reconstruct-recognizing in it a unity and completeness of its own.

2

1

This Elohistic history of the primeval world embraced the following sections: An account of the creation of the heavens and the earth; a genealogical list, reaching from Adam to Noah, or from the Creation to the Deluge; a history of the Flood, down to the death of Noah; and genealogical lists covering from Noah's sons to Abram; thus leading on to the story of the Hebrews. Though this continuousness of the Elohistic narration is not preserved in the later history, but is lost at times in the overlapping of other materials, yet this strong thread forms the warp of the whole Pentateuch, through which a woof of many colors is shot-the Grundschrift, or ground-writing, as the critics call it. Ewald called this work The Book of Origins."

VI.

There seems no room, then, to doubt that, however unable we are to completely unravel the texture of the Pentateuch into the original threads, this great book is in reality a woven tissue, three of the chief of whose strands we can fairly well pick out. Other threads doubtless were woven into this cloth of many colors, spun by other cunning hands.

1 Gen. i. ii. 3.

2 v.

1 xi. 10-26.

3

vi. 5; ix. 29-the Elohistic verses only. 5 See Note 3 to Chapter I.

Ewald thinks that he can pick out the work of seven different hands, and with thorough-going German confidence he proceeds to assign to each Narrator his special share of the Pentateuch. Davidson more modestly distinguishes four writers. Each critic has his own notion on this matter. In many of these fine distinctions there is an over-nicety of criticism, into which we need not care to follow the Masters; as there is often an over-positiveness of conclusion on which less learned folk can certainly not venture.

When the Masters have reached a reasonable unity of judgment concerning the minor elements of the book, or even concerning the exact apportionment to the two chief narrators of their respective contributions, it will be time for us scholars to try to reconstruct our Pentateuchs. We should not, however, turn our faces away from the light in which we can at least see, looming through the mist of time, the forms of the two great authors who, with the fervent Deuteronomist, undoubtedly wrote the bulk of the five-fold book, leaving it for some final editor, perhaps, to fashion their triple workmanship into its present shape.

This wonderful book is like the noble Mississippi, in whose bosom mingle the waters of three great rivers, which, rising far apart, have carried into the common stream very different elements from the soils through which they have flowed; the two largest branches

on their first meeting, rolling along side by side in clearly marked currents, while later on they mingle together in inextricable confusion; the imposing three-fold flood being ever fed, along its course, by other tributaries, into whose channels the springs of a nation have drained, to feed the mighty Father of Waters.

CHAPTER II.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH.

THE Pentateuch has sufficiently disclosed to us its internal structure to warrant our classing it under the usual type of early histories. It is, as we have plainly seen, a composite. Its fabric is woven out of many threads of history, three of the chief strands. of which we have been able to pick out, at least, here and there in the body of the work.

Who were these great authors, and when did they write?

I.

Tradition has assigned the Pentateuch to Moses; which, of course, would fix its date. In the light of the composite character of the Pentateuch which has opened upon us, such a traditional authorship necessarily limits itself, however, very considerably. Moses might have written one of the chief works which together compose the book; or he might have edited this triple work of others; or, at the utnost, he might have written the main contribution › this history and have united the labors of the ther two great authors with his own material, thus

fashioning the Pentateuch. There is nothing in the view of the book that we have thus far gained to deny the possibility of such a Mosaic authorship; and either of the two latter alternatives might be thought sufficient to validate the ancient tradition. Our elder scholars saw quite plainly that Moses must have drawn from much earlier sources in writing Genesis; whose conclusion was separated from his age by four hundred years. Luther put this theory in a naïf form:

66

Many things were written and described ere Moses was born. Doubtless Adam briefly noted the history of the creation, of his fall, of the promised seed, etc. The other patriarchs afterward, no doubt, each set down what was done in his time, especially Noah. Afterward Moses, as I conceive, took and brought all into a right method and order all which, doubtless, he had out of the sermons of the patriarchs that always one inherited from another." 1

But it will probably be confessed, by most dispassionate minds, that such an editing of this book in the age of Moses looks very improbable. It presupposes a considerable literary development among the Hebrews in a very early period,2 whereas the little that is known of them in those times reveals a rude semi-nomadic people, among whom no trace of "letters" is discernible.

What, then, are the grounds on which tradition has 1 Luther's Table Talk, & cxix.

2 Ante 1280 B.C.