[120]. E. Naville, Goshen and the Shrine of Saft el-Hennah, Fourth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (1887), pp. 14 sq.
[121]. See Naville, Goshen, p. 26.
[122]. Bibl. Hist., i. 91.
[123]. N. H. xix. 5.
[124]. Abel-Mizraim may be the Abel that is mentioned in connection with the ‘gardens,’ the ‘tilth,’ and the ‘spring’ of Carmel of Judah in the list of places in Canaan conquered by Thothmes III. (No. 92). Another Abel is mentioned two names earlier (No. 90).
[125]. See Virey’s translation in Records of the Past, new ser., iii. p. 34.
[126]. This, however, is beginning to be doubtful, in view of the discoveries made by Messrs. de Morgan and Amélineau in 1886-87.
[127]. For the logical goal of the ‘Higher Criticism,’ see Bateson Wright, Was Israel ever in Egypt? (1895.)
[128]. The theory of Jean Astruc, the French Protestant physician, was set forth in his Conjectures sur la Genèse published anonymously at Paris in 1753. In this he assumes that Moses wrote the book of Genesis in four parallel columns like a Harmony of the Gospels which were afterwards mixed together by the ignorance of copyists. Astruc intended his work to be an answer to those who, like Spinoza, asserted that Genesis was written without order or plan. It is interesting to note that Dr. Briggs in his able defence of the ‘critical’ hypothesis (The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, pp. 138-141) quotes with approval Professor Moore’s appeal to Tatian’s Diatessaron—a mere ‘patchwork’ of the Gospels—in support of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch.
[129]. See Bissell, Introduction to Genesis printed in Colours (1892), pp. xi-xiii; also p. vii, where he says: ‘The argument from language outside the divine names requires extreme care for obvious reasons. It is admitted to be relatively weak, and can never have more than a subordinate and supplementary value. There is no visible cleavage line among the supposed sources.’ Professor Bissell’s work is an attempt to represent by different colours the text of Genesis as it has been analysed and disintegrated by the ‘higher critics,’ and the result at which he arrives in his Introduction is that the analytical theory is a house built upon sand. As regards the account of the Flood, in which ‘it is claimed’ that two distinct narratives can be distinguished from each other, he remarks: ‘Two flood-stories, originating, according to the theory, hundreds of years apart, and literally swarming with differences and contradictions ... are found to fit one another like so many serrated blocks, and to form, united, a consecutive history whose unity, with constant use for millenniums, has been undisputed till our day. Is this coincidence, or is it miracle? But let us take a closer look. We shall find no loosely joined, independent sections, but mutually dependent parts of one whole. An occasional overlapping of ideas, a repetition for emphasis, or enlargement, in complete harmony with Hebrew style, there undoubtedly is. But there is also a marked interdependence and sequence of thought wholly inconsistent with the theory proposed. Let the reader test what J’s story would be alone. Beginning it has none; no preliminary announcement of the catastrophe; no command to make preparations; no report of Noah’s attitude.... And so P’s story, taken by itself, would be equally incomplete.... As to the alleged discrepancies in other respects, they appear, as we have seen, to be true in other cases, only after the text is rent asunder. The lighting system of the one does not exclude the one window of the other; nor the covering for the roof, the door in the side. Without the door, for which one document alone is responsible, how is it supposed that the occupants of the ark got in and out of it? If objects are thrown out of their due perspective, as in a mirage, it need surprise no one if they appear distorted and grotesque.... It is particularly in the matter of language and style that resort is taken to this illogical and dangerous means of text-mutilation. There are certain stylistic peculiarities of one or the other document, it is claimed, which are fixed from the usage of previous chapters. But unfortunately for the scheme, they appear not unfrequently in the wrong place. For instance, the expression “male and female” is held to be characteristic of P, J using another for it. In vii. 3, 9, J uses this expression twice, and our critics must make the redactor deny it. The oft-recurring formula, “both man, beast, and creeping thing and fowl of the air,” is found in the first chapter of Genesis, and so is said to be characteristic of P. Here J has it in vi. 7 and vii. 23, and the redactor is called in to square the document to the theory.... In all these changes we are supposed to have the work of a redactor. How is it possible? What motive could a redactor have had for it? It is claimed by our critics that he has left the principal points of contrast between the two great documents from which he compiled in their original ruggedness. The principal changes made, with rare exceptions, are of single words, detached phrases, verses or parts of verses,—every one of them changes in what was originally homogeneous matter to what is now heterogeneous, from what was once true, from the point of view of the document, to what is now false!’