Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/80

 to hold the balance even between the claims of unity and complexity in the documents; but the theory of single authorship may easily be pressed too far. If we could get through with only a J$1$ and J$2$, E$1$, E$2$ etc.,—i.e., with the theory of one main document supplemented by a few later additions,—it would be absurd to speak of 'schools.' And even if the case were considerably more complicated, it might still be possible to rest satisfied (as a majority of critics do) with the idea of literary schools, manipulating written documents under the influence of tendencies and principles which had become traditional within special circles. Gu. goes, however, much further with his conception of J and E as first of all guilds of oral narrators, whose stories gradually took written shape within their respective circles, and were ultimately put together in the collections as we now have them. The theory, while not necessarily excluding the action of an outstanding personality in shaping either the oral or the literary phase of the tradition, has the advantage of suggesting a medium in which the traditional material might have assumed its specifically Yahwistic or Elohistic form before being incorporated in the main document of the school. It is at all events a satisfactory working hypothesis; and that is all that can be looked for in so obscure a region of investigation. Whether it is altogether so artificial and unnatural as Professor Orr would have us believe, the reader must judge for himself.