those in which the appellations of the Deity are the sole or determining criterion; in xvi. the use of the Tetragrammaton in verse 2 compels Mr. Carpenter to wrench 1b and 2 from a P context and assign them to J; in xix. verse 29 is torn from a J chapter, in which it fits perfectly, to be given to P; in xx. the last verse is assigned to a redactor, though all the rest of the chapter goes to E, and the verse is required for the explanation of 17; in xxii. verses 14-18 go to redactors because the story is assigned to E (a redactor being responsible for the Tetragrammaton in 11). An even more flagrant instance occurs in xxviii. 21, where Mr. Carpenter is compelled to scoop out the words and the Lord will be my God' and assign them to J, the beginning and end of the verse going to E. What manner of man was this redactor who constructed a narrative on these strange principles? In xxxi. verse 3 has to go to a redactor, because the preceding and subsequent verses belong to E, yet that gentleman actually postulates the redactor's work by referring to the statement of 3 in verse 5. However, he receives compensation in xxii., where verse 30 is wrenched from a J context for his enrichment, though verse 31 (J) cannot be understood without it. ' This, then, may suffice as a comment on this vivisection. in general; the case of Genesis i.-iii. will be examined by itself shortly. Wiener then goes on to treat at length of the distribution of the divine names from the standpoint of textual criticism, and therein it seems to us that, as Plato hath it, there is something in what he says, yet not so much as he thinks. In any case this issue can scarcely be dealt with unless it be at great length; and it may therefore, be wiser to pass at once on to more certain ground, the substitution of Elohim (God) for Yahweh, that is admitted to have occurred in certain Old Testament documents, and which may, therefore, be the reason why the divine names are occasionally mingled in the Pentateuch in a way that cannot be accounted for by connotation or context. Driver, for example, in his Genesis, expressly says that the Chronicler is apt to shew a preference for Elohim (though he also uses Yahweh), and sometimes changes Yahweh of his source into Elohim; and the exceptional preponderance of Elohim over Yahweh in Book II of the Psalms, and in Psalms 73-83, as compared with the rest of the Psalter, shews that here the editor, or collector, must have substituted it for an original Yahweh.' We omit his references, but the reader may easily see what is meant by comparing Psalm 13 (14) with Psalm 52 (53), remembering that 'Lord' stands for Yahweh. If then, we ask, the Psalmist (in Psalm 13) and the Chronicler (i.e., in Chronicles, Paralipomenon) may fluctuate in their use of 1 Excursus i, p. 407. the divine names, why not Moses? If Yahweh' may come to be changed elsewhere, why not in the Pentateuch? And if the name be so changed, it is unlikely, as Driver himself observes,' that there will be anything in the context to betray the fact. 2 There is also a curious example of this interchange of the divine names outside the Biblical record, which it would be a pity to omit. Schrader points out that in two inscriptions of Sargon II of Assyria (722-705 B.C.) 'Jahubi'd' and 'Ilubi'd' stand for the same individual, a king, and that this is due to the interchange of ' Ilu' ('God' corresponding to Elohim,' or more strictly to the short formEl') and Jahu' (or 'Yahu,' 'Yahweh'). As a parallel to this he recalls the change of Eliakim's name to Jehoiakim in 2 (4) Kings xxiii. 34. 6 And now let us come to the chapters more immediately under consideration. Much stress has, indeed, been laid un them by modern critics,' because nowhere else, perhaps, does the hypothesis of a duplicate narrative, borne out by a divergent use of the divine names, appear at first sight so convincing. And yet a careful analysis of the facts is far from bearing out such an impression, and it will more than repay us to have sifted thoroughly at least one such concrete example. From the beginning of Genesis to the middle of Genesis ii. 4 is assigned to P, but the second part of that verse (' in the day ') had to wait some centuries for its subject and verb, for from here to the end of the fourth chapter is apportioned to J. ... We begin, then, by remarking that it is not right to speak of the first two chapters as duplicate narratives, for there is a different purpose running through each of them. To put it broadly, we may say that in the first chapter the account of creation is given for its own sake, while in the second we merely have the setting for the story of the Fall, starting, not from a general creation, but from the making of man and the garden. Nor can it be said that there is any discrepancy between the two accounts, provided the general character of the first chapter be recognized, as it has been set forth, for example, by Father O'Hea, S.J., in the I. E. RECORD, for March, 1917.3 Again, the so-called 'second creation' does not really fit in with J, any more than the first creation' fits in 1 Genesis, Addenda ii. pp. 45, 46. Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, vol. i. pp. 23, 24. with P. Whoever has carefully perused the article just mentioned will easily understand that there is nothing really like the first chapter of Genesis in the whole of the Pentateuch. It is a unique opening to a unique book. The rhythmical and symmetrical character peculiar to it does not recur in P, but renders the chapter much more different from the rest of P than the rest of P is from J. To speak of the rest of P as homogeneous in style and character with Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a' is to betray astounding literary obtuseness. As regards the second creation,' we have already remarked how awkwardly, on the critics' hypothesis, it is joined to the first. The use of 'Lord God' compels them to assign the second part of Genesis ii. 4 to J, which follows on, but the word 'generations,' which precede, is considered a characteristic P word, and therefore must refer to what precedes. This it may well do in any case; but because the formula,These are the generations,' usually precedes the account to which it belongs, Driver (ad loc.) notices favourably the desire of many critics to prefix Genesis ii. 4 (first half) to the whole book, and to assign its removal to the compiler-a glaring example of the lack of literary discernment so often displayed by the higher critics,' implying as it does an entire want of appreciation of the present magnificent opening. St. John the Evangelist had better felt its force: In the beginning created God . . .'; nay, 'In the beginning was the Word '! 6 6 But, in the second creation,' as a whole, it is the divine names that are especially at fault. Yahweh does not appear alone, even once, in the second or third chapter, but it is always either Yahweh Elohim' or 'Elohim,' the latter in Genesis iii. 1, 3, 5, contrary to the whole modern scheme. Further, Yahweh Elohim' simply, the latter without a pronominal suffix, is very generally considered an anomaly; the two names occur together twenty times up to the end of Genesis iii. but only very rarely elsewhere, and many scholars (e.g., Kittel in his Hebrew Bible, in the apparatus to Genesis ii. 4, and the Oxford Hebrew Dictionary, page 219) think, rightly enough, that one of the names should go. Only, according to the textual evidence, as Kittel makes clear, and as Wiener forcibly shows, the latter, unfortunately, without any reference to the Old Latin, it is unquestionably Yahweh' that should be 1 Driver, Genesis, p. 4. 2 Essays in Pentateuchal Criticism, p. 29. regarded as an interpolation, not merely because it is not found in Genesis iii. 1, 3, 5, but because in some other verses (Genesis ii. 9, 21), the Septuagint and Old Latin agree in ousting it, and there is other evidence tending in the same direction, but none, I think, in favour of keeping Yahweh' alone. The Old Latin may be seen in Dom Sabatier's great volumes (Bibliorum Sacrorum Latinae Versiones Antiquae, 1751), or in Augustine's Versions of Genesis, by John S. M'Intosh (Chicago, 1912). Thus the use of the divine names in reality furnishes a damaging argument against the 'critical' treatment of the first three chapters. Passing from the use of the divine names to the use of 'characteristic words' in general, we may still use these chapters to show the weakness of the 'critical' contention, so far as it regards P. But first some remarks of a more general kind. No doubt a list of words truly characteristic of P can be compiled; but this was bound to be the case, given the peculiar nature of the passages assigned to P. As Wiener puts it,' 'the argument amounts to saying that in a technical passage technical terms are used.' If all that belongs to systematic chronology, liturgy, and the rest be relegated to P, it follows that terms which are chronological, liturgical, and so forth will abound there, and perhaps be found there only, and perhaps bring with them other less immediately technical terms. If the reader of a history of the present war were convinced that a special writer had been employed to describe the war by sea, he could easily prove it (if proof it were) by a list of words including such terms as submarine,' torpedo,' ' cruiser'; and on the same principles he might discover a separate source for the parts concerned with the war in the air, the war in Mesopotamia, and various other departments or aspects of the struggle. Such an argument from language, taken simply on its own merits, would be worthless. On the other hand, supposing that in the narration of precisely similar events there were paragraphs in which soldiers, guns,' advanced,' and several other words were consistently used, and others in which "Tommies,' 'cannon,' went forward,' and other alternative synonyms were employed with equal constancy-then we should be justified in at least suspecting that a compiler had made up his narrative from different sources. 6 Now, the words which Driver' gives as characteristic 1 Pentateuchal Studies, p. 206. 2 Genesis, pp. 8, 9. of P are evidently, in the main, words that belong to it in the very nature of the case, words consequently that are no criterion of origin. The first eight belong to the first chapter. To discuss these thoroughly would require much space, and would be a great weariness to the reader. Perhaps the general drift of the rebutting argument will be sufficiently perceived when it is pointed out that (1) the word 'kind' (i.e., species, etc.) is used ten times in Genesis i., seven times in the Flood narrative, and nine times in the enumeration of Leviticus xi. ; otherwise in the Old Testament only in Deuteronomy xiv. 13-18; Ezekiel xlvii. 10, neither of which passages, of course, belongs to P; (2) 'creep' and 'creeping things' are used seven times here, thirteen times in the Flood, and twice in Leviticus xi. ; otherwise, in the Pentateuch, only in Leviticus xx. 25, Deuteronomy iv. 18, the latter once more not in P. Evidently we have here words needed only in a peculiar context, and, given the nature of the passages assigned to P, that context can hardly fail to be a P context. As we have said, to show the full force of this criticism of the · characteristic words' of P would be intricate and tedious. But it may be urged, these literary arguments about sources are only one side of the 'critical' case; there are duplicate narratives or precepts which differ, not merely in style, but also in content, so that they are in reality inconsistent. Well, as a matter of fact, we have already had occasion in this article to offer some criticism of the contention that Genesis opens with two inconsistent narratives of creation; and in the I. E. RECORD, for March, 1916,1 Father Baillon, S.J., writing of the Flood, incidentally demolished the attempt to distinguish two inconsistent accounts of that episode. As regards the supposed stages of liturgical and sacerdotal development, culminating in P, which is supposed to read back into the age of Moses regulations which only came into force after the exile, Father Manning, S.J., in the I. E. RECORD, for August, 1916, in his article, 'Wellhausen and the Levitical Priesthood,' to which we referred at the outset, has shown that even where Wellhausen appears most specious, the traditional view has nothing to fear from a sound and sane exegesis. To place P so late in the history only produces a fresh crop of difficulties. Thus enough has already been 1 See I. E. RECORD, Fifth Series, vol. vii. pp. 209 et seq. 2 Ibid. vol. viii. pp. 89 et seq. |