to hold the balance even between the claims of unity and complexity in the documents; but the theory of single authorship may easily be pressed too far. If we could get through with only a J1 and J2, E1, E2 etc.,—i.e., with the theory of one main document supplemented by a few later additions,—it would be absurd to speak of 'schools.' And even if the case were considerably more complicated, it might still be possible to rest satisfied (as a majority of critics do) with the idea of literary schools, manipulating written documents under the influence of tendencies and principles which had become traditional within special circles. Gu. goes, however, much further with his conception of J and E as first of all guilds of oral narrators, whose stories gradually took written shape within their respective circles, and were ultimately put together in the collections as we now have them. The theory, while not necessarily excluding the action of an outstanding personality in shaping either the oral or the literary phase of the tradition, has the advantage of suggesting a medium in which the traditional material might have assumed its specifically Yahwistic or Elohistic form before being incorporated in the main document of the school. It is at all events a satisfactory working hypothesis; and that is all that can be looked for in so obscure a region of investigation. Whether it is altogether so artificial and unnatural as Professor Orr would have us believe, the reader must judge for himself.
seems to go far beyond the evidence adduced, and, indeed, to be hardly reconcilable with the religious tone and spirit of the narratives.—To a similar effect writes Procksch, Sagenbuch, 284-308; although he does justice to the composite structure of the document J, and describes it in terms which throw a shade of uncertainty on the alleged unity of authorship. When we read of an "einheitlichen Grundstock, auf den wie in einen Stamm Geschicten ganz anderer Herkunft gewissermassen aufgepropft sind, jetzt eng damit verwachsen durch die massgebenden Ideen" (294 f.), we cannot help asking where these branches grew before they were engrafted on their present stem. If we are right in distinguishing a strand of narrative in which Yahwe was used from the beginning, and another in which it was introduced in the time of Enosh, it is not easy to account for their fusion on any theory which does not allow a relative independence to the two conceptions.
