Of the three principal documents, J, E and P, to whose fusion is due
the account of Israel's origin and early history contained in the
Hexateuch, nothing can be known except by inference; but within
certain limits their date and origin may be fixed. In Genesis, J and
E alike love to trace the sacred places of the Hebrews to some
revelation or incident in the life of the patriarchs. Now from the
prominence assigned to Hebron in J, together with the rôle assigned
to Judah in the story of Joseph, xxxvii. 26, and the special
interest in Judah displayed by Genesis xxxviii., it may be inferred
that J originated in Judah; while the special attention paid in E to
the sanctuaries of the northern kingdom, such as Shechem and Bethel,
is not unreasonably held to imply that E originated in Israel.
It is impossible to assign more than an approximate date to the
origin of these documents, but they can hardly be earlier than the
monarchy, which is clearly alluded to in Genesis xxxvi. 31. Such
incidental statements as that the Canaanite was _then_ in the
land, xii. 6, xiii, 7, imply that by the author's time the situation
had changed; and, as their subjection was not attained till the time
of Solomon (1 Kings ix. 21) the documents can hardly be earlier than
that. The sanctuaries glorified in the Pentateuch are the very
sanctuaries at which a sumptuous but misguided worship was practised
as late as the eighth century, in the days of Amos and Hosea (cf.
Amos iv. 4; Hosea xii. II); but, generally speaking, the conception
of God found in the prophetic history, though as robust and intense
as that of the early prophets, is more primitive. It is not afraid
of anthropomorphisms (Gen. iii. 8; Exod. iv. 24), and theophanies,
and it has not very clearly grasped the idea that God is spirit. On
these grounds alone it would not be unfair to place the prophetic
documents somewhere between Solomon and Amos. J probably belongs to
the ninth century, and E, which, as we saw reason to believe, was
later, to the eighth.
P takes us into a totally different world. The witchery of the
prophetic documents has disappeared; poetry has given place to
legislation, theophany to ritual, religion to theology. From the
late historical books, such as Ezra-Nehemiah, we learn that legalism
dominated post-exilic religion to an extent out of all proportion to
what can be proved, or what is probable, for pre-exilic times; and
it would be natural to suppose that another writing, such as P,
dominated by precisely the same spirit, is a product of the same
time. This supposition becomes a practical certainty in the light of
two or three facts. Firstly, in not a few respects P is at variance
with the legislative programme drawn up by the exilic prophet
Ezekiel (xl.-xlviii.). Now if P had been in existence, such a
programme would have been unnecessary, and, in any case, Ezekiel
would hardly have ventured to contradict a code which enjoyed so
venerable a sanction and bore the honoured name of Moses. It is
easier to suppose that Ezekiel's programme is a tentative sketch,
which was modified and improved upon by the authors of P. Again
there was every inducement during and immediately after the exile to
formulate definitely the ritual practice of pre-exilic times, and to
modify it in the direction of existing or future needs. So long as
the temple stood, custom could be trusted to take care of the ritual
tradition, but the violent breach with their country and their past
would impose upon the exiles the necessity of securing those
traditions in permanent and accessible form. P is therefore referred
almost unanimously by scholars to the exilic and early post-exilic
age, and may be roughly put about 500 B.C.
The documents J, E and P, which, for convenience, we have treated as
if each were the product of a single pen, represent in reality
movements which extended over decades and even centuries. The
Jehovist, e.g., who traces the descent of shepherds, musicians, and
workers in metal to antediluvian times (Gen. iv. 19-22), cannot be
the Jehovist who told the story of the Flood, which interrupted the
continuity of human life. These distinctions are known to criticism
as Jl, J2, etc.; but, though they stand for undoubted literary
facts, it is altogether futile to attempt, on this basis, an
analysis of the entire document into its component parts. The
presence of several hands may also be detected, though not so
readily, in E. Most scholars suppose J to precede E, but one or two
reverse the order. The truth is that there are passages in J
inspired by splendid prophetic conceptions, which must be later than
the earliest edition of E; and the moment it is recognized that a
long period elapsed before either document reached its present form,
the question of priority becomes relatively unimportant.
P is even more obviously the result of a long process marked by
repeated additions and refinements. Numbers xviii. 7, e.g., implies
that ordinary priests might pass within the vail, whereas in
Leviticus xvi. this is possible only to the high priest, and even to
him only once a year. Exodus xxix. 7 represents only the high priest
as anointed, Exodus xxviii. 41 the other priests as well. The
section in Exodus xxx. 1-10 on the altar of incense must be later
than the list in xxvi. 31-37, where it is not mentioned. The age,
too, at which the Levites might enter upon their service appears to
have been repeatedly changed; in Numbers iv. 3 it is put at thirty
years, in viii. 24 at twenty-five (and i Chron. xxiii. 24 at
twenty). All this only shows the unceasing attention that was paid
by the priests to the problem of worship; and the length of the
period over which this attention was spread may be inferred from the
fact that, even in the third century B.C., as we know from the
Septuagint, the Hebrew text of Exodus xxxv.-xl. was not absolutely
fixed.
We may conceive the composition of the Pentateuch to have passed
through approximately the following stages. Earliest of all and
fundamental to all come the ancient traditions and the ancient
poetry, such as the book of the wars of Jehovah, and the book of
Jashar. Upon this basis, during the monarchy men of prophetic spirit
in both kingdoms--not improbably at the sanctuaries--wrote the
history of the Hebrew people. These documents, J and E, were
subsequently combined into a single history (JE), possibly in the
seventh century, though how long, if at all, J and E continued to
enjoy an independent existence we have no means of knowing. During
the exile, the book of Deuteronomy was added (JED). Its influence,
as we have seen, is very prominent in Joshua, and occasionally
traceable even in the earlier books (cf. Gen. xviii. 19, xxvi. 5).
After the exile P was incorporated, and the Hexateuch had assumed
practically its present form about the middle of the fifth century
B.C.