(pp. 418, 450) belong to an older stratum of tradition than the main narrative; and the same might be said of ch. 49 (p. 512), which may very plausibly be regarded as a traditional poem of the 'school' of J, and the oldest extant specimen of its repertoire.—With regard to E, the proof of composite authorship lies chiefly in the Books of Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua; in Genesis, however, we have imperfectly assimilated fragments of a more ancient tradition in 34 (? if E be a component there), 351-7 4822 and perhaps some other passages.—The important fact is that these passages exhibit all the literary peculiarities of the main source to which they are assigned; at least, no linguistic differentiæ of any consequence have yet been discovered.[1] The problem is to frame a theory which shall do justice at once to their material incongruities and their literary homogeneity.
While the fact of collective authorship of some kind is
now generally recognised, there is no agreement as to the
interpretation which best explains all the phenomena. Some
scholars are impressed (and the impression is certainly very
intelligible) by the unity of conception and standpoint and
mode of treatment which characterise the two collections,
and maintain that (in the case of J especially) the stamp of
a powerful and original personality is too obvious to leave
much play for the activity of a 'school.'[2] It is very difficult
- ↑ The only exception would be Sievers' metrical analysis, which leads to results far more complicated than can be justified by other indications (see p. xxxi f.).
- ↑ See the lengthy excursus of Luther in INS, 107-170, where the thesis is upheld that the Yahwist (i.e. J1) is not a stage in the natural process of remodelling the tradition; that he does not mean merely to retail the old stories as he found them, but writes his book with the conscious purpose of enforcing certain ideas and convictions which often run contrary to the prevailing tendencies of his age (108). Lu. seems to simplify the problem too much by excluding the primæval tradition from consideration (108), and ignoring the distribution of the Yahwistic material over the various stages of the redaction (155). It makes a considerable difference to the theory if (as seems to be the case) the sections which Lu. assigns to J2 (e.g. chs. 34, 38, 19) really represent older phases of tradition than the main document; for if they existed in their Yahwistic colouring prior to the compilation of J1, there must have been a Yahwistic circle of some kind to preserve them; and even if they received their literary stamp at a later time, there must still have been something of the nature of a school to impress the Yahwistic character so strongly upon them. His conception of the Yahwist as an Ephraimite, a detached and sympathetic adherent of the prophetic and Rechabite movement of the 9th cent., an opponent of the cultus, and an upholder of the nomadic ideal against the drift of the old tradition,
