the scientific knowledge of our time;[1] and no person of educated intelligence accepts them in their plain natural sense. We know that angels do not cohabit with mortal women, that the Flood did not cover the highest mountains of the world, that the ark could not have accommodated all the species of animals then existing, that the Euphrates and Tigris have not a common source, that the Dead Sea was not first formed in the time of Abraham, etc. There is admittedly a great difference in respect of credibility between the primæval (chs. 1-11) and the patriarchal (12-50) traditions. But even the latter, when taken as a whole, yields many impossible situations. Sarah was more than sixty-five years old when Abraham feared that her beauty might endanger his life in Egypt; she was over ninety when the same fear seized him in Gerar. Abraham at the age of ninety-nine laughs at the idea of having a son; yet forty years later he marries and begets children. Both Midian and Ishmael were grand-uncles of Joseph; but their descendants appear as tribes trading with Egypt in his boyhood. Amalek was a grandson of Esau; yet the Amalekites are settled in the Negeb in the time of Abraham.[2]—It is a thankless task to multiply such examples. The contradictions and violations of probability and scientific possibility are intelligible, and not at all disquieting, in a collection of legends; but they preclude the supposition that Genesis is literal history.
It is not implied in what has been said that the tradition
is destitute of historical value. History, legendary history,
legend, myth, form a descending scale, with decreasing
emphasis on the historical element, and the lines between
the first three are vague and fluctuating. In what proportions
they are combined in Genesis it may be impossible
to determine with certainty. But there are three ways in
which a tradition mainly legendary may yield solid historical
results. In the first place, a legend may embody a more or
less exact recollection of the fact in which it originated.
In the second place, a legend, though unhistorical in form,
may furnish material from which history can be extracted.
Thirdly, the collateral evidence of archæology may bring to
light a correspondence which gives a historical significance
to the legend. How far any of these lines can be followed
to a successful issue in the case of Genesis, we shall consider
later (§ 4), after we have examined the obviously
legendary motives which enter into the tradition. Meanwhile
the previous discussion will have served its purpose
