Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/97

 leave no loophole for misinterpretation or misunderstanding. The jurist's love of order and method appears in a great facility in the construction of schemes and schedules—genealogical tables, systematic enumerations, etc.—as well as in the carefully planned disposition of the narrative as a whole. It is necessary to read the whole work consecutively in order to realise the full effect of the laboured diffuseness, the dry lucidity and prosaic monotony of this characteristic product of the Priestly school of writers. On the other hand, the style is markedly deficient in the higher elements of literature. Though capable at times of rising to an impressive dignity (as in Gn. 1. 47$7-11$), it is apt to degenerate into a tedious and meaningless iteration of set phrases and rigid formulæ (see Nu. 7). The power of picturesque description, or dramatic delineation of life and character, is absent: the writer's imagination is of the mechanical type, which cannot realise an object without the help of exact quantitative specification or measurement. Even in ch. 23, which is perhaps the most lifelike narrative in the Code, the characteristic formalism asserts itself in the measured periodic movement of the action, and the recurrent use of standing expressions from the opening to the close. That such a style might become the property of a school we see from the case of Ezekiel, whose writings show strong affinities with P; but of all the Priestly documents, P$g$ is the one in which the literary bent of the school is best exemplified, and (it may be added) is seen to most advantage.

The following selection (from Driver, LOT$8$, 131 ff.) of distinctive expressions of P, occurring in Genesis, will give a sufficient idea of the stylistic peculiarity of the book, and also of its linguistic affinities with the later literature, but especially with the Book of Ezekiel.

as the name of God, uniformly in Gen., except 17$1$ 21$1b$.—, 'kind': 1$11. 12. 21. 24. 25$ 6$20$ 7$14$ (Lv. 11, Dt. 14; only again Ezk. 47$10$).—, 'to swarm': 1$20. 21$ 7$21$ 8$17$ 9$7$ + (outside of P only Ps. 105$30$, Ezk. 47$9$).