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should have compiled a narrative from a number of detached legends which he reported just as he found them, regardless of their internal consistency. Nevertheless, there seems sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that (as Wellhausen has said) we have to do not merely with aggregates but with sequences; although to unravel perfectly the various strands of narrative may be a task for ever beyond the resources of literary criticism. Here it will suffice to indicate the principal theories.—(a) We. (Comp.$2$ 9-14) seems to have been the first to perceive that 4$1-16a$ is a late expansion based (as he supposed) on 4$16-24$ and on chs. 2, 3; that originally chs. 2-4 existed not only without 4$1-16a$, but also without 4$25f.$ and 5$29$; and that chs. 2. 3. 4$16-24$ 11$1-9$ form a connexion to which the story of the Flood is entirely foreign and irrelevant.—(b) The analysis was pushed many steps further by Budde (Biblische Urgeschichte, pass.), who, after a most exhaustive and elaborate examination, arrived at the following theory: the primary document (J$1$) consisted of 2$4b-9 16-25$ 3$1-19. 21$ 6$3$ 3$23$ 4$1. 2b[Greek: b]. 16b. 17-24$ 6$1. 2. 4.$ 10$9$ 11$1-9$ 9$20-27$. This was recast by J$2$ (substituting for down to 4$26$), whose narrative contained a Cosmogony (but no Paradise story), the Sethite genealogy, the Flood-legend, the Table of Nations, and a seven-membered Shemite genealogy. These two recensions were then amalgamated by J$3$, who inserted dislocated passages of J$1$ in the connexion of J$2$, and added 4$1-5$ 5$29$ etc. J$2$ attained the dignity of a standard official document, and is the authority followed by P at a later time. The astonishing acumen and thoroughness which characterise Budde's work have had a great influence on critical opinion, yet his ingenious transpositions and reconstructions of the text seem too subtle and arbitrary to satisfy any but a slavish disciple. One feels that he has worked on too narrow a basis by confining his attention to successive overworkings of the same literary tradition, and not making sufficient allowance for the simultaneous existence of relatively independent forms.—(c) Stade (ZATW, xiv. 274 ff. [= Ak. Reden u. Abh. 244-251]) distinguishes three main strata: (1) chs. 2. 3. 11$1-9$; (2) 4$25f. 17-22$ 9$20-27$ 10$9$? 6$1. 2$?; (3) the Flood-legend, added later to the other two, by a redactor who also compiled a Sethite genealogy (4$25f.$ 5$29$ ) and inserted the story of Cain and Abel, and the Song of Lamech (4$23f.$).—(d) Gunkel (Gen.$2$ 1 ff.) proceeds on somewhat different lines from his predecessors. He refuses in principle to admit incongruity as a criterion of source, and relies on certain verses which bear the character of connecting links between different sections. The most important is 5$29$ (belonging to the Sethite genealogy), where we read: "This (Noah) shall comfort us from our labour and from the toil of our hands on account of the ground which Yahwe has cursed." Here there is an unmistakable reference backward to 3$17$, and forward to 9$20ff.$. Thus we obtain a faultless sequence, forming the core of a document where was not used till 4$26$, and hence called J$e$, consisting of: one recension of the Paradise story; the (complete) Sethite genealogy; and Noah's discovery of wine. From this sequence are excluded obviously: the second recension of the Paradise story; the Cainite genealogy; and (as Gu. thinks) the Flood-legend, where Noah appears in quite a different character: these belong to a second docu