original authors. In the earlier times, so long as historical composition, with literature in general, was still flourishing, the amalgamation and fusion of the various written documents was effected more easily and gracefully than in the later. And it is in accordance with this that the reference to written authorities is very rare in earlier times, and only occurs in indispensable cases, but in later ages becomes more frequent and regular.

But we arrive here at one of the most memorable phenomena in the entire ancient Hebrew literature, which extends far beyond the range of the historical books, and hitherto has been but little regarded. In order to appreciate it in a manner proportioned to its importance, we must think ourselves back into the times when there was a great mass of scattered anonymous writings on the same subject in circulation, and when it was no easy task even to bring them together, and still less so to connect them properly. If several different writings on the same subject lay scattered in disorder, it was clearly in itself an advantage to select the best of them and combine them more intimately with one another; and if the writings were anonymous, it was so much the more easy to combine them agreeably to some special aim. But tolerably early the skilful compounding of many such works into one new one must have been raised into a special art; for in fact there needed not simply the will, but also considerable ability and dexterity, to effect such a compilation; skilfully to work over materials, to weigh the mutually contradictory, and by the aid of possibly numerous omissions and some connecting or explanatory additions, to blend the whole as far as possible, and to build up a new whole whose origination from previous documents only a practised eye can discover. But this special art of book-compounding must have been much practised in the Israelitish nation as early as the tenth century B. C. It extends down to very late times, flourishing more in prosperous periods than in others, and had manifestly the greatest influence on the whole outward form of a large portion of the literature. It might, besides, take many various forms. The book-compounder might add more or less of his own, might work over all his materials with more or less freedom. By nothing so much as by the activity of this art can one gauge the degree of perfection to which

the entire literature of Israel thus early raised itself. It trenches upon the entire literary field. The Book of Enoch as we now have it owes its origin to this art. Both the Canonical and the Apocryphal Proverbs,2 no less than the Psalter and the Book of Job, have passed through these finishing workshops, notwithstanding the authors' names which are here and there interwoven. Even the collection of the Sibylline Books has arisen in a similar manner.3 Chief of all, however, did this art find its employment in the historical works; nor can anything be conceived more elegant and perfect than the compilation of almost the whole of the Old Testament books of narrative. For it is certain, on closer investigation, that not merely the Pentateuch or Genesis, but almost the whole of the historical books, are traceable to distinct and still recognisable sources, though in most the combination has been so cleverly executed that one frequently experiences a difficulty in recognising the rivetings. Moreover this art is exhibited in the three first Gospels and the Acts; and in the Ten Books of the History of the Apostles referred to Abdias, the various layers of earlier written narratives of which they are composed are clearly to be made out. Of such importance is it to understand rightly this particular art, and so surely do we encounter here the traces of a forgotten but once very eager literary activity.

There are few historical books, therefore, now in the Old Testament, which have been preserved perfectly as they were first composed. The latest of all, the Book of Esther, is the only one that we can claim as wholly such; in the little Book of Ruth we observe, at the end at least (iv. 18-22), a literal copy of older writings. It therefore must certainly cost no little trouble to discover and clearly discriminate the original works in the present ones. All that has been preserved of them is more or less fragmentary and confused, and it is often hard enough even to find these fragments correctly. The necessity of such researches, however, spontaneously forces itself on us at every attentive perusal of the books; and, on the other hand, we may be even glad that the late works have preserved so many portions of the original ones, and that we are still enabled, by the careful study of so many fragments of the most

See my Abh. über des Aeth. B. Henokh Entstehung, Sinn und Zusammensetzung. Gött. 1854.

See the Jahrbücher der Biblischen Wiss., iii. and xi.

See my Abh. über Entstehung, Inhalt, und Werth der Sibyllischen Bücher. Gött.

1858. That such works as the Talmud, the C. J., the Babylonian-Arabian and the the Greek Geoponica must have arisen in this way, is self-evident; only in them the names of the reputed or actual authors of the original writings are often preserved.

different kinds and ages, to obtain a more complete survey of the whole ancient Hebrew historical composition. proceed to particulars.

We now

2

C. HISTORY OF HEBREW HISTORICAL COMPOSITION. The historical works contained in the Old Testament, which must be the chief sources of this history, are divided, both as to their character and their external order and arrangement, into three parts: I. The books which are devoted to the description of the Antiquity of the nation, or the period down to the time of the Judges: viz. the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua; which, however, properly only form one work, and which (if we wished to give them a collective name) might be called the Great Book of Origins, or of the Primitive History. II. The books which describe the time of the Judges and Kings, down to the first destruction of Jerusalem: viz. the Book of Judges and the four Books of Kings (i. e. the two of Samuel and the two of Kings), to which we must add the Book of Ruth, which accidentally has received a place in the Hebrew Bible among the Hagiographa; all these likewise, on their last redaction, only formed one work, which might be appropriately called the Great Book of Kings. Each of these two great works, therefore, not only embraces a separate province, but, by a surprising coincidence, at the same time comprises one of the three great periods into which the entire history of the nation is divided by intrinsic character; and all critical investigation brings us to the conclusion that neither of them, in the state in which we find them, is a single work in the strict sense, but is to be regarded as a book in which a number of kindred accounts and

When these investigations began to be zealously pursued in Germany, more than seventy years ago, very much perver. sity of attempt and aim mingled in them. Scholars were too easily satisfied with hunting out mere contradictions in the books, detecting want of coherence in the stories, and resolving everything into fragments'; whereas they had not yet found any large firm basis, and were therefore unable to distinguish a real incongruity from a merely apparent discrepancy. I do not now regret having cast my first youthful work of the year 1823 [die Komposition der Genesis] into that wild ferment: I still maintain large and important portions of it. I have, however, already spoken of it more than

once [namely, in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for the year 1831, p. 595 sqq., and in the March number of the Berliner Jahrbücher for the same year.] The necessity of strict investigation in this province is evident to everyone who is not wilfully blind; and all we have to be concerned about is, that our knowledge and discernment should be thoroughly reliable and profound. No conscientious man ought any longer to pay the least attention to the stupidity of those scholars who even in our day condemn all investigations of this sort in the lump.

2 Not to be confounded with that which I usually call the Book of Origins. This latter is the older book, and one basis of the present one.

representations of the same period have gathered round a main. central work, or rather, have attached themselves to it as closely as possible-just as, in the Psalter and the Proverbs, a quantity of kindred matter has gradually gathered round the nucleus furnished by David's songs and Solomon's proverbs. To these are to be added: III. Those much later works which are placed together in the Hagiographa, namely, the Great Book of Universal History down to the Greek times (the Chronicles, with the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah), and the little Book of Esther. These are the three strata of historical books in the Old Testament, which, moreover, were completed and received into the Canon in the same order of time. And as each of the three great works sprang, both as to origin and present shape, from peculiar and independent tendencies of historical view and description, we find in them, when taken together and thoroughly appreciated in all their minutest parts, the exactest possible history of the fates and modifications of Hebrew historical composition, from its rudiments, down through its fullest and ripest development, to its complete decay.

I. THE GREAT BOOK OF ORIGINS.

PENTATEUCH AND BOOK OF JOSHUA.

This work on the history of the ancient period of the nation is, as to its origin and the greater part of its contents, considerably older than the second of the three books above mentioned, and has therefore experienced far greater transformations, before it emerged out of the flood of similar books, as the only one which posterity thought worth preservation. Before it received its last modifications, earlier historical works and documents of the most various kind were gathered into its bosom, as rivers into a sea; and the discovery and discrimination of these oldest component parts is the problem, the right solution of which is indispensable for the use of the various materials, and includes in itself the relics of a history of the oldest Hebrew historical composition.

Without doubt, the utmost foresight is the first condition of sound discernment in this field. For when we have to deal with books which are no longer in their original state, and which we only know at second or third hand, by isolated criteria, it necessarily follows that the oldest are the most difficult to discover, because repeated redactions may have so much shortened, or transformed and amalgamated them with later material, that it requires the utmost effort to collect the fragments of a work from their dispersion and confusion, and to form from them a correct notion of the whole work. As it is impossible, however, any longer to evade all researches of this kind-unless we are ready beforehand to renounce every sound view about the whole of the oldest history-everything depends on our research being profound enough to exhaust all the evidences that the present documents offer. It is surprising to see how the varied phenomena of this province, as soon as we only make a right beginning of comprehending them, contribute so much light to explain each other, as to make it possible to establish the most important certainties on what at first sight seemed such slippery ground.'

1 After I had gained some insight into the leading necessities that govern this whole subject, I was curious to see whether K. D. Ilgen [Die Urkunden des ersten

Buchs von Mose, Halle, 1798], the only scholar of older date, who, after the physician Astruc and Eichhorn, carefully examined the Book of Genesis with refer