The division of the kingdom is also a very marked era in the history. It is introduced by a prophecy of Abijah to the first Jeroboam. "Behold, I rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee; but he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen; because he has forsaken me, and worshipped Astarte of Sidon, and Chemosh of Moab, and Milcom of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways to do that which is right in my eyes, my statutes, and my judgments, like David his father. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments as David my servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee. And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever."

We pass over a series of prophecies in a similar strain which occur regularly at the changes of dynasty in the northern kingdom, and cite only the concluding words which accompany the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes (2Kings xvii.). This fall came about "because the children of Israel sinned against Jehovah their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom they had driven out, and in the innovations of the kings of Israel; and because the children of Israel imputed to Jehovah their God things which are not so, and built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; and they set up pillars and Asheras on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they sacrificed in all the high places, as did the people whom Jehovah had driven out before them: and wrought wicked things to provoke Jehovah to anger, and served the abominations which Jehovah had forbidden. Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger. And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only. But they of Judah also kept not the commandment of their God, but walked in the manner of Israel: and Jehovah rejected the whole race of Israel, and humbled them, and delivered them unto the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight." No special concluding discourse is given for Judah, but that for Israel applies to Judah as well. This we see both directly from the last words of the passage cited, and from the circumstance that two very characteristic abominations in the foregoing catalogue, the worship of the host of heaven and the sacrifice of children, were introduced, according to the testimony of the prophets, which alone can determine the point, not in the eighth but only in the seventh century, under Manasseh, and accordingly are not chargeable on Israel, but only on Judah.

The water accumulates, so to speak, at these gathering places of the more important historical epochs: but from these reservoirs it finds its way in smaller channels on all sides. /1/ The first

************************************ 1. Such additions as MCWT YHWH, 1Kings xviii. 18 [LXX has correctly YHWH, without MCWT] (ZBW BRYTK [LXX correctly (ZBW without BRYTK] and more extensive ones, as 1Kings xviii. 31, 32a; 2Samuel vii. 2b [)#R NQR) WGW''] ) I do not reckon because they proceed from various periods, and are mostly younger than the Deuteronomic revision, and belong rather to textual than to literary criticism. It is certainly in itself very important to detect and remove these re-touchings. The whole old tradition is covered with them. *****************************************

question asked with regard to each ruler is, what position he took up to the pure religion—whether he did what was right or what was evil in the sight of Jehovah. Even in the case of those who only reigned a week, this question receives an answer. In general it has to be stated that they did evil. All except David and Hezekiah and Josiah, were defective, says Jesus Sirach (xlix. 4),—not quite accurately perhaps, but yet truly in so far as there is always some objection even to the good kings. But the sin here reproved is no longer, at least not principally, the worship of strange gods; it is the perverted worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2). That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period, a sin widespread and persistent. It is aggravated by the fact, that with the bamoth all kinds of unlawful abuses crept into the worship of Jehovah, Maccebas and Asheras, evergreen trees, and prostitutes of both sexes. Israel, continually compared with Judah in the matter, is further charged with a second great sin, the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. The religious estimate combines with the chronological facts to form that scheme in which every single reign of the kings of Israel and Judah is uniformly framed. Sometimes the frame is well filled in with interesting matter, but in not a few cases historical matter is almost entirely absent. The scheme appears most nakedly in such chapters as 1Kings xv. xvi., 2Kings xiii. xiv. xv.

That this redaction of our book is essentially uniform with that of the two historical books which precede it, requires no proof. Only it has here a warmer and more lively tone, and a much closer relation to the facts. In consequence of this we find it much easier to determine the point of view from which it proceeds. The mere fact that the narrative extends to the destruction of Jerusalem, nay, to the death of the captive king Jehoiachin, shows that we must place the date of the work not earlier than the Babylonian exile, and, indeed, the second part of the exile. The chronology reckons the exile in the period of 480 years, giving 50 years to it; and this would bring us still lower down; but it is open to us to assume that this is a later modification, which has not further affected the general character of the work. /1/

************************************** 1. Krey surmises that the last date mentioned, the liberation from prison of, Jehoiachin in the 37th year after his accession to the throne, was originally intended to form the lower limit of the chronology, especially as the periods of 40 years under which, as we have seen, the Jewish figures naturally fall, come exactly to this date. But if this be the case, we cannot regard the 4th or 5th year of Solomon as the era started from, for then there is no room for the 36 or 37 remaining years of Solomon's reign. But such a starting-point is entirely unnatural; Solomon's 40 years cannot be torn up in this way: if we are to make a division at all in that period, it must be at the disruption of the monarchy, the natural point of departure for the series of kings of Israel and of Judah. It deserves remark, that the 37 years of Jehoiachin, at the close of the older mode of calculation, which perhaps only tried to bring out generations of 40 years, but also perhaps a period of 500 years from David (40+40+20+ 41+40+40+81 + 38+ 80 + 79 1/4), answer to the 37 years of Solomon at the beginning of the method now carried through. That a process of alteration and improvement of the chronology was busily carried on in later times, we see from the added svnchronisms of the kings of Israel and Judah, from the uncertain statements in the Book of Judges, some of them parallel with each other (e.g., the interregna and minor judges, and the threefold counting of the time of the Philistines) and even from the variants of the LXX. ***************************************************

The writer looks back on the time of the kings as a period past and closed, on which judgment has already been declared. Even at the consecration of the temple the thought of its destruction is not to be restrained; and throughout the book the ruin of the nation and its two kingdoms is present to the writer's mind. This is the light in which the work is to be read; it shows why the catastrophe was unavoidable. It was so because of unfaithfulness to Jehovah, because of the utterly perverted tendency obstinately followed by the people in spite of the Torah of Jehovah and His prophets. The narrative becomes, as it were, a great confession—of sins of the exiled nation looking back on its history. Not only the existing generation, but the whole previous historical development is condemned—a fashion which we meet with first in Jeremiah (ii. 1 seq., iv. 3), who was actually confronted with the question as to the cause of the calamity. /2/

************************************** 1. The fall of Samaria suggested similar reflections to the earlier prophets with reference to the northern kingdom, but their views are, as a rule (Amos v., Isaiah ix.), not nearly so radical nor so far-fetched. Hosea does certainly trace the guilt of the present up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah, chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey it from so high a point of view. In this also he is a precursor of later writers, that he regards the human monarchy as one of the great evils of Israel: he certainly had very great occasion for this in the circumstances of the time he lived in. *******************************************

Ezekiel carried out this negative criticism of the past to greater lengths, with particular reference to the abominations of the older worship (chapter xvi., xx., xxiii.); and it is also to be found in Isaiah xl.-xlvi. (xlii. 24, xliii. 27), though here it is supplemented by a positive and greatly more suggestive view; we find it also in Deuteronomy xxviii.-xxx., and in Leviticus xxvi. The whole of the past is regarded as one enormous sin, which is to be expiated in the exile (Jeremiah xxxii. 30; Ezekiel xviii. 2, xxxiii. 10; Isaiah xl. 1); the duration of the punishment is even calculated from that of the sin (Leviticus xxvi. 34). The same attitude towards old times is continued after the return (Zechariah viii. 13 seq., ix. 7 seq.; Nehemiah ix. 7 seq.).

The treatment is naturally from a Judaean point of view. Outside of Jerusalem the worship of Jehovah is heretical, so that the political revolt of the Northern Israelites was at the same time an ecclesiastical schism. Yet they are not excluded in consequence from community with the people of God, as in the Chronicles: the old traditions are not thrown so completely overboard as yet: only after the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians does Judah continue the history alone. Almost the same reverence is paid to David and his house as to the city and the temple. His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance, with the liberation from prison of the Davidide Jehoiachin; this is the earnest of greater things yet in store. In the words of Abijah to Jeroboam, also, when he says that the humiliation of the house of David and the revolt from it of the ten tribes will not last for ever, we see the Messianic hope appear, which, as we learn from Haggai and Zechariah, largely occupied the minds of the Jews at the time of the exile and after it.

In the case of the books of Judges and Samuel it is not perhaps possible to decide with perfect certainty what was the norm applied by the last reviser in forming his estimates of the past. In the Books of Kings there can be no doubt on this point. The writer deals not only in indefinite references to the will of Jehovah, which Israel ought to obey, but resists; he speaks now and again (1Kings ii. 3, 2Kings xiv. 6, xvii. 37) of the written Torah in which the judgments and statutes of Jehovah are contained, a difference which indicates, one must allow, a historical feeling. Now the code which is implicitly regarded as the standard is that the discovery of which under Josiah is circumstantially narrated in 2Kings xxii. xxiii., viz., Deuteronomy. We are led to this conclusion, it is allowed on all hands, both by the phraseology of the reviser and by the spirit of his judgments. He condemns those sins specially against which Deuteronomy and the reformation of King Josiah were directed. And the one verbal quotation made from the book of the Torah is from Deuteronomy (2Kings xiv. 6; Deuteronomy xxiv. 16). On the other hand, there are clear signs that the author of the revision was not acquainted with the Priestly Code. Nowhere is any distinction drawn between priests and Levites; the sons of Aaron are never mentioned. The idea of a central sanctuary before Solomon is contradicted by 1Kings iii. 2. In one section only, a section which has been greatly exposed to corrections and interpolations of all kinds, namely, the description of the temple and its consecration, 1Kings vi.-viii., do we meet with signs of the influence of the Priestly Code, especially in the Massoretic text; in the Septuagint this is not so much the case. The most important example of this has already been investigated, p. 43, 44.

If, accordingly, we are fully justified in calling the revision Deuteronomistic, this means no more than that it came into existence under the influence of Deuteronomy, which pervaded the whole century of the exile. The difference between Deuteronomistic and Deuteronomic is one not of time only but of matter as well: /1/ Deuteronomy itself has not yet come to regard

****************************************** 1. Post-deuteronomic, but still from the time of the kings, are 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii, 1 seq.; 2Kings xviii. 13, 17 seq., xix. 1 seq.; chaps. xi. xii. xxi. xxiii. *******************************************

the cultus in this way as the chief end of Israel, and is much closer to the realism of the actual life of the people. A difference in detail which allows of easy demonstration is connected with the mode of dating. The last reviser distinguishes the months not by their old Hebrew names, Zif, Bul, Ethanim, but by numbers, commencing with spring as the beginning of the year. In this he differs not only from his older sources (1Kings vi. 37, 38, viii. 2), but also from Deuteronomy.

VII.III.2. This revision is, as we expect to find, alien to the materials it found to work on, so that it does violence to them. They have been altered in particular by a very one-sided selection, which is determined by certain religious views. In these views an interest in the prophets mingles with the interest in worship. It is not meant that the selection is due entirely to the last reviser, though it is thoroughly according to his taste; others had probably worked before him in this direction. But for us it is neither possible nor important to distinguish the different steps in the process of sifting through which the traditions of the time of the kings had to pass.

The culminating point of the whole book is the building of the temple; almost all that is told about Solomon has reference to it. This at once indicates to us the point of view; it is one which dominates all Judaistic history: the history is that of the temple rather than of the kingdom. The fortunes of the sanctuary and its treasures, the institution and arrangements of the kings with reference to worship—we are kept au courant about these, but about hardly anything else. The few detailed narratives given (2Kings xi seq. xvi. xxii. seq.) have the temple for their scene, and turn on the temple. Only in xviii. seq. does the prophetical interest predominate.

As for the kingdom of Israel, the statements about the cultus of that state are very scanty and for the most part rather vague. Here the prophetical narratives come to the front, generally such as are told from the prophetic point of view, or at least tell of the public appearances and acts of the prophets. Here and there we are told of occasions on which the Northern kingdom came in contact with Judah; here the Jewish feeling appears which dictated the selection. What is merely historical, purely secular, is communicated only in the scantiest measure: often there is nothing but the names and succession of the kings. We learn hardly anything about King Omri, the founder of the town of Samaria and re-founder of the kingdom, who seems to have reduced Judah also to the position of a dependent ally, nor do we learn more about Jeroboam II., the last great ruler of Israel; while the conflict with the Assyrians and the fall of Samaria are despatched in a couple of verses which tell us scarcely anything at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night (2Kings ix. x.), but after it we grope in the dark again. Only so much of the old tradition has been preserved as those of a later age held to be of religious value: it has lost its original centre of gravity, and assumed an attitude which it certainly had not at first. It may have been the case in Judah that the temple was of more importance than the kingdom, but there can be no doubt that the history of Israel was not entirely, not even principally, the history of prophecy. The losses we have to deplore must have affected the Israelitish tradition most seriously.

The damage done by the revision by its positive meddling with the materials as found in the sources, is not so irreparable; yet it is considerable enough. The change of colour which was effected may be best seen and characterised in the far-reaching observations which introduce the Israelite series of kings; "Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David; if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again to their rightful lord, and they will kill me, and become subject again to Rehoboam king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, Cease to go up to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; for the people went as one man, even unto Dan. And he made temples of high places, and took priests from the midst of the people which were not of the house of Levi; whomsoever he would he installed as priest of the high places " (1Kings xii. 26-30, xiii. 33). The perversion is scarcely so great as in Chronicles, but the anachronism is sufficiently glaring in the mode of view discernible in these reflections of Jeroboam, who appears to feel that the Ephraimite kingdom was illegitimate in its origin and could only be kept separate from the south by artificial means. The blessing of Jacob and the blessing of Moses show us what the sentiment of Northern Israel actually was. In the former Joseph is called the crowned of his brethren, in the second we read "His first-born bullock, full of majesty (the king), has the horns of a buffalo, with which he thrusts down the peoples; these are the ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh." Whence came the charm of the name of Ephraim but from its being the royal tribe, and the most distinguished representative of the proud name of Israel? Of Judah we read in the same chapter, "Hear, Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him back to his people." There can be no doubt what the people is to which Judah belongs: we cannot but agree with Graf, that this tribe is here regarded as the alienated member, and its reunion with the greater kingdom spoken of as the desire of Judah itself, and this is not so remarkable when we reflect that the part belongs to the whole and not the whole to the part. Only by long experience did Judah learn the blessing of a settled dynasty, and Ephraim the curse of perpetual changes on the throne.

Judah's power of attraction for the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom is thought to lie in the cultus of the Solomonic temple; and Jeroboam is said to have tried to meet this by creating new sanctuaries, a new form of the worship of Jehovah, and a new order of priesthood. The features in which the Samaritan worship differed from the Jewish pattern are represented as intentional innovations of the first king, in whose sin posterity persisted. But in making Bethel and Dan temples of the kingdom—that he set up high places, is a statement which need not be considered—Jeroboam did nothing more than Solomon had done before him; only he had firmer ground under his feet than Solomon, Bethel and Dan being old sanctuaries, which Jerusalem was not. The golden calves, again, which he set up, differed in their gold but not in their object from the ephods and idols of other kinds which were everywhere to be found in the older "houses of God"; e.g. from the brazen serpent at Jerusalem. /l/

***************************************** 1. "Although Jeroboam had lived in Egypt, it would he wrong to say that he brought animal worship with him from that country, as wrong as to regard Aaron's golden calf as a copy of Apis. The peculiarity of the animal-worship of Egypt, and of its bull-worship in particular, was that sanctity was attributed to living animals." Vatke, p. 398. Egyptian gods cannot help against Egypt, Exodus xxxii. 4; 1Kings xii. 28. ****************************************

Even Eichhorn remarked with force and point, that though Elijah and Elisha protested against the imported worship of Baal of Tyre, they were the actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of protesting against His pictorial representation; even Amos makes no such protest, Hosea is the first who does so. As for the non-Levitical priests whom the king is said to have installed, all that is necessary has been said on this subject above (p. 138 seq.).

A remarkable criticism on this estimate of the Samaritan worship follows immediately afterwards in the avowal that that of Judah was not different at the time, at any rate not better. In the report of Rehoboam's reign we read (1Kings xiv. 22 seq.): "They of Judah also set up high places and pillars on every high hill, and under every green tree, and whoredom at sacred places was practiced in the land." This state of things continued to exist, with some fluctuations, till near the time of the exile. If then the standard according to which Samaria is judged never attained to reality in Judah either, it never existed in ancient Israel at all. We know the standard is the book of the law of Josiah: but we see how the facts were not merely judged, but also framed, in accordance with it.

One more instance is worthy of mention in this connection. King Solomon, we are told, had, besides the daughter of Pharaoh, many foreign wives, from Moab, Ammon, and other peoples, intermarriage with whom Jehovah had forbidden (Deuteronomy xvii 17). And when he was old, they seduced him to the worship of their gods, and he erected on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem high places for Chemosh of Moab, and for Milcom of Ammon, and for the gods of his other wives. As a punishment for this Jehovah announced to him that his kingdom should be torn from him after his death and given to his servant, and also raised up adversaries to him, in Hadad the Edomite, who freed Edom, and in the Syrian Rezon teen Eliadah, who made Damascus independent. And by the prophet Abijah of Shiloh, he caused the Ephraimite Jeroboam, who then had the supervision of the forced labour of the house of Joseph in the fortification of the city of David, to be nominated as the future king of the ten tribes. So we read in 1Kings xi. But Edom, and, as it appears, Damascus as well, broke away from the kingdom of David immediately after his death (xi. 2I seq., 25); and the fortification of the citadel, in which Jeroboam was employed when incited to revolt by Abijah, though it falls somewhat later, yet belongs to the first half of Solomon's reign, since it is connected with the rest of his buildings (ix. 15, 24). Now Solomon cannot have been punished by anticipation, in his youth, for an offence which he only committed in his old age, and the moral connected with these events is contradicted by chronology and cannot possibly be ascribed to the original narrator. The Deuteronomistic revision betrays itself, in fact, in every word of xi. 1-13. To the original tradition belongs only the mention of the many wives—without the reprobation attached to it,—and the statement about the building of the altars of Chemosh and Milcom and perhaps Astarte, on the Mount of Olives, where they stood till the time of Josiah (2Kings xxiii. 13). The connection of the two events, in the relation of cause and effect, belongs to the last editor, as well as the general statement that the king erected altars of the gods of all the nationalities represented by his wives.

In the Books of Kings, it is true, the tradition is not systematically translated into the mode of view of the Law, as is the case in Chronicles. What reminds us most strongly of Chronicles is the introduction from time to time of a prophet who expresses himself in the spirit of Deuteronomy and in the language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and then disappears. /l/

****************************************** 1. Cf. Kuenen, Profeten onder Israel (1875), ii. p. 143; English translation (1877), p 398. One of these Deuteronomistic prophecies is cited above, p. 275. They are in part anonymous, e.g, 2Kings x. 30, xxi. 10 seq, in part connected with old names, e.g 1Kings xvi. 1 seq. In many instances no doubt the reviser found flints in his sources and worked them out in his own style; thus, 1Kings xiv. 7 seq., xxi 21 seq. 2Kings ix. 7 seq. In these passages the Deuteronomistic ideas and the phraseology of Jeremiah and Ezekiel are distinctly present [ HNNY MBY) R(h ], but detached expressions of an original type also occur,—which, it is true, are then constantly repeated, e.g. (CWN W(ZWB. Names, too, like Jehu ben Hanani, are certainly not fictitious: we are not so far advanced as in Chronicles. Cf. 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii. 1 seq. ****************************************

In this way the Law is introduced into the history in a living way; the prophets keep it effective and see it applied, according to the principle stated, 2Kings xvii. 13, which is founded on Jeremiah vii. 25; Deuteronomy xviii. 18: "Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers saying, Turn ye from your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes, according to all the Torah which I commanded your fathers and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets." The most unblushing example of this kind, a piece which, for historical worthlessness may compare with Judges xix.-xxi. or 1Samuel vii. seq., or even stands a step lower, is 1Kings xiii. A man of God from Judah here denounces the altar of Bethel, at which King Jeroboam is in the act of offering sacrifice, in these terms: "O altar, altar, behold a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places, that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." And to guarantee the truth of this prophecy, to be fulfilled three hundred years afterwards, he gives the sign that the altar shall burst asunder, and the ashes of the sacrifice upon it be poured out—which at once takes place. This legend, however, does not really belong to the Deuteronomist, but is a still later addition, as is easily to be seen from the fact that the sentence xii. 31 is only completed at xiii. 34. It deserves remark that in the two verses which introduce the thirteenth chapter, xii. 32 seq., the feast of tabernacles is fixed, in accordance with the Priestly Code, as the 15th of the 7th month.

VII.III.3. In this case also we are able to discern considerable shades and gradations in the sources the reviser had at command. In the Books of Kings for the first time we meet with a series of short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious chronological framework is regularly filled in with them (e.g. 1Kings xiv.-xvi.); their loose connection and neutral tone made it specially easy for later editors to interweave with them additions of their own, as has actually been done to no small extent. /1/

***************************************** 1. The passage discussed above, 1Kings xi. 1 seq., gives a good example of this; we at once pick out the terse )z ybnh wgw'' from the barren diffuseness surrounding it. ****************************************

These valuable notes commence even with Solomon, though here they are largely mixed with anecdotic chaff. They are afterwards found principally, almost exclusively, in the series of Judah. Several precise dates point to something of the nature of annals, /2/

**************************************** 2. 5th of Rehoboam (1Kings xiv. 25); 23rd of Jehoash (2Kings xii, 6); 14th of Hezekiah (2Kings xviii. 13); 18th of Josiah (2Kings xxii. 3); 4th and 5th of Solomon (1Kings vi. 37, 38). These dates occur, it is true, partly in circumstantial Jewish narratives, but these are intimately related to the brief notices spoken of above, and appear to be based on them. It may be surmised that such definite numbers, existing at one time in much greater abundance, afforded the data for an approximate calculation of the figures on which the systematic chronology is built up. These single dates at any rate are not themselves parts of the system. The same is true of the statements of the age of the Jewish kings when they ascended the throne. These also perhaps go back to the "Annals." The )Z is found 1Kings iii. 16, viii. 1, 12, ix. 11, xi. 7, xvi. 21, xxii. 50; 2Kings viii. 22, xii. 18, xiv. 8, xv. 16, xvi. 5. *****************************************

and with these the characteristic then might be thought to be connected, which frequently introduces the short sentences, and as it now stands is generally meaningless. In what circles these records were made, we can scarcely even surmise. Could we be certain that the reference to the royal temple of Judah, which is a prevailing feature of them, is due not to selection at a later time but to the interest of the first hands, we should be led to think of the priesthood at Jerusalem. The loyalist, perfectly official tone would agree very well with this theory, for the sons of Zadok were, down to Josiah's time, nothing else than the obedient servants of the successors of David, and regarded the unconditional authority claimed by these kings over their sanctuary as a matter of course (2Kings xvi. TO seq., xii. 18). These notices, however, as we have them, are not drawn from the documents themselves, but from a secondary compilation, perhaps from the two sets of chronicles cited at the end of each reign of the kings of Israel and those of Judah, from which at all events the succession of the rulers appears to the drawn. These chronicles are not to be identified, it is clear, with the original annals. The _book_ of the annals must be distinguished from the Dibre-hajamim themselves. Whether the chronicle of Israel_-hardly anything out of which is communicated to us—was composed much earlier than the chronicle of Judah (which seems to close with Jehoiachim), and whether it and the chronicle of Solomon (1Kings xi. 41) are a quite independent work, I am inclined to consider doubtful.

The excerpts from the annals are interrupted by more extensive episodes which are interwoven with them, and are also embraced in the Deuteronomistic scheme. Of these the Jewish ones are the minority, the greater part are Samaritan, but they all belong to a very limited period of time. I select the miraculous history of Elijah as an example of these, to show the sentiment and the change of sentiment in this instance also.

The prophet Elijah, from Tishbeh in Gilead, appears before King Ahab of Samaria, and says, "By the life of Jehovah the God of Israel, whom I serve, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." The story begins abruptly; we require to know that Ahab, stirred up by Jezebel, has been propagating in Israel the worship of the Tyrian Baal, and has killed the prophets of Jehovah by hundreds: this is the reason of the punishment which comes on him and his land (xviii. 13, 22). Elijah vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. We find him again at the brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan; then in the land of Baal with a widow at Zarepta; while following his fortunes we are made to feel in a simple and beautiful way the severity of the famine. Ahab in the meantime had sent out messengers to take him, and had required of every state to which the vain search had extended, an oath that he was not to be found there. Now, however, necessity obliged him to think of other things; he had to go out himself with his minister Obadiah to seek fodder for the still remaining war-horses (Amos vii. 1). In this humiliating situation he all at once met the banished man. He did not believe his eyes. "Is it thou, O troubler of Israel?" "I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house!" After this greeting Elijah challenged the king to institute a contest between the 450 prophets of Baal, and him, the only prophet of Jehovah left remaining. A trial by sacrifice took place on Mount Carmel before the whole people. Each party was to prepare a bullock and lay it on the altar without setting fire to the wood; and the divinity who should answer by fire was the true God. The prophets of Baal came first and sought after their own manner to influence their deity. They shouted and leapt wildly, wounded themselves with swords and lances till they were covered with blood, and kept up their raving ecstasy from morning till mid-day, and from mid-day till evening. During this time Elijah looked at them and mocked them, saying, "Cry louder, for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is somehow engaged, or he is asleep and must be awaked." At last his turn came; he repaired the altar of Jehovah, which was broken down, spread the pieces of the sacrifice upon it, and, to make the miracle still more miraculous, caused them to be flooded two or three times with water. Then he prayed to Jehovah, and fire fell from heaven, and consumed the sacrifice. The people, up to this point divided in their mind, now took the side of the zealot for Jehovah, laid hold of the prophets of Baal, and slaughtered them down below at the brook. A great storm of rain at once came to refresh the land.

This triumph of Elijah was only a prelude. When Jezebel heard what had happened she swore vengeance against him, and he fled for his life to Beersheba in Judah, the sanctuary of Isaac. Wearied to death he lay down under a juniper-bush in the wilderness, and with the prayer, It is enough: now, O Jehovah, take away my life, he fell asleep. Then he was strengthened with miraculous food by a heavenly messenger, and bidden to go to Horeb, the mount of God. He arrived there after a long journey, and withdrew into a cave; a rushing wind sweeps past; the wind and the earthquake and the lightning are the forerunners of Jehovah; and after them He comes Himself in the low whispering that follows the storm. His head covered, Elijah steps out of the cave and hears a voice ask what ails him. Having poured out his heart, he receives the divine consolation that his cause is by no means lost; that the direst vengeance, the instruments of which he is himself to summon to their task, is to go forth on all the worshippers of Baal, and that those 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal shall gain the day—"Thou shalt anoint Hazael to be King over Damascus, and Jehu ben Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be iiing over Israel, and Elisha ben Shaphat to be prophet in thy room; and him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and him that escapeth the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." The account of the execution of these commands by Elijah is at present wanting; we shall soon see why it was omitted. The conclusion of chapter xix. only tells us that he called Elisha from the plough to follow him. Of the account of the judgment which overtook the worshippers of Baal, this group of narratives contains only the beginning, in chapter xxi. Ahab wanted to have a vineyard which was situated beside his palace in Jezreel, his favourite residence: but Naboth, the owner, was unwilling to enter on a sale or an exchange. The king was angry, yet thought he could do no more in the matter; but Jezebel of Tyre had other notions of might and right and said to him, "Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? be of good courage; I will get thee the vineyard." She wrote a letter to the authorities of the town, and got Naboth put out of the way by means of corrupt judges. As Ahab was just going to take possession of the vineyard which had fallen into his hands, his enemy came upon him. The prophet Elijah, always on the spot at the right moment, hurled the word at him, "Hast thou killed and also taken possession? Behold, in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood also." Here this story breaks off. What follows is not the true continuation.

The thread of the narrative xvii.-xix. xxi. is also broken off here, without reaching its proper conclusion. The victory of Jehovah over Baal, of the prophet over the king, is wanting; the story of Naboth is, as we said, only the introduction to it. We are sufficiently informed about the facts, but in form the narratives do not answer to the announcement in chapter xix. and xxi.; they are drawn from other sources. According to xix. 1 7 the Syrian wars ought to result in vengeance on the worshippers of Baal, and specially on the idolatrous royal house; but in the narrative of the wars (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings vii. ix. ) this point of view does not prevail. On the contrary, Ahab and Joram there maintain themselves in a manly and honourable way against the superior power of Damascus it is ONLY AFTER the extirpation of Baal worship under Jehu that affairs took an unfortunate turn, and Hazael, who brought about this change, was not anointed by Elijah but by Elisha (2Kings viii. 7 seq.) /.l/

************************************* 1. The same applies to Jehu (2Kings ix. 1 seq.). This is the reason of the above remarked omission after 1Kings xix. 21: cf. Thenius's commentary. *************************************

The massacre at Jezreel, too, which is predicted in the threat of 1Kings xxi. 19, would need to be told otherwise than in 2Kings ix. x., to form a proper literary sequel to the story of Naboth. According to 1Kings xxi. 19 the blood of Ahab is to be shed at Jezreel; according to 2Kings ix. 25 his son's blood was shed there, to avenge Naboth. It is true, the explanation is appended in xxi. 27-29, that, as the king took to heart the threats of Elijah, Jehovah made a supplementary communication to the prophet that the threat against Ahab's house would only be fulfilled in the days of his son; but who does not see in this an attempt to harmonise conflicting narratives? /2/ A whole series of

*************************************** 2 In spite of xxi. 27-29, an attempt is made at xxii. 38 to show that the threat was fulfilled in Ahab himself. We are told that Ahab was shot in his chariot and that his servants brought his body from Ramoth-Gilead to bury it there. Then we read xxii. 38 "and they washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood, and the harlots bathed in it, according to the word of Jehovah." Thus it is explained how the dogs were able to lick his blood in Samaria, though it had had plenty of time to dry up after the battle! The fact was unfortunately over-looked that according to xxi. 19 the dogs were to lick the blood of Ahab not at Samaria but at Jezreel, the place of Naboth. The verse xxii. 38 is an interpolation which does credit to Jewish acuteness. ***************************************

subordinate discrepancies might be mentioned, which prove that 2Kings ix. x. does not look back to the story of the murder of Naboth as told in 1Kings xxi. According to ix. 25, 26, the dispute was not about the vineyard, but about the field of Naboth, which lay some distance from the town. His family was put to death along with him, and on the following day, when Ahab rode out IN COMPANY WITH JEHU and Ben Deker to take possession of the field, the word of the prophet (not framed so specially against him personally) met him: "Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth and of his sons, and I will requite it in this plat."

With the help of these other accounts, among which there is a considerable group of uniform character (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings iii. vi. 24-xii. 20. ix. 1-x. 27) favourably distinguished from the rest, we are placed in a position to criticise the history of Elijah, and to reach a result which is very instructive for the history of the tradition, namely that the influence of the mighty prophet on his age has after all been appraised much too highly. His reputation could not be what it is but for the wide diffusion of Baal worship in Israel: and this is not a little exaggerated. Anything like a suppression of the national religion at the time of Elijah is quite out of the question, and there is no truth in the statement that the prophets of Jehovah were entirely extirpated at the time and Elijah alone left surviving. The prophetic guilds at Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal continued without any interruption. In the Syrian wars prophets of Jehovah stand by the side of Ahab; before his last campaign there are four hundred of them collected in his capital, one of them at least long known to the king as a prophet of evil, but left alive before and left alive now, though he persisted in his disagreeable practices. Of the sons whom Jezebel bore him, Ahab called one Ahaziah, i.e. Jehovah holds, and another Jehoram, i.e. Jehovah is exalted: he adhered to Jehovah as the god of Israel, though to please his wife he founded at Samaria a temple and a cultus of the Syrian goddess. This being so, Elijah's contest with Baal cannot have possessed the importance attributed to it from the point of view of a later time. In the group of popular narratives above referred to, there is no trace of a religious commotion that tore Israel asunder: the whole strength of the people is absorbed in the Syrian wars. The kings are the prominent figures, and do well and according to their office in battle: Elijah stands in the background. From several indications, though from no direct statements, we learn of the high esteem which Ahab enjoyed from friend and foe alike (xx. 3I, xxii. 32-34 seq.). Joram also, and even Jezebel, are drawn not without sympathy (2Kings vi. 30, ix. 31). We can scarcely say the same of Jehu, the murderer, instigated by the prophets, of the house of Ahab (2Kings ix. 10).

It is the fact, certainly, that the prophets' hatred of Baal succeeded at last in overturning the dynasty of Omri. But in what manner was this done? At a time when King Joram was prevented by a wound he had received from being with his army in the field, a messenger of Elisha went to the camp, called the captain apart from a banquet at which he found him, to a secret interview, and anointed him king. When Jehu returned to his comrades at their wine, they asked him what that mad fellow had wanted, and, his evasive answers failing to satisfy them, he told them the truth. They at once raised him on an improvised throne, and caused the trumpets to proclaim him king: they were quite ready for such an exploit, not that they cared in the least for "that mad fellow." Jehu justified their confidence by his astounding mastery in treachery and bloodshed, but he placed his reliance entirely on the resources of his own talent for murder. He was not borne along by any general movement against the dynasty; the people, which he despised (x. 9), stood motionless and horrified at the sight of the crimes which came so quickly one after another; even a hundred years afterwards the horror at the massacre of Jezreel still lived (Hosea i. 4). The crown once gained, the reckless player showed his gratitude to the fanatics, and sent the priests and worshippers of Baal after the priests of Jehovah whom he had slaughtered along with all belonging to the royal house (x. 11). The manner in which he led them into the snare (x. 18 seq.) shows that no one had thought before this of regarding him as the champion of Jehovah; and even at this time his zeal was manifestly only ostensible: he was not fighting for an idea (x. 15. seq.). Thus we see that Baal did not bring about the fall of the house of Ahab, but common treason; the zealots employed for their purposes a most unholy instrument, which employed them in turn as a holy instrument for its purposes; they did not succeed in rousing the people to a storm against Baal, far from it. The execution of Naboth seems to have excited greater indignation: it was a crime against morals, not against religion. Even in the history of Elijah the admission is made that this struggle against Baal, in spite of his sacrificial victory on Carmel, was in the end without result, and that only the judicial murder of Naboth brought about a change in the popular sentiment. But according to 2Kings ix. 25, this murder proved a momentous event, not because it led, as we should expect, to a popular agitation, but from the fortuitous circumstance that Jehu was a witness of the never-to-be-forgotten scene between Ahab and Elijah, and seemed therefore to the prophets to be a fit person to carry out his threatenings.

It is certainly the case that the grand figure of Elijah could not have been drawn as we have it except from the impression produced by a real character. /1/ But it is too much torn away from the

************************************* 1. The distance of the narrator is not so very great in point of time from the events he deals with. He is a North-Israelite, as the )#R LYHWDH of xix. 3 shows: this may also be gathered from xix. 8 compared with Deuteronomy i. 2. A man of Judah could not easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been accustomed to assume. Another sign of antiquity is the way in which Elijah is represented as combating Baal in Israel, and in the land of Sidon associating with the worshippers of Baal on the most friendly terms (Luke iv. 25 seq.). *********************************************

historical position it belongs to, and is thereby magnified to colossal proportions. It may be said of this class of narratives generally, that the prophets are brought too much into the foreground in them, as if they had been even in their lifetime the principal force of Israelite history, and as if the influence which moved them had ruled and pervaded their age as well. That was not the case; in the eyes of their contemporaries they were completely overshadowed by the kings; only to later generations did they become the principal personages. They were important ideally, and influenced the future rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible importance is attributed to them. In the time of Ahab and Jehu the Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own, but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable fellows, who ate out of the king's hand and were treated with disdain by members of the leading classes. Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true, belonged to a younger generation, felt it an insult to be counted one of them. Elijah and Elisha rose certainly above the level of their order; but the first, whose hands remained pure, while he no doubt produced a great impression at the time by his fearless words, effected nothing against the king, and quite failed to draw the people over to his side: while Elisha, who did effect something, made use of means which could not bear the light, and which attest rather the weakness than the strength of prophecy in Israel.

VII.III.4. Let us conclude by summing up the results to which we have been led by our eclectic pilgrimage through the historical books. What in the common view appears to be the specific character of Israelite history, and has chiefly led to its being called sacred history, rests for the most part on a later re-painting of the original picture. The discolouring influences begin early. I do not reckon among these the entrance of mythical elements, such as are not wanting even in the first beginnings to which we can trace the course of the tradition, nor the inevitable local colour, which is quite a different thing from tendency. I think only of that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded history exclusively from the point of view of their own principles. Here we observe first a religious influence, which in the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical one. The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole. The song, Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it were actually composed by Deborah, the seer stands in no connection with the prophets. Least of all can the colleges of the B'ne Nebiim at Gilgal and other places be regarded as nurseries of historic tradition: the products which are to be traced to these circles betray a somewhat narrow field of vision (2Kings ii., iv. 1-6, 23). The prophets did not form the tradition at first, but came after, shedding upon it their peculiar light. Their interest in history was not so great that they felt it necessary to write it down; they only infused their own spirit into it subsequently.

But the systematic recoining of the tradition was only effected when a firmer stamp had become available than the free ideas of the prophets, the will of God having been formulated in writing. When this point was reached, no one could fail to see the discrepancy between the ideal commencement, which was now sought to be restored as it stood in the book, and the succeeding development. The old books of the people, which spoke in the most innocent way of the most objectionable practices and institutions, had to be thoroughly remodelled according to the Mosaic form, in order to make them valuable, digestible, and edifying, for the new generation. A continuous revision of them was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in the Babylonian exile. The style of the latter revision differed from that of the former. In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the law: transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the law is not disputed. In these works also the past is in some cases remodelled on the basis of the ideal, but as a rule it is simply condemned. That is one difference; another has to be added which is of far greater importance. In the Chronicles the pattern according to which the history of ancient Israel is represented is the Pentateuch, i.e. the Priestly Code. In the source of Chronicles, in the older historical books, the revision does not proceed upon the basis of the Priestly Code, which indeed is completely unknown to them, but on the basis of Deuteronomy. Thus in the question of the order of sequence of the two great bodies of laws, the history of the tradition leads us to the same conclusion as the history of the cultus.



CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH.

In the historical books the tradition is developed by means of supplement and revision; double narratives occur here and there, but not great parallel pieces of connected matter side by side. In the Hexateuch additions and supplements have certainly taken place on the most extensive scale, but the significant feature is here that continuous narratives which can and must be understood each by itself are woven together in a double or threefold cord. Critics have shown a disposition, if not in principle yet in fact, to take the independence of these so-called sources of the Hexateuch as if it implied that in point of matter also each is a distinct and independent source. But this is, even a priori, very improbable. Even in the case of the prophets who received their word from the Lord the later writer knows and founds upon the earlier one. How much more must this be the case with narrators whose express business is with the tradition? Criticism has not done its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution; it must aim further at bringing the different writings when thus arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition.

The striking agreement of the different works, not only in matter, but in their arrangement of the narratives, makes the office of criticism as now described not less but more necessary. There is no primitive legend, it is well known, so well knit as the biblical one, and thus it is no wonder that it became the frame for many others and infused into them some of its own colour. This connection is common in its main features to all the sources alike. The Priestly Code runs, as to its historical thread, quite parallel to the Jehovist history. This alone made it possible to interfuse the two writings as we now have them in the Pentateuch. That this was not done altogether without violence is less to be wondered at than that the violence which was done is so small, and particularly that the structure of each writing is left almost unimpaired. This can only be explained from the intimate agreement of the two works in point of plan. When the subject treated is not history but legends about pre-historic times, the arrangement of the materials does not come with the materials themselves, but must arise out of the plan of a narrator: even the architecture of the generations, which forms the scaffolding of Genesis, is not inseparably bound up with the matters to be disposed of in it. From the mouth of the people there comes nothing but the detached narratives, which may or may not happen to have some bearing on each other: to weave them together in a connected whole is the work of the poetical or literary artist. Thus the agreement of the sources in the plan of the narrative is not a matter of course, but a matter requiring explanation, and only to be explained on the ground of the literary dependence of one source on the other. The question how this relation of dependence is to be defined is thus a much more pressing one than is commonly assumed. /1/

***************************************** 1. The agreement extends not only to the thread of the narrative, but also to particulars, and even to expressions. I do not speak of mabbul (flood), or tebah (ark), but the following examples have struck me:-In Q Genesis vi. 9, Noah is said to be righteous in his generations, in J E vii. 1 he is righteous in his generation— an unusual form of speech, which gave a vast amount of trouble to the Rabbins and to Jerome. Similarly Q Genesis xvii. 21, the son whom Sarah shall bear at this set time next year, and JE xviii. 14: at the same time I will come to thee again next year, and then Sarah shall have a son. In the same way Q Exodus vi. 12 vii. 1. (Moses) I am of uncircumcised lips. (Jehovah) See, I make thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet; compared with JE iv. 10, 16. (Moses) I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue; (Jehovah) Aaron shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. Comp. Genesis xxvii. 46, with xxv: 22. *************************************

This, however, is not the place to attempt a history of the development of the Israelite legend. We are only to lay the foundation for such a work, by comparing the narrative of the Priestly Code with the Jehovistic one. In doing so we shall see that Buttmann (Mythologus, i. p. 122 seq.) is right in asserting against de Wette (Beitraege, ii.), that, the Jehovistic form of the legend is the earlier of the two . /2/

**************************************** 2. The line indicated by Buttmann was first taken up again by Th. Noldeke in his Essay on the main-stock of the Pentateuch, which opened the way to a proper estimate of the narrative part of the work. ****************************************

VIII.I.

VIII.I.1 The Bible begins with the account of the Priestly Code of the creation of the world. In the beginning is chaos; darkness, water, brooding spirit, which engenders life, and fertilises the dead mass. The primal stuff contains in itself all beings, as yet undistinguished: from it proceeds step by step the ordered world; by a process of unmixing, first of all by separating out the great elements. The chaotic primal gloom yields to the contrast of light and darkness; the primal water is separated by the vault of heaven into the heavenly water, out of which there grows the world above the firmament which is withdrawn from our gaze, and the water of the earth: the latter, a slimy mixture, is divided into land and sea, whereupon the land at once puts on its green attire. The elements thus brought into existence, light, heaven, water, land, are then enlivened, pretty much in the order in which they were created, with individual beings; to the light correspond the lamps of the stars, fishes to the water, to the heaven the birds of heaven, and the other creatures to the land. The last act of creation is markedly emphasised. "And God said: Let us make man after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the living creatures of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man after His own image, in the image of God created He him, and He created them male and female. And God blessed them, and said: Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given unto you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed-fruits: to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given the green herb for meat. Thus the heavens and the earth were made and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God ended His work, and blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." (Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a).

It is commonly said that the aim of this narrative is a purely religious one. The Israelite certainly does not deny himself in it: the religious spirit with which it is penetrated even comes at some points into conflict with the nature of its materials. The notion of chaos is that of uncreated matter; here we find the remarkable idea that it is created in the beginning by God. Brooded over by the Spirit, it is further of a nature for development to take place out of it, and the trait that the creation is represented throughout as a separation of elements which in chaos were mixed together, betrays even now the original design: but in the Hebrew narrative the immanent Spirit has yielded to the transcendent God, and the principle of evolution is put aside in favour of the fiat of creation. Yet for all this the aim of the narrator is not mainly a religious one. Had he only meant to say that God made the world out of nothing, and made it good, he could have said so in simpler words, and at the same time more distinctly. There is no doubt that he means to describe the actual course of the genesis of the world, and to be true to nature in doing so; he means to give a cosmogonic theory. Whoever denies this confounds two different things—the value of history for us, and the aim of the writer. While our religious views are or seem to be in conformity with his, we have other ideas about the beginning of the world, because we have other ideas about the world itself, and see in the heavens no vault, in the stars no lamps, nor in the earth the foundation of the universe. But this must not prevent us from recognising what the theoretical aim of the writer of Genesis i. really was. He seeks to deduce things as they are from each other: he asks how they are likely to have issued at first from the primal matter, and the world he has before his eyes in doing this is not a mythical world but the present and ordinary one.

The pale colour which generally marks the productions of the earliest reflection about nature, when they are not mythical theories, is characteristic of Genesis i. also. We are indeed accustomed to regard this first leaf of the Bible as surrounded with all the charm that can be derived from the combination of high antiquity and childlike form. lt would be vain to deny the exalted ease and the uniform greatness that give the narrative its character. The beginning especially is incomparable: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light." But chaos being given, all the rest is spun out of it: all that follows is reflection, systematic construction; we can easily follow the calculation from point to point. The considerations are very simple which lead the writer to make first what is great appear, and then what is small; first the foundation and then that which exists upon it, the water before the fishes, heaven before the birds of heaven, land and plants before the animals. The arrangement of the things to be explained stands here for the explanation; there is nothing more than a succession which proceeds from the simple to the complicated; there is no effort of fancy to describe the process more closely; everywhere cautious consideration which shrinks from going beyond generalities. Only the framework of creation, in fact, is given; it is not filled up. Hence also the form of the whole, the effect of which cannot be reproduced in an epitome; the formula gets the better of the contents, and instead of descriptions our ears are filled with logical definitions. The graduated arrangement in separating particular things out of chaos indicates the awakening of a "natural" way of looking at nature, and of a reasoned reflection about natural objects, just as this is manifest in the attempts of Thales and his successors, which are also remarkable as beginnings of the theory of nature and of an objective interest in the things of the outer world, but further than this do not exactly rouse us to enthusiasm. /1/

*********************************************** 1. "There is nothing whatever in the piece that merits the name of invention but the chronological order of the various creations." Buttmann, p. 133. **********************************************

The first sentence of the Jehovistic account of the beginning of the world's history has been cut off by the reviser. [It was all a dry waste] when Jehovah formed the earth, and nowhere did the green herb spring up, for Jehovah had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But a mist (?) went up out of the earth, and watered the face of the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Then he planted a garden far to the eastward in Eden, in the place where the four chief rivers of the earth part asunder from their common source; there grow among other fine trees the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. In this garden Jehovah placed the man, to dress it and keep it and to eat of all the trees, forbidding him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge only. But the man is utterly alone in his garden: he must have company that is suitable for him. So Jehovah first forms the beasts, if perchance the man will associate with them and make friends with them. He brings them to him one after another to see what impression they make on him, and what the man will call them. He calls them by their right names, ox, ass, bear, thus expressing his feeling that he finds in them nothing relate to himself, and Jehovah has to seek other counsel. Then he forms the woman out of a rib of the sleeping man, and causes him to awake. Wearied as it were by all the fruitless experiments with the beasts, the man cries out delighted when he looks at the woman: This surely is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone; she may be called wo-man.

Thus the scene is drawn, the persons introduced, and an action secretly prepared: now the tragedy begins, which ends with the expulsion of man from the garden. Seduced by the serpent, man stretches out his hand after the food which is forbidden him, in order to become like God, and eats of the tree of knowledge. The first consequence of this is the beginning of dress, the first step in civilisation; other and sadder consequences soon follow. In the evening the man and his wife hear Jehovah walking in the garden; they hide before Him, and by doing so betray themselves. It is useless to think of denying what has taken place, and as each of them puts the blame on the other, they show themselves one after the other to be guilty. The sentence of the judge concludes the investigation. The serpent is to creep on its belly, to eat dust, and to perish in the unequal contest with man. The woman is to bear many children with sorrow, and to long for the man, who yet will be her tyrant. The principal curse is directed against the man. "Cursed be the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to, thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Sentence being thus spoken, Jehovah prepares the man and woman for their future life by making coats of skins to dress them with. Then turning to His celestial company, "Behold," He says, "the man is become like one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." With these words he drives man out of Paradise, and places before it the cherubs, and the flaming sword, which turns every way, to keep the way of the tree of Life (Genesis i. 4b-iii. 24).

The gloomiest view of life as it now is, lies at the root of this story. Man's days are mere hardship and labour and task-work, a task-work with no prospect of relief, for the only reward of it is that he returns to the earth from which he was taken. No thought appears of any life AFTER death, and life WITHOUT death might have been, but has been forfeited, now the cherub guards the approach to the tree of life, of which man might have eaten when in Paradise but did not. This actual, cheerless lot of man upon the earth is the real problem of the story. It is felt to be the very opposite of our true destiny; at first, things must have been otherwise. Man's lot now is a perversion of what it was at first, it is the punishment of primeval guilt now resting on us all. At first man lived in Paradise; he had a happy existence, and one worthy of his nature, and held familiar intercourse with Jehovah; it was his forbidden striving after the knowledge of good and evil that drove him out of Paradise and brought all his miseries upon him.

What is the knowledge of good and evil? The commentators say it is the faculty of moral distinction,—conscience, in fact. They assume accordingly that man was in Paradise morally indifferent, in a state which allowed of no self-conscious action and could not be called either good or evil. A state like this not being an ideal one, some of them consider that man gained more than he lost by the fall, while others admit that it could not be the divine intention to keep him always at this stage of childish irresponsibility, and that this cannot be the view of the narrator either.

But it is plain that the narrator is not speaking of a relative prohibition of knowledge, but an absolute one: he means that it is only for God, and that when man stretches out his hand towards it he is transcending his limits and seeking to be as God. On the other side he cannot of course mean to say that conscience is a doubtful blessing, and its possession to be deplored, or that it is a thing that God in fact refuses to men and reserves to Himself alone. The knowledge spoken of cannot be moral knowledge. What could the assertion mean that God would have no one but Himself know the difference between good and evil, and would deny to man this knowledge? One would think that conscience is a thing belonging specifically to man and not to God.

And what could be the sense of representing Adam and Eve as so intent to know what was sin and what was virtue? No one is curious about that, and sin never came into existence in the way of ethical experiment, by men's desiring to know what it is. And it is manifestly assumed that men knew in paradise that obedience to Jehovah was good and disobedience evil. And finally, it conflicts with the common tradition of all peoples to represent the first man as a sort of beast; he is regarded as undeveloped only in point of outward culture. The knowledge which is here forbidden is rather knowledge as such, general knowledge, or getting the eyes opened, as it is afterwards called. This is what transcends, in the writer's view, the limits of our nature; prying out the secret of things, the secret of the world, and overlooking, as it were, God's hand to see how He goes to work in His living activity, so as, perhaps, to learn His secret and imitate Him. For knowledge is to the ancient world also power, and no mere metaphysic. This knowing in the highest sense is the attribute of God alone, who stands in the creative centre of things and penetrates and surveys the whole; it is sealed to man, who has to labour and weary himself at little things. And yet the forbidden good has the most powerful attraction for him; he burns to possess it, and instead of resigning himself in trust and reverence he seeks to steal the jewel which is jealously guarded from him, and so to become like God—to his own sorrow.

This explanation is not new; it is the old and popular one, for which reason also Goethe adopted it in Faust. One objection certainly may be taken to it; the words are not merely knowledge, but knowledge of good and evil. But good and evil in Hebrew mean primarily nothing more than salutary and hurtful; the application of the words to virtue and sin is a secondary one, these being regarded as serviceable or hurtful in their effects. Good and evil as spoken of in Genesis ii. iii. point to no contrast of some actions with others according to their moral distinctions: the phrase is only a comprehensive one for things generally, according to the contradictory attributes which constitute their interest to man, as they help or injure him: for, as said, he desires to know not what things are metaphysically, but what is the use of them. /1/ Besides the

*************************************** I Sur. 20, 91. Hudh. 22, 10 (Agh. xv. 105, 12). Hamasa, 292, 8 seq. Tabari i. 847, 18 ***************************************

lengthier expression we have the shorter one, knowledge, simply (iii. 6); and it must also be remarked that the phrase is not: know the good and the evil, but know good and evil.

But more, we must regard this knowledge not as it affects the individual, but in the light of history; what is meant is what we call civilisation. As the human race goes forward in civilisation, it goes backward in the fear of God. The first step in civilisation is clothing; and here this is the first result of the fall. The story is continued in chapter iv. Adam's sons begin to found cities, Jubal is the first musician, Cain discovers the oldest and the most important of the arts, that of the smith— hence the sword and bloody vengeance. Of the same tendency is the connected story of the city and the tower of Babel, in which is represented the foundation of the great empires and cities of the world, which concentrate human strength and seek to use it to press into heaven itself. In all this we have the steps of man's emancipation; with his growing civilisation grows also his alienation from the highest good; and—this is evidently the idea, though it is not stated—the restless advance never reaches its goal after all; it is a Sisyphus-labour; the tower of Babel, which is incomplete to all eternity, is the proper symbol for it. The strain is that strain of unsatisfied longing which is to be heard among all peoples. On attaining to civilisation they become aware of the value of those blessings which they have sacrificed for it. /1/

*************************************** 1. Dillmann thinks this idea insipid: Genesis (1882), p. 44 **************************************

It was necessary to discuss the notion of knowledge at some length, because the misunderstanding of this point on the part of philosophers and theologians has cast over our story an appearance of modernness, which has, in its turn, done something to influence general opinion as to the age of this story compared with the other. Having got rid of this impression we turn to those features of Genesis ii. iii. which help to determine positively its relation to chapter i.

What has been untruly asserted of Genesis i. is true of Genesis ii. iii. The Jehovist narrative does shine by the absence of all efforts after rationalistic explanation, by its contempt for every kind of cosmological speculation. The earth is regarded as being at first not moist and plastic but (as in Job xxxviii. 38) hard and dry: it must rain first in order that the desert may be turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when the showers of spring come. The ground further requires cultivation by man that the seed may spring forth. No regard is paid to any natural sequence of the acts of creation: man, the most helpless of all beings, appears first, and finds himself placed on a world entirely bare, without tree or bush, without the animals, without woman. Man is confessedly the exclusive object of interest, the other creatures are accounted for by their importance to him, as if this only conferred on them a right to exist. The idea explains matter: mechanical possibility is never consulted, and we do not think of asking about it. Want of taste could find no lower deeps than when this or that scholar goes from Genesis ii. 21 to count his ribs, or comes to the conclusion that the first man was hermaphrodite.

In the first account we stand before the first beginnings of sober reflection about nature, in the second we are on the ground of marvel and myth. Where reflection found its materials we do not think of asking; ordinary contemplation of things could furnish it. But the materials for myth could not be derived from contemplation, at least so far as regards the view of nature which is chiefly before us here; they came from the many-coloured traditions of the old world of Western Asia. Here we are in the enchanted garden of the ideas of genuine antiquity; the fresh early smell of earth meets us on the breeze. The Hebrews breathed the air which surrounded them; the stories they told on the Jordan, of the land of Eden and the fall, were told in the same way on the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the Oxus and the Arius. The true land of the world, where dwells the Deity, is Eden. It was not removed from the earth after the fall; it is there still, else whence the need of cherubs to guard the access to it? The rivers that proceed from it are real rivers, all well known to the narrator, they and the countries they flow through and the products that come from these countries. Three of them, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, are well known to us also; and if we only knew how the narrator conceived their courses to lie, it would be easy to determine the position of their common source and the situation of Paradise. Other peoples of antiquity define the situation of their holy land in a similar manner; the streams have different names, but the thing is the same. The wonderful trees also in the garden of Eden have many analogies even in the Germanic mythology. The belief in the cherubs which guard Paradise is also widely diffused. Krub is perhaps the same name, and certainly represents the same idea, as Gryp in Greek, and Greif in German. We find everywhere these beings wonderfully compounded out of lion, eagle, and man. They are everywhere guardians of the divine and sacred, and then also of gold and of treasures. The ingredients of the story seem certainly to have parted with some of their original colour under the influence of monotheism. The Hebrew people no doubt had something more to tell about the tree of life than now appears. It is said to have been in the midst of the garden, and so it seems to have stood at the point whence the four streams issued, at the fountain of life, which was so important to the faith of the East, and which Alexander marched out to discover. Paradise, moreover, was certainly not planted originally for man, it was the dwelling of the Deity Himself. Traces of this may still be recognised. Jehovah does not descend to it from heaven, but goes out walking in the garden in the evening as if He were at home. The garden of Deity is, however, on the whole somewhat naturalised. A similar weakening down of the mythic element is apparent in the matter of the serpent; it is not seen at once that the serpent is a demon. Yet parting with these foreign elements has made the story no poorer, and it has gained in noble simplicity. The mythic background gives it a tremulous brightness: we feel that we are in the golden age when heaven was still on earth; and yet unintelligible enchantment is avoided, and the limit of a sober chiaroscuro is not transgressed.

The story of the creation in six days played, we know, a great part in the earlier stages of cosmological and geological science. It is not by chance that natural science has kept off Genesis ii. iii. There is scarcely any nature there. But poetry has at all times inclined to the story of Paradise. Now we do not require to ask at this time of day, nor to argue the question, whether mythic poetry or sober prose is the earlier stage in the contemplation of the world.

Intimately connected with the advanced views of nature, which we find in Genesis i., is the "purified" notion of God found there. The most important point is that a special word is employed, which stands for nothing else than the creative agency of God, and so dissociates it from all analogy with human making and shaping— a word of such exclusive significance that it cannot be reproduced either in Latin, or in Greek, or in German. In a youthful people such a theological abstraction is unheard of; and so with the Hebrews we find both the word and the notion only coming into use after the Babylonian exile; they appear along with the emphatic statement of the creative omnipotence of Jehovah with reference to nature, which makes its appearance, we may say suddenly, in the literature of the exile, plays a great part in the Book of Job, and frequently presents itself in Isaiah xl.-lxvi. In Genesis ii. iii., not nature but man is the beginning of the world and of history; whether a creation out of nothing is assumed there at all, is a question which only the mutilation of the commencement (before ii. 4b) makes it not quite impossible to answer in the affirmative. At any rate it is not the case here that the command of the Creator sets things in motion at the first so that they develop themselves to separate species out of the universal chaos; Jehovah Himself puts His hand to the work, and this supposes that the world in its main features was already in existence. He plants and waters the garden, He forms man and breathes life into his nostrils, He builds the woman out of the man's rib, having made a previous attempt, which was unsuccessful, to provide him with company; the beasts are living witnesses of the failure of His experiments. In other respects, too, He proceeds like a man. In the evening when it grows cool He goes to walk in the garden, and when there discovers by chance the transgression which has taken place, and holds an investigation in which He makes not the least use of His omniscience. And when He says: "Behold, the man is become like one of us to know good and evil: and now lest he stretch forth his hand, and take of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever," that is not said in irony, any more than when He expresses Himself on the occasion of the building of Babel; "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of their doings, and now nothing will be too difficult for them that they have imagined to do; go to, let us go down and confound their language." That at the same time the majesty of Jehovah is in no way compromised is the mystery of poetic genius. How would the colourless God of abstraction fare in such a situation ?

The treatment, finally, of the microcosm in the two accounts, reflects the difference between them. In chapter i. man is directed at the very outset to the ground on which he moves to this day: "Replenish the earth, and subdue it," he is told; a perfectly natural task. In chaps. ii. iii. he is placed in Paradise, and his sphere of activity there, nestled, as he may be said still to be, in the lap of the Deity, is very limited. The circumstances of his life as it now is, the man's toil in the fields, the woman's toil in bearing children, do not answer to his original destiny; they are not a blessing, but a curse. In the Jehovistic narrative man is as wonderful to himself as the external world; in the other he is as much a matter of course as it is. In the one he sees astonishing mysteries in the difference of the sexes, in marriage, in child-birth (iv. 1); in the other these are physiological facts which raise no questions or reflections: "He made them male and female, and said, Be fruitful and multiply." There his attitude towards the beasts is one of mixed familiarity and bewilderment; he does not know exactly what to make of them; they are allied to him and yet not quite suitable society for him; here they are beings not related to him, over which he rules.

The chief point in which the difference between the two accounts comes to a head is this. In Genesis ii. iii., man is virtually forbidden to lift the veil of things, and to know the world, represented in the tree of knowledge. In Genesis i. this is the task set him from the beginning; he is to rule over the whole earth, and rule and knowledge come to the same thing—they mean civilisation. There nature is to him a sacred mystery: here it is a mere fact, an object; he is no longer bewildered over against nature, but free and superior. There it is a robbery for man to seek to be equal with God: here God makes him at first in His own image and after His own likeness, and appoints him His representative in the realm of nature. We cannot regard it as fortuitous that in this point Genesis i. asserts the opposite of Genesis ii. iii.; the words spoken with such emphasis, and repeated i. 27, v. 1, ix. 6, sound exactly like a protest against the view underlying Genesis ii. iii., a protest to be explained partly by the growth of moral and religious cultivation, but partly also no doubt due to the convulsive efforts of later Judaism to deny that most firmly established of all the lessons of history, that the sons suffer for the sins of the fathers. /1/

***************************************** 1. A coarser counterpart to Genesis ii. iii, is Genesis vi. 1-4. Here also there is a kind of fall of man in an attempt to overpass the boundary between the human race and the divine. In the priestly narrative (Q) the gulf between spirit, which is divine substance, and flesh, which is human substance, is bridged over by the doctrine of man's creation in the image of God. *****************************************

What are generally cited as points of superiority in Genesis i. over Genesis ii. iii. are beyond doubt signs of progress in outward culture. The mental individuality of the two writers, the systematiser and the genius, cannot be compared, and the difference in this respect tells nothing of their respective dates; but in its general views of God, nature, and man, Genesis i. stands on a higher, certainly on a later, level. To our way of thinking its views are more intelligible, simpler, more natural, and on this account they have been held to be also older. But this is on the one hand to identify naturalness with originality, two things which every one knows not to be the same, and on the other hand it is applying a standard to prehistoric tradition which applies to historical tradition only: freedom from miracle and myth count in favour of the latter, but not of the former. But the secret root of the manifest preference long shown by historic-critical theology for Genesis i. appears to lie in this, that scholars felt themselves responsible for what the Bible says, and therefore liked it to come as little as possible in conflict with general culture. /1/