Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/113



[] $24. 25. 30$, $29. 30$,  $11. 12. 21. 24. 25$,  $10$,  $22. 28$,, $21. 24. 25. 26. 28. 30$, ,  $20. 21$, and  in 2$4a$.—Comp. the lists in Di. p. 1; Gu. p. 107, and OH, i. 208-220; and for details see the Commentary below.—Of even greater value as a criterion of authorship is the unmistakable literary manner of the Priestly historian. The orderly disposition of material, the strict adherence to a carefully thought out plan, the monotonous repetition of set phraseology, the aim at exact classification and definition, and generally the subordination of the concrete to the formal elements of composition: these are all features of the 'juristic' style cultivated by this school of writers,—"it is the same spirit that has shaped Gn. 1 and Gn. 5" (Gu.).—On the artistic merits of the passage very diverse judgments have been pronounced. Gu., whose estimate is on the whole disparaging, complains of a lack of poetic enthusiasm and picturesqueness of conception, poorly compensated for by a marked predilection for method and order. It is hardly fair to judge a prose writer by the requirements of poetry; and even a critic so little partial to P as We. is impressed by "the majestic repose and sustained grandeur" of the narrative, especially of its incomparable exordium (Prol.$6$ 297). To deny to a writer capable of producing this impression all sense of literary effect is unreasonable; and it is perhaps near the truth to say that though the style of P may, in technical descriptions or enumerations, degenerate into a pedantic mannerism (see an extreme case in Nu. 7), he has found here a subject suited to his genius, and one which he handles with consummate skill. It is a bold thing to desiderate a treatment more worthy of the theme, or more impressive in effect, than we find in the severely chiselled outlines and stately cadences of the first chapter of Genesis.

In speaking of the style of P it has to be borne in mind that we are dealing with the literary tradition of a school rather than with the idiosyncrasy of an individual. It has, indeed, often been asserted that this particular passage is obviously the composition 'at one heat' of a single writer; but that is improbable. If the cosmogony rests ultimately on a Babylonian model, it "must have passed through a long period of naturalisation in Israel, and of gradual assimilation to the spirit of Israel's religion before it could have reached its present form" (Dri. Gen. 31). All, therefore, that is necessarily implied in what has just been said is that the later stages of that process must have taken place under the auspices of the school of P, and that its work has entered very deeply into the substance of the composition.—Of the earlier stages we can say little except that traces of them remain in those elements which do not agree with the ruling ideas of the last editors. Bu. has sought to prove that the story had passed through the school of J before being adopted by that of P; that it was in fact the form into which the cosmogony had been thrown by the writer called J$2$. Of direct evidence for that hypothesis (such as would be supplied by allusions to Gn. 1 in other parts of J$2$) there is none: it is an inference deduced mainly from these premises: (1) that the creation story shows traces of overworking which presuppose the existence of an older Heb. recension; (2) that in all other sections of the prehistoric