'But for the difficulty of uniting the second narrative with the former one, no one would have dreamt of other than the primâ facie understanding of this (ii.19) that at this time, and subsequently to man, the beasts and birds were created [whereas in i.24,25, they are created previously to man].' p.13.

'Observe that the name JEHOVAH is here found (v.29). It was JEHOVAH ELOHIM who had cursed the ground (iii.17) . . . . It may point to a 'Jehovistic' insertion or correction of the Elohistic' Narrative.' p.29.

This command (vi.19) is differently given in the Jehovistic account (vii.2,3), but referred to again in these same terms, not in those, in the resumption of the Elohistic Narrative (vii.8,9). Let the reader beware of the well-meant devices, by which it has been attempted to show that there is no such variety in the accounts. When we once consent to break down the barriers of simple-minded truth, and to commit pious frauds to save the literal accuracy of Scripture, we let go all evidence and all fair judgment thereupon.' p.33.

'xii.8, on the west,' literally, from the sea, which is the universal westward boundary of Palestine. Would Moses, who was born and bred in Egypt, have used this expression?' p.60.

The whole section (xviii, xix) is Jehovistic, with the remarkable exception of xix.29, which is apparently an insertion from the original Elohistic Narrative.' p.79.

This verse (xix.29) is one of the most remarkable instances of an independent summary account worked into the midst of another and detailed one. It may almost be described as the crucial experiment of the view which I cannot help adopting, viz. that this ancient sacred book is made up of Elohistic and Jehovistic materials inwrought and alternated one with the other.' p.87.

The last verse (xx.18) is treated as an addition by way of explanation, on account of the name JEHOVAH occurring in it only of the whole narrative. However this may be, let the reader beware of the supposed significance in the use of the names of God, so ingeniously found out by some commentators. Any such fancies can be justified by any moderately ingenious person; and in one of the latest commentaries [e.g. Bp. BROWNE'S, B.C.I.p.135] it has been done by passing entirely over v.11,13, which stood in its way.' p.91.

'This section (xxii.1–19) at first sight seems due to the Elohistic portion of this work; but on examination this impression is changed. As KNOBEL well remarks, nothing but the sacred name ELOHIM favours such an idea. Everything is full of the Jehovistic character. The strong anthropomorphism . . . . and numerous other details, dependent on the use of Hebrew words and expressions, plainly declare which portion of the sacred book is before us.' p.96.

It is hardly possible to imagine this (xxxv.9-15) a continuous portion of the same narrative with what we have just been reading. Doubtless ingenious reasons may be discovered why it should be so accounted; but they are very farfetched, and only credible by those who earnestly wish to believe them. . . . The whole narrative (v.9-15) stands by itself, and could not be taken, except for con

siderations foreign to itself, as other than a first account of the thing narrated. This is one of the places which seem to me to stamp almost with certainty the composition of Genesis out of independent documents.' p.156.

The various shifts, resorted to by those commentators who are determined to reconcile at all hazards, are more amusing than creditable, and are really not worth recounting. . . . How anyone, with these data before him, can resist the inference that Genesis is compounded of various independent documents, entirely passes comprehension.' p.159.

'While we may not follow into all its particularities the Elohistic and Jehovistic theory, common-sense and honesty cannot surely deny the coexistence in our present Exodus of various streams of narration, dropped and taken up alternately, the circumstantial assumptions of the one independent of those of the other.' p.246. 'We have here (E.ix.22), as before in vii.15,17, the rod of Moses appointed and used as the instrument of inflicting the plague. In the other portion of the narrative it is Aaron who is to stretch forth the rod at the command of Moses (vii.8,9,19, viii.5,16).' p. 257.

The notice of the greatness of Moses (E.xi.3) can neither be used against the authorship, as has been done by many, nor for it, as by Bp. WORDSWORTH. The question is not, as he puts it, between what Moses himself would have written and what a 'forger' would have done. By putting the dilemma thus, the real alternative of some one other than Moses, and yet not a forger, is adroitly kept out of sight.' p. 263.

The whole portion from this point (E.xii.37) to xiii.22 is singularly made up of detached fragments. Without undertaking to apportion these several pieces, as some have done, I submit that common fairness requires the recognition of them as independent fragments. . . . To resist this evidence of various origin and compound character seems to me as foolish as it is unfair.' p. 273.

This notice (E.xvi.35) is manifestly due to a period after the manna had ceased, and Israel had entered Canaan. By no possibility can that be true, which some (e.g. Bp. WORDSWORTH) have maintained, in anxiety to secure the authorship of Moses for every word of the Pentateuch-this sentence shows that the Book of Exodus did not pass out of the hands of Moses till a little before his death'; for the manna did not cease till the day following the eating of the corn of Canaan on the morrow after the passover of Gilgal (J.v.12), and the command to Joshua to pass over Jordan was prefaced by the words 'Moses My servant is dead. This is only an example of a kind of criticism* which needs to be entirely cleared away before the word of God can be fairly dealt with.' p. 298.

* As a specimen of another kind of criticism which 'needs to be entirely cleared away,' I quote the following from the English Churchman's Review of my Part VI (Dec. 21, 1871).

'The Book of Deuteronomy is the main butt in this volume of the shafts and of the malice of the right reverend author, and "Deuteronomy," rather than "Joshua,"

It is possible that, if Dean ALFORD had lived to complete his undertaking as planned, or had made acquaintance with the works already published before his death, but to none of which does he make the least allusion-of GRAF (1866) and KUENEN (1870-1), or with that of KALISCH on Leviticus, Part I (1867), which have thrown so much light upon the post-exilic origin of the priestly portions of the Pentateuch, including about half of Exodus, he would have found himself compelled to depart still further from traditionary views in respect of the composition of the Pentateuch, and its worth as history, than he has done in this volume. For instance he writes (upon G.v.3, &c.)—

'How can we tell what difference in conventional ways of reckoning, at present untraceable by us, may have assigned to Noah and Abraham, who were contem

should have been engraven on the title-page. The Bishop adopts this mode of warfare. He takes the ipsissima verba of the text, and sifts it word by word, and authoritatively declares such and such are the words of Ezekiel, and, because they are found in the later, they cannot be rightly used by the (asserted) earlier, writer. . . . The result of the Bishop's investigation is, that the Book of Deuteronomy was written by a writer (probably Ezekiel or Jeremiah) in the times posterior to the captivity of Babylon.' And the Reviewer occupies himself throughout the rest of his article in disproving the above (italicized) assertion.

Now as Part VI was almost entirely devoted to showing the post-exilic origin of the Levitical Legislation in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, some small portion of it being traced with some probability to the hand of Ezekiel, and as in Part III I maintained the pre-exilic origin of Deuteronomy, which conclusion I repeated again in Part VI, assigning that Book distinctly to the age of Josiah and possibly to the hand of Jeremiah (VI.24,481), it is very evident that the writer had not made even a slight superficial acquaintance with the contents of the book which he undertook to denounce-suggesting, moreover, that my title page should run 'the Pentateuch and Book of Deuteronomy,' instead of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua,' as if Deuteronomy formed no part of the Pentateuch!

And the same style of criticism has been adopted in support of traditionary views by writers in other (so-called) religious Journals (e.g. the Literary Churchman, April 13, 1872) in reviewing mv Part VI-though not perhaps in so bold and original a manner.

poraries during 58 years, to the former a life of 950 years, to the latter a life of 175 years?'

This bears upon the question of Human Longevity, discussed by Prof. OWEN in Fraser's Magazine (February 1872), where he has shown (in reply to Bp. BROWNE) that on scientific grounds the ages assigned to the Patriarchs before and after the Flood are incredible and, in fact, impossible, if they were constituted like other beings of the class homo sapiens, and if the years in G.v, xi.10–32, were common years. But then Dean ALFORD suggests, as above, that there may have been conventional modes of reckoning, at present untraceable by us,' which might perhaps save the historical character of the Scripture records. And a writer in Fraser (August 1872) enters more fully into this question. He first admits that—

There can be no reasonable doubt lingering in the mind of anyone rightly entitled to be called sapiens, that the Professor's arguments are perfectly conclusive, and that he has completely shattered the old edifice of popular belief and superstition, that these ancient men were capable of prolonging their lives beyond the usual term of threescore years and ten or, in a few instances, to a decade or two more.'

But he regrets that some attempt had not at the same time been made to build up again the faith in the historical veracity of the Scripture statements which had been so completely destroyed.

It will scarcely be satisfactory to many well-meaning and simple-minded persons to have their ancient beliefs thus scattered to the winds, and their faith in the good old Book thus rudely shaken, without one word of consolation being offered to them, without one single ray of hope given as to what may be the true explanation of the exploded statements. And yet there is an explanation, grounded upon strictly scientific principles and upon deductions from certain well-known facts, which, if accepted, removes all difficulties, and sets the matter in such a light that the Professor's remarks are all indirectly confirmed, whilst the most simple-minded Christian will not have his prejudices or his feelings in any way shocked.'

The writer then propounds for the consolation of such persons the theory of Prof. RASK of Copenhagen, who, setting out with

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the remark that the Hebrew word for 'year' means properly a recurring period '-as GESENIUS explains it, perhaps literally a repetition or return of the same seasons or natural appearances, comp. annus, i.e. annulus, ‘a ring, a circle'-goes on to suppose that from Adam to Noah, Shem to Serug, Nahor to Terah, Abraham to Moses, the year' must be reckoned as one month, two months, four months, six months, respectively. Then, assuming also that the ages of the Patriarchs at the birth of their eldest sons, as given by the LXX and Josephus, which exceed by a century those in the Hebrew and English Bibles, are the more correct, and that even these need to be still further increased by a century, by which they must have been diminished at some time or other, he succeeds at last in reducing their ages at death within reasonable bounds, and sums up as follows

Thus far it is plain that, by the methods suggested above, the whole of these fabulous ages are reduced within the limits of an ordinary life; and, while Prof. OWEN's physiological statements as to their impossibility may be accepted as perfectly true and accurate deductions from biological science, yet a simple-minded and uneducated man may accept the interpretation freely and fully, without doing any violence to his belief in the authority of the earlier chapters of the Bible.' Unfortunately for Prof. RASK's theory, in the story of the Flood where the 'year' (he says) must mean a month,' both the month and the day of the month are mentioned as well as the 'year '--e.g. 'in the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month,' G.vii.11, 'in the six-hundred-and-first year, in the first (month), the first of the month,' G.viii. 13-and consequently the year' can only have its proper meaning.

In his Commentary on Leviticus, Part II, Dr. KALISCH, without having seen my Part VI,* and from a totally different

* This Sixth Part came into my hands the very day when I had returned the last proof sheets of the new volume of my Commentary to the printer. . . . So