every turn. According to P, the Flood is caused by convulsions 
 of nature; according to J, by an extraordinary rain. According to 
 P, it began in Noah's 600tli year ; according to J, " after seven 
 days." According to P, the waters prevail 150 days ; according to 
 J, -iO days. According to P, they disappear at the end of a full 
 year from the beginning ; according to J, after about a hundred 
 days. The ark of one has an immovable lighting system ; of the 
 other, a window which can be opened and shut. One has a door in 
 the side ; to the other there is ingress and egress, apparently, over 
 the top, for which there is a covering provided. One reckons the 
 animals received by twos, male and female ; the other by sevens, 
 clean and unclean. One makes the Flood universal, reaching above 
 the highest mountains; the other, local and limited. We take no 
 account here, as we have not before, of supposed differences of style 
 and theological conception; but simply enumerate the more obvious 
 ones connected with the literary presentation. 
 
 The next section extends from chap. ix. 20 to xii. 5. The 
 literary difficulties and discrepancies which the advocates of the 
 analysis find here, should the matter be divided as required, are 
 numerous. At the beginning, Noah is represented as a husband- 
 man cultivating the vine, a role, it is said, quite distinct from that 
 of navigator filled by him in previous chapters. The actions of 
 his sons, in view of the patriarch's drunkenness, is characterized as 
 that of boys rather than of married men over a hundred years old, 
 the irrelevances being enhanced by the fact that but one tent is 
 assigned to father and sons. Noah's utterance of a curse on an 
 innocent person, the son of the true offender, is claimed to be due 
 to a jumble of difi'erent strata in the same document. In harmony 
 with iv. 16-24, the three sons of Lamech are made the fathers of 
 the new world ; while in chap, x it is the three sons of Noah. 
 Moreover, chap, x regards the nations as already settled "after 
 their families, after their tongues," etc., while in chap, xi the 
 whole process of dispersion " and differentiation of language which 
 has been accomplished in one way is (now) done over again in quite 
 a different way." According to P, Abrara got into Canaan by the 
 perfectly natural process of accompanying his father who started to 
 emigrate thither ; according to J, there was an extraordinary call 
 of God to the patriarch to go while he was yet in Ur of the 
 Chaldees. 
 
 In the next division (xii. 6-17), the life of Abram is continued 
 to the birth of Ishmael. Here P knows of no quarrel between 
 Abram and Lot ; they separate simply for want of room, and 
 Sarai has no diificulty with Hagar. J, however, is interested in the 
 domestic difficulties of the patriarchs. P says nothing of Sarai's 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 269 
 
 connection with a foreign court ; J gives two such accounts, and 
 there is another in E, P locates Abram in the Land of Canaan ; 
 J, by the " oaks of Mamre." According to P, Lot settles in the 
 cities of the Plain ; according to J, in the plain of the Jordan. Ac- 
 cording to P, Abram names Ishmael (xvi. 15) ; according to J, it is 
 the mother (xvi. 11). J's account of Abram's journey to Egypt 
 also is claimed to be inconsistent with the dates of P ; and it is said 
 that the supposition that a woman over sixty-five years of age 
 " could so charm the Egyptian court as to endanger her husband's 
 life is inconceivable." In the announcement of Isaac's birth, P's 
 account makes Abram, now become Abraham, laugh (xvii. 17); in 
 J, it is Sarah who laughs (xviii. 12). According to P, Abraham is 
 too old to beget a child (xvii. 17) ; according to J, the trouble is 
 with the age of Sarah (xviii. 11, 12). As to Lot's deliverance, P 
 says it was for Abraham's sake (xviii. 29) ; J, because of Lot's own 
 goodness, that is, his hospitality (xix. 1-3). P represents that Lot 
 was rescued out of the midst of the catastrophe to Sodom (xviii. 29) ; 
 J, that it was before it began (xviii. 22-2-1). In P, God destroys 
 the cities directly (xix. 29) ; in J, through natural means (xix. 24). 
 
 Chap, xiv, taken by itself, has the following inconsistencies. It 
 introduces Lot as in Sodom, but knows nothing of the city's wick- 
 edness. Abraham, who is in such terror for his life in Egypt, is now 
 so much a hero that he risks his life even for a nephew and con- 
 quers the combined forces of four mighty kings. He is also called 
 " the Hebrew," as though never heard of before. Even Jerusalem 
 is mentioned : for that is what is meant by Salem (ver. 18). 
 
 Chaps, xviii-xxiii. carry on the narrative to the death of Sarah. 
 P has not much material, excepting the bargain for the cave of 
 Machpelah ; but the new document E begins with chap. xx. It is 
 said to offer a new version of Abraham's journey to Egypt, as we 
 have before noted, as well as of Sarah's relations to Hagar, and one 
 that is quite incompatible with what has gone before. Sarah is 
 much too old for the occurrence described as taking place at the 
 court of Abimelech (chap. xx). In the matter of Hagar's banish- 
 ment, E represents that she was driven out (xxi. 10) ; J, that she fled 
 voluntarily (xvi. 6). One, that she leaves with Ishmael on her 
 shoulder, although he is seventeen years old (xxi. 14, LXX.) ; the 
 other, that at this time he is still unborn. One makes Ishmael the 
 cause ; the other, Hagar herself. In one, Abraham is the immediate 
 occasion of her going away ; in the other, Sarah. In one, the angel 
 calls down to her from heaven as she faints in the wilderness ; in the 
 other he meets her on the road thither. In one, she is found at the 
 well ; in the other, she herself finds the well. 
 
 In chap, xix-xxviii. 9 the history is carried on to the point 
 
270 TEE FRESBTTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 of Jacob's departure for Haran. As compared with J E, P, as be- 
 fore, knows nothing of family difficulties. Jacob receives his bless- 
 ing, because he is going away ; he goes away because his parents 
 do not wish him to marry in the neighborhood. There is no cheat- 
 ing or rivalry between him and Esau and no hatred or fear 
 engendered. 
 
 The experiences of Jacob in Haran are given in chaps, xxviii. 10- 
 xxxiii. 17. There is too little of P for extended comparison ; but 
 J and E supply the lack. One represents' the appearance to Jacob 
 at Bethel as a theophany ; the other, as a dream. In one, Jacob 
 asks for the dotted and spotted among the cattle ; in the other, 
 Laban proffers them with the hope of getting the better of his son- 
 in-law. In one, Esau answers Jacob's messages, by coming with a 
 troop; in the other, he appears for purposes of reconciliation. 
 Jacob's extraordinary timidity respecting Esau (J) is characterized 
 as out of harmony with his courage in wrestling with a heavenly 
 visitant (E). 
 
 The next division of the text carries us to the beginning of 
 Joseph's history (chaps, xxxiii. 18-xxxvii. 1). The only conflict 
 is between P and J E ; but that is sufficiently remarkable. In the 
 story of Dinah's seduction, Hamor's coming to talk with Jacob, and 
 especially with his sons (P), after the outrage (J), is regarded as pre- 
 posterous ; also, that one proposition should be made by Hamor (P) 
 and another by his son (J). In xxxv. 10 (P), Jacob's new name, 
 Israel, is said to have been given him in Bethel ; in xxxii. 28 (J), 
 at Peniel. In xxxv. 15 (P), Jacob gives its name to Bethel in com- 
 ing from Mesopotamia ; in xxviii. 19 (J), on going there. In one 
 (xxxv. 23-26), Benjamin was born in Paddan-aram ; in the other 
 (xxxv. 16-18, JE), on the way from it. According to one (xxxv. 27- 
 29), Isaac lived till Jacob's return ; according to the other (xxvii. 
 1, 2, 4, 7, 10), he was on his death-bed when he left home. Accord- 
 ing to P (xxxvi. 6-8), Esau left Canaan for Edom after Isaac's 
 death ; according to J (xxvii. 41-44), before it. 
 
 In Joseph's early history (chaps, xxxvii. 2-xli. 57), there are 
 but two complete verses assigned to P. The discrepancies between 
 J and E are as follows : The cause of the trouble with the brethren 
 in one source is Jacob's partiality (xxxvii. 4) ; in the other, Joseph's 
 dream (xxxvii. 11). In one, he is sent to Shechem and finds his 
 brethren there; in the other, be learns on the way that they are in 
 Dothan, and finds them there.'^" According to E, it is Eeuben who 
 saves Joseph's life (xxxvii. 22) ; according to J, it is Judah (xxxvii. 
 26). The former represents that the Midianites steal him and carry 
 him to Egypt ; the other, that Ishmaelites buy him from his 
 
 * The two sources are not separated by Kautzsch and Socin. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 271 
 
 brethren. The Ishmaelites sell him to an Egyptian ; the Midianites, 
 to Potiphar, According to J, Joseph's master imprisons him, because 
 of trouble with his mistress ; according to E, he is simply appointed 
 to service in the prison. In J, Joseph is brought to the notice of 
 Pharaoh, directly through the mediation of his friend, the butler ; 
 according to E, it is through the dream of Pharaoh. 
 
 In the continuation of Joseph's history (chaps, xlii. 1-xlvi. 34), 
 P's material again consists of but two verses (xlvi. 6, 7). The 
 discrepancies between J and E are as follows: The former rep- 
 resents that the restored money is found on the way home at the 
 inn ; the latter, after reaching home, when all are much astonished 
 and frightened. According to the former, Judah offers himself as 
 surety and advocate for Benjamin ; according to the latter, it is 
 Eeuben. The former makes Joseph speak of his brethren as selling 
 him ; the latter refers to it as merely an act of providence. 
 
 The last section of Genesis includes chaps, xlvii. 1-1. 26. Here 
 P appears in greater strength. Compared with JE, he has (xlvii. 5, 
 etc.), it is claimed, an awkward repetition of the arrival and settle- 
 ment of Jacob's family in Egypt ; another and a different account 
 (1. 12) of Jacob's burial in Canaan (cf. 1. 7, 9). In J, Joseph in- 
 forms Pharaoh of the arrival of his kinsfolk; in P (resort to LXX.), 
 the king hears of it by rumor. In one, Joseph introduces his five 
 brethren ; in the other, he introduces his father (xlvii. 7). J makes 
 the land of Goshen Jacob's dwelling-place (xlvii. 4) ; P, the land of 
 Eaamses. In one, Joseph is instructed to take the patriarch's 
 remains to Canaan (xlvii. 29) ; in the other, all the brethren are 
 required to do so (xlix. 29). 
 
 . We have made no effort to present an exhaustive list of the dif- 
 ferences, discrepancies and contradictions found by critics in the 
 text of Genesis, when looked upon as made up of three independent 
 sources. We have probably cited the majority of them. The peculiar 
 stamp most of them bear is apparent on a simple enumeration. 
 They arise by regarding as really contemporaneous what appears in 
 Genesis as different stages of the history ; or, by often treating an 
 added matter of detail which does not shut out or contradict the 
 first, if taken together, as a second account ; or they rest on arbi- 
 trary and incorrect assumptions as to the meaning of certain pass- 
 ages; or on an undue straining of the argument from silence ; or a 
 finical exegesis; or other precarious methods. The important 
 thing is that they principally appear, as we have said, only after 
 the text has been already divided, and as a result of the division. 
 We deny that they inhere in Genesis as it now exists, and point, in 
 proof, to the fact that they are almost entirely modern discoveries. 
 But our object at present is not to show that most of the alleged 
 
272 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 discrepancies are the direct result of the analysis, and hence cannot 
 be used in support of it without the fallacy of reasoning in a circle. 
 It is not to show that they are totally opposed to the spirit of the 
 book in which they are found, to say nothing of the Bible ; although 
 that would be a perfectly legitimate argument in its place. It is 
 rather to call attention to them as literary phenomena, to the fact 
 that they are an essential part of the apparatus of the present 
 analysis, and to what they imply as such. There were in circula- 
 tion in Israel, after the separation of the tribes, long after the 
 erection of the temple, at the very period of Isaiah's prophecies, 
 and during the lives of all the great prophets of the northern and 
 southern kingdoms, down to the Exile itself, confusing and discord- 
 ant traditions of this sort, yet no allusion is made to them in the 
 abundant literature of these periods, albeit nothing could have been 
 regarded as more important. Not until the fifth century is a serious 
 effort made to harmonize them with one another in a continuous 
 history. That effort, as far as discrepancies are concerned, was, to 
 a considerable extent, in a spirit of concealment and equivocation, 
 rather than of the expected ingenuousness and candor. Is such an 
 hypothesis probable ? Possible, of course it is ; but is it at all 
 probable ? Is it in harmony with that strong trend towards politi- 
 cal and religious unity which is acknowledged to have existed long 
 before this time, and which was a necessary effect of the building 
 of the temple and the concentration of the national life about it. 
 There is surely no analogy for such a procedure in the composition 
 of Biblical books, or of any others. 
 
 We are pointed, it is true, to the first book of Samuel and told 
 that an editor has there done this very thing ; that is, united dif- 
 ferent and even contradictory stories concerning the desire of the 
 people for a king, the appointment of Saul as such, and the in- 
 troduction of David at court.* If contradictions of this nature in 
 First Samuel were conceded, the cases would be by no means par- 
 allel. In one, we have a single fact, or a small cluster of connected 
 facts ; in the other, the whole ancient history of Israel and of the 
 world, from a theocratic point of view, down to the time of the 
 Judges. 
 
 We agree with Prof. Koenig in his recent excellent Intro- 
 duction to the Old Testament,-^ that differences in the contents of the 
 Pentateuch cannot, at the start, be denied, on the ground that Israel 
 could not have suffered them, or that the compiler must have 
 removed them. It is quite true that the tradition of Israel need 
 not be regarded as in itself infallible. The question, however, is 
 
 *Hebraica, 1888, p. 66. 
 
 •)• Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1891, p. 172. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 273 
 
 not one of possibility ; it is one of probability, and a choice between 
 opposing theories. That such and so many differences existed in 
 the tradition of Israel at any period assigned for the compilation of 
 Genesis we must regard as unlikely in the extreme. 
 
 Our preliminary view will not be complete without at least a 
 glance at the methods of the compiler, of which we have already 
 given hints. What principles, according to the critics, governed in 
 the compilation? It is assumed that more than one editorial hand 
 appears in Genesis, and that the documents themselves underwent 
 many changes before being united in one work. For our purpose, 
 however, it will be quite just to look upon the present arrangement 
 of the alleged sources and all the editorial matter by itself, as being 
 essentially in one category. The one question is, How, according 
 to the advocates of the analysis, did the original sources come into 
 their present shape ? 
 
 We are met, at the portal, with deprecatorv and damaging ad- 
 missions on the part of the critics. One says, for example, that the 
 compiler did his work on principles which directly exclude one 
 another ; at one time reproducing his sources with the greatest 
 faithfulness, at another considering chiefly the connection and unity 
 of his own work.* Another says that he handled his sources as 
 freely as if he had been their author, but without sufficient insight 
 to see that he was all the time making grave blunders. These are 
 serious charges ; but, as we shall see, they are well within the 
 truth. f It will appear, also, in instances too numerous to mention, 
 that the compiler has deliberately aimed to impose on his readers. 
 That is to say, on evidence submitted by the critics themselves and 
 stamped beyond mistake on the analysis they have made, it can be 
 shown that the compiler was incompetent, inconsistent and, by our 
 modern standards of morality at least, culpably false. In weighing 
 probabilities, accordingly, the question of the mode of the compila- 
 tion becomes one of great importance. 
 
 First, he was incompetent, or, as the critics say, was all the time 
 committing grave blunders. For example, in chaps, iv, vi, ix, 
 xi, he has mixed up with the sources P and J scraps of an earlier 
 stratum of the latter which openly contradict the statements of both. 
 It knows nothing of trouble between Cain and Abel, or, strange to 
 say, of any Flood. It represents the earliest people as migrating 
 peaceably eastward to the land of Nod (why " Nod " we are not 
 told), building cities, cultivating the arts, or, like Noah, engaging in 
 the pursuits of agriculture ; yet, showing an unexplained spirit of 
 rebellion by intriguing with the angels (vi. 1-4). When they begin 
 
 * See Volck, Enticicklungsgeschichte der A. T. Religion, 1891, p. 13. 
 ^ Hebraica, v, p. 68. 
 
274 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 to multiply on the earth, in order to check their too rapid growth 
 human life is limited to 120 years. Their numbers, notwithstand- 
 ing, finally become so great as to awaken Jehovah's anxiety (xi. 6), 
 and he confounds and disperses them at Babel. This is no travesty, 
 but the direct teaching of this documei;t, according to our critics. 
 "With the exception of a part of chap, xlix, these fragments are all 
 that is left of this earliest source now in Genesis. Why could 
 not the compiler have been content to leave out from his introduc- 
 tion, matter so incongruous and so disturbing ? 
 
 Again, genealogical tables, we should suppose, would be the last 
 thing he would fail to understand or to tamper with. Still he did 
 not seem to know that he was attaching the same genealogy to both 
 Cain and Seth as ancestors, notwithstanding the identity of two of 
 the names (chaps, iv, v) ; and, later, mixed together inextricably 
 those of Shem, Ham and Japheth by supplementing the table of P, 
 here and there, from J (chap. x). In chap, xiv he introduces, 
 from some quarter unknown, an episode about Abraham which he 
 might just as well have left out; but which, in calling him "the 
 Hebrew " and making him so courageous in his attack on the con- 
 federate kings, is not only improbable in itself, but out of harmony 
 with its context. 
 
 In Abraham's life throughout, as We have seen, he has allowed to 
 stand many discrepancies of the baldest character, making hodge- 
 podge of the narrative considered as a unit. As a unit, he doubt- 
 less meant his readers to understand and judge it. If his purpose 
 had been to display the documents, some other course would have 
 been adopted. As it is, from either point of view, if the analysis be 
 accepted, the performance was simply stupid. 
 
 In the middle of Genesis his work is especially curious as a speci- 
 men of literary composition. A part of a sentence is often taken 
 from one source and the rest of it from another, or from two or 
 three others. For instance, in xvi. 1, the first part of the verse is 
 given to P, " Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no children ;" the 
 remainder to J, " and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose 
 name was Hagar." In xxi. 1 we have, " The Lord visited Sarah as 
 he had said (J), and (P) the Lord (compiler) did unto Sarah as he 
 had spoken " (P) : in all two authorities and the compiler. Again, 
 in xxvii, 1, (Isaac) " called Esau, his elder son (J), and said unto 
 him," etc. (E). In xxvii. 28, in the report of Isaac's blessing, we 
 read, "God give thee .... of the fulness of the earth (E), and 
 plenty of corn and wine " (J). In xxix. 26 we have, " And Laban 
 said (E), It is not so done in our place " (J) ; ver. 28, " Jacob fulfilled 
 her week (E): and he gave him Rachel" (P). In xxx. 1 it stands, 
 " When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children (P), Rachel 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 275 
 
 envied her sister " (E) ; in ver. 7, " And Bilhah, Rachel's hand- 
 maid (J), conceived again, and (E) bore Jacob a second son " (J) ; in 
 ver. 22, " And God remembered Rachel (P), and God hearkened 
 unto her (E), and opened her womb " (J) : one verse from three docu- 
 ments. In xli. 49, we read : " And Joseph laid up corn (E) as the sand 
 of the sea very much (J) until he left off numbering " (E). In xlix. 
 1, " And Jacob called his sons " (P), followed by the blessing pro- 
 nounced upon them recorded in the next twenty-seven verses from 
 J. These are specimens only of the alleged style of compilation in 
 these sections. What is to be said of it? Is it clever, or is it 
 trivial and nonsensical ? 
 
 How the compiler treated the history of Joseph in general has 
 already been somewhat exhibited. What is taken from P has no 
 sequence and, by itself, is unintelligible. J and E are Tendenz- 
 yescliichte^ one being written to exalt Judah and so in the interests 
 of the southern kingdom ; the other is Ephraimitic, and Reuben, 
 Joseph and his two sons are pushed to the front. How they differ 
 in detail we have seen. These differences the compiler has ordi- 
 narily not disturbed. He has clearly aimed at unity in his recital 
 and yet has left his pages bristling with the sharpest antagonisms. 
 Such was the literary ideal, or shall we rather say extraordinary 
 naivete., of an historian of the age of Isaiah or of Ezra. 
 
 Our difficulties are not a little increased when we consider, at the 
 same time, the other acknowledged qualities of this peculiar char- 
 acter. His consistency was no greater than his capacity. .AV^hy 
 did he put side by side, though so contradictory, at the beginning 
 of Genesis two accounts of the creation and three of the history 
 more immediately following? He felt, it is said, the great intrinsic 
 value of his sources. They held for him almost canonical rank. 
 He wished to preserve and to present as much of them as possible. 
 Still, as we have seen, these revered originals have been swallowed 
 up in oblivion, although more than a score of less valuable ones have 
 been remembered and cited by those who used them. Can that have 
 been really the principle which governed the supposed compiler? 
 It would appear not, except at intervals. It might be thought to 
 be so, to some extent, in the narrative of the Flood and in some sin- 
 gle incidents later. It is not so as between P and J in the history 
 of Abraham ; or as between J and E in the continuation of Genesis. 
 They are made rather to supplement one another, as already noted, 
 for the purpose of securing a consecutive account. There is evi- 
 dence in abundance that the compiler had no such reverence for his 
 material as is supposed. In this same narrative of the Flood, so 
 far from keeping the documentary matter distinct, he has taken single 
 words and phrases from one and inserted them, in a way wholly 
 
276 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 inexplicable, in the midst of the other. In P (vii. 12, 16-17 ; viii. 
 2, 3) there stands where it ought not, a reference to the forty days 
 of rain, the gradual increase and abatement of the waters, to 
 Jehovah's shuttiug the patriarch in. In J (vi. 7, vii. 3, 9, 23) 
 there is twice inserted a peculiar formula of P's description of ani- 
 mal life and a reference to the animals of the ark as entering it by 
 twos, male and female, instead of by sevens, clean and unclean, as 
 might have been expected. Critics unite in saying that this is the 
 work of the editor or compiler. A consistent or even a credible 
 reason for it has not, to our knowledge, ever been given. Did he 
 wish to make them more alike ? It is not consistent with his leav- 
 ing unchanged the bold contrasts claimed to be found in the con- 
 text. In ix. 22 (J^), the document the compiler had before him 
 stated that it v/as Canaan who first saw and called attention to the 
 nakedness of Noah and who was subsequently cursed by him. He, 
 however, inserted the words, " Ham the father of, " before Canaan, 
 thus falsifying the record. Whatever other motive he may h-ave 
 had, it was certainly not one of reverence for this document. Was 
 his object harmony of impression ? So it is asserted. Why, again, 
 seek it in one place, and on so small a scale, to offend grossly against 
 it elsewhere on a large scale ? 
 
 In xiii. 1 (J), in an account of Abraham's going up out of Egypt, 
 the compiler has inserted the words, " and Lot with him, " in order 
 to prepare the way for a remark from P. By doing so he has de- 
 liberately garbled his authority, made it say what, from its point 
 of view, was confessedly false. It shows anything else than a spirit 
 of reverence or a canonical valuation. In chap. xv. 7, 8, 12-16, 
 19-21 (JE), he has wholly changed the complexion of a simple ac- 
 count of a sacrifice by Abraham through the insertion of foreign 
 material. In the history of Jacob and Joseph, in a multitude of 
 cases he has interjected in the midst of his document heterogeneous 
 remarks of his own, changed proper names, transferred words and 
 clauses from one source to another in a way to defy explanation on 
 the grounds given. If anything whatever was sacred to the com- 
 piler it must have been the names of Deity. According to our 
 critics, it is the one supreme mark that distinguishes the sources iu 
 Genesis. Yet, as we have noted, he has changed Jehovah to Elohim, 
 or the reverse, not less than seven times, and by dislocations given 
 one or the other a wrong context more than a dozen times.* 
 
 Under these circumstances we are unable to believe that the sup- 
 
 *Cf. Dr. Green in Hebraica, vii, pp. 35, 36: ""We are told that in some 
 places he carefully preserved minute fragments of his sources, though they are 
 a superfluous repetition of what has been already more fully stated in the lan- 
 guage of other documents, and yet elsewhere he freely omits large and essential 
 
ORlGm AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 277 
 
 posed compiler of Genesis was controlled in his method by rever- 
 ence for his sources. Nor do we discover any one controllino- 
 principle which he has consistently followed throughout his work. 
 If he had desired to present as much of his material as possible, a bet- 
 ter way would have been to have put them in a complete form side 
 by side, like the four Gospels. If, on the other hand, his object was 
 a consecutive history made up from the three, he would have obtruded 
 ■ his authorities much less. From either point of view, we say again, 
 his failure is conspicuous. There does not exist a consistent theory 
 of the compilation of Genesis from three documents. 
 
 Two important features of the compiler's work have been left un- 
 noticed. How did hetreat his three sources as a whole in their rela- 
 tion to one another ? Did he actually handle them as though J and 
 E were first put together and then supplemented long after by P ? 
 This question will be considered later in connection with a discussion 
 of the unity of Genesis. Let it suffice here to say that critics are far 
 from being agreed among themselves on this point. It is acknowl- 
 edged that in putting together the documents not only have J E 
 been supplemented by fragments from P, but J has often been cur- 
 tailed and mangled in favor of P. This is a very strange proceeding, 
 if the current theory of their chronological order be correct. 
 
 Again, the final editor, it is supposed, lived after the Exile. The 
 Hebrew language at the time of the Exile had undergone great 
 changes. Are we able to discover any signs of this late Hebrew in 
 the language which the editor himself uses here and there ? On the 
 contrary, his language is quite homogeneous with the material with 
 which it is interwoven : sometimes that of P and sometimes that of 
 J and E. We are often reminded that we must not require too much 
 of writers in these early times. There is also a danger, and perhaps 
 an equal one, of requiring too little. Genesis, from whatever point 
 regarded, is a great work and has achieved a distinct literary suc- 
 cess. If we may not apply to its composition modern literary rules 
 there should be discoverable intelligible rules of some sort which 
 may be applied to it.* 
 
 portions of them. In some places he preserves unchanged what is represented 
 to be plainly antagonistic, while in other places he is careful to smooth away 
 discrepancies and to give a different turn to variant passages by transpositions 
 or by insertions of his own. He sometimes keeps his documents quite distinct in 
 language and form ; at others he effaces their peculiarities, or blends them inex- 
 tricably together. All these offices must be assumed in turn in order to carry 
 the hypothesis safely through ; but whether such a bundle of contradictions was 
 ever incarnate in any actually existing person, the only proof of his existence 
 being that these contradictory things are alleged about him, every one may 
 judge for himself" 
 
 *The literary critic Andrew Lang, thus speaks of a similar effort at analysis 
 
278 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 The ethical standard of our compiler also presents a serious diffi- 
 cultj. He lived after the prophets of the ninth century ; we might 
 expect in him a reproduction, in some degree, of their spirit. Sup- 
 pose he were Nan Hosea, or Amos, or Isaiah! Isaiah also wrote his- 
 tory (2 Chron. xxvi. 22). It is clear from what has gone before 
 and will appear more fully from what follows that, whoever he 
 was, he often radically disagreed with and corrected his sources. 
 He treated them all alike in this respect. None was an authority 
 for him in any such sense as that he followed it implicitly. He put 
 himself above them. Yet his work shows no such evidence of com- 
 petency and consistency as to justify a position so exalted. In the 
 end he makes himself the authority ; but who and what is he ? Let 
 us illustrate. 
 
 In chaps, ii and iii he inserts, of his own option, Elohim beside 
 Jehovah a score of times. In iv. 16 he makes a scrap of J^ a con- 
 tinuation of J, in such a way as not only to misrepresent both the 
 sources, but, as our critics must and do maintain, the facts. And 
 this mode of combination is habitual with him. It occurs in the 
 majority of cases — and they are a host — where he pieces his 
 sources together. If the unity of Genesis be denied, no other con- 
 
 in classical literature {Longman'' s 3Iagazine, Sept., 1893) : " ' Terrible learning! ' 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold used to say, as he reviewed the performances of Homeric 
 commentators. 'Terrible learning! ' the admirers of the Odyssey must exclaim 
 as they read Homerische Untersucliungen, by Herr U. von Willamowitz Mollen- 
 dorflf. This critic, who has a great reputation for learning and brilliance, dis- 
 covers that the Odyssey is not the best-told tale in the world, not a masterpiece 
 of construction, not very ancient. It is the work, as it stands, of a Botcher, or 
 Patcher, a miserable journeyman poet, who lived about 650 B.C. He took three 
 older epics, which again were based on older lays. He cut them about, docked 
 beginnings and endings, added Book I, and a great deal of other nonsense of 
 his own, dragged in bits of the ancient poems all out of place, and by his tailor- 
 craft, scissors, and patches, this snip stuck and stitched together our Odyssey. 
 Why he did it, what he had to get by it, nobody knows. He was living in an 
 age when poets like Arctinus, Eugammon, Agias, and others were making epics 
 of their own, now lost. Others were turning to lyric effusions. There can have 
 been no great reading public, and where was an audience for the whole Odyssey ? 
 Why did a patchwork come to be accepted as inspired, while the works of Arc- 
 tinus perished? How was Greece, how was all the world deluded into accept- 
 ing a wretched piece of tailor-craft as an epic ? Who paid the tailor ? He got 
 no renown, nobody ever heard his name mentioned, and I fail to see how he 
 could get any solid reward. It was as if Mr. Tupper's continuation of Christa 
 bel were to be accepted as a solid part of the original, and the whole assigned to 
 Chaucer." 
 
 After showing, in a ludicrous way, how the same kind of analysis might be 
 applied to Walter Scott's hanhoe Mr. Lang remarks: • "The German critic of the 
 Odyssey dedicates his collection of mares' nests to Wellhausen, the critic of the 
 Old Testament. Are we to begin to suspect that Old Testament criticism is on 
 the same level as that of the ingenuous dissection of Imnhoe ? This were shock- 
 ing indeed to serious souls." 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 279' 
 
 elusion is possible. In the account of the Deluge, the way he has 
 introduced tiny bits of foreign matter in consecutive narrative, not 
 only destroying thereby its homogeneity but its verity, looks even 
 mischievous. As it stands, we are not allowed to say that in its 
 chronology, its description of the animal life concerned, of the 
 coming, the extent and the going of the waters, the present account 
 is true. We are denied the same prerogative as it respects each 
 source independently. The sole privilege left, accordingly, is that 
 of guessing at the facts. In ix. 18, 22, as we have seen, the com- 
 piler says that Ham was the father of Canaan. This was not true 
 according to J^ ; it was true according to P. Which was right ? Shall 
 we accept the compiler's statement as conclusive ? But he had an 
 obvious purpose in making it : it was to be able to insert here, out 
 of its true place, a fragment from J without too much apparent 
 contrariety. So in xvi. 8-10 he has incorporated two stories of 
 Hagar's flight. In order to present both he is compelled to invent 
 an incident, including an appearance and announcement of an 
 angel of the Lord. In Abraham's experience with Abimelech 
 (chap, xx), he puts into the document E words which are at home 
 only in Abraham's experience with Pharaoh contained in the docu- 
 ment J ; that is to say he falsifies for the sake of an apparent unity 
 which he really fails to achieve. 
 
 In the account of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac (xxii. 2, 14-18), he 
 has inserted the word " Moriah," to give it a quasi-connection with 
 the later temple mountain ; and further on, what purports to be a 
 promise of Jehovah to the patriarch. In xxiv. 6, 7, again, it would 
 appear, in the interests of harmony, he refers to Sarah's death, which 
 is here an anachronism ; it should have been Abraham's. To make 
 what is said to have happened to Isaac in Gerar (xxvi. 1, 15, 18) 
 seem like a new story, although it had appeared twice before in 
 connection with Abraham, he states what, if he were not witless, he 
 knew to be false, — that the famine which drove Isaac to Gerar was a 
 different one from that of Abraham's time ; that Isaac digged again 
 the wells which his father had digged and the Philistines had filled. 
 He puts in E a little later (xxviii. 21), divine name and all, a vow 
 of Jacob to Jehovah which, as far as we can see, was a pure inven- 
 tion. What resources he may have had outside his three histories, 
 it is true, we do not know. But his obvious motive for the inser- 
 tion and his proved untruthfulness elsewhere make the hypothesis 
 of invention the most natural. In xxxi. 51, 52, he has made J use 
 E's word " pillar " of the heap of stones which Jacob and his men 
 threw up as a sign and pledge for Laban. It is a small thing in 
 itself, but involves either carelessness or intentional deception. In 
 speaking of God's appearance to Jacob at Bethel (xxxv. 9), he has 
 
280 TEE PBESBTTEBIAK AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 put in the misleading word " again," and said further, that Jacob 
 set up a pillar and poured out a drink offering thereon ; when he 
 knew, according to our critics, that it was an event which had been 
 described before in another connection ; and that P, his present 
 source, knew nothing of drink offerings at this stage of the history. 
 To secure, amid glaring incongruities, a verisimilitude in the nar- 
 rative of Joseph, he unfairly makes E represent that Joseph's 
 brothers hated him (xxxvii. 5, 8, 10) ; changes the word Judah to 
 Reuben (xxxvii. 21) ; makes J say that the Egyptian to whom 
 Joseph was sold was Potiphar, when J had scrupulously left that 
 unsaid ; puts in the same narrative a wrong, mystifying word for 
 sack (xiii. 27); gives a title of God peouliar to P to E ; twice alters 
 the word Jacob to Israel (xlviii. 11, 22) : and does other like things 
 which space forbids us to enumerate. 
 
 What has been already said suffices to show ad abundantiam the 
 compiler's method. That he dealt honestly with his sources or 
 with his readers will not, in the presence of these facts, be main- 
 tained. If we are to trust the representation of him which our 
 critics have left indelibly stamped on his work, he is wholly un- 
 worthy of our confidence, not to say of our respect. What he has 
 done is withoat value, except as we value his individual opinion, 
 the more or less authentic scraps of information he has here and 
 there given us, and the fragments he has preserved of his supposed 
 authorities. 
 
 Such then, in detail, are the conditions, the actual presupposi- 
 tions reduced to plain statement, which confront us before we take 
 up the arguments urged in support of the current theory 
 of the origin and composition of Genesis. Bating what one will 
 for occasional error of representation on our part, the main result 
 cannot well be wrong. Many a scheme, externally and curso- 
 rily considered, looks plausible which will not bear analysis. To 
 the question whether it is likely that documents of this sort were 
 in circulation in Israel at any of the dates given, we have been 
 compelled to answer : No ; it is not likely. To the further ques- 
 tion whether it is probable, supposing such documents to have 
 existed, that they were put together after the manner indicated by 
 the analysis of our critics, we are compelled to reply with a far 
 more decided negative; to say, in fact, that it is next to impossi- 
 ble. If the make-up of the compiler intellectually were credible, he 
 would, in the circumstances, still be an ethical marvel. Some kind 
 of analogy to this sort of composition, therefore, must be found 
 elsewhere, in connection with the Bible or outside the Bible, or the 
 theory breaks down of its own weight. 
 
 Efforts have been made to find such an analogy. Up to the 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 281 
 
 present time the only one ofifered wortlij of consideration is that of 
 Tatian's Diatessaron, It was an attempted harmony of the Gospels 
 made after the middle of the second century A.D.* Tatian did, 
 in fact, arrange the four Gospels so as to read as a consecutive nar- 
 rative. In doing so he put in, apparently, as much of the matter 
 at his disposal as he well could. He found use for many mere 
 fragments of verses. He was obliged, notwithstanding, to omit 
 not a little — one-quarter of the whole, it is estimated. He likewise 
 made extensive transpositions of the matter. Occasionally he sup- 
 plied a few words in adjusting one section to another. Here and 
 there he put side by side accounts seemingly variant, like those of 
 Luke and Matthew, concerning the birth of our Lord. But when 
 we have said so much, we have said about all that is parallel in the 
 two cases. Things most essential have been left untouched. 
 
 No one would venture to say that the two accounts of our Lord's 
 birth are at all analogous to the two of the creation in Genesis, as 
 they are contrasted by our critics. The earlier compiler changed, 
 falsified — for that is the exact word — his sources at will and made 
 of his three accounts a fourth, which faithfully represented none of 
 them nor the sum of them quite as fully as either. It represented 
 his own caprice. Tatian, on the other hand, it is admitted, made a 
 legitimate and conscientious use of his authorities. The earlier 
 compiler made no reference to the originals ; Tatian did, using dia- 
 critical marks for the purpose. It might be said that the reason in 
 the former case was the fact that they were anonymous. "Who 
 knows that they were anonymous ? and if they were, have we any 
 ground for supposing that the sources cited in Samuel, Kings and 
 Chronicles were not generally anonymous? But that did not prevent 
 an appeal to them. The earlier compiler, in using his alleged 
 sources, seems to have used them up, at least they have never since 
 been heard of. Tatian's work, on the contrary, itself disappeared 
 for a long time ; but his sources remained and were always supreme 
 in the Church at large. 
 
 In Genesis, it is supposed, we have the composite work, not of 
 one person alone, but of two at least; while each of the constituent 
 parts suffered many changes before being united to its companion 
 documents. Still, critics profess to be able to analyze the contents 
 down to jot and tittle with no help from the originals. In the Dia- 
 tessaron we have the work of but one hand, and the originals are 
 before us. So if it be true that " the most hair-splitting analysis of 
 the Pentateuch " is, as one has said, " sober in comparison with 
 this composite Gospel," it has no real bearing in the premises. It 
 
 *See articles by Moore and Mead in the Journal of the Society for Biblical 
 Literature, 1890, pp. 201-215 ; 1891, pp. 44-54. 
 19 
 
282 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 is not the uniting of several documents into one that is so wonder- 
 ful ; it is the ostensible reproduction of the original documents ver- 
 hatim et literatim more than two thousand years later without 
 the sign of a guide or certain knowledge even that there are docu- 
 ments of the sort supposed. We repeat, accordingly, that there is 
 no proper analogy between the Diatessaron and the compilation of 
 Genesis. The appeal to it, in the circumstances, is unwarranted. 
 For such documents as we are alleged to have in Genesis and for 
 such a compilation, there exists, as far as we know, no parallel in 
 history. The whole scheme, in fact, is so extraordinary, so out of 
 harmony with common experience ; especially are the forgeries and 
 falsifications supposed and required " so repugnant to the probabili-- 
 ties of the case," and to any just conception of the "origin and 
 import of the Old Testament ; that nothing but the most incontro- 
 vertible demonstration can be sufficient to establish it." * 
 
 In coming therefore, in the next place, to consider the positive 
 arguments urged in its behalf, we have a right to demand for them 
 absolute stringency. We must have proofs that c'annot be gainsaid. 
 These arguments are of three kinds : supposed repetitions in the 
 narrative ; diverse theological and other conceptions, indicating a 
 wide separation in date ; and differences in style and vocabulary. 
 The first point has been referred to above. The second will be now 
 briefly examined. It is claimed that the documents J E distinguish 
 themselves from P by their theological conceptions. For example, 
 their representation of God is more anthropomorphic, verging on 
 polytheism ; they have much to say of altars, pillars, sacrifices, a 
 feature wholly absent from P ; they make a distinction between 
 clean and unclean beasts, and in other respects anticipate later Mosaic 
 laws. P, on the other hand, is monotheistic, legalistic, carefully 
 abstains from referring to the sacrificial ritual of Moses before its 
 institution, and even from the use of the name Jehovah before 
 Exodus vi. 3, where, according to it, the title has its historic origin. 
 
 It is to be admitted that there are abundant anthropomorphisms 
 in Genesis ; that they are relatively more numerous there than in 
 any other book of the Bible. They would be sufficiently accounted 
 for by the supposition that Genesis is an historical record of early 
 date. Such representations of God belong properly to the child- 
 hood of the race. This supposition, moreover, is far more proba- 
 ble than that later Jews, outraging their deeper convictions, in- 
 vented such anthropomorphisms in order to give an antique color- 
 ing to their own work. 
 
 It is to be denied that P's representation of God differs vitally 
 from that of J E. It is, relatively speaking, no more monotheistic. 
 
 * Mead, I. c, p. 46. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 283 
 
 If the latter lets him say (iii. 22), " Behold the man has become 
 as one of us, " the former puts into his mouth the words (i. 26), 
 " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." It is in P 
 that God is represented as working on six days and resting the sev- 
 enth (chap, i); Enoch and Noah walked with him (v. 22, vi. 9); 
 he talked with the latter ; remembered him ; commanded him to 
 leave the ark, etc. (vi. 13-22, viii. 1, 15-17). Theophanies, a char- 
 acteristic feature of the earlier books, are not peculiar to J E, but 
 are found also in P (xvii. 1, 22, xxxv. 9, 13, xlviii. 3 ; cf. xxxv. 9). * 
 
 In the question of the recognition of religious rites, it is to be re- 
 membered that by theory the material of P is unique, that it is largely 
 genealogical and statistical, and that it makes up only about one-' 
 fourth of the book. Again, naturally, it was to Jehovah, from the 
 first recognized as the theocratic Ruler, that religious worship was 
 paid. Hence we should expect to find references to altars and sacrifices 
 chiefly in a Jehovistic context. But they are not confounded with 
 later Mosaic institutions. Genesis knows of no one especial place of 
 worship ; has no priesthood ; no system of sacrifices ; practices only 
 two sorts of sacrifices ; does not regard sacrifice as even necessary 
 for worship ; notably looks upon the essential thing in it as the 
 spirit in which it is offered, — " If thou doest well," says Jehovah to 
 Cain, " shalt thou not be accepted ? " (i. 7). 
 
 It cannot be proven that by the fat which Abel offered, the spe- 
 cific parts of the animal afterwards enjoined by the Mosaic law are 
 meant. The use of jninchah in the sense of offering, in the context, 
 is quite different from its later technical use.f It was to have been 
 expected that a foreshadowing of subsequent laws would appear in 
 the customs of the patriarchs : like sacrificing, which, however, was 
 only occasional ; like the distinction between clean and unclean 
 among animals offered up (vii. 2) ; the giving of tithes (xxviii. 22) ; 
 outward purification (xxxv. 2) ; the levirate marriage (chap, xxxviii). 
 That they are not the later laws proleptically introduced is evident. 
 They are of a different and more primitive form. The letter of a 
 later law is even broken with impunity by Abraham in marryino- 
 his half sister (xx. 1, 2, 5). 
 
 And if it were not so, P is fully as great a sinner in this respect as 
 its companion documents. It is P that introduces in the first chap- 
 ter of Genesis the term " raoadhim " (seasons), afterwards adopted as a 
 technical term for certain of the Jewish feasts; describes the insti- 
 tution of the Sabbath, the controlling norm of all the feasts (ii. 2), 
 looking straight towards the Mosaic ritual, and at the same time, as 
 
 *This notwithstanding Kcenig's remark {Einleit, p. 225). 
 f The meal offering in the ^Eosaic ritual was never offered by itself, but always 
 in connection with some other sacrifice. 
 
2 Si THE FEESBYTElUAy AXD REFOR.VEB BE VIEW. 
 
 it would seem, prohibits the eating of blood ; lays tlie foundation of 
 the sixth commaudnunu \^ix. 3-0^ ; discourages heathen mar- 
 riages \^xxvi. 85^ ; above all establishes the rite of circumcision as 
 the one fundamental condition of Jewish nationality and describes 
 Israel as already beginning to be a distinct people (chaps, xvii and 
 xx-xiv). If the supposed earlier documents (,JE\ accordingly, are 
 charged with anticipating improperly Mos;\ic institutions, the S5\me is 
 at least equally true of the later. Hence it is irrelevant to speak of P 
 as avoiding the use of Jehovah before Ex. vi, 3 and any reference to 
 clean and unclean animals, etc. \Yhat he does say shows that he did 
 not i'ntenti'onalh/ avoid speakino; of such thintjs. Nor is there anv 
 such distinction between the documents as to subjects treated, as is 
 claimed, if the material be fairly dealt with and an illogical use of 
 the redactor be not resorted to. In xxxv. 14. it is really P who 
 says that " Jacob set up a pillar .... a pillar of stone : and he 
 poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil thereon." And 
 unless a like violence is done to the text, this same source, so f!\r 
 from refraining from the use of the name Jehovah before the sixth 
 chapter of Exodus, uses it a number of times, as though it were the 
 most natural thing in the world ^^vii. 5. xvii. 1, xxi. 1 : cf. the 
 manipulation of the text v. 5^, vii. 10).* We directly challenge, 
 therefore, the conclusion that there is a real diversity of theological 
 conception between JE and P in Genesis and that one more than 
 the other presupposes later Mosaic institutions. They both, in quite 
 a natural manner, prepare the way for such institutions; but they 
 do not presuppose them as already formally existing, f Again, it 
 is claimed that in its treatment of the patriarchal history there is a 
 marked contrast between the supposed sources JE and P. The 
 former, it is held, show a disposition to exalt unduly the ancestoi"s 
 of the Jewish people, while the latter abstains from any extrava- 
 gance of statement concerning them. This is a position which it 
 will be found exceedingly difficult to maintain : not only taking into 
 account the amount and quality of the material involved, but also 
 other facts. It is P that pronounces Noah a " righteous man 
 and perfect in his generation "' ^^vi. 9) ; says of him and of Enoch 
 that they "walked with God" yr. 21^; speaks of God as making a 
 covenant with Abraham and changing his name (xvii. 2, 5); repre- 
 sents him as a mighty prince, of great wealth, among the lords of 
 Canaan (xxiii. 6); shows how the city of Shechem came into the 
 
 ♦The Samar. Pentatfueh, according to Kcenig (EinJ^i"/., p. 163), has Jehovah for 
 Elohim iu vii. 9. xxviii. 4. xsxi. 9. 10. aud Elohiiu for Jehovah iu xiv. 02, 
 XX. 18. 
 
 + Other than theokigical couceptions (cosmological. etc.) will be taken up later 
 in another connection. 
 
ORIGIN AND C'OMPOSiriON OP GENESIS. 285 
 
 power of Jacob and his sons (chap, xxxiv); as well as the others, 
 pictures the greatness to which Joseph, and through him, his family 
 attained in Egypt (from chap, xlij. 
 
 On the other hand, if the predicated sources JE deal more at 
 length with the patriarchal history, it is noticeable that they do not 
 spare the follies or the sins of these ancient worthies. It is in these 
 very sources that we find unsparingly depicted Adam's fatal weak- 
 ness in Eden (iii. 6;; Noah's shameful drunkenness (ix. 20-24); 
 Abraham's and Isaac's cowardly deceptions Cchaps. xii, xxvi;j 
 Jacob's ignoble evasions and subterfuges in his relations with Esau 
 and Laban (chaps, xxviii-xxxiij ; the dreadful treachery and 
 cruelty of Jacob's sons towards certain of the inhabitants of Canaan, 
 necessitating their sudden flight(chap, xxxiv); Judah's unblushing 
 licentiousness and criminal, if unconscious, incest (chap, xxxviiij ; 
 and last, though not least, the lack of natural affection shown by the 
 brethren in their treatment of Joseph and their aged, heart-broken 
 father (chaps, xxxvii-xliii). Under circumstances like these, if 
 it be a question of hif^torical fidelity and simple straightforward- 
 ness of statement whatever the consequences, certainly the alleged 
 documents JE will not suffer when brought into comparison with 
 the supposed more realifctic and phlegmatic narrator of the Exile. 
 
 Once more, it is said of P in this connection, that it is not be- 
 trayed into the bald anachronisms of JE as it respects the arts, which 
 the latter represent as flourishing even with Cain and his immedi- 
 ate posterity, Jabal, Jubal and Tubal, That what is described in 
 Gen. iv. 17-23 (JE) is out of harmony with its assumed date, has 
 never yet been proven. Were it to be so, the reasoning would be 
 equally valid against what is said in Gen. vi. 14-16 (P), where 
 Noah is suddenly called upon and expected to build a store-ship 
 with no other instructions than the most general statement of its 
 form and dimensions ; is required, in other words, to apply the very 
 knowledge of the arts earlier presupposed. The question may be 
 safely left, accordingly, to the candid judgment of any one acquaint- 
 ed with the facts whether they justify the conclusions stated by our 
 critics, or do not rather compel a conclusion diametrically opposite. 
 There is no such diversity in the circle of ideas, theological or gen- 
 eral, in JE and P, notwithstanding that their bounds are first un- 
 alterably fixed by the analysis, as to lead one fairly to infer that they 
 arose at widely different dates. 
 
 The third and final argument for the present analysis rests on 
 alleged differences in style and vocabulary. Here, too, the argu- 
 ment from style is not pressed as between J and E, but only as be- 
 tween JE, taken together, over against P, Now it is freely admitted 
 that, as the material has been divided, there is, in general, a great 
 
286 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 difference in style between these documents. It could not be other- 
 wise; hence, proves nothing. Necessitas non habet legem. It is 
 only saying over again that the matter of P is different from that of 
 the rest of Genesis. The matter mostly determines the style. We 
 have seen how P is made up here. Genealogies and statistics are 
 its bone and sinew. It has but little narrative. J and E are al- 
 most wholly narrative. Set the few purely narrative portions of P 
 alongside those of JE, where they have the same theme and the same 
 context, and there may be a fair comparison. We might, for ex- 
 ample, compare P with J or E in any part of the last half of Gene- 
 sis, if P had matter enough here to allow a comparison. Take 
 chap, xxxiv, which offers, perhaps, the fairest opportunity for it. 
 Diff'erences in style will at once be redaced to the vanishing point. 
 The argument from mere style, consequently, is invalid in the larger 
 part of Genesis ; and where it can be fairly applied, it is without 
 cogency.* The argument from vocabulary is, to some extent, in 
 another category ; although here also the character of the material 
 greatly conditions the question. As a recent writer f has shown, 
 there are two principal points of view from which this part of the 
 literary problem should be considered : that of possible successive 
 or periodic changes indicated in a given vocabulary ; and that of 
 simultaneous changes. As to the first, it is clear that there are ac- 
 tual stages of growth, or, better, of decay indicated in the Hebrew 
 of the Old Testament. The question is, (1) how far does the evi- 
 dence of it appear in the original text of Genesis ; and (2) as far as 
 it may appear does it support the current analysis? 
 
 Results only can here be given. Undoubtedly, as we think, the 
 present Hebrew text may be taken as representing, to a reason- 
 able degree, the original text, whatever occasional and sporadic cor- 
 ruptions it may have undergone. Now, if it be true, as claimed, 
 that the document known as P is of considerably later origin than J 
 
 * One of the best Biblical critics claims a more flowing style in P itself in the 
 latter parts of the book. Tliis is equivalent to abandoning the argument from 
 style altogether. Cf. Tuch, Com. uber die Genesis, p. xlix. 
 
 t Kcenig. Cf. Studien und Kritiken 1893, 3tes Heft, pp. 445-479. " Wodurch 
 sich Tuch 'die leicht erklarbare ' Thatsache das die Schreibart im letzten 
 Theile der Grundschrift geschmeidiger und fliissiger war als sie zu 
 Anfang erscheint, erklitrt, sagt er nicht. Uns will es bediinken, eine solche 
 Thatsache zu erkUiren, gebe es tiberhaupt nur zwei Wege. Entweder liegt 
 zwischen der Abfassung der eiuzelnen Stiicke eines Verfassers, an welchen 
 man Verschiedenheit des Styls bemerkt, ein Zeitraum der lang und reich genug 
 ist, um dem Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in z7ZisRaum zu gestatten, oder 
 aber die Verschiedenheit desbehandelten Gegenstandes, oder des verschiedenen 
 Gesichtpunkts, aus den der niimliche Gegenstand behandelt wird, bringt die 
 Aenderung der Schreibart mit sich, wobei dann freilich im ersten Falle der Styl 
 als Produkt der Nothwendigkeit und im zweiten als Produkt der Freiheit im 
 geisligen Leben erscheint." See Kurtz, Einheit des Pentateuchs, 1844, p. 106. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 287 
 
 and E, especially if it arose at the time of the Exile, while they be- 
 long to the eighth century B.C., the signs of it should not fail in 
 the vocabulary used. This is not only a suificiently long interval 
 for a proper test ; but it is one when the most marked changes of 
 this sort would be likely to occur. If then they are found to exist, 
 under proper conditions, it will be a strong reason not only for the 
 original separate existence of P, but will directly support the time 
 phase of the theory. On the other hand, if they are found not to 
 exist, there is left the second point of view from which the subject 
 may be considered. And we shall inquire whether there are simul- 
 taneous differences in the vocabularies of the three supposed docu- 
 ments of such a nature and such a number as to prove the hypothe- 
 sis of separate documents. 
 
 Before giving the result of our own investigations on the first 
 point, it will be proper to refer to the views of others who have gone 
 over the same ground. Ryssel, a few years since, made the language 
 of the P document a special study. His conclusion, which was in- 
 deed assailed by some scholars, but defended by others of at least 
 equal ability and fairness, was, as it respects our book, to the effect, 
 that it is not only wanting in traces of a late age, but abounds in 
 the indications of a primitive one. Essentially the same position is 
 taken by Dillmann having in view the whole document. After cit- 
 ing a large number of its peculiarities, he says : " Why such expres- 
 sions should be called late is not intelligible That many of 
 
 them are otherwise found only in the later writers is not sufficient 
 to show that they themselves belong to that period." * 
 
 Our first inquiry then concerns the vocabulary of P in Genesis. 
 Does it indicate an origin several centuries after J and E ? One 
 thing is important and one is necessary in the investigation. It is 
 important to show, if possible, stages of change in the use of a word 
 in P ; it is necessary to show that the word actually arose after J 
 and E. Words used by P in Genesis showing possible stages of 
 change are : First, such as have been modified in their root form, one 
 of the consonants within the word being exchanged for another ; or, 
 a soft consonant having taken the place of a hard one. Such are the 
 words meaning lamh^ to cry out and to laugh ; and they are all of 
 their kind that are relevant. Of these, the first is not peculiar to P, 
 J and E also showing the same change (xxx. 32, 33, 35, 40). The 
 same may be said of the second (xviii. 20, a nominal form). 
 While both P and J have the earlier form of the third and neither 
 
 * Ryssel Be EloMsiie Pentateucliici Sermone, Lips., 1878. Cf. Giesebrecht, 
 Zeitschrift fur AlUestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1881, pp. 177-276; Driver, Journal 
 of Philology xi, 201-236; Kuenen, 2 he Hexateuch, § 15, 11; Dillmann, Die 
 Bucher Numeri, Deuteronomium, etc., pp. 063-665. 
 
288 2'HE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 has the later (xvii. 17, P; xviii. 12, J). Hence there is nothing in 
 this class to show the later origin of P. 
 
 A second class consists of words using a different and a supposed 
 later lexical or grammatical form to express the same early idea. 
 Here we find the demonstrative pronoun in two forms, the personal 
 pronoun of the first person singular and the verbs meaning respec- 
 tively to make, or establish (a covenant) and to beget. As it respects 
 these words as a whole, there is no positive evidence that the forms 
 regarded as the later were not in use in the earliest Biblical periods 
 of the language. The question before us therefore is, Does P use 
 only the form apparently latest developed ? or does that form so pre- 
 ponderate in P as to justify the conclusion that it is of later origin? 
 
 As it concerns the demonstrative pronoun, there is a long and 
 short emphatic form in the singular and a long and short form in 
 the plural ; of the former the long may perhaps be regarded as the 
 older. It is found in J (xxiv. 65) and E (xxxvii. 19) in Genesis; 
 but the short form also occurs in Judges (vi. 20) and 2 Kings (fern. iv. 
 25), as well as once in Zechariah (ii. 8), Daniel (viii. 16) and Ezra 
 (xxxvi. 35). Whether the shorter form of the plural be regarded as 
 archaic or not, like the common one, it is about equally distributed 
 in the documents (Gen. xix. 8, 25, xxvi. 3, 4, E. ; Lev. xviii. 27 ; 1 
 Chron. xx. 8, etc.), and so has no bearing. Of the two forms of the first 
 person singular of the personal pronoun, it is true that the shorter 
 predominates in P and also in the later literature. This is impor- 
 tant, but not convincing. The gradual diminution in the use of 
 the longer form is curiously interrupted in Deuteronomy ; while 
 phenomena suggesting a different explanation are presented in the 
 other documents sufficient to break the force of this one example 
 of the kind. For instance, the alternative word for Lord in the Old 
 Testament, Adonai, is not found at all in P in the Pentateuch, to eigh- 
 teen times in J and E. And while used increasingly in later books, it 
 culminates in Ezekiel, where it is found 232 times, or much beyond 
 the sum of all its occurrences elsewhere. The same word, too, presents 
 a notable sign of development. Its literal sense being my Lord, 
 four times in Ezekiel and once in Job the same form has come to 
 have the sense of Lord or the Lord. The history of the word 
 Adonai, accordingly, to go no further, is directly against the con- 
 clusion as to the relative date of P reached from the gradually 
 diminishing use of anoJci in favor of ani. 
 
 Again the two forms of the verb used with covenant do not really 
 belong, as alleged, to different ages, while carrying the same mean- 
 ing. The meaning is not the same ; the causative form having the 
 sense to establish, not to make (a covenant). The context, in every 
 case of its occurrence, abundantly proves this (see chaps, ix 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 289 
 
 and xvii of Genesis ; also Ex. vi. 4 ; Lev. vi. 9). Finally, as it re- 
 spects the verb meaning to heget^ the claim is that P uses the causa- 
 tive form, while J uses the ground form in the same sense. That 
 the causative form is later is inferred from its predominant use in 
 Chronicles (cf. also Jer. xxx. 6) and other late books. This is pre- 
 carious reasoning, since the ground form is also used in the same 
 sense in Chronicles a number of times, as well as in Job, the Psalms 
 and apparently in Isaiah (xlix. 21). But a more serious difficulty 
 with the argument is that the use of this special form by P in the 
 Pentateuch is mostly limited to two genealogies (chaps, v and xi 
 of Genesis). This implies, of course, sources of much smaller dimen- 
 sions than has been surmised. "We are quite ready to admit that 
 the occurrence of two forms of the word side by side with the 
 same meaning makes the impression that different documentary 
 sources are involved in the structure of Genesis ; it does not, how- 
 ever, argue for documents of the sort, and of the extent required by 
 the current theory. 
 
 One other change in vocabulary which might indicate successive 
 periods is where a word or expression solely in use in earlier times 
 has been mostly or wholly supplanted by another having the same 
 sense. There are two pertinent examples of this kind, and they 
 bear decidedly against the relative lateness of P. The first is the 
 case of the word f^or fine linen found in Genesis and the rest of the 
 Pentateuch. With the exception of three examples in Ezekiel 
 (xvi. 10, 13 ; xxvii. 7), this word disappears later, giving place to 
 another. Unluckily for the theory, the older form is far more com- 
 mon in P than in JE, The other case is the collective for ears (of 
 grain). It occurs in the Hexateuch and in P only in this sense (Ex. 
 ix. 31 ; Lev. ii. 14). In E in Genesis, on the contrary, and in 
 later books (Ruth ii. 2 ; Is. xvii. 5 ; Job xxiv. 24, in the singular 
 including Zech. iv. 12), quite another word is found with the same 
 meaning. What adds emphasis to this fact is the employment of 
 the earlier form as the name of a month for which the exilic title 
 was Nisan. 
 
 These are all the examples of what may be called successive or 
 periodic changes in the language of Genesis, having a bearing on 
 our problem. That they make probable the later origin of P, much 
 more that they prove it, no one will care to hold. 
 
 But in the next place, it might be thought that classes of words used 
 exclusively by P in Genesis, and elsewhere only in the later books of 
 the Old Testament, can be cited as showing a later origin for that 
 document. Such lists are to be carefully noted. To give them valid- 
 ity as proofs here, it is necessary to show that they are not likely to 
 have been employed by late writers simply as a part of the common 
 
290 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 stock of words belonging to the sacred literature of the people. 
 Especially it must be shown that P is peculiar in this respect and 
 that the same phenomenon "does not appear in J and E. Examples 
 of P's usage are the following : The word for firmament outside of 
 Genesis (i. 6) appears only in Psalms in two places, in Ezekiel once 
 and in Daniel once; the cardinal number one is used as an ordinal 
 outside of the Hexateuch only in 1 Kings (xvi. 23), but often in 
 the later books ; a peculiar word for possession (Gen. xii. 5) outside 
 the Hexateuch is found only in Chronicles, Ezra and Daniel ; a word 
 for kind^ species, elsewhere only once in Ezekiel ; a word for to swarm 
 elsewhere only once in Ezekiel ; the expression the self-same day 
 elsewhere only once in Ezekiel. But on the other hand there is an 
 expression in J, garden of the Lord (ii. 8, xiii. 10), whose sole rem- 
 iniscence likewise is in one passage in Ezekiel (xxviii. 13) ; a peculiar 
 word for bottle in E (xxi. 1-1, 15, 19), which reappears only in Hab- 
 akkuk (ii. 15) ; a word in J meaning to grieve (xlv. 5, Ni.), found 
 •once in 1 Samuel (but otherwise Nehemiah and Ecclesistes ;) the ex- 
 pression " land of Shinar " (x. 10), ascribed to J, but outside of 
 Genesis found only once each in Isaiah, Zechariah and Daniel ; the 
 pi. of the cardinal one, in the sense of some, a few, in E twice — xxvii. 
 44, xxix. 10, — elsewhere only in Daniel (xi. 20). Hence if one set 
 of passages is valid to prove P late, the other is equally so to prove 
 J and E late. 
 
 Besides, there are words supposed to be peculiar to P which do 
 not appear in the latest books, but fail after Jeremiah. "What is to be 
 said of them? Such are those for waste and emptiness (i. 2) ; the 
 verb for gather together (i. 9, 10, Ni.); the word for sea monsters 
 (i. 21) ; for green grass (i. 11) ; another word for possession (xxiii. 18). 
 And there is an important word rendered lights (Gen.i. 14, a part of 
 P), which assumes a different form in Ezekiel (xxxii. 8). Contrariwise 
 there are expressions assigned to J and E which, if used to some 
 extent elsewhere outside of Genesis, at least have a prominent and 
 sometimes a predominant place in the latest books. Such are the 
 words to prosper (xxiv. 21 Hi.), to bow the head (xxiv. 26), to try 
 (xxii. 10 Qi.) and one for prince (xii. 15). These are fair examples 
 selected from a list of words ascribed to the several documents in 
 Genesis. They certainly do not support the conclusion that it is 
 of later source than J and E ; much less, as far as this book is con- 
 cerned, do they support the assertion of the recent critic that in con- 
 trast with other parts there are entire connected sections of P which 
 in their literary phenomena agree with those of the latest times, and 
 in form, if not in content, must have had their origin in those times.* 
 
 And it is to be noted, still further, that these facts do not stand 
 
 ^ Kcenig, Studien und Kritiken, 1893, Stes Heft, p. 471. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 291 
 
 alone. Equally with the other two supposed sources, P shares in a 
 certain archaic coloring which, in the main, is indisputable. It 
 shows in common with them the use of the masc. of the third person 
 of the personal pronoun as generis communis. The same is true of 
 the word for maiden., one form serving for both genders with a few 
 exceptions throughout the Pentateuch. It has preserved the obsoles- 
 cent form for the nominative case (i. 24:) ; an archaic word for child 
 (xi. 30); an archaic pronominal ending (i. 11) ; does not place the 
 numeral after the word numbered, a custom beginning with Exodus 
 •(xxix. 1) ; retains that of repeating the thing numbered with its num- 
 ber, a custom which disappears after 1 Kgs. vi. 1 ; uses a circumlocu- 
 tion for the ordinal (vii. 11); and contains a multitude of antique 
 phrases (xvii. 14, xxv. 8, etc.). On the other hand, this document is 
 lacking, conspicuously in Genesis, in those signs of decay which mark 
 the Hebrew subsequent to Jeremiah. Dillmann has named nearly a 
 score of them.* This argument, it is true, is negative ; but it is a 
 complete counterpart to the positive side which, to a limited extent, 
 has just been given. It is impossible, therefore, in view of these 
 facts, to maintain that, in contrast with JE, the document known as 
 P had a considerably later origin. 
 
 But another important question remains. Does the vocabulary 
 of Genesis furnish evidence strongly corroborative of the current 
 theory that three diverse documents lie at its basis? That such an 
 argument can in itself be demonstrative, or anything more than an 
 adjunct to others of greater import, none will hold. It is possible 
 here to do little more than to consider the principles by which the 
 facts elsewhere collected are to be judged. There is nothing per se 
 against the assumption that a work like Genesis may be made up 
 from different contemporaneous sources. It is, of course, also pos- 
 sible that these sources may so decidedly differ in literary char- 
 acter from one another that on that ground alone they may be 
 separated from one another to a greater or less extent and degree of 
 certainty. The question is. Are the linguistic peculiarities of Genesis 
 of this sort and have they been so delineated? 
 
 They include a phraseology, as we have seen, which is the com- 
 mon heritage of precxilic Israel. As was to be expected, it has 
 marked features, corresponding to Israel's signal history. In this 
 very excess of literary characteristics, in fact, lies one chief danger. 
 They can easily be set over against one another in extended lists. 
 That process, however, is far enough from determining the sources, 
 although many seem to have thought otherwise. Unless the sources 
 have been conclusively fixed by other means, it is only a scheme of 
 guessing, with the widest margin for caprice. In what book 
 
 * Die Bucher Nameri, Deuteronom., p. G65. 
 
292 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 and by what author have universally accepted critical principles 
 been laid down by which this exceedingly delicate operation of as- 
 signing a given word to one supposed document rather than another 
 is decided?* Undoubtedly the clearest logical rules have been 
 continually violated in the current analysis. 
 
 For example, there are words cited as characteristic of a docu- 
 ment which are found very seldom, or even but once in it. About 
 one-third of the words usually ascribed to P in Genesis are of this 
 character, and one-fourth of them are found but once in the book. 
 How can they be said to characterize the document and at the same 
 time also be used for identifying it when used so seldom altogether ? 
 At most they characterize an insignificant portion of it. The weak- 
 est form of this argument is when it is built on the absence of legis- 
 lative or poetical expressions in material where without literary 
 stupidity they could not be found. There is no composition which 
 with such reasoning might not be proven composite. 
 
 Again, alleged characteristic words are sometimes taken largely 
 from one section of the book, appearing again rarely, if at all, ex- 
 cept in a reproduction of the thought or coloring of that section. 
 This is especially true of the first chapter of Genesis. It has an 
 extraordinary diction and contains signs of being of peculiar origin. 
 We would not be surprised to find that it forms, with the three 
 next succeeding verses, one of the original sources of Genesis. But 
 it is assumed to represent P, and, strange to say, 18 out of 42 words 
 referred to this document in Genesis first occur in it and in but few 
 passages elsewhere. This is a risky proceeding, especially so when 
 to this fact is added another, — that critics are by no means agreed 
 in ascribing this chapter in its present form to P.f 
 
 Again, words are named as peculiar to a document because, as the 
 supposed sources have been delineated, they appear alone or appear 
 oftener in it than elsewhere. This is obviously a non sequitur^ how- 
 ever often they may appear. It might be merely incidental, as can 
 be shown by almost any piece of composition. To make the argu- 
 ment of value it must be shown that there was occasion for the 
 
 * An article by Kcenig in tlie Studien und Krit. (189B, 3), " Der Spracli- 
 beweis in der Litteraturkritik," etc., we have already referred to. It is late in 
 appearing and covers tlie ground only to a very limited degree, though in itself 
 valuable. Cf. also his De criticce s. argumento, etc., 1879. 
 
 \ Hebraica, iv, 220, v. 24: "The first chapter of Genesis is supposed by 
 most critics not to be original with P, but to have been incorporated by him in 
 his work from some outside source. If this be true, it should not be cited as a 
 specimen of P's style. The sublimity and stateliness which characterize it are 
 not to be found in so striking a degree in other portions of P's work. Still, 
 whatever its source, the chapter has been thoroughly worked over and may 
 fairly represent P, while ch. ii. 1-4*, which is eminently characteristic of P, 
 plentifully [sic} supplies anything that may be lacking." 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 293 
 
 occurrence of just these words the same number of times in the con- 
 trasted document. For instance, the word used for kind or species 
 in the first chapter of Genesis is held to be characteristic to a 
 marked extent of P. The mere assertion of it, however, does not 
 make it so. The passages must be pointed out where J or E might 
 have had the word, but have avoided it or chosen another in its 
 place. This has not been done.* 
 
 Again, as said above, we accept the present, that is, the 
 Massoretic text, as being sufficiently correct to serve as a test 
 for these critical questions. Coosequentlj, we cannot agree that 
 a word is peculiar to a documenj; when to get it within its 
 bounds, or to keep it there, it is necessary to resort to the theory 
 of (editorial) textual alteration. This device is so frequent with 
 bur analysts that, if it does not approximate with them the force 
 of a rule, it goes so far as to seriously impair their reasoning. 
 Many of these cases are of such a sort that no excuse can be found 
 for ascribing the given expression to an editor except that the exi- 
 gencies of the theory require it.f Again, it is claimed that, in many 
 instances, a given document, instead of using the same word with 
 its companion documents, employs a synonym. Yery well, does 
 that prove it to be an independent document? The Hebrew lan- 
 guage abounds in synonyms. Is there any rule forbidding the same 
 writer from using them ad libitum ? One of the most emphasized 
 here is Paddan-aram, which is said to be P's word for J's Mesopo- 
 tamia, or " Aram of the two rivers." But the latter expression is 
 only found twice in the Hexateuch altogether, and the passages are 
 as widely separated as Genesis and Deuteronomy, while the former 
 is assured to P only by an unwarranted interference of the editor 
 (xxxi. 18, Ixvi. 15). If the usage were uniform and frequent in 
 the contrasted documents, the proof would still lack stringency. 
 It is not assumed that each writer was not acquainted with both 
 names. 
 
 The Book of Ruth is short, and its integrity, as far as we 
 know, undisputed. Yet it uses two different expressions in speak- 
 ing of Bethlehem : " Bethlehem " and " Bethlehem-judah " (i. 1, 
 i. 19) ; has two different words for handmaid (ii. 13, iii. 9), besides 
 another for maiden (ii. 5) ; two forms of the same word for rest 
 (i. 9, iii. 1); two words for leaving off (i. 18, ii. 20) ; two words for 
 taking a wife, one of them quite peculiar (i. 4, iv. 13); and uses P's 
 word Shaddai twice alongside of Jehovah (i. 20, 29). No one as yet 
 has, as far as we have heard, thought of making these facts a basis for 
 
 * The one case cited by Kcenig, Einleit., is not relevant. Cf. the language of 
 P, vi. 19. 
 t Cf., for example, vi. 7, vii. B, 9, 17, 23. 
 
294 TH^ PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 an argument to prove that Ruth is a compilation from two or more 
 sources. 
 
 Finally, it should not be overlooked that special attention has 
 been directed bj our critics to only this one kind of data in the 
 several sections involved : those which seem to indicate division. It 
 has been correspondingly diverted from those of another sort which 
 tend to show the homogeneous nature of the material throughout. 
 The collection of such expressions given elsewhere, it is safe to say, 
 suffers nothing, either in the number or the quality of its examples, 
 when compared with the entire sum of those of a contrary sort. At 
 the same time their validity in an argument for the unity of Genesis- 
 over against the current scheme cannot be called in question. 
 
 These considerations in view, what is to be said of the reasoning 
 from simultaneous linguistic differences in Genesis as a proof of its 
 origin from three continuous sources ? It must impress every candid 
 mind as notably inconsequent and feeble. As already said, it might 
 be of value if the position taken could be fairly defended on other 
 grounds. Left to itself, as it must largely be, to furnish the weight 
 of the argument, it fails to do the work expected of it. 
 
 And so we conclude, for the most part, our review of the theory of 
 the origin of Genesis now most widely in vogue on the continent of 
 Europe, and having many able adherents in England and America. 
 The arguments offered in its support have been examined with 
 sufficient minuteness and care to test adequately their worth. That 
 we have always succeeded in maintaining a spirit of fairness and 
 candor in their treatment we will not assert, but only that it has- 
 been honestly attempted. It seems clear, however, that the actual 
 phenomena of the book of Genesis are not even fairly explained by 
 the current theory. It requires too many wide-reaching presuppo- 
 sitions ; in short, too much credulity and the acceptance of too 
 many logical fallacies. "We have, accordingly, next to inquire 
 what other theory, or what modifications of the so-called traditional 
 one, will satisfy fairly well the conditions of the problem, 
 
 McCoRMiCK Theological Seminary. Edwin Cone BisseLL, 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS AS A THEOLOGIAN. 413 
 
 be, at once humanity and divinity. Thus the doctrine of Christ's 
 divinity is weakened into the deification of man. 
 
 In many high places of thought this reconstruction of the Gospel 
 is now enthroned as the highest expression of the religious con- 
 sciousness. From within the camp of the covenanted host in the 
 very language of the word which it sets aside, and in grosser forms 
 from the camp of the enemy, these same cries are echoing. 
 " The distinction between the divine and the human is the anti- 
 Christ of theology " — this is the " message," which one modern 
 " prophet " bids us hear under dreadful penalties. " God is human 
 and man is divine. The humanity and divinity of the Son of God 
 were essentially the same."* And again : " Fellowship with the 
 sufferings of Christ is the common atonement which all who believe 
 in Him may make for human sin. The atonement is ours as well 
 as Christ's." A much more notable writer f strikes the same key- 
 note, declaring that Paul attributes to Jesus " a kind of separation 
 from humanity, and a kind of identification with God, which is 
 practically a return to the old Jewish opposition of God and man. 
 .... In this way he seems to deny the union between the human 
 and the divine, which was the essential lesson of the life of Jesus." 
 " The theological doctrine of the two natures in Christ .... has 
 never found an echo in the voice of immediate religious experience. 
 .... Christ is divine just because he is the most human of men 
 .... the Son of man who reveals what is in humanity, just he- 
 cause he is the purest revelation of God in man." It would be easy 
 to append a catena of similar quotations gathered almost at random 
 from current theological literature — all variations upon the one 
 theme, the essential identity of God and man. Phillips Brooks' 
 latest eulogist X phrases it boldly : " The soul of man is con- 
 substantial with God." Lovely and pleasant in their lives the 
 apostles of this other Gospel may be ; but all the more because they 
 are, and because this prince of preachers charmed his generation 
 with his magnetic eloquence and uttered much vital truth, the 
 Church of God must not fail to expose the glittering delusions so 
 strangely fused therewith. One of their own poets also § has fore- 
 told what must come to pass if we should be blind to the attempt 
 to compromise truth and falsehood — 
 
 " If e'er when faith had fallen asleep 
 I heard a voice ' Believe no more, ' 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep." 
 Brooklyn, New York. JohN Fox. 
 
 * The New Redemption, by Prof George D. Ilerron, pp. 48, 133. 
 
 \2ne Evolution of Religion, by Prof. Edward Caird, Vol.ii, pp. 213, 214, 232. 233. 
 
 X Tlie Theology of Phillips Brooks, by Rev. L. Parks, D.D., p. 21. 
 
 § In Memoriam, cxxiii. 
 
II. 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND C0MP0SITI0:N^ OF 
 
 GEIS"ESIS. 
 
 THE UNITY AND CONTINUITY OF GENESIS. 
 
 THE unity of a literary work may be shown in a variety of 
 ways. The most natural signs of unity are oneness of plan 
 and the mutual dependence of constituent parts. Over against a 
 theory of compilation from various sources homogeneity of style 
 and vocabulary also, if they exist, may properly be urged as subsi- 
 diary arguments. A general external unity in Genesis is now 
 nowhere denied. Neither is it denied that its author, or final com- 
 piler, had for a definite purpose to prepare a work introductory to 
 the history of Israel or the theocracy. A deeper question, how- 
 ever, must be kept in view : Is the actual, demonstrable unity ot 
 Genesis only of such a sort as to allow the theory of its origin now 
 so widely current, or does it, per se, exclude it ? 
 
 According to Tuch,* the aim of Genesis, in its relation to the other 
 books of the Pentateuch, is to show how, under the special care of 
 God, His chosen people, from the beginning, were separated from 
 other peoples, through the moral elevation of the patriarchs, Abra- 
 ham, Isaac and Jacob ; how they were fitted for theocratic relations; 
 and how to these same patriarchs was revealed the fundamental law 
 of such relationship and was given the promise of possessing 
 Canaan. Similarly Ewald if " The goal which the author of Gen- 
 esis set before him is sufficiently clear from his work. He employs 
 himself with the fortunes in Canaan of the three ancestors of Israel. 
 His plan is to trace the history of the people of God from its origin 
 to the period of its transplanting to Egypt." 
 
 These conceptions of the immediate purpose of Genesis we may 
 adopt, in their general features, and proceed to inquire how the 
 author carried them out in detail. First, what is the object of the 
 matter preliminary to the history of Abraham in Genesis? Evi- 
 dently it has more than one object. As it respects the patriarch per- 
 sonally, it is first to show his genealogical descent. Genesis presents 
 
 * Com. ilber die Genesis, xvii. 
 
 f Die Composition der Genesis, p. 267. 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 415 
 
 no more marked feature than its interest in the genealogies of its 
 principal characters. Accordingly, it was not enough to say that 
 Abraham was the son of Terah. He had Noah also for an ancestor. 
 And who was Noah ? Once in the period of the Flood, it was im- 
 possible not to go further back. What was the occasion of the 
 dreadful visitation? Whence the evils that were then adjudged? 
 Whence these divergent moral currents? Whence was man himself 
 and the earth on which he exists ? 
 
 But there were weightier reasons why our author began with the 
 beginning of things. There had been definite historic stages before 
 the days of Abraham ; the Flood had marked the close of one, the 
 confusion of tongues at Babel another. To give the remarkable call 
 of the patriarch its proper perspective and setting, it was needful to 
 display also great events. A new start, so to speak, was to be made 
 with him. To have failed to indicate this fact would have been to 
 fail in what is one evident aim of the book. Then too, in Abra- 
 ham there was the principle of selection illustrated. Terah had 
 other sons ; Abraham was the one chosen, separated from his kin- 
 dred by special call to receive the revelations of God and become 
 an exceptional agent of His will. It was an important point with 
 the writer to show that this principle had not taken its rise with 
 Abraham. It had also been manifest in the choice of Shem from 
 among the sons of Noah, in the rescue of Noah himself out of the 
 midst of a drowning world, and even still further back in the con- 
 trasted lines of Cain and Seth. Whence the necessity of such selec- 
 tion ? Evil was in conflict with the good. Whence came the evil ? 
 From God ? N"o ; the world and man as made by God were 
 " very good." 
 
 So it was not alone, or chiefly, because of his interest in tracing 
 genealogies that the author of Genesis was led to begin his work with 
 the creation. One of his main purposes plainly stamped on every 
 part of the book, genealogies not excepted, was to show that Israel, 
 in a peculiar sense, was a chosen people. Its history is represented 
 not indeed as something apart from the world's history, but as, under 
 God's control, the best fruit of it and destined finally to be the 
 world's richest blessing. Let us notice more particularly how this 
 law of selection governs throughout the work and so serves as a 
 peculiar sign of its unity. 
 
 Cain, as already suggested, was driven forth (iv. 14) in order to 
 leave in freedom those who would call on Jehovah's name (iv. 26), 
 With the failure of this plan through subsequent intermarriage of 
 the races, Noah was chosen for a new trial. When a like moral 
 deterioration showed itself in his descendants, culminating once 
 more in the dominance of the evil, a third start was made with 
 
416 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 Abraham ; but under the same law of separation and restriction. 
 Terah sets out with his family for the land of Canaan ; Abraham 
 and Lot alone really enter it. Soon Lot is set aside, and with as 
 manifest a purpose as previously Cain, Ham and Japheth had been. 
 So among the descendants of the patriarch, there is no point which 
 there is a more special effort on the part of the historian to make 
 clear than that it is not Hagar's son or Keturah's children who are 
 to represent the chosen line of promise, but Isaac, the son of 
 Sarah; it is not Esau but Jacob. The rejection of one is scarcely 
 less marked than the choice of the other. 
 
 It is worth noting how this fact appears in what one might regard 
 as the most unchangeable features of the book, its genealogical lists. 
 Thej^ are constructed in a way to lead us to suppose that it was a 
 special object of the writer to display it. We are given, for instance, 
 a list of Cain's descendants as well as of those of Seth. The difference 
 is that, in the case of Cain, there the matter drops; while in that of 
 his brother the genealogy is made the connecting link conducting to 
 the history. Of the sons of Noah, the genealogy of each is given ; 
 Shem's alone is represented in the following narrative. And there 
 is a curious circumstance which here enhances the contrast. The 
 order of the sons' names as they usually occur is Shem, Ham, 
 Japheth ; but the order of the genealogy is Japheth, Ham, Shem, 
 — evidently in order to make the transition to the succeeding narra- 
 tive more easy and natural. 
 
 In the same way in Terah 's family (xix. 37, 38), Lot's descend- 
 ants are named only to pass out of the immediate history, while it 
 goes on with Abraham. Of Abraham's seed, the descendants of 
 Ishmael (xxv. 12-15) and of Keturah (xxv. 2-4) are given ; the 
 story concerns itself only with Isaac. So, in each case, the sub- 
 ordinate branches of the family are first disposed of, the slag, as it 
 were, separated from the ore, in order then to go on with what was 
 the main concern of the writer. Of Nahor's seed there is a list of 
 eight names recorded of whom nothing more is said excepting of 
 Eebecca. Of Isaac's seed, the descendants of Esau are named, to 
 disappear from Genesis; while the story of Jacob and his sons occu- 
 pies the remainder of the book. This peculiarity of the work van- 
 ishes at this point simpl}^ for the reason that with Jacob the line of 
 promise is complete for the time. Of the same purport is the way 
 in which the family relations of the chosen people are jealously 
 guarded from corruption or confusion. It had been intermarriages, 
 a free intermingling on common ground, that had been the fatal 
 step in the two earlier epochs of the race. Now there was to be 
 exclusion. This is quite sufficient to explain what otherwise might 
 have been puzzling in the narrative ; why, three times, incidents are 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 417 
 
 given in the lives of Abraham and Isaac in connection with the 
 royal courts in Egypt and Gerar which are very similar in their 
 general character, and could not be regarded as creditable to the 
 patriarchs (xii. 10-20, xx. 1-18, xxvi. 6-11), It was in order not 
 to leave any ground for suspicion, on occasions when such suspicion 
 might easily have arisen, that the promised seed was not in the line 
 of promise. With special emphasis it was impressed on Abraham's 
 mind, in the presence of misgivings, that Sarah should be the mother 
 of the promised seed. The peremptoriness of race separation could 
 hardly have been given a sign clearer than in the rite of circumcis- 
 ion. Ishmael, "the wild ass among men," might ally himself in 
 marriage with the people of his mother ; Esau take to him wives of 
 the daughters of Canaan, though to the grief of his parents; but with 
 Isaac and Jacob it was not to be tolerated. " Abraham said unto 
 his servant .... I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of 
 heaven and the God of earth, that thou shalt not take a wife for my 
 son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell" (xxiv. 
 3). It is a most significant fact to which attention cannot be too 
 strongly directed, as showing the importance of this matter in the view 
 of the author of Genesis, that the story of the procuring a wife for 
 Isaac is given an extraordinary prominence. It is the longest 
 chapter in Genesis. It occupies two and one-half of its fifty-eight 
 pages. Even greater prominence is given to the same matter in 
 Jacob's history. " Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged 
 him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters 
 of Canaan " (xxviii. 1). In Genesis the spirit of exclusion as it re- 
 spected other nations becomes so strong as even to appear almost like 
 repugnance, as shown in the case of Hamor the son of Shechem and 
 the daughter of Jacob (chaps, xxxiv and xxxv). 
 
 Could there well be stronger evidence than these examples aftbrd 
 that the author of Genesis deliberately set out so to use the sources 
 at his command as to show what is said in Deuteronomy (vii. 6), that 
 God had chosen Israel " to be a peculiar people unto himself, above 
 all peoples that are upon the face of the earth ? " Plainly, too, he 
 made the freest use of his sources for the end he had in view. He 
 was not their slave, but their master. Far beyond the impression 
 made upon us of mere material of various sorts to be conserved or 
 regarded, is the decided pragmatism of the writer. Genesis has no 
 more marked literary characteristic than the purpose which rules 
 in it. 
 
 We have shown this as it respects the divine choice of a people ; 
 it is no less manifest as it respects the choice of a land. Here the 
 beginning is made with Abraham. If we except the evident fore- 
 shadowing of the destiny of Canaan already in chaps, ix. 20-26 and 
 
418 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 X. 15-19, the end, which is the Conquest, lies outside the bounds of 
 Genesis. If one purpose bind the first two-thirds of the book 
 together in an unmistakable unity, the other does it for the last 
 two-thirds. Abraham is commanded of God to go into a country 
 which He will show him (xii. 1). He proceeds to Canaan, fulfilling 
 God's purpose as truly thereby as he would have done had it not 
 been the original intention of Terah to emigrate thither. We are 
 not left in ignorance of the true state of things. " The Canaanite," 
 it is said, " was then in the land." But this declaration is immedi- 
 ately followed by another that " God appeared unto Abram and 
 said, Unto thy seed " — note the exact nature of the first promise — 
 "will I give this land" (xii. 4-7). From this time the subject is 
 never long out of sight. In the following chapter it is repeated, 
 after the patriarch's separation from Lot, with added breadth and 
 intensity (xiii. 14, 15). Two chapters later the bounds are named — 
 " from the river of Egypt unto the Euphrates " — and the gift is 
 ratified by a covenant (xv. 18). Two chapters later still it is said, 
 in connection with the rite of circumcision : " And I will give unto 
 thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the 
 land of Canaan for an everlasting possession." The promise is 
 never simply repeated in the old terms. Again to Isaac, when 
 tempted through famine to leave the country, it is said (xxvi. 3-5) : 
 " Sojourn in this land, and 1 will be with thee, and will bless thee ; 
 for unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these lands, and I 
 will establish the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father." 
 This becomes afterwards the favorite form of reference to the 
 promise. It is an interesting circumstance that while both Abra- 
 ham and Jacob temporarily left the land of Canaan, Isaac was not 
 permitted to do so. Once more the promise is repeated to Jacob 
 in terms recalling earlier utterances (xxviii. 13-15), on the occa- 
 sion of his fleeing from the wrath of Esau unto Mesopotamia, and 
 again on his return (xxxv. 12) :* " And the land which I gave unto 
 Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after 
 thee will I give the land." So likewise on the patriarch's going 
 down to Egypt. He seems to hesitate to make the change without 
 the divine permission, which he secures at Beersheba (xlvi. 4) : "I 
 will go down with thee into Egypt ; and I will also surely bring 
 thee up again." As was natural to expect, Jacob did not forget 
 this pledge. When death was drawing near he made Joseph, who 
 alone had the power to bring it about, swear by a peculiarly solemn 
 form of oath, found elsewhere only in the history of Abraham, that 
 
 * The importance which is attached to this first appearance of Jeliovah to 
 Jacob is seen in the fact that it is referred to on the occasion of each subse- 
 quent one (xxxi. 13, xxxv. 1, 7, xlviii. 3, 15, 16). 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 419 
 
 he should not be buried in Egypt (xlvii. 29, 30) : " When I sleep 
 with my fathers, thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in 
 their burying place. And he said, I will do as thou hast said. And 
 he said, Swear unto me : and he sware unto him." The same assur- 
 ance he afterwards required from the remaining sons (xlix. 29-32). 
 And Genesis is brought to an appropriate close with a circumstan- 
 tial record of the burial of Jacob in Machpelah by his sons, includ- 
 ing Joseph, together with a record of the dying words of Joseph 
 (1. 24, 25) : " I die ; but God will surely visit you, and bring you up 
 out of this land unto the land which he sware unto Abraham, to 
 Isaac and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of 
 Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my 
 bones from hence." This they also did as we are told in Joshua 
 (xxiv. 32), burying them in Shechem, "in the parcel of ground 
 which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem." 
 
 Not only is the matter of the future possession of the land of 
 Canaan by Israel thus conspicuously and indelibly stamped on 
 every principal feature of the story, there is an evident purpose 
 also to show that it would be no usurpation on Israel's part to have 
 and to hold it. It was, first and foremost, a warranty from God 
 (xii. 7). Its present inhabitants were there by sufferance alone. 
 Through the grossest forms of sin they had forfeited any supposable 
 rights arising from preoccupancy. The detailed description of 
 Sodom and its inhabitants (chaps, xviii, xix) is no mere episode. 
 " Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against the Lord 
 exceedingly " (xiii. 13). The sole reason given why Abraham and 
 his seed were not put in immediate possession of the country was 
 that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full (xv. 13-16). 
 
 Pains are taken to show that, although the patriarchs on certain 
 occasions had temporarily vacated the land, it was with the express 
 intention of returning thither (xii. 10, xxvi. 1, xxviii. 10, xlvi. 
 1, etc.). They never renounced, so to speak, their right of domi- 
 cile. It was, accordingly, no misnomer to apply to Canaan the 
 title in the later parts of Genesis, " land of the fathers " (xxviii. 41). 
 Critics have objected to the phrase, " the land of the Hebrews," in 
 the mouth of Joseph as an anachronism (xl. 15). If, however, " the 
 land of the Perizzite " and " the land of the Hivite " were in place, 
 " the land of the Hebrews " was quite as much so. A tendency is 
 clearly observable to bring into view the part the patriarchs took 
 in the affairs of the land. Abraham, on winning against large odds 
 an important victory over its oppressors — though he had interposed 
 particularly on Lot's account — is publicly blessed by the priest- 
 king of Salem. With the political leaders, however, he asserts his 
 independence, refusing an offered reward lest it should be said that 
 
420 THE PRE SB YTERIAN AND R EFORMED RE VIE W. 
 
 thej had made Abraham rich (chap. xiv). Abimelech proffers him 
 the freedom of the land (xx. 15), as did later his successor with 
 Isaac (xxvi. 26-31), and desires an alliance with him. 
 
 On what other literary ground is it, moreover, that an entire 
 chapter is devoted to an account of the purchase by Abraham of a 
 burying place? The most minute details of the transaction are 
 thought worthy of record, including the witnesses and the purchas- 
 ing price to a shekel. On every subsequent reference to the affair — 
 three times altogether in the book — the fact that it was a purchase 
 from Ephron the Hittite and that the adjoining field was included 
 in the sale are noted (xxv. 9, 10, xlix. 29-32, 1. 13). So it is 
 stated that Jacob bought a piece of ground in Shechem when he 
 returned from Paddau-aram, paying for it one hundred kesitahs, a 
 coin named only here in the Bible. This purchase he looked upon 
 as giving him proprietary rights, and we find him later, apparently, 
 bestowing it upon Joseph as a legacy (xlviii. 22). 
 
 Nor is this all. In the choice of the people we saw how, through- 
 out the narrative, the principle of separation and elimination dom- 
 inated. It is equally true, and along the same lines, as it respects 
 the land. It is a feature that concerns not alone the native popu- 
 lation, but also the descendants of the patriarchs outside one clear 
 line of demarcation. It is not enough for the writer to describe 
 how by Lot's voluntary choice of the plain of the Jordan, Abra- 
 ham was left free range in Canaan. It must be noted later that, 
 through their incestuous origin, his descendants made impossible 
 every claim to the possession of the land along with Abraham's 
 seed (xix. 30-38). An effective farewell is taken of them in the 
 words, " The same is the father of the Moabites," " the same is the 
 father of the children of Ammon unto this day." Of Ishmael it is 
 predicted before his birth that his home will be apart from his 
 brethren (xyi. 12). Of his descendants we are carefully informed 
 that they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt 
 (xxv. 18). So the second possibility of a disputed claim was shut 
 out. In the case of Keturah's children, the object of the narrative 
 could not be plainer were it directly stated (xxv. 6): "But unto 
 the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave 
 gifts ; and he sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, 
 eastward, unto the east country." So far, then, an unclouded title 
 belonged to Abraham and by him was transmitted unimpaired to 
 his son. 
 
 How was it with Jacob? Here matters are more involved. 
 Esau is the first-born. In a moment of physical distress he sells his 
 birthright. Still he looks and works for the coveted blessing. In this 
 he is shrewdly outwitted by Jacob and Rebecca. Yet the undoubted 
 
THE ORIOJN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 421 
 
 physical power is on the side of " My lord Esau." Will he not secure 
 by force what he had failed to get through natural channels? 
 The interest of the story, through several chapters, centres in this 
 contest. All the more marked, therefore, is the issue, Esau had 
 been flitting, apparently undetermined, back and forth from Canaan 
 to Mount Seir. On Jacob's return to Canaan, after the joint burial 
 of their father, to our great surprise he takes voluntary and final 
 leave of the promised land. " And Esau took his wives and his 
 sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house, and his cattle 
 and all his beasts, and all his possessions, which he had gathered in 
 the land of Canaan and went into a land away from his brother 
 Jacob" (xxxvi. 6). The event itself and the imperative reason 
 behind it could not well have been more conspicuously displayed. 
 
 In chap, xxxix the historian had been particular to note a mere 
 incidental peril to the patriarch's rights from another quarter. 
 Laban and his friends had been wounded in their feelings, and 
 believed themselves wronged in their property interests by the fugi- 
 tive Jacob. Might not this become the occasion of future trouble ? 
 Laban's formal pledge is made to settle it (xxxix. 52) : " This heap 
 be a witness, and the pillar be witness that I will not pass over this 
 heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this 
 pillar unto me, for harm." Thus Jacob is left in undisturbed pos- 
 session of his ancestral rights in Canaan and the aim of the writer, 
 as far as it concerns this second principal point, reaches its culmina- 
 tion. If one clear purpose, like a silken cord, runs through the 
 pages of Genesis that God would separate unto Himself a people of 
 His choice, another runs parallel to it in every part, that for His 
 people, at the appointed time. He would have ready_ a land that 
 should be all their own. 
 
 There is a third principal thought displayed on the pages of 
 Genesis which should not be overlooked; it is that the patriarchs, 
 not without trials to their faith or discipline, entered into their 
 promised possessions. This is particularly true of Abraham and 
 Jacob ; it is less true of Isaac, of whom we have little information.* 
 No sooner is the promise of a numerous seed made to Abraham 
 than the proving of his faith begins. He is seventy-five years of 
 age. Sarah is barren. His riches increase apace, but not his fam- 
 ily. Meantime the promise is renewed ; once on his entering Ca- 
 naan, again after his separation from Lot: "Unto thy seed will I 
 
 * Though he, too, had suflacient occasion for the exercise of faith and hope, 
 for Rebecca was barren. During twenty years Ihey waited for the promised 
 seed and when it came it was in a way to cause the gravest apprehensions (xxv. 
 23, 23). Isaac's death, his burial by Jacob and Esau, recorded along with a list 
 of Jacob's sons (xxxv. 23-29), opens the notable tendency of the historian to 
 keep strictly to his theme. 
 
422 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 give this land " (xii. 7). " And I will make thy seed as the dust of 
 the earth : so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then 
 shall thy seed also be numbered" (xiii. 16). Still the expected 
 blessing came not. After he had been in the land a period of years, 
 we hear him uttering his thought in prayer after this manner : " 
 Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and 
 he that shall be possessor of mine house is Dammesek Eliezer." 
 " Behold to me thou hast given no seed " (xv. 2, 3). Now the 
 promise takes a more definite form : " This man shall not be thine 
 heir ; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be 
 thine heir " (xv, 4). Abraham believes, but asks for a sign. It is 
 given him with a fourth renewal of the promise (xv. 18). Time 
 goes on until ten years have passed since the patriarch's arrival in 
 Canaan. His faith begins again to waver. An heir born of his own 
 flesh had been assured to him, but should it be by Sarah ? Abetted 
 by her, he takes Hagar as wife, and in his eighty-sixth year she 
 bears him Ishmael. Hagar is vouchsafed a communication from 
 the heavens ; they are now seemingly shut to Abraham (xvi. 7). 
 Thirteen years longer he waits. The dates are supplied, no doubt, 
 with deliberate intention. Then Jehovah appears again, and for 
 the fifth time communicates with His waiting servant. Hagar's 
 child was not the promised seed. Within a year Sarah should bear 
 a son ; his name should be called Isaac. Through him she should 
 become the " mother of nations." This was Jehovah's covenant. 
 As a token of reciprocation, Abraham must adopt the rite of cir- 
 cumcision for his offspring (chap. xvii). 
 
 Hopes long deferred now seem on the eve of realization ; but 
 Sarah's faith is in need of quickening ; hence a special theophany 
 is granted on her account, but with a definite reference to the last : 
 *' At the set time I will return unto thee .... and Sarah shall 
 have a son " (xviii. 14). Meantime the destruction of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah takes place, with Lot's rescue, and, what is more to the 
 point, Abraham's journey to Gerar and his trial with Abimelech. 
 It is not without a purpose, as we have seen, that the writer gives 
 this incident ; it is with a special purpose that he introduces it at 
 just this point. At last the event predicted twenty-five years before 
 occurs, by the very course of the history plainly constructed on the 
 plan of a graduated series of events. The attention had been con- 
 tinually and ever more closely riveted upon it. *' And Sarah con- 
 ceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of 
 which God had spoken to him " (xxi. 2), 
 
 But the climax has not yet been reached. It lay in the divine 
 command to Abraham to take this son of his, this only son whom 
 he loved, and offer him up as a burnt offering. When in unques- 
 
TEE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 423 
 
 tioning obedience he carried out, as far as with him was possible, 
 the injunction, the utterances of Jehovah to him reach their culmi- 
 nating point (xxii. 16), The revelation is in a form so Avonderful 
 that afterwards there is no more favorite designation of Canaan, as 
 we have intimated, than as " the land which the Lord sware unto 
 Abraham " (xxvi. 3, 1. 24). " By myself have I sworn, saith the 
 Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy 
 son, thine only son : that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multi- 
 plying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the 
 sand which is upon the seashore." 
 
 There had been at the beginning the promise of a numerous pos- 
 terity ; then that it should be from his own body ; then that it 
 should be through Sarah ; then the name of the child and the date 
 of his birth are given; and at last, after years of happy possession, 
 the supreme trial whose issue assured to the patriarch the absolute 
 certainty of all that had been previously spoken. Or, tracing the 
 progression of thought along another line, we first find Jehovah 
 speaking with Abraham (xii. 1) ; then appearing to him (xii. 7) ; 
 then ratifying a covenant with him through a visible sign (xv. 17, 
 18) ; then appointing, on his part, a token of the mutual covenant 
 (xvii. 9) ; then sharing with him as a guest a covenant meal, an 
 act elsewhere unexampled in the Bible (xviii. 8) ; and, finally, 
 swearing by Himself an oath of eternal faithfulness to all that He 
 had promised, and accounting him, as Isaiah notes, His friend (cf. 
 Isa. xii. 8). Thus the story of Abraham, in this particular, bespeaks 
 from beginning to end a unity of purpose that is unmistakable. 
 
 Jacob's trials naturally had an individual stamp, but they are run 
 in the same general mold. To no small extent they were the re- 
 sult of his own lack of faith and honesty, but they were real. His 
 protracted banishment from his father's house ; his peculiarly irk- 
 some service with Laban ; his long continued and well-grounded 
 fear of Esau ; the peril into which he was brought by his lawless 
 sons at Shechem ; the temporary absence of Judah and his low life 
 with Hira, the Adullamite ; above all the deception practiced upon 
 him who had grievously deceived his own father, by his sons in 
 turn, in the matter of Joseph — these facts absorb the material of the 
 book in this part of it and form a closely jointed narrative. 
 
 Like those of Abraham and Jacob, Joseph's history begins with 
 revelations from heaven in which his future is foreshadowed ; and 
 like them he makes his way through trials to his providential des- 
 tiny. The material, though- in itself tolerably complete, is of one 
 pattern with what goes before and looks towards the same end ; to 
 show how God was preparing a people for Himself. In fact, it is the 
 life of Jacob which furnishes the key to that of Joseph. There it 
 
424 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 has its beginning, that gives point to the transition?, and in the ex- 
 altation of Joseph it comes to its best fruitage and receives its high- 
 est reward. One is apt to overlook that this very turn is given to 
 the narrative of Joseph by its title. It begins with the words, 
 "These are the generations of Jacob " (xxxvii. 2); just as Jacob's 
 history is placed under the rubric : " These are the generations of 
 Isaac " (xxv. 19). 
 
 After Joseph is once fairly established in Egypt, the one thing of 
 importance before the writer's mind seems to be to get Jacob and 
 his family there. When they are there and have been presented 
 to Pharaoh and had got them possessions therein and were " multi- 
 plied exceedingly," the next thing in order is the decease of 
 Jacob. This stage of history was now complete ; the family 
 was ready to give place to the nation. As Noah, Abraham 
 and Isaac had done, Jacob bestows his blessing upon his 
 sons before his death. It is surprising how much of the history 
 of the patriarch and his children reappears in this blessing, 
 taken in connection with the family register placed a little earlier 
 (chap. xlvi). We recall again his experiences in Haran, includ- 
 ing the birth of his children severally ; the death of Judah's sons \ 
 Dinah's misfortune at Shechem, with the lamentable part taken in 
 it, to their cost, by Simeon and Levi ; Reuben's shameless act with 
 Bilhah, by which he lost his birthright ; and especially the place 
 which, in the later time, Judah had won in the father's heart. 
 Nothing is needed but a bare rehearsal of the facts recorded to show 
 how inseparably they are woven together like warp and woof in the 
 fabric of the story. 
 
 There is one thing more giving a peculiar cast to Genesis which 
 should not be wholly omitted : I mean its predictive element. De- 
 li tzsch speaks of three concentric circles of revelation : (1) the seed 
 of the woman, who is the conqueror of evil in mankind ; (2) the 
 seed of the patriarchs, who is the blessing of the nations ; (3) the 
 seed of David, who is the salvation and glory of Israel. Their order 
 is exactly reversed in the fulfillment. It is a significant fact that 
 two of these great circles lie within the bounds of Genesis. Of 
 course our present interest in the matter is not so directly theo- 
 logical and religious as literary. How far do these predictions make 
 a feature of the book inclusive of its several constituent parts ? 
 
 It has been customary and seems reasonable to connect the prom- 
 ise of the coming seed (iii. 15) with Eve's words (iv. 1) : "I have 
 gotten a man with (the help of) the Lord ;" and with Lamech — the 
 tenth from Adam, the number of completion — who exclaimed on 
 the birth of Noah (v. 29) : " The same shall comfort us .... be- 
 cause of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed." Clearly, moreover, 
 
THE ORIOIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 425 
 
 in the mind of the historian, who has arranged his matter with 
 this in view, it was Shem among whose descendants the prom- 
 ised good should come to bloom. Canaan should be his servant ; 
 Japheth dwell in his tents (ix, 26, 27). Again, Abraham is Terah's 
 son, the tenth, in turn, in the goodly line of Shem, and in him all 
 the families of the earth should be blessed. With Abraham the 
 promise entered its second stage of development. It is no longer 
 the seed of the woman, but that of the patriarchs which is the goal 
 of hope. How this special hope centres again in Isaac, then in 
 Jacob, and what pains are taken to show beyond all cavil that there 
 had been no divergence in the line of blessing, we have seen. In 
 similar terms the promise is repeated to each of them. To the 
 former it is said : " I will establish the oath which I sware unto 
 Abraham thy father . , . . and in thy seed shall the nations of the 
 earth be blessed " (xxvi, 3, 4), To the latter : " I am the Lord, the 
 God of Abraham, thy father " (again, " thy father " to Jacob), " and 
 the God of Isaac .... in thee and in thy seed shall all the families 
 of the earth be blessed " (xxviii. 13, 14 ; cf. xxviii. 3, 4). 
 
 From Jacob the blessing would naturally have descended to Eeu- 
 ben the first born. Isaac was Abraham's only son by Sarah. Esau 
 had voluntarily relinquished his birthright in favor of Jacob, and 
 God had accepted and ratified the transfer. On which of Jacob's 
 sons would it fall ? Eeuben had forfeited his claim by incest 
 (xlix, 3) ; Simeon and Levi more by their cruelty to the Shechemites 
 (xlix. 5-7)- Hence the blessing is divided ; the material rights of 
 primogeniture go to the favorite Joseph (xlix. 22-26) ; the primacy 
 to Judah, the fourth son (xlix. 8-12). To him his father's sons 
 should bow down. " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah," is 
 the language of the announcement, " nor the ruler's stafl" from be- 
 tween his feet until Shiloh come and unto him shall the obedience 
 of the peoples be." Whichever of the disputed renderings of the 
 more essential clause be adopted — "until Shiloh come;" "until 
 he come to Shiloh ;" " until that [that is, the kingdom] come which 
 is his " — it is impossible to vacate the passage of the great hope. It 
 has been growing in intensity, while gradually narrowing in com- 
 pass and range throughout our book. It is not necessary for us to 
 insist here that this hope is Messianic, or looks at all beyond the 
 Jewish people. It can and must be claimed that it is a marked pecu- 
 liarity of Genesis, and transfuses it like a beam of light from first to 
 last. 
 
 We now advance to a new stage of the inquiry. We have 
 shown, in four particulars, that the author of Genesis had a distinct 
 plan before him. These four objects of his are not of equal promi- 
 nence, but they are in perfect harmony with one another and are 
 28 
 
426 2 HE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 blended together in an obvious unity. If he had other objects in 
 view, they were clearly subsidiary to these, and made to contribute 
 to their unfolding. The conclusion is inevitable and is, in fact, so 
 far undisputed. Genesis exhibits, superficially at least, a remark- 
 able oneness in conception and design. In its general features it 
 bears the marks of the same constructive mind. Each part is fitted 
 to its place in the general plan and duly contributes to its develop- 
 ment. What is the bearing of this fact on the current theory ? 
 Genesis, in its present form, must have been the work of one master 
 mind. Can anything be known respecting the sources he had at his 
 command? It can be shown, we think, with reasonable certainty, 
 that the documents known as J, E and P, as such did not form the 
 basis of his work. The facts hitherto set forth in this paper, 
 although selected at random for their own sake and with no such 
 secondary end immediately in view, have strongly suggested 
 this inference already. The theory now in vogue is plainly incom- 
 patible with such a unity of plan, so carried out. With the presup- 
 posed redactor or compiler, it was less a question of clearly putting 
 an object before his readers, or of teaching them some moral lesson, 
 than of conserving and displaying his material. For the quasi- 
 canonical matter he felt a tender, even a sacred interest. We are 
 told that his frequent faults of judgment were generally due to a 
 pardonable bias of feeling towards his sources. The evident pur- 
 pose of the author of Genesis, on the other hand, shown in the four 
 particulars named, demonstrates exactly the contrary feeling. He 
 worked as a master. He made his material strictly subserve the 
 ends he had in view. The matter selected, what it should be, 
 whether genealogical or historical, whether little or much, whether 
 drawn out in extreme detail or put in the form of bare state- 
 ment, was selected, shaped and manipulated as it was, because the 
 author had set before him a definite literary and moral goal which 
 he never lost sight of. It was not because he had three documents 
 to combine into a pleasing verisimilitude. We may safely challenge 
 the j udgment of every candid investigator whether prima facie this 
 is not the case. If it be so, it is a fact which goes very far towards 
 settling the question before us ; it proves that Genesis is not a 
 compilation from three continuous sources of the nature of J, E 
 and P. 
 
 We have already considered how extremely improbable it is that 
 three such works, so alike in material and chronological order, existed 
 at the periods named. The difficulties of such an hypothesis are 
 greatly enhanced by what has been said in the present paper. Each 
 must also have been penetrated by the same purpose. We now see, 
 as we have not before, what must have been, severally, their aim, 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 427 
 
 •content, spirit and peculiar construction. Like Paley's mysterious 
 watch, whose separate parts, when brought together, fitted each so 
 nicely, they must have been proportioned and adapted to one another 
 at the start, or their compiler was a greater wonder-worker than Mos^s 
 in Egypt. We have the supposed documents delimited for us in 
 Genesis and can easily test how they are severally related to this 
 group of objects, together forming the manifest purpose of its au- 
 thor. Take first the principle of separation and exclusion through 
 which the choice of a people was eftected. Is it a feature of each 
 of this trio of alleged early writers ? To a certain extent it is. We 
 have pointed out how the genealogies are employed ; and have 
 shown that in their relative position, and even in their inner construc- 
 tion, they give evidence of having been used to help the author in 
 this aim (with iv. 16-19 cf. v. 3-30 ; and chaps, x, xi). This is P's 
 testimony ; but only in part. It singles out, like the others, Noah 
 and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and marries the last two among their 
 kindred. It is the document of the covenants and of circumcision. 
 It marks, with approval, the growing estrangement from the Canaan- 
 ites, little observable in the time of Abraham (xxvi. 35 ; chap, 
 xxxiv) ; and allows to the Israelites a possession by themselves in 
 the land of Egypt (xlvii. 11). 
 
 With reference to J and B it is less necessary to illustrate this 
 point, since it would be generally admitted. Seth's substitution, 
 Shem's exaltation, Abraham's call, most of the great promises of a 
 numerous offspring, the three stories of special trial at royal courts ; 
 Jacob's purification at Bethlehem ; the enucleation of the family 
 alike in Canaan and in Egypt — these are here ; and to crown all, 
 Jacob's blessing upon his sons with his prophetic glance directed into 
 the distant future as well as the nearer past.* 
 
 Look, next, at the author's purpose respecting the land of Canaan. 
 J records the call to Abraham to migrate; P equally shows 
 whither ; J has the first promise of the land as an inheritance (xii. 
 7) ; P soon after repeats, and emphasizes it by a covenant (xvii. 9) ; 
 J gives information that centuries must pass before the promise is 
 fulfilled (xv. 16) ; P tells how Abraham, in pledge of unabated con- 
 fidence, bought for himself and family a burying place at Machpelah 
 (chap, xxiii) ; J and E repeat (xxvi. 3, xli. 4) the promise of the 
 land to Isaac and Jacob; the same is true of P (xvii. 8, xxxv. 11). 
 And in the successive eliminations of possible counter-claimants 
 each document, either by historical record or by pertinent state- 
 
 * Let it be noted here once for all that, in this survey of the contents of the 
 several documents, no distinction is made between what is known as J and J' ; 
 nor any attention given to mere excerpts of a document assigned by critics to the 
 redactor in the obvious interests of the theory advocated. 
 
428 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 ment, shares : in the dismission of Lot, of Ishmael, of Keturah's 
 children, and of Esau. Again, consider the common trials of the 
 patriarchs. Is P colored by this fact ? It is not ignorant of the 
 clog that Lot proved to be to Abraham ; it notes Sarah's barren- 
 ness and implies that of Eebecca (xxv. 21) ; speaks of the " grief of 
 mind " that Esau's wives were to his parents ; records Jacob's pro- 
 tracted absence in Paddan-aram ; the perilous complications at 
 Shechem on his return, and the dying of the patriarch in Egypt 
 with his face turned towards Canaan. With respect to J and B, it 
 is less necessary to enlarge. They divide between them the record 
 of the long continued discipline of Abraham ; of Jacob's experience 
 at Haran ; his grave differences with Laban and Esau ; and of his 
 sufferings from the injustice done to Joseph and the share he had in 
 Egypt. 
 
 So, finally, as it regards the predictive matter of our book, the 
 same result is reached. J has received from some the name of the 
 " prophetical writer," to so large an extent is matter of this sort 
 referred to it. It is not wanting in E, which predicts that Abraham's 
 seed shall be as the stars ; and, later, that in them shall be blessed 
 all the nations of the earth (xv.. 5 ; cf. xxii. 16, 17). Isaac's 
 prophetic blessing upon Jacob is assigned by our analysts, partly to 
 J, partly to E ; so the narrative of the divine appearance to Jacob 
 on the way to Haran, with its accompanying promise (xxviii. 10- 
 22 ; cf. XXXV. 1), And it is E which records the vision accorded 
 to Jacob on his way to Egypt and the promise that his bones shall 
 finally rest in the land of his fathers (xlvi. 4, 5). 
 
 How is it with P — to a large extent a mass of dry statistics, 
 names and dates ? Did the spirit of prophecy touch it also ? It is P 
 which, looking forth to the end of time, declares that there shall no 
 more be a flood to destroy the earth (ix. 11) ; corresponding to J's 
 words, in view of the same event just passed : " While the earth re- 
 maineth, seed time and harvest and cold and heat, and summer and 
 winter, and day and night shall not cease " (viii. 22), We have 
 already seen with what consummate skill the author of Genesis 
 divided P's genealogy of Shem in the midst (chaps, x, xi) in order 
 to take it up later on, and so to concentrate attention on Shem's 
 famous scion, the son of Terah. 
 
 Notwithstanding the disconnected and fragmentary nature of P's 
 matter elsewhere, there is no mistaking its drift. Abraham goes 
 to Canaan, grows there to be rich and powerful, becomes a party 
 to the covenant by which substantially the same things are assured 
 to him as by J and E (xxvii. 7, 8) : " And I will establish my 
 covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout 
 their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 429 
 
 and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy 
 seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan 
 for an everlasting possession ; and I will be their God," When 
 Abraham is laid to rest in the significant Machpelah, it is P which 
 remembers to record how God blessed his son Isaac, as in P it is 
 noted that he had promised to do (xxv. 11). 
 
 It is P which puts into Isaac's mouth these words of benediction 
 for Jacob : " God Almighty bless thee .... that thou mayest be a 
 company of peoples " (xxviii. 3) ; and into God's mouth an express 
 prediction of like content : " A nation and a company of nations 
 shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins .... and 
 the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give 
 it and to thy seed after thee will I give the land " (xxxv. 10-12). 
 To this promise, found in P, Jacob, likewise in P, points back, in a 
 conference with Joseph in Egypt, assigning to Joseph's two sons a 
 portion in this land which was to be an " everlasting possession." 
 Hence, P is not so wanting in this element of prediction as might be 
 thought. It has enough of it to leave no just room for doubt that 
 the same master hand, controlled by the same general purpose, 
 shaped it and fitted it to its place. 
 
 It might be asked : Is not this reasoning a two-edged sword ? 
 Does it not tend to support, rather than to overthrow the theory 
 that there are combined in Genesis three originally separate works, 
 having similar contents ? We answer, No, far from it, in the form 
 presented. Such a theory might have plausibility in certain con- 
 tingencies and to a certain limited degree. Followed out to a logical 
 conclusion in the present case, it is a boomerang which comes back 
 to confound its projectors. The argument from similarity of contents 
 here proves too much to serve the theory. If it have the value of 
 proof at all, it proves that J, E and P are inseparable parts of one 
 work. Where was there ever a narrative of any length which could 
 not be separated into parts, each more or less continuous in itself, and, 
 in the nature of the case, bearing a striking resemblance to one 
 another '/ That is in no sense extraordinary. The proof that the 
 divisions are constituent parts of one and the same work and belong 
 together is in the fact that when found together, or when put 
 together, they form an organic whole ; a whole that is obviously 
 penetrated and dominated by certain ideas, which may appear 
 and should indeed appear, to some degree, in the parts themselves, 
 but unorganized, without a nice inner connection, without growth 
 and without climax. That is the exact state of the case here. 
 We have no mechanical junction of disconnected stories. We have 
 a continuous evolution from primary ideas. 
 
 None of the supposed sources presents in their fullness and strength 
 
430 2'HE PRE8BTTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 the four ruling principles named. None of them fails to represent^ 
 in some form and degree, every one of them. J is prophetical, but 
 so are E and P in a degree, and, what is more to the point, along 
 the same lines and looking to the same objects. P offers powerful 
 evidence here and there that its author was intent on showing how 
 Israel became a people and inherited a land ; but it is in scraps, un- 
 related segments. The circle is complete when to them are added 
 the statements of J and E. On the other hand, it might be made out 
 from J or E, and far better from both together, that it had pleased 
 God to train His servants in patience and heroic trust. But the lesson 
 would be below the standard clearly aimed at by the author of 
 Genesis without the matter supplied by P. Simple walls are not 
 meaningless ; they have not the significance of walls converging to 
 the arch. That is what these supposed sources do for one another. 
 It is admitted that they are composed of the same material, that it 
 is shaped to a like pattern ; but some fail to see that apart, they are 
 each loosely, if at all, connected and are feeble in suggestion. 
 Together they come to their own, are alive with meaning through- 
 out, and make up the palpable unity of Genesis. 
 
 Take, for example, the trial of Abraham respecting the promised 
 seed. There is no more marked feature of the book, and each of 
 the alleged sources contributes its part. Take J alone and you get 
 the idea, but without some important side lights upon it touching 
 Eliezer and Abraham's doubts (xv. 1-3). Without P the promise 
 on which Abraham's hopes, as well as his own matchless faith are 
 based, fail of their culminating point, and the related series of 
 events lacks their proper perspective. Again, without P and J, E 
 would be unintelligible ; having a tolerable beginning, but without 
 middle or end. We find Isaac, as we do Ishmael, in it, and the 
 patriarch's trial at Jehovah-jireh. That is all. The last is an im- 
 portant contribution as such to the scheme of Genesis. Isolated in 
 E, it is incomprehensible — would cause, in fact, the gravest per- 
 plexity. 
 
 This illustrates sufficiently well the point we have in view. To 
 separate Genesis into three parts by the lines of cleavage laid down 
 in the current analysis would be to rob the book of its admitted 
 meaning. To admit such meaning, though only in part, and suppose 
 it the product of little more than an external adjustment of originally 
 dissevered independent works, mediated by how deft soever a hand, 
 is to predicate an ethical and a literary impossibility, — if the hand 
 were unskilled and clumsy, a gross absurdity. As Prof. Driver * 
 says of the " traditional view," the price at which such a theory 
 must be maintained is too high. 
 
 * Introd., p. X. 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 431 
 
 The argument for the unity of Genesis derived from the quality 
 of the Hebrew employed has been already given on both its nega- 
 tive and positive sides in the previous chapter. It is generally ad- 
 mitted that Genesis represents, to a considerable extent, the oldest 
 form of the language. But it is said that in P, mingled with signs 
 of antiquity, are elements characteristic of its latest form. This we 
 beg leave to question on the ground of facts elsewhere presented ; 
 and we call for proof. What has been hitherto adduced as proof is 
 plainly inadequate, finding a complete parallel, to say no more, in J 
 and E. The conclusion, accordingly, to which we are necessarily 
 driven by the data in hand is this : If from the general criteria of 
 language and style it is impossible to say that Genesis did not 
 originate in the time of the early kings (1000-800 B.C.), on the 
 same ground it is impossible to deny that it might have arisen in 
 the time of Moses. 
 
 One other ground for the unity and continuity of Genesis remains 
 to be considered. It is the references of its several parts to one 
 another. They are far more numerous than is generally supposed, 
 and their bearing is unmistakable. The problem is complicated 
 somewhat by differences of opinion among critics as to the relative 
 order of the sources and the time of their union. For convenience 
 we shall have in mind the hypothesis of the great majority who 
 hold that J and E after circulating independently were first united ; 
 then, long after — not less than three centuries — were supplemented 
 and completed from P. As might be expected, the redactor or 
 compiler has here an important role. At each step his part is to be 
 carefully scrutinized lest he exceed his prerogative or transgress the 
 rules of logic, since, in the end, whoever else he may be, he is the 
 responsible agent of the theory which created him. 
 
 There are found in Genesis, as we now have it, four classes of 
 cross references : of P to P ; of P to J or E ; of J or E to P ; and 
 of J and E to one another. For present purposes the references of 
 P to J or E, or vice versd^ will be sufficient. Actual references or a 
 dependence of this sort are obviously out of harmony with the 
 theory, in fact disprove it. If the matter of P refers to or pre- 
 supposes that of J or E, it must have been written with reference to 
 it. The same is true of J or E in relation to P. The only alter- 
 native is to suppose, that in these particulars the original form of 
 all sources was virtually alike; that is to say, if the cases are nu- 
 merous, instead of there being three distinct sources at the basis of 
 Genesis, there was one Genesis from which the alleged sources 
 were derived. Another possibility should not be overlooked. The 
 way may be prepared in one part of Genesis for what appears later, 
 without prejudice to the theory that the former may be an original 
 
432 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 source on which the latter has freely built, thd!t is, some form of a 
 supplementary theory which is not yet altogether antiquated. 
 
 First, are there indications of the dependence of J or E on 
 P? Throughout chaps, ii and iii (J) the word Elohim has gen- 
 erally been put in a way almost singular in the Bible, alongside 
 of Jehovah, in obvious reference to chap, i (P). It is usually 
 ascribed to the redactor. Was he then so theologically inclined ? 
 It must be conceded that he took a great deal of pains to emend his 
 (three-hundred-year old) source, since he was obliged to insert the 
 word not less than a score of times.* Again, " heaven and 
 earth," as a conception, in v. 29, is a remarkable interjection 
 of a scrap of matter from J in the midst of P. It refers to the birth 
 of Noah, which is the subject of the context. There are but two 
 alternatives : either the matter is from J, and here depends on P's 
 statement which immediately precedes, or it is P's matter, and refers 
 back to J (iii. 17). Either supposition is out of harmony with the 
 theory. 
 
 In vi. 7, vii. 23, it is admitted by all, that there is found in J 
 a characteristic expression consisting of a dozen v/ords in the 
 English, of P (i. 26) : " Let us make man in our image, and let 
 him have dominion." By a clear evasion of strict logical conse- 
 quences, however, it is charged to the redactor. A credible reason 
 for these two lapses of the redactor, who was so careful in chaps. 
 ii and iii to use words by line and plummet, has never been 
 given. In vii. 1 (J), Noah is told to come into " the ark," though 
 all that is previously said about " the ark " is said in P (vi. 13-16). 
 In the same verse Jehovah is represented as saying to the patri- 
 arch : " Thee have I seen righteous before me in this genera- 
 tion," in obvious dependence on vi. 9 (P), as the peculiar coloring 
 of the language shows and as is admitted by Dillmann.f In vii. 3, 
 9, the language again, it is universally conceded, shows that J is in 
 the livery of P. But it is claimed, redactor fecit. A possible reason 
 why critics might claim it, we have ; any good reason why the re- 
 dactor should do it, we have not. 
 
 In vii. 12 (J), the statement that the rain was upon the earth 
 forty days is directly dependent on the verse just before, vii. 11 (P), 
 which speaks of the opening of the windows of heaven; and in viii. 
 2'' (J), there is a like dependence on viii. 1^ (P). The declaration 
 in viii. 20 (J), that Noati built an altar, presupposes his disembarka- 
 tion recorded only by P in a previous section (viii. 4). In ix. 22 
 (J), there is a clear anticipation of a fact stated in x. 6 (P). It is 
 
 *In ii. 18, "living creature" (of. i. 21, etc.), claimed by critics as an expres- 
 sion peculiar to P, might fairly be cited as referring to i. 31, etc. (P). 
 t Die Composition des Hexateuchs, p. 656. 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 433 
 
 laid to the charge of the redactor, but in palpable avoidance of the 
 logic of facts (cf. ix. 18, 19). In x. 15 (J), a genealogical state- 
 ment is made that can be understood only by referring back to P 
 (x. 6). It is held to be another of the redactor's adjustments 
 Would he have cut up J, the older family register, to piece out P's, 
 and make a mess of both ? He was more economical in chaps 
 iv and v, where, wittingly or not, he is supposed to have pre 
 served one and the same register in two forms. In x. 24 the re 
 dactor is made to supplement P's register by a verse of his own 
 In doing so he has employed one of the most characteristic ex 
 pressions of J ("begat" in the Hebrew). Working in the age and 
 spirit of P, he should have been more shrewd. If, on the other 
 hand, it was intended as an introductory link to J's list which fol- 
 lows, it is equally clumsy in showing a dependence in other re- 
 spects on P. 
 
 Again, in xi. 1-9 (J), the account of the confusion of tongues is 
 absolutely necessary to explain x. 5, 20, 31, 32 (P), which implies 
 that the nations already had different tongues. Chap. xii. 4 (J), 
 which speaks of Lot's going to Canaan with Abraham, is mystify- 
 ing without xi. 27, 31 (P), which informs us who Lot is. In xii. 
 6 it is remarked that Abraham passed through the land. We only 
 know what land it is from the preceding verse, contributed by P. 
 In xviii. 10, 14 (J), Jehovah assures Abraham that he will surely 
 fulfill his promise when the season comes round " at the set time." 
 The time had just been marked in chap. xvii. 17 (P), as Sarah's 
 ninetieth year (cf. xii. 4, xxi. 5). In xxi. 2 it is said that Sarah 
 " bare Abraham a son in his old age," an obvious reference to P's 
 statements concerning the patriarch's age, for they occur nowhere 
 else in J. In xxi. 13 (E), we read : " And also of the son of the 
 bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed." Its 
 form suggests at once xvii. 20, where the promise concerning Ish- 
 mael has fuller expression (P). In xxiv. 6, 7 (J), the death of Sarah 
 is directly implied. It had been previously recorded in xxiii. 1, 2 
 (P), and there alone. To say that the redactor inserted the refer- 
 ence in J is simply a sign of stress of weather, and does not change 
 the matter an atom. In xxv. 18 we have another instance of the 
 piecing of P with a scrap from J, and the scrap would be mean- 
 ingless anywhere else. What such a fact means, a moment's re- 
 flection will suggest. A statement made in xxix. 30 (E), is logi- 
 cally dependent on what is said in the preceding verse (P), and 
 the idea would be intolerable without it (cf., also, xxix. 23, 24). 
 We claim further that what is said of Esau's movements in con- 
 nection with Seir (xxxii. 3, xxxiii. 16, J), is only intelligible when 
 taken together with what P supplies in various passages (xxxv. 
 
434 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 29, XXX vi. 6-8; cf. xliv. 30, 31).* Chap, xxxiv. shows through- 
 out the mutual dependence of J and P. 
 
 The connection is as close in some cases as subject and predicate 
 (vers. 1, 2) ; or the corresponding parts of a compound sentence (ver. 
 3). A matter proposed in P, in one case, is carried out in J (with 
 14-17 cf. 19). In ver. 25 we read : " And it came to pass on the third 
 day, when thej were sore, that (so far P) two of (J) the sons of Jacob 
 (P), Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brethren (J), took each man his 
 sword, and came upon the city unawares, and slew all the males " 
 (P). We are asked to believe that a redactor working in the days 
 of P used his scissors thus mercilessly on his sources, and for what 
 purpose here ? To supplement J in the interests of P ? No ; but to 
 correct P and make it harmonize with J — a proceeding in polar con- 
 trast with his assumed attitude in general. And he did this when, 
 if he had left P's representation unmodified, he would have had a 
 more natural and easily accepted statement : namely, that all the 
 brethren were concerned in the affair, instead of two only. 
 
 What now do these examples show ? They show, as far as they 
 go, and their scope is not inconsiderable, that J and E presuppose 
 P, on which they so clearly depend. To ascribe the phenomena 
 presented to the simple manipulation of the sources is manifestly 
 out of the question. To say that the matter was originally alike 
 in these particulars, or that the redactor has changed it to make it 
 conform where it was unlike, are pure conjectures to which the 
 advocates of the theory are not entitled, especially to any such ex- 
 tent. They have not, moreover, the merit of plausibility. In fact, 
 they are suicidal. We have one original Genesis, and these three 
 are extracts, not sources. 
 
 Changing now the point of view, let us note any instances where 
 P refers to or presupposes J or E. As in the last case, an exhaust- 
 ive induction is not attempted. In v. 1 we read : " The book of 
 the generations of Adam." It is reasonable to suppose that this 
 proper name, gradually introduced from chap. iii. 17 (cf. iv. 25), 
 comes through J, where we find already a sense for the importance 
 of names (cf. ii. 19, 23). In the following verse we read : " Male 
 and female created he them and blessed them, and called their 
 name Adam." This appears to refer to the work of creation as 
 recorded in J (ii. 7), and to be a play upon the word Adam, that is, 
 in its root-meaning, earth, the material from which they are there 
 said to have been made ("dust from the ground"). The fact that 
 Adam and his descendants are spoken of as dying (v. 5), looks back to 
 ii. 17(J), where death is threatened as the consequence of disobedience. 
 
 * If there were a discrepancy— which there is not — it is in P when compared 
 with itself. 
 
THE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 435 
 
 The expression in v. 24, " Enoch walked with God," like a similar 
 one at vi. 9, referring to Noah, implies the corruption of the earth de- 
 scribed only in J. In vi. 11, the statement that the earth was cor- 
 rupt, like the last passages, but more peremptorily, requires the ac- 
 count of the introduction of sin contained in J, Chap, i had con- 
 cluded with the words : " And God saw everything that he had 
 made, and behold it was very good." 
 
 In vi. 12 we are told that all " flesh " had corrupted his way upon the 
 earth. The peculiar designation of the fallen race as " flesh," is derived 
 from vi. 3 (J). In vii. 6 (P), the immediate announcement of the flood 
 in J (vers. 1-5) is plainly presupposed. In vii. 17 (P), the flood is 
 said to have been " forty days " on the earth, looking back to vii. 12 
 (J). It is laid to the redactor ; but at the expense either of his 
 good sense or his honesty. In ix. 3 (P), where flesh is allowed to 
 man as food, there is doubtless a reference to the previous restric- 
 tion to a vegetable diet, and most likely, from the phrasing of J's 
 form of it (Hi. 18 ; cf. ii. 16, J ; i. 29, P). In ix. 5 (P), " and surely 
 your blood will I require," etc., seems to allude to the account of 
 Abel's murder (J), especially to the words : " The blood of thy 
 brother crieth unto me from the ground." In xi. 31 (P), Sarah is 
 spoken of as Abraham's wife. The fact of the marriage is noted 
 two verses before in J. In xii. 4 Abraham's age is given when he 
 started from Haran. The fact and the occasion of his going to 
 Haran are found only in J, just before (xii. 1-4). In xiii. 6, the 
 circumstance is mentioned that the substance of Abraham and Lot 
 is too great to permit them to dwell together. How it comes to be 
 so is described in J in the preceding context (xii. 16, xiii. 1-5). The 
 same relation of the documents is true as it regards their recorded 
 separation (xiii. 11, 12; cf. xiii. 7-11). 
 
 In xvi. 3, " Hagar the Egyptian " is introduced into the narrative 
 of P. How Abraham came to have an Egyptian maid is told only 
 and told very consistently in J (xii, 16, xvi. 1). In xvii. 7, God 
 speaks of establishing His covenant with Abraham. That He had 
 made one appears only from J and E, in previous chapters. In 
 xix. 29 the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is alluded to as 
 having taken place. The fact is described by J at length in the 
 preceding context. In this same brief allusion to the event by P, 
 Lot is said to have been delivered on Abraham's account, evi- 
 dently implying Abraham's intercession recorded in J (xviii. 23-32). 
 In xxxii. 2 (P), Abraham is noticeably spoken of as having come 
 to mourn for Sarah. We are informed in E that he was in 
 Beersheba at the time (xxii. 19), while Sarah had died at Hebron. 
 
 In XXV. 20 (P), the reference to Isaac's marriage looks back to the 
 record of it in xxiv. 67 (J) ; that to Rebecca's relatives, including 
 
436 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW^ 
 
 Bethuel, " the Syrian of Paddan-aram," to J io xxii. 23, xxiv. 29. 
 In XXV. 8 (P), Abraham is said to have died in a " good old age," 
 an expression taken from the promise that he should do so, re- 
 corded in XV. 15, which is properly matter of J, although to avoid 
 a collision assigned by critics to the redactor. In xxv. 11 (P), it is 
 said that Isaac dwelt at Beer-lahai-roi, a statement based on a pre- 
 vious one (of P) that he had come up from there to meet and 
 marry Eebecca (xxiv. 62 ; cf. xvi. 14). In xxviii. 1, Isaac's charge 
 to Jacob is founded on the foregoing narrative of J and E; so 
 xxviii. 2 on xxiv. 9, xxviii. 7 on xxvii. 42, although for no apparent 
 reason except to avoid danger to the theory in the last case the re- 
 dactor has been supposed to have made an insertion of two words 
 in P's text. A part of ver. 18, chap, xxxi (P), is afloat, like a 
 piece of cordage in the sea, unless it be connected with the narra- 
 tive of J and E found immediately before. That it floats in a cer- 
 tain common direction does not prove it any the less a fragment. 
 Who is the Dinah of whom the story is told by both P and J in 
 chap, xxxiv? We are informed only in J (xxx. 21). How do we 
 know that Hamor is the father of Shechem (xxxiv. 4, P) ? E tells 
 us a few verses earlier (xxxiii. 19). Critics think he ought not to 
 have done so, but the " ought " has force from their point of view 
 only. In xxxv, 9, God is said to have appeared unto Jacob " again " 
 when he came from Paddan-aram. It can only relate to his first 
 appearance to him when he went thither, recorded in E (xxviii. 
 11, 12). Critics would refer the one word again to the redactor. 
 It is quite too small a buffer to stand the concussion of intervening 
 history. In xxxv. 10 (P), where the change of Jacob's name from 
 Jacob to Israel is recorded for the second time, the first account of 
 it (xxxii. 25, J) is in view where alone its raison cTeire appears. In 
 xxxv. 26 (P), Zilpah is referred to as Leah's handmaid. It looks 
 back to xxx. 9 (J) where the fact is stated in its original and fuller 
 form. In xli. 46 (P), Joseph is introduced as having stood before 
 Pharaoh. The circumstance is described in the context (J and E) 
 just preceding. Without this connection, it is another piece of 
 floating wreckage. In xlvi. 6, 7, xlvii. 5, 6, 7-11, there are like 
 scraps from P relating to Joseph's going down to Egypt, which are 
 similarly incomplete when considered apart. At this point, more- 
 over, a long list of Jacob's descendants is given as a resume of scat- 
 tered information elsewhere. By a fundamental principle of the 
 analysis it should be assigned to P. It is introduced by matter 
 which is so assigned. It has some of P's alleged characteristic ex- 
 pressions (xlvi. 15). But it refers back to events peculiar to J and 
 E (ver. 12, etc.). The criticism, accordingly, is between two fires. 
 As is usual in such cases, it gives way in favor of the redactor to 
 the extent of about twenty verses. 
 
TEE ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 437 
 
 In xlvii, 27 (P) the expression " land of Goshen " is found, said to 
 be at home only in J, P's being "land of Egypt," or "land of 
 Rameses." To parry the blow, to the theory and save an alleged 
 duplicate, the redactor is supposed to have inserted the two mis- 
 leading words, the very thing he was there not to do (cf. xlvii. 11). 
 If critics can give as forcible and necessary a reason for his doing 
 it as they themselves have for holding that he did it, the hypothesis 
 might be regarded as credible. In xlviii. 7, in P's context, and with 
 his phraseology, Rachel's death is incidentally noted. A circum- 
 stantial description of the event appeared in JE long before (xxxv. 
 16-22). Here again resort is taken to the redactor, but against the 
 judgment of some of the ablest of the critics themselves. It was 
 not unnatural for Jacob in speaking with Joseph respecting his 
 sons that he should refer to the decease of Joseph's own mother. 
 A large part of chap, xlix is devoted to Jacob's final blessing upon 
 his sons '(vers. 1-27). To it in detail ver. 28 (P) makes clear refer- 
 ence in these words : " And this it is that their father spoke unto 
 them and blessed them, every one according to his blessing, he 
 blessed them." It is a fitting conclusion to this long list of in- 
 stances in which P takes account of the matter of its supposed 
 companion documents. 
 
 Again we ask, What is to be done with these facts ? Some of 
 them might be disputed. We do not claim absolute certainty in 
 every case ; only in the majority of cases. Whatever may be said 
 of some of the instances cited cannot affect the validity of the rest. 
 The argument is not like a chain whose strength is equal only to 
 that of its weakest link. The point to be considered is : Are not 
 these instances of cross reference just what might have been ex- 
 pected were Genesis as a literary work essentially a unit ? Are 
 they not fully as numerous in this case as they would be in that ? 
 And are they not of the same general character ? It is to be re- 
 membered that the references of P to P and of J to E and vice versa 
 have not been considered, nor many others not so directly bearing 
 on the theory before us. They would add immensely to the list. 
 On the other hand, were Genesis constructed as claimed by the ad- 
 vocates of the current analysis, would not, must not, the fundamen- 
 tal differences cropping out be far greater, and these cross references 
 much fewer and of a different character ? So it seems to us. We 
 would, as a matter of course, expect indications very marked and 
 very clear of a literary make-up so pronounced. 
 
 We are pointed, it is true, to the evidence of language and of 
 duplicate accounts. These we have considered elsewhere* and do 
 not find sufficiently strong to overcome the acknowledged and 
 
 * See article in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for April, 1895. 
 
438 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 demonstrable unity of the book. Were there no other testimony 
 that the repetitions pointed out in Genesis are not marks of diverse 
 documentary sources, the fact that many of the same sort remain 
 in each of the supposed documents, after the analysis has been re- 
 duced to its lowest terms, would be fully adequate to disprove the 
 theory at this its strongest .point (cf. v. 32, vi. 10, x. 1, vi. 11, 12, 
 vii. 14-16, 18-20 triplicate, ix. 9-11, 12-17, xii. 5, xvii. 8, 10). 
 These are a few examples, taken somewhat at random, from the 
 one document P, the one most scrupulously separated from the 
 others. It is apparent that they are not signs of different docu- 
 ments, but mere reiterations for the purpose of emphasis or of 
 clearness. 
 
 The methods adopted to weaken the force of the argument for 
 the unity of Genesis from the many mutual references of the 
 alleged sources have already been glanced at. Sometimes it is 
 claimed that they are due to the mere juxtaposition or the skillful 
 adjustment of somewhat similar original material. For this suppo- 
 sition the references are clearly too numerous and the dependence too 
 direct, since the date of their origin respectively cannot be forgotten. 
 More often the dependence is charged to alterations introduced by 
 the redactor in his material. This might be admitted oftener in the 
 score or so of cases alleged, if a really probable reason were given 
 for the most of such changes from the point of view of a redactor. 
 The necessity for them from the critic's point of view is perspicuous 
 enough. It is needless to say that every such introduction of the 
 redactor, as a mere puppet of the theory, is itself a strong, if indi- 
 rect argument against the theory. At best it must be regarded as 
 irregular, an exception to what is claimed. Beyond a certain nar- 
 row limit exceptions of this sort become an unbearable burden 
 upon a theory, and that limit is here left far behind. A bare sur- 
 vey of the editorial matter of the Genesis of the analysis, on what- 
 ever side considered, can only awaken the gravest suspicion towards 
 the theory it is brought to support. 
 
 It is to be remembered, too, that this evidence from cross refer- 
 ences among the alleged documents in Genesis does not stand by it- 
 self. It comes to confirm a view still generally accepted and 
 hitherto universally held. It comes to the support of other reasons 
 for the unity of Genesis which would be quite conclusive were they 
 offered in favor of another book. The four great lines of thought 
 which we have discovered running through it are thus shown anew 
 not to be factitious but real, organically connected not only among 
 themselves, but with a multitude of other subordinate lines which 
 contribute to their development. That there are, to some extent, 
 original fragmentary documentary sources at the basis of the pres- 
 
THE ORIOIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 439 
 
 ent Genesis we are convinced, and shall attempt hereafter to show. 
 It will be found to be in no consistent sense out of harmony with 
 the positions already taken. That this original material lies there, 
 however, still like massive blocks of sandstone alternating with 
 granite and gneiss ; that these blocks yet appear in the common 
 structure, only covered here and there with bits of stucco and an 
 occasional interchange of the material to make a verisimilitude, a 
 semblance of uniformity — is more than disproved by the facts pre- 
 sented. Genesis represents not so much compilation as strenuous 
 elimination and selection. It is characterized,^ not by bare uni- 
 formity, or a unity that is outward and in a few points. It has the 
 unity of the landscape. The earth, the tree, the cloud are there, 
 but each existing for the other, and by a subtile inner concord 
 working together under the guidance of one controlling mind for 
 common ends. 
 
 Edwin Cone Bissell. 
 
 McCoRMiCK Theological Seminary, Chicago. 
 
III. 
 
 THE AUTHENTICITY AND GENUINENESS 
 OF DANIEL. 
 
 AMONG the books of the Old Testament, that of Daniel stands 
 in the forefront as a witness for Jesus Christ. Through all 
 the centuries it has borne powerful testimony for the divine origin 
 and claim of Christianity. It contains the supernatural element in 
 a high degree. Its miracles and prophecies are of the most pro- 
 nounced description and demand the direct agency of God for their 
 production. These marked features of the book have incurred for 
 it the displeasure of rationalistic critics, who have massed all the 
 resources of the critical method for the purpose of destroying its 
 authenticity and historical credibility, while evangelical scholars 
 have been no less earnest in their defense. The history of the con- 
 test is an interesting one. 
 
 For more than two thousand years the Church of God has held 
 that the Book of Daniel was written at Babylon during the exile and 
 had Daniel for its author ; and that its historic statements are true 
 and its miracles and prophecies genuine. The first to dispute this 
 position was Porphyry, a heathen philosopher of the New Platonic 
 School, in the latter part of the third century of our era. He 
 maintained that the book was a forgery, its miracles impossible, 
 and its prophecies history written after the event. He frankly 
 admitted that history had verified some of the prophecies of Daniel, 
 " and then adroitly turned his admission into a weapon of attack, 
 arguing that a record so exact could be made only after the events : 
 Daniel played the part of an historian in the mask of a prophet." 
 The matter rested for many centuries until the attack was resumed 
 by the Dutch Jew Spinoza, the French infidel Voltaire, the German 
 rationalist Berthhold, and the English deist Anthony Collins, the 
 actual precursors of the destructive critics of to-day, who repro- 
 duce the same arguments. In their view, the book does not come 
 from Daniel and his times, but from the Maccabean age, when the 
 Jews were persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes. They hold that 
 the predictive elements of the book, so far as there is any truth in 
 them at all, are history in the form of prediction written after the 
 
THE ANTI8TES OF ZURICH. 613 
 
 to the left or rationalistic wing. These were the theologians who 
 led Zurich back again to rationalism. Over against the rationalistic 
 teachings of the university of Zurich, the evangelicals called a pro- 
 fessor extraordinary to the university and supported him privately. 
 They also founded, through the liberality of Matilda Escher, the St. 
 Anna Chapel, which has become the centre of all evangelical influ- 
 ences in the canton. In 1866, Antistes Brunner died and was suc- 
 ceeded by the present antistes, Diethelra George Finsler, a very able 
 man, who has written a number of very valuable works such as a 
 History of the Theological Development of German Sivitzerland. 
 He represents the mediating school of theology as held by the late 
 Prof. Hagenbach of Basle, but like Hagenbach and the mediates in 
 general he is always anxious to give the same rights to each party 
 in the Church. It is possible that he may be the last of the long 
 series of antistes, as the parliament is now occupied with a new 
 organization of the Church, which would eliminate that dignity. 
 
 We have thus traced the history of the antistes of Zurich through 
 three centuries, and from the highest Calvinistic orthodoxy down to . 
 the completest rationalism. Zurich and its university to-day are the 
 most rationalistic in German Switzerland, although we have learned 
 with pleasure that within the last five years somewhat of a reaction 
 has set in especially in the country parishes who are tired of ration- 
 alism and prefer orthodox pastors. But it is very sad to see how 
 the main cities, historic in the Reformed faith, have gone off into 
 rationalism, such as Geneva, Zurich and Heidelberg. that some 
 Zwingli would again rise to destroy the power of this new oppressor 
 as he destroyed Romanism. Or would that some Hess might again* 
 come to lead the Zurich Church back to the Bible and to orthodoxy. 
 The Alliance of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches could not 
 do a better work than to establish English congregations in these 
 old Reformed centres, which might serve to strengthen the things 
 that remain and uphold the evangelical elements within the state 
 churches by their sympathy, as well as be to them object lessons of 
 the practical methods of church work among the English churches. 
 
 Reading, Pa. JamE3 I. GoOD. 
 
Warfield Library 
 
 MA^ 2'^ iq2 5 j 
 
 n. 
 
 ORIGI]^ AND C0MP0SITI0:N^ OF GEIS^ESIS. 
 
 THE SITUATION PRESUPPOSED IN GENESIS. 
 
 THEORIES of the origin of Old Testament books have, of late, 
 been greatly in excess of admitted facts. To collect, classify? 
 verify and learn the significance of facts is doubtless the inquirer's first 
 business; it is certainly the quickest and surest path to valid results. 
 The fifty chapters of Genesis furnish no small amount of material. 
 It should be no hopeless task to determine, within certain general 
 limits, the bearing of this material on questions of composition, 
 authorship and date. What then is the actual situation presupposed 
 in Genesis? What age of the world does it best reflect? If the 
 book be six hundred or a thousand years later than the times, per- 
 sons and things described in it, signs of this fact should be abundant 
 and clear ; while literary and historical criticism can have no more 
 legitimate function than to point them out and show their true 
 meaning. The work here, moreover, should be all the easier that 
 the contents of Genesis are of such a peculiar cast. To a great extent, 
 as its name imports, it is a book of beginnings. It professes to 
 describe the beginnings of the material universe, of the earth, of 
 man and his history, of the family, of human sin and redemption, of 
 the Sabbath rest, of the building of altars and the anointing of 
 pillars, of the public worship of Jehovah, of polygamy, of agricul- 
 ture and the arts, of the abrupt decline of human life, of the confu- 
 sion of tongues, and other things besides. Nor are these the only 
 peculiarities of the book. Its geography and topography are char- 
 acteristic, its local antiquities, the proverbs and the customs then cur- 
 rent, its ethnic presuppositions, the measure and the kind of contact 
 with the surrounding peoples everywhere implied, its family regis- 
 ters, and its religion both on the human and the divine side. In 
 fact, our greatest embarrassment is to know how to treat properly 
 such a mass of materials in the limits allowed. We will look first 
 at some of the main points of the historical narratives of the book. 
 One specially marked feature of Genesis is its cosmogony. Many 
 important questions concerning it still await solution. They need 
 not, however, necessarily defeat a purpose to discover in what gen- 
 
ORIOIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 615 
 
 eral period the first chapter of Genesis took its present form. Is it a 
 product of the Babylonian exile, as some maintain, or may it have 
 been of Mosaic or even pre-Mosaic origin? There certainly seems 
 to be decisive objections against its origin in the exile. The close 
 relation between the Biblical and one of the Babylonian accounts of 
 the creation no one doubts. In both the work is divided into seven 
 successive stages. In both the beginning is a watery chaos, char- 
 acterized by a word having the same root-meaning. In both the 
 general order of creation, with man at the apex, is the same. In 
 both the celestial bodies are appointed for "signs and for seasons, 
 and for days and years." * But these facts furnish no just ground 
 for the conclusion that the Biblical account came from Babylon at 
 the time of the exile, but quite the contrary ; or even that it is de- 
 pendent on the Babylonian. A common ultimate origin for both 
 is all that can be safely inferred.f 
 
 (1) The Biblical account does not make upon us the impression that 
 it is the product of special study or reflection, as one might expect 
 if it came from so late a period as the middle of the fifth century 
 B.C. It has a peculiar style, but it is lapidarian, that is to say, 
 monumental in character. (2) That the Jews would adopt from 
 their heathen masters of the exile period, in any form, so conspic- 
 uous a part of the Torah as the opening chapter of Genesis — that 
 they would find among them the formative elements, or even the 
 suggestions of its great spiritual truths, including its pure monothe- 
 ism — is extremely improbable, not to say incredible. (3) The 
 Babylonian story of the creation, as we have it, is demonstrably 
 much earlier than the exile. It comes to us first from the period 
 and the library of Assurbanipal (B.C. 668-626), where it was stored 
 
 *See Records of the Past, 2d series, i, 130. 
 
 f Pinches {Expository Times, May, 1893, p. 350), a competent authority, thus 
 expresses himself on this point: "No charge of plagiarism can be brought 
 against the Hebrew writer on account of any parallels which may exist between 
 his narrative or narratives and those of the Babylonians. They are parallels, 
 and nothing more; for the two sets of narratives are so different, that no one, 
 comparing them, would venture to say that either was copied from the other. 
 That the legends current among the Babylonians were, at least to a certain 
 extent, known to the scribes of the Hebrews, is very probable, and it is just as 
 probable that the legends [?] current with the Hebrews were known to the scribes 
 of Babylonia. That the Hebrew writer may have been influenced by the Baby- 
 lonian legends, is not only possible but probable; but if he was so influenced, 
 when he wrote, he has managed to suppress the fact in a remarkable way, for 
 such parallels and similarities as these are only what might have been expected 
 among writers so closely akin in race and language, belonging to nationalities 
 whose forefathers had, in early times, inhabited the same country, and between 
 whom there was much intercourse in later days. Two descriptions of the same 
 event, especially if that event be the Creation, are, moreover, bound to contain 
 a certain number of parallels." 
 
616 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 as the treasured copy of an original older by many hundreds of 
 years. Assyria, it is well known, became an independent empire 
 about the eighteenth century B.C. Its literature, of the kind we 
 are considering, was wholly inherited ; it was the same as that of the 
 Babylonians, and originally derived from the same Akkadian and 
 Sumerian sources. We are pointed, accordingly, to the Babylonia 
 of Abraham's time, if not much earlier, by these parallels. If one 
 object to the simple and natural theory that it was through Abra- 
 ham that the Hebrews received from antiquity the essential contents 
 of the earlier chapters of Genesis, there is still another, much to be 
 preferred on the score of probability to the one offered us by a cer- 
 tain class of critics. It has been placed beyond doubt, since recent 
 discoveries in Southern Arabia and at Tel Loh in Mesopotamia, 
 that a high Babylonian civilization had spread, to some extent, over 
 Canaan and the surrounding nations considerably before the days of 
 Abraham.* Here then was an opportunity for the transmission to 
 the future home of the Israelites of " this or other cosmogonies of pos- 
 sibly Babylonian origin.""|- (4) The peculiar structure of the creation 
 narrative in Genesis is doubtless due to the formative idea underly- 
 ing the chapter, which is that of six days of labor followed by a 
 Sabbath of rest. This idea reaches back to the very dawn of his- 
 tory, appearing in the Babylonian record before it does in Genesis. 
 That it is pre-Mosaic in Israel is clear from the language of the 
 fourth commandment : " Remember the Sabbath day," — showing a 
 knowledge of the Sabbath, whatever may be said of its early observ- 
 ance. (5) There are numerous passages in the Psalms, early and 
 late (Ps. viii, xxxiii. 9, xc. 2, cii. 25, 27, civ) in chap, xxxviii, and 
 in Proverbs (viii. 22-30), which, to all appearances, refer to the Bib- 
 lical account of the creation. In view of these facts, if one claim for 
 it an exilic or even a post-Mosaic origin, the claim must be supported 
 by something besides conjecture ; there must be stringent reasons 
 given for so unlikely a position4 As yet they have not been pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Three other narratives of Genesis which have more or less direct 
 
 *See Ennan, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenland. Oesellschaft, Sept., 1892; 
 Conder, Scottish Rev., Oct., 1894, on "The Earliest Ages of Hebrew History." 
 
 •j- See article by Hommel " The Oldest Cosmogony of the World, " in the 8. 8. 
 Times, February 17, 1894. 
 
 X To the hypothesis that the scheme of the creation on the basis of the so-called 
 Hexahemeron ia due to a later working over of the original material, Dillraann 
 says {Die Genesis, 1892, p. 16) that it is an unnecessary and essentially impossi- 
 ble theory. Similarly, Delitzsch, Com., 1887, p. 42; and Strack, Com., 1892, pp. 
 4, 6. Or the effort to get rid of the testimony of the Decalogue by claiming that 
 Ex. XX. 11 is a later addition, Delitzsch {ibid.) refers to Deut. v. 13-15, where the 
 existence of the Sabbath is predicated, though the motive urged for its observ- 
 ance is new. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 617 
 
 connection with the monuments of Babylon are those of the Fall, the 
 Deluge and of the Tower of Babel. All Assyrian scholars are not 
 agreed that there is a clear tradition of the Fall recorded on the 
 monuments. Kecently, however, new discoveries have enlarged our 
 knowledge of the subject. It is now held, at least by some of them, 
 that while there is no complete monumental record of this event 
 extant, there are in the same creation series fragmentary passages 
 showing that the story was known to the Babylonians in a form 
 resembling, in several important respects, the Biblical. Both have 
 an earthly paradise, a tree of knowledge, and, apparently, a tree of 
 life. In both the sin consists in the eating of forbidden fruit. 
 Thus runs, in part, the version : 
 
 " The great gods, all determiners of fate. 
 
 They entered, and death, like the god, soon was filled. 
 
 In sin one with the other in compact joins. 
 
 The command was established, in the garden of the god. 
 
 The tree Asnan they ate, they broke. 
 
 Its stalk they destroyed. 
 
 They drank the sweet juice which injures the body. 
 
 Great was their sin. Themselves they exalted. 
 
 To Merodach their Redeemer he appointed their destiny."* 
 In addition to this fragment, there is a small Babylonian cylinder 
 preserved in the British Museum, of uncertain, but, as is generally 
 agreed, of very ancient date, which seems to make definite refer- 
 ence to the fall of man. It contains a picture of the tree of knowl- 
 edge, or, according to Babylonian ideas, of the tree of life. On 
 either side sit a man and woman, while behind the woman the ser- 
 pent appears as if addressing himself to her. There can be no rea- 
 sonable doubt what this pictorial representation was meant to teach. 
 It shows that, in its most essential features, the Biblical story of the 
 Fall was widely current among Shemitic peoples. 
 
 Here again, it is to be observed, whatever the ultimate relation 
 of these accounts may prove to be, they transport us by their essen- 
 tial contents to the very earliest times. If, accordingly, one is 
 pleased to conjecture that the Biblical narrative assumed its pres- 
 ent form at a late period in the Hebrew history, he is entitled to 
 all the support which an unlikely conjecture affords and to nothing 
 more. "Very late it cannot have been, since there are several ref- 
 erences to it in the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon (Prov. iii. 18, 
 xi. 30, xiii. 12, xv. 4), as well as in the earlier Prophets (Joel ii. 3 ;. 
 Hosea x. 8).t In fact, there seems to be nothing to forbid the nar- 
 
 * See Boscawen, Expository Times, 1893, pp. 439-441 ; but cf. Pinches, ibid.^ 
 1892, pp. 123-125. 
 
 f Only here, outside of Genesis, are the Hebrew words for thorns and thistles 
 found in combination. 
 
618 2HE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 rative of the fall in Genesis being the product of an age preceding 
 Moses. 
 
 In the case of the Deluge, the Babylonian and Biblical accounts 
 display, even in the smallest details, a most remarkable similarity. 
 They agree in the main, as it respects the reason of the judgment; 
 definitely stating that it. was on account of sin, that the warning of 
 it was first given to one man and that it was to be a flood of waters. 
 This man is said to have done as he was bidden. The object of the 
 vessel is declared to be to save the Babylonian Noah and others, so 
 as " to preserve the seed of life." The flood has a second announce- 
 ment as in the Bible. The hero embarks with his relatives and the 
 beasts of the field. The door of the vessel is shut and the flood ap- 
 pears as announced. It is caused by rain and the convulsions of 
 nature. Mankind without is totally destroyed. The duration of 
 the flood is carefully stated. This other Noah, like the Biblical, 
 opens a window. The ship stands in the region of Armenia. Birds 
 are sent out after seven days. The occupants of the ship disembark. 
 A sacrifice is offered to the gods, who are pleased with the odor, and, 
 as the text is generally read, a rainbow appears in the sky and a 
 promise is given that the world shall not again be destroyed. At 
 the end, the man is blessed by Bel. This is the surprising Baby- 
 lonian account. 
 
 Unlike the two preceding narratives examined, the first of which 
 is ascribed by critics to the document P (dated B.C. 444), the sec- 
 ond to J (dated B.C. 800), we have here combined together in the 
 Bible, it is supposed, extracts from both these documents ; hence 
 the Biblical story, as a whole, is held not to be earlier than B.C. 
 444. The utter improbability of such a theory is patent on the 
 surface. The Babylonian story of the Deluge, like that of the 
 Creation and the Fall, reaches us through the library of Assur- 
 banipal, two hundred years before the exile. It is an acknowl- 
 edged copy of an original earlier by centuries, more properly 
 millenniums.* That is to say, obviously long before Moses, the 
 principal contents of the Biblical narrative of the Flood, mostly 
 in the Biblical order, were current in ancient Babylonia, the 
 very region from which Abraham set out to find a home in Canaan. 
 The monuments at Tel Loh were discovered by the French consul 
 de Sarzeh at Bassorah (1880-1881). They are not later than the 
 twenty-fourth century B.C. They furnish, it is said, the oldest 
 Akkadian inscriptions yet found. Taking, these, along with the 
 Tel el-Amarna tablets, it is safe to infer that the political history 
 
 *The legends of Gilgames, of which the flood story forms a part, were 
 brought to Nineveh by the scribes of Assurbanipal from the Akkadian library 
 of Erech, among the oldest of Chaldaea. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 619 
 
 of Palestine previous to the conquest by Joshua included two peri- 
 ods : (1) That of the domination of the Akkadians, probably a Mon- 
 gol people, and (2) that of the Egyptians as revealed in the Tel el- 
 Amarna tablets. The first of these afforded occasion and opportu- 
 nity for a considerable immigration of Shemitic tribes southward 
 across the fords of the Euphrates at Carchemish.* 
 
 What room, then, is there for the hypothesis — for that is all that it 
 is — that the Biblical account is made up of two different and dis- 
 cordant stories originating four hundjed years apart and first united 
 together B.C. 444? We do not say, observe, that the Biblical storv 
 is dependent on the Babylonian, or vice versa ; but only that the 
 great antiquity of the Babylonian, seeing that it reproduces to such 
 a degree and in such form the Biblical, is prima facie evidence 
 against the position of our critics.f More than that, it directly 
 favors the view that this narrative, like the two preceding, came to 
 the Hebrews through their Mesopotamian ancestors, — if not by means 
 of Abraham on his immigration into Canaan, then by the consid- 
 erably earlier spread of Babylonian civilization to the west and 
 south. 
 
 The connection of the Tower of Babel, mentioned in Gen. xi. 
 3, 4, with the history of Babylonia is less clear. The " Land of 
 Shinar " is doubtless the Sumer of the monuments. As a matter of 
 fact, too, the bitumen said to have been used on the structure is 
 still abundant in the neighborhood of Babylon, and the word for 
 brick is common in the earlier and later Shemitic languages. 
 Schrader X insists that there can be no doubt that the Biblical story 
 refers to a structure which once really existed and whose ruins may 
 still exist. This need not be true as it respects the last part of the 
 assertion ; but if it were true, it would leave little to be desired in 
 the matter of antiquity. Birs-Nimrud, near Borsippa, and Babil, 
 more especially its temple of Merodach, with which, severally, the 
 Tower of Babel has been identified by different writers, had their 
 origin during the earlier Babylonian civilization. In any case, ac- 
 cordingly, there appears to be nothing to invalidate the theory of a 
 pre-Mosaic date for the Biblical account. 
 
 Of the other earlier narratives of Genesis we will next look at 
 those of Cain and Abel (iv. 1-24), the Nephilim (vi. 4), Noah after 
 the Flood (ix. 18-27) and Nimrod (x. 8, 9). In the first, relating 
 
 *Cf. Conder, in Tlce Scottish Review, October, 1894, "The Earliest Ages of 
 History." 
 
 f Strack {Com., inloco) candidly admits that the Babylonian account through- 
 out runs parallel with that of the Bible. His inference, however, that origin- 
 ally P and J contained here much the same material is plainly suicidal for the 
 current analysis. 
 
 X Die Keilinscliriften, etc., 2te Auflage, p. 121. 
 
620 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 to Cain and Abel, Cain is represented as a tiller of the ground and' 
 Abel a keeper of sheep. It will be noted, that the domestication of 
 the sheep has taken place, and the distinction between an agri- 
 cultural and a pastoral life is, to a degree, presupposed. The pro- 
 cess of reaching it need not have been a long one. The same is true 
 of the matter of sacrificing, in the simple form in which it is here 
 presented. In the alarm which Cain, the murderer, felt lest he, in 
 turn, might be put to death, there is shown the natural feeling which 
 afterwards underlay the custom of blood revenge. It is unnecessary 
 to suppose that such a custom already existed. That there were 
 other children of Adam and Eve, of whom the narrative does not 
 definitely speak, is clear from the context (iv. 17, v, 4), It is also 
 in harmony with the situation that Cain, in his appeal to Jehovah, 
 speaks of the remaining inhabitants of the world as though they 
 were friends of Abel (" whosoever findeth me shall slay me"). The 
 land of Nod, to which Cain fled, seems to mean no more than the 
 land of his wanderings. When it is said that he afterwards " be- 
 gan to build a city," — for that is the force of the words in Hebrew, — 
 we are not to think of a city in the modern sense (cf. 2 Kgs, xvii. 9) ; 
 but rather of a walled hamlet, meant largely, it is to be presumed, 
 for Cain's own protection. The record of the beginning of plural 
 marriages with Lamech, a descendant of Cain, is significant. It 
 would hardly have been recorded unless it really marked the begin- 
 ning of the deterioration. The same may be said of the statement 
 concerning Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-Cain, that with them several of 
 the arts began. It does not imply that they had reached any great 
 development in their time, but the contrary. So, in conclusion, as 
 there is a sufficient moral and religious reason for the insertion of 
 this chapter at this point in Genesis, so there is nothing in its exter- 
 nal form which makes it unsuitable as an introduction to Mosaic 
 institutions. 
 
 The four verses prefixed to the story of the Flood (vi, 1-4),^ 
 relating to the Nephilim, the Gibborim and the intermarriage 
 of the " Sons of God " with the " daughters of men," are of consid- 
 rable archaeological interest. By a certain class of critics they are 
 regarded as indisputable evidence of the survival of Hebrew myths 
 in the Bible. By the sons of God, they believe, the angels are 
 meant. If this were true it would at the same time be a sign of 
 the highest antiquity. It is in far better harmony with the context, 
 however, as well as with the teachings of the Bible generally, to 
 suppose that by the sons of God the Sethites are intended. Their 
 marriages with the daughters of the rest of men, as the race in- 
 creased and they were brought into more immediate vicinity, would 
 prove fatal to the earlier moral superiority of the Sethites, and so 
 would be offensive to God. The product of such marriages was the 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 621 
 
 more notable because it was the union, as we have reason to suppose, 
 of the best physical developraeat of the time, in stature, longevity 
 ^nd the like, with the highest progress in mechanical skill, espe- 
 cially in the manufacture of weapons. That this view, most com- 
 monly held, can be exegetically defended has been shown among 
 others recently by Strack, of Berlin.* 
 
 Of Noah after the Flood it is said (ix. 18-27) that he began to be 
 a husbandman and planted a vineyard. It is further noted that, 
 apparently as the result of his ignorance, he was overcome by the 
 wine which he had made. It is worthy of remark that the orig- 
 inal home of the vine is claimed to have been in the regions of 
 Armenia, whence, to some extent even in historic times, it has 
 found its way to other peoples. It was domesticated in Palestine 
 before the days of Abraham (xiv. 8). It might be claimed by some 
 that the prophecy of Noah found in the context, especially in its 
 •curse of Canaan, reflects a far later period. If it be really a 
 prophecy, as we believe, the peculiar reference to Canaan would be 
 no valid objection to its early date. If it were to be admitted that 
 it is no prophecy, it would bring us no further down than the times 
 of Abraham, when, according to Genesis, the judgment on Canaan 
 was already in prospect (xv. 16, etc.). 
 
 The reference to Nimrod in x. 8-11 is of a remarkable character, 
 and he must have been an extraordinary personage. That he is 
 spoken of as a " mighty hunter," is every way suitable to the habits 
 of an oriental monarch of antiquity. The name Nimrod has not 
 yet come to light on the monuments. The Bible seems to indicate 
 that he was of Cassite origin (" And Cush begat Nimrod "). The 
 centre of the Cassite supremacy, it is now known, was Babylon and 
 its neighboring cities. He is further said to have gone forth (better 
 it would seem, " One went forth ") " from that land and builded 
 Nineveh," etc. It used to be thought, in spite of the Bible, that 
 Assyria was older than Babylonia; this theory has now, of course, 
 been abandoned.f Of the cities of Assyria named in vers. 11, 12 
 all have not yet been identified. When Nineveh was founded, it is 
 not known, but certainly long before Moses. It is fair to presume 
 that Calah and Kesin (Reheboth-Ir was simply a suburb of a city) 
 were not much younger.:}: 
 
 * Com., in loco. 
 
 fCf. Micah v. G, where Assyria and the land of Nimrod are used synony- 
 mously. 
 
 X According to Schrader {Die Keilimcliriften, etc., p. 96), an Assyrian king 
 who reigned about B.C. 850, states that Calah was "founded " by Shalmaneser I, 
 about B.C. 1300. It may well be doubted, in the circumstances, whether this 
 '^in^ founded and did not rather rebuild the city. It needed rebuilding again in 
 the ninth century B.C. Cf. Com. of Strack in loco, who renders the Assyrian 
 
622 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 "We now come to the life of Abraham. Genesis informs us that 
 he came from " Ur of the Chaldees." Until recent times, outside of 
 this Biblical reference, the place was quite unknown. It is now 
 recognized as having been once a capital (town or city), whose politi- 
 cal conditions at the time of the patriarch are fairly well understood. 
 Even names corresponding to those of Abraham, Sarah and Milcah 
 occur on the documents of the country. At the time of Terah's 
 removal from his native city to Harran, a popular movement of the 
 Babylonian people carrying with it their traditions and their civili- 
 zation towards the west was taking place. Harran itself was a 
 frontier town of Babylonia, 600 miles away, and like it worshiping 
 the moon-god. The much traveled road to it led along the banks 
 of the Euphrates. In view of these facts a distinguished archeeolo- 
 gist has written :* 
 
 "Such a remarkable coincidence between the Biblical narrative 
 and the evidence of archaeological research cannot be the result of 
 chance. The narrative must be historical ; no writer of late date^ 
 even if he were a Babylonian, could have invented a story so exactly 
 in accordance with what we now know to have been the truth. For 
 a story of the kind to have been the invention of Palestinian tradi- 
 tion is equally impossible. To the unprejudiced mind there is no 
 escape from the conclusion that the history of the migration of 
 Terah from Ur to Harran is founded on fact. 
 
 " If founded on fact, we may further conclude that it was recorded 
 in contemporaneous documents. We have learned from the Tel el- 
 Amarna tablets that before the age of the Exodus the Babylonian 
 language and writing were used throughout Palestine, and that 
 Babylonian literature must have been well known there ; we have 
 also learned from the cuneiform monuments of Babylonia itself that 
 Babylonian armies had trodden the ' harran ' or high road to Syria 
 centuries before the birth of Abraham, and that Palestine had been 
 subject to the Babylonian kings. When Abraham entered Canaan, 
 the Canaanites were not only acquainted with the cuneiform sylla- 
 bary of Babylonia, they were also acquainted with the Babylonian 
 language. The Elamite suzerain of Babylonia claimed to be 
 lord of Palestine as well, and Abraham would thus have found him- 
 self in what might be considered a sort of province of the Babylo- 
 nian empire. At all events it was a country into which the lan- 
 guage and literature, the theology and beliefs, of the Babylonians 
 had deeply penetrated." 
 
 word by "gemacht," that is built. The passage referred to reads, " Kalhu, 
 which Salmanaser, king of the land of Assyria, the prince my predecessor, had 
 built (epu-us), that city had fallen into decay and ruin, that city anew I built' 
 (ab-ni)." 
 * Sayce, 8. S. Times, January 2Q, 1894. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 623 
 
 That Abraham had a servant, Eliezer, the Damascene, seems 
 to be one of the undesigned coincidences which mark the patri- 
 arch's journey to Canaan, as Hagar does a subsequent one to 
 Egypt. The famine which drove Abraham to the Nile land 
 was a common experience of his times. Ilis treatment by the rul- 
 ing monarch, the gifts he received, including camels* and excluding 
 horses, abundant in the period of Joseph, tally with the revelations 
 of secular history, as far as known.f Verifications by the inscrip- 
 tions of the episode in Abraham's life recorded in chap. xiv. are so 
 numerous and so far reaching in their relations, that an entire 
 paper would not suffice to set them adequately forth.:}: The 
 antiquity of the material is clearly stamped on the language inci- 
 dentally employed. We read of " Bela, the sam e is Zoar ;" " the vale 
 of Siddim, the same is the Salt Sea ;" of " El-paran, which is by the 
 wilderness ;" of " En-mishpat, the same is Kadesh ;" of " the vale 
 of Shaveh, the same is the King's Vale," etc. Says Hommel: "If 
 Genesis xiv were really ' a very late Midrash-like record from post- 
 exilic times,' how in that event should the supposed author, who in 
 this chapter created a masterpiece, have been able to make use of 
 antiquated names and phrases, which he himself had to explain by 
 accompanying glosses for the sake of intelligibility? .... Was 
 this perhaps a ruse of the author to give to his production the 
 appearance of antiquity ? If so, I must confess that such refinement 
 of deception is without parallel in all the Old Testament, and that 
 if indeed we were to credit the author with adopting such an arti- 
 fice, it seems extraordinary that he should have used his old Baby- 
 lonian data for the embellishment of just this scene belonging to 
 the later period of Abraham's life, when there was a whole series of 
 hoary records that afforded a much more inviting field for such oper- 
 ations."§ In other respects, the historical situation of the patriarch, 
 as hitherto generally understood, is reproduced with a minuteness 
 and an accuracy of detail most wonderful, even in this day of arch- 
 aeological surprises. The rulers' names forming the alliance against 
 
 *See Tomkins, Timea of Abraham., pp. 51, 52, and Rawlinson, Eerodotus, i, 
 365. 
 
 fStrack, Com., in loco, quotes Wiedemann, Geschiehte von Alt-Egypten, 1891, 
 p. 77, who says that the presence of the camel in Egypt is verified hy classical 
 writers, and the fact that the animal does not appear on the monuments may be 
 due, if not a mere accident, to religious, considerations. Cf. Tomkins, Times of 
 Abraham, p. 153, who notes that the animal is mentioned in several interesting 
 texts in the nineteenth dynasty and that the gift of camels to Abraham would 
 be natural from the shepherd-kings. 
 
 :}:The title Pharaoh is found in the oldest monuments and used as a title of the 
 Egyptian kings down to the Persian conquest. On the story of Sarah see 
 Spurrell, p. 129. 
 
 § 5. 5. Times, March 5, 1893 
 
624 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 the kings of the Canaanitish pentapolis, with a single exception, 
 have all been identified. The Elamite supremacy in Palestine at 
 this period, so long held to be an impossibility, is now one of the 
 best recognized of facts. Even a personage analogous to the hither- 
 to mysterious Melchizedek has been discovered in Ebed-Tob of the 
 Tel el-Amarna tablets. It is no unexpected language, accordingly, 
 which, in view of recent disclosures in the East, one of the most 
 distinguished of the discoverers uses, who says: "Underneath the 
 narratives of Genesis lie historical documents which come down 
 from the age of the events which they record, and possess, accord- 
 ingly, all the value of contemporaneous evidence. Whatever may 
 have been the period when the book was compiled, its author or 
 authors made use of written materials, and these written mate- 
 rials were as historicallytrustworthy as those on which we base 
 our knowledge of the Persian wars with Greece. The history of 
 Canaan before the Israelitish conquest was not a blank to be filled 
 up by the legends and systematizing fictions of a later day ; it belongs 
 to a period when reading and writing were widely known and prac- 
 ticed, and when contemporaneous events were recorded on imper- 
 ishable clay."* 
 
 An important episode in the life of Abraham was the destruction 
 of the cities of the plain (Gen. xix). The patriarch was then at 
 Mamre near Hebron. The harmony of the Biblical record with the 
 topography of the country (cf. Gen. xiii. 10, xviii. 16, xix. 27) and 
 with its geological structure (xiv. 10) is most remarkable. The 
 five cities, it is evident, lay to the north of the Dead Sea, between 
 which and* Abraham was the vale of Siddim with its pits of asphalt.f 
 From his outlook on the heights east of Mamre he could easily have 
 observed the smoke of the land going up " as the smoke of a 
 furnace." The story of the incestuous origin of Ammon and Moab 
 appended to this same chapter, moreover, is not the product of later 
 Jewish hate, as some have affirmed. It has the correct historical 
 perspective. We know from the Moabite stone in the ninth century 
 B.C., that the language of Moab corresponded with that of Israel (i.e., 
 with the Hebrew) — in fact was Hebrew. ^ The names of the peoples 
 were suggested by their peculiar ancestry. Their title, " sons of Lot," 
 is equally pertinent. They are constantly named together in the 
 Bible (Num. xvii ; 1 Sam. xiv. 47, etc.). As early as Deut. ii. 9, 19, 
 their descent from Lot is made the ground why Israel, on its way to 
 
 *Sayce, Expository Times, December, 1891, p. 117. Cf. article by Hommel, 8. 
 8. Times, March 5, 1892. 
 
 t Observe the route of the hostile forces from Mount Seir, El-Paran and Kadesh 
 through the land of the Amalekites and Amorites to their battlefield before 
 Sodom. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 625 
 
 Canaan from Egypt, refused either to conquer or to molest them. 
 The names of both Ammon and Moab appear on the Assyrian monu- 
 ments, but in no way to conflict with Biblical statements. 
 
 In the account of Abraham's offering of Isaac, the event itself 
 furnishes one of the best evidences of its antiquity. That it took 
 place on an elevation in " the land of Moriah " is no indication of a 
 post-Davidic period. All the conditions of the narrative point to 
 this site. Beersheba, where Abraham was, is a twelve hours' ride 
 away from Hebron, and thus another day's journey distant from 
 Jerusalem. We read that on the third day the patriarch saw the 
 place afar off — supposably on the brow of the hill lying between 
 Bethlehem and Jerusalem. That in this same region Jehovah sub- 
 sequently appeared to David and that the temple itself was built on 
 Mt. Moriah are frankly admitted ; and, at the same time, that " there 
 is a wonderful fitness in connecting this stupendous act of piety (on 
 Abraham's part) with the place where the glory of God should 
 (afterwards) dwell, and where perfect atonement should be offered 
 for the people of Israel."* Even the incident of the ram caught by 
 his horns in the thicket is not without its value as a corroborative 
 testimony to the truthfulness of the record. We are told that the 
 horns of the Syrian ram are remarkably twisted, and thus one 
 might easily have become entangled as described.f 
 
 The detailed statement of the purchase by Abraham of a sepul- 
 
 *Deane, Life and Times of Abraham, p. 143. 
 
 f On undesigned coincidences between the account of the destruction of the 
 cities of the plain and topographical and geological data, see S. S. T'imes, Feb. 
 3, 1894, p. 70 (Beecher), and p. 71 (Geikie) and p. 68 (Tristram). The last 
 is important enough to be cited as a whole : — 
 
 " Nothing strikes the careful observer on the spot, in the Holy Land, more 
 than the wonderful exactness of minute and incidental expression, when tested 
 by the actual topography of the country. It is so with respect to the situation 
 of what may be termed the prehistoric cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 It has often been imagined that these cities were submerged during the great 
 convulsion of nature, and are now buried under the waters of the Dead Sea. 
 There is no foundation in the Biblical story for such an idea. We are told that 
 God rained fire and brimstone upon those cities, and overthrew them, and all 
 the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the 
 ground. The word kikkar, rendered 'plain,' has the same sense as the modern 
 Ghor, the name still applied to the Jordan valley, north of the Dead Sea. 
 Geological investigation shows us that they never could have been in the area 
 at present covered by the waters of the Dead Sea, which is simply a vast fissure, 
 a continuation, a deepening, of the Jordan valley, with steep sloping sides. 
 The geological evidence is that the cities must have been either north or south 
 of the Dead Sea. A careful examination of the history of the invasion of Che- 
 dorlaomer shows that they could not have been south of the Dead Sea, but to 
 the north of it ; for, in returning from their raid in Mount Seir, they attack the 
 Amorites in Hazazon-tamar, which is Eugedi, and after that, meet the king of 
 Sodom and hia confederates. Had the cities been south of the Dead Sea, they 
 41 
 
626 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 chre from the Hittite settlers of Canaan (chap, xxiii) is a faith- 
 ful and striking protraiture, as far as it goes, of the historic situa- 
 tion there B.C. 1900. Evidence from the context of a com- 
 paratively civilized condition appears in the fact that burial is 
 by entombment, that silver is circulated as money and that care- 
 fully drawn contracts are used in the exchange of property. But 
 six hundred years earlier, it is said, the ancestors of these same 
 Hittites cut cedars in northern Lebanon.* And it is a fact of im- 
 portance to us that in the eighth century B.C. this people disap- 
 pears, as such, from Hebrew history, their power having been broken 
 by the Assyrian Sargon. 
 
 The succeeding narratives of Isaac and Jacob, aside from the fact 
 that they bear the same literary stamp as the matter with which 
 they are associated, contain little to indicate the period in which 
 they arose.f A circumstance of some importance, however, is re- 
 corded in the life of Judah, one of Jacob's sons. He is said to have 
 been in possession of a signet ring, together with the cord by which 
 it was suspended from the neck (xxxviii. 18). For a long time this 
 signet ring was regarded as the only evidence in Genesis that the 
 patriarchs may have been acquainted, to any extent, with written 
 characters. In fact one of the most recent and fair-minded of com- 
 mentators remarks that there was probably engraved on the ring 
 
 must have marched through their country before meeting the Amorites, whom 
 they encounter in the vale of Siddim, and then proceed towards Damascus. 
 
 "Now, at the time of the destruction of Sodom, Abraham was encamped at 
 Mamre, the site of which is universally identified very near Hebron. Abra- 
 ham, we are told in the sixteenth verse, accompanied the angels who looked 
 towards Sodom, to bring them on the way. That way could only be by ascend- 
 ing the range of hills immediately east of Mamre. Here Abraham halted, and 
 remained standing before the Lord, whilst the two proceeded on their way. 
 
 "It is nowhere stated that they could see Sodom, but it is stated that on the 
 following morning Abraham got up early and went to the same place, and 
 thence looked towards Sodom and Gomorrah and towards all the land of the 
 plain, and saw the smoke of the country going up as the smoke of a furnace. 
 Now, looking from those heights towards the south end of the Dead Sea, the 
 distant view is completely shut in, and it would be impossible to recognize 
 whence any smoke might ascend. But towards the north, although it is im- 
 possible to see the surface of the plain of Jordan itself, yet the wide, flat depres- 
 sion, which is formed by the plain of Jericho on the one side and the plain ot 
 Shittim on the other, can be easily recognized by the wide gap between the 
 lofty plateau on which we stand and the distant but still more lofty range of the 
 mountains of Moab and Gilead on the other side of the Jordan valley, with a 
 gauzy cloud of haze intervening. Thus the spectator could exactly locate the 
 spot whence he saw the smoke arising, while smoke from no other part of the 
 valley could be so identified. Hence the notable accuracy of the expression 
 ' looked towards Sodom.'" 
 
 *Conder, in Smith's Bible Diet, 2d series, «. «. "Hittite." Of. Sayce, The Hit- 
 tites, 1890. 
 
 t Sayce: S. S. Times: 1894, p. 134, " Senjerli." 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 627 
 
 some kind of pictorial representation ; but that one need not think of 
 an inscription in connection with it, or of an acquaintance with the 
 art of writing in the patriarchal period,* As already intimated above, 
 the time has more than passed when any doubt need be entertained 
 on this subject. Scholars some time ago came to the conclu- 
 sion that Shemitic alphabetic characters arose some centuries before 
 the age of Moses. 
 
 One of them remarks : " The possible date of the origin of this 
 
 alphabet is thus brought within definite limits The possible 
 
 limits lie between the twenty-third and seventeenth centuries, and 
 there seems to be no reason why we should not provisionally accept 
 the approximate date which has been proposed by de Eoug6 and 
 place it in or about the nineteenth century B.C." f 
 
 These conclusions are not matter of simple theory ; they are based 
 on actual archaeological discoveries made in Egypt and especially 
 in Southern Arabia. The so-called Minntean inscriptions of the 
 latter place brought to light by Dr. Glaser and others, as we are 
 informed, prove that as early as the days of Abraham the nomadic 
 tribes, passing back and forth between Babylonia and Egypt, among 
 whom may be reckoned in a general way the Hebrews themselves, 
 were in possession of a Shemitic alphabet, even though they may 
 have made .little general use of it, leaving it largely to the priests. 
 "At that time Arabia was the seat of a cultured state, whose mem- 
 bers practiced the art of alphabetical writing and had extended its 
 power from the extreme south of the peninsula to Edom and the 
 borders of Palestine." % The fact, therefore, that Moses' father-in- 
 law was a priest of Midian acquires through this new information 
 an extraordinary interest ; especially as the early rulers on the 
 Arabian peninsula were themselves priests. 
 
 In the life of Joseph we find an unusual number of points of con- 
 tact with the period in which he lived. Critics who dispute so early 
 an origin for Genesis as the Mosaic epoch are inclined to make the 
 most of the argument from silence and to put a disproportionate 
 emphasis on certain data hitherto but imperfectly explained. Un- 
 doubtedly the judgment of Brugsch voices that of the great ma- 
 jority of competent Egyptian scholars. " It was long ago noted," he 
 says, " and looked upon as a complete confirmation of the truthful- 
 ness of the Biblical record that the individual features of it, as far 
 as they refer to the relations of Joseph to the Pharaoh of his time 
 
 *Strack, Com., in loco,; but see to the contrary, Konig, Einleitung in das A. T. 
 p. 178. 
 
 f Isaac Taylor, History of the Alphabet. Cf. Glaser, Neue kirchliche Zeit- 
 ichrift, 1890, No. 1. 
 
 X See articles by Prof. Sayce, in S. S. Times, and in the Academy, Dec. 9, 1893. 
 
628 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 and to the court life of the period, are thorougUy in harmony witTi 
 the declarations of the monuments." * " The outward details of life, 
 the officers of the court, the traffic in slaves, the visits for corn, are 
 all pictured on temple walls and stone slabs." f 
 
 It is to be assumed, with most, that it was in the latter half of the 
 reign of the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, that the events recorded 
 occurred. X The caravan which bore Joseph to Egypt traded in 
 spicery, balm and myrrh, characteristic articles from Canaan and 
 Syria, and notably mentioned as such on the papyri. Joseph is sold 
 to Potiphar, who is more than once named as, an Egyptian, as if to 
 distinguish him from the foreign conquerors of the country. His 
 name, too, is confessedly that of a native. The Hebrew captive 
 soon becomes a trusted servant in the house of his master, a sort of 
 major domo^ a thoroughly Egyptian institution. Through no fault 
 of his, he incurs the resentment of his master's wife. A story quite 
 analogous to this in many of its details has been discovered in the 
 famous Orbiney papyrus, entitled The Two Brothers. Joseph is 
 thrown into a prison, to which is given a characteristic Egyptian 
 name. The dreams of two of his fellow-prisoners, former ofl&cials 
 under Pharaoh, both in their essential character and in the interest 
 they excite, are wholly in accord with supposed circumstances of 
 the story. In Joseph's interpretation of the dreams, tli,e introduc- 
 tion of wine as in use by the king, the recognition of the custom of 
 carrying burdens on the head and that of decapitation with subse- 
 quent impaling as a punishment, are one and all in harmony with 
 what we know from other sources was then true in Egypt.§ The 
 chief butler was restored to favor at a feast on Pharaoh's birth- 
 day. The Eosetta stone informs us that as late as Ptolemy Epiph- 
 anes this day was set apart as a holiday and was observed as an 
 occasion of great rejoicing. 
 
 In Pharaoh's dream, in turn, no one would think of calling in 
 question the relevancy of its surroundings. "The river," so-called, 
 without a more definite name, as though one could not be mistaken 
 in what was meant ; the seven kine feeding in the sedge grass ; the 
 seven-eared wheat; the consultation with magicians, are, every 
 one, simple and natural touches of local coloring, as unaffected as 
 they are picturesque. And when Joseph is hurried in from prison 
 to act as interpreter, it is not to be overlooked that " he shaved him- 
 self and changed his raiment," shaving being as essential to an Bgyp- 
 
 * Steinschrift und Bibelwort (1891), p. 80. Cf. Tompkins, Life and Times of 
 Joseph (1891), pp. 40-92. 
 f St. Clair, Buried Cities and Bible Countries, p. 49. 
 :}:Brug8cli, Egypt under tlie Pharaohs (1891), p. 120. 
 § See Harper, The Bible and Modern Discoveries (1891), p. 45. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 629 
 
 tian as it was an abomination to a Shemite. The Egyptian artists 
 uniformly represent a person in low station as wearing a beard. So 
 the pleasure and gratitude shown by Pharaoh at the explanation of 
 his dream are presented in a costume of expressions and ideas, as the 
 most competent Egyptian scholars inform us, that is throughout an- 
 tique Egyptian. The signet ring, the robe of fine linen, the collar 
 of gold, the Egyptian name selected for the honored benefactor, the 
 additional titles of "father " and "lord," especially the permission to 
 ride in a royal chariot and to be second to the king, are wholly in 
 character and to be expected from an intelligent contemporary 
 writer. The same is true of many subsequent details of the nar- 
 rative. How changed the scenes to which Joseph's life and ad- 
 ministration as governor of Egypt introduce us from tha^t with 
 which we are familiar in the history of the patriarchs ! But the 
 spirit of the narrative and its transparent artlessness remain un- 
 changed. A seven years' famine may be rare along the banks of 
 the Nile; it is not unprecedented.* When the transfer to the 
 Pharaohs of the ownership of the soil occurred we are not told out- 
 side the Bible, though the fact is recognized in the inscriptions as 
 well as a time when it was not the case. It had already taken place 
 in the period of the Rameses. To this day, in case of scarcity, the 
 inhabitants of southern Palestine go down to Egypt to purchase 
 corn. 
 
 Mr. Flinders Petrie has discovered that the custom obtained under 
 the Hyksos kings of ruling through a series of viziers, who bearing 
 the king's seal acted for him with respect to the treasury and 
 taxes, royal edicts and official doouments.f That the grand vizier 
 should charge the incoming strangers with being spies, considering 
 what the political relations of the peoples actually were, is not 
 strange. Almost an exact parallel has come to light in an old 
 papyrus: "Who," says an Egyptian official, "who sent thee here 
 to this city of the South? How hast thou come to spy out?":}: 
 
 " By the life of Pharaoh," was a common form of Egj'-ptian oath. 
 Divination by cups in ancient Egypt is an indisputable fact ; so 
 too the custom of employing an interpreter at court. In the tab- 
 lets recently recovered at Tel el-Amarna, dated between the time of 
 Joseph and the Exodus, it is noted that an interpreter is sent from 
 Mesopotamia into Egypt, and he bears the nearly Biblical title of 
 
 *Brugsch, ibid., p. 121, cites an ancient inscription which runs : "I collected 
 corn as a friend of the harvest god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. A^nd 
 •when famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the city each year 
 of famine." 
 
 t Cf. St. Clair, Buried Cities, p. 60. 
 
 }; Tompkins ibid., p. 62. 
 
630 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 targumanu, that is the modern dragoman. The use of wagons for 
 transportation in the time of Joseph is no anachronism. In the 
 advice which he gives to his brethren, to tell Pharaoh that they are 
 shepherds, assuming that it is the period of the Hyksos supremacy, 
 there is a striking coincidence worth observing. While shepherds 
 were an abomination to the Egyptians, they need not have been, 
 and seem not to have been, to Pharaoh, who was not properly an 
 Egyptian. He accepts accordingly their prearranged plan and even 
 suggests that Joseph's brethren have the care of the royal herds.* 
 The limits of ancient Goshen are no longer known. The Bible 
 places it in the land of Rameses. Rameses, or Ramses, was the title 
 given to Zoan, or Tanis, by Rameses II. Tanis was the capital of 
 the Hyksos empire. From the story itself we would gather that 
 the palace of Joseph was not so very far from the home of his family. 
 The land of Goshen was fertile ; and, what perhaps was of equal 
 importance to the Hebrews, the way from it back to Palestine was 
 comparatively open. Here Jacob died, was embalmed and bewailed 
 after the Egyptian fashion, and was carried to his burial in the distant 
 Hebron from the Egyptian Zoan by a mixed company of his family 
 and the servants of Pharaoh. " We can therefore understand," says 
 Sayce, " why Zoan and Hebron are brought into such close relation 
 in the well-known passage in Numbers (xiii. 22), where it is said 
 that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. Hebron 
 and Zoan were the two points around which centred the patri- 
 archal history which is set before us in the Book of Genesis." f 
 
 Such are some of the marks of chronological unity and harmony 
 in the Biblical life of Joseph which closes the historical narratives of 
 Genesis. We are not yet ready for our final conclusion. One class 
 of facts only has thus far been noted. But we already get some idea 
 of the direction in which the facts uniformly tend. A distinguished 
 German professor, in a recent introduction to the Old Testament, 
 has asked the question : :}; " Can one maintain that the references of 
 the Pentateuch to Egypt may not be explained as the product of a 
 tradition running back to the times of Moses, accompanied and 
 revived by a later knowledge of Egyptian matters ? " We have 
 made no effort to exhaust the references to Egypt occurring even in 
 the Book of Genesis ; but it is clear that they are not of the kind to 
 which our professor refers. The most of them are not of a nature 
 to be transmitted by oral tradition through many centuries. Ac- 
 
 * "The Egyptian contempt for herdsmen appears plainly on the monu- 
 ments, where they are commonly represented as dirty and unshaven, and are 
 sometimes caricatured as a deformed and unseemly race." St. Clair, ibid., p. 51. 
 
 \ Fresh Lights, etc., p. 54. 
 
 X Edouard Konig, Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1893), p. 159. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 631 
 
 quaintance with the great outlying facts of Egyptian history, and 
 some general knowledge of the mode of life there in ancient times, 
 may be safely predicated, perhaps, of the leading men in Israel in all 
 periods. The information required to write Genesis in its present 
 form is of quite a different sort. If there could have been a desire, 
 there was neither the archaeological information nor the literary 
 skill among Hebrew writers of the time of Joash and Amaziah, 
 much less of the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, to fit them to write 
 into such a history the numerous and often obscnre allusions to the 
 coexisting customs and events it contains. They are indisputably, 
 to a great extent, the purely incidental coloring, undesigned coinci- 
 dences, of a contemporary writer. * 
 
 In pursuing the subject of the bearing of the material of Genesis 
 on the age of its composition, we pass to its genealogical and ethno- 
 graphical matter. It is one of its most marked and familiar feat- 
 tures, and is mostly assigned to one of the supposed documents — P, 
 dated, it will be remembered, in the time of the exile. Do the facts 
 justify this conclusion? The Hebrews were not at all peculiar 
 among Shemitic peoples in the great attention which they paid to 
 genealogies. And outside of Shemitic races, it was also, if not 
 equally, characteristic of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. If the 
 human race started, as the Bible represents, with a single family as 
 the unit of society, we should not be surprised that family records 
 occupy so large a space in the brief history of the antediluvian and 
 postdiluvian worlds before Abraham. After Abraham it was still 
 
 * The claim that the Egyptian name of Joseph and the word Poti-phera are 
 not reflected on the Egyptian monuments until the seventh century B.C. is well 
 set forth in The Biblical World for October, 1893, in an interesting article by 
 Dr. Coburn, commending to American readers Dr. Steindorfl''s identification of 
 Zaphenath-paneah, Asenath and Poti-phera (Gen. xli; 45, 50; xlvi; 20) with 
 Egyptian names of a late period. This article intimates confidently that this 
 identification offers a new and conclusive proof that Joseph and his relatives 
 could not really have borne such names as the Bible gives them, and therefore 
 that the passages in which the misstatements appear must have been written not 
 earlier than 930 B.C., and most probably in the seventh century B.C., when 
 such names became common. 
 
 This suggestion is not a startlingly new one. It has been four yea/^or more 
 since Dr. Steindorff openly published it in the ZeitschriftfurjEgyptischeSprache, 
 and it has been often referred to since in German and American reviews. That 
 the discussion has been of any great significance in settling the date of Genesis 
 it is diflicult to believe for various reasons: 
 
 1. Divergent views have been and are yet held by competent Egyptologists 
 as to what hieroglyphic groups exactly correspond to the names given above. 
 Other groups than those preferred by Dr. Steindorff have been declared by dis- 
 tinguislied Egyptologists to answer " letter for letter " to these Hebrew names. 
 
 2. Since the publication of Dr. Steindorff's views, it has been stated by high 
 authority that the very groups which have been selected by him as exactly cor- 
 responding to the names in Genesis can be read upon monuments which are as 
 
632 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 more to be expected. With him began the development of a chosen 
 people from a chosen family. Its separation from other peoples, its 
 assignment to a particular land, its orderly occupation of the same, 
 above all its hereditary priesthood and the law governing its succes- 
 sion of kings, required a strict adherence to the lines of family descent. 
 Genealogical registers are strictly in place in Genesis. Is there 
 any positive evidence, or any likelihood, that those found there are 
 of post -Mosaic origin? On many grounds the contrary can be suc- 
 cessfully maintained. If any of these lists needed to be transmitted 
 orally for a considerable period — a position which is incapable of 
 proof* — it is at most the short ones recorded in chaps, iv and v, 
 referring to antediluvian personages. The rest, including the nume- 
 rous descendants of Noah (vi. 10), and his sons (chaps, x, xi), of Abra- 
 ham's father (xi. 27), and brother Nahor (xxii. 21-24), of Abraham 
 himself by Keturah (xxv. 1-4), and through Ishmael (xxv. 12-16)^ 
 of Esau (chap, xxxvi) and of Jacob (xxxvi. 23-26, xlv. 8-25), 
 might easily have been committed to tablets at once and, even in 
 Abraham's time, as we have seen, written in alphabetic characters. 
 For the out-and-out fabrication of such records, did the nature of the 
 case permit, every sufficient motive is wanting. That they are 
 complete, that they retain in every respect their original form, or 
 that they can now be perfectly restored or explained, nobody would 
 
 old as the era of Joseph. This indeed seems to be granted in the case of Asenath 
 by the writer of the paper in the issue of The Biblical World referred to. 
 
 3. Granting that the names given by Dr. Steindorff are exact equivalents of 
 the Hebrew names, and granting also that they have never been found on any 
 monument earlier than the tenth to seventh century B.C.; yet to infer from 
 this that the book of Genesis was not written until the seventh century befoi'e 
 our era, would seem to be a conclusion more generous than just. 
 
 These names may have been twenty-sixth dynasty explanations or translations 
 of twelfth dynasty forms, just as " Salvatorem Mundi" was the fourth century 
 translation of one of those very names given by St. Jerome in the Vulgate. 
 
 Again, the Egyptian literature is confessedly fragmentary, and an Egyptolo- 
 gist must be of very sanguine spirit who can argue with confidence that because 
 those names have not been found on any recovered monument earlier than the 
 twenty-second dynasty, therefore they were never used in Egypt previous to 
 that date. If our Bible were torn in pieces and scattered to the four winds it would 
 appear no bashful assumption if some foreigner, after examining a handful of 
 leaves which he had succeeded in finding, should afiirm that it was now settled 
 that no man by the name of Joseph was ever mentioned in the Hebrew or Chris- 
 tian Scriptures, for no such name could be read on any of the fragments in his 
 possession. 
 
 See, also, Tompkins Life and Times of Joseph, Appendix B. 
 
 Note an analogy in the Egyptian word for Oasis, wJiat. It is found in monu- 
 ments belonging to the sixth dynasty and not again for 2000 years 1 See PrO" 
 ceeding of the Soc.for Bib. Arch., Vol. xvi, 24th session, pp. 50, 51. 
 
 * See Lenormant, Beginnings of History (Brown's Translation, 1882), p. 387. 
 Hasisatra (the Babylonian Noah) is bidden to bury in Sippara all that had been 
 consigned to writing before his day. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 633 
 
 attempt to prove. But that they are, in the main, genuine, quite 
 germane to the history, and stand like so many granite pillars under 
 the literary and ethical structure of Genesis, cannot well be doubted. 
 
 They may be considered from two points of view, that of Genesis 
 and their own immediate context, and that of Chronicles where 
 they are massed together with many others from various periods. 
 The genealogy of Cain (iv. 17-21) has but six links, and noticeably 
 breaks off with the murderer Lamech and his family, as it began 
 with the murderer Cain, There is nothing in the number, names, 
 or character of Cain's descendants to stamp the section in which 
 they are found as ungenuine. That there was other posterity of 
 Adam before the birth of Seth is implied in the context (iv. 14, 17). 
 That they are not more particularly referred 'to is, apparently, 
 because their lives offered nothing worthy of note in a history so 
 exceedingly pragmatical. A somewhat advanced civilization is 
 foreshadowed in connection with Jubal and Tubal-cain, who are the 
 latest descendants of Cain introduced. One is called the "father" 
 of those handling the harp and shepherd's pipe (not " the organ ") ; 
 the other, the " father " of workers in copper and iron. The passage 
 has been challenged as an anachronism ; but from the point of view 
 of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian art, or even that of the ark 
 itself, unjustly. 
 
 The main line of the genealogy of Adam, ending with Noah, is 
 found in tJie fifth chapter. It has some noticeable characteristics 
 which it shares with that of Shem (xi. 10-26). Each is made up 
 of ten names, and in each we are told how old a person was before 
 having a " son " and how long he lived afterwards. In this respect, 
 these two lists are absolutely unique. The round number and this 
 peculiar form, among other things, suggest that the lists are meant 
 to be representative rather than exhaustive. That the first child 
 named is not to be looked upon as in every case the first born of his 
 parents is clear from the context (v. 3; cf. iv. 17, 25). Seth was 
 not actually the first born of Adam. He had had, it would appear, 
 several other children. The same may be true in the other cases. 
 Such a conclusion is made the more certain by the length of time 
 elapsing before the birth of a son is recorded ; in one case, 105 years, 
 in another 162, and in still another 187 years. 
 
 Still further, if we are guided by the analogy of other Biblical 
 genealogies, not excepting that of our Lord in the Gospels, and a quite 
 general Biblical usage, we may not assume that the word " son " as 
 used here means, in many cases — how many we know not — anything 
 more than descendant. The term " son " has from time immemorial 
 been used throughout the East to denote connection by succession 
 as well as by descent. Hence "the succession of generations here- 
 
634 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 may represent the succession to such, and such an inheritance or 
 headship of tribe or family, rather than the relationship of father 
 and son."* It has been usual to infer, it is true, that the author of 
 Genesis meant by the peculiar form which he gave these two lists 
 of patriarchs to indicate the exact chronology of the period they 
 cover. Such an inference is wholly unwarranted. If the writer's 
 object had been to make a hard and fast chronology of those times 
 there should be direct indication of it. There is none whatever. 
 No chronology is either attempted or by word or sign suggested in 
 the Bible at this point. And he who seeks to deduce one from the 
 indefinite data given does so at his peril. 
 
 When, for example, it is said that Methusaleh, in his 187th 
 year, " begat " Laoaech, one is not entitled to the conclusion, if we 
 are governed by a common Biblical usage, either that Lamech was 
 the first child born to Methusaleh, or that he was immediately 
 begotten by him. One may have been begotten from whom Lamech 
 long afterwards sprang. These two selected lists of Genesis were 
 doubtless given for some other purpose : as, for instance, to preserve 
 the names of the more eminent patriarchs ; to show to what extra- 
 ordinary limits certain lives attained in the early days ; how the 
 years of human life gradually diminished, comparing the second list 
 with the first ; and also in a general way to trace, for the purposes 
 of history, the lines of family descent. The charge, accordingly, 
 which has been made against these two genealogies that they can- 
 not be authentic since they are out of harmony with what we 
 already know of the age of man on the earth, is clearly invalid. 
 
 Another fact which is supposed to have an important bearing on 
 the data of these genealogies of Adam and of Shem is a grammati- 
 cal form almost peculiar to them in Genesis (found also vi. 10, xvii. 
 20, XXV. 19, xlviii. 6). It is the Hiphil of the word ^^yaladh " in 
 the sense of " beget " for which elsewhere in Genesis the Qal is 
 found. It is claimed that the Hiphil^ in this sense, arose at a late 
 period and so stamps the matter where it is found as itself late. 
 The claim, however, that the form is of late origin must be first 
 made good before one will be entitled to the conclusion. This will 
 be found a more difi&cult task than might be supposed. The Hiphil 
 may have arisen, historically and grammatically speaking, after the 
 other in the sense used, and still synchronize with it perfectly as 
 far as the Biblical books are concerned. It is used, it is true, in the 
 sense of " beget " in these tables and, to some extent, elsewhere ; but 
 this meaning is not uniform for the Hiphil throughout the Bible. 
 It also has the meaning "conceive" (Isa. lix. 4) and "cause to 
 bring forth " (Isa. Iv. 10, Ixvi. 9) ; while its proper passive, the 
 
 * Smith's Bib. Diet., 2d ed., s.v. "Genealogy." 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 635 
 
 Eophal^ is found once with the meaning of " birthday " (Gen. xl. 
 20) and twice with that of " be born " (Ezek. xvi. 4, 5), In fact 
 there is given no other meaning for the Hophal in the Bible than 
 " be born." Again it is important to compare the relative use and 
 distribution of the Qal and the Eiphil. The Qal occurs outside of 
 Genesis and the Chronicles in Deuteronomy (xxxii. 8), Job (xxxviii. 
 28), the Psalms (ii. 7), the Proverbs (xvii. 21, xxiii. 22, 24), Zech- 
 ariah (xiii. 3, of both parents), Daniel (xi. 6). This by no means 
 suggests the dying out of the form. The Hiphil, within the same 
 limits, is found in Judges (1), Ruth (5), 2 Kings (1), Job (1), Eccle- 
 siastes (1), Isaiah (1), Jeremiah (1), Ezekiel (3) and Nehemiah (2).* 
 This, on the other hand, does not show any marked growth in the 
 use of the word during Biblical times. If now we turn to 1 Chron- 
 icles, where the tables of Genesis are massed together with other 
 genealogies, we should expect to find, were the theory of our critics 
 true, the Chronicler showing a preference for the Hiphil form in 
 this sense. For the most part, however, he simply repeats the 
 respective names without any connective whatever (1 Chron. i. 1- 
 14, 17-28). When he has occasion to use either form he employs 
 the one found in Genesis (1 Chron. i. 18), betraying in this respect 
 no liking for one above the other. Moreover, the form in which 
 the genealogical lists of Genesis are reproduced in 1 Chronicles im- 
 plies that they were before the Chronicler as originals, as they 
 now appear in Genesis. He not only takes them up in the same 
 order, while condensing and shortening them, as might be expected 
 from the evident purpose of his work, but he keeps them within 
 the same essential limits. The list of chap. v. of Genesis, for ex- 
 ample, is compressed into a single verse in Chronicles, and that of 
 chap, xi (vers. 10-27) into three verses; but the exact names are 
 there and no others, while between them, as in Genesis, is inserted 
 the catalogue of the nations recorded in the tenth chapter. And 
 when, in this way, the Chronicler has exhausted the various family 
 registers of Genesis, he takes up, almost immediately, the line of 
 David as found in the book of Ruth.f 
 
 For these reasons we cannot accept the theory of a late date 
 
 * We omit passages where the Hipldl may have another meaning. 
 
 t Konig (Einleitung, pp. 168, 229, 230) seeks to break the force of the argument 
 from the relative frequency of the Qal for "beget " by denying its pertinency 
 in certain cases, it being used, he says, of "sexually indifferent ''■subjects. The 
 objection is invalid. Though the Qal is used metaphorically (Deut. xxxii. 8 ; 
 Job xxxviii. 28), it is not used with a sexually indifferent subject, but always of 
 the male. Only one of the passages cited by Konig under this head is ad rem, 
 the proper rendering being in most of them not "beget," but "bear," or, at 
 least, doubtful. He says further that the Chronicler, in reproducing the tables 
 of Genesis, has omitted in some instances the Qal form. It is true, but he has 
 
636 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 for the two genealogies concerned on the simple ground of a 
 diverse grammatical form. The most that can fairly be inferred 
 from it is that these genealogies had a different origin from their 
 immediate context; and there is a fact hitherto unnoticed which 
 renders even this inference, to say the least, doubtful. The same 
 Hebrew verb yaladh^ which has two actives, a Eiphil and a Qal, 
 each rendered " beget," has also two passive forms, a Niphal and a 
 Pual^^ each rendered he born. These forms are almost equally 
 numerous, one being used twenty-eight, the other thirty-six times 
 in the Bible and are similarly distributed from Genesis to Chron- 
 icles. If, accordingly, the former are held to represent material of 
 different origin because, being different forms, they are translated in 
 the same way, by parity of reasoning why should not the latter 
 represent material of different origin ? Still no one thinks of ap- 
 plying the principle in more than the one instance.f 
 
 Looking now more particularly at the remaining genealogies of 
 the Book of Genesis, there seems to be nothing in them generally 
 implying a late, or even a post-Mosaic origin, but rather the contrary. 
 For instance, a census of the house of Jacob is found in chap. xlvi. 
 If we compare the earlier part of it relating to Reuben, Simon and 
 Levi, with a passage in Exodus (vi. 14-20), where the tribe of Levi 
 is especially in view, it will be seen that the material in the latter 
 
 also omitted, and for the same reason it would appear, — for brevity's sake, — more 
 than an equal number of cases of the Hi-pJiil used in this sense in Genesis ; in fact, 
 he has reproduced but one of its many occurrences. Konig again adduces as evi- 
 dence of the late origin of the HipMl with tlie meaning given, the statement that 
 when the Chronicler is not quoting but writing independently, he always uses 
 this form. When we consider how the books of Chronicles are confessedly made 
 up, how the Chronicler came by the major part of his matter, especially that found 
 in his numerous genealogical tables, it is hazardous to affirm that he ever acts 
 independently in the thing alleged. It would have been more to the point to 
 say, for it would be true, that in Chronicles the Hiphil predominates over the 
 Qal in this sense. This is most likely due to the fact of the more frequent use 
 of the Hiphil in the sources from which he made his extracts. And such a fact 
 should have its weight. On the other hand, another fact should also be given 
 weight. The use of the Hiphil in the sense noted in two of the most promi- 
 nent of the patriarchal registers might be expected to have great influence 
 on its use in the later books without reference to the question whether it were a 
 late or an early form. In the same manner, the use of the Qal in subsequent 
 literature, if not in precisely the same degree, the form being less pronounced 
 and determinate, may be accounted for. 
 
 *Diestel's theory {Theolog. Literatur Zeitung, 1876, Nr. 4), that the original 
 pointing of the Qal forms, with this meaning, made them Pi'els is worthy of at- 
 tention, especially as the Samaritan Pentateuch, with two exceptions (Gen. 
 X. 8, xxii. 23), treats them so. But the position is beyond proof (cf. also in the 
 Hebrew Prov. xvii. 21), and, were it proved, it would not be decisive as 
 respects the main point at issue. 
 
 fit is not to be denied that the extended and exclusive use of the Hiphil 
 (Gen. V. 3-32, xi. 10-26), is significant in its case. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 637 
 
 passage has received considerable additions and been put, meantime, 
 into a more formal order. The same thing, that is, the contempo- 
 raneousness and the normal growth of the genealogies, is indicated 
 bj another similar fact. A census was taken of the Israelites, it is 
 said, while they were in the wilderness (Num., chaps, i-iii). On en- 
 tering Canaan, thirty-eight years afterward, it was repeated, and the 
 names of the new families which had arisen during this period added 
 (Num., chap, xxvi).* Such facts serve to corroborate, and all the 
 more for being incidental, the genuineness of the early registers of 
 this sort. 
 
 But we are pointed to one circumstance said to require an op- 
 posite conclusion. In the genealogy of Esau's descendants (chap, 
 xxxvi) we read: "And these are the kings that reigned iu the 
 land of Edora, before there reigned any king over the children of 
 Israel." The names of eight kings follow, beginning with " Bela 
 the son of Beor," and ending with a certain Hadar. It is said that 
 the reference to kings as reigning over Israel implies a period 
 as late, at least, as that of Saul, its first king. The inference would 
 be the more stringent if there had been no thought of the reign of 
 kings over Israel and no direct preparation for it previous to and for 
 some time following the days of Esau. It is quite otherwise. The 
 promise had been made to both Abraham and Jacob that they 
 should be the progenitors of kings (xvii. 6, 16, xxxv. 11) ; to the 
 latter, in the chapter immediately preceding'the one we are consid- 
 ering. Moses is said in Deuteronomy (xvi. 14-20) to have made a 
 law in the wilderness for the government of the kings of Israel when 
 the people shall have entered Canaan ; and another passage in the 
 same book represents them as having one at a later period (Deut. 
 xxviii. 36 ; cf. Num. xxiii. 21). Moses himself is called a king in one 
 place (Deut. xxxiii. 5). How warmly the Israelites cherished the idea 
 of an earthly sovereign appears from their efforts to induce Gideon to 
 become their king (Jude viii. 22). And when in the time of Samuel 
 they used their best persuasions to induce that prophet to give them a 
 king to judge them " like all the nations," their language is sigcally 
 colored by that of the law for the king in Deuteronomy (1 Sam. viii. 
 5). Again, the list of eight Edomitish kings named in our passage 
 would be no anachronism in the pre-Mosaic period. As far as the 
 time needed for them is concerned, it is ample, with many years to 
 spare. There are several reasons why they are in place there. We 
 note first that the genealogical material, in the midst of which the 
 list is found, bears marks of gradual enlargement from an original 
 form. We are told in the beginning of the sons born to Esau in 
 Canaan (xxxvi. 1-5) ; then of the sons of these sons, to the second 
 
 *See Smith's Bible Diet. s. v. "Genealogy." 
 
638 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 generation from Esau, born to him in Edom (xxxvi. 6-19), some of 
 whom became dukes, that is, family chiefs, or nobles. And finally 
 we are informed of certain other descendants of Esau, eleven in num- 
 ber, who were also dukes (xxxvi. 40-43), without a word to indi- 
 cate their immediate origin or date. With such literary indica- 
 tions there is no demand in our chapter for a long stretch of time 
 subsequent to Esau. It is rather excluded. Further, along with 
 these lists of Esau's descendants there is given in the same chapter 
 a catalogue of the original Horite settlers with their family heads 
 or dukes. Now, since we learn from Deuteronomy (ii. 12, 22) that 
 these Horites are those whom Esau destroyed and succeeded, their 
 names carry us back in part, at least, to a period before rather than 
 after his day. 
 
 Again, inasmuch as the first class of dukes or subordinate rulers- 
 named dates from the second generation after Esau, it is fair to 
 conclude that the line of kings also did, whose electors they may 
 well have been. That the dukes and kings had not the same rank 
 and did not rule successively is clear, not only from their different 
 titles, but from Ex. xv. 15, when compared with Num. xx. 14, 
 where they are treated as contemporaneous. Still further, the form 
 of the list in which kings appear and the historic statements con- 
 nected with it, furnish strong, if indirect, evidence that they lived 
 before Moses. The list is unelastic and it would appear strictly 
 inclusive of all the Edomitish rulers of the period under review, it 
 being stated that each succeeding king reigned in the last one's 
 stead.* Of the fourth king it is remarked that he " smote Midian 
 in the field of Moab." Midian, as a people, ceased to exist at about 
 the time of Gideon (Num. xxi. 20 ; Ruth i. 1). 
 
 The time between Gideon and Saul, if we make that the terminus 
 ad quem^ is too short for the four remaining kings. Much later it 
 cannot be, since in the time of David the independence of Edom and 
 the continuity of its line of sovereigns ceased. 
 
 Another marked indication of time is the manner in which the 
 last king is spoken of. In every other case we are told of the death 
 of the king. In this case not only is nothing said of that, but the 
 family of his wife is somewhat circumstantially described. For this 
 reason it has seemed to many, and the inference is a natural one, 
 that the last king of the line was in power at the time of the writer, 
 who gives the list. And since there was an Edomitish king in 
 power at the period of the Exodus (Num. xx. 14 ; Jude xi. 17), the 
 query of Delitzsch seems reasonable whether the last name in our 
 list is not that of the king who refused to let the Israelites pass 
 
 * The kings being elective and not hereditary, it does not surprise us that they 
 are not more closely identified with the family of Esau. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 639 
 
 through his land when on their way to Canaan. Be that as it may 
 there is no occasion for placing him subsequent to the Exodus. 
 
 But what, it might be asked, was the purpose of the writer of 
 Genesis in giving this catalogue of foreign sovereigns in this place ? 
 His method elsewhere furnishes the answer. He had shown in the 
 case of Cain and of Ishmael that while the worldly line had started 
 off quite in advance of the line of promise in the rapidity of its 
 development, it had later been overtaken and outstripped ; the 
 same, accordingly, might be expected here. The line of Esau comes 
 early to its bloom, but that of Jacob inherits the promises.* 
 
 As already suggested, along with the genealogical matter of 
 Genesis there is associated not a little ethnographical matter. That 
 is perhaps the proper term for it rather than ethnological.f No 
 attempt is made in Genesis, strictly speaking, to give an account of 
 the various races of the world ; but in its tenth chapter there is a 
 most remarkable conspectus of the descendants of Noah settled within 
 a certain geographical area. It is a well-known idiom of Hebrew 
 to speak of a people as the product of the country where it is found. 
 A great city like Jerusalem, for example, was looked upon as the 
 mother of its inhabitants. So here, the peoples grouped around 
 Canaan are treated as though they had sprung from the several 
 countries where they are found. When it is said, accordingly, that 
 Canaan " begat " Zidon and Heth, a geographical rather than a 
 strictly genealogical connection is referred to. So the three sons of 
 Noah, being assigned to different localities, Japheth to the north. 
 Ham to the south and Shem to the interior, the inhabitants occupy- 
 ing these localities at the time are looked upon as their descendants. 
 In a general way this may also be true ; but it is not to be forgotten 
 that the point of view of the writer is geographical and political and 
 not severely racial. Hence it follows that Egyptian and Canaanite, 
 Elamite and Assyrian are classed together as though descendants 
 from one ancestor. :}: 
 
 I have called the contents of the tenth chapter remarkable. They 
 are so in many respects. The literatures of other nations contain 
 lists of foreign peoples; but they are those whom they have subju- 
 gated. Their preservation is a mark of national pride. This one, 
 on the contrary, is evidence of the universality of Israel's outlook. 
 
 *The fact that there was a certain Edomitish Hadad ("Hadar"?) of royal 
 blood living in the time of Solomon can have nothing to do with the Hadad who 
 closes the list of kings of the period of Esau. The former married a daughter 
 of Pharaoh and never reigned in Edom (1 Kgs. xi. 14-22). 
 
 f See Sayce, The Races of the Old I'estament, p. 41. 
 
 J The principle followed is well illustrated in the case of the tribe of Sheba, 
 which spread so far from north to south that it is twice named, once under 
 Ham, and once under Shem (vers. 7, 28). 
 
■640 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 It is not only meant to show the unity of the race, in its origin, but 
 in its hope for the future. In the quest for salvation, so to speak, 
 those chosen for that noble object take leave, for the time being, of 
 those from whom they must separate, as the line of Seth of that of 
 Cain, the line of Shem of that of Ham and Japheth, as the family 
 of Abraham of the remaining families of the earth ; but it is with 
 the evident hope and purpose of meeting again to share the common 
 rewards, when the goal has been reached and the quest ended. 
 "Whatever may be thought of the presence of mythical material 
 elsewhere in Genesis, I am not aware that any one suggests its pres- 
 ence here. Certainly it is most unlikely. Scholars generally would 
 agree with the statement of Eawlinson, approved by Delitzsch, that 
 it is " the most authentic record we possess for the affiliations of 
 nations " in the early times.* The more fully it has been examined 
 and understood, the more worthy it has shown itself of trust. Much 
 in it that once was regarded as doubtful has proven itself, when 
 considered from the right point of view, to be correct. 
 
 Can we, within reasonable limits, determine its date ? The 
 data on which reliance must chiefly be placed are these : the liter- 
 ary form of the material, and more especially what it contains 
 and what it omits. If we compare the contents of the chapter with 
 the lists of nations found in Jeremiah (xxv. 19-26) and Ezekiel 
 (chap, xxvii and xxxiii. 17-30), it makes at once the impression 
 of being not only isolated but ancient. The peculiar notice of 
 Nimrod, the reference to the early civilizations of Babylon and 
 Assyria, to the cities of the plain as though still standing, the signifi- 
 cant break made in the line of Shem with Peleg, and the relatively 
 small development of the line of Japheth to two generations only, 
 all point in the same direction. The chapter contains nothing in 
 fact positively requiring for it a post-Mosaic date.f None of the 
 peoples named are carried in their development beyond the Exodus 
 period ; most of them are left far short of it. The prominence 
 given to Zidon (ver. 15) appears to show that Tyre, which is 
 unnamed, had not yet reached the preeminence it held in David's 
 time. The recognition of Egypt in its two divisions, upper and 
 lower, has its parallel on the oldest monuments of that country. :j; 
 The omissions in the list of peoples, as far as they can be reasonably 
 
 *Delitzsch, Com. uber die Genesis, p. 301. 
 
 t For remarks on " Calah " (ver. 12) see above, p. 631. Assurbanipal says 
 <885) that Shalmaneser I (1300) had this city "gemacht" ("epesu," '^S'i*; 
 Sch., VJ3};). 
 
 X The title was sometimes applied, it is true, to one division of the country 
 alone (Isa. xi. 11; Jer. xliv. 1, 15). Strack {Gom., in loco.) holds that the 
 usual Hebrew word for Egypt is not a dual. 
 
ORIGIN AND COMPOSITION OF GENESIS. 6il 
 
 explained, are not out of harmony with this general conclusion. 
 Among others the American, the Australian and the Chinese* 
 races are unnoticed. Were they unknown, or had they not yet 
 arisen ? More likely than the former supposition is another, that 
 the writer purposely confined his view to a limited area. At least, 
 as matter of fact, and for some reason now hidden, he did restrict 
 himself to peoples grouped around the Mediterranean basin and its 
 immediate vicinity. If among these we find omissions of important 
 ancient peoples, it will be significant. There are some such. There 
 is no reference to Arabia, first coming into notice in Solomon's day 
 (1 Kgs. X. 15), nor to the Minni of Jeremiah's time (Jer. li. 27), 
 nor to the great world empire of Persia dating from the reign of 
 Cyrus (B.C. 538). These facts seem to make the theory of an exilic 
 origin for the tenth chapter of Genesis impossible. 
 
 But why are such peoples as the Amalekites omitted, together 
 with Edom, Moab, Ammon and Ishmael, and the descendants of 
 Abraham by Keturah, and certain apparently aboriginal inhabitants 
 of the district around and in Canaan, the Anakim, Eephaim, Emim 
 and Zamzummim ? f There is no one reason, probably, which would 
 apply to all the cases. The Amalekites cannot have been omitted 
 because they had so long before disappeared from history. The 
 finishing stroke in their destruction as a people was given by Saul 
 (1 Sam., chap. xv). But their very peculiar relations to Israel from 
 the period of the Exodus would insure that their memory would be 
 kept fresh long after this event (Ex. xvii. 16 ; cf. 1 Chron. iv. 43).:}: 
 As it concerns the aboriginal tribes — more properly, perhaps, Amor- 
 itish clans — named, they mostly inhabited the region east of the Jor- 
 dan. Their relative unimportance would well enough account for 
 the failure to mention them. One has remarked concerning the 
 ^^ount of matter contained in the tenth chapter of Genesis, when 
 compared with what it might have been : " The poverty of its lists 
 and of its information is the proof of its genuineness."§ And as to 
 Ishmael, Edom, Ammon, Moab and the rest, they are directly 
 related to Abraham by kinship, of whom the subsequent history is 
 to treat at the appropriate time and place ; they receive all the atten- 
 tion called for in the circumstances. 
 
 In general, then, it may be said that the tenth chapter of Genesis 
 
 * An effort has been made to connect the early civilization of China with that 
 of ancient Akkadia. 
 
 f If a complete list of the early inhabitants of Canaan and vicinity before the 
 conquest had been aimed at, we should have expected the names of the Periz- 
 zites, Kenites, Kenizzites and Kadmonites (x. 16 ; cf xv. 19). See Sayce's Races 
 of the Old Testament, chap, vi, and Kohler's Bib. Geschichte, pp. 72-94. 
 
 I See Strack, Com., p. 41. 
 
 ^Herder quoted by Strack, ibid., in loco. 
 42 
 
642 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. 
 
 seems to reflect a period previous to the conquest, not one after it. 
 More definitely, it appears to point to the time just before the 
 Egyptian supremacy, described in the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, 
 began to make itself greatly felt in Palestine, that is about B.C. 
 1600. Previously, Canaan had been dominated from the north and 
 east ; and a considerable immigration had swept into it through the 
 fords of the Euphrates at Carchemish. * 
 
 Chicago. EdWIN Cone Bissell. 
 
 * See Sayce, ibid., who speaks of the Philistines (cf. Gen. x. 14) as a guard 
 established by the Egyptians on the southern border of Palestine ; and cf. Con- 
 der, "The Earliest Ages of Hebrew History," in the Scottish Review, October, 
 1894. 
 
Gaylord Bros. 
 
 Makers 
 Syracuse. N. V. 
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