of Chronicles shows in what manner it was necessary to deal with the history of bygone times when it was assumed that the Mosaic hierocracy was their fundamental institution.

2. The foregoing remarks are designed merely to make it plain that the problem we have set before us is not an imaginary one, but actual and urgent. They are intended to introduce it; but to solve it is by no means so easy. The question what is the historical place of the Law does not even admit of being put in these simple terms. For the Law, If by that word we understand the entire Pentateuch, is no literary unity, and no simple historical quantity./1/

************************* 1. Compare the article "Pentateuch" in the Ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. xviii. *************************

Since the days of Peyrerius and Spinoza, criticism has acknowledged the complex character of that remarkable literary production, and from Jean Astruc onwards has laboured, not without success, at disentangling its original elements. At present there are a number of results that can be regarded as settled. The following are some of them. The five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua constitute one whole, the conquest of the Promised Land rather than the death of Moses forming the true conclusion of the patriarchal history, the exodus, and the wandering in the wilderness. From a literary point of view, accordingly, it is more accurate to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. Out of this whole, the Book of Deuteronomy, as essentially an independent law-book, admits of being separated most easily. Of what remains, the parts most easily distinguished belong to the so-called "main stock" ("Grundschrift"), formerly also called the Elohistic document, on account of the use it makes of the divine name Elohim up to the time of Moses, and designated by Ewald, with reference to the regularly recurring superscriptions in Genesis, as the Book of Origins. It is distinguished by its liking for number, and measure, and formula generally, by its stiff pedantic style, by its constant use of certain phrases and turns of expression which do not occur elsewhere in the older Hebrew; its characteristics are more strongly marked than those of any of the others, and make it accordingly the easiest to recognise with certainty. Its basis is the Book of Leviticus and thc allied portions of the adjoining books,— Exodus xxv.-xl., with the exception of chaps. xxxii.-xxxiv., and Num.i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi., with trifling exceptions. It thus contains legislation chiefly, and, in point of fact, relates substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a hiatus from the Creation to the Exodus; it becomes fuller only on the occasions in which other interests come into play, as, for example, in Genesis, with regard to the three preludes to the Mosaic covenant which are connected with the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham respectively. When this fundamental document is also separated out as well as Deuteronomy, there remains the Jehovistic history-book, which, in contrast with the two others, is essentially of a narrative character, and sets forth with full sympathy and enjoyment the materials handed down by tradition. The story of the patriarchs, which belongs to this document almost entirely, is what best marks its character; that story is not here dealt with merely as a summary introduction to something of greater importance which is to follow, but as a subject of primary importance, deserving the fullest treatment possible. Legislative elements have been taken into it only at one point, where they fit into the historical connection, namely, when the giving of the Law at Sinai is spoken of (Exodusxx.-xxiii., xxxiv.)

Scholars long rested satisfied with this twofold division of the non-Deuteronomic Hexateuch, until Hupfeld demonstrated in certain parts of Genesis, which until then had been assigned partly to the "main stock" and partly to the Jehovist, the existence of a third continuous source, the work of the so-called younger Elohist. The choice of this name was due to the circumstance that in this document also Elohim is the ordinary name of the Deity, as it is in the "main stock" up to Exodus vi.; the epithet "younger," however, is better left out, as it involves an unproved assumption, and besides, is no longer required for distinction's sake, now that the "main stock" is no longer referred to under so unsuitable a name as that of Elohist. Hupfeld further assumed that all the three sources continued to exist separately until some one at a later date brought them together simultaneously into a single whole. But this is a view that cannot be maintained: not merely is the Elohist in his matter and in his manner of looking at things most closely akin to the Jehovist; his document has come down to us as Noldeke was thc first to perceive, only in extracts embodied in the Jehovist narrative./1/

*************************** Hermann Hupfeld, Die Quellen der Genesis u. die Art ihrer Zusammersetzung, Berlin, 1853; Theodor Noldeke, Die s. g. Grundschrift des Pentateuch, in Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments, Kiel, 1869. ***************************

Thus, notwithstanding Hupfeld's discovery, the old division into two great sections continues to hold good, and there is every reason for adhering to this primary distinction as the basis of further historical research, in spite of the fact, which is coming to be more and more clearly perceived, that not only the Jehovistic document, but the "main stock" as well, are complex products, and that alongside of them occur hybrid or posthumous elements which do not admit of being simply referred to either the one or the other formation. /2/

************************ 2. J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs, in Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theologie, 1876, pp. 392-450, 531-602; 1877, pp. 407-479. I do not insist on all the details, but, as regards the way in which the literary process which resulted in the formation of the Pentateuch is to be looked at in general, I believe I had indicated the proper line of investigation. Hitherto the only important corrections I have received have been those of Kuenen in his Contributions to the Criticism of the Pentateuch and Joshua, published in the Leyden Theologisch Tijdschrift; but these are altogether welcome, inasmuch as they only free my own fundamental view from some relics of the old leaven of a mechanical separation of sources which had continued to adhere to it. For what Kuenen points out is, that certain elements assigned by me to the Elohist are not fragments of a once independent whole, but interpolated and parasitic additions. What effect this demonstration may have on the judgment we form of the Elohist himself is as yet uncertain. In the following pages the Jehovistic history-book is denoted by the symbol JE, its Jehovistic part by J, and the Elohistic by E; the "main stock" pure and simple, which is distinguished by its systematising history and is seen unalloyed in Genesis, is called the Book of the Four Covenants and is symbolised by Q; for the "main stock" as a whole (as modified by an editorial process) the title of Priestly Code and the symbol RQ (Q and Revisers) are employed. *************************

Now the Law, whose historical position we have to determine, is the so-called "main stack," which, both by its contents and by its origin, is entitled to be called the Priestly Code, and will accordingly be so designated. The Priestly Code preponderates over the rest of the legislation in force, as well as in bulk; in all matters of primary importance it is the normal and final authority. It was