Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/57

Rh the analysis beyond Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, and in rejecting the idea that Genesis consisted of documents used by Moses, erred only in not perceiving the possible reduction to a common source of many of its "fragments." This error, or oversight, was corrected by the third hypothesis; the modern theory completed the progress by its discovery of a subdivision of one of the documents. Thus the successive hypotheses are not disjointed and conflicting systems, but consistent stages of growth of one central idea, around which innumerable personalities are clustered. And the Grundschrift, Book of Origins, Annalistic Writer, Elohist, Book of the Four Covenants, and Priestly Code, or Writer, are so many titles, suggested by different aspects, of one and the same document—the one which serves as a framework, and gives order and unity to the whole Hexateuch.

It is possible, therefore, at the present day to offer a decisive analysis of the Hexateuch as the accepted result of the long controversy. The traditional notion, that Moses wrote the earlier books of Scripture as sole and inspired author, is entirely obsolete. Even Professor Sayce admits that "about the general fact of the composite character of the Pentateuch competent critics of all schools are now agreed." The few who still contend for a Mosaic authorship admit that it is a compilation, and that it has been much modified subsequently. It is significant to note that almost all who cling to the Mosaic authorship and editorship are persuaded that its denial has grave theological implications. In the second place, there is unanimity among the critics with regard to the character of the documents which compose the Hexateuch. Four main documents have been unanimously recognised—the Deuteronomist, the Priestly Writer, the Jahvist, and the Elohist. The principles on which the several documents have been traced in the exceedingly complex structure of the Pentateuch are numerous and effective. Not only the curious duality of names which was the first to be remarked, and manifest differences of style and lexicology, and of psychological assumption, come to the aid of the analysts, but the final synthesis has been so crude that the narrative contains numerous