Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/75



were recensions of a single document, differing in nothing but the use of or. What reasons, then, hinder us from deserting the critical view, and coming over to the side of Dr. Orr? In the first place, the difference between J and E is not confined to the divine names. The linguistic evidence is very much clearer than Dr. Orr represents; and differences of conception, though slight, are real. It is all very well to quote from candid and truth-loving opponents admissions of the close resemblance of the narratives, and the difficulty and uncertainty of the analysis, in particular instances, and to suggest that these admissions amount to a throwing up of the case; but no man with an independent grasp of the subject will be imposed on by so cheap a device. In the second place, J and E consist largely of duplicate narratives of the same event. It is true, this argument is lost on Dr. Orr, who has no difficulty in conceiving that Abraham twice told the same lie about his wife, and that his son Isaac followed his example, with very similar results in the three cases. But he will hardly affect to be surprised that other men take a more natural view, and regard the stories as traditional variations of the same theme.—(2) The second position is that P was never a distinct or self-subsisting document, but only a "framework" enclosing the contents of JE (341-377). Again we have to ask what Dr. Orr means by a 'framework,' which, in his own words, "has also, at certain points, its original, and, in parts, considerable contributions to bring to the history" (272); and how he can possibly tell that these original and considerable contributions did not come from an independent work. The facts that it is now closely interwoven with JE, and that there are gaps in its narrative (even if these gaps were more considerable than there is any reason to suppose), prove nothing except that it has passed through the hands of a redactor. That its history presupposes a knowledge of JE, and is too meagre to be intelligible apart from it, is amply explained by the critical view that the author wished to concentrate attention on the great religious turning-points in the history (the Creation, the Flood, the Covenant with Abraham, the Blessing of Jacob by Isaac, the origin of the name Israel, the Settlement in Egypt, etc.), and dismissed the rest with a bare chronological epitome. When we add that on all these points, as well as others, the 'original and considerable contributions' are (Dr. Orr's protestations notwithstanding) radically divergent from the older tradition, we have every proof that could be desired that P was an independent document, and not a mere supplementary expansion of an earlier compilation (see, further, p. lvii ff. below). But now, supposing Dr. Orr to have made good his contentions, what advantage has he gained? So far as we can see, none whatever! He does indeed go on to assert a preference for the term 'collaboration' as expressing the 'kind and manner of the activity which brought the Pentateuchal books into their present shape' (375). But that preference might just as easily have