Moses is already taken for the author of the Pentateuch in 2 Chronicles xxv. 4, xxxv. 12 sq.; only the last eight verses of Deuteronomy are, according to the rabbins, not from his pen. From the synagogue belief in the Mosaic authorship passed to the church, and is still widely prevalent among Christians. At an early date, indeed, doubts suggested themselves as to the correctness of this view, but it was not till the 17 th century that these became so strong that they could not be suppressed. It was observed that Moses does not speak of himself in the first person, but that some other writer speaks of him in the third,—a writer, too, who lived long after. The expression of Gen. xii. 6, “the Canaanite was then in the land,” is spoken to readers who had long forgotten that a different nation from Israel had once occupied the Holy Land; the words of Gen. xxxvi. 31, “these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,” have no prophetic aspect; they point to an author who wrote under the Hebrew monarchy. Again, the “book of the wars of Jehovah” (Num. xxi. 14) cannot possibly be cited by Moses himself, as it contains a record of his own deeds; and, when Deut, xxxiv. 10 (comp. Num. xii.) says that “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses,” the writer is necessarily one who looked back to Moses through a long series of later prophets.

At the same time attention was drawn to a variety of contradictions, inequalities, transpositions, and repetitions of events in the Pentateuch, such as excluded the idea that the whole came from a single pen. Thus Peyrerius remarked that Gen. xx. and xxvi. stand in an impossible chronological context; and on the incongruity of Gen. i. and ii., which he pressed very strongly, he rested his hypothesis of the Preadamites. Such observations could not but grievously shake the persuasion that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, while at the same time they directed criticism to a less negative task—viz., the analysis of the Pentateuch. For this, indeed, the 17 th century did not effect anything considerable, but at least two conclusions came out with sufficient clearness. The first of these was the self-contained character of Deuteronomy, which in these days there was a disposition to regard as the oldest book of the Pentateuch, and that with the best claims to authenticity. And in the second place the Pentateuchal laws and the Pentateuchal history were sharply distinguished; the chief difficulties were felt to lie in the narrative, and there seemed to be less reason for questioning the Mosaic authorship of the laws.

Spinoza’s bold conjecture that in their present form not only the Pentateuch but also the other historical books of the Old Testament were composed by Ezra ran far ahead of the laborious investigation of details necessary to solve the previous question of the composition of the Pentateuch. Jean Astruc has the merit of opening the true path of this investigation. He recognized in Genesis two main sources, between which he divided the whole materials of the book, with some few exceptions, and these sources he distinguished by the mark that the one used for God the name Elohim (Gen. i., v.; comp. Exod. vi. 3) and the other the name Jehovah (Gen. ii.-iv.). Astruc’s hypothesis, fortified by the observation of other linguistic differences which regularly corresponded with the variation in the names of God, was introduced into Germany by Eichhorn’s Einleitung in d. Λ.T., and proved there the fruitful and just point of departure for all further inquiry. At first, indeed, it was with but uncertain steps that critics advanced from the analysis of Genesis to that of the other books, where the simple criterion of the alternation of the divine names was no longer available. In the hands of the Scotsman Geddes and the German Vater the Pentateuch resolved itself into an agglomeration of longer and shorter fragments, between which no threads of continuous connexion could be traced (“Fragmentary Hypothesis”). The fragmentary hypothesis was mainly supported by arguments drawn from the middle books of the Pentateuch, and as limited to these it long found wide support. Even De Wette started from it in his investigations; but this was really an inconsistency, for his fundamental idea was to show throughout all parts of the Pentateuch traces of certain common tendencies, and even of one deliberate plan; nor was he far from recognizing the close relation between the Elohist of Genesis and the legislation of the middle books.

De Wette’s chief concern, however, was not with the literary but with the historical criticism of the Pentateuch, and in the latter he made an epoch. In his J)iss. Critica of 1805 (f)ρusc. Theol., pp. 149-168) he placed the composition of Deuteronomy in the time of King Josiah (arguing from a comparison of 2 Kings xxii., xxiii., with Deut, xii.), and pronounced it to be the most recent stratum of the Pentateuch, not, as had previously been supposed, the oldest. In his Critical Enquiry into the Credibility of the Books of Chronicles (Halle, 1806) he showed that the laws of Moses are unknown to the post-Mosaic history; this he did by instituting a close comparison of Samuel and Kings with the Chronicles, from which it appeared that the variations of the latter are not to be explained by the use of other sources, but solely by the desire of the Jewish scribes to shape the history in conformity with the law, and to give the law that place in history which, to their surprise, had not been conceded to it by the older historical books. Finally, in his Criticism of the Mosaic History (Halle, 1807) De Wette attacked the method then prevalent in Germany of eliminating all miracles and prophecies from the Bible by explaining them away, and then rationalizing what remained into a dry prosaic pragmatism. De Wette refuses to find any history in the Pentateuch; all is legend and poetry. The Pentateuch is not an authority for the history of the time it deals with, but only for the time in which it was written; it is, he says, the conditions of this much later time which the author idealizes and throws back into the past, whether in the form of narrative or of law.

De Wette’s brilliant debut, which made his reputation for the rest of his life, exercised a powerful influence on his contemporaries. For several decennia all who were open to critical ideas at all stood under his influence. Gramberg, Leo, and Von Bohlen wrote under this influence; Gesenius in Halle, the greatest Hebraist then living, taught under it; nay, Vatke and George were guided by De Wette’s ideas and started from the ground that he had conquered, although they advanced beyond him to a much more definite and better established position, and were also diametrically opposed to him in one most important point, of which we shall have more to say presently.

But meantime a reaction was rising which sought to direct criticism towards positive rather than negative results. The chief representatives of this positive criticism, which now took up a distinct attitude of opposition to the negative criticism of De Wette, were Bleek, Ewald, and Movers. By giving up certain parts of the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy, they thought themselves able to vindicate certain other parts as beyond doubt genuinely Mosaic, just in the same way as they threw over the Davidic authorship of certain psalms in order to strengthen the claim of others to bear his name. The procedure by which particular ancient hymns or laws were sifted out from the Psalter or the Pentateuch had some resemblance to the decretum absolutum of theology; but up to a certain point the reaction was in the right. The youthful De Wette and his followers had really gone too far in applying the same measure to all parts of the Pentateuch, and had been satisfied with a very inadequate insight into its composition and the relation of its parts. Historical criticism had hurried on too fast, and literary criticism had now to overtake it. De Wette himself felt the necessity for this, and from the year 1817 onwards—the year of the first edition of his Einleitung — he took an active and useful part in the solution of the problems of Pentateuchal analysis. The fragmentary hypothesis was now superseded; the connexion of the Elohist of Genesis with the legislation of the middle books was clearly recognized; and the book of Joshua was included as the conclusion of the Pentateuch. The closely-knit connexion and regular structure of the narrative of the Elohist impressed the critics; it seemed to supply the skeleton which had been clothed with flesh and blood by the Jehovist, in whose contributions there was no such obvious conformity to a plan. From all this it was naturally concluded that the Elohist had written the Grundschrτft or primary narrative, which lay before the Jehovist and was supplemented by him (“Supplementary Hypothesis ”).

This view remained dominant till Hupfeld in 1853 published his investigations on The Sources of Genesis and the Method of their Composition. Hupfeld denied that the Jehovist followed the context of the Elohistic narrative, merely supplementing it by additions of his own. He pointed out that such Elohistic passages in Genesis as clearly have undergone a Jehovistic redaction (e.g., chaps, xx., xxi., xxii.) belong to a different Elohist from the author of Gen. i. Thus he distinguished three independent sources in Genesis, and he assumed further, somewhat inconse-quently, that no one of them had anything to do with the others till a fourth and later writer wove them all together into a single whole. This assumption -was corrected by Nöldeke, who showed that the second Elohist is preserved only in extracts embodied in the Jehovistic book, that the Jehovist and second Elohist form one whole and the Grun/lschrift another, and that thus, in spite of Hupfeld’s discovery, the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy being excluded) was still to be regarded as made up of two great layers. Nöldeke had also the honour of having been the first to trace in detail how the Elohistic Grundschrift runs through the whole Hexateuch, and of having described with masterly hand the peculiar and inflexible type of its ideas and language. In this task he was aided by the commentary of Knobel, whose industry furnished very valuable materials for men of judgment to work upon.

Thus the investigation into the composition of the Pentateuch had reached a point of rest and a provisional conclusion. The results may be thus summarized. The five books of Moses with Joshua form one whole; and it is not the death of Moses but the conquest of the promised land which forms the true close of the history of the patriarchal age, the exodus, and the wanderings in the wilderness; it is therefore more correct to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. From this whole it is most easy to detach the book of Deuteronomy, and accordingly its independence was very early recognized. Of the other elements, that which has the most marked individuality is the work of the Elohist, which we shall in the sequel call the Priestly Code. This too, like Deuteronomy, is a law-book, but it has an historical setting. Its main stock is Leviticus, with the cognate parts of the adjacent books, Exod. xxv.-xl. (except chaps, xxxii.-xxxiv.) and Num. i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.- xxxvi. (with some inconsiderable exceptions). This law-book does not, like Deuteronomy, embrace precepts for civil life, but is confined to affairs of worship, and mainly to the esoteric aspect of public worship, that is, to such points as belonged to the function of the priests as distinguished from the worshipping people. The legal contents of the Code are supported on a scaffolding of history, which, however, belongs to the literary form rather than to the substance of the work. It is only where some point of legal interest is involved that the narrative acquires any fulness, as it does in the book of Genesis in connexion with the three preparatory stages of the Mosaic covenant attached to the names of Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Generally speaking, the historical thread is very thin, and often (Gen. v., xi.) it becomes a mere genealogical line, on which is hung a continuous chronology carried on from the creation to the exodus. The Priestly Code is characterized by a marked predilection for numbers and measures, for arrangement (titles to sections) and formality of scheme, by the poverty and inflexibility of its language, by standing repetitions of certain expressions and phrases such as are not elsewhere found in old Hebrew. Thus its distinguishing marks are very pronounced, and can always be recognized without difficulty. If now Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code are successively subtracted from our present Pentateuch the Jehovistic history-book remains, distinguished from both the others by the fact that it is essentially narrative and not law, and by the pleasure it takes in bringing out details of the historical tradition, so that individual points of the story receive full justice and are not sacrificed to the interests of the general plan. The patriarchal history belongs almost entirely to this document, and forms the most characteristic part of it; here that history forms no mere epitomized introduction to more important matter, as in the Priestly Code, but is treated in all fulness as a subject of first-rate importance. Legislative elements are incorporated in the Jehovistic narrative only at one point, where they naturally fall into the historical context, viz., in connexion with the law-giving on Sinai (Exod. xx.-xxiii., xxxiv.).

These, then, are the three main component parts of the Hexateuch—Deuteronomy, the Priestly Code, and the Jehovist. But the Jehovist has woven together in his history-book two sources, one of which uses the name Elohim (Hupfeld’s younger Elohist), while the other says lahwè, as does the Jehovist himself. So, too, the Priestly Code is not a perfectly incomposite structure; it has one main stock marked by a very definite historical arrangement and preserved with little admixture in the book of Genesis; but on the one hand some older elements have been incorporated in this stock, while on the other hand there have been engrafted on it quite a number of later novellae, which in point of form are not absolutely homogeneous with the main body of the Code, but in point of substance are quite similar to it, reflecting the same tendencies and ideas and using the same expressions and mannerisms, so that the whole may be regarded as an historical unity though not strictly as a literary one.

The very name of Deuteronomy shows that from the earliest times it has been regarded as at least possessing a relative independence; the only difficulty is to determine where this section of the Pentateuch begins and ends. In recent times opinion has inclined more and more to the judgment of Hobbes and Vater, that the original Deuteronomy must be limited to the laws in chaps, xii.-xxvi.

The reasons that compel us to distinguish the Priestly Code from the Jehovist, and the relation that subsists between these two elements, may be exemplified and illustrated by the first nine chapters of Genesis. We begin by comparing Gen. i. 1 to ii. 4α with Gen. ii. 45 to iii. 24. The history of the first man in paradise has nothing to do with the preceding record of the creation of the world in six days, which is neither referred to nor presupposed. “In the day that Jehovah made the earth there was as yet no plant of the field upon the earth, and no herb grew in the field; for Jehovah had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And Jehovah formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” It might be supposed that the picture drawn in chap. i. is here briefly referred to in order to add a particular feature which had not been fully brought out there. But there is no situation in chap. i. which this scene fits. There man is made last of all, but here first of all, before vegetation, and according to ii. 19 sq. also before the beasts. There man and woman are created together, here at first the man is alone. There vegetation and wet stand opposed, the plants spring up as soon as there is dry land; here the condition of vegetation is the moistening of the dry land—it must first rain; the earth, therefore, was originally not water but a parched desert,—the same conception as in the book of Job, where the sea bursts forth from the womb of the hard earth. The conceptions of the two narratives are different all through, as appears equally in what follows. “Jehovah planted a garden eastwards in Eden, at the place where the four chief rivers of the world are parted from a common source. Here among other goodly trees grew the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. In this garden Jehovah set the man, to dress it and to keep it, to eat of all the fruits save only that of the tree of knowledge.” In chap. i. man receives from the first as his portion the whole great earth as he now occupies it, and his task is a purely natural one; “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” But in chap. ii. the first man is placed in a mysterious garden of God, with a very limited sphere, where all is supernatural and marvellous. To speak generally, the ideas of God and man in chap. i. are rational and enlightened, but bare and prosaic; in chaps, ii.-iii. they are childlike and primitive, but full of meaning. The point of the contrast is mainly this: in Gen. ii., iii., man is in fact forbidden to lift the veil of things and know the world, represented by the tree of knowledge; in Gen. i. this is his primary task, to rule over all the earth, for sovereignty and knowledge come to the same thing. There nature is to man altogether a marvel; here it is a mere thing, an object for him. There it is robbery for man to seek to be as God; here God from the first created man in His own image, after His likeness, and appointed him His vicegerent on earth. With these incongruities in the substance and spirit of the two sections we must take also the differences of form and language observable alike in the whole manner of the narrative—which in Gen. i. is confined by a precise and formal scheme, while in Gen ii., iii., it has a free poetic movement—and in individual expressions. Thus Gen. i. has Elohim, Gen. ii., iii., Jehovah; Gen. i. has the technical word ⅛C^O, “create,” while the other narrative uses the ordinary words Πΰ 1 !?, “make,” T⅛*', “form;” and so forth.

The contrast between the two records appears in a somewhat different way when we go on to compare Gen. v. with Gen. iv. 17 sq. The elements of the genealogy of ten members in the Priestly Code and that of seven members in the Jehovist correspond, save that the former adds Noah after Lamech, and that at the beginning Adam-Cain is doubled and becomes Adam-Seth-Enosh-Cainan. Adam and Enosh both mean “man,” so that the latter series is equivalent to Adam-Seth-Adam-Cainan; in other words Enosh-Cainan is the beginning of a series corresponding to that in chap, iv., and Adam-Seth is a parallel and variation. Linguistically chap. v. is distinguished from chap. iv. by the use of τSl∏ in place of “6*.

In Gen. i.-v. we find the two narratives lying side by side in continuous pieces and without intermixture; in Gen. vi.-ix., on the other hand, we have a kind of mosaic, in which elements taken from each...