CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH.

In the historical books the tradition is developed by means of

supplement and revision; double narratives occur here and there,

but not great parallel pieces of connected matter side by side.

In the Hexateuch additions and supplements have certainly taken

place on the most extensive scale, but the significant feature

is here that continuous narratives which can and must be understood

each by itself are woven together in a double or threefold cord.

Critics have shown a disposition, if not in principle yet in fact,

to take the independence of these so-called sources of the Hexateuch

as if it implied that in point of matter also each is a distinct

and independent source. But this is, even _a priori_, very

improbable. Even in the case of the prophets who received their

word from the Lord the later writer knows and founds upon the earlier

one. How much more must this be the case with narrators whose

express business is with the tradition? Criticism has not done

its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution; it

must aim further at bringing the different writings when thus

arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them

intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it

possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition.

The striking agreement of the different works, not only in

matter, but in their arrangement of the narratives, makes the

office of criticism as now described not less but more necessary.

There is no primitive legend, it is well known, so well knit as the

biblical one, and thus it is no wonder that it became the frame

for many others and infused into them some of its own colour.

This connection is common in its main features to all the sources

alike. The Priestly Code runs, as to its historical thread,

quite parallel to the Jehovist history. This alone made it

possible to interfuse the two writings as we now have them in the

Pentateuch. That this was not done altogether without violence

is less to be wondered at than that the violence which was done

is so small, and particularly that the structure of each writing

is left almost unimpaired. This can only be explained from the

intimate agreement of the two works in point of plan. When the

subject treated is not history but legends about pre-historic

times, the arrangement of the materials does not come with the

materials themselves, but must arise out of the plan of a

narrator: even the architecture of the generations, which forms

the scaffolding of Genesis, is not inseparably bound up with the

matters to be disposed of in it. From the mouth of the people

there comes nothing but the detached narratives, which may or may

not happen to have some bearing on each other: to weave them

together in a connected whole is the work of the poetical or

literary artist. Thus the agreement of the sources in the plan

of the narrative is not a matter of course, but a matter requiring

explanation, and only to be explained on the ground of the

literary dependence of one source on the other. The question how

this relation of dependence is to be defined is thus a much more

pressing one than is commonly assumed. /1/

-- Footnote

1. The agreement extends not only to the thread of the narrative,

but also to particulars, and even to expressions. I do not speak

of _mabbul_ (flood), or _tebah_ (ark), but the following examples

have struck me:-In Q Genesis vi. 9, Noah is said to be _righteous

in his generations_, in J E vii. 1 he is _righteous in his generation_--

an unusual form of speech, which gave a vast amount of trouble to

the Rabbins and to Jerome. Similarly Q Genesis xvii. 21, _the son

whom Sarah shall bear at this set time next year_, and JE xviii. 14:

_at the same time I will come to thee again next year, and then

Sarah shall have a son_. In the same way Q Exodus vi. 12 vii. 1.

(Moses) _I am of uncircumcised lips_. (Jehovah) _See, I make thee

a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet_;

compared with JE iv. 10, 16. (Moses) _I am slow of speech, and of

a slow tongue_; (Jehovah) _Aaron shall be to thee instead of a mouth,

and thou shalt be to him instead of God_. Comp. Genesis xxvii. 46,

with xxv: 22.

-- Footnote

This, however, is not the place to attempt a history of the

development of the Israelite legend. We are only to lay the

foundation for such a work, by comparing the narrative of the

Priestly Code with the Jehovistic one. In doing so we shall see

that Buttmann (Mythologus, i. p. 122 seq.) is right in asserting

against de Wette (Beitraege, ii.), that, the Jehovistic form of the

legend is the earlier of the two . /2/

-- Footnote

2. The line indicated by Buttmann was first taken up again by

Th. Noldeke in his Essay on the main-stock of the Pentateuch,

which opened the way to a proper estimate of the narrative part

of the work.

-- Footnote

VIII.I.

VIII.I.1 The Bible begins with the account of the Priestly Code of the

creation of the world. In the beginning is chaos; darkness,

water, brooding spirit, which engenders life, and fertilises the

dead mass. The primal stuff contains in itself all beings, as yet

undistinguished: from it proceeds step by step the ordered

world; by a process of unmixing, first of all by separating out

the great elements. The chaotic primal gloom yields to the

contrast of light and darkness; the primal water is separated by

the vault of heaven into the heavenly water, out of which there

grows the world above the firmament which is withdrawn from our

gaze, and the water of the earth: the latter, a slimy mixture, is

divided into land and sea, whereupon the land at once puts on its

green attire. The elements thus brought into existence, light,

heaven, water, land, are then enlivened, pretty much in the order

in which they were created, with individual beings; to the light

correspond the lamps of the stars, fishes to the water, to the

heaven the birds of heaven, and the other creatures to the land.

The last act of creation is markedly emphasised. "And God said:

Let us make man after our likeness; and let them have dominion

over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over

the cattle, and over all the living creatures of the earth, and

over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God

created man after His own image, in the image of God created He

him, and He created them male and female. And God blessed them,

and said: Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and

subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over

the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon

the face of the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given unto

you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the

earth, and every tree with seed-fruits: to you it shall be for

food: and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the

air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there

is life, I have given the green herb for meat. Thus the heavens

and the earth were made and all the host of them, and on the

seventh day God ended His work, and blessed the seventh day, and

hallowed it." (Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a).

It is commonly said that the aim of this narrative is a purely

religious one. The Israelite certainly does not deny himself in

it: the religious spirit with which it is penetrated even comes

at some points into conflict with the nature of its materials.

The notion of chaos is that of uncreated matter; here we find

the remarkable idea that it is created in the beginning by God.

Brooded over by the Spirit, it is further of a nature for development

to take place out of it, and the trait that the creation is

represented throughout as a separation of elements which in chaos

were mixed together, betrays even now the original design: but

in the Hebrew narrative the immanent Spirit has yielded to the

transcendent God, and the principle of evolution is put aside in

favour of the fiat of creation. Yet for all this the aim of the

narrator is not mainly a religious one. Had he only meant to say

that God made the world out of nothing, and made it good, he could

have said so in simpler words, and at the same time more distinctly.

There is no doubt that he means to describe the actual course of

the genesis of the world, and to be true to nature in doing so;

he means to give a cosmogonic theory. Whoever denies this confounds

two different things--the value of history for us, and the aim of the

writer. While our religious views are or seem to be in conformity

with his, we have other ideas about the beginning of the world,

because we have other ideas about the world itself, and see in the

heavens no vault, in the stars no lamps, nor in the earth the

foundation of the universe. But this must not prevent us from

recognising what the theoretical aim of the writer of Genesis i.

really was. He seeks to deduce things as they are from each

other: he asks how they are likely to have issued at first from

the primal matter, and the world he has before his eyes in doing

this is not a mythical world but the present and ordinary one.

The pale colour which generally marks the productions of the

earliest reflection about nature, when they are not mythical

theories, is characteristic of Genesis i. also. We are indeed

accustomed to regard this first leaf of the Bible as surrounded

with all the charm that can be derived from the combination of high

antiquity and childlike form. lt would be vain to deny the

exalted ease and the uniform greatness that give the narrative its

character. The beginning especially is incomparable: "The

earth was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the deep,

and the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: Let

there be light, and there was light." But chaos being given, all

the rest is spun out of it: all that follows is reflection,

systematic construction; we can easily follow the calculation

from point to point. The considerations are very simple which

lead the writer to make first what is great appear, and then what

is small; first the foundation and then that which exists upon it,

the water before the fishes, heaven before the birds of heaven,

land and plants before the animals. The arrangement of the things

to be explained stands here for the explanation; there is nothing

more than a succession which proceeds from the simple to the

complicated; there is no effort of fancy to describe the process

more closely; everywhere cautious consideration which shrinks

from going beyond generalities. Only the framework of creation,

in fact, is given; it is not filled up. Hence also the form of

the whole, the effect of which cannot be reproduced in an epitome;

the formula gets the better of the contents, and instead of

descriptions our ears are filled with logical definitions. The

graduated arrangement in separating particular things out of chaos

indicates the awakening of a "natural" way of looking at nature,

and of a reasoned reflection about natural objects, just as this

is manifest in the attempts of Thales and his successors, which

are also remarkable as beginnings of the theory of nature and of

an objective interest in the things of the outer world, but further

than this do not exactly rouse us to enthusiasm. /1/

-- Footnote

1. "There is nothing whatever in the piece that merits the name of

invention but the chronological order of the various creations."

Buttmann, p. 133.

-- Footnote

The first sentence of the Jehovistic account of the beginning of

the world's history has been cut off by the reviser. [It was

all a dry waste] when Jehovah formed the earth, and nowhere did

the green herb spring up, for Jehovah had not yet caused it to

rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

But a mist (?) went up out of the earth, and watered the face of

the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground, and

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then he planted a

garden far to the eastward in Eden, in the place where the four

chief rivers of the earth part asunder from their common source;

there grow among other fine trees the tree of life and the tree of

knowledge. In this garden Jehovah placed the man, to dress it and

keep it and to eat of all the trees, forbidding him to eat of the

fruit of the tree of knowledge only. But the man is utterly

alone in his garden: he must have company that is suitable for

him. So Jehovah first forms the beasts, if perchance the man will

associate with them and make friends with them. He brings them to

him one after another to see what impression they make on him,

and what the man will call them. He calls them by their right

names, ox, ass, bear, thus expressing his feeling that he finds

in them nothing relate to himself, and Jehovah has to seek other

counsel. Then he forms the woman out of a rib of the sleeping man,

and causes him to awake. Wearied as it were by all the fruitless

experiments with the beasts, the man cries out delighted when he

looks at the woman: This surely is flesh of my flesh and bone of

my bone; she may be called wo-man.

Thus the scene is drawn, the persons introduced, and an action

secretly prepared: now the tragedy begins, which ends with the

expulsion of man from the garden. Seduced by the serpent, man

stretches out his hand after the food which is forbidden him, in

order to become like God, and eats of the tree of knowledge. The

first consequence of this is the beginning of dress, the first step

in civilisation; other and sadder consequences soon follow. In

the evening the man and his wife hear Jehovah walking in the

garden; they hide before Him, and by doing so betray

themselves. It is useless to think of denying what has taken

place, and as each of them puts the blame on the other, they show

themselves one after the other to be guilty. The sentence of the

judge concludes the investigation. The serpent is to creep on its

belly, to eat dust, and to perish in the unequal contest with man.

The woman is to bear many children with sorrow, and to long for

the man, who yet will be her tyrant. The principal curse is

directed against the man. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake: in

sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns

also and thistles shall it bring forth to, thee, and thou shalt

eat the herb of the field, till thou return unto the ground, for

out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt

thou return." Sentence being thus spoken, Jehovah prepares the man

and woman for their future life by making coats of skins to dress

them with. Then turning to His celestial company, "Behold," He

says, "the man is become like one of us to know good and evil;

and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of

life, and eat, and live for ever." With these words he drives man

out of Paradise, and places before it the cherubs, and the flaming

sword, which turns every way, to keep the way of the tree of

Life (Genesis i. 4b-iii. 24).

The gloomiest view of life as it now is, lies at the root of this

story. Man's days are mere hardship and labour and task-work, a

task-work with no prospect of relief, for the only reward of it

is that he returns to the earth from which he was taken. No

thought appears of any life AFTER death, and life WITHOUT death

might have been, but has been forfeited, now the cherub guards

the approach to the tree of life, of which man might have eaten

when in Paradise but did not. This actual, cheerless lot of man

upon the earth is the real problem of the story. It is felt to be

the very opposite of our true destiny; at first, things must have

been otherwise. Man's lot now is a perversion of what it was at

first, it is the punishment of primeval guilt now resting on us all.

At first man lived in Paradise; he had a happy existence, and one

worthy of his nature, and held familiar intercourse with Jehovah;

it was his forbidden striving after the knowledge of good and evil

that drove him out of Paradise and brought all his miseries upon him.

What is the knowledge of good and evil? The commentators say it

is the faculty of moral distinction,--conscience, in fact. They

assume accordingly that man was in Paradise morally indifferent,

in a state which allowed of no self-conscious action and could not

be called either good or evil. A state like this not being an

ideal one, some of them consider that man gained more than he lost

by the fall, while others admit that it could not be the divine

intention to keep him always at this stage of childish

irresponsibility, and that this cannot be the view of the narrator

either.

But it is plain that the narrator is not speaking of a relative

prohibition of knowledge, but an absolute one: he means that it

is only for God, and that when man stretches out his hand towards

it he is transcending his limits and seeking to be as God. On the

other side he cannot of course mean to say that conscience is a

doubtful blessing, and its possession to be deplored, or that it is

a thing that God in fact refuses to men and reserves to Himself

alone. The knowledge spoken of cannot be moral knowledge. What

could the assertion mean that God would have no one but Himself

know the difference between good and evil, and would deny to man

this knowledge? One would think that conscience is a thing

belonging specifically to man and not to God.

And what could be the sense of representing Adam and Eve as so

intent to know what was sin and what was virtue? No one is

curious about that, and sin never came into existence in the way

of ethical experiment, by men's desiring to know what it is. And

it is manifestly assumed that men knew in paradise that obedience

to Jehovah was good and disobedience evil. And finally, it

conflicts with the common tradition of all peoples to represent the

first man as a sort of beast; he is regarded as undeveloped only in

point of outward culture. The knowledge which is here forbidden is

rather knowledge as such, general knowledge, or getting the eyes

opened, as it is afterwards called. This is what transcends, in

the writer's view, the limits of our nature; prying out the secret

of things, the secret of the world, and overlooking, as it were,

God's hand to see how He goes to work in His living activity, so as,

perhaps, to learn His secret and imitate Him. For knowledge is to

the ancient world also power, and no mere metaphysic. This knowing

in the highest sense is the attribute of God alone, who stands in

the creative centre of things and penetrates and surveys the whole;

it is sealed to man, who has to labour and weary himself at little

things. And yet the forbidden good has the most powerful

attraction for him; he burns to possess it, and instead of

resigning himself in trust and reverence he seeks to steal the

jewel which is jealously guarded from him, and so to become like

God--to his own sorrow.

This explanation is not new; it is the old and popular one, for

which reason also Goethe adopted it in Faust. One objection

certainly may be taken to it; the words are not merely

_knowledge_, but _knowledge of good and evil_. But good and evil

in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful;

the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary

one, these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their

effects. Good and evil as spoken of in Genesis ii. iii. point

to no contrast of some actions with others according to their

moral distinctions: the phrase is only a comprehensive one for

things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which

constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him:

for, as said, he desires to know not what things are

metaphysically, but what is the use of them. /1/ Besides the

-- Footnote

I Sur. 20, 91. Hudh. 22, 10 (Agh. xv. 105, 12). Hamasa, 292,

8 seq. Tabari i. 847, 18

-- Footnote

lengthier expression we have the shorter one, knowledge, simply

(iii. 6); and it must also be remarked that the phrase is not:

know the good and the evil, but know good and evil.

But more, we must regard this knowledge not as it affects the

individual, but in the light of history; what is meant is what we

call civilisation. As the human race goes forward in

civilisation, it goes backward in the fear of God. The first step

in civilisation is clothing; and here this is the first result of

the fall. The story is continued in chapter iv. Adam's sons

begin to found cities, Jubal is the first musician, Cain discovers

the oldest and the most important of the arts, that of the smith--

hence the sword and bloody vengeance. Of the same tendency is the

connected story of the city and the tower of Babel, in which is

represented the foundation of the great empires and cities of the

world, which concentrate human strength and seek to use it to press

into heaven itself. In all this we have the steps of man's

emancipation; with his growing civilisation grows also his alienation

from the highest good; and--this is evidently the idea, though it

is not stated--the restless advance never reaches its goal after all;

it is a Sisyphus-labour; the tower of Babel, which is incomplete

to all eternity, is the proper symbol for it. The strain is that

strain of unsatisfied longing which is to be heard among all

peoples. On attaining to civilisation they become aware of the

value of those blessings which they have sacrificed for it. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Dillmann thinks this idea insipid: Genesis (1882), p. 44

-- Footnote

It was necessary to discuss the notion of knowledge at some

length, because the misunderstanding of this point on the part of

philosophers and theologians has cast over our story an

appearance of modernness, which has, in its turn, done something

to influence general opinion as to the age of this story compared

with the other. Having got rid of this impression we turn to

those features of Genesis ii. iii. which help to determine

positively its relation to chapter i.

What has been untruly asserted of Genesis i. is true of Genesis ii.

iii. The Jehovist narrative does shine by the absence of all

efforts after rationalistic explanation, by its contempt for

every kind of cosmological speculation. The earth is regarded as

being at first not moist and plastic but (as in Job xxxviii. 38)

hard and dry: it must rain first in order that the desert may be

turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when

the showers of spring come. The ground further requires

cultivation by man that the seed may spring forth. No regard is

paid to any natural sequence of the acts of creation: man, the

most helpless of all beings, appears first, and finds himself

placed on a world entirely bare, without tree or bush, without

the animals, without woman. Man is confessedly the exclusive

object of interest, the other creatures are accounted for by

their importance to him, as if this only conferred on them a

right to exist. The idea explains matter: mechanical possibility

is never consulted, and we do not think of asking about it. Want

of taste could find no lower deeps than when this or that scholar

goes from Genesis ii. 21 to count his ribs, or comes to

the conclusion that the first man was hermaphrodite.

In the first account we stand before the first beginnings of sober

reflection about nature, in the second we are on the ground of

marvel and myth. Where reflection found its materials we do not

think of asking; ordinary contemplation of things could furnish

it. But the materials for myth could not be derived from

contemplation, at least so far as regards the view of nature which

is chiefly before us here; they came from the many-coloured

traditions of the old world of Western Asia. Here we are in the

enchanted garden of the ideas of genuine antiquity; the fresh

early smell of earth meets us on the breeze. The Hebrews breathed

the air which surrounded them; the stories they told on

the Jordan, of the land of Eden and the fall, were told in the same

way on the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the Oxus and the Arius.

The true land of the world, where dwells the Deity, is Eden. It

was not removed from the earth after the fall; it is there still,

else whence the need of cherubs to guard the access to it? The

rivers that proceed from it are real rivers, all well known to the

narrator, they and the countries they flow through and the

products that come from these countries. Three of them, the Nile,

the Euphrates, and the Tigris, are well known to us also; and if

we only knew how the narrator conceived their courses to lie, it

would be easy to determine the position of their common source and

the situation of Paradise. Other peoples of antiquity define the

situation of their holy land in a similar manner; the streams

have different names, but the thing is the same. The wonderful

trees also in the garden of Eden have many analogies even in the

Germanic mythology. The belief in the cherubs which guard

Paradise is also widely diffused. _Krub_ is perhaps the same name,

and certainly represents the same idea, as _Gryp_ in Greek, and

_Grei_f in German. We find everywhere these beings wonderfully

compounded out of lion, eagle, and man. They are everywhere

guardians of the divine and sacred, and then also of gold and of

treasures. The ingredients of the story seem certainly to have

parted with some of their original colour under the influence of

monotheism. The Hebrew people no doubt had something more to tell

about the tree of life than now appears. It is said to have been

in the midst of the garden, and so it seems to have stood at the

point whence the four streams issued, at the fountain of life,

which was so important to the faith of the East, and which

Alexander marched out to discover. Paradise, moreover, was

certainly not planted originally for man, it was the dwelling of

the Deity Himself. Traces of this may still be recognised.

Jehovah does not descend to it from heaven, but goes out walking

in the garden in the evening as if He were at home. The garden of

Deity is, however, on the whole somewhat naturalised. A similar

weakening down of the mythic element is apparent in the matter of

the serpent; it is not seen at once that the serpent is a demon.

Yet parting with these foreign elements has made the story no

poorer, and it has gained in noble simplicity. The mythic

background gives it a tremulous brightness: we feel that we are

in the golden age when heaven was still on earth; and yet

unintelligible enchantment is avoided, and the limit of a sober

chiaroscuro is not transgressed.

The story of the creation in six days played, we know, a great

part in the earlier stages of cosmological and geological science.

It is not by chance that natural science has kept off Genesis ii.

iii. There is scarcely any nature there. But poetry has at

all times inclined to the story of Paradise. Now we do not

require to ask at this time of day, nor to argue the question,

whether mythic poetry or sober prose is the earlier stage in the

contemplation of the world.

Intimately connected with the advanced views of nature, which we

find in Genesis i., is the "purified" notion of God found there.

The most important point is that a special word is employed, which

stands for nothing else than the creative agency of God, and so

dissociates it from all analogy with human making and shaping--

a word of such exclusive significance that it cannot be reproduced

either in Latin, or in Greek, or in German. In a youthful people

such a theological abstraction is unheard of; and so with the

Hebrews we find both the word and the notion only coming into use

after the Babylonian exile; they appear along with the emphatic

statement of the creative omnipotence of Jehovah with reference to

nature, which makes its appearance, we may say suddenly, in the

literature of the exile, plays a great part in the Book of Job,

and frequently presents itself in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. In Genesis ii.

iii., not nature but man is the beginning of the world and of

history; whether a creation out of nothing is assumed there at

all, is a question which only the mutilation of the commencement

(before ii. 4b) makes it not quite impossible to answer in the

affirmative. At any rate it is not the case here that the command

of the Creator sets things in motion at the first so that they

develop themselves to separate species out of the universal chaos;

Jehovah Himself puts His hand to the work, and this supposes that

the world in its main features was already in existence. He plants

and waters the garden, He forms man and breathes life into his

nostrils, He builds the woman out of the man's rib, having made

a previous attempt, which was unsuccessful, to provide him with

company; the beasts are living witnesses of the failure of His

experiments. In other respects, too, He proceeds like a man.

In the evening when it grows cool He goes to walk in the garden,

and when there discovers by chance the transgression which has

taken place, and holds an investigation in which He makes not

the least use of His omniscience. And when He says:

"Behold, the man is become like one of us to know good and evil:

and now lest he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of

life, and eat and live for ever,"

that is not said in irony, any more than when He expresses

Himself on the occasion of the building of Babel;

"Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language,

and this is only the beginning of their doings, and now nothing

will be too difficult for them that they have imagined to do;

go to, let us go down and confound their language."

That at the same time the majesty of Jehovah is in no way compromised

is the mystery of poetic genius. How would the colourless God of

abstraction fare in such a situation ?

The treatment, finally, of the microcosm in the two accounts,

reflects the difference between them. In chapter i. man is

directed at the very outset to the ground on which he moves to

this day: "Replenish the earth, and subdue it," he is told; a

perfectly natural task. In chaps. ii. iii. he is placed in

Paradise, and his sphere of activity there, nestled, as he may

be said still to be, in the lap of the Deity, is very limited.

The circumstances of his life as it now is, the man's toil in the

fields, the woman's toil in bearing children, do not answer to his

original destiny; they are not a blessing, but a curse. In the

Jehovistic narrative man is as wonderful to himself as the

external world; in the other he is as much a matter of course as

it is. In the one he sees astonishing mysteries in the difference

of the sexes, in marriage, in child-birth (iv. 1); in the other

these are physiological facts which raise no questions or

reflections: "He made them male and female, and said, Be

fruitful and multiply." There his attitude towards the beasts

is one of mixed familiarity and bewilderment; he does not know

exactly what to make of them; they are allied to him and yet

not quite suitable society for him; here they are beings not

related to him, over which he rules.

The chief point in which the difference between the two accounts

comes to a head is this. In Genesis ii. iii., man is virtually

forbidden to lift the veil of things, and to know the world,

represented in the tree of knowledge. In Genesis i. this is the

task set him from the beginning; he is to rule over the whole

earth, and rule and knowledge come to the same thing--they mean

civilisation. There nature is to him a sacred mystery: here it

is a mere fact, an object; he is no longer bewildered over

against nature, but free and superior. There it is a robbery for

man to seek to be equal with God: here God makes him at first in

His own image and after His own likeness, and appoints him His

representative in the realm of nature. We cannot regard it as

fortuitous that in this point Genesis i. asserts the opposite of

Genesis ii. iii.; the words spoken with such emphasis, and

repeated i. 27, v. 1, ix. 6, sound exactly like a protest

against the view underlying Genesis ii. iii., a protest to be

explained partly by the growth of moral and religious

cultivation, but partly also no doubt due to the convulsive

efforts of later Judaism to deny that most firmly established of

all the lessons of history, that the sons suffer for the sins of

the fathers. /1/

-- Footnote

1. A coarser counterpart to Genesis ii. iii, is Genesis vi. 1-4.

Here also there is a kind of fall of man in an attempt to overpass

the boundary between the human race and the divine. In the priestly

narrative (Q) the gulf between spirit, which is divine substance,

and flesh, which is human substance, is bridged over by the doctrine

of man's creation in the image of God.

-- Footnote

What are generally cited as points of superiority in Genesis i.

over Genesis ii. iii. are beyond doubt signs of progress in outward

culture. The mental individuality of the two writers, the systematiser

and the genius, cannot be compared, and the difference in this

respect tells nothing of their respective dates; but in its general

views of God, nature, and man, Genesis i. stands on a higher,

certainly on a later, level. To our way of thinking its views are

more intelligible, simpler, more natural, and on this account they

have been held to be also older. But this is on the one hand to

identify naturalness with originality, two things which every one

knows not to be the same, and on the other hand it is applying

a standard to prehistoric tradition which applies to historical

tradition only: freedom from miracle and myth count in favour

of the latter, but not of the former. But the secret root of the

manifest preference long shown by historic-critical theology for

Genesis i. appears to lie in this, that scholars felt themselves

responsible for what the Bible says, and therefore liked it to

come as little as possible in conflict with general culture. /1/

-- Footnote

1. I merely assert that Genesis ii. iii. is prior to Genesis i.;

I do not believe the story of Paradise and of the Fall to be very

old with the Israelites. We are led to think so by the fact that

the man and the woman stand at the head of the genealogy of the

human race; a place we should rather expect to be assigned to the

serpent (according to primitive Semitic belief the serpent was by

no means opposed to God). This is the case in the Chronicon

Edessenum and in Abyssinian legend, and a trace of this is perhaps

preserved in the name of Eve, as Noldeke thinks. The name

certainly receives this interpretation in Philo (de agric. Noe,

# 21) and in the Midrash Rabba on Genesis iii. 20 (D. M. Z. 1877,

p. 239, 326). Moreover, the true seat of God to the Hebrews was

Mount Sinai, and the original Hebrew life was the nomadic life of

the patriarchs, not gardening or agriculture. And finally we

cannot believe barbarians to have indulged in reflections on the

advantages and disadvantages of civilisation. The materials of

Genesis ii. iii. can hardly have been imported before the time

of Solomon. Where they came from we can scarcely guess; it

would be most natural to think of the Phoenicians or the

Canaanites generally, and this theory is favoured by Genesis iv.

But in JE Babel is regarded as the last home of the primitive

human race, Eden and Nod having preceded it; and the Hebrews

probably derived the legend in the last instance from Babylon.

But this does not prove that this or that parallel brought forward

by Assyriologists is necessarily of value.

-- Footnote

VIII.I.2. After the beginning of the world we have in Genesis i.-xi.,

both in the Priestly Code and in the Jehovist, the transition from

Adam to Noah (chapters iv. v.), then the flood (vi.-ix.), then the

transition from Noah to Abraham (chapters x. xi.).

In the dry names, which are enumerated in Genesis v. and Genesis iv.

Buttmann recognised the remains of an historical connection once

woven together out of primitive stories. These narratives were

evidently mythological: their original contents are destroyed

both in Genesis v. (Q) and in Genesis iv. (JE), but only the list

of the Jehovist now bears the appearance of a ruin. In the other

the fragments have been used for a careful new building in which

they no longer look like fragments. Here they are made to serve

as the pillars of a chronology which descends from Adam to Moses,

computing the period from the one to the other as 2666 years.

These 2666 years represent 26 2/3 generations of a hundred years

each: namely, 1-20 Adam to Abraham, 21 Isaac, 22 Jacob, 23 Levi,

24 Kohath, 25 Amram, 26 Aaron; the last 2/3 of a generation is

Eleazar, who was a man of mature years at the time of the Exodus.

/2/

-- Footnote

2. So Noldeke in the Jahrbb. fuer protest. Theol., 1875, p. 344.

Genesis xv. 13-16 expressly states that the generation is reckoned

as 100 years in this period.

-- Footnote

Such a chronology is totally at variance with the simplicity of the

legend. /1/ It is also evident, that if even in the case of the

-- Footnote

1. "Exact chronological dates are a sure sign of later working up

of old poetical legends." Buttmann, I. p. 181.

-- Footnote

historical books the systematic chronology is no older than the

period of the exile, that of the Pentateuch must be of still later

origin. For the historical period there were certain fixed points

for chronology to lay hold of; it cannot have begun with the

patriarchs and gone on to the kings, it must have begun with the

kings and then gone higher up to the patriarchs; it must have

begun at the lower end, where alone it had any firm ground to stand

on. The belief that the men of the early world lived to a great

age is no doubt old, but the settled chronology, based on the years

in which each patriarch begat his son, is an artifice in which we

manifestly see the doctrinaire treatment of history which was coming

into vogue for later periods, attempting to lay hold of the earliest

legends as well. Only when the living contents of the legend had

completely disappeared could its skeleton be used as a framework

of chronology.

Buttmann has also shown that the elements of the ten-membered

genealogy of Q (Genesis v.) and of the seven-membered of JE (Genesis

iv.) are identical. In Q, Noah comes after Lamech at the end, and

at the beginning Adam Cain is doubled and becomes Adam Seth Enos

Cainan. Adam and Enos being synonymous, this amounts to Adam Seth

Adam Cainan: that is to say Adam Seth are prefixed, and the

series begins anew with Enos Cainan, just as in JE. The Priestly

Code itself offers a remarkable testimony to the superior

originality of the Jehovist genealogy, by ascribing to Lamech,

here the ninth in order, the age of 777 years. This can only be

explained from JE, where Lamech is seventh in order, and moreover

specially connects himself with the number seven by his speech.

Cain is avenged seven times, and Lamech seventy times seven.

Another circumstance shows Q to be posterior to E. The first man

is called here not Ha Adam as in JE, but always Adam, without the

article (v. 1-5), a difference which Kuenen pertinently compares

with that between ho Xristos and Xristos. But in Q itself (Genesis

i.) the first man is only the generic man; if in spite of this

he is called simply Adam (Genesis v.), as if that were his proper

name, the only way to account for this is to suppose a

reminiscence of Genesis ii. iii., though here the personification

does not as yet extend to the name.

We come to the story of the flood, Genesis vi.-ix. In JE the flood

is well led up to: in Q we should be inclined to ask in surprise

how the earth has come all at once to be so corrupted, after being

so far in the best of order, did we not know from JE. In omitting

the fall, the fratricide of Cain, the sword-song of Lamech, the

intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and

parting with the distinctive gloomy colouring which is

unmistakably spread over the whole early history of man in JE,

the Priestly Code has entirely lost the preparation for the

flood, which now appears in the most abrupt and unaccountable way.

As to the contents of the story, the priestly version here agrees

to an unusual extent with the Jehovistic one; differing from it

chiefly in the artificial, mathematical marking out of the

framework. The flood lasts twelve months and ten days, i.e.,

exactly a solar year. It begins in the six hundredth year of

Noah, on the seventeenth of the second month, rises for one

hundred and fifty days, and begins to fall on the seventeenth of

the seventh month. On the first month the tops of the mountains

become visible; in the six hundred and first year, on the first

of the first month, the water has abated; on the twenty-seventh of

the second month the earth is dry. God Himself gives instructions

and measurements for the building of the ark, as for the

tabernacle: it is to be three stories high, and divided

throughout into small compartments; three hundred cubits long,

fifty cubits broad, thirty cubits high; and Noah is to make it

accurately according to the cubit. When the water is at its

height, on the seventeenth of the second month, the flood is

fifteen cubits above the highest mountains--Noah having apparently

not forgotten, in spite of his anxiety, to heave the lead and to

mark the date in his log-book. This prematurely modern measuring

and counting cannot be thought by any one to make the narrative

more lifelike; it simply destroys the illusion. All that is

idyllic and naive is consistently stripped off the legend as far

as possible. As the duration of the flood is advanced from forty

days (JE) to a whole year, its area also is immeasurably

increased. The Priestly Code states with particular emphasis that

it was quite universal, and went over the tops of the highest

mountains; indeed it is compelled to take this view by its

assumption that the human race was diffused from the first over

the whole earth. Such traits as the missions of the birds and the

broken-off olive-leaf are passed over: poetic legend is smoothed

down into historic prose. But the value and the charm of the story

depend on such little traits as these; they are not mere

incidents, to poetry they are the most important thing of all.

These are the features which are found just in the same way

in the Babylonian story of the flood; and if the Jehovist has a

much greater affinity with the Babylonian story than the Priestly

Code, that shows it to have preserved more faithfully the international

character of those early legends. This appears most plainly in

his accounting for the flood by the confounding of the boundaries

between spirit and flesh, and the intercourse of the sons of God

and the daughters of men: the Jehovist here gives us a piece, but

little adulterated, of mythical heathenism--a thing quite

inconceivable in Q.

The Priestly Code has the rainbow, which the Jehovist, as we now

have him, wants. But we have to remember that in Genesis vi.-ix.

the Jehovist account is mutilated, but the priestly one preserved

entire. If the rainbow occurred both in JE and in Q, one of the

accounts of it had to be omitted, and according to the editor's

usual procedure the omission had to be from JE. It is accordingly

very possible that it was not at first wanting in JE; it agrees

better, indeed, with the simple rain, which here brings about the

flood, than with the opening of the sluices of heaven and the

fountains of the deep, which produce it in Q, and it would stand

much better after viii. 21, 22 than after ix. 1-7. In the

Priestly Code, moreover, the meaning of the rainbow is half

obliterated. On the one hand, the story is clumsily turned into

history, and we receive the impression either that the rainbow

only appeared in the heavens at this one time after the flood, or

that it had been there ever since; on the other hand, it is made

the token of the covenant between Elohim and Noah, and the use of

language in other passages, with the analogy of Genesis xvii.,

would point to the covenant described in ix. 1-7: the rainbow

would then be the counterpart of circumcision. /1/ The covenant,

-- Footnote

1. The celestial bow is originally the instrument of the

arrow-darting God, and therefore a symbol of His hostility; but

He lays it out of His hand to signify that He has laid aside His

wrath, and it is a token of His reconciliation and favour. When

there has been such a storm that one might dread a repetition of

the flood, the rainbow appears in heaven, the sun, and grace,

breaking forth again. In the 0. T. Q#T has not the meaning of

a mere arc, it always means the war-bow. And what is most

important of all, the Arabs also always take the iris to be the

war-bow of God; Kuzah shoots arrows from his bow, and then hangs

it up in the clouds (D. M. Z. 1849, p. 200 seq.). With the Jews

and their kin, the rainbow has retained far into Christian times a

remarkably near relation to the Deity. It is singular that the

Edomites have a God named Kaus, as well as Kuzah.

-- Footnote

i.e., the law of ch. ix. 1-7, a modification of the first ordinance

given to Adam (i.229, 30) for the world after the flood which still

subsists, is for the Priestly Code the crown, the end, the substance,

of the whole narrative. Its interest in the law always completely

absorbs the simple interest of its story.

We have also to remark that in this source vengeance for the

spilling of blood is not the affair of the relatives but the

affair of God; and that it is demanded for man as man, whether

master or slave, and no money compensation allowed. The words

sound simple and solemn: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man

shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man."

Yet the religious notion of HUMANITY underlying this sentence

is not ancient with the Hebrews any more than with other nations;

cf. Genesis iv. 15, 24, and Exodus xxi. 20 seq. /1/

-- Footnote

1. De Wette, Beitrage, p. 57. The religious notion of the people

is old.

-- Footnote

The ark lands, according to Q, on Mount Ararat. In JE, as we have

it, no landing-place is named. But this is not original, as

mythic geography belongs to the Jehovist in all other passages

where it occurs. In Q the primitive history is never localised,

the whole earth is given to man for a dwelling from the first. In

JE, on the contrary, they live first in the land of Eden far to

the East, and presumably high up in the North; expelled from

Eden they come to the land of Nod, where Cain builds the town of

Enoch, and departing from this district, which is still far to the

East, they settle in the land of Shinar, at the mouths of the

Euphrates and Tigris, where they build the town of Babel. Shinar

is the point of departure of that history of the world which is

no longer merely mythical, it is the home of the present human

race. In this point the contrast is very noticeable between the

local definiteness of the Jehovist legend, which lends it the

character of the idyllic, and the vague generalness of the other.

In Shinar, according to JE, Genesis xi. 1-9, men are still all

together, and they desire to remain together there. Not to be

scattered, they build a great city, which is to hold them all;

and to make themselves a name, they add to it a high tower which

is to reach heaven. Jehovah, perceiving in these attempts the

danger of further progress in the same direction, comes down to

confound their language, and by such violent means brings about

the dispersion of the human race by the unity of which He feels

himself threatened. In Q it is understood that men are scattered

over the whole earth; they are never represented as all living at

one point, and pains are accordingly taken to describe the flood

as quite universal. The division of the people comes about quite

simply in the way of genealogy, and the division of the languages

is not the cause but the result of it. Accompanying this we find

once more a notable difference in point of mental attitude; what

JE regards as unnatural, and only to be understood as a violent

perversion of the original order, is in Q the most natural thing

in the world.

The period between the flood and Abraham is filled up in Q by

another ten-membered genealogy, which, to judge from the analogy

of Genesis iv., had probably only seven members in JE. It cannot

have been wanting there, and may have passed straight from Shem

to Heber, and left out the grandfather Nahor (x. 21, 24, xxiv.

15, xxix. 5), who is even less to be distinguished from his

grandson of the same name than Adam from Enos. The original

dwelling-place of the Terahites is, according to Q, not the

Mesopotamian Haran (Carrhae), as in JE (xii. 1, xxiv. 4), but Ur

Casdim, which can only mean Ur of the Chaldees. From there

Terah, the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran, is said to have

emigrated with Abraham and Lot, the son of Haran, who was already

dead. If this was so, Nahor must have stayed at Ur Casdim, and

Haran must have died there. But neither of these assumptions is

consistent with the indications of the narrative. The different

aspirates notwithstanding, it is scarcely allowable to separate

the man Haran from the town Haran and to make him die elsewhere.

It is equally impossible to regard Ur in Chaldaea as the

residence of Nahor, whether the grandfather or the grandson of the

same name matters nothing; for it is obviously not without

relation to real facts that the place, which in any case must be

in Syria, where the Nahorides Laban and Rebecca dwell, is called

in J the town of Nahor, and in E Haran. Even in Q though Nahor

stays in Ur, Laban and Rebecca do not live in Chaldaea, but in

Padan Aram, ie., in Mesopotamian Syria. What helps to show that

Ur Casdim does not belong to the original form of the tradition,

is that even in Serug the father of Nahor, we are far away from

Babylon towards the West. Serug is the name of a district which

borders Haran on the North; how can the son of Serug all at once

leap back to Ur Casdim? What the reasons were for making Babylon

Abraham's point of departure, we need not now consider; but after

having left Ur Casdim with Terah, it is curious how he only gets

as far as Haran, and stays there till his father's death. In Q

also it is from Haran that he enters Palestine. Here, if anywhere,

we have in the doubling of the point of departure an attempt to

harmonise and to gain a connection with JE.

VII.I.3. The view is happily gaining ground that, in the mythical

universal history of mankind in Genesis i.-xi., the Jehovist

version is more primitive than the priestly one. And we are, in

fact, compelled to adopt this view when we observe that the

materials of the narratives in question have not an Israelite, but

a universal ethnic origin. The traces of this origin are much

more distinctly preserved in the Jehovist, whence it comes that

comparative mythology occupies itself chiefly with his

narratives, though without knowing that it is doing so. The

primitive legend has certainly undergone alterations in his hands

too; its mythic character is much obliterated, and all sorts of

Israelite elements have crept in. Even the fratricide of Cain,

with the contrast in the background between the peaceful life of

the Hebrews in the land of Canaan and the restless wanderings of

the Cainites (Kenites) in the neighbouring desert, quite falls out

of the universal historical and geographical framework. Still

more does the curse of Canaan do so; here the trait is evidently

old, that Noah was the first to make wine, but this has been made

a merely subordinate feature of a pronouncedly national

Israelite narrative. But in the Jehovist the process of emptying

the primitive legend of its true meaning and contents has not gone

nearly so far as in the Priestly Code, where it actually creates

surprise when some mythic element shines through, as in the cases

of Enoch, and of the rainbow.

The mythic materials of the primitive world-history are suffused

in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of

antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism: as

if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure

not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4). We notice a shy,

timid spirit, which belongs more to heathenism. The rattling of

the chains at intervals only aggravates the feeling of confinement

that belongs to human nature; the gulf of alienation between man

and God is not to be bridged over. Jehovah does not stand high

enough, does not feel Himself secure enough, to allow the

earth-dwellers to come very near Him; there is almost a suggestion

of the notion of the jealousy of the gods. This mood, though in

many ways softened, is yet recognisable enough in Genesis ii. iii.,

in vi. 1-4, and xi. 1-9. In the Priestly Code it has entirely

disappeared; here man no longer feels himself under a secret curse,

but allied to God and free, as lord of nature. True, the Priestly

Code also recognises in its own fashion the power of sin--this we

saw in the chapter on sacrifice; but sin as the root of ruin,

explaining it and capable of being got rid of, is the very opposite

of blind, not-to-be-averted fate. The slavery of sin and the

freedom of the children of God are in the Gospel correlated. The

mythical mode of view is destroyed by the autonomy of morality;

and closely connected with this is the rational way of looking at

nature, of which we find the beginnings in the Priestly Code. This

view of nature presupposes that man places himself as a person over

and outside of nature, which he regards as simply a thing. We may

perhaps assert that were it not for this dualism of Judaism, mechanical

natural science would not exist.

The removal of colour from the myths is the same thing as the

process of Hebraising them. The Priestly Code appears to

Hebraise less than the Jehovist; it refrains on principle from

confounding different times and customs. But in fact it Hebraises

much more: it cuts and shapes the whole of the materials so that

they may serve as an introduction to the Mosaic legislation. It

is true that the Jehovist also placed these ethnic legends at the

entrance to his sacred legend, and perhaps selected them with a

view to their forming an introduction to it; for they are all

ethical and historical in their nature, and bear on the problems

of the world of man, and not the world of nature. /1/

-- Footnote

1 Yet it is possible the selection presented him with no difficulty,

since cosmological myths were not popular tales, but priestly

speculations, with which he was quite unacquainted.

-- Footnote

But with the Jehovist justice was yet done to some extent to the

individuality of the different narratives: in the Priestly Code

their individuality is not only modified to suit the purpose of

the whole, but completely destroyed. The connection leading up

to the Torah of Moses is everything, the individual pieces have

no significance but this. It follows of course from this mode of

treatment that the connection itself loses all living reality; it

consists, apart from the successive covenants, in mere genealogy

and chronology. De Wette thinks all this beautiful because it is

symmetrical and intelligible, and leads well up to a conclusion.

But this will not be every one's taste; there is such a thing as

poetical material without manufacture.

How loosely the narratives of the primitive history are connected

with each other in the Jehovist we see very clearly in the

section dealing with the flood. It disagrees both with what goes

before and with what follows it. The genealogy Genesis iv. 16-24

issues not in Noah but in Lamech; instead of Shem, Ham, and

Japhet, the sons of Noah, we have Jabal, Jubal, Tubal, the sons of

Lamech, as the inaugurators of the second period. We have also the

characteristic difference, that Shem, Ham, and Japhet give us a

division of mankind according to nations, while Jabal, Jubal, Tubal

give a division according to guilds, which are necessarily those

of the same people, as no people consists entirely of musicians

or entirely of smiths. And it is undoubtedly the aim of chapter

iv. 16 seq. to describe the origin of the present civilisation,

not of that which is extinct, having been destroyed by the flood.

Tubal-Cain is the father of the smiths of the present, not of

those before the flood; Jubal the father of the musicians, Jabal

of the shepherds of the narrator's own period; hence they stand

at the end of the genealogy and open the second period. But as

Genesis iv. 16-24 does not look forward to the flood, so neither

does Genesis xi. 1-9 (the building of the tower of Babel) look back

to it. This piece is obviously not the continuation of chapter x.

That chapter brought us to a point at which the earth was occupied

by different peoples and different tongues; and here (xi. 1) we

are suddenly carried back to a time when the whole earth was of

one language and one speech. Can this have been the time when

Noah's family made up the whole population of the earth? or in

other words, does xi. 1-9 go back before chap x. and join on to

vi.-ix.? Manifestly not: "the whole earth" (xi. 1) is not

merely Shem and Ham and Japhet; the multitude of men who seek by

artificial means to concentrate themselves, and are then split up

into different peoples, cannot consist of only one family. The

point of view is quite different from what it would be if chaps.

vi.-ix. were taken into account; the narrator knows nothing of

the flood, which left Noah's family alone surviving out of the

whole world. Nor would it avail to place xi. 1 at a period so

long subsequent to the flood that the family might have increased

again to a great people; even this would not give the requisite

connection with the idea of Noah and his three sons. If the latter

united themselves afterwards in one family, and one coherent

people thus grew out of them, which was then split up by a higher

power into different languages, then Shem, Ham, and Japhet

entirely lose their significance as the great heads of the

nations.

The fact is simply this, that the whole section of the flood

(Genesis vi.-ix.) is an isolated piece without any connection

with the rest of the narrative of the Jehovist. Another strange

erratic boulder is the intercourse of the sons of God with the

daughters of men (Genesis vi. 1-4). /l/ The connection between

-- Footnote

1 See p. 307, note.

-- Footnote

this piece and the story of the flood which follows it, is of the

loosest; and it is in entire disagreement with the preceding part

of the Jehovist narrative, as it tells of a second fall of man,

with a point of view morally and mentally so different from that

of the first, that this story can in no wise be regarded as

supplementing or continuing that one. In Genesis vi. 1-4 morality

has nothing to do with the guilt that is incurred. We have further

examples which illustrate the fragmentary character of the Jehovist

primitive history as we have it, in the story of the fratricide

of Cain, and the curse of Canaan, which indeed ought not to be

here at all, but belong by rights to the history of the

patriarchs.

We may close this section by reproducing the words in which

Buttmann (i. 208 seq.) indicates his disagreement with De Wette

in regard to the treatment of the early legends of the Bible:

they are well worth noting. "Thoroughly familiar with the

antiquities of the race in whose sacred writings these monuments

have been preserved to us, De Wette recognises and follows the

national spirit of that race in their most ancient records. In

this way he discovers amidst these ruins the thread of an old

connection, a kind of epos, the theme of which was the

glorification of the people of Israel, a theme which finds a

prelude even in the primitive history of the human race. This

view is of the first importance for the object he has before him,

which is the true criticism of these books; and for the moment

other considerations must necessarily yield to it. My object in

this whole investigation is only to find the universal element in

the legends of different nations, and especially to discover what

is common property in the myths of the different branches of the

great family of nations to which the Hebrews and the Greeks and we

ourselves alike belong. Thus each myth reveals itself

to me as existing for itself, having a basis and completeness of

its own, and even when I find it in other nations I at once assert

for it its character as already known to me. Thus De Wette and I

come to differ in the view we take of individual myths. To him they

commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men

for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar

view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free

inventions in which there is no intention to deceive. I, on the

contrary, can allow no invention in these oldest portions of

mythology. A true myth is never invented; it is handed down.

It is not true, but it is honest. From small elements which fancy

offered as true, these myths arose and grew, without any contributor

to their growth feeling that he had of himself added to them. Those

only had any conscious intention in the matter, who touched up the

oldest pure myths, and drew them into the great circle of their

national history; and their intention, though conscious, was quite

innocent and harmless, as De Wette describes it. Now De Wette

sees the chief traces of that unity, or of that national epos

which winds its way through the Mosaic history, in the Elohim

document. For his critical purpose, therefore, this document is

the most important, and it he for the most part follows. My aim

forbids me to attend to anything but the inner completeness of the

stories taken one by one, and this I see most clearly in the

Jehovah fragments; whence I have had to yield the preference to

them in the foregoing discussions. Should each of us attain his

end, our views will excellently supplement each other."

We may add that just that linked unity of its narrative, which

has procured for the Priestly Code the title of the "mainstock,"

shows that it presents us with a more developed form of the myths;

while the Jehovist, just because of the defective connection

(in form) of his "fragments," which long caused him to be regarded

as a mere filler-up of the fundamental work, must be judged to stand

nearer to the fountain.

VIII.II.

VIII.II.1. In the history of the patriarchs also, the outlines of

the narrative are the same in Q and in JE. We find in both Abraham's

immigration into Canaan with Sarah and Lot, his separation from

Lot, the birth of Ishmael by Hagar, the appearance of God for the

promise of Isaac, Isaac's birth, the death of Sarah and Abraham,

Ishmael, Isaac's marriage with Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Jacob's

journey to Mesopotamia and the foundation of his family there, his

return, Esau, Joseph in Egypt, Jacob in Egypt, Jacob's blessing on

Joseph and his other sons, his death and burial. The materials here

are not mythical but national, and therefore more transparent, and in

a certain sense more historical. It is true, we attain to no

historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of the time when the

stories about them arose in the Israelite people; this later age is

here unconsciously projected, in its inner and its outward features,

into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there like a glorified mirage.

The skeleton of the patriarchal history consists, it is well known,

of ethnographic genealogy. The Leah-tribes are connected with the

Rachel-tribes under the common father Jacob-Israel: then entire

Israel is connected with the people of Edom under the old name of

Isaac (Amos vii 9, 16). Isaac again is connected under Abraham

with Lot, the father of Moab and Ammon. All these nearly related

and once closely allied Hebrew tribes are shown to be intimately

connected with the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian desert, and

sharply marked off from the Canaanites, in whose land they

dwelt. The narrative speaks of its characters as succeeding each

other in time or contemporary; in this form it indicates logical

or statistical subordination and co-ordination. As a fact the

elements are generally older than the groups and the smaller

groups than the greater. The migrations which are mentioned of

peoples and tribes are necessary consequences of the assumed

relationship. It would be quite possible to present the

composition and relative position of any given people at a given

time in a similar way in the form of a genealogical early

history. True genealogy can scarcely represent precisely the

existing relations. It cannot always be determined as a matter

of fact whether a tribe is the cousin or the brother or the

twin-brother of another tribe, or whether there is any affinity

at all between the two; the affinity can be understood and

interpreted in different ways, the grouping always depends to some

extent on the point of view of the genealogist, or even on his

likings and antipathies. The reason why the Arameans are made so

nearly related to the Israelites is probably that the

patriarchal legend arose in Middle and North Israel; as indeed

the pronounced preference shown for Rachel and Joseph clearly

proves to have been the case. Did the legend belong originally

to Judah, it is likely that more prominence would be given to the

Cainite (Kenite) tribes of the peninsula of Sinai, which, as it

is, are too much thrust into the background; for there can be no

doubt that in the earliest history of Israel these tribes were of

no small importance. Nor are apparent contradictions wanting in

the ethnographic genealogy. Ishmael, Edom, and the Cainite tribes

first mentioned, come into mutual contact in different ways, which

may be quite naturally explained from different views and arrangements

of their mutual relationships. And lastly we may add that the

genealogical form lends itself to the reception of every sort of

materials. In the patriarchal legend, however, the ethnographic

element is always predominant. Abraham alone is certainly not

the name of a people like Isaac and Lot: he is somewhat difficult

to interpret. That is not to say that in such a connection as this

we may regard him as a historical person; he might with more

likelihood be regarded as a free creation of unconscious art. He is

perhaps the youngest figure in the company, and it was probably at

a comparatively late period that he was put before his son Isaac. /1/

-- Footnote

1. The stories about Abraham and those about Isaac are so similar,

that they cannot possibly be held to be independent of each

other. The stories about Isaac, however, are more original, as

may be seen in a striking way on comparing Genesis xx. 2-16 with

xxvi 6-12. The short nnd profane version, of which Isaac is the

hero, is more lively and pointed; the long and edifying version

in which Abraham replaces Isaac, makes the danger not possible but

actual, thus necessitating the intervention of the Deity and so

bringing about a glorification of the patriarch, which he little

deserved. All the commentators on Genesis indeed, regard chapter

xx. as the original of xxvi.; they do not base their judgment,

however, on a comparison of the parallel passages, but merely

consider that as the father is older than the son, the story

about the father is older than the corresponding story about the

son; and they regard Isaac generally as a mere echo of Abraham.

The obviousness of this principle is too great, and against it we

have to consider that the later development of the legend shows a

manifest tendency to make Abraham the patriarch par excellence and

cast the others into the shade. In the earlier literature, on the

other hand, Isaac is mentioned even by Amos, Abraham first appears

in Isaiah xl.-lxvii. Micah vii 20 belongs to the exile, and the

words "who redeemed Abraham" in Isaiah xxix. 22 are not genuine;

they have no possible position in the sentence, and the idea of

the salvation of Abraham (from the fire of the Chaldaeans) is of

late occurrence. I certainly do not mean to maintain that

Abraham was not yet known when Amos wrote; but he scarcely stood

by this time at the same stage as Isaac and Jacob. As a saint of

Hebron he might he of Calibite ordain, and have something to do

with Ram (1Chronicles ii.). Abram may stand for Abiram, as Abner

for Abiner and Ahab for Ahiab. The name Abu Ruham occurs in the

Hadith as _nomen proprium viri_.

-- Footnote

In the Jehovist this skeleton of ethnographic genealogy is found

covered throughout with flesh and blood. The patriarchs, Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob, are not mere names, but living forms, ideal

prototypes of the true Israelite. They are all peace-loving

shepherds, inclined to live quietly beside their tents, anxious

to steer clear of strife and clamour, in no circumstances prepared

to meet force with force and oppose injustice with the sword.

Brave and manly they are not, but they are good fathers of

families, a little under the dominion of their wives, who are

endowed with more temper. They serve Jehovah in essentially the

same way as their descendants in historical times; religion with

them does not consist of sacrifice alone, but also of an upright

conversation and trustful resignation to God's providence. Jacob

is sketched with a more realistic touch than the other two; he has

a strong dash of artifice and desire of gain, qualities which do

not fail to secure the ends he aims at. He escapes from every

difficulty and danger, not only safely but with profit: Jehovah

helps him, but above all he helps himself, without showing, as

we should judge, any great scruple in his choice of means. The

stories about him do not pretend to be moral, the feeling they

betray is in fact that of undissembled joy in all the successful

artifices and tricks of the patriarchal rogue. Of the subordinate

figures Esau is drawn with some liking for him, then Laban, and

the weak-kneed saint, Lot. Ishmael is drawn as the prototype of

the Bedouin, as a wild ass of a man, whose hand is against every

man, and every man's hand against him.

It is remarkable that the heroes of Israelite legend show so little

taste for war, and in this point they seem to be scarcely a true

reflection of the character of the Israelites as known from their

history. Yet it is not difficult to understand that a people

which found itself incessantly driven into war, not only dreamed

of an eternal peace in the future, but also embodied the wishes of

its heart in these peaceful forms of the golden age in the past.

We have also to consider that the peaceful shepherd life of the

patriarchs is necessary to the idyllic form in which the early

history of the people is cast; only peoples or tribes can make

war, not single men. /1/ This also must serve to explain why

-- Footnote

1. This consideration is certainly less decisive than the

foregoing one. Jacob is a peaceful shepherd, not only because

of the idyllic form of the narrative, but in his own being and

character. He forms the strongest contrast to his brother Esau,

who in spite of the idyllic form is a man of war.

Such exceptions as Genesis xiv. and xlviii.'22 (chapter xxxiv.)

only prove the rule.

-- Footnote

the historical self-consciousness of the nation finds so little

expression in the personal character of the patriarchs. It makes

vent for itself only in the inserted prophecies of the future;

in these we trace that national pride which was the fruit of the

exploits of David, yet always in a glorified form, rising to

religious exaltation.

In the traits of personal character ascribed to the patriarchs they

represent substantially the nature and the aspirations of the

individual Israelite. The historic-political relations of Israel

are reflected with more life in the relations borne by the patriarchs

to their brothers; cousins, and other relatives. The background is

never long concealed here, the temper of the period of the kings

is everywhere discernible. This is the case most clearly perhaps

in the story about Jacob and Esau. The twins are at variance, even

in the womb; even in the matter of his birth the younger refuses

precedence to the elder, and tries to hold him back by the heel.

This is interpreted to the anxious mother by the oracle at

Beersheba as follows: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two

peoples are separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall

be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the

younger." The boys grow up very different. Esau is a rough and

sunburnt hunter, ranges about in the desert, and lives from day to

day without care: Jacob, a pious, smooth man, stays at home

beside the tents, and understands the value of things which his

unsophisticated brother disregards. The former is the favourite

of his father, the autochthonous Isaac, the latter is preferred by

the mother, the Aramaean Rebecca; the former stays in his own

land and takes his wives from the original population of south

Canaan and the Sinaitic peninsula, the latter emigrates, and

brings his wives from Mesopotamia. Thus the contrast is distinctly

prefigured, which at a later time appeared, between the rough Edom,

sprung from the soil and having his roots in it, and smoother,

more civilised Israel, which had more affinity with the great

powers of the world. By means of deceit and trickery the

younger brother succeeds in depriving the elder of the paternal

blessing and of the right of the first-born; the elder, in

consequence of this, determines to kill him, and the situation

becomes strained. Edom was a people and a kingdom before Israel,

but was then overshadowed by Israel, and even subjugated at last

by David: hence the fierce hatred between the brother nations, of

which Amos speaks. The words of the blessing of Jacob show this

quite distinctly to be the historical basis of the legend, a

basis of which the Jews were perfectly conscious: we hear in the

blessing of repeated attempts of the Edomites to cast off the yoke

of Israel, and it is predicted that these efforts will be at last

successful. Thus the stories about Jacob and Esau cannot have

taken form even in outline, before the time of David; in their

present form (Genesis xxvii. 40) their outlook extends to times

still later. The roots of the legend being thus traceable in

later history, a circumstance which the Jehovist does not attempt

to conceal, it is no more than an apparent anachronism when he

takes occasion to give a complete list of the Edomite kings

down to David, interspersing it with historical notes, as, for

example, that Hadad ben Bedad (possibly a contemporary of

Gideon) defeated the Midianites on the plains of Moab. In the

story of Jacob and Laban, again, the contemporary background

shines through the patriarchal history very distinctly. The

Hebrew, on his half-migration, half-flight from Mesopotamia to the

land of Jordan, is hotly pursued by his Aramean father-in-law,

who overtakes him at Gilead. There they treat with each other

and pile up a heap of stones, which is to be the boundary between

them, and which they mutually pledge themselves not to overstep

with hostile intentions. This answers to the actual state of the

facts. The Hebrew migration into Canaan was followed by the

Aramaean, which threatened to overwhelm it. Gilead was the

boundary between the two peoples, and the arena, during a long

period, of fierce conflicts which they waged with each other.

The blessing of Jacob, in the oracle on Joseph, also mentions the

Syrian wars: the archers who press Joseph hard, but are not able

to overcome him, can be no other than the Arameans of Damascus, to

whose attacks he was exposed for a whole century. Joseph here

appears always as the pillar of the North-Israelite monarchy, the

wearer of the crown among his brethren, a position for which he

was marked out by his early dreams. The story of Joseph,

however, in so far as historical elements can be traced in it at

all, and not merely the free work of poetry, is based on much

earlier events, from a time when the union was just being

accomplished of the two sections which together became the people

of Israel. The trait of his brother's jealousy of him points

perhaps to later events. /1/

-- Footnote

1. It deserves to be considered that at first Joseph is in Egypt

alone, and that his brothers came after, at his request. When the

notion of united Israel was transferred to the distant past, one

consequence was that the fortunes of the part could not be

separated from those of the whole. In the same way, Rachel being

an Aramaean, Leah must be one too. Perhaps the combination of

Rachel and Leah in a national unity was only accomplished by

Moses. Moses came from the peninsula of Sinai (Leah) to lead the

Israelites there from Goshen (Joseph). The designation of Levite

he could not receive in Joseph, only in Leah.

-- Footnote

The historical associations which form the groundwork of the

stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old.

They afford us almost the only information we possess about the

great change which must have taken place in the league of the

tribes soon after Moses. This change principally affected the

group of the four old Leah tribes which were closely connected

with each other. Reuben assumes the rights of his father

prematurely and loses the leadership. Simeon and Levi make,

apart from the others, a faithless attack on the Canaanites,

and collective Israel lets them suffer the consequences alone,

so that they succumb to the vengeance of their enemies and cease

to be tribes. Hence the primogeniture is transferred to Judah.

Judah also suffers great losses, no doubt in the conflict which

accompanied the settlement in the land of Canaan, and is reduced

to a fraction of his former importance. But this breach is made

good by fresh accessions from the mother-stock of the Leah tribes,

by the union of Pharez and Zarah, i.e. of Caleb, Kenaz, Cain (Ken),

Jerahmeel, with the remnant of ancient Judah. The Jehovist

narratives about Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, are undoubtedly

based on occurrences connected with the period of the conquest of

the holy land; but this is not the place to trace the historical

interpretation of the stories further. /1/

-- Footnote

1. See "Israel," sec. 2, infra. Genesis iv. 1-15 is a similar

tribal history. The old tribe of Cain, the name of which is

indicative of settlement and culture, appears to have been broken

up and scattered to the four winds in very early times (Judges v.

24) in the same way as Levi, with which it appears to have

divided the priesthood. We have already said that Genesis iv. 1-l5

can only have found its way into the primitive legend by

interpolation.

-- Footnote

It may, however, be remarked, and it is important to

do so, that even where true historic motives are indisputably

present in the patriarchal legend, it is not exactly a

reproduction of the facts as they occurred. In reality Edom

always kept up his hatred against Israel and suppressed his feeling

of relationship (Amos i. 11); in Genesis he meets his brother

returning from Mesopotamia, and trembling with anxiety at the

encounter, in a conciliatory temper which is quite affecting.

The touch is one to reflect no small honour on the ancient

Israelite. To set against this we have the touch, manifestly

inspired by hatred, of Genesis xix. 30-38. No one can fail to

wonder why the daughters of Lot are nameless, but this shows that

they are inserted between Lot and his sons Moab and Ammon purely

for the sake of the incest. Sympathies and antipathies are

everywhere at work, and the standpoint is throughout that of

Northern Israel, as appears most evidently from the circumstance

that Rachel is the fair and the beloved wife of Jacob, whom alone

in fact he wished to marry, and Leah the ugly and despised one who

was imposed on him by a trick. /2. On the whole, the rivalries

-- Footnote

2 This, however, only warrants us to conclude that these legends

first arose in Ephraim, not that they were written down there in

the form in which we have them.

-- Footnote

which really existed are rather softened than exaggerated in this

poetical illustration of them; what tends to unity is more prominent

and is more carefully treated than what tends to separation. There

is no trace of any side glances at persons and events of the day, as,

e.g., at the unseemly occurrences at the court of David, and as

little of any twisting or otherwise doctoring the materials to

make them advance this or that tendency.

But these stories would be without point were it not for other

elements which enter into them and attach them to this and that

particular locality. In this aspect we have first of all to

consider that the patriarchs are regarded as the founders of the

popular worship at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, and Hebron, as we

saw above, <I.II.1. "In perfect correspondence...">. A whole series

of stories about them are cultus-myths; in these they discover

by means of a theophany that a certain spot of earth is holy ground;

there they erect an altar, and give it the name of the place.

They dwell exclusively at places which were afterwards regarded as

primeval sanctuaries and inaugurate the sacrifices which are offered

there. The significance of these stories is entirely bound up with

the locality; they possess an interest only for those who still

sacrifice to Jehovah on the same altar as Abraham once did, under

the same sacred oak of Moreh or Mamre. In the same way the

patriarchs discover or excavate the caves, or springs, or wells,

and plant the trees, which their posterity still count sacred or

at least honourable, after the lapse of thousands of years. In

some cases also striking or significant formations of the earth's

surface receive a legendary explanation from the patriarchal age.

Were the Dead Sea not there, Sodom and Gomorrha would not have

perished; were there not a small flat tongue of land projecting

into the marsh from the south-east, Lot would have directed his

flight straight to the mountains of his sons Moab and Ammon, and

would not have made the detour by Zoar, which only serves to

explain why this corner was not included in the ruin to the area

of which it properly belongs. The pillar of salt into which Lot's

wife was turned was still pointed out in the days of Josephus;

perhaps the smoke of the furnace which Abraham saw from the

Jewish shore the morning after the catastrophe has some connection

with the town of the same name which was situated there. /1/

-- Footnote

1 Joshua HNB#N xv. 62 is no doubt more correctly HKB#N: the

name, having the article prefixed to it, must be susceptible of a

clear meaning.

-- Footnote

The origin of Mount Gilead is explained from its historical

significance: it is an immense mound which was once heaped up by

Laban and Jacob in order to serve as a boundary between Aram and

Israel. In many instances the names of places gave rise to a

legend which does not always hit upon the true reason of the name.

The spring of Lahai Roi, for example, is an instance of this. The

discovery of this spring saved Hagar and Ishmael from dying of

thirst. Hagar called the name of Jehovah who spoke with her, El

Roi (God of Seeing), for she said, "Have I seen God, and am I

kept in life after my seeing?" Wherefore the well is called

Beer Lahai Roi (he lives who sees me); it is between Kadesh and

Berdan. According to Judges xv. 18-20, 2Samuel xxiii. 11, a

more correct interpretation of Lahai Roi would be " jawbone of the

antelope "--this being the appearance presented by a series of

rocky teeth standing close together there. /1/

-- Footnote

1 Compare Onugnathos and the camel's jawbone in Vakidi, op. cit.

p. 298, note 2: Jakut iv. 353, 9 seq. R)Y is an obsolete name

of an animal. For HLM, Genesis xvi. 15, we should read )LHYM (cf.

1Samuel iii. 13), and before )XRY we should probably insert

W)XY.

-- Footnote

The original motive of the legend, however, as we have now

indicated it, appears in the Jehovist always and everywhere

covered over with the many-coloured robe of fancy. The longer a

story was spread by oral tradition among the people, the more

was its root concealed by the shoots springing from it. For

example, we may assume with regard to the story of Joseph that,

just because it has almost grown into a romance, its origin

stretches back to a remote antiquity. The popular fancy plays as

it will; yet it does not make such leaps as to make it impossible

to trace its course. Miracles, angels, theophanies, dreams, are

never absent from the palette. When Rachel eats the mandrakes

which Reuben had found, and which Leah had given up to her, and

they remove her barrenness so that she becomes the mother of

Joseph, we have a story based on a vulgar superstition. Purely

mythical elements are found isolated in the story of Jacob's

wrestling with the Deity at the ford of the Jabbok. Etymology

and proverbs are a favourite motive, and often give rise to lively

and diversified tales. Even in pieces which we should be inclined

to attribute to the art of individuals, old and characteristic

themes may be involved. The story of Jacob and Laban, for

example, is entirely composed of such materials. The courtship at

the well is twice repeated with no great variation. The trait of

the father-in-law's wish to get his oldest daughter first off his

hands and craftily bringing her to the son-in-law after the

wedding-feast, is scarcely due to the invention of an individual.

The shepherd's tricks, by which Jacob colours the sheep as he likes,

have quite the flavour of a popular jest. The observance of

hospitality or transgressions against it, occupy a prominent place

in the Genesis of the Jehovist; Lot's entertainment, and the

Sodomites' insulting maltreatment, of the Deity who comes among

them in disguise, is an incident that appears in the legends of

many races. There is little psychological embellishment, little

actual making-up; for the most part we have the product of a

countless number of narrators, unconsciously modifying each

other's work. How plastic and living the materials must have

been even in the ninth and eighth century, we see from the

manifold variants and repetitions of the same stories, which,

however, scarcely change the essential character of the themes.

One more trait must be added to the character of the Jehovist.

Each of his narratives may be understood by itself apart from

the rest; the genealogy serves merely to string them together;

their interest and significance is not derived from the connection

in which they stand. Many of them have a local colour which

bespeaks a local origin; and how many of them are in substance

inconsistent with each other, and stand side by side only by

compulsion! The whole literary character and loose connection of

the Jehovist story of the patriarchs reveals how gradually its

different elements were brought together, and how little they

have coalesced to a unity. In this point the patriarchal history

of the Jehovist, stands quite on the same footing with his legend

of the origins of the human race, the nature of which we have

already demonstrated.

VIII.II.2. It is from the Jehovistic form of the legends that we

derive our picture of the patriarchs, that picture which children

learn at school and which they find it easy to retain. To compare

the parallel of the Priestly Code it is necessary to restore it as

a whole, for few are aware of the impression it produces.

"And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of

Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son,

and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls

that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into

the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came (xii.

4b, 5). And the land was not able to bear them that they might

dwell together, for their substance was great so that they could

not dwell together. And they separated themselves the one from

the other; Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled

in the cities of the Kikkar. /1/

-- Footnote

1. Where the Dead Sea was afterwards.

-- Footnote

And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the

Kikkar, that God remembered Abram, and sent Lot out of the midst

of the overthrow-, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt...

(xiii. 6, 11b, 12ab, xix. 29). And Sarai was barren: she had

no child. And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her

maid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and

gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And Hagar bare Abram

a son; and Abram called his son's name which Hagar bare, Ishmael.

And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to

Abram" (xi. 30, xvi. 3, 15, 16)

Then follows the covenant of God with Abram, whose name he now

changes to Abraham, and the institution of circumcision as the

mark of those who belong to the covenant; then the announcement

of the birth of Isaac by Sarai, now ninety years old, who is

henceforth to be called Sarah, and Isaac's nomination as heir

of the covenant in place of Ishmael (chapter xvii.).

"And Sarah bore Abraham a son at the set time of which God had

spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was

born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham

circumcised his son Isaac, after eight days, as God had commanded

him. And Abraham was an hundred years old when Isaac his

son was born unto him (xxi. 2-5). And the life of Sarah was an

hundred and twenty seven years; these were the years of the life

of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-Arba, the same is Hebron in

the land of Canaan" (xxiii. 1, 2).

Then comes the treaty of Abraham, reported with all due legal

accuracy, with Ephron the Hittite, from whom he purchases the

cave of Machpelah, which is over against Mamre, for a family

burying-place (xxiii.).

"And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he

lived, a hundred and seventy five years. And Abraham gave up the

ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years;

and was gathered to his fellow tribesmen. And his sons Isaac and

Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron

ben Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham

purchased of the sons of Heth; there was Abraham buried and Sarah

his wife. And after Abraham was dead, God blessed his son Isaac"

(xxv. 7-11a).

Next come the Toledoth (generations) of Ishmael according to the

regular practice of first exhausting the collaterals (xxv. 12-17).