Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/533

 PENTATEUCH Se.ra-
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Pistly Elohim (Hupfeld s younger Elohist), while the other says lahwe, as does the Jehovist himself. So, too, the Priestly Code is not a perfectly incomposite structure ; it has one main stock marked by a very definite historical arrange ment and preserved with little admixture in the book of Genesis ; but on the one hand some older elements have been incorporated in this stock, while on the other hand there have been engrafted on it quite a number of later novelise, which in point of form are not absolutely homo geneous with the main body of the Code, but in point of substance are quite similar to it, reflecting the same tendencies and ideas and using the same expressions and mannerisms, so that the whole may be regarded as an historical unity though not strictly as a literary one. The very name of Deuteronomy shows that from the earliest times it has been regarded as at least possessing a relative inde pendence ; the only difficulty is to determine where this section of the Pentateuch begins and ends. In recent times opinion has in clined more and more to the judgment of Hobbes and Vater, that the original Deuteronomy must be limited to the laws in chaps, xii.-xxvi. The reasons that compel us to distinguish the Priestly Code from the Jehovist, and the relation that subsists between these two elements, may be exemplified and illustrated by the first nine ! J(3 chapters of Genesis. We begin by comparing Gen. i. 1 to ii. 4 r i with Gen. ii. 46 to iii. 24. The history of the first man in paradise Jovist. has nothing to do with the preceding record of the creation of the world in six days, which is neither referred to nor presupposed. &quot; In the day that Jehovah made the earth there was as yet no plant of the field upon the earth, and no herb grew in the field ; for Jehovah had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.&quot; It might be supposed that the picture drawn in chap. i. is here briefly referred to in order to add a particular feature which had not been fully brought out there. But there is no situation in chap. i. which this scene fits. There man is made last of all, but here first of all, before vegetation, and according to ii. 19 sq. also before the beasts. There man and woman are created together, here at first the man is alone. There vegetation and wet stand opposed, the plants spring up as soon as there is dry land ; here the condition of vegetation is the moistening of the dry land it must first rain ; the earth, therefore, was originally not water but a parched desert, the same conception as in the book of Job, where the sea bursts forth from the womb of the hard earth. The conceptions of the two narratives are different all through, as appears equally in what follows. &quot; Jehovah planted a garden eastwards in Eden, at the place where the four chief rivers of the world are parted from a common source. Here among other goodly trees grew the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. In this garden Jehovah set the man, to dress it and to keep it, to eat of all the fruits save only that of the tree of knowledge.&quot; In chap. i. man receives from the first as his portion the whole great earth as he now occupies it, and his task is a purely natural one ; &quot;be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.&quot; But in chap. ii. the first man is placed in a mysterious garden of God, with a very limited sphere, where all is supernatural and marvellous. To speak generally, the ideas of God and man in chap. i. are rational and enlightened, but bare and prosaic ; in chaps, ii. -iii. they are childlike and primitive, but full of meaning. The point of the contrast is mainly this: in Gen. ii., iii., man is in fact forbidden to lift the veil of things and know the world, represented by the tree of knowledge ; in Gen. i. this is his primary task, to rule over all the earth, for sovereignty and knowledge come to the same thing. There nature is to man altogether a marvel ; here it is a mere thing, an object for him. There it is robbery for man to seek to be as God ; here God from the first created man in His own image, after His likeness, and appointed him His vicegerent on earth. With these incongruities in the substance and spirit of the two sections we must take also the differences of form and language observable alike in the whole manner of the narrative which in Gen. i. is con fined by a precise and formal scheme, while in Gen ii. , iii., it has a free poetic movement and in individual expressions. Thus Gen. i. has Elohim, Gen. ii., iii., Jehovah; 1 Gen. i. has the technical word &O2, &quot;create,&quot; while the other narrative uses the ordinary words nC^y, &quot;make,&quot; IV, &quot;form;&quot; and so forth. The contrast between the two records appears in a somewhat different way when we go on to compare Gen. v. with Gen. iv. 17 sq. The elements of the genealogy of ten members in the Priestly Code 1 The addition of Eloliim, which produces the mi-Hebrew form Jehovah Elohim, in Gen. ii., iii., is due to an editor who desired to soften the abrupt transition from the Elohim of the one narrator to the Jehovah of the other. and that of seven members in the Jehovist correspond, save that the former adds Noah after Larnech, and that at the beginning Adam -Cain is doubled and becomes Adam- Seth-Enosh-Cainan. Adam and Enosh both mean &quot; man,&quot; so that the latter series is equi valent to Adam-Seth-Adam-Cainan ; in other words Enosh-Cainan is the beginning of a series corresponding to that in chap, iv., and Adam-Seth is a parallel and variation. Linguist ically chap. v. is distinguished from chap. iv. by the use of &quot;1 vlH in place of &quot;1? In Gen. i.-v. we find the two narratives lying side by side in continuous pieces and without intermixture; in Gen. vi.-ix., on the other hand, we have a kind of mosaic, in which elements taken from each are interwoven to form a single narrative. The narrative of the Priestly Code is preserved entire in vi. 9-22, vii. 11, 13-16 (except the last clause of ver. 16), 19-22, 24, viii. 1-5 (with one small exception), 13, 14, ix. 1-17. The Jehovistic narrative, on the other hand, is curtailed to prevent repetition ; it would not have done to relate twice over the building of the ark and the divine command to do so, or to give the ordinance of the rainbow once after viii. 22, and then again in ix. 9 sq. The hand that fused the two sources together into one continuous account is very plainly recognized in vii. 8, 9, as compared on the one side with vi. 19, 20, and on the other with vii. 2. The justice of Hupfeld s observation, that besides the first Elohist (our Priestly Code) there is a second author who uses the same name of God, can be best proved from Gen. xx.-xxii., where this second Elohist appears for the first time. According to the Priestly Code Ishmael was fourteen years old at the birth of Isaac, and thus would be seventeen when some three years later Isaac was weaned. But how does this accord with xxi. 9 sq., where Ishmael appears not as a lad of seventeen but as a child at play (pl~IYO, ver. 9), who is laid on his mother s shoulder (ver. 14), and when thrown down by her in her despair (ver. 15) is quite unable to help himself ? Similar inconsistencies appear if we attempt to place chap, xx. in the context of the Priestly Code ; it was already observed by Peyrerius that it is &quot; non vero simile, regem Geraraj voluisse Saram vetulamcui desierant fieri muliebria.&quot; We come, then, to ask what is the relation between this second Elohistic writing, from which the greater part of Gen. xx.-xxii. is derived, and the Jehovistic history. In their matter, their points of view, and also in language apart from the names of God the two are on the whole similar, as may be seen by comparing chap. xx. with chap, xxvi., or chap. xxi. with chap. xvi. Moreover, the Elohistic history is preserved to us in a Jehovistic setting, as can be plainly discerned, partly by certain slight changes (xxi. 33, xxii. 11-14), partly by larger additions (xx. 18, xxi. 1, 32b, xxii. 15-18). But we cannot suppose that it was the principal narrator of the Jehovistic history the author of the main mass of chaps, xii. , xiii., xvi., xviii. , xix., xxiv., xxvi. who incor porated chaps, xx. -xxii. in his own book. For how can we imagine anything so absurd as that, before or after, he should have chosen to tell again in his own words and with full detail and important variations almost all the stories which he borrowed from another work ? Bather must we conclude that the union of the Elohistic work (E) with the main Jehovistic narrative (J) was accomplished by a third hand. This third author is most conveniently designated as the Jehovist, and his work is compendiously cited as JE ; the authors of its two component parts are frequently called for dis tinction the Jahvist and the Elohist. The editorial hand of the Jehovist can be traced not only in E but in his main source J (the source which uses the name lahwe) ; compare, for example, Gen. xvi. 8-10 with Gen. xxv. 15, 18. Still more complicated than the work of the Jehovist is the Priestly Code, at least in its main section, the ritual legislation of the middle books. It is conceded on all hands that the collection of laws in Lev. xvii.-xxvi. was originally a small independent code, though it has now been worked into the Priestly Code by the aid of very considerable editorial treatment. It is equally undeniable, though not as universally admitted, that to take one example Exod. xxx. and xxxi. cannot be placed in the same line with Exod. xxv.-xxix. , but form a supplement to the last-named section. No reason can be assigned why the author of Exod. xxv.-xxix., if he intended to mention the golden altar of incense at all, should have failed to include it in the passage where he describes all the other furniture within the tabernacle, the ark, mercy -seat, golden table, and candlestick ; that the altar of incense is first mentioned in Exod. xxx. 1-10 is only to be understood on the assumption that chaps, xxx. and xxxi. were added by a later author. Such are the main lines of the view now most prevalent as to the composition of the Hexateuch. We come next to consider the date and mutual relations of the several sources. As regards Deuteronomy and the Jehovist there is tolerably complete agreement among critics. Some, indeed, attempt to date Deuteronomy before the time of Date of Josiah, in the age of Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4, 22), feutero or even still earlier ; but on the whole the date originally 110111&amp;gt;r-