* The approximate date of the composition and source of this
first Jehovist is still an open question., Reuss and
Kuenen, not to mention others, believe the Jehovist writer
to have been a native of the northern kingdom; I have
adopted the opposite view, which is supported by most modern
critics.

He related how God, after creating the universe out of chaos, had chosen His own people, and had led them, after trials innumerable, to the conquest of the Promised Land. He showed, as he went on, the origin of the tribes identified with the children of Israel, and the covenants made by Jahveh with Moses in the Arabian desert; while accepting the stories connected with the ancient sanctuaries of the north and east at Shechem, Bethel, Peniel, Mahanaim, and Succoth, it was at Hebron in Judah that he placed the principal residence of Abraham and his descendants. His style, while simple and direct, is at the same time singularly graceful and vivacious; the incidents he gives are carefully selected, apt and characteristic, while his narrative passes from scene to scene without trace of flagging, unburdened by useless details, and his dialogue, always natural and easy, rises without effort from the level of familiar conversation to heights of impassioned eloquence. His aim was not merely to compile the history of his people: he desired at the same time to edify them, by showing how sin first came into the world through disobedience to the commandments of the Most High, and how man, prosperous so long as he kept to the laws of the covenant, fell into difficulties as soon as he transgressed or failed to respect them. His concept of Jahveh is in the highest degree a concrete one: he regards Him as a Being superior to other beings, but made like unto them and moved by the same passions. He shows anger and is appeased, displays sorrow and repents Him of the evil.* When the descendants of Noah build a tower and a city, He draws nigh to examine what they have done, and having taken account of their work, confounds their language and thus prevents them from proceeding farther.** He desires, later on, to confer a favour on His servant Abraham: He appears to him in human form, and eats and drinks with him.*** Sodom and Gomorrah had committed abominable iniquities, the cry against them was great and their sin very grievous: but before punishing them, He tells Abraham that He will “go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.” ****

* Exod. iv. 14 and xxxii. 10, anger of Jahveh against Moses
and against Israel; Gen. vi. 6, 7, where He repents and is
sorry for having created man; and Exod. xxxii. 14, where He
repents Him of the evil He had intended to do unto Israel.
** Gen. xi. 5-8.
*** Gen. xviii.
**** Gen. xviii. and xix.

Elsewhere He wrestles a whole night long with Jacob;* or falls upon Moses, seeking to kill him, until appeased by Zipporah, who casts the blood-stained foreskin of her child at her husband’s feet.** This book, though it breathes the spirit of the prophets and was perhaps written in one of their schools, did not, however, include all the current narratives, and omitted many traditions that were passing from lip to lip; moreover, the excessive materialism of its treatment no longer harmonised with that more idealised concept of the Deity which had already begun to prevail. Consequently, within less than a century of its appearance, more than one version containing changes and interpolations in the narrative came to be circulated,*** till a scribe of Ephraim, who flourished in the time of Jeroboam II., took up the subject and dealt with it in a different fashion.****

* Gen. xxxii. 24, 25.
** Exod. iv. 24-26.
*** Schrader and Wellhausen have drawn attention to
contradictions in the primitive history of humanity as
presented by the Jehovist which forbid us to accept it as
the work of a single writer. Nor can these inconsistencies
be due to the influence of the Elohist, since the latter did
not deal with this period in his book. Budde has maintained
that the primitive work contained no account of the Deluge,
and traced the descent of all the nations, Israel included,
back to Cain, and he declares he can detect in the earlier
chapters of Genesis traces of a first Jehovist, whom he
calls J1. A second Jehovist, J2, who flourished between 800
and 700 B.C., is supposed to have added to the contribution
of the first, certain details borrowed from the Babylonian
tradition, such as the Deluge, the story of Noah, of Nimrod,
etc. Finally, a third Jehovist is said to have thrown the
versions of his two predecessors into one, taking J2 as the
basis of his work.
**** The date and origin of the Elohist have given rise to
no less controversy than those of the Jehovist: the view
most generally adopted is that he was a native of the
northern kingdom, and flourished about 750 B.C.

Putting on one side the primitive accounts of the origin of the human race which his predecessors had taken pleasure in elaborating, he confined his attention solely to events since the birth of Abraham;* his origin is betrayed by the preference he displays for details calculated to flatter the self-esteem of the northern tribes. To his eyes, Joseph is the noblest of all the sons of Jacob, before whom all the rest must bow their heads, as to a king; next to Joseph comes Reuben, to whom—rather than to Judah**—he gives the place as firstborn. He groups his characters round Bethel and Shechem, the sanctuaries of Israel; even Abraham is represented as residing, not at Hebron in Judea, but at Beersheba, a spot held in deep veneration by pilgrims belonging to the ten tribes.*** It is in his concept of the Supreme Being, however, that he differs most widely from his predecessors. God is, according to him, widely removed from ordinary humanity. He no longer reveals Himself at all times and in all places, but works rather by night, and appears to men in their dreams, or, when circumstances require His active interference, is content to send His angels rather than come in His own person.****

* Budde seems to have proved conclusively that the Elohist did not write any part of the primitive history of mankind.

** Gen. xxxvii. 21, 22, 29, 30; xlii. 22, 27; whereas in Gen. xliii. 3, 8-10, where the narrative is from the pen of the Jehovist, it is Judah that plays the principal part: it is possible that, in Gen. xxxvii. 21, Reuben has been substituted in the existing text for Judah.

*** Gen. xxi. 31, 33; xxii. 19; the importance of Beersheba as a holy place resorted to by pilgrims from the northern kingdom is shown in 1 Kings xix. 3, and Amos v. 5; viii. 14.

**** Gen. xx. 3-8; xxviii. 11-15; xxxi 24; Numb. xxii. 8-12, 20.