Hagar's expulsion, E tones down these objectionable features. Thus in Gen. xvi. 4-6, Hagar's expulsion is due purely to Sarah's jealousy, while in Gen. xxi. 12 Abraham is counselled of God to send her away; even as J in Gen. xii. simply states that Abraham palmed off his wife as his sister in Egypt for fear of his life, whereas E (xx.) is at pains to show how God saw to it from the first that no harm came to Sarah.1

Many local touches-e.g. the stress laid on the sanctuaries of Bethel, Shechem, Beersheba, and the prominence given to Joseph, father of Ephraim and Manasseh,-point to the Northern Kingdom as E's home, while similar local touches suggest Judah as J's. From their general religious tone, their toleration of much against which canonical prophets ever protested, and their never subordinating their evident interest in their stories to a specifically religious purpose,2 J and E must be earlier than the canonical prophets. Their style and tone stamp their narrative as the work of the early prophetic school. We speak of J and E, but they are not the work of a single hand in either case. The narrative of Jin Gen. i.-xi. is clearly composed of two strands, and throughout J and E, from Gen. to Sam., considerable variations are to be found within J and E alike. Each is the outcome of a long literary process, the work of a "school" of like-minded prophetic historians. In their histories, they embodied pre-existing material,

1 Besides the peculiarities noted, J and E have many other distinguishing characteristics. For instance, E is more of an antiquarian and more learned; he makes Laban, an Aramaic Syrian, call the boundary cairn Jegarsahadutha, Jacob gives it the good Hebrew name Gal'Ed (Gilead) (Gen. xxxi. 47); he knows Egyptian names (xli. 45); and refuses to use the name Jehovah till it is revealed to Moses, for fear of anachronism.-E uses "Amorites" for J's "Canaanites"; Horeb (E) for Sinai (J); Jacob (E usually) for Israel (J); in J Moses acts by and for himself, in E Aaron, Jethro, Joshua help him much. In E more is made of prophets than in J, e.g. Abraham, Moses, Miriam are so called.

2 On the other hand, we must not fancy that J and E endorse all they report. They often just repeat tradition without comment of their own. Ancient ceremonies, however, the original meaning of which was forgotten, they interpret in the light of their own day, e.g. Jacob disguising himself with skins. So of the names of sacred places, Beersheba, Bethel.

66

PROPHETIC" DEUTERONOMY

53

folklore, legends, poems, tradition of various date, transmitted orally (or by writing 1) from very much earlier times, as well as several collections of old laws.

Such were J and E. The date of J is assumed to be c. 850 B.C., that of E c. 750 B.C. Genesis gives us the best samples of both, but the narratives of Exod. and Numb. also supply many of their masterly pictures. Though they often closely resemble each other, they were written independently, for E did not copy J. Their resemblance is due to the fact that J and E were parallel narratives drawing on a common stock of tradition which had already crystallised into a comparatively fixed form."

As parallel documents with much in common and supplementing each other, the attempt to combine them in a continuous narrative was natural and soon adopted. About 700 B.C. J and E were welded into one narrative JE, and so skilfully that at times it is all but impossible to separate and reconstruct these two sources. JE extends as far as Joshua, but may go further. In JE the prophetic moral and religious element is strong.

About 650 B.C., as already stated, "prophetic" Deuteronomy was composed. At first it was all but exclusively a Law-Book, beginning at Deut. v.; v.-xi. expounding the fundamental principles of religion, xii.-xxvi. containing special laws,-laws, however, not systematically and technically stated, but ethically expounded, and xxviii. as a fitting and effective conclusion of the whole, a peroration. So it is a LawBook in a class by itself, hortatory and homiletical thought on the lines of the canonical prophets. It deals mainly with religious reforms and regulations. Both its religious code and its history are based on

1 A scribe chronicler was attached to the royal court from David's day onwards. The earliest books were apparently Lyrics, e.g. "The Books of the Wars of Jehovah" (Numb. xxi.-14), "The Book of Jashar " (Josh. x., 2 Sam. i.). Both J and E were revised and enlarged by later hands. There were very many editorial revisions of the Hexateuch down to, may be, the third century, and consequent additions and alterations.

JE adapted to the needs and ideas of 650 B.C. The special laws in D, especially xxii. sqq., are similar to those of Exod. xxi.-xxiii., and Lev. xvii.-xxv., and embody ancient custom. Chs. v.-xi. form the core of D and lay down its theocratic principles, embodying the Decalogue of Exod. xx.

D, as it stands, is not the work of one hand or of one date. The original nucleus (v.-xxvi., xxviii.) has been revised, expanded and modified. "Some little time after the kernel (chs. v.-xxvi., xxviii.) of Dt. was composed, it was enlarged by a second Deuteronomic writer or writers" (Driver). This done, the next stage, during the Captivity, was the inclusion of D in a new edition of JE. This is known as JED.

During the Exile also, a new body of ritual law, the Code of Holiness, (H) (see p. 47, n. 2 sup.), was drawn up, about Ezekiel's day, and probably by a disciple of his. Later still, c. 500 B.C., was written P, (p. 47, sup.) with its great mass of ritual and ceremonial laws. Next, P (including H now) was united with JED., about 420-400 B.C., and a new historical setting was written as a framework to P's legislation. "The Editors took P as their basis, and introduced in each period the parts of JE which seemed to them to belong there" (Prof. G. Moore). Not content with its large contribution to the Pentateuch, and the new sacerdotal version of its history, the priestly editors of P "revised the whole Hexateuch, pieced together its writings in such a way as almost everywhere to make their own line of thought the foundation of the whole, and, wherever possible, to adapt the other writings to their own pattern."

The following Table gives Ryle's analysis of J and E in Genesis :

"Speaking very roughly, P embraces 11 chs. in Gen., some 19 in Exod., all Lev., and 28 chs. in Numb. The Pentateuch, as we now have it, is a fusion of these 85 chs. with the two far older narratives, and with the Law of D" (Montefiore, H.L., 315). Of course, this does not imply that JE, etc., wrote in chapters.

la,

P SECTIONS IN PENTATEUCH

55

J: 2-4; 52; 61-8; 71-5, 12, 160, 17, 22, 23; 8 2b, Sa, 6-12, 136, 20-22; 918-27; 108-12, 21, 24-30; II 1-0, 28-30; 121-4, 6-20; 131-5, 7-11, 126-18; 16 lb, 2, 14; 18; 191-28, 30-38; 21 14, 24, 33; 22-24; 24; 251-6, 116, 18, 21-264, 27-34; 261-33, (exc. 16, 18); 271-45 (mainly); 2810, 13-16, 19; 292-14, 19-35 (exc. 286, 29) ;301-23 (mainly), 21–42. 24-42; 311,8 (25-27, 38-40), 46, 48-50; 324-1423-32; 331-17; 34 (largely); 3521-224; (3681-38); 37 12-35 (partly); 38-39; 42-444; 4623-475, 13-26, 27, 29-31; 49 lb-28a; 501-11, 14. E: 15 (portions, according to some scholars), eg. parts of VV. I, 2, 3, 5; 201-17; 218-32; 22 1-14, 19 28 11, 12, 17, 18, 20-22; 291.15-18; 30 (portions); 312-47 (exc. 185) 328, 136-22.

1

33

5b, 186-20

;35

1-8.

16-20; 37

19. 22-24, 28a, 280-30, 36; 40 (showing some influence of J); 41 45-463; 481-28-22; 50 15-26.

26-11, 14a, 18,

1-15, 50-57; 421-37;

The following is Driver's list of P sections in the Pentateuch 2:

Gen. 1 to 2; 51-28, 30-32; 69-22; 76, 7-9, 13-16a, 18-21, 24; 81-2a, 36-5, 14-19;

50 12-13.

12

18a.

; 35
‚5–6a (lxx.), 7–11, 276-28:
8; 483-6, 79; 49'

1a, 28-33

16 1-3, 6-24, 31-36;

Exod. 11-7, 13-14; 2236-25 62 to 713, 19-20, 216-22; 85-7, 156-19; 9 1-20, 28, 37a, 40-51; 131-2, 20; 141-4, 8-9, 15-18, 21a, 21c-23, 26–27a, 28a, 29 171; 191-2; 2415-18a; 251 to 3118; 3420-35; 35 to 40. Lev. 1 to 16; (17 to 26); 27.

Numb. 11to 1028; 131

1-17a, 21, 25-26a, 32a; 141-2, 5-7, 10, 26-38; 15; 1614, 26-11, 17 to 19; 20 la, -36, 6, 12-13, 22-29; 21 a, 10-11; ; 33 to 36.

(16–17), 18–24, 27a, 326, 35, (36-40), 41-50; 221; 256-18; 26 to 31; 32 Deut. 3218-52; 341a, 8-9.

18-19, 28-32

1 "It is to be observed that the E passages are first to be identified in the story of Abraham (Ryle).

A document close akin to P is incorporated in Josh. xiii. 15-xxi. 42. "This document, though of the same character and age as P in the Pentateuch, cannot be shown to be originally of the same source, and may have originally formed an independent document. The part borne by the Priestly writer in Josh. seems to be somewhat different to that fulfilled by P in the Pentateuch. In Gen.-Num. the narrative of P is to a large extent complete in itself, and forms as it were the framework of the narrative. In Josh. i.-xii. the traces of the Priestly hand are comparatively insignificant, amounting in all to some 10 verses (Burney, Schweich Lect., p. 26 n.).

CHAPTER V

EARLY MAN AND HIS CREED

IF our plea in Chs. I-IV. is sound, two points now stand out: (1) The Bible's one aim is edification, not information; character-building, not head-knowledge. It is our spiritual guide, not a historical or scientific handbook. "My Bible tells me how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go," said Galileo to his inquisitors. (2) The Bible sets truth of idea above truth of fact, and we must read it in the same spirit. We are bound by its judgments of value, but free to challenge its statements of fact. On God, Life, Duty it says all but the last word; to it we must go for our knowledge of God's will for us. But for our knowledge of God's methods, how He works in history and Nature, our modern science and our historybooks are our true guides.

This chapter takes us far behind Israel's history to the infancy of man. Yet omit it we cannot. It alone explains that large quaint primitive element which is at the root of every religion in the world. We meet it constantly in Israel's religion in quaint myths, customs, superstitions, which are "survivals from a lower level of culture, waifs and strays of man's beliefs in the babyhood of the world. For instance, how else can we explain these strange Hebrew beliefs:-Man is formed out of clods, and God breathes the breath of life into his nostrils, while woman is created out of man's rib, because God saw he was lonely (Gen. ii. 7, 18); Lot's wife turns into a pillar of salt; Satan is a talking snake;