of a fixed corpus of tradition and the composition of J and E. Beyond this, however, we are in the region of vaguest conjecture. We cannot tell for certain what kind of authority had presided over the combination of the legends, nor whether it was first done in the oral or the literary stage of translation. We may think of the priesthoods of the leading sanctuaries as the natural custodians of the tradition:[1] the sanctuaries were at least the obvious repositories of the cult-legends pertaining to them. But we cannot indicate any sanctuary of such outstanding national importance as to be plausibly regarded as the centre of a national epic.[2] Or we may assign a conspicuous share in the work to the prophetic guilds which, in the time of Samuel, were foci of enthusiasm for the national cause, and might conceivably have devoted themselves to the propagation of the national tradition. Or, finally, we may assume, with Gu., that there existed in Israel, as among the Arabs, guilds of professional story-tellers, exercising their vocation at public festivals and such like gatherings, for the entertainment and instruction of the people. The one certainty is that a considerable time must be allowed for the complex mental activities which lie behind our earliest literary sources. It is true that the rise of a national epos presupposes a strongly developed consciousness of national unity; but in Israel the national ideal was much older than its realisation in the form of a state, and therefore we have no reason for placing the unification of the traditions later than the founding of the monarchy. From the age of Samuel at least all the essential conditions were present; and a lower limit than that will hardly meet the requirements of the case.
We may here refer to a matter of great importance in its bearing
on the possibility of accurate oral transmission of the legends: viz.
the recent effort of Sievers (Metrische Studien, ii., 1904-5) to resolve
the whole of Genesis into verse. If his theory should be established,
