it would not merely furnish the most potent instrument of literary analysis conceivable, but it would render credible a very high degree of verbal exactitude during the period of unwritten tradition. The work of Sievers is viewed with qualified approval both by Gu. (p. xxix f.) and Pro. (210 ff.), and it is certain to evoke interesting discussion. The present writer, who is anything but a 'Metriker von Fach,' does not feel competent to pronounce an opinion on its merits. Neither reading aloud, nor counting of syllables, has convinced him that the scansion holds, or that Hebrew rhythm in general is so rigorously exact as the system demands. The prejudice against divorcing poetic form from poetic feeling and diction (of the latter there is no trace in what have been considered the prose parts of Genesis) is not lightly to be overcome; and the frequent want of coincidence between breaks in sense and pauses in rhythm disturbs the mind, besides violating what used to be thought a fundamental feature of Hebrew poetry. Grave misgivings are also raised by the question whether the Massoretic theory of the syllable is (as Sievers assumes) a reliable guide to the pronunciation and rhythm of the early Hebrew language. It seems therefore hazardous to apply the method to the solution of literary problems, whether by emendation of the text, or by disentanglement of sources.
B. Structure and Composition of the Book.
§ 6. Plan and Divisions.
That the Book of Genesis forms a literary unity has been a commonplace of criticism since the maiden work of Ewald[1] put an end to the Fragmentary Hypothesis of
- ↑ Die Komposition der Genesis, kritisch untersucht (1823).—In that essay Ewald fell into the natural error of confusing unity of plan with unity of authorship,—an error, however, which he retracted eight years later (SK, 1831, 595 ff.), in favour of a theory (virtually identical with the so-called Supplementary Hypothesis) which did full justice to the unity and skilful disposition of the book, while recognising it to be the result of an amalgamation of several documents. The distinction has never since been lost sight of; and all subsequent theories of the composition of Genesis have endeavoured to reconcile the assumption of a diversity of sources with the indisputable fact of a clearly designed arrangement of the material. The view which is generally held does so in this way: three main documents, following substantially the same historical order, are held to have been combined by one or more redactors; one of these documents, being little more than an epitome of the history, was specially fitted to supply a framework into which the rest of the narrative could be fitted, and was selected by the redactor for this puropose; hence the plan which we discover in the
