is quite possible that the passage of the Red Sea, the manna, the quails, and other miracles, may thus have had a real historical foundation, as will be shown more fully in our critical review of the different Books of the Pentateuch. And Samuel may have desired to collect these legends, and make them the basis of a narrative, by which he, being dead, might yet speak to them with a Prophet's voice, and, while rejected by them himself as a ruler, might yet be able patriotically to help forward their civil and religious welfare under kingly government, and more especially under the rule of his favourite David, whose deep religious feeling accorded with his own sentiments so much more fully than the impetuous, arbitrary, character of Saul. His annual journeys of assize, when he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places,' 1S.vii.16, would have given him good opportunities for gathering such stories, as well as for knowing thoroughly the different parts and places of the country, to which such legends were attached. He may have spent a great part of his life, especially the latter part of it since Saul came to the throne, and he was himself relieved from the cares of government, in the elaboration of such a work as this, filling up from his own mind, we may conceive, the blanks left in such legendary accounts, and certainly imparting to them their high religious tone and spiritual character.

867

CHAPTER XXI.

SUMMARY OF THE RESULTS IN PART II.

487. In another Part of this work, I shall enter into a close examination of the Book of Genesis, and shall seek to assign the different parts of the book, with such degree of probability as the case admits of, to their respective authors. I shall endeavour to make this part of the subject as clear and intelligible as I can to the English reader, who may have no acquaintance with the Hebrew language; though, of course, to a Hebrew scholar, or even to one who has a mere elementary knowledge of Hebrew, the arguments will be still more convincing. I trust, however, that no reader, who will be willing to give his close attention to the minute discussion of the book of Genesis, as it will be there set forth, and, in a question of such deep interest and importance, I may surely rely on thus far securing the reader's cooperation, - will find himself unable to follow the course of the reasoning; and, if so, I entertain no doubt as to his arriving with me at the same general results. 488. HUPFELD writes as follows, Die Quellen der Genesis, p.1:

The discovery, that the Pentateuch is put together out of various sources or original documents, is beyond all doubt, not only one of the most important, and most pregnant with consequences, for the interpretation of the historical books of the O.T., or rather, for the whole theology and history, but it is also one of the most certain discoveries, which have been made in the domain of criticism and the history of literature. Whatever the anticritical party may bring forward to the contrary, it will maintain itself, and not retrograde again through anything, so

long as there exists such a thing as criticism; and it will not be easy for a reader, upon the stage of culture on which we stand in the present day, if he goes to the examination unprejudiced, and with an uncorrupted power of appreciating the truth, to be able to ward off its influence. Rather, many a one, I believe, through continually new confirmations in the course of his own observation, will have an inward experience, a 'witness of the spirit' to its truth. No longer does it require to be proved, or maintained as well-grounded; it needs only further improvement, the perception and correction of its application in details, in the distinction and distribution of the parts due to the different original sources, as well as the detection of their relationship, and of the kind of way in which they were compounded into a whole.

489. In conformity with HUPFELD's words, above italicised, I would venture to express the hope that many of my readers, whether students of Hebrew or not, may be induced, in the meanwhile, to attempt for themselves the separation of the Book of Genesis into its two component parts, due to the Elohist and Jehovist, respectively. The reader, who is no Hebrew scholar, will only have to observe the distinctive marks of the two writers, as notified in (213), and to remember that the words 'Elohim' and 'Jehovah' are represented in the E.V. by God and LORD, respectively. Whoever will set himself down to this work, will find it a very interesting study, and will, as HUPFELD has observed, very soon arrive by himself at such a conviction of the reality of the main result of this criticism, as will decide the question in his own mind for ever. It is true, he will sometimes be at a loss as to the details; he will not always be able to pronounce with certainty whether this or that particular verse or passage is an interpolation of the later writer into the original narrative; and he will be interested to compare, on different points, the conclusions of his own mind with those of others. But if two or more friends, not deficient in ordinary acuteness and power of observation, will separately engage themselves in this work, they will undoubtedly find such a general agreement in their results, as will satisfy them that the notion of two distinct writers being concerned in the composition of the book of Genesis is not a mere fancy of critics, but a

fact, which it becomes us as true men, and servants of the God of Truth, to recognise, whatever may be the consequences, however it may require us to modify our present views of the Mosaic system, or of Christianity itself.

490. In a matter so difficult and intricate as this, it is, of course, not surprising that there should still be differences of opinion among critics with respect to some matters of detail, though gradually the limits of such differences are becoming more and more narrowed, while on the main point, viz. the fact of the existence of documents of different ages in the Pentateuch, there is almost unanimous agreement among all who have devoted themselves to the close examination of the question. Some, for instance, as HUPFELD, believe that they can trace the hands of two Elohistic writers in the book of Genesis; while others, as BLEEK, maintain that there is only one. We shall have occasion to consider this question in the next Part of this work, and shall be able to come to a decision with respect to it, when the evidence is fairly before us. But for the present the reader need not be troubled with these considerations. If there was only one Elohist, he was, according to our view, Samuel. If there were two, they were men of the same age, who wrote in the same spirit; such, for instance, as Samuel and one of his elder pupils or friends; though the history points to no one, who was likely to have been so thoroughly associated with him in his lifetime in such a work. The reader, in fact, would find no strong marks of distinction in style between the parts of the story, supposed to be due to these two Elohistic writers. It will be sufficient, however the, case may stand in reality, that he should for the present, at all events, regard the Elohistic matter as due to one single hand.

491. A more important question has arisen among critics, as to the character of the two documents. Was the Jehovistic narrative a second original record, wholly independent of the other? Or did the writer merely intend to supplement the

older one, which he had before him when he wrote? HUPFELD maintains the former view of the case. But, though very unwilling to differ from one of the most original and clearsighted of modern critics, I am myself, at the present time, convinced by the evidence that the Jehovist merely wrote to enlarge, amend, and illustrate, the work of the older writer. A single glance at the Jehovistic insertions, which have been made in the account of the Deluge, will, I think, satisfy the minds of most readers, that these disjointed fragmentary passages, which contain no account of the building of the Ark, of Noah's entering in or coming out of it, could never have been taken out of a complete story which lay before a later editor, who is to be supposed to have selected passages at his pleasure from either document, and made thus a patchwork of the whole.

492. Further, critics are still not agreed as to the different ages in which the different parts of the Pentateuch were written. I hope that some of the investigations in this volume — especially the discussions in Chap.XII-XVIII-may help to throw some clearer light upon this point. Without, however, perplexing the reader with the different opinions which have been mooted on this subject, I will here state the conclusions to which I have myself been led, as the results of the present enquiry, and for which I shall produce, as we proceed, confirmatory evidence, in addition to that which has been already advanced.

493. The following are the principal steps of the argument, as it has been developed up to this point.

(i) There are different authors concerned in the composition of the book of Genesis, whose accounts in some respects contradict each other.

(ii) One of these authors is distinguished by abstaining altogether from the use of the name Jehovah in that book, while the other uses it freely from the first.

(iii) The former writer composed also E.vi, as all critics