Thus in G.vi.19,20, we read as follows:

'Of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the Ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.'

But in G.vii.2,3, the command is given thus:

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female, and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female; of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female, to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.'

It is impossible to reconcile the contradiction here observed, in the numbers of living creatures to be taken into the Ark, especially in the case of the fowls, of which one pair of every kind is to be taken, according to the first direction, and seven pairs, according to the second.

209. But here also the matter explains itself easily, when we observe that the former passage is by the hand of that writer, who uses only ELOHIM, and the latter passage by the other writer, who uses JEHOVAH, as well as ELOHIM, though he does not now use the compound phrase, JEHOVAH ELOHIM. It did not occur to the one, whether aware, or not, of the distinction between clean and unclean beasts, to make any provision for sacrificing immediately after the Flood. The latter bethinks himself of the necessity of a sacrifice, G.viii.20, when Noah and his family come out of the Ark; and he provides, therefore, the mystical number of seven pairs of clean beasts and fowls for that purpose.

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CHAPTER II.

THE ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC WRITERS.

210. It will be seen hereafter, when we proceed to examine critically the whole book of Genesis, that throughout the book the two different hands, which we have already detected, are distinctly visible; and the recognition of this fact will explain at once a number of strange and otherwise unaccountable contradictions. One of these two writers, it will be found, is distinguished by the constant use of the word Elohim, the other by the intermixture with it of the name Jehovah, which two words appear as God and LORD, (not 'Lord,' ', Adonai,) in our English translation. Sometimes the latter writer uses only Jehovah for considerable intervals, as the other uses only Elohim: thus, in i.1-ii.3 we have only Elohim, 35 times, in xxiv, only Jehovah, 19 times. Can any one believe that these two passages were written by one and the same writer?

211. Hence these two parts of the book are generally known as the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions. The Elohistic passages, taken together, form a tolerably connected whole, only interrupted, here and there, by a break, caused apparently (but this we shall have to consider hereafter) by the Jehovist having removed some part of the Elohist's narrative, replacing it, perhaps, by one of his own. And it should be noted that the Elohistic passages do not generally assume the reader's acquaintance with facts, which are mentioned only in antecedent Jehovistic passages, except in such cases as those above referred to, where the Jehovist has, probably, as will be seen, replaced an Elohistic section by words of his own. On the other hand, the Jehovistic passages, taken

by themselves, are mere disjointed fragments, and require the Elohistic story to connect them with each other.

212. This implies at once that the Elohist was the oldest of the two writers, and that his narrative may have been used by the other as the groundwork, upon which he framed his own additions. The Jehovist, in fact, may have revised what the Elohist had written, making his own insertions here and there, sometimes in long passages, (as in the second account of the Creation,) sometimes in shorter ones, (as in the small section about the Deluge,) sometimes interpolating two or three verses only, or even a single verse or part of a verse, which makes its appearance in the midst of the older writing, and, now and then, in such a way as to make it difficult to assign precisely to each writer his own particular portion. In most cases, however, the distinction of the two hands is so plain, that it cannot be mistaken by any attentive reader.

213. Besides the peculiarity in the use of the Divine Name, there are other differences in style and language, which are found to distinguish the two writers.

Thus the Elohist uses the expression,, El Shaddai, ALMIGHTY GOD, Xvii.1,* xxviii.3, xxxv. 11, xliii. 14, xlviii.3, xlix.25, which the Jehovist never employs.

Again the Elohist uses Israel as a personal name for Jacob, xxxv.21,22,'xxxvii.3,13, xliii.6,8,11, xlv.28, xlvi.1,2,29,30, xlvii. 29,31, xlviii.2,8,10,11,13,14,21, xlix.2, 1.2,-the Jehovist never.

Also the Elohist uses always Padan or Padan-Aram, i. e. the cultivated field of the highlands,' for the mountainous district near the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, xxv.20, xxviii.2,5,6,7, xxxi.18, xxxiii.18, xxxv.9,26, xlvi.15, xlviii.7, a name which occurs nowhere else in any other part of the Bible; whereas the Jehovist uses Aram-Naharaim, i. e. the highlands

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* The occurrence of the name, Jehovah, in this verse, (N.B. in this verse only of the whole chapter,) will be considered, when we review the whole book of Genesis in Part III.

of the two rivers,' xxiv.10 (E. V. Mesopotamia), which name appears also again in D.xxiii.4, Ju.iii.8, 1Ch.xix.6, Ps.lx.(title).

214. We shall find that the Elohistic narrative forms the basis of the whole story from Genesis to Joshua, fragments of it appearing, here and there, throughout. In fact, at the very end of Joshua, xxiv.32, we have a passage, containing the account of Joseph's bones being brought at last into the land of Canaan, and buried in Shechem, which is evidently by the same hand as that which wrote Joseph's dying injunction about them in G.1.25, and that which recorded the fact of Moses taking them out of Egypt in E.xiii.19 and all these, as we shall see, are due to the Elohist.

215. We shall have occasion to return to this subject hereafter. But this circumstance, viz. that such unmistakable differences of expression distinguish, throughout the book of Genesis, the parts which are due to these separate writers, may almost, with reference to the momentous questions involved, be called providential, since it enables us to speak positively on some points, which might otherwise have been still subject to doubt, and will be found greatly to relieve the difficulty of determining, with some approach to probability, the age of the different portions of the Pentateuch.

216. But this simple fact, which, when once attention is drawn to it, will be so obvious to any unprejudiced reader that it cannot be disputed, is enough by itself to set aside the ordinary notion of the whole Pentateuch having been written by Moses, and, as such, coming to us in every part with the sanction arising from his Divine Mission. It does, however, more than this. It proves that the original Elohistic document was not considered so venerable and sacred by the second writer, whoever he may have been, in whatever age he may have lived, that he was restrained by any religious fears or scruples from meddling with it,—from altering, enlarging, or curtailing it, at his own pleasure, and mixing up with it, as of equal value, his own compositions. Even if both were divinely inspired to an equal degree, yet it

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must seem strange that one inspired writer should take such liberties with the writings of another, believed to be divinely infallible,—that one man, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, should amend, add to, or erase, in this way, portions of a story, which either was, or was believed to be, in its every letter and word, of Divine original, and, as such, of absolute, immutable authority.

217. It may be well here, before we proceed further, to insert a few quotations from KURTZ, which will show the gradual progress of an honest mind, in the investigation of the matter now before us, from the most decided orthodoxy at starting, to a very considerable change of opinion at the conclusion of his work.

I quote first from vol.i.p.56-65.

It is a historical fact, better established than any other in antiquarian research, that the Pentateuch is the basis and the necessary preliminary of all Old Testament history and literature, both of which — and with them Christianity as their fruit and perfection would resemble a tree without roots, a river without a source, or a building which, instead of resting on a firm foundation, was suspended in the air, if the composition of the Pentateuch were relegated to a later period in Jewish history. The references to the Pentateuch, occurring in the history and literature of the Old Testament, are so numerous and comprehensive, and they bear on so many different points, that we cannot even rest satisfied with the admission, which BERTHEAU himself would readily make, that many portions of the present Pentateuch date, indeed, from the time of Moses, but were only collated and elaborated by a later editor. We go further, and maintain that the whole Pentateuch - its five books, and all the portions of which it is at present made up is the basis and the necessary antecedent of the history of the Jewish people, commonwealth, religion, manners, and literature. We have not reached the stage in our researches, when we shall submit proof for this assertion. This, indeed, is the object of the history, which we propose to furnish in the following pages.

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The necessity, on the one hand, of considering the Pentateuch as the basis of Jewish history, in all the relations of its internal developement, and, on the other, the appearance, at the very period when the Pentateuch must have been composed, of the man whom Israel celebrated as the founder of its national and political history, has in all ages induced the representatives, both of the Synagogue and of the Church, to maintain, in accordance with the most ancient tradition, the Mosaic authorship of this, the fundamental, work of the Old Covenant. But this principle may be held in a narrower, and in a wider, acceptation of it. In the former case, the