INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. Introductory: Canonical position of the book—its general scope—and title.

The Book of Genesis (on the title see at the end of this §) forms the opening section of a comprehensive historical work which, in the Hebrew Bible, extends from the creation of the world to the middle of the Babylonian Exile (2 Kings 25³⁰). The tripartite division of the Jewish Canon has severed the later portion of this work (Joshua‒Kings), under the title of the “Former Prophets” (הנביאים הראשונים), from the earlier portion (Genesis‒Deuteronomy), which constitutes the Law (התורה),—a seemingly artificial bisection which results from the Tôrāh having attained canonical authority soon after its completion in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, while the canonicity of the Prophetical scriptures was not recognised till some centuries later.¹ How soon the division of the Tôrāh into its five books (חמשה חומשי התורה: ‘the five fifths of the Law’) was introduced we do not know for certain; but it is undoubtedly ancient, and in all probability is due to the final redactors of the Pentateuch.² In the case of Genesis, at all events, the division is obviously appropriate. Four centuries of complete silence lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the history of a nation as contrasted with that of a family; and its prevailing character of individual biography suggests that its traditions are of a different quality, and have a different origin, from the national traditions preserved in Exodus and the succeeding books. Be that as it may, Genesis is a unique and well-rounded whole; and there is no book of the Pentateuch, except Deuteronomy, which so readily lends itself to monographic treatment.

¹ See Ryle, Canon of the Old Testament, chapters iv. v.; Wildeboer, Origin of the Canon of the Old Testament², 27 ff., 101 ff.; Buhl, Kanon und Text des Alten Testaments, 8 f.; Budde, article ‘Canon,’ in Encyclopædia Biblica, and Woods, ‘Old Testament Canon,’ in A Dictionary of the Bible.

² Kuenen, Onderzoek, i. pages 7, 331. The earliest external evidence of the fivefold division is Philo, De Abrahamo, initial (Τῶν ἱερῶν νόμων ἐν πέντε βίβλοις ἀναγραφέντων, ἡ πρώτη καλεῖται καὶ ἐπιγράφεται Γένεσις, ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως, ἣν ἐν ἀρχῇ περιέχει, λαβοῦσα τὴν πρόσρησιν· καίτοι κτλ.); Josephus, Against Apion i. 39. It is found, however, in The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch and LXX, and seems to have served as a model for the similar division of the Psalter. That it follows natural lines of cleavage is shown by Kuenen (ll.cc.); and there is no reason to doubt that it is as old as the canonisation of the Tôrāh.

Genesis may thus be described as the Book of Hebrew Origins. It is a peculiarity of the Pentateuch that it is Law-book and history in one: while its main purpose is legislative, the laws are set in a framework of narrative, and so, as it were, are woven into the texture of the nation’s life. Genesis contains a minimum of legislation; but its narrative is the indispensable prelude to that account of Israel’s formative period in which the fundamental institutions of the theocracy are embedded. It is a collection of traditions regarding the immediate ancestors of the Hebrew nation (chapters 12‒50), showing how they were gradually isolated from other nations and became a separate people; and at the same time how they were related to those tribes and races most nearly connected with them. But this is preceded (in chapters 1‒11) by an account of the origin of the world, the beginnings of human history and civilisation, and the distribution of the various races of mankind. The whole thus converges steadily on the line of descent from which Israel sprang, and which determined its providential position among the nations of the world. It is significant, as already observed, that the narrative stops short just at the point where family history ceases with the death of Joseph, to give place after a long interval to the history of the nation.

The Title.—The name ‘Genesis’ comes to us through the Vulgate from the LXX, where the usual superscription is simply Γένεσις (LXX^{EM, most cursives}), rarely ἡ γένεσις (LXX⁷²), a contraction of Γένεσις κόσμου (LXX^{A, 121}). An interesting variation in one cursives. (129)—ἡ βίβλος τῶν γενέσεων (compare 2⁴ 5¹)¹—might tempt one to fancy that the scribe had in view the series of Tôlĕdôth (see page xxxiv), and regarded the book as the book of origins in the wide sense expressed above. But there is no doubt that the current Greek title is derived from the opening theme of the book, the creation of the world.²—So also in Syriac (sephrå dabrīthå), Theodore of Mopsuestia (ἡ κτίσις), and occasionally among the Rabbis (ספר יצירה).—The common Jewish designation is בראשית, after the first word of the book (Origen, in Eusebius Church History, vi. 25; Jerome, Prologus Galeatus, and Questions on Genesis); less usual is חומש ראשון, ‘the first fifth.’—Only a curious interest attaches to the unofficial appellation ספר הישר (based on 2 Samuel 1¹⁸) or ס׳ הישרים (the patriarchs) see Carpzov, Introductio in libros canonicos bibliorum Veteris Testamenti page 55; Delitzsch, 10.

¹ Cambridge Septuagint, page 1.

² See the quotation from Philo on page i above; and compare Pseudo-Athanasius De synposis scripturæ sacræ 5.

A. Nature of the Tradition.

§ 2. History or Legend?

The first question that arises with regard to these ‘origins’ is whether they are in the main of the nature of history or of legend,—whether (to use the expressive German terms) they are Geschichte, things that happened, or Sage, things said. There are certain broad differences between these two kinds of narrative which may assist us to determine to which class the traditions of Genesis belong.

History in the technical sense is an authentic record of actual events based on documents contemporary, or nearly contemporary, with the facts narrated. It concerns itself with affairs of state and of public interest,—with the actions of kings and statesmen, civil and foreign wars, national disasters and successes, and such like. If it deals with contemporary incidents, it consciously aims at transmitting to posterity as accurate a reflexion as possible of the real course of events, in their causal sequence, and their relations to time and place. If written at a distance from the events, it seeks to recover from contemporary authorities an exact knowledge of these circumstances, and of the character and motives of the leading personages of the action.—That the Israelites, from a very early period, knew how to write history in this sense, we see from the story of David’s court in 2 Samuel and the beginning of 1 Kings. There we have a graphic and circumstantial narrative of the struggles for the succession to the throne, free from bias or exaggeration, and told with a convincing realism which conveys the impression of first-hand information derived from the evidence of eye-witnesses. As a specimen of pure historical literature (as distinguished from mere annals or chronicles) there is nothing equal to it in antiquity, till we come down to the works of Herodotus and Thucydides in Greece.

Quite different from historical writing of this kind is the Volkssage,—the mass of popular narrative talk about the past, which exists in more or less profusion amongst all races in the world. Every nation, as it emerges into historical consciousness, finds itself in possession of a store of traditional material of this kind, either circulating among the common people, or woven by poets and singers into a picture of a legendary heroic age. Such legends, though they survive the dawn of authentic history, belong essentially to a pre-literary and uncritical stage of society, when the popular imagination works freely on dim reminiscences of the great events and personalities of the past, producing an amalgam in which tradition and phantasy are inseparably mingled. Ultimately they are themselves reduced to writing, and give rise to a species of literature which is frequently mistaken for history, but whose true character will usually disclose itself to a patient and sympathetic examination. While legend is not history, it has in some respects a value greater than history. For it reveals the soul of a people, its instinctive selection of the types of character which represent its moral aspirations, its conception of its own place and mission in the world; and also, to some indeterminate extent, the impact on its inner life of the momentous historic experiences in which it first woke up to the consciousness of a national existence and destiny.¹

¹ Compare Gordon, Early Traditions, 84: “As a real expression of the living spirit of the nation, a people’s myths are the mirror of its religious and moral ideals, aspirations, and imaginations.”

In raising the question to which department of literature the narratives of Genesis are to be referred, we approach a subject beset by difficulty, but one which cannot be avoided. We are not entitled to assume a priori that Israel is an exception to the general rule that a legendary age forms the ideal background of history: whether it be so or not must be determined on the evidence of its records. Should it prove to be no exception, we shall not assign to its legends a lower significance as an expression of the national spirit than to the heroic legends of the Greek or Teutonic races. It is no question of the truth or religious value of the book that we are called to discuss, but only of the kind of truth and the particular mode of revelation which we are to find in it. One of the strangest theological prepossessions is that which identifies revealed truth with matter-of-fact accuracy either in science or in history. Legend is after all a species of poetry, and it is hard to see why a revelation which has freely availed itself of so many other kinds of poetry—fable, allegory, parable—should disdain that form of it which is the most influential of all in the life of a primitive people. As a vehicle of religious ideas, poetic narrative possesses obvious advantages over literal history; and the spirit of religion, deeply implanted in the heart of a people, will so permeate and fashion its legendary lore as to make it a plastic expression of the imperishable truths which have come to it through its experience of God.

The legendary aspect of the Genesis traditions appears in such characteristics as these: (1) The narratives are the literary deposit of an oral tradition which, if it rests on any substratum of historic fact, must have been carried down through many centuries. Few will seriously maintain that the patriarchs prepared written memoranda for the information of their descendants; and the narrators nowhere profess their indebtedness to such records. Hebrew historians freely refer to written authorities where they used them (Kings, Chronicles); but no instance of this practice occurs in Genesis. Now oral tradition is the natural vehicle of popular legend, as writing is of history. And all experience shows that apart from written records there is no exact knowledge of a remote past. Making every allowance for the superior retentiveness of the Oriental memory, it is still impossible to suppose that an accurate recollection of bygone incidents should have survived twenty generations or more of oral transmission. Nöldeke, indeed, has shown that the historical memory of the pre-Islamic Arabs was so defective that all knowledge of great nations like the Nabatæans and Thamudites had been lost within two or three centuries.¹ (2) The literary quality of the narratives stamps them as products of the artistic imagination. The very picturesqueness and truth to life which are sometimes appealed to in proof of their historicity are, on the contrary, characteristic marks of legend (Dillmann, 218). We may assume that the scene at the well of Ḥarran (chapte 24) actually took place; but that the description owes its graphic power to a reproduction of the exact words spoken and the precise actions performed on the occasion cannot be supposed; it is due to the revivifying work of the imagination of successive narrators. But imagination, uncontrolled by the critical faculty, does not confine itself to restoring the original colours of a faded picture; it introduces new colours, insensibly modifying the picture till it becomes impossible to tell how much belongs to the real situation and how much to later fancy. The clearest proof of this is the existence of parallel narratives of an event which can only have happened once, but which emerges in tradition in forms so diverse that they may even pass for separate incidents (12^{10 ff.} ∥ 20^{1 ff.} ∥ 26^{6 ff.}; 16. ∥ 21^{8 ff.}; 15. ∥ 17, etc.).—(3) The subject-matter of the tradition is of the kind congenial to the folk-tale all the world over, and altogether different from transactions on the stage of history. The proper theme of history, as has been said, is great public and political events; but legend delights in genre pictures, private and personal affairs, trivial anecdotes of domestic and everyday life, and so forth,—matters which interest the common people and come home to their daily experience. That most of the stories of Genesis are of this description needs no proof; and the fact is very instructive.² A real history of the patriarchal period would have to tell of migrations of peoples, of religious movements, probably of wars of invasion and conquest; and accordingly most modern attempts to vindicate the historicity of Genesis proceed by way of translating the narratives into such terms as these. But this is to confess that the narratives themselves are not history. They have been simplified and idealised to suit the taste of an unsophisticated audience; and in the process the strictly historic element, down to a bare residuum, has evaporated. The single passage which preserves the ostensible appearance of history in this respect is chapter 14; and that chapter, which in any case stands outside the circle of patriarchal tradition, has difficulties of its own which cannot be dealt with here (see page 271 ff.).—(4) The final test—though to any one who has learned to appreciate the spirit of the narratives it must seem almost brutal to apply it—is the hard matter-of-fact test of self-consistency and credibility. It is not difficult to show that Genesis relates incredibilities which no reasonable appeal to miracle will suffice to remove. With respect to the origin of the world, the antiquity of man on the earth, the distribution and relations of peoples, the beginnings of civilisation, etc., its statements are at variance with the scientific knowledge of our time;³ and no person of educated intelligence accepts them in their plain natural sense. We know that angels do not cohabit with mortal women, that the Flood did not cover the highest mountains of the world, that the ark could not have accommodated all the species of animals then existing, that the Euphrates and Tigris have not a common source, that the Dead Sea was not first formed in the time of Abraham, etc. There is admittedly a great difference in respect of credibility between the primæval (chapters 1‒11) and the patriarchal (12‒50) traditions. But even the latter, when taken as a whole, yields many impossible situations. Sarah was more than sixty-five years old when Abraham feared that her beauty might endanger his life in Egypt; she was over ninety when the same fear seized him in Gerar. Abraham at the age of ninety-nine laughs at the idea of having a son; yet forty years later he marries and begets children. Both Midian and Ishmael were grand-uncles of Joseph; but their descendants appear as tribes trading with Egypt in his boyhood. Amalek was a grandson of Esau; yet the Amalekites are settled in the Negeb in the time of Abraham.⁴—It is a thankless task to multiply such examples. The contradictions and violations of probability and scientific possibility are intelligible, and not at all disquieting, in a collection of legends; but they preclude the supposition that Genesis is literal history.

¹ Amalekiter, page 25 f.

² Compare Winckler, Abraham als Babylonier, 7.

³ See Driver, The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes, XXXI ff. 19 ff.

⁴ See Reuss, Geschichte der Heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments², 167 f.

It is not implied in what has been said that the tradition is destitute of historical value. History, legendary history, legend, myth, form a descending scale, with decreasing emphasis on the historical element, and the lines between the first three are vague and fluctuating. In what proportions they are combined in Genesis it may be impossible to determine with certainty. But there are three ways in which a tradition mainly legendary may yield solid historical results. In the first place, a legend may embody a more or less exact recollection of the fact in which it originated. In the second place, a legend, though unhistorical in form, may furnish material from which history can be extracted. Thirdly, the collateral evidence of archæology may bring to light a correspondence which gives a historical significance to the legend. How far any of these lines can be followed to a successful issue in the case of Genesis, we shall consider later (§ 4), after we have examined the obviously legendary motives which enter into the tradition. Meanwhile the previous discussion will have served its purpose if any readers have been led to perceive that the religious teaching of Genesis lies precisely in that legendary element whose existence is here maintained. Our chief task is to discover the meaning of the legends as they stand, being assured that from the nature of the case these religious ideas were operative forces in the life of ancient Israel. It is a suicidal error in exegesis to suppose that the permanent value of the book lies in the residuum of historic fact that underlies the poetic and imaginative form of the narratives.¹

¹ On various points dealt with in this paragraph, see the admirable statement of A. R. Gordon, Early Traditions of Genesis, pages 76‒92.

§ 3. Myth and legend—Foreign myths—Types of mythical motive.

1. Are there myths in Genesis, as well as legends? On this question there has been all the variety of opinion that might be expected. Some writers, starting with the theory that mythology is a necessary phase of primitive thinking, have found in the Old Testament abundant confirmation of their thesis.¹ The more prevalent view has been that the mythopœic tendency was suppressed in Israel by the genius of its religion, and that mythology in the true sense is unknown in its literature. Others have taken up an intermediate position, denying that the Hebrew mind produced myths of its own, but admitting that it borrowed and adapted those of other peoples. For all practical purposes, the last view seems to be very near the truth.

¹ Goldziher, Der Mythos bei den Hebräern (1876).

For attempts to discriminate between myth and legend, see Tuch, pages I‒XV; Gunkel, page XVII; Höffding, Philosophy of Religion (Engish translation), 199 ff.; Gordon, 77 ff.; Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch, I. etc.—The practically important distinction is that the legend does, and the myth does not, start from the plane of historic fact. The myth is properly a story of the gods, originating in an impression produced on the primitive mind by the more imposing phenomena of nature, while legend attaches itself to the personages and movements of real history. Thus the Flood-story is a legend if Noah be a historical figure, and the kernel of the narrative an actual event; it is a myth if it be based on observation of a solar phenomenon, and Noah a representative of the sun-god (see page 180 f.). But the utility of this distinction is largely neutralised by a universal tendency to transfer mythical traits from gods to real men (Sargon of Agadé, Moses, Alexander, Charlemagne, etc.); so that the most indubitable traces of mythology will not of themselves warrant the conclusion that the hero is not a historical personage.—Gordon differentiates between spontaneous (nature) myths and reflective (ætiological) myths; and, while recognising the existence of the latter in Genesis, considers that the former type is hardly represented in the Old Testament at all. The distinction is important, though it may be doubted if ætiology is ever a primary impulse to the formation of myths, and as a parasitic development it appears to attach itself indifferently to myth and legend. Hence there is a large class of narratives which it is difficult to label either as mythical or as legendary, but in which the ætiological or some similar motive is prominent (see page xi ff.).

2. The influence of foreign mythology is most apparent in the primitive traditions of chapters 1‒11. The discovery of the Babylonian versions of the Creation- and Deluge-traditions has put it beyond reasonable doubt that these are the originals from which the biblical accounts have been derived (pages 45 ff., 177 f.). A similar relation obtains between the antediluvian genealogy of chapter 5 and Berossus’s list of the ten Babylonian kings who reigned before the Flood (page 137 f.). The story of Paradise has its nearest analogies in Iranian mythology; but there are faint Babylonian echoes which suggest that it belonged to the common mythological heritage of the East (page 90 ff.). Both here and in chapter 4 a few isolated coincidences with Phœnician tradition may point to the Canaanite civilisation as the medium through which such myths came to the knowledge of the Israelites.—All these (as well as the story of the Tower of Babel) were originally genuine myths—stories of the gods; and if they no longer deserve that appellation, it is because the spirit of Hebrew monotheism has exorcised the polytheistic notions of deity, apart from which true mythology cannot survive. The few passages where the old heathen conception of godhead still appears (1²⁶ 3^{22. 24} 6^{1 ff.} 11^{1 ff.}), only serve to show how completely the religious beliefs of Israel have transformed and purified the crude speculations of pagan theology, and adapted them to the ideas of an ethical and monotheistic faith.

The naturalisation of Babylonian myths in Israel is conceivable in a variety of ways; and the question is perhaps more interesting as an illustration of two rival tendencies in criticism than for its possibilities of actual solution. The tendency of the literary school of critics has been to explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian documents, and to bring it down to near the dates of our written Pentateuch sources.¹ Largely through the influence of Gunkel, a different view has come to prevail, viz., that we are to think rather of a gradual process of assimilation to the religious ideas of Israel in the course of oral transmission, the myths having first passed into Canaanite tradition as the result (immediate or remote) of the Babylonian supremacy prior to the Tell-Amarna period, and thence to the Israelites.² The strongest argument for this theory is that the biblical versions, both of the Creation and the Flood, give evidence of having passed through several stages in Hebrew tradition. Apart from that, the considerations urged in support of either theory do not seem to me conclusive. There are no recognisable traces of a specifically Canaanite medium having been interposed between the Babylonian originals and the Hebrew accounts of the Creation and the Flood, such as we may surmise in the case of the Paradise myth. It is open to argue against Gunkel that if the process had been as protracted as he says, the divergence would be much greater than it actually is. Again, we cannot well set limits to the deliberate manipulation of Babylonian material by a Hebrew writer; and the assumption that such a writer in the later period would have been repelled by the gross polytheism of the Babylonian legends, and refused to have anything to do with them, is a little gratuitous. On the other hand, it is unsafe to assert with Stade that the myths could not have been assimilated by Israelite theology before the belief in Yahwe’s sole deity had been firmly established by the teaching of the prophets. Monotheism had roots in Hebrew antiquity extending much further back than the age of written prophecy, and the present form of the legends is more intelligible as the product of an earlier phase of religion than that of the literary prophets. But when we consider the innumerable channels through which myths may wander from one centre to another, we shall hardly expect to be able to determine the precise channel, or the approximate date, of this infusion of Babylonian elements into the religious tradition of Israel.

¹ See Budde, Die biblische Urgeschichte, 1883), 515 f.; Kuenen, Theologisch Tijdschrift, xviii. (1884), 167 ff.; Kosters, i.b. xix. (1885), 325 ff., 344; Stade, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, (1895), 159 f., (1903), 175 ff.

² Schöpfung und Chaos (1895), 143 ff.; Genesis² (1902), 64 f. Compare Driver, The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes, 31.

It is remarkable that while the patriarchal legends exhibit no traces of Babylonian mythology, they contain a few examples of mythical narrative to which analogies are found in other quarters. The visit of the angels to Abraham (see page 302 f.), and the destruction of Sodom (page 311 f.), are incidents of obviously mythical origin (stories of the gods); and to both, classical and other parallels exist. The account of the births of Esau and Jacob embodies a mythological motive (page 359), which is repeated in the case of Zeraḥ and Pereẓ (chapter 38). The whole story of Jacob and Esau presents several points of contact with that of the brothers Hypsouranios (Šamem-rum) and Usōos in the Phœnician mythology (Usōos = Esau: see pages 360, 124). There appears also to be a Homeric variant of the incest of Reuben (page 427). These phenomena are among the most perplexing which we encounter in the study of Hebrew tradition.¹ We can as yet scarcely conjecture the hidden source from which such widely ramified traditions have sprung, though we may not on that account ignore the existence of the problem. It would be at all events a groundless anticipation that the facts will lead us to resolve the patriarchs into mythological abstractions. They are rather to be explained by the tendency already referred to (page ix), to mingle myth with legend by transferring mythical incidents to historic personages.

¹ See Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt, page LVI.

3. It remains, before we go on to consider the historical elements of the tradition, to classify the leading types of mythical, or semi-mythical (page ix), motive which appear in the narratives of Genesis. It will be seen that while they undoubtedly detract from the literal historicity of the records, they represent points of view which are of the greatest historical interest, and are absolutely essential to the right interpretation of the legends.¹

¹ The enumeration, which is not quite exhaustive, is taken, with some simplification, from Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt, page XVIII ff.

(a) The most comprehensive category is that of ætiological or explanatory myths; i.e., those which explain some familiar fact of experience by a story of the olden time. Both the questions asked and the answers returned are frequently of the most naïve and childlike description: they have, as Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt has said, all the charm which belongs to the artless but profound reasoning of an intelligent child. The classical example is the story of Paradise and the Fall in chapters 2, 3, which contains one explicit instance of ætiology (2²⁴: why a man cleaves to his wife), and implicitly a great many more: why we wear clothes and detest snakes, why the serpent crawls on his belly, why the peasant has to drudge in the fields, and the woman to endure the pangs of travail, etc. (page 95). Similarly, the account of creation explains why there are so many kinds of plants and animals, why man is lord of them all, why the sun shines by day and the moon by night, etc.; why the Sabbath is kept. The Flood-story tells us the meaning of the rainbow, and of the regular recurrence of the seasons: the Babel-myth accounts for the existing diversities of language amongst men. Pure examples of ætiology are practically confined to the first eleven chapters; but the same general idea pervades the patriarchal history, specialised under the headings which follow.

(b) The commonest class of all, especially in the patriarchal narratives, is what may be called ethnographic legends. It is an obvious feature of the narratives that the heroes of them are frequently personifications of tribes and peoples, whose character and history and mutual relationships are exhibited under the guise of individual biography. Thus the pre-natal struggle of Jacob and Esau prefigures the rivalry of ‘two nations’ (25²³); the monuments set up by Jacob and Laban mark the frontier between Israelites and Aramæans (31^{44 ff.}); Ishmael is the prototype of the wild Bedouin (16¹²), and Cain of some ferocious nomad-tribe; Jacob and his twelve sons represent the unity of Israel and its division into twelve tribes; and so on. This mode of thinking was not peculiar to Israel (compare the Hellen, Dorus, Xuthus, Aeolus, Achæus, Ion, of the Greeks);¹ but it is one specially natural to the Semites from their habit of speaking of peoples as sons (i.e. members) of the collective entity denoted by the tribal or national name (sons of Israel, of Ammon, of Ishmael, etc.), whence arose the notion that these entities were the real progenitors of the peoples so designated. That in some cases the representation was correct need not be doubted; for there are known examples, both among the Arabs and other races in a similar stage of social development, of tribes named after a famous ancestor or leader of real historic memory. But that this is the case with all eponymous persons—e.g. that there were really such men as Jerahmeel, Midian, Aram, Sheba, Amalek, and the rest—is quite incredible; and, moreover, it is never true that the fortunes of a tribe are an exact copy of the personal experiences of its reputed ancestor, even if he existed. We must therefore treat these legends as symbolic representations of the ethnological affinities between different tribes or peoples, and (to a less extent) of the historic experiences of these peoples. There is a great danger of driving this interpretation too far, by assigning an ethnological value to details of the legend which never had any such significance; but to this matter we shall have occasion to return at a later point (see page xix ff.).

¹ See Driver, The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes 112; Gordon, The Early Traditions of Genesis, 88.

(c) Next in importance to these ethnographic legends are the cult-legends. A considerable proportion of the patriarchal narratives are designed to explain the sacredness of the principal national sanctuaries, while a few contain notices of the origin of particular ritual customs (circumcision, chapter 17 [but compare Exodus 4^{24 ff.}]; the abstinence from eating the sciatic nerve, 32³³). To the former class belong such incidents as Hagar at Lahairoi (16), Abraham at the oak of Mamre (18), his planting of the tamarisk at Beersheba (21³³), Jacob at Bethel—with the reason for anointing the sacred stone, and the institution of the tithe—(28^{10 ff.}), and at Peniel (32^{24 ff.}); and many more. The general idea is that the places were hallowed by an appearance of the deity in the patriarchal period, or at least by the performance of an act of worship (erection of an altar, etc.) by one of the ancestors of Israel. In reality the sanctity of these spots was in many cases of immemorial antiquity, being rooted in the most primitive forms of Semitic religion; and at times the narrative suffers it to appear that the place was holy before the visit of the patriarch (see on 12⁶). It is probable that inauguration-legends had grown up at the chief sanctuaries while they were still in the possession of the Canaanites. We cannot tell how far such legends were transferred to the Hebrew ancestors, and how far the traditions are of native Israelite growth.

(d) Of much less interest to us is the etymological motive which so frequently appears as a side issue in legends of wider scope. ♦Speculation on the meaning and origin of names is fascinating to all primitive peoples; and in default of a scientific philology the most fantastic explanations are readily accepted. That it was so in ancient Israel could be easily shown from the etymologies of Genesis. Here, again, it is just conceivable that the explanation given may occasionally be correct (though there is hardly a case in which it is plausible); but in the majority of cases the real meaning of the name stands out in palpable contradiction to the alleged account of its origin. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find the same name explained in two different ways (many of Jacob’s sons, chapter 30), or to have as many as three suggestions of its historic origin (Ishmael, 16¹¹ 17²⁰ 21¹⁷; Isaac, 17¹⁷ 18¹² 21⁹). To claim literal accuracy for incidents of this kind is manifestly futile.

(e) There is yet another element which, though not mythical or legendary, belongs to the imaginative side of the legends, and has to be taken account of in interpreting them. This is the element of poetic idealisation. Whenever a character enters the world of legend, whether through the gate of history or through that of ethnographic personification, it is apt to be conceived as a type; and as the story passes from mouth to mouth the typical features are emphasised, while those which have no such significance tend to be effaced or forgotten. Then the dramatic instinct comes into play—the artistic desire to perfect the story as a lifelike picture of human nature in interesting situations and action. To see how far this process may be carried, we have but to compare the conception of Jacob’s sons in the Blessing of Jacob (chapter 49) with their appearance in the younger narratives of Joseph and his brethren. In the former case the sons are tribal personifications, and the characters attributed to them are those of the tribes they represent. In the latter, these characteristics have almost entirely disappeared, and the central interest is now the pathos and tragedy of Hebrew family life. Most of the brothers are without character or individuality; but the accursed Reuben and Simeon are respected members of the family, and the ‘wolf’ Benjamin has become a helpless child whom the father will hardly let go from his side. This, no doubt, is the supreme instance of romantic or ‘novelistic’ treatment which the book contains; but the same idealising tendency is at work elsewhere, and must constantly be allowed for in endeavouring to reach the historic or ethnographic basis from which the legends start.

§ 4. Historical value of the tradition.

It has already been remarked (page vii) that there are three chief ways in which an oral, and therefore legendary, tradition may yield solid historical results: first, through the retention in the popular memory of the impression caused by real events and personalities; secondly, by the recovery of historic (mainly ethnographic) material from the biographic form of the tradition; and thirdly, through the confirmation of contemporary ‘archæological’ evidence. It will be convenient to start with the last of these, and consider what is known about—

1. The historical background of the patriarchal traditions.—The period covered by the patriarchal narratives¹ may be defined very roughly as the first half of the second millennium (2000‒1500) B.C. The upper limit depends on the generally accepted assumption, based (somewhat insecurely, as it seems to us) on chapter 14, that Abraham was contemporary with Ḫammurabi, the 6th king of the first Babylonian dynasty. The date of Ḫammurabi is probably circa 2100 B.C.² The lower limit is determined by the Exodus, which is usually assigned (as it must be if Exodus 1¹¹ is genuine) to the reign of Merneptah of the Nineteenth Egyptian dynasty (circa 1234‒1214 B.C.). Allowing a sufficient period for the sojourn of Israel in Egypt, we come back to about the middle of the millennium as the approximate time when the family left Palestine for that country. The Hebrew chronology assigns nearly the same date as above to Abraham, but a much earlier one for the Exodus (circa 1490), and reduces the residence of the patriarchs in Canaan to 215 years; since, however, the chronological system rests on artificial calculations (see pages 135 f., 234), we cannot restrict our survey to the narrow limits which it assigns to the patriarchal period in Palestine. Indeed, the chronological uncertainties are so numerous that it is desirable to embrace an even wider field than the five centuries mentioned above.³

¹ The discussion in this section is confined to the patriarchal tradition, because it is only with regard to it that the question of essential historicity arises. Every one admits that the pre-historic chapters (1‒11) stand on a different footing, and there are few who would claim for them the authority of a continuous tradition.

² The date here assigned to Ḫammurabi is based on the recent investigations of Thureau-Dangin (Journal des Savants [1908], 190 ff.; Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xxi. [1908], 176 ff.), and Ungnad (Orientalische Litteraturzeitung [1908], 13 ff.); with whom Poebel (Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, xxi. 162 ff.) is in substantial agreement. The higher estimates which formerly prevailed depended on the natural assumption that the first three dynasties of the Royal Lists (first published in 1880 and 1884) reigned consecutively in Babylon. But in 1907, L. W. King (Chronicles concerning early Babylonian Kings) published new material, which showed conclusively that the Second dynasty, ruling over the ‘Country of the Sea,’ was at least partly, if not wholly, contemporaneous with the First and Third dynasties in Babylon. King himself and Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums², I. ii. 339 ff. [1909]) hold that the Third (Kaššite) dynasty followed immediately on the First; and that consequently the previous estimates of the chronology of the First dynasty have to be reduced by the total duration of the Second dynasty (368 years according to List A). The scholars cited at the head of this note consider, on the other hand, that the contemporaneousness was only partial, and that there was an interval of 176 years between the close of the First dynasty and the accession of the Third. The chief data are these: King’s new chronicle has proved beyond dispute (1) that Ilima-ilu, the founder of the Second dynasty, was contemporary with Samsu-iluna and Abi-ešu’, the 7th and 8th kings of the First dynasty; and (2) that Ea-gâmil, the last king of the Second dynasty, was an older contemporary of a certain Kaššite (king?), Kaštiliaš. Now, Kaštiliaš is the name of the 3rd king of the Kaššite dynasty; and the question is whether this Kaštiliaš is to be identified with the contemporary of Ea-gâmil. Thureau-Dangin, etc., answer in the affirmative, with the result stated above. King opposes the identification, and thinks the close of the Second dynasty coincides with a gap in the list of Kaššite kings (8th to 15th), where the name of Kaštiliaš may have stood. Meyer accepts the synchronism of Ea-gâmil with the third Kaššite king; but gets rid of the interregnum by a somewhat arbitrary reduction of the duration of the Second dynasty to about 200 years. For fuller information, the reader is referred to the lucid note in Driver, The Book of Genesis with Introduction and Notes⁷ XXVII. ff. (with lists).—King believes that his date for Ḫammurabi (circa 1958‒1916) facilitates the identification of that monarch with the Amraphel of Genesis 14 (see page 257 f. below), by bringing the interval between Abraham and the Exodus into nearer accord with the biblical data; but in view of the artificial character of the biblical chronology (v.s.), it is doubtful if any weight whatever can be allowed to this consideration.

³ Thus the Exodus is sometimes (in defiance of Exodus 1¹¹) put back to circa 1450 B.C. (Hommel, The Expository Times., x. [1899], 210 ff.; Orr, The Problem of the Old Testament, 422 ff.); while Eerdmans would bring it down to circa 1125 B.C. (Vorgeschichte Israels, 74; The Expositor 1908, September, 204). Joseph is by some (Marquart, Winckler, al.) identified with a minister of Amenophis IV. (circa 1380‒1360), by Eerdmans, Alttestamentliche Studien with a Semitic ruler at the very end of the Nineteenth dynasty (circa 1205). See page 501 f.

In the opinion of a growing and influential school of writers, this period of history has been so illumined by recent discoveries that it is no longer possible to doubt the essential historicity of the patriarchal tradition.¹ It is admitted that no external evidence has come to light of the existence of such persons as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, or even (with the partial exception of Joseph) of men playing parts at all corresponding to theirs. But it is maintained that contemporary documents reveal a set of conditions into which the patriarchal narratives fit perfectly, and which are so different from those prevailing under the monarchy that the situation could not possibly have been imagined by an Israelite of that later age. Now, that recent archæology has thrown a flood of light on the period in question, is beyond all doubt. It has proved that Palestinian culture and religion were saturated by Babylonian influences long before the supposed date of Abraham; that from that date downwards intercourse with Egypt was frequent and easy; and that the country was more than once subjected to Egyptian conquest and authority. It has given us a most interesting glimpse from about 2000 B.C. of the natural products of Canaan, and the manner of life of its inhabitants (Tale of Sinuhe). At a later time (Tell-Amarna letters) it shows the Egyptian dominion threatened by the advance of Hittites from the north, and by the incursion of a body of nomadic marauders called Ḫabiri (see page 218). It tells us that Jakob-el (and Joseph-el?) was the name of a place in Canaan in the first half of the 15th century (pages 360, 389 f.), and that Israel was a tribe living in Palestine about 1200 B.C.; also that Hebrews (‛Apriw) were a foreign population in Egypt from the time of Ramses II. to that of Ramses IV. (Heyes, Bibel und Ägypten: Abraham und seine Nachkommen in Ägypten 146 ff.; Eerdmans, Alttestamentliche Studien 52 ff.; The Expositor l.c. 197). All this is of the utmost value; and if the patriarchs lived in this age, then this is the background against which we have to set their biographies. But the real question is whether there is such a correspondence between the biographies and their background that the former would be unintelligible if transplanted to other and later surroundings. We should gladly welcome any evidence that this is the case; but it seems to us that the remarkable thing about these narratives is just the absence of background and their general compatibility with the universal conditions of ancient Eastern life.² The case for the historicity of the tradition, based on correspondences with contemporary evidence from the period in question, appears to us to be greatly overstated.

¹ Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 365: “Wir haben gezeigt, dass das Milieu der Vätergeschichten in allen Einzelheiten zu den altorientalischen Kulturverhältnissen stimmt, die uns die Denkmäler für die in Betracht kommenden Zeit bezeugen.”

² A striking illustration of this washing out of historical background is the contrast between the Genesis narratives and the Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe, from which Jeremias, (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 298 ff.) quotes at length in demonstration of their verisimilitude. While the latter is full of detailed information about the people among whom the writer lived, the former (except in chapters 14. 34. 38) have hardly any allusions (24³ 37^{15 f.}) to the aboriginal population of Palestine proper. Luther (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 156 f.) even maintains that the original Yahwist conceived Canaan as at this time an uninhabited country! Without going so far as that, we cannot but regard the fact as an indication of the process of abstraction which the narratives have undergone in the course of oral transmission. Would they appeal to the heart of the world as they do if they retained, to the extent sometimes alleged, the signature of an obsolete civilisation?

The line of argument that claims most careful attention is to the following effect: Certain legal customs presupposed by the patriarchal stories are now known to have prevailed (in Babylon) in the age of Ḫammurabi; these customs had entirely ceased in Israel under the monarchy; consequently the narratives could not have been invented by legend-writers of that period (Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 355 ff.). The strongest case is the truly remarkable parallel supplied by Code of Ḫammurabi 146 to the position of Hagar as concubine-slave in chapter 16 (below, page 285). Here everything turns on the probability that this usage was unknown in Israel in the regal period; and it is surely pressing the argumentum ex silentio too far to assert confidently that if it had been known it would certainly have been mentioned in the later literature. We must remember that Genesis contains almost the only pictures of intimate family life in the Old Testament, and that it refers to many things not mentioned later simply because there was no occasion to speak of them. Were twin-births peculiar to the ♦patriarchal period because two are mentioned in Genesis and none at all in the rest of the Old Testament? The fact that the custom of the concubine-slave has persisted in Mohammedan countries down to modern times, should warn us against such sweeping negations.—Again, we learn (ib. 358) that the simultaneous marriage with two sisters was permitted by ancient Babylonian law, but was proscribed in Hebrew legislation as incestuous. Yes, but the law in question (Leviticus 18¹⁸) is late; and does not its enactment in the Priestly-Code rather imply that the practice against which it is directed survived in Israel till the close of the monarchy?—The distinction between the mōhar, or purchase price of a wife, and the gift to the bride (ib.), should not be cited: the mōhar is an institution everywhere prevailing in early pastoral societies; it is known to Hebrew jurisprudence (Exodus 22¹⁶); its name is not old Babylonian; and even its transmutation into personal service is in accordance with Arab practice (page 383 below).¹—In short, it does not appear that the examples given differ from another class of usages, “die nicht spezifisch altbabylonisch sind, sondern auch spätern bez. intergentilen Rechtszuständen entsprechen, die aber ... wenigstens teilweise eine interessante Beleuchtung durch den Code Ḫammurabi erfahren.” The “interessante Beleuchtung” will be freely admitted.

¹ See S. A. Cook, Cambridge Biblical Essays, 79 f.

Still less has the new knowledge of the political circumstances of Palestine contributed to the direct elucidation of the patriarchal tradition, although it has brought to light certain facts which have to be taken into account in interpreting that tradition. The complete silence of the narratives as to the protracted Egyptian dominion over the country is very remarkable, and only to be explained by a fading of the actual situation from the popular memory during the course of oral transmission. The existence of Philistines in the time of Abraham is, so far as archæology can inform us, a positive anachronism. On the whole it must be said that archæology has in this region created more problems than it has solved. The occurrence of the name Yaḳob-el in the time of Thothmes III., of Asher under Seti I. and Ramses II., and of Israel under Merneptah; the appearance of Hebrews (Ḫabiri?) in Palestine in the 15th century, and in Egypt (‛Apriw?) from Ramses II. to Ramses IV., present so many difficulties to the adjustment of the patriarchal figures to their original background. We do not seem as yet to be in sight of a historical construction which shall enable us to bring these conflicting data into line with an intelligible rendering of the Hebrew tradition.

It is considerations such as these that give so keen an edge to the controversy about the genuineness of chapter 14. That is the only section of Genesis which seems to set the figure of Abraham in the framework of world history. If it be a historical document, then we have a fixed centre round which the Abrahamic traditions, and possibly those of the other patriarchs as well, will group themselves; if it be but a late imitation of history, we are cast adrift, with nothing to guide us except an uncertain and artificial scheme of chronology. For an attempt to estimate the force of the arguments on either side we must refer to the commentary below (page 271 ff.). Here, however, it is in point to observe that even if the complete historicity of chapter 14 were established, it would take us but a little way towards the authentication of the patriarchal traditions as a whole. For that episode confessedly occupies a place entirely unique in the records of the patriarchs; and all the marks of contemporary authorship which it is held to present are so many proofs that the remaining narratives are of a different character, and lack that particular kind of attestation. The coexistence of oral traditions and historic notices relating to the same individual proves that the former rest on a basis of fact; but it does not warrant the inference that the oral tradition is accurate in detail, or even that it faithfully reflects the circumstances of the period with which it deals. And to us the Abraham of oral tradition is a far more important religious personality than Abram the Hebrew, the hero of the exploit recorded in chapter 14.

2. Ethnological theories.—The negative conclusion expressed above (page xvii f.) as to the value of ancient Babylonian analogies to the patriarchal tradition, depends partly on the assumption of the school of writers whose views were under consideration: viz., that the narratives are a transcript of actual family life in that remote age, and therefore susceptible of illustration from private law as we find it embodied in the Code of Ḫammurabi. It makes, however, little difference if for family relations we substitute those of clans and peoples to one another, and treat the individuals as representatives of the tribes to which Israel traced its origin. We shall then find the real historic content of the legends in migratory movements, tribal divisions and fusions, and general ethnological phenomena, which popular tradition has disguised as personal biographies. This is the line of interpretation which has mostly prevailed in critical circles since Ewald;¹ and it has given rise to an extraordinary variety of theories. In itself (as in the hands of Ewald) it is not necessarily inconsistent with belief in the individual existence of the patriarchs; though its more extreme exponents do not recognise this as credible. The theories in question fall into two groups: those which regard the narratives as ideal projections into the past of relations subsisting, or conceptions formed, after the final settlement in Canaan;² and those which try to extract from them a real history of the period before the Exodus. Since the former class deny a solid tradition of any kind behind the patriarchal story, we may here pass them over, and confine our attention to those which do allow a certain substratum of truth in the pictures of the pre-Exodus period.

¹ History of Israel i. 363, 382, etc.

² So Wellhausen Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels⁶ 319 ff. [English translation 318 ff.], Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte 11 ff.; Stade Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. 145 ff., Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, i. 112 ff., 347 ff.

As a specimen of this class of theories, neither better nor worse than others that might be chosen, we may take that of Cornill. According to him, Abraham was a real person, who headed a migration from Mesopotamia to Canaan about 1500 B.C. Through the successive separations of Moab, Ammon, and Edom, the main body of immigrants was so reduced that it might have been submerged, but for the arrival of a fresh contingent from Mesopotamia under the name Jacob (the names, except Abraham’s, are all tribal or national). This reinforcement consisted of four groups, of which the Leah-group was the oldest and strongest. The tribe of Joseph then aimed at the hegemony, but was overpowered by the other tribes, and forced to retire to Egypt. The Bilhah-group, thus deprived of its natural support, was assailed by the Leah-tribes led by Reuben; but the attempt was foiled, and Reuben lost his birthright. Subsequently the whole of the tribes were driven to seek shelter in Egypt, when Joseph took a noble revenge by allowing them to settle by its side in the frontier province of Egypt (History of Israel, 29 ff.).

It will be seen that the construction hangs mainly on two leading ideas: tribal affinities typified by various phases of the marriage relation; and migrations. As regards the first, we have seen (page xii) that there is a true principle at the root of the method. It springs from the personification of a tribe under the name of an individual, male or female; and we have admitted that many names in Genesis have this significance, and probably no other. If, then, two eponymous ancestors (Jacob and Esau) are represented as twin brothers, we may be sure that the peoples in question were conscious of an extremely close affinity. If a male eponym is married to a female, we may presume (though with less confidence) that the two tribes were amalgamated. Or, if one clan is spoken of as a wife and another as a concubine, we may reasonably conclude that the latter was somehow inferior to the former. But beyond a few simple analogies of this kind (each of which, moreover, requires to be tested by the inherent probabilities of the case) the method ceases to be reliable; and the attempt to apply it to all the complex family relationships of the patriarchs only lands us in confusion.¹—The idea of migration is still less trustworthy. Certainly not every journey recorded in Genesis (e.g. that of Joseph from Hebron to Shechem and Dothan, 37^{14 ff.}: pace Steuernagel) can be explained as a migratory movement. Even when the ethnological background is apparent, the movements of tribes may be necessary corollaries of the assumed relationships between them (e.g. Jacob’s journey to Ḥarran: page 357); and it will be difficult to draw the line between these and real migrations. The case of Abraham is no doubt a strong one; for if his figure has any ethnological significance at all, his exodus from Ḥarran (or Ur) can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a migration of Hebrew tribes from that region. We cannot feel the same certainty with regard to Joseph’s being carried down to Egypt; it seems to us altogether doubtful if this be rightly understood as an enforced movement of the tribe of Joseph to Egypt in advance of the rest (see page 441).

¹ Guthe (Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 1‒6) has formulated a set of five rules which he thinks can be used (with tact!) in retranslating the genealogical phraseology into historical terms. There is probably not one of them which is capable of rigorous and universal application. Thus, the marriage of Jacob to Leah and Rachel does not necessarily imply that Jacob was a tribe which successively absorbed the two clans so named: it is just as likely that the union of Leah and Rachel with one another produced the entity called Jacob.

But it is when we pass from genealogies and marriages and journeys to pictorial narrative that the breakdown of the ethnological method becomes complete. The obvious truth is that no tribal relationship can supply an adequate motive for the wealth of detail that meets us in the richly coloured patriarchal legends; and the theory stultifies itself by assigning ethnological significance to incidents which originally had no such meaning. It will have been noticed that Cornill utilises a few biographical touches to fill in his scheme (the youthful ambition of Joseph; his sale into Egypt, etc.), and every other theorist does the same. Each writer selects those incidents which fit into his own system, and neglects those which would ♦embarrass it. Each system has some plausible and attractive features; but each, to avoid absurdity, has to exercise a judicious restraint on the consistent extension of its principles. The consequence is endless diversity in detail, and no agreement even in general outline.¹

¹ Luther (Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1901, 36 ff.) gives a conspectus of four leading theories (Wellhausen, Stade, Gunkel, Cornill), with the purpose of showing that the consistent application of the method would speedily lead to absurd results (46). He would undoubtedly have passed no different verdict on later combinations, such as those of Steuernagel, Die Einwanderung der israelitischen Stämme in Kanaan; Peters, Early Hebrew Story, 45 ff.; Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch: die Elohimquelle, 330 ff. etc.—What Grote has written about the allegorical interpretation of the Greek legends might be applied word for word to these theories: “The theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that after one or two simple and obvious steps, the way is no longer open, and he is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures” (History of Greece, edition, 1888, page 2).

It is evident that such constructions will never reach any satisfactory result unless they find some point of support in the history of the period as gathered from contemporary sources. The second millennium B.C. is thought to have witnessed one great movement of Semitic tribes to the north, viz., the Aramæan. About the middle of the millennium we find the first notices of the Aramæans as nomads in what is now the Syro-Arabian desert. Shortly afterwards the Ḫabiri make their appearance in Palestine. It is a natural conjecture that these were branches of the same migration, and it has been surmised that we have here the explanation of the tradition which affirms the common descent of Hebrews and Aramæans. The question then arises whether we can connect this fact with the patriarchal tradition, and if so with what stratum of that tradition. Isaac and Joseph are out of the reckoning, because neither is ever brought into contact with the Aramæans; Rebekah is too insignificant. Abraham is excluded by the chronology, unless (with Cornhill) we bring down his date to circa 1500, or (with Steuernagel) regard his migration as a traditional duplicate of Jacob’s return from Laban. But if Jacob is suggested, we encounter the difficulty that Jacob must have been settled in Canaan some generations before the age of the Ḫabiri. In the case of Abraham there may be a conflation of two traditions,—one tracing his nativity to Ḥarran and the other to Ur; and it is conceivable that he is the symbol of two migrations, one of which might be identified with the arrival of the Ḫabiri, and the other might have taken place as early as the age of Ḫammurabi. But these are speculations no whit more reliable than any of those dealt with above; and it has to be confessed that as yet archæology has furnished no sure basis for the reconstruction of the patriarchal history. It is permissible to hope that further discoveries may bring to light facts which shall enable us to decide more definitely than is possible at present how far that history can be explained on ethnological lines.¹

¹ To the whole class of theories considered above (those which try to go behind the Exodus), Luther (l.c. 44 f.) objects that they demand a continuous occupation of Palestine from the time when the legends were formed. He hints at a solution, which has been adopted in principle by Meyer (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 127 ff., 415, 433), and which if verified would relieve some difficulties, archæological and other. It is that two independent accounts of the origin of the nation are preserved: the Genesis-tradition, carrying the ancestry of the people back to the Aramæans, and the Exodus-tradition, which traces the origin of the nation no further than Moses and the Exodus. There are indications that in an earlier phase of the patriarchal tradition the definitive conquest of Canaan was carried back to Jacob and his sons (chapters 34. 38. 48²²); on Meyer’s view this does not necessarily imply that the narratives refer to a time subsequent to Joshua. A kernel of history may be recognised in both strands of tradition, on the assumption (not in itself a violent one) that only a section of Israel was in Egypt, and came out under Moses, while the rest remained in Palestine. The extension of the Exodus-tradition to the whole people was a natural effect of the consolidation of the nation; and this again might give rise to the story of Jacob’s migration to Egypt, with all his sons.

3. The patriarchs as individuals.—We come, in the last place, to consider the probability that the oral tradition, through its own inherent tenacity of recollection, may have retained some true impression of the events to which it refers. After what has been said, it is vain to expect that a picture true in every detail will be recoverable from popular tales current in the earliest ages of the monarchy. The course of oral tradition has been too long, the disturbing influences to which it has been exposed have been too numerous and varied, and the subsidiary motives which have grafted themselves on to it too clearly discernible, to admit of the supposition that more than a substantial nucleus of historic fact can have been preserved in the national memory of Israel. It is not, however, unreasonable to believe that such a historical nucleus exists; and that with care we may disentangle from the mass of legendary accretions some elements of actual reminiscence of the prehistoric movements which determined the subsequent development of the national life.¹ It is true that in this region we have as a rule only subjective impressions to guide us; but in the absence of external criteria a subjective judgement has its value, and one in favour of the historic origin of the tradition is at least as valid as another to the contrary effect.—The two points on which attention now falls to be concentrated are: (a) the personalities of the patriarchs; and (b) the religious significance of the tradition.

¹ Compare Winckler, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament³, 204: “Es ist nämlich immer wahrscheinlicher, dass ein grosses für die Entwicklung des Volkes massgebend gewordenes Ereigniss in seiner Geschlossenheit dem Gedächtniss besser erhalten bleibt als die Einzelheiten seines Herganges.”

(a) It is a tolerably safe general maxim that tradition does not invent names, or persons. We have on any view to account for the entrance of such figures as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph into the imagination of the Israelites; and amongst possible avenues of entrance we must certainly count it as one, that they were real men, who lived and were remembered. What other explanations can be given? The idea that they were native creations of Hebrew mythology (Goldziher) has, for the present at least, fallen into disrepute; and there remain but two theories as alternatives to the historic reality of the patriarchs: viz., that they were originally personified tribes, or that they were originally Canaanite deities.

The conception of the patriarchs as tribal eponyms, we have already seen to be admissible, though not proved. The idea that they were Canaanite deities is not perhaps one that can be dismissed as transparently absurd. If the Israelites, on entering Canaan, found Abraham worshipped at Hebron, Isaac at Beersheba, Jacob at Bethel, and Joseph at Shechem, and if they adopted the cult of these deities, they might come to regard themselves as their children; and in course of time the gods might be transformed into human ancestors around whom the national legend might crystallise. At the same time the theory is destitute of proof; and the burden of proof lies on those who maintain it. Neither the fact (if it be a fact) that the patriarchs were objects of worship at the shrines where their graves were shown, nor the presence of mythical traits in their biographies, proves them to have been superhuman beings.—The discussion turns largely on the evidence of the patriarchal names; but this, too, is indecisive. The name Israel is national, and in so far as it is applied to an individual it is a case of eponymous personification. Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (assuming these to be contractions of Yiẓḥaḳ-el, etc.) are also most naturally explained as tribal designations. Meyer, after long vacillation, has come to the conclusion that they are divine names (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, 249 ff.); but the arguments which formerly convinced him that they are tribal seem to us more cogent than those to which he now gives the preference. That names of this type frequently denote tribes is a fact; that they may denote deities is only a hypothesis. That they may also denote individuals (Yaḳub-ilu, Yašup-ilu) is true; but that only establishes a possibility, hardly a probability; for it is more likely that the individual was named after his tribe than that the tribe got its name from an individual.—The name Abram stands by itself. It represents no ethnological entity, and occurs historically only as the name of an individual; and though it is capable of being interpreted in a sense appropriate to deity, all analogy is in favour of explaining it as a theophorous human name. The solitary allusion to the biblical Abram in the monuments—the mention of the ‘Field of Abram’ in Shishak’s inscription (see page 244)—is entirely consistent with this acceptation.—It is probably a mistake to insist on carrying through any exclusive theory of the patriarchal personalities. If we have proved that Abram was a historical individual, we have not thereby proved that Isaac and Jacob were so also; and if we succeed in resolving the latter into tribal eponyms, it will not follow that Abraham falls under the same category.

There is thus a justification for the tendency of many writers to put Abraham on a different plane from the other patriarchs, and to concentrate the discussion of the historicity of the tradition mainly on his person. An important element in the case is the clearly conceived type of character which he represents. No doubt the character has been idealised in accordance with the conceptions of a later age; but the impression remains that there must have been something in the actual Abraham which gave a direction to the idealisation. It is this perception more than anything else which invests the figure of Abraham with the significance which it has possessed for devout minds in all ages, and which still resists the attempt to dissolve him into a creation of religious phantasy. If there be any truth in the description of legend as a form of narrative conserving the impression of a great personality on his age, we may venture, in spite of the lack of decisive evidence, to regard him as a historic personage, however dim the surroundings of his life may be.¹

¹ Compare Höffding, Philosophy of Religion 199 ff.: “Its essence [that of legend] consists in the idea of a wonderful personality who has made a deep impression on human life—who excited admiration, furnished an example, and opened new paths. Under the influence of memory, a strong expansion of feeling takes place: this in turn gives rise to a need for intuition and explanation, to satisfy which a process of picture-making is set in motion.... In legends ... the central interest is in the subject-matter, in the centripetal power, which depends on an intensification of memory rather than on any naïve personification and colouring....”

(b) It is of little consequence to know whether a man called Abraham lived about 2000 B.C., and led a caravan from Ur or Ḥarran to Palestine, and defeated a great army from the east. One of the evil effects of the controversial treatment of such questions is to diffuse the impression that a great religious value attaches to discussions of this kind. What it really concerns us to know is the spiritual significance of the events, and of the mission of Abraham in particular. And it is only when we take this point of view that we do justice to the spirit of the Hebrew tradition. It is obvious that the central idea of the patriarchal tradition is the conviction in the mind of Israel that as a nation it originated in a great religious movement, that the divine call which summoned Abraham from his home and kindred, and made him a stranger and sojourner on the earth, imported a new era in God’s dealings with mankind, and gave Israel its mission in the world (Isaiah 41^{8 f.}). Is this conception historically credible?

Some attempts to find historic points of contact for this view of Abraham’s significance for religion will be looked at presently; but their contribution to the elucidation of the biblical narrative seems to us disappointing in the extreme. Nor can we unreservedly assent to the common argument that the mission of Moses would be unintelligible apart from that of Abraham. It is true, Moses is said to have appealed to the God of the fathers; and if that be a literally exact statement, Moses built on the foundation laid by Abraham. But that the distinctive institutions and ideas of the Yahwe-religion could not have originated with Moses just as well as with Abraham, is more than we have a right to affirm. In short, positive proof, such as would satisfy the canons of historical criticism, of the work of Abraham is not available. What we can say is, in the first place, that if he had the importance assigned to him, the fact is just of the kind that might be expected to impress itself indelibly on a tradition dating from the time of the event. We have in it the influence of a great personality, giving birth to the collective consciousness of a nation; and this fact is of a nature to evoke that centripetal ‘intensification of memory’ which Höffding emphasises as the distinguishing mark and the preserving salt of legend as contrasted with myth. In the second place, the appearance of a prophetic personality, such as Abraham is represented to have been, is a phenomenon with many analogies in the history of religion. The ethical and spiritual idea of God which is at the foundation of the religion of Israel could only enter the world through a personal organ of divine revelation; and nothing forbids us to see in Abraham the first of that long series of prophets through whom God has communicated to mankind a saving knowledge of Himself. The keynote of Abraham’s piety is faith in the unseen,—faith in the divine impulse which drove him forth to a land which he was never to possess; and faith in the future of the religion which he thus founded. He moves before us on the page of Scripture as the man through whom faith, the living principle of true religion, first became a force in human affairs. It is difficult to think that so powerful a conception has grown out of nothing. As we read the story, we may well trust the instinct which tells us that here we are face to face with a decisive act of the living God in history, and an act whose essential significance was never lost in Israelite tradition.

The significance of the Abrahamic migration in relation to the general movements of religious thought in the East is the theme of Winckler’s interesting pamphlet, Abraham als Babylonier, Joseph als Aegypter (1903). The elevation of Babylon, in the reign of Ḫammurabi, to be the first city of the empire, and the centre of Babylonian culture, meant, we are told, a revolution in religion, inasmuch as it involved the deposition of Sin, the old moon-god, from the supreme place in the pantheon in favour of the ‘Deliverer Marduk,’ the tutelary deity of Babylon. Abraham, a contemporary, and an adherent of the older faith, opposed the reformation; and, after vainly seeking support for his protest at Ur and Ḥarran, the two great centres of the worship of Sin, migrated to Canaan, beyond the limits of Ḫammurabi’s empire, to worship God after his fashion. How much truth is contained in these brilliant generalisations it is difficult for an ordinary man to say. In spite of the ingenuity and breadth of conception with which the theory is worked out, it is not unfair to suggest that it rests mostly on a combination of things that are not in the Bible with things that are not in the monuments. Indeed, the only positive point of contact between the two data of the problem is the certainly remarkable fact that tradition does connect Abraham with two chief centres of the Babylonian moon-worship. But what we chiefly desiderate is some evidence that the worship of the moon-god had greater affinities with monotheism than the worship of Marduk, the god of the vernal sun. [The attempt to connect Joseph with the abortive monotheistic reform of Chuenaten (Amenophis IV.) is destitute of plausibility.]—To a similar effect Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 327 ff.: “A reform movement of protest against the religious degeneration of the ruling classes” was the motive of the migration (333), perhaps connected with the introduction of a new astronomical era, the Taurus-epoch (which, by the way, had commenced nearly 1000 years before! compare 66). The movement assumed the form of a migration—a Hegira—under Abraham as Mahdi, who preached his doctrine as he went, made converts in Ḥarran, Egypt, Gerar, Damascus, and elsewhere, finally establishing the worship of Yahwe at the sanctuaries of Palestine. This is to write a new Abrahamic legend, considerably different from the old.

§ 5. Preservation and collection of the traditions.

In all popular narration the natural unit is the short story, which does not too severely tax the attention of a simple audience, and which retains its outline and features unchanged as it passes from mouth to mouth.¹ A large part of the Book of Genesis consists of narratives of this description,—single tales, of varying length but mostly very short, each complete in itself, with a clear beginning and a satisfying conclusion. As we read the book, unities of this kind detach themselves from their context, and round themselves into independent wholes; and it is only by studying them in their isolation, and each in its own light, that we can fully appreciate their charm and understand, in some measure, the circumstances of their origin. The older stratum of the primæval history, and of the history of Abraham, is almost entirely composed of single incidents of this kind: think of the story of the Fall, of Cain and Abel, of Noah’s drunkenness, of the Tower of Babel; and again of Abraham in Egypt, of the flight or expulsion of Hagar, of the sacrifice of Isaac, etc., etc. When we pass the middle of the book, the mode of narration begins to change. The biography of Jacob is much more a consecutive narrative than that of Abraham; but even here the separate scenes stand out in their original distinctness of outline (e.g. the transference of the birthright, Jacob at Bethel, the meeting with Rachel at the well, the wrestling at Peniel, the outrage on Dinah, etc.). It is not till we come to the history of Joseph that the principle of biographical continuity gains the upper hand. Joseph’s story is, indeed, made up of a number of incidents; but they are made to merge into one another, so that each derives its interest from its relation to the whole, and ends (except the last) on a note of suspense and expectation rather than of rest. This no doubt is due to the greater popularity and more frequent repetition of the stories of Jacob and Joseph; but at the same time it bears witness to a considerable development of the art of story-telling, and one in which we cannot but detect some degree of professional aptitude and activity.

¹ Compare Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt page XXXII, to whose fine appreciation of the “Kunstform der Sagen” this § is greatly indebted.

The short stories of Genesis, even those of the most elementary type, are exquisite works of art, almost as unique and perfect in their own kind as the parables of our Lord are in theirs. They are certainly not random productions of fireside gossip, but bear the unmistakable stamp of individual genius (Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt page xxx). Now, between the inception of the legends (which is already at some distance from the traditional facts) and the written form in which they lie before us, there stretches an interval which is perhaps in some instances to be measured by centuries. Hence two questions arise: (1) What was the fate of the stories during this interval? Were they cast adrift on the stream of popular talk,—with nothing to secure their preservation save the perfection of their original form,—and afterwards collected from the lips of the people? Or were they taken in hand from the first by a special class of men who made it their business to conserve the integrity of the narratives, and under whose auspices the mass of traditional material was gradually welded into its present shape? And (2), how is this whole process of transmission and consolidation related to the use of writing? Was the work of collecting and systematising the traditions primarily a literary one, or had it already commenced at the stage of oral narration?

To such questions, of course, no final answers can be given. (1) It is not possible to discriminate accurately between the modifications which a narrative would undergo through constant repetition, and changes deliberately made by responsible persons. On the whole, the balance of presumption seems to us to incline towards the hypothesis of professional oversight of some sort, exercised from a very early time. On this assumption, too, we can best understand the formation of legendary cycles; for it is evident that no effective grouping of tradition could take place in the course of promiscuous popular recital. (2) As to the use of writing, it is natural to suppose that it came in first of all as an aid to the memory of the narrator, and that as a knowledge of literature extended the practice of oral recitation gradually died out, and left the written record in sole possession of the field. In this way we may imagine that books would be formed, which would be handed down from father to son, annotated, expanded, revised, and copied; and so collections resembling our oldest pentateuchal documents might come into existence.¹

¹ See Gilbert Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, page 92 ff.

Here we come upon one important fact which affords some guidance in the midst of these speculations. The bulk of the Genesis-tradition lies before us in two closely parallel and practically contemporaneous recensions (see page xliii ff. below). Since there is every reason to believe that these recensions were made independently of each other, it follows that the early traditions had been codified, and a sort of national epos had taken shape, prior to the compilation of these documents. When we find, further, that each of them contains evidence of earlier collections and older strata of tradition, we must assume a very considerable period of time to have elapsed between the formation of a fixed corpus of tradition and the composition of Yahwist and Elohist. Beyond this, however, we are in the region of vaguest conjecture. We cannot tell for certain what kind of authority had presided over the combination of the legends, nor whether it was first done in the oral or the literary stage of translation. We may think of the priesthoods of the leading sanctuaries as the natural custodians of the tradition:¹ the sanctuaries were at least the obvious repositories of the cult-legends pertaining to them. But we cannot indicate any sanctuary of such outstanding national importance as to be plausibly regarded as the centre of a national epic.² Or we may assign a conspicuous share in the work to the prophetic guilds which, in the time of Samuel, were foci of enthusiasm for the national cause, and might conceivably have devoted themselves to the propagation of the national tradition. Or, finally, we may assume, with Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt, that there existed in Israel, as among the Arabs, guilds of professional story-tellers, exercising their vocation at public festivals and such like gatherings, for the entertainment and instruction of the people. The one certainty is that a considerable time must be allowed for the complex mental activities which lie behind our earliest literary sources. It is true that the rise of a national epos presupposes a strongly developed consciousness of national unity; but in Israel the national ideal was much older than its realisation in the form of a state, and therefore we have no reason for placing the unification of the traditions later than the founding of the monarchy. From the age of Samuel at least all the essential conditions were present; and a lower limit than that will hardly meet the requirements of the case.

¹ Compare Stade, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, i. 347 ff.

² Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch: die Elohimquelle,however (392 f.), suggests Shiloh as the place where the national legend was developed.

We may here refer to a matter of great importance in its bearing on the possibility of accurate oral transmission of the legends: viz. the recent effort of Sievers (Metrische Studien, ii., 1904‒5) to resolve the whole of Genesis into verse. If his theory should be established, it would not merely furnish the most potent instrument of literary analysis conceivable, but it would render credible a very high degree of verbal exactitude during the period of unwritten tradition. The work of Sievers is viewed with qualified approval both by Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt (page xxix f.) and Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch: die Elohimquelle (210 ff.), and it is certain to evoke interesting discussion. The present writer, who is anything but a ‘Metriker von Fach,’ does not feel competent to pronounce an opinion on its merits. Neither reading aloud, nor counting of syllables, has convinced him that the scansion holds, or that Hebrew rhythm in general is so rigorously exact as the system demands. The prejudice against divorcing poetic form from poetic feeling and diction (of the latter there is no trace in what have been considered the prose parts of Genesis) is not lightly to be overcome; and the frequent want of coincidence between breaks in sense and pauses in rhythm disturbs the mind, besides violating what used to be thought a fundamental feature of Hebrew poetry. Grave misgivings are also raised by the question whether the Massoretic theory of the syllable is (as Sievers assumes) a reliable guide to the pronunciation and rhythm of the early Hebrew language. It seems therefore hazardous to apply the method to the solution of literary problems, whether by emendation of the text, or by disentanglement of sources.

B. Structure and Composition of the Book.

§ 6. Plan and Divisions.

That the Book of Genesis forms a literary unity has been a commonplace of criticism since the maiden work of Ewald¹ put an end to the Fragmentary Hypothesis of Geddes and Vater. The ruling idea of the book, as has already been briefly indicated (page ii), is to show how Israel, the people of God, attained its historical position among the nations of the world; in particular, how its peculiar relation to God was rooted in the moral greatness and piety of its three common ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and how through God’s promise to them it had secured an exclusive right to the soil of Canaan.² This purpose, however, appears less in the details of the history (which are obviously governed by a variety of interests) than in the scope and arrangement of the work as a whole, especially in the ‘framework’ which knits it together, and reveals the plan to which the entire narrative is accommodated. The method consistently followed is the progressive isolation of the main line of Israel’s descent by brief genealogical summaries of the collateral branches of the human family which diverge from it at successive points.

¹ Die Komposition der Genesis, kritisch untersucht (1823).—In that essay Ewald fell into the natural error of confusing unity of plan with unity of authorship,—an error, however, which he retracted eight years later (Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1831, 595 ff.), in favour of a theory (virtually identical with the so-called Supplementary Hypothesis) which did full justice to the unity and skilful disposition of the book, while recognising it to be the result of an amalgamation of several documents. The distinction has never since been lost sight of; and all subsequent theories of the composition of Genesis have endeavoured to reconcile the assumption of a diversity of sources with the indisputable fact of a clearly designed arrangement of the material. The view which is generally held does so in this way: three main documents, following substantially the same historical order, are held to have been combined by one or more redactors; one of these documents, being little more than an epitome of the history, was specially fitted to supply a framework into which the rest of the narrative could be fitted, and was selected by the redactor for this purpose; hence the plan which we discover in the book is really the design of one particular writer. It is obvious that such a conception quite adequately explains all the literary unity which the Book of Genesis exhibits.

² See Tuch, Commentar über die Genesis XVI ff.

A clue to the main divisions of the book is thus furnished by the editor’s practice of inserting the collateral genealogies (Tôlĕdôth) at the close of the principal sections (11^10‒30; 25^12‒18; 36).¹ This yields a natural and convenient division into four approximately equal parts, namely:

I. The Primæval History of mankind: i.‒xi.²

II. The History of Abraham: xii. 1‒xxv. 18.

III. The History of Jacob: xxv. 19‒xxxvi. 43.

IV. The Story of Joseph and his brethren: xxxvii.‒l.

A detailed analysis of the contents is given at the commencement of the various sections.

¹ The genealogies of 4^{17‒24. 25 f.} and 22^20‒24 do not count: these are not Tôlĕdôth, and do not belong to the document used as a framework. Chapter 10 (the Table of peoples) would naturally stand at the close of a section; but it had to be displaced from its proper position before 11¹⁰ to find room for the story of the Dispersion (11^1‒9). It may be said, however, that the Tôlĕdôth of Adam (chapter 5) should mark a main division; and that is probably correct, though for practical purposes it is better to ignore the subdivision and treat the primæval history as one section.

² Strictly speaking, the first part ends perhaps at 11²⁷ or ³⁰; but the actual division of chapters has its recommendation, and it is not worth while to depart from it.

It is commonly held by writers on Genesis that the editor has marked the headings of the various sections by the formula [וִ]אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדוֹת, which occurs eleven times in the book: 2^4a 5¹¹ 6⁹ 10¹ 11¹⁰ 11²⁷ 25¹² 25¹⁹ 36¹ 36⁹ 37². Transposing 2^4a to the beginning, and disregarding 36⁹ (both arbitrary proceedings), we obtain ten parts; and these are actually adopted by Franz Delitzsch, Neuer Commentar über die Genesis as the divisions of his commentary. But the scheme is of no practical utility,—for it is idle to speak of 11^10‒26 or 25^12‒18 as sections of Genesis on the same footing as 25¹⁹‒35²⁹ or 37²‒50²⁶; and theoretically it is open to serious objection. Here it will suffice to point out the incongruity that, while the histories of Noah and Isaac fall under their own Tôlĕdôth, those of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph fall under the Tôlĕdôth of their respective fathers. See, further, page 40 f.

¹ זָה סֵפֶר תולדות.

§ 7. The Sources of Genesis.

The Book of Genesis has always been the strategic position of Pentateuchal literary criticism. It was the examination of this book that led Astruc, in 1753,¹ to the important discovery which was the first positive achievement in this department of research. Having noticed the significant alternation of the divine names in different sections of the book, and having convinced himself that the phenomenon could not be explained otherwise than as due to the literary habit of two writers, Astruc proceeded to divide the bulk of Genesis into two documents, one distinguished by the use of the name אֱלֹהִים, and the other by the use of יְהֹוָה; while a series of fragmentary passages where this criterion failed him brought the total number of his mémoires up to twelve. Subsequent investigations served to emphasise the magnitude of this discovery, which Eichhorn² speedily put on a broader basis by a characterisation of the style, contents, and spirit of the two documents. Neither Astruc nor Eichhorn carried the analysis further than Exodus 2,—partly because they were influenced by the traditional opinion (afterwards abandoned by Eichhorn) of Mosaic authorship, and did not expect to find traces of composition in the history contemporaneous with Moses. We shall see presently that there is a deeper reason why this particular clue to the analysis could not at first be traced beyond the early chapters of Exodus.

¹ Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux, dont il paroît que Moyse s’est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse.

² Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 1780‒3 (1st edition).

While the earlier attempts to discredit Astruc’s discovery took the direction of showing that the use of the two divine names is determined by a difference of meaning which made the one or the other more suitable in a particular connexion, the more recent opposition entrenches itself mostly behind the uncertainties of the text, and maintains that the Versions (especially LXX) show the Massoretic Text to be so unreliable that no analysis of documents can be based on its data: see Klostermann, Der Pentateuch (1893), page 20 ff.; Dahse, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft., vi. (1903), 305 ff.; Redpath, American Journal of Theology, viii. (1904), 286 ff.; Eerdmans, Die Komposition der Genesis (1908), 34 ff.; Wiener, Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review (1909), 119 ff.—It cannot be denied that the facts adduced by these writers import an element of uncertainty into the analysis, so far as it depends on the criterion of the divine names; but the significance of the facts is greatly overrated, and the alternative theories propounded to account for the textual phenomena are improbable in the extreme. (1) So far as I have observed, no attention is paid to what is surely a very important factor of the problem, the proportion of divergences to agreements as between LXX and Massoretic Text. In Genesis the divine name occurs in one or other form about 340 times (in Massoretic Text, יהוה 143 times + אלהים 177 times + י׳ א׳ 20 times). The total deviations registered by Redpath (296 ff.) number 50; according to Eerdmans (34 f.) they are 49; i.e. little more than one-seventh of the whole. Is it so certain that that degree of divergence invalidates a documentary analysis founded on so much larger a field of undisputed readings? (2) In spite of the confident assertions of Dahse (309) and Wiener (131 f.) there is not a single instance in which LXX is ‘demonstrably’ right against Massoretic Text. It is readily conceded that it is probably right in a few cases; but there are two general presumptions in favour of the superior fidelity of the Massoretic tradition. Not only (a) is the chance of purely clerical confusion between κ̅ς and θ̅ς greater than between יהוה and אלהים, or even between י׳ and א׳, and (b) a change of divine names more apt to occur in translation than in transcription, but (c) the distinction between a proper name יהוה and a generic אלהים is much less likely to have been overlooked in copying than that between two appellatives κύριος and θεός. An instructive example is 4²⁶, where LXX κύριος ὁ θεός is ‘demonstrably’ wrong. (3) In the present state of textual criticism it is impossible to determine in particular cases what is the original reading. We can only proceed by the imperfect method of averages. Now it is significant that while in Genesis LXX substitutes θεός for יהוה 21 times, and κύριος ὁ θεός 19 times (40 in all), there are only 4 cases of κύριος and 6 of κύριος ὁ θεός for אלהים (10 in all: the proportions being very much the same for the whole Pentateuch). LXX thus reveals a decided (and very natural) preference for the ordinary Greek θεός over the less familiar κύριος. Dahse urges (page 308) that Massoretic Text betrays an equally marked preference for יהוה, and has frequently substituted it for אלהים; but that is much less intelligible. For although the pronunciation of יהוה as אֲדֹנָי might have removed the fear of the Tetragrammaton,—and that would be a very good reason for leaving יהוה where it was,—it suggests no motive at all for inserting it where it was not. There is force, however, in Gray’s remark on a particular case (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Numbers page 311), that “wherever [ὁ] κ̅ς appears in LXX it deserves attention as a possible indication of the original text.” (4) The documentary theory furnishes a better explanation of the alternation of the names than any other that has been propounded. Redpath’s hypothesis of a double recension of the Pentateuch, one mainly Yahwistic and the other wholly (?) Elohistic, of which one was used only where the other was illegible, would explain anything, and therefore explains nothing; least of all does it explain the frequent coincidence of hypothetical illegibility with actual changes of style, phraseology, and standpoint. Dahse (following out a hint of Klostermann) accounts for the phenomena of Massoretic Text (and The Samaritan Recension of the Pentateuch) by the desire to preserve uniformity within the limits of each several pericope of the Synagogue lectionary; but why some pericopes should be Yahwistic and others Elohistic, it is not easy to conceive. He admits that his view cannot be carried through in detail; yet it is just of the kind which, if true, ought to be verifiable in detail. One has but to read consecutively the first three chapters of Genesis, and observe how the sudden change in the divine name coincides with a new vocabulary, representation, and spiritual atmosphere, in order to feel how paltry all such artificial explanations are in comparison with the hypothesis that the names are distinctive of different documents. The experience repeats itself, not perhaps quite so convincingly, again and again throughout the book; and though there are cases where the change of manner is not obvious, still the theory is vindicated in a sufficient number of instances to be worth carrying through, even at the expense of a somewhat complicated analysis, and a very few demands (see page xlviii f.) on the services of a redactor to resolve isolated problems. (5) It was frankly admitted by Kuenen long ago (see Historisch-critisch Onderzoek naar het ontstaan en de verzameling van de boeken des Ouden Verbonds i. pages 59, 62) that the test of the divine names is not by itself a sufficient criterion of source or authorship, and that critics might sometimes err through a too exclusive reliance on this one phenomenon.¹ Nevertheless the opinion can be maintained that the Massoretic Text is far superior to the Versions, and that its use of the names is a valuable clue to the separation of documents. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction; and, however surprising it may appear to some, we can reconcile our minds to the belief that the Massoretic Text does reproduce with substantial accuracy the characteristics of the original autographs. At present that assumption can only be tested by the success or failure of the analysis based on it. It is idle to speculate on what would have happened if Astruc and his successors had been compelled to operate with LXX instead of Massoretic Text; but it is a rational surmise that in that case criticism would still have arrived, by a more laborious route, at very much the positions it occupies to-day.