V f .J i. V ti»C? ' • . ¦•5" ri*- JS?.Kj^'--v •• ****^ '4uLi^. 1 1 ^ 0 THE GENESIS OF GENESIS .\ STUDY OF THE DOCr:SIEXTARY SOURCES OF THE FIRST BOOK OF MOSES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RESULTS OF CRITICAL SCIENCE ILLUSTRATING THE PRESENCE OF BIBLES WITHIN THE BIBLE BENJAMIN "W^ISNER BACON WITH AX INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE F. MOORE Professor t7t Andover Theological Seminary " The books of the Old Testament in their present form, in many instances are not, and do not profess to be, tht; original documents on which the history was based. There was (to use a happy expression employed of late) " a bible within A BIBLE," an *' Old Testament before an Old Testament was written." To discover any traces of the lost works in the actnal text, or any allusions to them even when their substance is entirely perished, is a task of immense interest." STANLEY HARTFORD THE STUDENT PUBLISHING COMPANY ri Bl3l Copyrighted 1891 By Student Publishing Co. D. S. MOSELEY, PRINT. BIBLES WITHIN THE BIBLE. Or 5^ 'i TO EDWARD E. SALISBURY, LL. D. LATE PROFESSOR IN VALE UNIVERSITY, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION. PREPACK. The attention of the reading public of America has been called frequently of late to the claims of the science of Higher Criticism, a study all-important to a correct under standing of the Scriptures ; and in particular to that theory of the science which maintains the origin of the Pentateuch from a compilation of older documents. They have been assured of the practically unanimous acceptance of this theory abroad, and have been themselves witnesses of the divided opinions of scholars at home. Considering the im portance of the subject, the enormous mass of accumulated evidence pro and con, the conflicting claims of scholars as to the resulting benefit or injury to accrue to Christian faith from the acceptance of the theory, it should be apparent to all, as a primary axiom, that the reading public are entitled to judge for themselves. As to the method of presenting the facts to the public, two propositions are easily established. I. The public require, not controversial argument, but explanation. The method of the controversialist, which ever side be cham pioned, rarely gains more than a partisan applause guaranteed in advance, and the converts to be made among those " con vinced against their will." It assumes that the public has already m.ade up its mind, or else to judge for the public. The assumption is either false or impertinent. A public accustomed to exercise the right of private judgment de mands, in the case of so important and widely supported a theory, a plain statement of the case, an explanation of the general principles involved, of the nature, rather than the details, of the argument, and as simple a presentation of methods and results as possible. It wants " the documents in the case." viii PREFACE. II. It is not necessary that the presentation of the case should be made from a standpoint of hostility to the new theory, nor even from one of indifference. The public wishes to do justice to the new theory. Until it has had opportunity to obtain a general conspectus thereof it occupies the standpoint of traditional opinion. It has not time to give to the minutiae of controversial discussion, but desires to be informed in general outline of the method pur sued by the critics and the results propounded. Such an explanation can only be given by one familiar with the critical argument and at least in some degree in sympathy with the theory. The position of such an expositor differs however from that of the advocate and special pleader, in that he undertakes to explain and not to argue. He does not pretend to have no opinion, but refrains from obtrud ing his opinion upon the reader, preferring to state the most general facts and grounds of critical procedure in an unbi assed way, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. In accordance with the general proposition first laid down, the present work is addressed not merely to scholars and technical investigators, but to the general public. The author believes that critics and biblical scholars will find contributions of value to the science of documentary analysis within its pages ; but argument in support of these original investigations has been relegated to technical reviews, and even notes which require the use of Hebrew text have been inserted in a special appendix, reference being made by means of the numerals (i), (2), (3), etc. Chapter III. is a reprint of the author's articles in Hebraica iv. 4 and v. i (1888) intended to exhibit the present state of the documen tary analysis. The articles have been deprived of the foot notes, in which all divergences from the analysis of Dillmann —given in the text— by six of the foremost critics were pre sented, and for the purpose of a minute comparison of the analyses of Wellhausen, Kuenen, Budde, Jiilicher, Delitzsch and Kittel, the reader will be obliged to consult the articles in their original form. One of the principal results of the PREFACE. ix articles has been, however, to establish beyond the possibility of dispute the existence of a real and extraordinarily minute agreement of all schools of documentary analysis. The citation of the authority of DLUmann alone will therefore serve the purposes of the general reader, as it is, in the main and essentially, identical with that of all critics. The present work will be found accordingly to be in general a graphic presentation of the consensus of modem criticism. But the author has not restricted himself to a following of authorities. The analysis has been carried through independently, with results in a number of cases diverging from those of all former critics. For the process and evidence in these cases of original analysis the reader is referred to Hebraica, October, 1890, and following numbers, where it is given in detail. Technical argument has thus been avoided in the present volume, but the general reader will have opportunity by consulting chapter III. to assure himself that the recog nized authorities in this field are fairly represented, while at the same time the more exact student has placed at his disposal, through the notes and references, the means of verifying all statements and examining the grounds of in dependent analysis. A careful study of the opening para graphs of chapter III. is especially recommended. If the few lines of Hebrew in this chapter and in Appendix II. appear somewhat formidable, the main ideas will be found available and even indispensable to the thoughtful reader. In recent years, thanks largely to the efforts of Profs. W. R. Harper of Chicago and C. A. Briggs of Union Seminary, the claims of Semitic literature to a position in the curricu lum of study for every person of liberal education are coming to be felt. The literary and scientific study of the develop ment of the Hebrew and Hellenistic religious consciousness as exhibited in their literature — the Bible — ^is beginning to be recognized as something not to be left merely to the pulpit orator and the Sunday-school teacher, but to be eagerly welcomed into the domain of school, coUege and university training. With the recognition has come a perception of the X PREFACE. transcendent interest of these studies and a growing demand from beyond the academic walls for admission to at least a gleaner's share in these new fields of scientific investigation. The author desires to meet this demand, and to present to all classes of Bible students, in churches, Sunday-schools, academies and other institutions of learning, as well as to the general public, that which might be expected to be gained from a course of lectures on the Documentary Theory of the Pentateuch, if delivered on one of the recently endowed university foundations for instruction in Biblical Literature. The method of the book explains itself. Part I. is intro ductory. The science of Documentary Analysis and that inseparable from it of Historical Criticism are briefly ex plained and illustrated. A more complete idea of each, and of their mutual relations, can be gained by reading the articles "Israel" and "Pentateuch" in Enc. Brit., 9th ed. ; W. Robertson Smith's "Old Testament in the Jewish Church," and "Prophets of Israel," D. Appleton and Co., 1882 and 1883; Prof. Geo. T. Ladd's "What is the Bible?" Scribner's, 1888; and Prof. C. A. Brigg's "Biblical Study" (3d ed., 1890); and "Messianic Prophecy," Scribner's, 1886. Fr. Lenormant's " Beginnings of History " (translated), Scrib ner's, 1883, and Geo. Smith's " Chaldean Account of Genesis ;" new ed. ; Sampson Low, Marston and Co., London, 1880, are books of kindred aim adapted to the requirements of the general reader. Of a more technical character are Prof. Ladd's "Doctrine of Sacred Scripture," Scribner's, 1883; and, as standard works respectively of historical and analyti cal criticism, J. Wellhausen's "Historyof Israel" (translated), A. and C. Black, Edinburgh, 1885 ; and Kuenen's " Hexa- teuch " (translated), Macmillan and Co., London, 1886. To readers of German, Dutch and French, an inexhaustible field is opened. A bibliography will be found in almost any one of the larger works just enumerated. Part II. affords to the eye a general view of the processes and results of Pentateuch analysis during the 138 years of its labor. The typographical means employed display the text PREFACE. xi of Genesis according to the revised version, the portions assigned to soiirces, compilers, editors and interpolators characteristically exhibited, and the loss or displacement of material indicated, so that at a glance the reader may com prehend the whole process of untwisting of each supposed strand in the composite thread, and judge whether or not it be reasonable. The references at the foot of the page are for the most part intelligible to the reader unfamiliar with Hebrew, and are mainly concerned with resemblances and contrasts in style and subject matter among the supposed documents. In a few cases they are intended to elucidate the thought, and go beyond the limits of the Hexateuch. Part III. affords a connected view of the supposed docu ments J, E and P, as they are restored by the analysis. Lost material has sometimes been conjecturally supplied, but all such supplemental material is marked with [ . . . . . ] These gaps can sometimes be filled with certainty from subsequent references in the same document (e. g. J's version of the first interview of Joseph with his brethren in Egypt corresponding to E in Gen. xiii., from J in xliii. 3-7, 18-21 ; xliv. 19-29) ; sometimes all attempts at restoration of lost material must be mere guesswork. But gaps are fortunately the exception, not the rule. A few conjectural readings and amendments to the text of good authority, spoken of in the notes to Part II., are introduced in Part III. ; also preferred marginal renderings, and, in a small number of cases, new translations suggested by the analysis, and an arrangement of the text in verses, intended to exhibit the traces of metrical form displayed by the original. The first Appendix presents a group of passages connected with the Creation and Flood story, exhibiting remarkable affinity with the well-known Assyrian Flood and Creation tablets. Critics now regard these passages in Genesis as having been grafted upon the stock of Hebrew tradition, the majority considering them as an interpolation into the docu ment J, others as incorporated by J together with the national epos. These passages are taken out as a group xii PREFACE. and placed, in Appendix I., in juxtaposition with the cunei form narratives for purposes of comparison. In joining the number of those who are endeavoring to awaken a new interest in biblical study by means of the remarkable results of analytical criticism, the author wishes to express his most grateful acknowledgments to Prof. A. Kuenen of Leyden and President W. R. Harper of Chicago for the kindness experienced at their hands. Also to Prof. George F. Moore of Andover for his scholarly revision and criticism of the new readings of Part III., beside innumerable other services of value, and to the eminent scholars to whom he is indebted for their courteous commendation of the book to the English-speaking public at home and abroad. To the reader who may approach these pages in the endeavor to find a deeper, clearer meaning in the ancient book than hitherto, he would express the sincere and sanguine hope that new light upon the unknown history of this long revered and cherished literature may prove it ever more and more clearly a "word of God," frag ments providentially preserved of religious thought from that people whose history is the history of the development of the religious consciousness. If " given unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners," it was no less "given of God," because the gift extended over many centuries, "line upon line and precept upon precept. " It is no less divine if the fruit of generations of consecrated human hearts and consciences, rather than the utterance of a single individual. What is true of the individual investigator is in a still higher degree true of any science, the science of criticism included. " We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." If reassurance is needed in regard to the effect of presenting to the public these claims of the higher criticism, I prefer to give it in the words of others rather than my own. Says Prof. Briggs of Union Seminary : " The higher criticism has rent the crust with which rabbinical tradition and Chris tian scholasticism have encased the Old Testament, overlay- PREFACE. xiii ing the poetic and prophetic elements with the legal and the ritual. Younger biblical scholars have caught glimpses of the beauty and glory of biblical literature. The Old Testa ment is studied as never before in the Christian Church. It is beginning to exert its charming influence upon ministers and people. Christian theology and Christian life will be ere long enriched by it. God's blessing is in it to those who have the Christian wisdom to recognize, and the grace to receive and employ it."* In the firm confidence that a general acquaintance with the discoveries claimed to have been made by the higher criticism in the Pentateuch can only conduce to the lasting benefit of His cause, who said, "Thy word is Truth," this volume is respectfully submitted to the Christian public. Benjamin Wisner Bacox. Parsonage, Oswego, N. Y., October, i8ipi. * Biblical Study. By Chas. A. Briggs. New York: Scribner and Sons. 1886. Page 247. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface vii.-xiii. Introduction, xxiii.-xio:. PART FIRST; INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER I. Higher Criticism and the Science of Documentary Analysis. I. Criticism is appreciation. — Biblical criticism, both textual and " higher," is necessary to do justice to the Bible, and is the indis pensable foundation of a valid doctrine of Revelation and Inspira tion ; hence also of a scientific Revealed Theology Pp. i, 2 2. The Documentary Analysis : Its field and function. — Treatises on its history and method. — Illustrations of its success from patristic literature Pp. 2-6 3. General nature and history of Oriental MSS. — Agglomerative in their origin, and accretive in their transmission. — Explanation, and testimony to the fact Pp. 6-10 4. Orig^ of prose histories. — The minstrels the first historians. — Literature at first mnemonic in purpose. — Illustrations from extra-Pentateuchal literature Pp. 10-22 5. Relation of poetic sources to incorporating narrative. — Illustrations from Joshua x. and Judges xv. — Higher criticism goes behind the author to his sources. — The Book of Jashar Pp. 12-17 6. Sources cited as such by the Pentateuch. — The Book of the Wars of Yahweh. — Prose sources named. — Deuteronomy and the Book of CONTENTS. the Covenant. — Other writings attributed to Moses. — Relation of the sources quoted as such to the Pentateuch narrative. — Theory of the analysis Pp. 17-21 The analysis has the right to search the Scriptures. — A priori ex clusion refuted. — An unreasonable demand complied with. — Unity can only be certified by the results of attempted analysis Pp. 21-24 The demand for " credentials " complied with Pp. 24-25 CHAPTER II. The Science of Historical Criticism. I. Documentary analysis is only preliminary to Historical Criticism. — Indispensableness of the latter to appreciation of both history and literature. — Results P. 27 a. Illustration from secular literature needless. — Historical criticism is a cross-examination of the witnesses Pp. 27, 28 3. Biblical historical criticism illustrated from the Psalms and Deutero-Isaiah. — Two methods of accounting for the phenomena. — Practical results of the critical method Pp. 28-30 4. Biblical archseology and the history of historical criticism to be studied in other treatises. — The purely literary branch of the science, in the single department of the Hexateuch, alone treated here. — A scriptural discrimination Pp. 30, 31 5. External and Internal evidence.— The former includes Tradition. —All New Testament references belong under this head.— The doctrinal argument irrelevant.— Internal evidence.— For deter mination of dates the two kinds of evidence are complemen tary Pp. 31-34 CONTENTS. xvii 6. Date and authorship of the Pentateuch in the light of external and internal evidence. — The tradition. — Other external evidence as sures its existence circ. 300 B. C. — Anonymity Pp. 34-36 7. Evidence opposed to Mosaic authorship. — External e silentio, (a) from the history, (b) from the prophetic literature. — Relation of Chronicles to the older historical books. — Pre-exilic history ignores the ritual law. — The contrast might be due to disappearance of the Pentateuch Pp. 36-39 8. The prophetic literature ignores the ritual law and positively dis claims a knowledge of its existence Pp. 39-42 9. Internal evidence. — How its force may be nullified. — Post- Mosaica. — Destructive criticism of Colenso. — Illustrations. — Its object Pp. 42-46 10. The date 620 B. C. for Deuteronomy the key to historical criticism of the Pentateuch. — Why critics identify Hilkiah's law-book, II. Kings xxii.f, with Deuteronomy. — External evidence for this date Pp. 46-49 1 1 . Intemal evidence m Deuteronomy. — Post-Mosaica. — Character and style of the Code. — The religious revolution demanded. — Its ne cessity and radical nature. — Deuteronomy providentially if not miraculously fitted to the necessities of reform in the seventh century, B. C Pp. 49-54 12. Position of the priestly code in regard to the great reform. — Characterization of P. — Relation to the history and litera ture Pp. 54-57 13. Relation of Deuteronomy to P an unbroken silence. — Deuteronomy "analyzes" Exodus and Numbers. — Intemal evidence for post- exilic origin of P. — Illustration from Ezekiel of legal develop ment Pp. 57-59 xviii CONTEXTS. 14. Characterization of JE.— External and intemal evidence of date.— Its function in the prophetic movement Pp. 59-62 15. J and E. — Relation and contrast of J and E Pp. 62, 63 16. Results of the Critical Theory. — An inductive doctrine of revela tion and inspiration Pp. 63, 64 CHAPTER III. The Documentary Theory of To-day. I. Purpose of the articles. — Method pursued. — The Grafian theory. — History of the amalgamation of JE. — Origin and incorporation of Deuteronomy. — The " prophetic" element of the Hexateuch. — Growth of the priestly legislation. — Rewriting of the history as a framework to the priestly legislation. — Supplementation. — Amal gamation of the priestly with the prophetic elements. — Final redaction Pp. 65, 66 • 2. The theory of Dillmann. — Mainly a peculiar theory of the origin of P. — The earliest priestly codes. ^The great priestly writer.— Simultaneous combination of E, P'^ J and parts of P' by R. — Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist Pp. 66, 67 3. Evangelical critics. — List of authorities P. 67, 68 4. Table of Dillmann's analysis of P, E and J throughout the Hexa teuch Pp. 68-94 PART II. The text of Genesis according to the Revised Version in varieties of type to exhibit the constituent sources and method of their compilation according to the general consensus of critical analysis, with notes explanatory of the phenomena of redaction Pp. 97-223 CONTENTS. xix PART III. The separate documents J, E and P conjecturally restored, with revised translation according to emended text and conjectural readings of good authority Pp. 225-334 APPENDICES. Appendix I. The great Flood Interpolation and connected passages, placed in juxtaposition with a translation of their cuneiform paral lels Pp. 335-350 Appendix II. Hebrew Notes Pp. 351, 352 INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION. " If you penetrate the secret of the twelve [last verses of Deuteronomy, containing the account of Moses' death], also 'And Moses wrote' (Ex. xxiv. 4; Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 22), 'And the Canaanites were then in the land' (Gen. xii. 6 ; cf. xiii. 7), 'In the mountain of the Lord he ap pears' (Gen. xxii. 14), 'And his bedstead was an iron bed stead' (Deut. iii. 11), you will discover the truth." In these enigmatical words Aben Ezra [f 1168], the acutest of the mediaeval Jewish commentators, calls attention to a number of indications in the Pentateuch of a later hand than that of Moses. He leaves the inference to his readers with a caution ; "He who understands will hold his tongue " (Comm. on Gen. xii. 6). It is not certain what inference he himself drew. The mystery he makes about it might easily lead us, as per haps it did Spinoza, to exaggerate the extent of Aben Ezra's departures from the received opinion. He deprecates in an outburst of orthodox horror the temerity of a certain Isaac, who ascribed the list of kings in Edom " before there was any king in Israel" (Gen. xxxvi. 31), to the time of Jehosha- phat. On the other hand, it is not clear that Aben Ezra meant no more than to point out the existence of some later glosses in the Mosaic text of the Pentateuch. However that may be, with these observations criticism had made a begin ning. It was a long time before anything more came of it. The new impulse to Bible study in the Reformation century did not take a critical direction. The erratic reformer Carl stadt [f 1541] declared the authorship of the Pentateuch unknown and unknowable ; the Catholic Andreas Maes [t 1573]) one of the men of learning whom scholars will always delight to honor, held that long after Moses the xxiv INTROD UC TION. Pentateuch had passed through the hands of an editor (per haps Ezra), who had at least introduced words and clauses here and there to make the meaning clearer, and substituted for obsolete names of places those by which they were known in his time. The Church responded by putting Maes's Joshua on the Index.* Biblical scholarship had, indeed, much to do before addressing itself to the problems of the higher criticism. The ancient versions of the Old 'Testament were to be edited and the entire apparatus brought together in the great Polyglot Bibles ; the interpretation of the Old Testament on the basis of the original text — wholly neglected among Christians since Jerome — was to be taken up, and the tools of the interpreter created ; the history, geography, chronology, arch£eology of the Bible to be worked up ; the versions to be compared with the Hebrew text, and the beginnings of systematic text criticism made. This work was done in the seventeenth century with a comprehensive learning and an indefatigable diligence which command not only our admiration but our lasting gratitude. There were giants in the earth in those days. Toward the end of the century the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, as we have it, was again challenged. Hobbes in his "Leviathan," 1651 and La Peyrere in his fantastic " Preadamites," 1655, did little more than enlarge and comment on Aben Ezra's list of diffi culties ; though the latter argues also from the obscurity, confusion, and disorder of many parts of the narrative that we have a jumble of excerpts and transcripts rather than an original work. He does not doubt, however, that Moses wrote the greater part of the Pentateuch. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-politicus, 1670, making Aben Ezra's obscure hints his point of departure, went much farther and anticipated many of the observations and inferences of subsequent criti cism. He shows that there are much more serious difficulties in the way of the long-established opinion that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch than the superficial anachronisms * This did not deter other Catholic scholars from following in his footsteps. The Spaniard Pereira and the Flemish Jesuit Bonf rdre are particularly to be named. INTRODUCTION. xxv which would at most warrant the conclusion that it had been glossed here and there by copyists or revised by an editor. The whole history of Joseph and Jacob, for example, shows by its internal inconsistencies that it is extracted and compiled from different histories. No author could have put Genesis xxxviii. (the story of Judah and Tamar), with its introduction, "And it came to pass at that time," where it now stands, interrupting the history of Joseph and involving the most patent chronological absurdities ; it must be taken from another book, and introduced here by the compiler without sufficient examination. The hypotheses by which the commentators seek to relieve such difficulties, if true, would prove that the ancient Hebrews were entirely ignorant both of their own language and of the way to tell a story ; in which case there would be no principle or norm in the inter pretation of Scripture, but every man might invent any ex planation he pleased. This clear statement of the inevitable outcome of the attempt to remove critical difficulties by exe getical inventions contains the judgment not only of the rabbinical commentators whom Spinoza had immediately in view, but of much modem exegesis as well. Such a method is not to interpret the Scripture but to correct it ; or as he says in a note, to corrupt it, and give it, like a piece of wax, as many shapes as you please. His own theory was that the Pentateuch and older Historical Books (Josh., Jud., Sam., Kings) were the work of a single historian, who proposed to write the antiquities of the Jews from the beginning to the first destruction of Jerusalem, and who largely compiled his work from older writings. Who this historian was, cannot be certainly established ; but there are considerations of some weight which support the conjecture that it was Ezra. The criticism of the seventeenth century is best known by the names of Richard Simon, Histoire critique du Vieux Testa ment, 1678 (edition suppressed ; authorized reprint, Rotter dam, 1685), and Jean Le Clere, Sentimens de quelques thMogiens de Hollande sur l' Histoire Critique, etc., 1685, etc. ; to whom may be added Anton van Dale, 1696. These scholars agree xxvi INTRODUCTION. only in their negative conclusion : the Pentateuch as we have it can not be the work of Moses. Each has his own hypo thesis of its origin. According to Simon it grew out of the public archives under the direction of prophets and scribes ; Le Clere imagined it the work of the Samaritan priest, I Kings xvii. 28 ; Van Dale makes Ezra the author. Without some new instrument, criticism could not get beyond negative results. Its researches could make it in creasingly clear that the Pentateuch in its present form is not Mosaic ; that it is a compilation rather than an original work ; but that true history of the book which, as Spinoza justly says, is the basis of its interpretation, it could not divine. The course of criticism in the seventeenth century, and again in Germany in the end of the eighteenth, shows that the logical drift of opinion was to bring the compilation of the Pentateuch down to the age of Ezra ; in which case, as no criteria other than the intrinsic probability of the relation existed, by which to determine the age or work of the sources employed by the author, the historical value of the work was effectually destroyed. The necessary instrument, the critical analysis, was put in the hands of criticism by the French physician, Jean Astruc. Astruc's father, a Reformed pastor, who abjured before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had given him a thorough education.* He rose to eminence in his profession, not only as a practitioner, but as the author of treatises which are still named with honor. It was the man of science, not the theologian, who discovered the secret of Genesis. The repe titions, or parallel narratives (e. g. the two accounts of the creation of the world and especially of man ; the threefold repetition of some of the particulars of the flood) ; the pecu liar use of the names Elohim and Jehovah in Genesis, in contrast with Exodus iii.ff ; the antichronisms, or disturb ances of the chronological order, led him to conjecture that the author (Moses) had employed at least two older nar- * It is often said (e. g. by Renan in his preface to the French translation of Kuenen's Introduction) that Astruc was not a Hebrew scholar. This is contradicted, however, by his own language, Conjectures, p. 18 ; cf. Note p. 31, 32, etc. INTRODUCTION. xxvii ratives, one of which used the name Elohim, the other, Jehovah. This hypothesis he tested by carrying through the analysis. His success in this attempt was itself a verifica tion ; but the verification became demonstrative when it appeared that upon the separation of the Elohim and the Jehovah Memoirs the repetitions, contradictions, and anti chronisms which had so much exercised commentators and critics, disappeared of themselves. With the confidence of the man of science in scientific method, he wrote at the end of his prefatory exposition of these results : " So we must either renounce all pretence of ever proving any thing in any critical question, or agree that the proof which the combina tion of these facts affords amounts to a complete demonstra tion of the theory of the composition of Genesis which I have propounded." Unfortunately, few theologians had sufficient scientific or historical training to recognize the absolute cogency of the demonstration. Astruc's motive and his application of the results were conservative. He congratulated himself that his surgeon's knife had effected a radical cure of what he calls the " malady of the last century," the doubt of the Mosaic authorship of Genesis ; and especially that he had " annihilated the vain triumph of Spinoza," in the matter of Genesis xxxviii. The father of analytic criticism was an apologist. His own analysis was tentative and imperfect ; his criteria were too simple ; his application of them too mechanical. His hy pothesis of the way in which the "Memoirs" were combined was artificial and improbable. But when all that is said, his discovery remains one of the most brilliant and fruitful in the history of criticism. His Conjectures had no better fortune than the works of laymen usually experience at the hands of scholars of the schools. J. D. Michaelis, in a review of the book the year after its appearance, gave the author the credit of being a well-meaning man ; but added that he seemed not to be ac quainted with the literature of Old Testament studies since Clericus, and that his original contributions were worthless ! xxviii INTRODUCTION. The theory of the composition of Genesis from two principal narratives was taken up in Germany by Michaelis's younger colleague, Eichhom (from 1779), and improved on by Ilgen (1798), who recognized a second Elohist (E), and in other ways displayed rernarkable insight. In the early years of the present century the hypothesis of Astruc-Eichhom-Ilgen, that our Genesis is the harmonistic combination of two or three continuous narratives, gave place for a time to the theory of Geddes (1792) and Vater (1805), who regarded the Pentateuch as a planless and dis- orderl)'- congeries of loose scraps, of various age and worth, brought together by a late compiler. This was the direction in which German criticism had been feeling its way before Eichhom, and to which it now retumed. This " Fragmeiit Hypothesis " succumbed to the demonstration, which was ere long forthcoming, that the Pentateuch is not such a hodge-podge ; but has, in spite of a certain appearance of disorder, a manifest unity and strongly marked plan. This plan appears most conspicuously in the main Elohistic narrative, the " Groundwork " of the Pentateuch, as it now began to be called. And this led to the hypothesis, which enjoyed for a while the adhesion of the leading critics, that the Groundwork has received extensive additions by a later writer. These pieces of new cloth do not always match the old garment ; they are often misplaced, and have sometimes made rents : the disorder on the surface of a well-ordered composition is thus accounted for. In this theory ("Supple ment Hypothesis") the Fragment Hypothesis is only half overcome. A juster and more discriminating analysis soon showed that the Jehovistic parts of Genesis have a plan and order of their own, and when separated form a tolerably complete whole. This was demonstrated by Hupfeld, whose work on the Sources of Genesis appeared, by a noteworthy coincidence, in 1853, the centennary of the publication of Astruc's Conjectures. Hupfeld rediscovered Ilgen's second Elohist, and demonstrated that Genesis is a cord, not of two, but of three strands. Criticism had now nothing to do but to INTROD UC TION. xxix return to the original hypothesis, that Genesis is a combina tion of older histories (so-called "Document Hypothesis"); and did so with more assured confidence, since all conceiv able alternatives had been tried and excluded. Since this return to the right path much progress has been made in the details of the analysis by the studies of Noldeke, Wellhausen, Kuenen, Dillmann, Budde, and others. In Genesis, at least, we are approaching, if we have not already reached, the limit to which it can be carried. There will always be a remainder which defies our analysis. And, as in all other historical investigations, the evidence varies from the highest degree of probability to the most delicate balancing of seem ingly contradictory indicia. But there is no reason to think that the general results in which critics now agree will be overturned. In this volume the actual status of the analysis is graphi cally exhibited by the use of different fonts of type for the different narratives which have been combined to make our Genesis. The composite character of the whole having been thus made apparent, the unity and substantial integrity of the three main sources is shown by bringing together the disjecta membra of each of them. Synthesis must be the test of analysis.* Of the author's qualification for the task he has undertaken, the work itself is the best witness. It is the fruit of long and thorough study of the text, and of intimate ac quaintance with the extensive and widely scattered literature of recent criticism. Mr. Bacon has proved his ability to do original work of value in this field by various articles in Hebraica and the Journal of Biblical Literature which have * Earlier attempts to present the results of the analysis to the eye are — not to mention Astruc's parallel columns — E. Boehmer, Liber Genesis Pentateuchicus, i860 (the Hebrew text in different fonts of type) ; followed by his Das erste Buck der Thora. Uebersetzung seiner drei Quellenschriften u. s. w., 1862. Lenorraant, La Gen&se. Traduction d^ apr^s V Hebreu avec distinction des Clemens constitutifs du texts, suivie d^ un essai de restitution des livres primitifs, 1883 ; English transla tion under the title : The Book of Genesis, etc., 18S6. (On this translation see Andover JReview X., 654.) Kautzsch and Socin, Die Genesis mit dusserer Unterscheidung der Quellenschriften, u. s. iv., 1889 ; second edition, i8gi. It is proper to say that the pre sent work was far advanced before the appearance of the first edition of Kautzsch and Socin's excellent little volume. xxx INTRODUCTION. received merited commendation from scholars. A more competent guide through the labyrinth of the analysis would be hard to find. It would not be strange if the very clearness with which the results of criticism are here exhibited should give rise to some apprehension of the consequences if they should be generally accepted. But surely apprehension is groundless. That a better understanding of the way in which God has revealed Himself in the history of the true religion, whose early chapters are written in the Old Testament, will dimin ish men's faith in religion or the Scripture, or their reverence for them, is no less unreasonable than to suppose that better knowledge of Astronomy or Geology must impair faith in the God of Heaven and Earth. PART. I CHAPTER I. Higher Criticism and the Science of Documentary Analysis. CHAPTER II. The Science of Historical Criticism. CHAPTER III. Pentateuchal Analysis. PART I. INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER I. Higher Criticism and the Science of Documentary Analysis. I. Criticism is appreciation. To criticise means, both by etymology and correct usage, to do justice ; but as all things partaking in any degree of a human character are imperfect, and justice implies the exposing of imperfection, the word is naturally apt to acquire a sinister sense to which it is not justly entitled. Biblical criticism is therefore in reality not merely an innocent pursuit for specialists, but in the highest degree a science to be cultivated by all who honor and revere the Scriptures. To fail to criticise the Bible is to fail to do it justice. In former times when it was customary to deny even the existence of a human element in the Bible, textual criticism was denounced as an attack upon revealed religion. But textual criticism is now universally admitted to have corrected vast numbers of errors on the part of scribes and copyists, and may justly claim to have brought us by means of its marvellous apparatus for minute comparison of texts, to a position by many centuries nearer to the original writers of the Scriptures. The Higher Criticism* accepts the text which textual criti cism furnishes as the closest possible approximation to the original, and identical for all practical purposes with the auto graph of the latest editor or compiler as the case may be ; but beyond this point it undertakes to carry us still further back. It inquires how the text thus established came to assume that form. Was the writer an editor or compiler * " By the Higher Criticism is meant that study which tries to reproduce the influ ences and circumstances out of which the biblical books arose, and thus exhibit them as true children of their own time." Ladd. What is the Bible? p. 126. 1 3 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE merely, as the writers of Kings and Chronicles declare them selves to be ? Then what were his sources, and what was their authority? Was he an author, as in the case of the fourth gospel ? Then who was he ? When and where did he live ? Under what circumstances and for what purpose did he write? What were his materials, and, if his personal opinions enter into the writing, what is the grounci and de gree of the respect to which his opinions are entitled ? All these questions are essential to a just appreciation of the Scriptures, and at the same time they are such as are legiti mately comprised in the field of a special science. Until they are answered on scientific principles there can be no scientific doctrine of revelation and inspiration, no valid in terpretation, and consequently no scientific science of Re vealed theology. It is not assumed that there is no divine element in the Bible. It is not of course assumed that there is no human element in it, beside the mistakes of copyists. Nothing is assumed. One thing however is regarded as certain : that whether the Bible as it left the hands of the final editors was all divine, or all human ; or whether it was neither the one nor the other, but partook, as it is now admitted to partake, of the nature of both, there is no other way to do it justice than by criticism. By no other means can the human ele ment, if there be one, be made to disclose its imperfections, and the divine element, if there be one, be made to disclose its perfections, but by Biblical Criticism, both the textual and the higher. 2. But it is with only a single department of the higher criticism that we have mainly to do in the present volume, the subordinate branch of Documentary Analysis, whose principal function is the extrication of sources. Even here we do not go beyond the first six books of the Old Testament, which critics regard as a literary unit and call the Hexateuch. It has been the unique privilege of the present century to succeed in unearthing veritable libraries of ancient literature. SCIENCE OF DOC UMEN TARY ANAL YSIS. 3 Monuments of stone, tablets of clay, scrolls of parchment and papyrus have yielded up many secrets of the past to the patient search and scrutiny of the archaeologist. But a field of discovery by no means the least fruitful has been the page of authors and historians long known to our libraries, as well as of others recently brought to light. When we hear the ancient authors Sanchoniathon, Berosus, Manetho, and others quoted, the impression is apt to be made that copies of their works are in existence. This is not the case ; the works of a great proportion of these ancient writers are known to us only as they are quoted by Eusebius, Josephus, or some ancient historian whose works survive. But it necessarily happened that in many instances, especially in the earlier times, sources were not quoted by title and name, but simply incorporated ; for ideas of copyright and plagiarism, author's privileges and citation of authorities, are of modem invention. It is obvious, however, that no historian can write without sources, either oral or written, and if we possess more than one book wherein the same material appears, it becomes at once a problem within the ability of science to solve, at least in some degree, what the source was. A familiar instance is the book of Chronicles, which reproduces verbatim page after page of the earlier books of Samuel and Kings. Another kind of problem, almost equally familiar, is that of the Syn optic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, where again we have the same material employed three times over in long passages verbally identical, but where the phenomena are such as to make the theory of direct transfer of limited appli cation. That which is not so well known to the general public is the fact that a science exists, and has existed for more than a century, with definite method and rules for going beneath the surface of ancient writings, and, so to speak, examining the material of their foundations and tracing thereon the masons' marks, and that many important results of this science have already secured universal acceptation among those competent to judge. At present the trastworthiness of the science in its 4 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE general methods and results can be best exhibited by an illustration drawn from patristic literature, since thus we shall not raise the mooted question of the documentary the ory of the Pentateuch.* Up to the time of the publication in 1883 of the extremely ancient Christian document entitled. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the eminent German critics, BickeU and Gebhardt had concluded from their studies of the so-called Apostolic Constitutions and Apostolic Epitome that some more ancient document underlay these writings. In 1882 appeared the work of Krawutzky, "in which he under took to recover and reconstruct the imbedded earlier and simpler document." When, in 1883, this Teaching of the Twelve Apostles was brought forth from its hiding-place of centuries in a neglected convent library of Constantinople and given to the Christian world, the close correspondence of it with the document conjecturally reproduced by the pro cesses of " documentary analysis " demonstrated the latter to be " a success of the most pronounced and brilliant character, "f Like work to this so successfully accomplished in patristic literature, can be done, and has been done in the biblical writings, and its results have been scrutinized, checked and corroborated by the mutual criticism of many schools of higher criticism, comprising the most illustrious names in Biblical scholarship for a century past. Corroboration by the discovery of the actual documents supposed to have been imbedded in the Hexateuch is scarcely to be expected ; for the discovery of the Assyro-Chaldean Flood and Creation tablets,! though furnishing unmistakeable evidence of a rela- * ln.stead of a minute description of the history and methods of this science of Documentary Analysis, the reader is referred to the article Pentateuch in the Enc. Brit. IX. ed., or, if accessible, to a very excellent French history of Pentateuch analysis by A. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque (Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1888.) The methods can best be studied by the English reader in Kuenen's Hexa teuch already referred to : by readers of German in Kuenen, and in Wellhausen's Composition des HexateucJis, Berlin, 1890. t Professors Hitchcock and Brown of Union Theological Seminary. Introduction to their edition of the Didache. X See Appendix I. SCIENCE OF DOC UMENT A RY ANAL YSIS. 5 tionship between the two versions, affords no material verb ally incorporated into the narratives supposed to have been interpolated in Genesis. The archaeologist has however brought to light quite recently a document whose bearing upon the documentary theory of the Pentateuch is too direct and important to permit an ignoring of it in any work assum ing to present the claims of the analysis. Professor Geo. F. Moore of Andover, in an article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature 1890, Part II, and entitled, "Tatian's Diatessaron and the Pentateuch," shows how every process attributed by the critics to R. the Redactor, or assumed com piler and editor of the Pentateuch, is paralleled, and more than paralleled, by those applied by the long-lost author Tatian to the material taken by him from our own canonical four gospels. That which in the analysis of the Hexateuch has been ignorantly denounced as "a crazy patchwork " is seen to be more sober, more credible by far, than the process actually applied by Tatian to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to make his Diatessaron, or " Harmony of the four gospels." This work is itself an illustration of the constructive power of the documentary analysis, for it was reconstructed by Zahn in 1881 "with conspicuous success" by means of a Latin Harmony of the sixth century and the Armenian com mentary on it of Ephraem Syrus. In 1888 Ciasca edited the Diatessaron itself from two codices, the Vatican Cod. Arab. xiv., and a MS. recently acquired by the Museum Borgianum. For details of the comparison between the mode of con struction of this composite gospel — for such it is, rather than a harmony — and the composite Pentateuch assumed by the overwhelming majority of modern scholars, the reader is referred to the above mentioned article. It is however the history of Tatian's Diatessaron which has a more immediate bearing than even its text upon the Pentateuchal theory. Prof. Moore will allow me to quote his language. "This harmony of the Gospels was made after the middle of the second century. ... It was for several generations the Gospel of a large part of the Syrian church, and is quoted simply as such After the beginning of the fifth century, however, there came a change. 6 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (411-435), ordered that the churches of his diocese should be supplied with copies of the Separate Gospels, and that they should be read. A few years later, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus (423-457), found the Diatessaron in use in two hundred churches in his diocese — one in four of the whole number. He sequestered them, and replaced them by copies of the Gospels of the Four Evangelists. These names are not without significance. They are the opposite of 'Composite Gospel,' the common name for the Diatessaron. The title of Matthew in the Curetonian fragments, which puzzled Cureton, and of which Bernstein proposed a wholly untenable explanation, expresses this contrast ; it is ' The Separate Gospel Matthew. ' " Had it not been for the forcible intervention of the bishops, the Syrian church would doubtless have repeated to the letter the history of the supposed documentary sources of the Pen tateuch J. E. D. and P;* for in an uncritical age motives of convenience and the tendency to assimilation far outweigh the claims of literary comparison for the sake of historical accuracy. What the Separate Gospels did for the Syrian church the analysis aims to do for us by a Separated Hexa teuch. The greater the number of witnesses and the wider the divergence in their standpoint, the longer will be the base-line of critical measurement and the stronger and more accurate the history determined by it. 3. Complete as is the parallel between the history of Tatian's Diatessaron and the supposed history of the Penta teuch, no one pretends to say that such a supposition would be probable in the case of a modem Occidental work. Two facts cooperate to make the supposition credible in the case of ancient Oriental books which in the case of modem books would be quite improbable : first, their long and checkered history in the MS. form, subject to all kinds of manipulation and interpolation such as textual criticism bears witness tof; second, ancient, and especially Oriental methods of book- making. So nearly universal is the rule that very ancient documents are conglomerate, having incorporated in their history larger or smaller quantities of older or foreign material, that scarcely * I. e., Jahvist, Elohist, Deuteronomist and Priestly writer. See p. 21. + E. g., Mark xvi. 9-20 and John vii. 53 — viii. n. Rev. Ver. SCIENCE OF DOC UMENT A RY ANAL YSIS. 7 one exists to which the process of analysis has not been ap plied with more or less striking success. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, perhaps the oldest writ ing in existence, and the Homeric poems, are generally re garded as conglomerate, though so far back as traceable in history they have been protected from divergent forms by canonization and hence afford but slight crevices for the wedge of analytical criticism. Other sacred books of antiq uity, however, the Vedas, the Bundehesch and the Edda, are mines of primitive documentary treasure ; while the clay tab lets of Sardanapalus avow themselves copies of works dating from 2000 B. C, and earlier. In fact it is the general expec tation of the antiquarian that investigation of an early docu ment will disclose still earlier fragments. Hence discoveries of ancient writings are no sooner made than appeal is taken both to historical and analytical criticism, to discover what ever may be underlying the present text. An example is The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, wherein already the discovery of a still earlier portion by critical analysis has been announced and is generally accepted. These facts necessarily presuppose a somewhat different character and structure in ancient documents from that to which we are accustomed in modern literature. No one would think, for example, of trying to analyze one of Dick ens's novels or a story of the war of the Rebellion or Ban croft's History of the United States, into component parts. We might indeed be sure, in cases like the last, that certain sources must underlie the work of the author ; but we should know it a hopeless task to attempt anything like a recon struction of more than minute parts of such authorities em ployed, because of their great number and the thorough process of mental review and assimilation which they had undergone before composition began. But with respect to the writings here dealt with the case is wholly different. In the first place, works of fiction spun out of ' the author's individual mind are notoriously (with exceptions too few to be considered) not to be found in primeval literatures. 8 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE Secondly, a certain class of writings, manifestly the auto graphs of individuals, such as monumental inscriptions, are of course excepted in any case from the sphere of analysis. Such autographs are however, in the nature of the case, compara tively rare and brief. When transmitted to us by literary transcription and incorporation into larger works, they are liable to those modifying processess — revision, emendation, expansion — which always accompany such transmission, and of which we shall have more to say in the course of the argu ment. Writings of this class are therefore more apt to be the finished product of documentary analysis than its raw material. Thirdly, in the case of historic, poetic and religious writ ings (the usual form in which the literary legacy of the early past is transmitted to us), we must expect a very different character and structure from that of modern books. A mod ern writer has a vast number of works on kindred topics, which are also accessible to his readers. He cannot quote at length from all, he dare not plagiarize at length from one or two. With the ancient writer the case is entirely different. He has but very few sources — three or four at the utmost. He has neither the capacity nor the desire to compare critically, to digest and reproduce in his own language. On the other hand there is no objection to unlimited transfer of material. He may simply copy a whole book. He may copy the whole or parts of two books or three, and add as much or as little as he chooses of his own. In either case his work will be equally serviceable and equally approved. A book was a book, individually and by itself, before the days of systematic publication; it was judged by its contents as true or untrue, interesting or uninteresting, without regard to authorship, sources, or possible relation to other books, previous or con temporary, like or unlike. The man who owned it owned so much parchment or paper, on which he copied what he chose and wrote what he chose. His successor owned it in like manner and could treat it in like manner. It is no wonder that ancient documents, of even a few pages only, contain SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTA R Y ANALYSIS. 9 elements extremely heterogeneous in character. It is no wonder either that we should find (as we do) that documents usually tend to swell in bulk as they pass on from generation to generation. Even supposing the owner of a book to ab stain from inserting on the margin or between the lines observations of his own — an abstinence more apt to flow from mental indolence than from any idea of literary impropriety — he cannot be expected to abstain from inserting into his vol ume any floating scrap of history or poetry which strikes him as valuable, especially if he has a notion that it emanates from the same author as the volume in his possession. Omission, on the other hand, would be comparatively rare, occurring only in very obvious cases of duplication or contra diction. These a priori conclusions were strikingly confirmed, as we have seen, by the discovery of Tatian's Diatessaron ; further illustration and authority for these statements will be afforded by the following extract from a review of vol. III. of Renan's History of Israel in the Christian Union for April 9, 1891 : — " Oriental history is compilation, in which the several parts retain their individuality. There is less desire for smoothness and unbroken connection than for the inclusion of all matters bearing on the subject in hand. That ' the pieces exist in their entirety, not digested (p. 58), is to a large extent true. Renan cites as examples of the habit the Chronicle of Malalas of Antioch, among the Greek compilations ; Moses of Chorene, Firdusi. The materials thus used are preserved in their new combination, but lost as separate works. ' It is, in fact, the law of Oriental history-writing that a book kills its predecessor. The sources of a compilation rarely survive the compilation itself. A book in the Orient is hardly ever copied just as it is. It is brought up to date by the addition of whatever is known, or believed to be known, besides. The individuality of a historical book does not exist in the Orient. The sub stance is held to, not the form ; there is no scruple at mixing authors and styles. The desire is to be complete, that is all.' " (Pp. 61, 62.) Says Prof. W. Robertson Smith of Cambridge : — " When critics maintain that some Old Testament writings tradition ally ascribed to a single hand, are really of a composite origin, and that many of the Hebrew books have gone through successive redactions, — or, in other words, have been edited and re-edited, in different ages, receiving some addition or modification at the hand of each editor, — it is often supposed that these are mere theories devised to account for facts which may be susceptible of a very different explanation Here it is that the Septuagint comes in to justify the critics, and provide 10 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE external evidence of the sort of thing which to the conservative school seems so incredible. The variations of the Greek and Hebrew text, reveal to us a time when the functions of copyist and editor shaded into one another by imperceptible degrees. They not only prove that Old Testament books were subjected to such processes of successive editing as critics maintain, but that the work of redaction went on to so late a date that editorial changes are found in the present Hebrew text which did not exist in the MSS. of the Greek translators No one who has been personally occupied with old Eastern MSS., and has observed the way in which copyists, on account of the scarcity and costliness of writing material, were accustomed to fill up blank pages at the end of a book by writing in some other work or passage which they wished to preserve, and that without any note or title whatever, will for a moment venture to affirm that the title at the beginning of the book must necessarily apply to the whole contents of the volume." * The testimony of competent witnesses is unanimous that early, and especially Oriental MSS. are far from being uni versally homogeneous in original structure, while their trans mission has been exposed to almost unlimited interpolation and manipulation. The earliest Semitic authorship seems to have been frequently a process of agglomeration, of which the Diatessaron is only one of the latest and most elaborate examples. The transmission of these early works has again been not merely copying, but during a considerable part of the history a process of accretion. There are however two considerations which relieve the sense of dissatisfaction occa sioned by this disclosure. First: elimination is much rarer than addition. Second : the very fact of great antiquity, although in one respect complicating the problem of analysis, makes the probability the stronger that the writing, if com posite, is the resultant of few elements rather than many. 4. There will be no disposition in any quarter to dispute the general proposition that the earliest prose histories are found to rest upon a foundation of folk-lore and minstrelsy. The history of literature presents to us in the earliest period the age of war-songs and ballads sung at feasts or round the camp fire by bards whose music is but a step from the ring ing shield or twang of bow-string; of legends, too, that cluster around sacred groves or venerated shrines. The Homeric poems, the Runic sagas, survived thus in oral form for an in- * Old Test, in the Jewish Church, pp. 105 and log. SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTAR Y ANALYSIS. 11 definite period. While the treasury of tribal tradition was still small, for a period indeed which to the modern seems almost incredible, the memory alone was sufficient to preserve the most memorable of these traditions entire; but gradually the increasing burden compelled reluctant resort to the labor ious and costly method of writing. In most cases if not all, literature begins in the attempt to preserve the overflowing treasures of oral tradition ; the different forms of poetic ex pression, cadence, rhythm, rhyme and alliteration, being mnemonic expedients previously resorted to. We need not be surprised therefore to find underlying a primitive historical writing, as one of its principal sources, individual songs, some times of even epic proportions ; and not infrequently whole collections of early poems, usually of a warlike, often of a re ligious character. The prose Edda reduces to the form of a continuous story the earlier lyric mythology. Herodotus and his predecessors draw upon the earlier legends of poetic form. Livy looks back to Ennius "the Homer of Rome." But most nearly allied to Hebrew writings is the Arabic epic Kitab-el-Aghdni, whose resemblance in its mingled prose and verse to some of the Old Testament writings is a favorite illustration of Renan. "Rhythmic structure," he says, "especially when conformed to the rules of the Semitic parallelism, is like the quipou, the knotted string which holds fast what would otherwise drop out of memory. Thus it is that every Arab tribe, making no use of writing, preserved, in old times, the whole Divan of its poems ; thus it is that the memory of the pre-islamic Arabs, from which it would have been in vain to expect a single accurate statement of historic fact, preserved, down to the time of the scribes of Baghdad, one hundred and fifty years after Mohammed, the immense poetic treasure of the Kitab-el-Aghdni, the Moaltakdt, and other poems of the same sort. The Tuareg tribes in our own day exhibit phenomena of the same kind."* It is well known to what extent the historical writings of the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, Joshua and the book of Judges, are strewn with poems and poetic fragments antique in structure and often of great beauty. It will hardly be supposed that the author of the prose work himself com posed the poems for the embellishment of the history. But * E. Renan. Histoire du peuple d' Israel. I. p. 304. 13 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE if not, here is already a "source" easily separable, whose re lation to the work which now incorporates it we should do well to discover. What if the Song of Lamech, the Blessing of Noah, the Oracle of Rebekah, the Blessings of Isaac and of Jacob form parts of such a fund of folk-lore and minstrelsy! In that case not only will the separate study of these frag ments carry us back to an earlier period of the history, but a comparison of their standpoint with that of the writer who incorporates them, will shed an invaluable light upon the question how the latter shall be undei-stood, and to what ex tent our view of his narrative is to be affected by the sources to which he thus invites our study. Illustrations are abundant. The 4th and 5 th chapters of Judges give respectively a prose and a poetic account of the victory of Deborah and Barak. There can be no question as to the relative antiquity of the two, since the song bears every mark of a paean of victory dating from the immediate remem brance of the triumph. The prose narrative in this instance makes a highly favorable impression by its correspondence with and at the same time its seeming independence of the poem, as if its author had at command some further details of the battle, written or traditional, though he manifestly looks back to "that time" as one more or less remote. 5. But let us tum to another instance even more noted. Joshua X. 12, 13, contains a quotation expressly assigned to its source. The author, perhaps because what he relates might seem to require more authority than his mere state ment, after quoting four lines of poetry says, "Is not this written in the book of Jashar?" The quotation is a poetic apostrophe to the sun and moon, placed no doubt in the mouth of Joshua, and reminds us of the impassioned asser tion of Deborah's Song, "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." It read as follows: Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, And thou, moon, in the valley of Aijalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies. SCIENCE OF DOC UMENT A RY ANAL YSIS. 13 We recognize at once the force and beauty of a poetical figure. But there is no evidence that the author of the prose narrative did so. To him it was simply a miracle, but one the stupendous character of which in its cosmical relations he of course could not appreciate. In a tone of wonder he de clares : " And the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that Yahweh hearkened unto the voice of a man ; for Yahweh fought for Israel." Here we see an author distinctly citing his authority by title, and apparently misconceiving it. This is quite a differ ent matter from that in Judges iv., and if we succeed in estab lishing unity of authorship between this prose account and other parts of the historical writings, we learn to treat such other parts with the caution suggested by the discovery that the writer is dependent on a poetical source, the book of Jashar, which in at least one case he failed to interpret cor rectly. That which is so undeniably true in the case of this passage in Joshua must be admitted to be at least possible in other cases. We find ourselves thus prompted by the very letter of the Scriptures themselves to this inquirj'- : Is it permissible to go behind the letter of the text in these other cases also ? — It is by this process of "searching the Scriptures," that we are led toward an answer. Where the narrative is not act ually set face to face with the cited authority we cannot pro ceed with the same confidence ; but we can proceed with a degree of probability which makes the whole study one of the profoundest interest to the lover of sacred history. No fault has been found with the revisers for eliminating from the book of Judges one of its most remarkable prodi gies by a simple modification of the translation of xv. 19, from "God clave a hollow place that was in the jaw" to "God clave the hollow place that is in Lehi," although such attempts to lighten the task of faith are wont to be resented. Lehi of course means "jawbone" and the spring called En-hakkore ("spring of him that called"), which 14 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE is at Lehi, is said by the writer to have derived its origin and name from Samson's prayer. The name of the place Lehi or Ramath-Lehi ("hill of the jawbone") corresponds to the Greek name for a certain promontory which Strabo gives as Onugnathos, "ass's jawbone," and is supposed by criticis to be derived from the appearance of the cliff,* as in Hebrew a rock is called a "tooth," shen,\ and a cliff a "jaw." Will it be resented if after the revisers, by simply regarding Lehi as a proper name in v. 19, have eliminated one of the most incred ible prodigies of the Old Testament, the higher criticism proceeds to remove the equally stupendous one which imme diately precedes it, by doing exactly the same thing in v. 16, viz., translating Lehi as a proper name ? If this is permissible, verse 16 will read literally, "And Samson said, At Lehi an ass [or a heap] a heap, two heaps, At Lehi an ass [or a heap] I have slain a thousand men." The merest" tyro in criticism will see at a glance that the word translated "an ass" in the text, which is identically the same word (hamor) as that twice repeated at the end of the first line, is simply what is called a dittograph, the com monest of scribal errors, by which a word is accidentally duplicated in writing. Either because the word Lehi ("jaw bone of") suggested the translation "an ass" for the first hamor or because the reduplication of the word ("a heap, two heaps ") to signify great numbers made confusion, the simple fragment of a war song. At (Heb. he) Lehi, a heap, two heaps, At Lehi I have slain a thousand men, was transformed into " With (a secondary sense of be) the jawbone of an ass heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone of an ass I have slain a thousand men." % * Cf . note to Gen. xvi. 14, the well of Lehi-roi. + Cf . French dent. Dent du Midi, Dent du Dru. t C£. Heb. Notes, (i) SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTAR Y ANAL YSIS. 15 But since the elimination of the prodigy is effected in this case by the removal of a single dittographic word from the text, many will be inclined to consider this textual criti cism. It is not. The author of the chapter himself read and wrote "jawbone of an ass," and builds all his story on the fact. We must go behind the author to his source, which in this instance is unquestionably an ancient song, probably the same twice quoted in the preceding chapter. When it be comes manifest from verses 15 and 17 that the author himself understood his material in thesense, "With the jawbone of an ass," no matter how absurd the rendering, textual criticism has no more to say. It becomes the duty of the higher criti cism to put the inquiry. How far does the author correctly interpret his source ? To most minds the conclusion will be inevitable that we have here instead of a stupendous prodigy the simple misinterpretation of an ancient song. Outside the Pentateuch it is therefore entirely possible to trace in some of the historical books, certain fragments of the sources employed, and even to place the source itself in comparison with the narrative deduced from it. Not only is this true, but we know the title of one of the most important of the earlier works quoted, and can make a beginning already toward reconstructing it. For the Sepher haj- Jashar, or " Book of the Upright," quoted by the author of Joshua x. 10, ff. is referred to elsewh,ere in the Old Testament and considerable extracts made from it. The noble elegy upon the death of Saul and Jonathan, II Samuel i. 17-27, there called (or per haps directed to be sung to the melody of) " The Song of the Bow," and attributed to David, is the most important excerpt, and easily constitutes the most authentic and earliest witness to David's skill as a minstrel, besides corroborating the touching story of the friendship of David and Jonathan. " I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan, Very pleasant hast thou been unto me ; Thy love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of woman. Behold it is written in the book of Jashar." 16 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE But while this corroboration of I Samuel and of the tradi tion which in Amos's time (Amos vi. 5) gave to David the rep utation of a bard, is most welcome, it must be admitted that the period to which we should assign the collection quoted here and in Joshua x., is brought down to a later date than we have been accustomed to assign to the composition of Joshua itself. Even if we assume with Renan in his brilliant but inexcusably superficial and dogmatic Histoire du Peuple d Israel, that the Song of the Bow marks the closing of the collection of haj- Jashar, we cannot place this date earlier than the reign of David. But M. Renan, who avowedly depends more upon the instinctive intuition of a French Semitic scholar than on the patient industry and cautious method of German critics, has in this instance been led astray by his in tuition that the Sepher haj- Jashar must have been completed in, or soon after, the period of David. " It is therefore our opinion that the battle of Gilboa and the elegy on the death of Jonathan occupied the last pages of the book. Certainly there was no allusion to the last period of David nor to the reign of Solomon." * A glance at the LXX. version, however, at I Kings viii. 12, would have proved that the building and dedication of the temple were also treated in the book of Jashar. The poetic fragment which, according to the Hebrew, begins — Then spake Solomon : " Yahweh hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness ; But I have built thee an house to dwell in, A place for thine habitation forever ;" was more complete and correct in the text possessed by the LXX., and read in a way which restores both the parallelism and poetic thought of the opening line. "Yahweh created the sun in the heavens, But he hath determined to dwell in darkness, I have built an house of habitation for thee, A place to dwell in eternally. Behold is it not written in the book of Jashar." * " Nous pensons done que la bataille de Gelbo4 et I'Slegie sur la mort de Jonathas occupaient les dernieres pages du livre. Assurement, il n' y etait question ni des derniers temps de David ni du regne de Salomon." Hist, d Isr. 11. 226. SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTAR Y ANAL YSIS. 17 How much beyond the dedication of the temple it would be necessary to bring down the date of compilation of the Book of Jashar it is of course impossible to say, but Renan is doubtless right in comparing the work to the Arab anthology Kitab-el-Aghdni with its ancient ballads loosely connected by brief prose narratives. To what extent it may underlie the older historical books is as yet a question which admits only of conjecture. 6. In deference to the traditional belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, reference to the poetic sources incorporated by it has been avoided hitherto.* We may how ever, without pre-judging the question, at least refer to the sources which the Pentateuch itself expressly presents as such. Thus Deut. xxxii. 1-43 is introduced in the preceding and following verses as a song which Moses and Hoshea spake in the ears of the people. Deut. xxxiii. is another long poem introduced by the simple phrase, "This is the Blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death." We pass over the great mass of Songs and Blessings, from the so-called "Sword-song" of Lamech, Gen. iv. 23 f. down, which, by advocates of the Mosaic authorship, may be considered in the light either of incor porated material,! or as the composition of Moses,! and come at once to a case precisely similar to that of Joshua x. lo. *Josh. X. 10, while belonging on the critical theory to E, oneof the Pentateuch sources, is of course not regarded as " Mosaic " by the supporters of the traditional view. t So Rev. E. Cowley in his Writers of Genesis just issued (1891) by Thos. Whit taker, 2 Bible House, New York : " My belief is, and I shall endeavor to show, that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and Joseph were the original writers of those portions of Genesis in which they appear as the active subjects My treatment will assign to Moses the first editing of the records of Judah which ended with the death of Joseph. In Egypt and Midian he collected all the Hebrew records and traditions. They had kindled his enthusiasm and incited him to undue haste when he slew the offending Egyptian." X It is, I believe, customary on the traditional theory to assume that records of the utterances of Lamech, Noah and the patriarchs were transmitted in oral or written form to Moses. (See note preceding.) I am not aware, however, in what way the long poem in Numbers xxiii. f. is considered to have reached Moses in time for incorporation in his work, unless Balaam himself is supposed to have per sonally communicated the substance of his prophecy. 2 18 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE In Numbers xxi. 14 ff. we have a poetic citation concerning Israel's coming into "the field of Moab," introduced bythe words, "Wherefore it is said in the Sepher Milchamoth Yahweh,'' or "Book of the Wars of Yahweh." A longer poetic frag ment in the same chapter is attributed by the historian to "them that speak in proverbs," or, as we might better trans late, "folk-lore." In the case of these and the other lyric fragments scattered through the non-legal parts of the Hexateuch the fact that the same type is employed in the analysis contained in Part II. of this volume is not to be understood as indicating an opin ion that the authors J and E themselves composed the poems. On the contrary criticism frequently traces the origin of the prose narrative to the existence and sometimes to the misin terpretation of the earlier poem.* No other poetic citation of the Pentateuch beside Numbers xxi. 14 ff. is referred by actual title to its source, but several of the codes of law incorporated, including all which by critics are regarded as the oldest, are explicitly referred by the Pen tateuchal writer to certain "books," or "writings," which in his judgment were Mosaic. Whether by this he meant that he supposed himself possessed of an autograph of the great legislator, and transcribed verbatim j or whether the " Mo saic " character of these writings was indirect, admitting of free transcription, interpretation and expansion from tradi- '*' By referring to Dillmann's analysis of Ex. xiv. (see chap. III.) the reader will see that in J, generally regarded as the oldest document, the crossing of the Red Sea cannot be called a miraculous occurrence though manifestly providential. The strong wind drives back the shallow water till Israel is able to ford the narrow gulf. On the further shore the battle takes place between them and their pursuers, who are embarrassed by the returning tide and flnally turn to " flee against it" leaving their dead upon the seashore. The transition from this providential but ptfrely natural relation to the prodigy of the later story, in which the cleft mass of waters stand as a wall on either side of the host and collapse at the signal from Moses' rod as the Egyptian host enters behind, is traced by some critics in the poetic license of the ode of victory, ch. xv. , which in verse 8 passes from the poetic description of the wind as "the blast of Yahweh's nostrils," " piling up the waters," to the purely figurative " The floods stood upright as an heap, The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea." Still this idea is open to grave objections, based however not upon the earliness, but the lateness of the psalm. Cf . verse 17. SCIENCE OF DOC UMENT A RY ANAL YSIS. 19 tional understanding, both on his part and on the part of his predecessors; or whether, finally, he had no positive judg ment to express, but simply adopted the current tradition which attributed all legislation to Moses, as in the Graeco- Roman world to Lycurgus, Draco, Solon, Minos, the Twelve Tables, we do not now inquire. Argument can of course be made to great extent on all three suppositions. The fact re mains that these codes are referred, in the narrative which frames them in, to Moses, and are spoken of as "written" documents. No argument is here intended against the Mo saic authorship, for we do not impugn the possibility that the narrative, even where it goes on, at the end of Deuteronomy, to tell the story of Moses' death on Mount Nebo, may be of Moses' own writing * as well as the incorporated codes. But the codes are incorporated as sources and we have no choice but to accept the fact when it is so distinctly written. Thus the author of Deut. xxxi. 9, expressly distinguishes the " book of the law" which "Moses wrote and delivered it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and unto all the elders of Israel" from the book he is engaged in writing. Of that book he says, xxxi. 24 ff., that when Moses had written it "till it was finished," he com manded the Levites to " take it and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Yahweh your God that it may be there for a witness." The present book of Deuteronomy pur ports to be a transcript or reproduction (verse 9, "this law") of the book of the law which Moses wrote, and that book, if we can discover it, was the source of the Deuteronomic Code. In the opinion of critics we actually possess the book attributed by the writer of Deuteronomy to Moses, incor- ¦* Jewish tradition is represented in the Gemara: "It is taught [Dt. xxxiv. .¦;] : 'And Moses the servant of the Lord died there.' How is it possible that Moses died and wrote : 'and Moses died there' ? It is only unto this passage Moses wrote, after wards Joshua wrote the rest. These are the words of Rabbi Jehuda, others say of Rabbi Nehemiah, but Rabbi Simeon said to him : Is it possible that the book of the law [Pentateuch] could lack one letter, since it is written [Dt. xxxi. 26] ; ' Take this book cf the law ?' It is only unto this the Holy One, blessed be He ! spoke, and Moses [both] spoke and wrote. From this place and onwards the Holy One, blessed be He ! spoke, and Moses wrote with weeping." Briggs, Bibl. Study, p. 177. 20 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE porated in Exodus xx.-xxiii., and in the narrative attached to it, xxiv. 3-8, called "the Book of the Covenant" and again stated to have been "written by Moses" (xxiv. 4).* Whether or not this opinion of the critics is adopted, the remarks just made concerning the narrative framework of the Deuteronomic Code apply in exactly the same way, and with the same force, to the narrative incorporating "The Book of the Covenant." The author of Ex. xxiv. 4-8, and consequently of the narrative of Yahweh's speaking, again distinguishes "the Book of the Covenant," which included "all the Words of Yahweh and all the Judgments." (cf. xx. i and xxi. i.), from his own narrative, and incorporates it as a source which he considers to be Mosaic. We need not neces sarily assume that Moses did not write both code and narra tive, but they are two separate documents written at different times, and the one serves as material to the other. The only other passages in the Pentateuch where Moses is said to write anything are Ex. xvii. 14, where it is natural, but not neces sary, to suppose that the author had before him a narrative of the battle with Amalek ; Ex. xxxiv. 27 f, where some will perhaps assume that the writing referred to was accessible ; and Num. xxxiii. 1-49, to which the remarks upon Deuteron omy and the Book of the Covenant apply with equal force. It is certain therefore that the Pentateuch has sources both prose and verse, distinguishable from the text, and tolerably numerous. Of these sometimes only fragments are taken up, but in at least two cases the entire document. It is a well-known fact that besides these sources which are explicitly named, and sometimes described, by the Pentateuch itself, modern critics believe it to incorporate two principal narratives extending from Gen. i. i. to Joshua xxiv. 33, called respectively from their supposed characteristics the Priestly Law-book and the Prophetic Narrative. The latter, now generally regarded as the older, is supposed to be itself com- i- Those who wish to know the grounds on which Ex. xx.-xxiv. 8 is regarded as the "source" referred to by Deuteronomy, will find in The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, by W. Robertson Sraith, Note 2 to Lecture xi., p. 431, a detailed table of the laws in Ex. xx.-xxiii. and their equivalents in Deuteronomy. SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTAR Y ANAL YSIS. 21 posite, a braiding together of a strand J derived from Judah * and a strand E derived from Ephraim. The interweaving in these two cases is regarded as similar in character to that illus trated in the Diatessaron and exemplified within the canon by the confessed practise of the authors of Kings and Chroni cles. (Cf.I Kings xi. 41, xiv. 29, xv. 7, 23, 31, xvi. 5, etc.) The reader himself will have opportunity to judge of the value of the theory, and the author purposely refrains from argument. On one point however he is unfortunately obliged to assume temporarily the controversial attitude. 7. Strange as it may seem to the student who approaches the Bible without prepossessions, to learn simply what it has to teach concerning itself, and gather, but not monopolize, its hid treasure, a certain class of writers demand that all attempts to learn by critical analysis what its component parts are shall be forbidden a priori. Unless the critical prospector can demonstrate beforehand that there is treasure beneath the surface, not a sod shall be turned by pick or spade ; he is peremptorily warned off the premises. Would-be monopolists, and self-constituted " def enders " of the Scrip tures of this kind, the expounder of criticism is obliged to meet with a straightforward and positive denial of their assumption. A typical instance is furnished in a recently published argument for " The Mosaic Origin of the Penta teuchal Codes." t It is remarkable in many places for missing the point at issue, misconceiving the true principles and methods of the inquiry, and failing to appreciate the force of evidence. One '•' The letters J and E are abbreviations of Jahvist and Elohist, names applied from the characteristic use of Elohim in one document and Yahweh (Jahv6) in the other, to designate the Deity ; but as all critics agree that E must be of northern (i. e., Ephraimite) origin and nearly all (Kuenen excepted), consider J to have origi nated in Judah, the letters serve a double mnemonic purpose. JE stands for Jeho vistic narrative, the combination of J and E forming the so-called Prophetic Narra tive. Sometimes it stands for their compiler personally. t The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes, by Geerhardus Vos, fellow of Princeton Theological Seminary. With an introduction by Prof. Wm. Henry Green. New York : A. C. Armstrong and Son, 714 Broadway, 1886. 23 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE passage in the book so forcibly exhibits what the Pentateuch and the Pentateuchal question are not that it may well be transcribed in full. » The author lays down as his general thesis No. i : — " There must be, in the first instance, some reasonable ground why the critical analysis should be applied to the Pentateuchal code, to justify any use being made of it whatever. If there be no presumptive evidence that it consists of various documents, it will be justly con demned as a most arbitrary and unscientific procedure to divide it into several pieces, more or less strongly marked by linguistic or stylistic peculiarities. The question is not whether the process admits of being made plausible by apparently striking results, but whether it be neces sary, or at least natural, on a ^r/orz' considerations. We might take a chapter or poem of any one author, sunder out a page, note the striking expressions, then examine the other parts of the work, combine all the passages where the same terms appear, give them the name of a docu ment, and finally declare that all the rest constitutes a second document, and that the two were interwoven by the hand of a redactor so as to form now an apparent unity. Our first demand therefore, is that the critical analysis shall rest on a solid foundation, and show its credentials beforehand."* If we take every sentence and thought of this passage and reverse it, we shall come very near to a proper and reasonable first principle of biblical study. The assumption with which the writer starts out is that there is no presumptive evidence of various documents in the Pentateuch, or at least in the Pentateuchal Code. We will not take so cruel an advantage as to refer the au thor to his own title, but surely it is presumptive evidence that the Pentateuch itself refers to its sources. For the re quired "reasonable ground" it is only necessary to refer to the many Christian scholars who before the days of the analysis, were hopelessly puzzled and confused by the appar ently duplicate accounts of the same event, incongruities in the material placed in juxtaposition, and other phenomena which the analysis explains, f * Vos. Mosaic Origin, &c. p. 25. + Cf. Briggs, Bibl. Study, 196-202 for examples of higher criticism before the days of the analysis. Thus Spinoza 1670 regarded the Pentateuch as conglomerate. Richard Simon 1678 distinguished a Mosaic Code and a "prophetic" narrative, and called attention to : (i) The double account of the deluge. (2) The lack of order in the arrangement of the narratives and laws. (3) The diversity of the style. Cleri cus, Van Dale, Semler, Vitringa and others shared these views. See also Ladd, Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, Vol. I. pp. 501 ff. SCIENCE OF DOCUMENTAR Y ANAL YSIS. 33 Peyrerius declared it " non vero simile regem Gerarae voluisse Saram vetulam cui desierant fieri muliebria y " and even the rabbis found stumbling blocks in the way of their own theory.* But supposing it to be admitted that there is no " presump tive evidence" for the analysis; how shall we decide whether or not it is " a most arbitrary and unscientific procedure? " Here is a substance traditionally and popularly believed to be homogeneous, elementary. The chemist proceeds to test or prove this belief. How ? — There is only one way. By apply ing the process of analysis. If the substance is not composite it cannot be decomposed, and in spite of the strange declara tion in a passage we are about to take up, it is as true in literature as in chemistry that the supreme, perfect and only valid proof of non-composite structure is resistance to all at tempts at analysis or decomposition. Division into all possi ble elements is just the process by which, — and by which alone— literary unity can be demonstrated. If the work is a real unit the process fails; that is all. But the class of defenders of the faith with whom we have now to deal would rest their proofs on other grounds. " The question," we are told, "is not whether the process admits of being made plausible by apparently striking results, but whether it be necessary, or at least natural, on a priori con siderations."! With every apology for so square a contradiction, we are constrained to say that in our view the question is precisely what the above statement says it is not; otherwise analysis is not analysis. A priori considerations doubtless persuade the * So Aben Ezra found difficulty with Gen. xii. 6, xxxvi. 31. Num. xii. 6f. and Dt. xxxiv. 10. Observe also the singular legend alluded to in i. Cor. x. 4, that the rock struck by Mos,qs followed the marching host throughout the wilderness, a movable reservoir, which would seem a difficult conception to account for. May it not be that the fact that the story of its being struck and giving out water is iwicere\a.teA, once at the outset of the 40 years wandering, Ex. xvii. 1-7, and once at its conclusion. Num. XX. 1-13, the very name of the cliff (Meribah) being the same in both instances, was the ground for the belief ? Such a deduction would be far from unexampled in the Talmudic writings. Cf. also the legend of Lilith, Adam's first wife, based upon Gen. i. z7f. compared .with ii. 18-25. tVos. Mosaic Origin, &.C. p. 26. 34 HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE average man that water is an elementary substance; it is simply the results of analysis that remove the cherished error. As to the rash offer to "sunder out a page of any one author," let the writer simply try the experiment upon any admittedly non-composite writing and see what the "results" will be. For by "results" is the decision made at the tribunal of science; and upon the results, and nothing else, will the ver dict be given in this question before the court of ultimate appeal, which is the forum of the Christian public. We deem it therefore a work not only permissible, but deserving of commendation and good-will from all quarters rather than hostility and suspicion, to bring these results before the public. 8. There is but one thing to detain us before proceeding to the presentation of the results required, and that is the "demand" formulated in the passage above quoted, which seems to be made in the name of the whole traditionary school. "Our first demand therefore, is that the critical analysis shall rest on a solid foundation, and show its creden tials bef orehand. " I assume that the writer does not mean that the analysis shall show its results before beginning its work, or rest on a solid foundation before being allowed to enter the field of operations or to even begin to build. By " credentials " therefore must be meant "testimonials" from scholars whom the Christian world is wont to respect. We will content ourselves with quoting one which sums up and includes the testimony of all. Our " credentials " shall be the statement of Prof. C. A. Briggs of Union Theological Semi nary N. Y., (Presbyterian), as it is quoted and endorsed by Prof. Geo. T. Ladd of Yale University (Congregational). ' ' In several places in this book the claim has been made that Christian scholars are almost unanimous in their opinion that the Hexateuch is a composite composition, an historical development, and therefore cannot have been the work of Moses. This claim of scholarly unanimity is sometimes disputed in the presence of the Christian multitude. I wish therefore to enforce it by quoting the words of Prof. C. A. Briggs (in the Presbyterian Review for April, 1887, p. 340). ' The critical analysis of the Hexateuch,' says this Christian scholar, ' is the result of more than a century of profound study of the documents by the greatest crities of the age. There has been a steady advance until the present position of SCIENCE OF DOC UMENT A R Y ANAL YSIS. 35 agreement has been reached in which Jew and Christian, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Rationalistic and EvangeHcal scholars, Re formed and Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopal, Unitarian, Methodist a,nd Baptist, all concur. The analysis of the Hexateuch into several dis tinct original documents is a purely literary question in which no article of faith is involved. Whoever in these times, in the discussion of the literary phenomena of the Hexateuch, appeals to the ignorance and pre judices of the multitude as if there were any peril to the faith in these processes of the Higher Criticism, risks his reputation for scholarship by so doing. There are no Hebrew professors on the continent of Europe, so far as I know, who would deny the literary analysis of the Penta teuch into the four great documents [J. E. P. and D.] The professors of Hebrew in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, and tutors in a large number of theological colleges, hold the same opinion. A very considerable number of the Hebrew professors of America are in accord with them. There are, indeed, a few professional scholars who hold to the traditional opinion, but these are in a hopeless minority. I doubt whether there is any question of scholarship whatever in which there is greater agreement among scholars than in this question of the literary analysis of the Hexateuch.' "* The opinion of scholars is not to take the place of a judg ment made, each man for himself, by the Christian public "from the results." But since the right of the analysis to appear at all has been challenged, and its credentials de manded, it becomes necessary to quote the above statement as one of the facts to be considered a priori. * What is tlie Bible > p. 486. CHAPTER II. The Science of Historical Criticism. I. A mere separation of Scripture into documents is of course very far from securing that appreciation of the liter ature which we have seen to be the purpose and significance of Biblical criticism. If documents are traceable here we need to know their character, age, authorship, and mutual re lation ; but above all, their relation to the course of events in which their place is to be determined. To do them justice we must know the history out of which they sprang and the history which grew from them. To make us acquainted with this history is an essential part of the purpose of the docu ments themselves. If then we can better appreciate both the history itself and the narrative of it by applying to them the methods which Niebuhr and Wolf applied to the histo rians of ancient Greece and Rome, and which have since been recognized as indispensable to the understanding of all historical writings, this will be the truest way to honor the Bible and to give it the systematic study of which it is worthy. If the results are revolutionary in theology, the revolution will be simply the substitution of an inductive method for the a priori method of dogmatics, and thus identical in nature with that which since the days of Francis Bacon has taken place in all other branches of science. 2. We do not need to illustrate the methods and success of historical criticism, which undertakes the tasks above defined, in secular literature. Every intelligent reader is aware that historical critics are universally regarded as competent to fix, from style, language and thought, from subject-matter and relation to external events and to other literature, the date and probable authorship of ancient anonymous or pseudony- , mous documents. But more, we have already seen that it is (37) 38 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. possible to go behind an author and compare his own state ments with his sources. A large part of historical criticism is simply cross-examination of a witness, a cross-examina tion not hostile, but friendly, to ascertain how accurate his knowledge is, and in what sense and degree of literalness he wishes his statements to be taken. Testimony can be cross- examined in the absence of the witness by comparison with itself, even where no parallel account exists ; but it is charac teristic of the Bible that it presents almost every narrative in two-fold, three-fold, even five-fold form. This system of cross-examination is now so universally recognized as indis pensable to do justice to all secular history that we may sim ply sum up the facts in the saying of the late historian Von Ranke, "There is no history but critical history." 3. Within the Bible an illustration drawn from the sphere in which historical criticism is least effective would be the book of Psalms. Prayers, hymns and lyrics adapted for the general uses of public worship must of necessity be of a character having but little that is distinctive of any one epoch. Yet how easy it is to see when once we raise the question of date and authorship that Ps. xlii.-xliii. belongs to the period of exile in Babylon, and comes from one whose "soul is cast down" as he remembers Jerusalem and how he " was wont to go up to the house of God with the multi tude that kept holy day !" How meaningless is it if read without raising these questions ! If the Psalm-book as a whole be considered, as historical criticism suggests, a product of the post-exilic period, the single outlet for the old religious feeling of the people not yet quenched by priestly ritual in the temple, and scribal and pharisaic pettifogging in the syn agogue, what a light does this throw on that dark epoch when prophecy seemed extinct and only its germs were slowly maturing beneath the soil, to bloom forth at length in the un paralleled glory of the teaching of John the Baptist and of Jesus! If we turn now to some of the more generally accepted* THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 29 results of historical criticism, we may take as a second illus tration the great anonymous prophecy appended after the prose chapters, Is. xxxvi.-xxxix., which terminate the collec tion of prophecies attributed to Isaiah the son of Amoz. A traditional theory, now nearly obsolete, considers Is. xl.-lxvi. to have been written by the author of Is. i.-xxxix. circ. 7 20 B. C, but separately, " as a deep and rich bequest to the church of the Exile .... left to be understood in the future." In point of fact this bequest would have been incomprehensi ble for nearly two centuries ; for Isaiah lived in the Assyrian period, when the long struggle against the foreign invader had just culminated in the overthrow of Sennacherib, and Je rusalem was left safe and triumphant. Babylon has yet to come into prominence; the Exile is more than a century in the future. But every thought and expression of Isaiah xl.- lxvi. is inseparably linked with the end of the Babylonian Captivity. The author stands behind the " bars of iron and gates of brass " (the one-hundred brazen gates of Babylon) soon to be broken in sunder by the Redeemer of Israel, and hears a voice from the desert that stretches between him and Jerusalem, bidding him speak comfort to the exiles and that they prepare to get them up from Babylon and return to their own land, for Yahweh will lead them back as he led their fathers thither. " He saith of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited ; and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and I will raise up the waste places thereof : He saith to the deep. Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers : He saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure ; even say ing of Jerusalem, She shall be built, and to the temple. Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith Yahweh to his Messiah, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings ; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut ; I will go before thee, and make the rugged places plain ; I will break in pieces the doors of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron."* There are two ways of accounting for this outburst of wel come from a captive in Babylon to Cyrus as Yahweh's messenger to redeem Israel. By assuming a prodigious mir acle, we may suppose that Isaiah the son of Amoz wrote it more * Is. xl. I ff. and xliv. 26 ff. 30 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. than a century before Cyrus was bom or the Jews had gone into captivity, being miraculously enabled to put himself into the situation of the exiled people. This method has the merit of justifying the entire accuracy of the scribe who put this prophecy upon the same roll of parchment as that con taining the prophecies of Isaiah the son of Amoz. Another way regards the mention of Cyrus, the allusions to Jerusalem as "burnt with fire," and. to the people as in cap tivity in Babylon, from whence they are now to be delivered, as indications of the period in which the prophecy was actually written. This latter, which is the method of histori cal criticism, is not so wonderful as the other, and admits the possibility that the inclusion of these chapters without sepa rate title after Is. xxxix. was due to mistake, but it claims to treat the Scriptures with at least equal respect, and has the advantage of throwing a glory of meaning into this last and noblest fruit of the prophetic spirit which it could not other wise possess. At the same time it displays to us the inner workings of divine providence at the critical period when the question was. Shall Jerusalem be rebuilt, or shall Judah also pass into oblivion as Ephraim did, and the treasures of He brew religious life and literature remain forever buried in the mounds of Mesopotamia. Thus understood we recognize in Is. xl.-lxvi. not merely the swan-song of the ancient pro phetic spirit, but the clarion-call which summons into being the " faithful seed " from which is to come forth a new Israel, a new Jerusalem, and at last a Kingdom of God. 4. Aside from these mere excerpts we cannot better describe what historical criticism has done for biblical litera ture and history than by a brief review of its treatment of that mass of material which has come down to us as the Pentateuch Narrative. This material, when coordinated and systematized, will give us (a) a rational conception of the con tinuous working of God in the providential events of Israel's career ; (b) a view in perspective of the gradually enlarging apprehension of this working of God in their history which THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 31 filled the minds of Israel's teachers and writers. We shall scarcely be able to find God in the Bible until we find him there in these two ways, in the events which he decreed, and in the minds which he enlightened. Biblical archaeology is of value for the former, but historical criticism is indispensa ble for the latter.* Historical criticism we understand then to be a loyal response to the distinct summons of the Scriptures themselves to go behind the letter and beneath the surface, distinguishing be tween the testimony and the facts testified to, between the mere literature and the sources and causes, material and spiritual, human and divine, which gave rise to it; even as Paul himself warns us not to be blind supporters of this name or that, but to count both him and ApoUos "ministers through whom ye believed." Above all is this discrimination inculcated by our Lord in his rebuke to the scribes and phar- isees for their servile clinging to the letter of the Scriptures. " Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life ; and they are they which testify of me; but ye would not come unto me that ye might have life."f Be it our task then to draw as near as may be to the mind of the writers, and ask what it is that has affected them. And first we must obtain, so far as may be through brief ex planation and illustration, a general outline of the method and theory of historical criticism within the domain of the Hexateuch. We turn then to the two great classes of evi dence which criticism relies on for its fundamental inquiry as to date and authorship. 5. External evidence may be conclusive of the date of a writing so far as regards the terminus a quo or fixed point of departure in the backward tracing of a document. Thus the * An excellent synopsis of the progress of the science in recent times will be found in Prof. O. Pfleiderer's Development of Theology, New York, Macmillan and Co., 1890. Book HI., ch. II. The Histories of Israel by Wellhausen and Renan, already quoted, the articles Israel and Pentateuch in Encyc. Brit. ed. ix. and Tite Religion of Israel ^iy A. Kuenen, London, Williams and Norgate, 1874, are all accessible to the English reader, beside " Introductions " and minor works innumerable. tjohnv. 39f. (R. v.) 33 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. quotations from Matthew in the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" positively establish the existence of Matthew in the early part of the 2d century ; and the LXX. version proves the existence of the Pentateuch in nearly its present shape in the third century B. C. But as to the terminus ad quem ex ternal evidence is not conclusive. We can by no means argue that Matthew did not exist in the year 90 A. D. because Clem ent of Rome does not use it. The mere silence of authors from Ezra down would not prove that Matthew was not writ ten in 500 B. C. Neither can we establish the non-existence of the Pentateuch from the mere fact, if fact it be, that none of the prophets allude to it. Such arguments e silentio are only of force when a strong independent probability can be established that the writers would have used it, or would at least have expressed themselves otherwise than they did, if they had known of it. Under external evidence must be included traditional views of date and authorship. Tradition which can be traced back to a period wherein men might be supposed to know the date and authorship would be very valuable, especially if there were no other way of accounting for the origin of the tradition than to regard its statements as fact. The tradi tion, for example, attributing the origin of the second gospel to John-Mark gains very much in weight from the difficulty of accounting for an untrue tradition fixing upon so obscure a character rather than the prominent one which popular rumor usually prefers. If, on the other hand, the tradition cannot be traced to a period competent to know, but is of a piece with numerous other traditions known to be worthless, and is easily accounted for, it will have scarcely any weight at all. It is true that certain supporters of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch have attempted to introduce a tertium quid of the nature neither of external nor internal evidence, by excepting the utterances of our Lord from the general class of tradition and exalting them into a kind of dogmatic or doctrinal argument. If our Lord had ever expressed an THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 33 opinion for or against the critical theory we should indeed be obliged to take sides either with those who should deny his competency to judge, and insist upon drawing their own con clusions in literary criticism, or else with those who should hold that the ipse dixit of Jesus forbade all critical investiga tion as impious. The modern attempt to occupy both posi tions at once is irrational. Fortunately there is no such des perate alternative presented. The dogmatic argument has no relevancy whatever, for Jesus expressed no opinion in the case. The fact that Jesus in quoting from the Pentateuch referred the citation to " Moses " proves simply that the books were called then, as they are now, "the Books of Moses." It shows that the tradition of Mosaic authorship was then un questioned, which we knew before, and that Jesus would not precipitate discussion of such a question, which we might have known before. We must decline to stake the authority of Jesus Christ on a question of literary criticism. The second line of critical evidence is intemal. If exter nal evidence is conclusive of the terminus a quo in the question of date, internal evidence is in exactly the same degree con clusive as to the terminus ad quem. If the quotations from Matthew in the Didache are external evidence positively proving that Matthew existed before the Didache, they are intemal evidence for the Didache proving with equal posi tiveness that the Didache, at least in these parts, did not exist until after Matthew. By means of intemal evidence it is almost always easy to detect a forgery, as none but the most finished scholar could possibly construct even the briefest document which would not by some anachronism in style, language, subject-matter, or mode of treatment, betray an acquaintance with matters occurring subsequently to its sup posed origin. Intemal evidence however is capable of furnishing far more, as we have already seen, than merely data from which to determine date and authorship. The writer of a docu ment is the best teacher from whom to learn its purpose and character, and, although rarely in ancient times announcing 3 34 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. his own authorship, can yet be made a willing witness upon questions of interpretation (whether as legend, myth, allegory or simple fact) and the degree of literalness with which the statements of the document are meant to be received. 6. As we enter now upon the consideration of the general argument and theory of the historical criticism of the Penta teuch, the reader who does not wish to know even in outline what the character of the evidence is which leads critics to a practically unanimous decision against Mosaic authorship, is invited to skip the pages which follow. For the sake of those who wish to know the outline and basis of that theory, we will attempt briefly to illustrate and explain the character of the evidence, beginning with tradition. The Talmud, from which we have already quoted an im portant passage on this question (p. 19 ), is explicit in attrib uting the Pentateuch to Moses ; but not the Pentateuch only. Job also is assigned to Moses.* Josephus f likewise ascribes the Pentateuch to Moses including the last eight verses describing his own death. So also Philo. J These witnesses from the first century confirm the evidence from the New-Testament of the existence of the tradition. They also shed light upon the character of it. But if desired we can trace the tradition a step farther back, and obtain still more light upon its character. The Apocalypse of Ezra is an apocryphal book frequently printed in the English Bible under the title of II Esdras, and dating from the first century A. D. Readers who find it accessible are referred to II Esdras xiv. 19-46 for the tradi tion of Mosaic (?) authorship in full, in the form in which it was adopted by the Christian fathers Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Chrysostom, in pseud- Augustine, and the Clem entine Homilies. This tradition represents that the law (Pen tateuch) and all the holy books were burnt at the destruction *For a description of these mediaeval opinions the reader is referred to Prof. Briggs, Biblical Study, pp. 173-180. + Antiquities, IV. 8, 48. X Life of Moses, III. 39. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 35 of J erusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. Ezra miraculously restored them all, composing also others. In the words of Clement of Alexandria : "Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras the Levite, the priest, in the time of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having become inspired in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures." * Another form of the same tradition adopted by Irenseus, Theodoret, Basil, Jerome, and later Christian writers, repre sents the "restoration " of Ezra to have been a "recasting of all the words of the former prophets " and a "reestablishment " of the Mosaic legislation. Carrying back the tradition thus to the earliest form in which it is directly stated it becomes a difficult matter indeed to say whether tradition is more favor able to the so-called "traditional" view, or to the critical theory which attributes to Ezra and the later scribes the in corporation of the priestly element P into the Hexateuch and the recasting of the whole. A scientific judgment of the character of the tradition however, must simply classify it with a mass of similar traditions which attribute Samuel, Judges and Ruth to Samuel, Kings to Jeremiah, and the Psalms to " David with the aid of the ten ancients, Adam the first, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah." In other words there is nothing to recommend it as anything more than an a priori assumption of the crudest kind on the part of the scribes. But external evidence for the existence of the tradition and of the Pentateuch as a whole may be traced still earlier. Allusions in the books of Chronicles, Nehemiah and Ezra to the Book of the Law of Moses, are admitted to refer to our present Pentateuch and fumish evidence perhaps a little earlier than the LXX. Further back it is not possible to go ; for the work now divided into First and Second Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah mentions Darius Codomannus (336 B. C), and brings down its genealogies to a still later date. Earlier allusions to the law of Moses cannot be shown to refer * Stromata i. 22. 36 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. to more than some one of the codes now incorporated in the Pentateuch, and there attributed to him. There is therefore no disposition in any quarter to deny the fact that the Penta teuch, approximately in its present shape, existed circ. 300 B. C, and was then attributed, by a more or less rational tradition, in a more or less direct sense, to Moses. More than this can scarcely be drawn in favor of the traditional date and authorship from external evidence. If there is internal evidence for Mosaic authorship beside the passages attributing, as has been shown, certain sources to Moses, it is of too general and desultory a character to be taken into serious consideration; for the book itself, like all the ancient historical books, is simply anonymous.* 7. We tum with some dismay to the mass of evidence both external and intemal accumulated by historical criti cism against the traditional view. External evidence as we have already seen partakes necessarily of the weakness of an argumentum e silentio when we depart from the terminus a quo or date before which it must have existed (viz., 300 B. C.) and seek a terminus ad quem before which it cannot have existed. Here we find ourselves at once confronted with masses of evidence derived from both the history and the literature of Israel from the time of Moses, 1320 B. C, to the time of Ezra 450 B. C. to prove, e silentio, that before Ezra the Pentateuch as we have it was not in existence, or at least not known to any one of all those whom we should expect to be most familiar with it. The force of this evidence will depend upon the degree of probability with which it can be established that these per sons would have acted differently, or written differently, from the way in which they did act, and write, if they had known our Pentateuch. This external evidence divides itself therefore into evidence from the history, and evidence from *The degree of familiarity with Egyptian customs evidenced in Gen. 1. i ff. and other passages is so easily attributable to any fairly well-informed writer of the period of the monarchy, that none but a special pleader would think of advancing it as evidence. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 37 the literature. We can do no more than briefly summarize both. The history admittedly presents no agreement with the requirements of the Pentateuch, even in the case of the most earnest zealots for Yahweh and the greatest reformers, from the period of Moses down to that of Ezra. The contrast be tween the history as it was, and the history as it would have been if the actors had been guided by the " law of Moses " according to the Pentateuch, is brought out very vividly by the post-exilic book of Chronicles, which re-writes the history of the pre-exilic books of Samuel and Kings, omitting and amending so as to bring the history into conformity with the ritual law. A comparison in detail exhibiting the system by which the chronicler proceeds can be found in Wellhausen's History of Israel, chap. vi. For the present we can only ask the reader to compare the story of the rebellion against Athaliah as it appears in II. Kings xi. 4-12, heedless of all the elaborate provisions of the Levitical law against the entrance of any save a consecrated foot into the house of Yahweh, and the same story in II. Chron. xxiii. amended by the substitution of the Levites for the king's body-guard of mercenaries. The example is characteristic of the way in which Chronicles fills out the unbroken silence of the older historical books in regard to the whole vast Levitical system and Aaronic hierarchy, with its elaborate ritual and centralized worship, and brings into conformity with the Levitical system the actions of David, Samuel, Elijah and other devout char acters, who in Samuel and Kings act as if they never had heard of the Pentateuch or the ritual law. As a further illustration of the contrast between the early and the late religious praxis the reader may compare the worship and ritual at the primitive temple at Shiloh, where Eli and his sons are the priests and the little Ephraimite (not Levite) boy Samuel, clad with the ephod, performs the service of the sanc tuary " before Yahweh," lies down to sleep " in the temple of Yahweh where the ark of God was " before " the lamp of God was gone out" (cf. Lev. xxiv. 1-4), and "opens the doors of the 38 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. house of Yahweh in the morning," I. Sam. i.-iv., with the elaborate provisions of the Levitical code, consigning the care and even the sight of the most holy things exclusively to the house of Aaron and of the holy things to the Levites, with the injunction. Num. i. 5 1, " the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death." To take the post-exilic testi mony of Chronicles in preference to that of its acknowledged sources, from 400 to 600 years earlier in date, reverses every principle of common sense. We have no alternative but to assume that the Pentateuch as we know it, was not in existence, or that it was unknown to men like Samuel, David, Elijah, and Isaiah, who could not voluntarily have so completely ignored and transgressed its most emphatic re quirements, as in the earlier historical books they are uni formly related to have done. Upholders of tradition have, of course, preferred the latter, assuming a disappearance of the Pentateuch for ages, and subsequent re-discovery. In con nection with the explanation of the critical treatment of Deuteronomy we shall meet again this assumption, and hence at present will confine ourselves to the above setting-forth of the indisputable fact that the history, from Joshua to the Exile, completely ignores the Levitical law. It should be observed, however, that the immense presumption against the accidental reappearance of a book lost for more than six centuries makes it incumbent upon the propounders of the theory to show reason for its acceptance. The Levitical law is a system of elaborately developed ritual worship, cen tralized about the inner shrine of the temple of Jerusalem, which itself is regarded as simply a copy of a portable temple or " tabernacle " of the previous epoch, unknown, however, to the pre-exilic writers. Concentric circles of sanctity, which it is death for the unprivileged to cross, surround the Holy of holies, holy-place, and successive temple courts, and elaborate ritual prescriptions make the temple, its service and its hier archy, the all-absorbing, all-controlling interest of the nation. The older history knows nothing whatever of this ; worship is free and untrammeled. Prophets, kings, and common THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 39 people build altars at any place to offer sacrifice with entire acceptance. There is simply no thought or mention what ever of the Levitical requirements, the breach of which in the least degree in the Pentateuch is visited with instant death. Every man approaches God freely and spontaneously where he chooses or where he happens to be. The sanc tuaries are numerous, but very simple and unpretentious, and open to all the people. The people worship Yahweh "upon every high hill and under every green tree ;" but the surprising thing is not this, which is admitted to be true, and might be accounted for on the theory of rebellion and degeneracy, but that this worship is regarded as entirely acceptable to God by the older historians and equally so by all the greatest reformers down to the time of Josiah.* 8. We turn to the external evidence from the literature of the period in which the Levitical law now incorporated in the Pentateuch and forming by far the largest part of " the law of Moses " as there presented, is supposed to have existed. The authors of the older historical literature, as we have seen, simply ignore this ritual system. These, however, are less important than the writings of the prophets, which by way of exception in Semitic literature have both the author's name and date prefixed,f and which bring into broad day light the religious life of the people both in Ephraim and Judah throughout nearly three centuries preceding the Exile. * Observe I. Kings iii. 4-15 in contrast with II. Chron. i. 1-13 ; also, Elijah's com plaint to God at Horeb. " They have thrown down thine altars," I. Kings xix. 10, 14. All these altars, according to the Pentateuch and the later literature, were an abomination, to destroy which was piety. t " This remark [the law of anonymity] applies with full force only to works like the Historical Books, which were products of the study, and did not derive their value from their connection with the author's public life. It is not equally appli cable to lyric poetry, where, as in the case of David's elegy on Saul and Jonathan, the interest of the poem frequently depends on the authorship. Least of all could the law of anonymity apply to the written collections of the sermons of the pro phets, which were summaries of a course of public activity in which the personality of the prophet could not be separated from his words. Thus, while the historical books are habitually anonymous, and poetical pieces only sometimes bear an author's name, it is the rule that each group of prophecies, and often each indivi dual oracle, has the name of the author attached." W. Robertson Smith, Old Testament in Jewish Church, 108. 40 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. The first trace of an allusion to anything contained in the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch, or to the existence of any ordinance of Moses concerning ritual, will be searched for in vain throughout the writings of the pre-exilic prophets. This argumentum e silentio is met by the explanation that the specific work of the prophets led them to exalt the ethical feature of the law at the expense of the ritual, and indeed we should by no means ignore the contrast in function be tween the prophet and priest. Both were teachers of the people, the priest however being the interpreter and mouth piece of the ritual law (Ez. xliv. 23f.), and the prophet usually taking a more generally ethical ground. Both " sat in Moses' seat " as trustees of the national inheritance of law and custom, but their relations were far from antagonistic, as the friendship of Isaiah with Uriah the chief priest sufficiently shows. Several of the later prophets, including both Jere miah and Ezekiel, were at the same time priests as well as prophets, and Ezekiel devotes all the latter part of his book to the construction of an elaborate ritual system. Neverthe less in weighing the evidential force of the silence of the prophets on this subject full consideration must be given to the peculiarly ethical work of prophetism in general. It is not, however, upon this mere silence that historical criticism depends for its external evidence. It is claimed that the repeated expressions of these writers are such as to make it absolutely insupposable that they knew the Penta teuch, or had ever heard of the enactment of an elaborate ritual law by Moses. More explicit language, for example, than that of Jeremiah vii. 2 iff. could scarcely be expected. "Thus saith Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egjrpt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices : but this thing I commanded them, saying. Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people : and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you." An appeal to the public to say whether any such law was ever given will perhaps be even stronger testimony, especially THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 41 if it be made in the name of Yahweh himself. Such an appeal the critics find in Amos v. 2 iff., where the period of the wilderness-wandering is spoken of as a time of special manifestation of Yahweh's favor (so, frequently, in the Pss. and prophets, cf. Hos. xi. iff., xiii. 4f., etc.), and the question asked whether then there was any of this sacrificing and ritual observance. The reader of the Pentateuch of to-day would be inclined to call that the period of sacrifice and ritual par excellence. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, I will not accept them : neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offenngs in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel ? Equally plain is the noble appeal in Micah vi. 6-8 : — "Wherewith shall I come before Yahweh, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my firstborn for my trans gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good : and what doth Yahweh require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Isaiah i. irf. demands to know on what authority ritual ob servances are practised : — "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith Yahweh : I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he- goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts?" One might indeed reconcile with a knowledge of the Pentateuch utterances of the prophets deprecating the too great regard paid to ritual, and urging as of equal dr greater importance the " weightier matters of the law ;" but how can it be supposed that the authors of these appeals to know when and where Yahweh had ever authorized anything of the kind were aware of the existence of a Mosaic law, nine-tenths of which were devoted to inculcating this very thing in the 43 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. most explicit terms as of immediate divine authority, and with the imposition of most fearful penalties for its neglect. Can we suppose that Jeremiah and Isaiah knew of this body of law ? And if Jeremiah and Isaiah and those they appealed to knew nothing of it, who did ? Such are the questions an examination of the external evidence brings. Whether or no such facts are compatible with the traditionary view, or are susceptible of explanation, the reader himself must judge. We need add but one more piece of external evidence to do justice to the case of historical criticism in this department, although of course the presentation here made is a mere abstract. Some of the most important evidence for the date of codification of the ritual law is found in the book of Ezekiel. Here we have a prophet of the Exile planning for the recon struction of the nation after its return. Ezekiel was both prophet and priest. The last part of his book is an elaborate ritual system devised on a purely ideal foundation, but of course far less elaborate than the Pentateuchal provisions. Was he aware of the existence of a Mosaic code covering in greater detail than his the whole ground of his code, or did he think of superseding it by his own ? If Ezekiel knew nothing of it, who knew of it ? It is the attempt to answer these questions which has driven nearly all Old Testament scholars to abandon the idea of the Pentateuch ritual code as a revelation to Moses fixed for all subsequent time in all its detail, and substituted that of a growth whose roots go back in the consuetudinary law and traditional practise of the sanctuary for an indefinite period previous to the Exile, but whose codification began at the same time and for the same reasons as Ezekiel's code. 9. We have seen why from the nature of the case external evidence can fumish only an argument from silence, when we seek a date before which a writing cannot have existed. This argument from silence admits of being strengthened almost indefinitely by the establishing of a probability that if a book had been in existence it would have been known to THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 43 the authors consulted, and they in consequence would have used it, referred to it, or at least have written or acted in some way differently from what they did. Still it is neces sarily internal evidence, exactly complementary to external, which can alone definitely fix a date before which a writing cannot have existed. Even here however we may escape the conclusion if we are willing to assume a miracle in support of Rabbinic tradition.* In reply to this nothing can be said except to grant to all to whom this method of meeting difficulties is satisfactory that intemal evidence is powerless before it. Supposing, however, that there are some to whom this short and easy method with the critics will not be satisfactory, we will briefly refer to some of the best-known phenomena of the Pentateuch which may be termed the post-Mosaica ; clauses which cannot be severed from the text except by resorting, as in the case of Deut. xxxiv. 5-1 2, to the very process of analysis denounced by the traditionary school, passages for which, nevertheless, it is necessary to assume a miracle to attribute them to Moses. As our purpose is merely illustra tive, the following must be regarded not as a complete list, but as examples of a class : — Gen. xxxvi. 31, " Before there reigned any king over the children of Israel," on critical principles would imply authorship subsequent to the establishment of the monarchy ; Gen. xl. 15, "the land of the Hebrews ;" Gen. xii. 6b, xiii. 7b and a series of passages implying that the Canaan ites in the author's day had long disappeared, bnngs down the date to the period subsequent to Solomon (I. Kings ix. 16, 2of.) Deut. ii. 12 refers explicitly to Israel's having driven out the Canaanites and taken full possession of the land. "The Horites dwelt there beforetime, but the children of Esau succeeded them ; and they destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead, as Israel did unto the land of his possession which Yahweh gave unto them." Deut. xix. 14 for bids the removal of " thy neighbor's landmark which they of old time have set." Passages like Gen. xxxv. 20, "The same is the pillar of ¦* Cf . Briggs' Bibl. Study, p. 188, a quotation from the commentary of Wm. Gouge, an honored puritan divine, who meets the objections to the Davidic authorship of all the psalms, and in particular, " Objection ^ — The cxxxviith Psalm doth set down the disposition and carriage ot the Israelites in the Babylonish Captivity, which was six hundred forty years after David's time, and the cxxvith Psalm sets out their return frora that Captivity. Ans.— To grant these to be so, yet might David pen those psalms ; for, by a prophetical spirit, he might foresee what would fall out, and answerably pen Psalms fit thereunto." 44 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. Rachel's grave unto this day ;" Deut. iii. ii, " Behold his bedstead was a bedstead of iron ; is it not in Rabbah of the children of Ammon ?" with Gen. xxxii. 22 and Deut. x. 8 (" unto this day "), point to mementos and institutions of antiquity to which the reader is referred. Num. xxiv. 7 alludes to Agag, cf. I. Sam. xv. 33. The psalm, Ex. xv. 1-17, refers in vv. 13 and 17 to the temple — "Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation ;" and, " Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance. The place, O Yahweh, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in. The sanctuary, O Yahweh, which thy hands have established." See also Num. xii. 3 and Deut. xxxiv. 10. A second class of post-Mosaica are the references to position. The Pentateuch writer or writers use invariably the stereo typed expressions for north, south, east and west, which, nevertheless, have no significance except for a dweller in Palestine. Thus south is literally, " Negeb-^2ir&.," i. e. toward the desert of Beersheba ; west is "sea- ward," i. e. toward the Mediterranean. The expression " beyond Jordan " is fre quently accompanied by " toward the sunrising," and is always shown by the context to mean eastward, whereas to Moses "beyond Jordan " would be west. Passing over the argument from the indications of progres sive development in the Pentateuchal codes, which, although considered by many the strongest evidence for the critical theory, is of too technical a nature for a popular treatise, we reluctantly turn to a department of the evidence which cannot be ignored, but which from its very nature is obnoxious to all for whom the religious value of the book is inseparable from historical accuracy in describing the events of the remote past. No small part of the proof deduced from the Pentateuch of its origin from traditionary sources centuries after the events it narrates is the alleged impossibility, and, hence historical inaccuracy of its representations. This most thankless task of all criticism, a purely negative work, but one which, like the clearing away of unsound material, must necessarily precede the building of a trustworthy structure upon the actual phenomena of the documents, was taken up by Colenso, Bishop of Natal, in Part I. of his " Pentateuch and Book of ¦ Joshua critically examined,"* and carried through •"New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1S63. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 45 as unflinchingly as the surgeon wields the knife against disease. We can only refer to an instance or two from the period of Moses himself. The enormous numbers of the Israelites who came out of Egypt (600,000 armed men, beside non-combatants), are not due to textual errors, because they are again and again re iterated, verified by repeated footings and that in two com plete censuses, besides agreeing with many of the representa tions of the story itself. Colenso proceeded to show that they are not only incompatible with the account of the 70 persons who four generations before had come into Egypt, but make the account of the Exodus incredible. To mobilize an army of "600,000 armed men " in a single night, Ex. xii. 37ff., is an incredible feat, even if we leave entirely out of account the women and children, the aged and infirm, the " mixed multi tude " and the "flocks and herds." But supposing all this done, and the whole company, numbering necessarily be tween two and three million, provided with the "tents," we find them immediately after (Ex. xvi. 16) occupying, and all other necessary paraphernalia, including the riches required for the tabernacle, why should 600,000 armed men who " went up in battle array out of Egypt" (Ex. xiii. 18), run away from Pharaoh, or cry out for fear of the detachment of troops. sent in pursuit? Why need an "armed force" ten times as numerous as the entire allied army at Waterloo submit to intolerable oppression ? And how could the petty desert tribe of Amalekites hold them in check and for a consider able time "prevail" against them, Ex. xvii. 8ff. ? Again ; the human millions are supported by manna in the " waste howling wilderness," but what supported the great numbers of cattle and flocks and herds of which we hear repeatedly ? If they had these " flocks and herds " why did they complain of having no flesh to eat, and twice require a miracle to provide it, Ex. xvi. 1-14, Num xi. 4-35 ? If they did not have them, whence came the innumerable beasts for sacrifice carefully specified, and the passover lambs for 40 successive years required, Ex. xii. 5, to be males of the first year ? 46 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. Again, the male Levites at the first census. Num. iii. 39, were 22,000 ; thirty-eight years afterward. Num. xxvi. 62, 23,000. But in Moses' own generation (Ex. vi. i6ff.) there were only sixteen all told. These 23,000 Levites were sub stituted for 22,273 first-bom males of all Israel (Num. iii. 43). If we make the total male population only 900,000 (600,000 bore arms) every mother in Israel must then have had at least 42 male children. Other objections of Colenso are of a more general character. Any intelligent person may gain a fair conception of them by simply reading the passages referred to (e. g. Num. xxxi.) and asking himself from time to time, " What does this nar rative imply ?" This is indeed purely negative criticism ; but its object is not destruction of the records as is often supposed. Negative criticism must be considered part of the evidence tending to show whether the history is that of eyewitnesses or more or less distorted by tradition. We tum, nevertheless, with satisfaction from the negative to the constructive side of historical criticism. 10. The central position of the science as regards the Hexateuch is the date 620 B. C. for the code of Deuteronomy. The argument for this is a volume in itself. In the treatise of DeWette, entitled Dissertatio Critica, 1805, Deuteronomy was identified with the " Book of the Law " or "Teaching" [torah) found by Hilkiah in the temple under Josiah, who made it the basis for a revolution in the religious history of Israel. It is this religious revolution which, more completely even than the Exile itself, divides the history into two dis tinct epochs. The story of this discovery and great reform is related at length in II. Kings xxii., xxiii., and the origin of Deuteronomy as an attempt to formulate the torah of Moses, as then understood, at a period not long previous to 620 has, since DeWette, acquired the force of an axiom among critics. The briefest possible resum^ of external and internal evidence is all that we can allow ourselves. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 47 . The book brought forward by Hilkiah is positively identi fied as the Deuteronomic Code (Deuteronomy without the historical introduction and appendix which frame it in to the Hexateuch story), and not the whole Pentateuch. The testi mony of Jeremiah and Ezekiel already adduced precludes from the point of view of criticism the supposition that this book contained the ritual law, for ignorance cannot be pleaded in their case. The conduct of Josiah is equally conclusive. But further, the book was so short that Shaphan could read it aloud "before the king," II. Kings xxii. lo, and the king " the whole of it" before the people, xxiii. 2. (Cf. the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole week, Neh. viii. 2-18). It was in the form of a "covenant" (xxiii. 2 and 21, "this book of the covenant," cf. Dt. xxix. i), and was distinguished by fearful curses (xxii. 1 1-20 ; cf. Dt. xxvii. 1 1 — xxviii. 68). Finally its contents may fairly be inferred from II. Kings xxiii. 1-24, which relates in detail the innovations Josiah undertook after pledging himself to carry out the reforms demanded by the book discovered. The whole chapter relates simply how Josiah proceeds step by step to carry out the requirements of the Deuteronomic Code. Thus II. Kings xxiii 7 carries out D t. xxiii., 7f. 9 10II14 21 ' xviii. 8. ' xviii. 10. ' xvii. 3. ' xvi. 2 if. ' xvi. 5. 11 24 ' xviii. II. Further evidence for the identity of the book appears in the fact that it demanded some great and radical reform to justify the language of II. Kings xxii. 13, "Great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book to do according unto all that which is written concerning us," and that of xxiii. 22, which extends the period during which no such requirements had been observed, back to the time of Joshua. What this radical reform was we shall soon see. For the present the external evidence of the case is clear to 48 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. the critic. It was the Deuteronomic Code and nothing else, so far as external evidence can show it, which was brought forward by Hilkiah in the year 620 B. C. The statements of II. Kings are explicit and unanswerable that previous to that time neither the book nor all of its requirements had been known for an indefinite period. The question at once arises, How old was it ? In what sense, and on what grounds, was it called " the Book of the Law ?"* On this point also we may learn something from the narrative in II. Kings. An}'- one acquainted with ancient MSS. will be inclined to say at once, in answer to the query as to age, " Not very old." If for no other reason, then because only a trained expert can read MSS. of a few centuries back, on account of changes in chirography and language ; but further, because Oriental MSS. are written with ink which fades and becomes illegible with dampness, and no MS. can be supposed to have survived, without care, the repeated pillaging of the temple, and the extraordinary vicissitudes of the ark in the ruined temple of Shiloh (Jer. vii. 12, 14, xxvi. 6, 9), in battle, among the Philis tine cities, in the house of Obed-Edom, and among the peasants of Beth-shemesh. To suppose that the Book of the Torah which Shaphan claimed to have found in the temple was the actual autograph of Moses referred to in Dt. xxxi. 24ff., is perhaps what the author of Dt. xxxi. 24ff. thought and in tended ; but in order to accept his opinion as true and com petent, it will be necessary to assume a prodigious miracle. Let us see what means the finders resorted to, to ascertain the origin and authority of the book. The story is short. They did not trouble themselves at all about its origin, but a delegation took it to "Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum, the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe," who returned the very practical answer that what the book required ought to be done. It was " good law ;" beyond this point none seemed to think it necessary to go. So far as the external evidence goes, in the story of the dis covery, and aside from the practical difficulties in the way of * Observe that it is nowl(ere in the story attributed to Moses. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 49 supposing an extremely ancient MS., Shaphan's "Book of the Torah " might equally well have been an autograph of Moses, or a mere recent embodiment of the traditional " teaching " as understood by the prophets and priests of the period, the prophets being, according to the book itself, Deut. xviii. 15-22, the authorized custodians and interpreters of this "Torah." Or again, it might be neither of these extremes, but, as critics suggest, an expansion and modification (fully within the legitimate province of the prophet) of a Torah of Moses codi fied from the traditional form at least a century before. Such a Torah unquestionably existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now incorporated as " The Book of the Covenant " in Ex. XX. — xxiv.* The external evidence of Scripture narrative, therefore, simply determines the year 620 for the terminus a quo of Deuteronomy, and throws open, for determination upon internal evidence, the question how much further back this " Book of the Torah " can be carried in its present form (the form described in II. Kings). II. We need not long delay upon the post-Mosaica. In addition to the brief phrases adduced on page 43, we may cite Dt. iv. 38, "To give thee the land as it is this day," and the use of " Dan " for Laish, xxxiv. i (cf. Jud. xviii. 29.) More particular attention, however, is called to the general character of the legislation. It is adapted to the wants, and assumes the existence, of an agricultural people long accus tomed to city and village life. (Cf. the precautions of xxii. i-io in regard to house-building and agriculture ; also xix. 14.) The same of course holds true of the Book of the Covenant, from which these laws are taken. Chap, xx., especially vv. 5-9, is ill adapted to the period of the conquest. Chap. xvii. 14-20 gives directions for the conduct of kings. Samuel, and the author of I. Sam. viii., as well as the people of that day, seem never to have heard of it, but the directions and prohi bitions themselves are scarcely comprehensible except when • See page \^i. 4 50 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. read side by side with the story of Solomon's abuses of the office, II. Kings x. 14 — xi. 8. Chaps, xxix. and xxx. (D^ cf. especially xxix. 28), which assume that the alternative of blessing or curse of the preceding chapters is no longer open but that the curse has already fallen, we do not here consider, as they cannot in any case be earlier than the Code, and are regarded by critics as a later appendix. As negative evidence of a post- Mosaic origin the above should suffice. Have we any means of determining constructively the date of Deuter onomy ? For the purely literary critic the resemblance of the style, language, religious conceptions and general standpoint to Jeremiah is so marked as perhaps to outweigh even the historical evidence. Some critics have indeed claimed Jere miah as the author, on the ground of identity of expressions and cast of thought ; but the evidence is inconclusive and too technical for our consideration. We must proceed at once to the examination of that radical religious reform carried through by Josiah according to the requirement of "this Book of the Torah," which in the account itself is stated to have been an innovation upon the practise of all the people from time immemorial. Both the Code itself, Deut. xii. ff., and the story of the reform, II. Kings xxiii., make it absolutely unmistakable what the nature of the revolution was. It was the abolition of the bamoth (" high places "), or local sanctuaries and altars, and the concentration of the worship of the entire people at Jerusalem, designated as " the place which Yahweh shall choose." It was demanded on the ground that these local shrines with their altars, " pillars " {maf^eboth), and sacred trees, or asherim (wooden posts used as religious symbols), were of Canaanitish origin, and tended to corrupt the worship of Yahweh into resemblance to the impure wor ship of the Canaanite baalim (Dt. xii. 1-18). All this was most unquestionably true, and we may even say that had not this radical discrimination of Yahweh-worship from ordinary Semitic Baal-worship (cf. Hos. ii. i6f.) taken place as it did scarcely a generation before the people were scattered in THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 51 exile, Judah, and with it Yahweh-worship, with all- its price less treasures of revelation and religious thought, would have disappeared as completely as Ephraim did in captivity, by simple assimilation and absorption arnong kindred peoples. Whatever consequences it may have had in the development of ritualism and the extinction of prophecy in post-exilic times, it was a revolution which was necessary, and one to which we owe the preservation not only of the pre-exilic literature, but actually of the Jewish race itself as a " peculiar people," and the subsequent development of their religious consciousness. However, it was an innovation, and of the most radical character. The Book of the Covenant, Ex. xx.-xxiv., had dis tinctly sanctioned the popular worship, "in every place where Yahweh caused his name to be remembered ;" the simple " altars of earth and unhewn stone" had dotted the land. Prophets like Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah had deplored the tendency to Canaanitish practises there, but never dreamed of declaring them illegal. Elijah had built up the ruined altar of Carmel and mourned for those which an impious hand had broken down. Samuel (I. Sam. ixf.) honored the simple village sacrifice at the bamah ("high- place ") by his presence, and blessed the sacrifice ; from year to year he went in circuit from one to another of the most revered (vii. 1 6). Not a prophet or reformer or king of the ancient time but had exercised freely the right of private sacrifice and building of altars. If, as the Deuteronomist truly says, they were of Canaanitish origin, hitherto the whole effort of reformers had been to connect them with the history of Yahweh's relations with the patriarchs. The narratives of Genesis * are almost exclusively devoted to connecting this (sacred) tree, that altar, this (sacred) well, with the history of the patriarchs ; and the origin of sanctuary after sanctuary, tree after tree, "pillar" after "pillar" is justified in the relation of how " Yahweh had caused his name to be remem bered there." *The JE element only. P maintains the strictest silence on the whole subject of sacrifices, altars and sacred places. 53 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. Isaiah had begun the movement of reform, but even Isaiah, although the destruction of Ephraim in 722 B. C. removed the most insurmountable obstacle in the way of concentration of the worship at Jerusalem, did not accomplish, if he even at tempted, the abolition of the local sanctuaries ; and " a ma((ebah to Yahweh" in the border of Egypt, and an altar in the midst of Egypt (Is. xix. 19), was to him an end to be devoutly prayed for. Compare with this the distinct prohibition of Deut. xvi. 2 if., " Thou shalt not plant thee an asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Yahweh thy God which thou shalt make thee, neither shalt thou set thee up a maffebah ; which Yah weh thy God hateth," and that of Lev. xxvi. i, "Ye shall make you no idols, neither shall ye rear you up a graven image, or a mag^ebah, neither shall ye place any figured stone in your land to bow down to it." This warfare against material objects of worship as such appears to have been preceded, as we might expect, by a period of warfare against the heathen sacred tree, stone or ma((ebah as distinct from that reared in honor of Yahweh. The ma((eboth of the Canaanites are to be broken in pieces, Ex. xxiii. 24 ; xxxiv. 13! ; Num. xxxiii. 52. It is this stage of prophetic " zeal for Yahweh " which is presented in the pre- Isaianic prophets and in the narratives of Genesis re-baptizing the sacred trees, wells, stones, cairns, cromlechs, altars and ma((eboth of the land into memorials of Yahweh's relations with the patriarchs. So at least the critics understand the records. (Cf. Gen. xxi. 33 ; xxviii. 18, 22 ; xxxv. 14, 20, and passim ; Josh. xxiv. 26 ; Hos. iii. 4.) We cannot enter further into the story of this contest of the prophets (and doubtless the priests also), in the seventh century, for the purification of Yahweh-worship from Canaan itish survivals. Much more can be obtained by reading Part I. of the " History " of Wellhausen. Whether due to the prophetic insight of Moses discovering in advance the exact wants of the century in which Deuteronomy would come to light ; or whether the book be considered an adapta tion to that time of the Mosaic torah as it was understood in THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 53 the circle of prophetic and priestly reformers of the period of Josiah, its legitimate guardians and exponents ; certain it is that the Deuteronomic Code plunges into the very thick of the contest, at the opportune moment when the long re actionary policy of Manasseh and Amon has been displaced by that of a docile youth under a priestly regency. It sum mons reformers to the vital issue of that very day in its opening words : " Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes." (Dt. xii. 8. Cf. also Dt. xvii. 3 with II. Kings xxi. 3.) Even the consequences of its radical innovation in the worship are foreseen and provided for in Deuteronomy. For the ancient Israelite sacrifice and slaughter were the same thing. The Hebrew has but one word for both. Meat was rarely eaten, and whenever an animal was killed it was brought ^^utito God," Ex. xxi. 6 — of course not to the distant temple at Jerusalem, but to the village sanctuary and altar. Slaughter without this consecrating of the blood at the altar was impious, I. Sam. xiv. 32-35 ; but when animals were taken in the chase, it was provided as a substitute for the altar ser-vice, that the blood should be poured out upon the ground. Lev. xvii. 1-14. Among other consequences of the revolution effected by Deuteronomy would be the impossibil ity of bringing animals to Jerusalem to be slaughtered. This difficulty of distance is foreseen and provided for in Dt. xiv. 24f., and express provision is made for this case in the second part of the opening chapter of the Code, Dt. xii. 15-27, which extends the provisions previously applying to " the gazelle and hart " to all kinds of flesh. A more serious difficulty was the providing of support for the priests who would be made destitute by the abolition of the bamoth. These rural priests {Chemarim) are recognized in Deuteronomy as on a footing of equality with the Jerusa lem priesthood of the house of Zadok. They were Levites, and in Deuteronomy, just as in Jeremiah, the phrases, " the priests the Le-vites " and " the Levites the priests " are inter changeable. The distinction so strongly marked in the 54 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. Priestly Code between a priest and a Levite has here no exis tence whatever.-* The author accordingly not only com mends repeatedly the Levite, in connection with the widow and fatherless, to the compassion of the people, but devotes the section xviii. i-8 to a special enactment providing that: — " If a Levite come from any of thy gates out of all Israel, where he sojourneth, and come with all the desire of his soul unto the place which Yahweh shall choose ; then he shall minister in the name of Yahweh his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which stand there before Yahweh. They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh of the sale of his patrimony." The Levites who thus became dependent upon the charity of the people and of their Jerusalem (Zadokite) brethren could not of course expect to remain on a footing of equality with these latter, and, as we shall see, it is from the history of the ever-widening discrimination between the mere Levites, and the Zadokite priesthood, that one of the strongest arguments is derived for the date of the Priestly Code. With this exhibition of the internal evidence for Deuteron omy as the product of the great struggle for reform in the seventh century B. C, an adaptation of the torah of Moses, both oral and written, to the necessities of the struggle for pure worship, we must leave the reader to decide for him self how much weight may be gfiven to the argument of his torical critics for this their cardinal position, and proceed briefly to describe the subordinate propositions of current historical criticism. 12. We have already seen (p. 38) that the concentration of worship around the single altar at Jerusalem, which is the great innovation of Deuteronomy, is in the Priestly Code of the Pentateuch already a fundamental axiom. The central altar protected by concentric rings of sanctity is the core and kernel of all the Levitical ritual law. Totally unknown to the earlier history, to prophets, legislators and ref ormers, and * Of. Deut. xviii. i, " the priests, the Levites even all the tribe of Levi," with the repeated denunciation of the death penalty in the Priestly Code for a usurpation of the least function of the priest by a Levite, in particular the destruction of Korah and his company. Num. xvi. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 55 indeed totally impracticable under the conditions previous to the capti-^dty of Ephraim, it comes first to light when Ezra "the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven" re turns empowered by Artaxerxes to reconstruct the unfortu nate little colony at Jerusalem "according to the law of his God which was in his hand," Ezra vii. 1-26. From this time Judaism begins. In the words of Dean Stanley, "it was not a nation but a church which returned." The prophet is displaced by the scribe ; the local sanctuary by the syna gogue ; king, nobles and people, by high-priests and priests, Levites and laity. There can be no question when the Priestly Law was introduced, the only question must be. When did it originate in a written form? and what was the function of " Ezra the priest, the scribe, even the scribe of the words of the commandments of Yahweh, and of his statutes to Israel ?" (Ezra vii. 11.) It cannot again be necessary to enter into all the minutiae of external and intemal evidence. Suffice it to say that the Documentary Analysis distinguishes in the Hexateuch a priestly element, P, easily separable, all the way from Gen. i. to Josh, xxiv., from the so-called "prophetic narrative," JE, and comprising the whole Levitical or ritual law. The nucleus of the work is supposed to be a priestly code (P') in corporated in Lev. xvii-xxvi. to which the great majority of critics assign a date nearly contemporaneous with Ezekiel. The rest of P (P\) is mainly a code of ritual law presented in the form of a history of the conquest of Canaan. A cer tain amount of material incorporated at a still later date is classified as PI The great mass of the book is naturally located at Sinai (Ex. xxv-xl. Lev. i-xxvii. Num. i-x.) but special laws or "covenants" are brought in at important epochs : the Sabbath, at creation ; Noachic law of bloodshed, Gen. ix. ; circumcision. Gen. xvii. ; passover, Ex. xii. Another important object for the writer seems to be the deduction of exact genealogies from Adam down, in the case of all char acters of the history ; and still another the distribution of the land of Canaan by lot according to the heads of the fathers' 56 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. houses of each tribe. Thus the patriarchal period is di-vided into ten Toledoth or genealogies, of which Gen. v. is an ex ample, only interrupted here and there by something of legal or ritual importance. The story is a mere skeleton or frame work, derived, according to the dominant school of criticism, from J E. In Joshua it is almost purely occupied with as signing boundaries, to the tribal "lots ; " in the middle books of course with ritual prescriptions. The style is inexpressibly verbose, artificial and repetitious, and is comparable to nothing but the genealogies and inven tories of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. (Cf. Num. vii., the same passage of six verses repeated verbatim twelve times over, with Ezra ii.) The decimal system is introduced everywhere and a minute chronology extends up to the very day of creation, including the birth-day and death-day of every descendant of Adam down to the Flood, and of all the patriarchs since. The minutest detail of numbers, statistics and measurements (the same which drew the unsparing criticism of Colenso) per vades all the history, and gives to the whole document the tone of a mathematical calculation. In the judgment of Nol deke, the great critic of the Priestly Code, a more artificial, unnatural and purely mechanical treatment of the story can scarcely be conceived. It is needless to add that P is abso lutely barren of poetic material. No anachronism is traceable in the document, for the writer never permits himself for one moment to anticipate the course of revelation as he has mapped it out. The name Yahweh, for example, is not used until Ex. vi. 2, where it is related to have been revealed to Moses. Thereafter it is used uniformly. The frequent sacrificing, altar-building, and other religious observances which in J E so largely oc cupy the time of the patriarchs, in P are wholly wanting until the instituting of the ritual at Sinai sets the system in regular motion. Mechanical and artificial as is the Priestly Code in both style and conception, the religious ideas which it embodies are the loftiest of the Pentateuch. The justly admired mon- THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 57 otheistic representations of Gen. i. are characteristic of P. The naif, poetic and striking but crude anthropomorphisms of J, which only partially disappear in E, are wholly removed from P. The life has gone out of the narrative of J E in the form P gives it, but at least we must recognize here the work of one who desires to embalm for perpetual preservation the records of a past replete with divine significance. The treat ment of the history is a process of smoothing out all the wrinkles and reducing of every thing to an absolute and stereotyped uniformity of perfection, and this naturally ex cites the antipathy of the historical critic ; but the very changes which- obliterate for example from the story of the patriarchs all traces of dissension and wrong conduct, leaving nothing but an ideal and uniform existence of unbroken serenity, or which in Joshua transform the checkered history of the Conquest into a simple division of Canaan among the tribes by lot, after we have been told in two words how Joshua converted the whole territory into a tabula rasa, are due to nothing else than the very vividness with which a mind extravagantly devoted to minute and mechanical sys tematizing, and utterly unprotected from its own vagaries by the first scintillation of historical imagination or critical sense, has grasped the fundamental idea of a divine purpose and a divine revelation in the history. Crude and artificial as it is, from the point of view of the historian, this extraor dinary document had a providential task to fulfill in the year 444 B. C. and whether then new or old it was providentially adapted to fulfill it. We can take but a single illustration from each department of the evidence adduced by historical criticism for assigning the work to about this date.* 13. Deuteronomy is regarded by the traditionary school as * See chapter III., p 67, for Dillmann's dissenting view. His opposition to the opinion of the dominant school is however more apparent than real, since he also although claiming an existence of P before the Exile— some portions excepted— would consider it to have been quite unknown, its existence being merely latent. He also considers P entirely dependent upon E and some of the sources of J for his historical material. As the Dillmann theory is certainly losing ground it will not be necessary to pay it further attention in what follows. 58 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. later than the priestly legislation. It professes to set forth the law of Moses given at Horeb. It rehearses the history of all the period from Sinai to the Jordan, in which the great mass of the priestly document falls. It is singular, in this view, that the minutest search of critic after critic in both the narrative and the legislative parts of Deuteronomy has failed, as even Dillmann, who maintains the origin of P before Deuteronomy, confesses, to reveal one trace of acquaintance with any part of this great mass of mingled law and narrative. But not even is this all. The analysis of Num. xvi., for example, reveals a JE element narrating the revolt of Dathan and Abiram, Reuben- ites, against Moses, and their punishment by being swallowed up alive. Intimately inwoven and blended with this is the narrative of P of an attempt of Korah with 250 Levites to usurp the functions of the priesthood. Fire came out from Yahweh and devoured them. Dt. xi. 6 quotes this chapter, but only the JE element. Korah and all pertaining to him are simply ignored. As external evidence that P was unknown to the Deuteronomist facts like these must be admitted to have weight. The intemal evidence for the late origin of P is mainly derived from evidences of development in the legislation beyond the point of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. We select as a single example the regulations discriminating between priest and Levite. In the chapter just quoted. Num. xvi., P exhibits his conception of the inferiority of the Levites. It is in P a matter of birth, the priests being exclusively de scendants of Aaron of the house of Zadok. The distinction is thus for him primeval. But in considering Deuteronomy we found an equality between priests and Levites only just beginning to separate into a distinction of rank between the Zadokites and the ordinary Levite. How came this little rift to widen to such a chasm ? The transition point is found in Ezekiel's legislation. Here in Ez. xliv. 7-16 "the Levites that went far from me, when Israel went astray" are as signed a menial position in the sanctuary (displacing the for- THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 59 eign hierodouloi, apparently Philistines,* who had performed such services), " Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and became a stumbling-block of iniquity unto the house of Israel : therefore have I lifted up rny hand against them saith the Lord Yahweh, and they shall bear their iniquity. And they shall not come near unto me, to execute the office of priest unto me nor to come near unto any of my holy things. . . . . Yet will I make them keepers of the charge of the house for all the service thereof and for all that shall be done therein. But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of m.y sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray Jrom me, they shall come near unto me to minister unto me ; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord Yahweh, they shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge." That which in the Priestly Law is regarded as primeval, is here instituted as a punishment for ministering in illegitimate worship. The passage looks both forward and backward ; backward to a time when, as in Deuteronomy, " the priests, the Levites" were "all the tribe of Levi;" forward to the time when, as in the Priestly Code, the Zadokites shall be the only legitimate priests and the other Levites mere servants. In this development Deuteronomy stands earliest, Ezekiel midway, P latest. A striking detail of the phenomenon is the fact of the re tention in Num. xvii. i, 23 (P) of the very phrase "they shall bear their iniquity " twice employed by Ezekiel. In the Priestly Code however all odium is removed from it. The sense attached is simply "act as mediators for the people." 14. Referring the reader to the technical works already cited for evidence as to the origin of P, and to the document itself for further characterization, we tum to the other ele ment of the Hexateuch, the Prophetic Narrative J E. Al though recognized by critics as duplicate, the two strands of J E are so closely similar in style, content, purpose and gen eral characteristics, and withal are so closely intertwined, *So considered from the fact that they were "uncircumcised," Ez. xliv. 7-9, "leaped over the threshold," Zeph. i. 9— cf. 1 Sam. v. 4 f., and were perhaps no other than the king's body-guard of Cretans and Philistines, 2 Sam. viii. 18 ; xv. iS ; XX. 7, 23 ; I Kings i. 38, 44. 60 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. that it is better to treat J E first as a unit. Such indeed rela tively to D and P it really is. Afterward I shall refer more briefly to some of the characteristics which distinguish E from J. The external evidence for J E in Deuteronomy is as com plete as it was absolutely wanting for P The narrative parts of Deuteronomy reproduce J E throughout the period covered in Exodus and Numbers, precisely as extricated by the analysis, and in frequent cases verbatim. The legal enact ments again reproduce the whole of the Book of the Cove nant, Ex. xx-xxiv. 8 (E), with scarcely an exception. For the separate parts of JE references can be found of a still higher antiquity. Thus E in Ex. iv.-xv. can be traced in Is. X. 24, 26, and later ; and Hosea, at a still earlier period, re peatedly refers to the narratives of J. In view of this it is not necessary to refer again to the pre-deuteronomic attitude assumed in JE toward the local sanctuaries, trees, altars, wells and maffeboth, which are universally put in a favora ble light and connected with theophanies to, or experiences of, the patriarchs. The style, language and religious stand point is in general that of Isaiah and his period, though betraying of course in the older portions a much more arch aic type. If, however, the judgment of historical critics is worth anything, the religious standpoint of both elements of JE is such as cannot possibly be supposed to antedate the great religious revival of Elijah. The whole work is in fact permeated through and through with the " prophetic " spirit of Elijah and his successors, of "jealousy for Yahweh" (I. Kings xix. 10, 14). It is to paint in most vivid colors the action of Yahweh for his people from the beginning, his favor for their obedience, and wrath for their frowardness, that this incomparable collection of the folk-lore of Israel was made. With a distinctly religious purpose it was shaped into a national epos of Yahweh's dealing with his people from the time when he called Abram and promised him the land, till that promise was fulfilled to the children of Abram. There is no period which it so appropriately fits as that THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 61 golden age of prophetic activity, where literature and the religious consciousness seem to have sprung at once and to gether almost to their perfect bloom. Whenever it may have found its origin, it found its significance in the age of the great prophets Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah ; the age which begins with the brilliant and prosperous reigns of Jero boam II. and Uzziah, and ends with the tragic fate of Josiah. Here, as part of the great prophetic movement, if guided by historical criticism, we must place the origin of the Bible ; for this, and nothing less, was the function of the Prophetic Narrative, especially after its combination with Deuteron omy, to be the Bible of pre-exilic Israel. With this date agrees every indication of the text, the refer ences to the monarchy, to the extinction of the Canaanites, to the temple, to the Book of Jashar (Josh. x. i2f=E), and others already noted. From the standpoint of literary and historical criticism JE is of the very bone and flesh of the Assyrian period, 850-722 B. C. If it was already in existence before the conquest of Canaan it was a miraculous removal during deep sleep. Of the character and purpose of JE we can speak but briefly in addition to what has been already spoken and im plied. Contrast in style could not be stronger than between JE and P. Graphic narrative, brilliant coloring, dramatic power, idyllic simplicity and freshness take the place of " end less genealogies" and ponderous artificiality. Poetry and imaginative genius illuminate every page. We visit each local shrine and sanctuary and learn the story of its origin. We live the life of the patriarchs, and find it that of the peasant of pre-exilic Israel. Love-stories, tales of feats of cunning over-reaching cunning, of gigantic strength, of heaven-sent wisdom and kind-heartedness, puns and jokes even (Gen. xl. 13 and 19), awaken the interest, sympathy or mirth of the reader. Rarely (least rarely in J) do we meet -with coarse innuendoes (Gen. xix. 3off ) and popular super stitions (Gen. xxx. 14-16). The fountains of minstrelsy and ballad-lore yet flow copiously through its pages. But through 62 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. it all runs the thread of a unifying purpose, a religious motif which betrays the inspiration of the men who made Israel " a light to lighten the Gentiles." This underlying motif, more clear in E than in J, in JE than in either, is a purpose to show forth " God in history." The " history " is such only as the age could provide, but the God apprehended there is the Everlasting God of Truth and Righteousness. 15. In the ensuing analysis, J is presented as antedating E by some fifty years, and as derived from Judah. There are difficulties in the way of assuming both together. Both style and material of J seem more archaic than E. J is more sec ular, E more careful to preserve the religious tone.* These phenomena naturally lead to the conclusion that J is older, especially if, as seems probable, one is dependent upon the other more or less indirectly. Also the external evidence, it will be remembered, can be traced further back for J than for E. On the other hand, an origin in less prosperous Judah might account for a less developed literary product, and it is hard to accept the very considerable evidence for the southern origin of J and at the same time account otherwise than by dependence upon E for the fact of his including the same list of sanctuaries (all Ephraimite but one), as E, whose Ephraimite procli-vities are so marked as to be universally conceded among critics. Hence Kuenen, convinced of the earlier origin of J, considers the document Ephraimite and E as merely emphasizing its national tendenz. The solution is perhaps to be found in the fact that both J and E may draw from an elohistic, Ephraimite (poetic ?) source, E being the later, and the common material of the two be thus only indirectly related. To this source J may well have added his southern material and modified its Ephraimite character, though he did not remove it. The contrasts between J and E in style, phraseology and religious conceptions are striking *Cf. Jacob's overreaching of Laban in J xxx. 41-43 with God's providential favor ing of Jacob in E xxxi. 7-9 ; similarly xxx. 14-16 (J) with i7f . (E) ; xii. 13 (J), with xx. 12 (E) ; xvi. 6f. (J), with xxi. 11-13 (E) ; and see xiv. 5-8, 1. ipf., and other E passages. THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. 63 and interesting ; as, for example, the revelation by dream or by a voice "from heaven" in E (cf. Num. xii. 6-8), in con trast to the personal interviews with Yahweh related by J. Certain modes of expression, as e. g. E's formula of address. Gen. xxii. i, 7, 11, etc., and contrasted historical conceptions, are interesting, but belong rather to the details of analysis than to our present general characterization. 16. We bring to a close our theory and method, and our presentation of the outline of the argument of historical criticism of the Pentateuch, by calling the attention of the reader to the revolution which must follow from it, if adopted, in current modes of conceiving the history of Israel. Instead of starting at the summit and rehearsing nothing but a long series of lapses and reinstatements, the history thus conceived discloses a connected development, a wavering but neverthe less constant line of advance in the development of the religious consciousness of Israel ; first the prophet, the creative genius, emphasizing the moral law ; then the priest and scribe, the conservative power, developing ritual form. From the simple idyllic transcripts of the folk-lore and national tradi tion which served as the earliest channel by which the devo tion of the prophets to Yahweh the God of Israel, the God of Righteousness, was transfused into the veins of the common people, down to the epoch-making Deuteronomic Code, and to the Priestly Legislation, protecting, even while it restricted and seemed almost to stifle beneath its panoply, the germs of religious life in the beginnings of Judaism, we have a pro gressive revelation of God, a continuous development of the Hebrew religious consciousness. In this development the creative element is the inspired genius of prophetism, appre hending God in history, and in the conscience ; the corrective element is the providential course of events, persistently pruning and training the conception ; and the conservative element, the ritual law. Hebrew history and Hebrew litera ture, placed side by side and studied by the inductive methods of criticism, lead up to this as a scientific statement of the 64 THE SCIENCE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM. doctrine of Divine Revelation, and to the Bible as the ripest and most perfect fruit of this spiritual evolution. Many doubtless will continue to cling to the tradition of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, as men long clung to the Davidic authorship of the Psalms. But those who have witnessed the quiet superseding of this now obsolete idea by that of historical criticism, presenting the Psalm- book as a conglomerate which unites in one collection fruits of the religious thought and feeling of Israel during many centuries, have no excuse for regarding the exactly analogous treatment of the heterogeneous elements of the Hexateuch as necessarily subversive of religious faith. Rather let us, with the genuine faith in divine revelation of the late Dean Stanley, see in the results of criticism a dis covery of " Bibles within the Bible," — a discovery which testifies to the continuous operation and guidance of the Spirit of Truth in the history of spiritual life in Israel, exactly as the geologist's strata, layer upon layer, bear witness with their embedded fossil survivals of a pre-historic age to the continuous work of the Creator in the sphere of physical life. For here also are " tables of stone -written with the finger of God ;" here also are " prophets which have been since the world began." CHAPTER ni. Pentateuchal ANALTSis.*t A few words touching the field of controversy are needed in order to a correct idea of the theories and the stand-point of the authorities cited. The prevailing theory is the Grafian. Graf's followers, pre-eminent among whom are Kuenen and Wellhausen, consider the " prophetic," so-called ( JE), to be the older of the two main sources of the Hexateuch. JE itself is composite, a close amalgamation of two kindred narratives of Hebrew history. J (circ. 800) and E (circ. 750) circulated for a time independently, and were more or less modified. After the destruction of Ephraim and the discovery of Deuteronomy (621) -whose origin also must be placed at about this period (650-621), J and E were united into a closely welded whole, and soon after, Deuteronomy, which had, mean time, received an introduction and an appendix, was incorporated.! These two processes necessitated further interpolation and modifica- / T I -px I -r\ tion, and for a considerable period -'^- — ^5s~ = JED circulated as a well-rounded "prophetic" compilation. But with the interruption of the cultus by the exile began the process of codification of the Levitical, • The subjoined articles were printed in Hebraica, IV. 4 and V. 1 (July and Octo ber, 1888), and were intended as a basis for the diseussion of the Pentateuchal Question in the columns of that journal; but also, as appears from the note follow ing, as a, preliminary to the present volume then In preparation. Lack of space has unfortunately compelled the omission of the foot-notes which contained the divergent analyses of the authorities cited on page 68, and of course also of the analyses of later critics by which the articles had been brought down to date by the author. The omission is the less serious from the fact that the articles them- selTes are accessible, and moreover from the fact that it was their most striking result to prove an almost exact coincidence in the analyses of independent critics, Instead of the " conflicting results " which have been erroneously ascribed to them. With the exception noted the articles are reproduced substantially in their original form. t A Tabular Presentation according to Eepresentatives of the Prin- crPAL Schools of Higher Criticism, including Fragments and Portions ASSIGNED TO Editors, Interpolators, Compilers and Glossators. The writer has in preparation a volume embodying the subjoined analysis and presenting J, E, and P conjecturally restored. * Wellhausen holds that the amalgamation of J and E preceded the origin of D. 5 (65) 66 PENTATEUCHAL ANALYSIS. ritual law. Heretofore it had been consuetudinary, tradition and the living praxis having suflSced for its transmission. Ezekiel (40-48)* inaugurated the new system of a written Torah, which progressed during the exile with the formation of the code known as the Eeilig- keitsgesete, Pi (Lev. 17-26), an antique body of laws midway in tone between Deuteronomy and the priestly legislation. It culminated in the priestly code, F-. This great work drew from JE a sketch of the history, made from its own stand-point. It was subsequently enlarged by the incorporation of Pi and by expansions and additions desig nated P3. Ezra introduced it as the constitution of the post-exilic hierarchical state. A flnal redactor, B., combined P with JED at some time between Ezra's promulgation thereof (444 B. C.) and the appear ance of the LXX. version (circ. 280 B. C). We might express the 1, *v. * , TT 4. u (J-l-E)-|-D-|-(Fi-t-P2-fP3)^ process by the formula : Hexateuch = i-=^^ — ' ' . ' ^ !— =— ! ¦'.+ Rje Rd R ' Against the Grafians a minority of critics under the able leadership of Dillmann still maintain the older theory, in a modifled form. This school nearly coincides with the Grafian in the date and origin assigned to the prophetic narrative JE, and to Deuteronomy ; but insists upon an earlier origin for P. Dillmann describes the development of the priestly element (P) somewhat as foUows ; The most ancient portions of P are more properly to be considered a cluster of fragments, most densely aggregated together in liev. 17-26, but scattered also throughout the middle portion of the Hexateuch from Ex. 31 to Num. 15. In a certain sense they may be considered as having a common " source," since attempts at codification were made probably as early as the period of Jehoshaphat, the material itself being consuetudinary law transmitted in certain cases from a period as remote as the flrst centuries after the conquest. But this source Pi (Dill. S) shows no such unity of design as to enable us to treat it as a speciflc document. On the contrary certain portions were incorporated by P2 and worked over by him, certain others were taken up by R after complete recasting at his hand, still others adopted in an unassimilated form. J * Throughout the article, chapters are distinguished from verses by means of bold-faced type. t The denominators in the formulae are thus placed to indicate the fact that their relation to the factors beneath which they stand is that of compilers and editors. X The Hypothesis broached in Dill. ii. of a version of S (Pi) worked over and Incorporated by C (PiJ) is withdrawn In Dill, in., p. 633; hence the only remaining versions of Pi recognized by. him are Pips and Pir. Prom these are to be distin guished perhaps unadulterated fragments Pi (in., pp. 633-670). PENTATEUQHAL ANALYSIS. ^7 But the differences still remaining between these various fragments of Pi, after allowance has been made for the double redaction of P2 and R in the one case and of R alone in the other, is too great to admit of their having existed together in a single code. Two codes of Pi at least were current, beside indi-vidual toroth, and the process of redac tion of Pi extended demonstrably into the Exile. A considerable group of fragments from one of these (including its hortatory conclu sion, Lev. 26:3-45), still exhibiting its characteristic point of view of "holiness," is preserved to us in Leviticus 17-26, worked over, how ever, by P2. P2, for whom the date 800 B. C. is approximately determined by Dill mann, is held to be dependent for his historical material largely upon E (900-850 B. C), also upon the sources of J, which are frequently very ancient. Here and there he has ancient historical material of his own, but his richest sources are of course the priestly toroth. In the first half of the eighth century appeared J, dependent largely upon E, but also using P2, though writing from a totally different stand-point. As a popular -writer he has access to popular sources. R's work consisted simply in the simultaneous combination of E, P^, J, and parts of Pi. Very rarely does he use the pen ; but in the transposition, clipping, and piecing of his material he shows the utmost freedom. Deuteron omy, the latest document of the Hexateuch, was added by a later redactor, R, E', D^, include all elements not of an editorial character which have been appended to the original "prophetic" documents. Notes intended according to the critics for harmonizing JE and E, or for the union of JE to D, and glosses and interpolations in general of a minor character, supposed to have preceded the union of JED to P, are included under R