leadership. The history is in fact composite; its component elements reflecting differences of coloring due to different ages, and to the traditions and thought-habits of different sections of the country.

It was not until after the Chaldean exile that the Pentateuch was completed in its present inclusion and order. Of its component elements there were four main lines, which we will here enumerate: the Jehovistic (J); the Elohistic (E); the Deuteronomic (D); and the Priestly (P). These lines, with some intermediate editing, were skillfully combined by the latest historians, so as to form in the main a continuous narrative. The latter two will come up for mention in their place; we have to deal here merely with the first and second, originating in the early part of the monarchical period now under consideration, and con-. taining the most vigorous and moving elements of the early history.

The oldest stratum of story, and the one that has been used for the narrative basis of the whole patriarchal history, The Jehois the so-called Jehovistic (Yahvistic); which vistic Source embodies, as is generally supposed, the traditions current in the southern kingdom. It seems to have come from about the time of King Jehoshaphat, 874 to 849 B.C. Containing, as a rule, the most charming and limpidly told of the early stories, it has the flow and realistic vigor of the native folk tale, and doubtless derives largely from a still earlier oral source. The depth of its spiritual involvement, however, forbids our attributing it to a purely folk's origin. It must have come from cultivated teachers, who, though speaking in plain and as it were domestic terms, had a deep intuitional sense of human and divine values. The best account of the matter is that these J stories were composed for the catechetical instruction of the common people and the young. In their inception they were educational. The Israelites, as we know, attached

great importance to instruction of this kind. They were eager that all, from the humblest up, might be familiar with the knowledge of Jehovah and of the great names and events of the past (cf. Exod. xii, 26, 27; xiii, 14; Deut. vi, 6-9; Josh. iv, 21).

Though oldest in point of composition, the Jehovistic line of story does not begin until Genesis ii, 4, where the detailed account of the creation of man begins; the first chapter, from the later priestly source, dealing with the six days of the creation of the world. For two chapters, in designating Deity, it unites the two names Jehovah and Elohim (Authorized Version, LORD God) in one; after that the simple name Jehovah" is used, though not rigorously. Thus in this Jehovistic source he is recognized as from the beginning the one God of mankind and first worshiped in the time of Adam's third son Seth (Gen. iv, 26); though according to the Elohistic account the name "Jehovah" was not known to Israel until the time of the deliverance from Egypt (Exod. vi, 2, 3). With the predominant use of this name goes a very intimate conception of the relations of Jehovah with men. He is represented as walking with them, talking face to face with them, eating and lodging with them; and his acts, as connected with the creation, the flood, the confusion of tongues, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, are planned and carried out in very human ways. Thus the stories seem to reflect the artless conceptions of early conditions, as these had gradually shaped themselves by oral repetition into stereotyped narrative forms. It is an indication of the later historians' fidelity to their sources, that these stories retain so much of their primitive character, though at the time when the history was compiled and unified the idea of God had grown so much more austere and remote.

As there was a line of story in the southern kingdom, so in the northern; and this was drawn upon by the later

compilers and worked in as a strand in the completed history. It is called Elohistic, from Elohim, the older and more The Elohistic general name of the Deity common to all the Source Semitic stock, to which name this line of story tended. It embodies traditions of the northern kingdom, as written supposedly about the time of Elisha, or somewhere from 850 to 800 B.C. In the completed history this line of story is not drawn upon so continuously, but rather to fill out and supplement the Jehovistic; this probably because the two lines of story contained mostly identical traditions.

The Elohistic line, which like the other derives from folk tradition, reflects a somewhat different coloring of religious thought; not, however, discordant in principle. Its idea of God is less intimate, as befits a less personal concept of him; he is represented not as friend and companion but as a Being whom men could apprehend only through angels and dreams and oracles. Beginning at Genesis xii, it comprises material from no farther back than the common ancestor Abraham; and from the time of Jacob it deals especially with the history of the northern tribes, giving its honors to those lines of ancestry rather than to the Judaic. The less intimate sense of Deity which characterizes the Elohistic story, and which we feel in the habitual use of the less personal name, may be due to the fact that its idea of God starts from natural forces rather than from human experience. With these two slightly different angles of view, it can be seen that the interweaving of Elohistic and Jehovistic elements enriches rather than distorts the united history. It gives solidity and contour, like the superimposed pictures of a stereoscopic view.

NOTE. The Two Sources. The following brief characterization of the J and E documents is quoted from Professor Alexander R. Gordon, in Hibbert Journal, Vol. IV, p. 164:

The Jehovistic Source: "It is to this document, par excellence, that the Book of Genesis owes its peculiar charm. It is distinguished for its

delicate style and easy rhythmical flow of language, but above all for its delineation of character, and its insight into, and power of expressing, subtle shades of feeling and motives of conduct. It is also suffused throughout with a simple, fresh, and spontaneous religious spirit. Jahveh is near to man. He comes down and walks and talks with him almost like a brother-man. And the religious life consists essentially in the free, happy, almost visible walk of man with Jahveh."

The Elohistic Source: "This document, while still popular in spirit, is rather more stiff and formal in style. The language shows a distinct tendency to crystallize into literary forms, or mannerisms. The religious tone, too, is more reserved. We have no longer the free, happy walk of Jahveh with man. God dwells in some measure apart from men, and reveals himself, not by open word, but in dreams and by His angel.”

III

How these were Supplemented. The data derived from another source, the so-called Priestly, though interpolated much later, may be considered here for the distinctive tone and coloring they impart to the text. It is in the contributions from this source that we feel the formal touch of the historian, as he thinks in terms of written and documentary records, as distinguished from the folk's consciousness thinking in terms of spoken and literary utterance.

The material of this source represents rather the literature composed for permanence and record than that composed for common use and dissemination; it is the original idea of the written as distinguished from the spoken style.1 Composed under clerical and scribal auspices from the civic and Temple archives, it comprises a supplementary line of data designed to supply the chronological and genealogical backbone of the history; to give statistics, formal details, measurements, and the like; and to incorporate the statutes, civic, sanitary, and ritual, which had to do with the various usages, festival and liturgical, of the sanctuary. Its most distinctive legal section is comprised in the Book of Leviticus,

1 See above, p. 14.

which in its present form embodies the ecclesiastical code as observed in the second Temple. It reflects the consciousness of the priests and clergy to whom the religion has long been an established and organic system, and at a time when the nation, no longer independent as a state, had only the religious outlet for its thoughts and activities.

Its thought of God is of a Being high and withdrawn from men, whose face none can see and live, and intercourse with whom is only by rites and forms. He is the God of creation and nature and history, rather than of the personal human experience; hence the comparative remoteness and austerity of the character ascribed to him. The general name "Elohim" is used to designate him, until the history reaches the time of the deliverance from Egypt (see Exod. vi, 2, 3), when the distinctive national name 'Jehovah" takes its place. The more formal and documentary coloring of this source makes it comparatively easy to distinguish from the more flowing narrative of the rest. Whether any of it is earlier than the Chaldean exile is a matter of dispute; but at any rate its legal parts, as represented in the Book of Leviticus, are thought to be in their present form the work of Ezra the scribe, who came from Babylon to publish the law to the returned exiles at Jerusalem, in 458 B.C. (see Neh. viii, 1-3).

་་

NOTE. The Jehovistic (Jahvistic) narrative, as represented in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, is given by itself, detached from the Priestly, in Gordon, "Early Traditions of Genesis," pp. 233-241; and is followed by a secondary Jehovistic element (J 2), pp. 242-245. The Priestly document is detached and given, in its turn, pp. 245-255.

IV

Treatment of Myth and Legend. The modern way of getting at the origins of things is by study of the evidence furnished by geology, physical geography, climatology, and archæological remains; and of man, by ethnological study