The Literature of the Old Testament

by George Foot Moore

For the sake of brevity, it is customary to designate these sources by symbols: J (Jahvist), the source in which God is from the beginning called Jehovah (more exactly, Jahveh); E (Elohist), the closely cognate source in which Elohim (God) is consistently used throughout Genesis; D, Deuteronomy and the kindred narrative in Joshua; P (Priestly), the source in which the interest in the religious institutions predominates. This author also uses Elohim exclusively in Genesis, and down to Exod. vi. 2 ff.

The two sources, J and E, both narrate the story of the patriarchs at some length. J begins with the migration of Abraham from Haran (Gen. 12); the corresponding introduction of Abraham in E is not preserved, and the first passage that can with confidence be attributed to that source is Gen. 20. From that point through Genesis and down to Exod. 24, J and E furnished the author of the Pentateuch most of his narrative. The contents of both were evidently drawn from the same common stock of legend, and they tell in large part the same stories in variant forms, with differences of incident or of localization. Sometimes one is ampler and more detailed, sometimes the other. The author of Genesis in such cases often chose the fuller version, enriching it here and there from the other; in other places the two are combined in more equal measure into one continuous narrative; or, again, as in parts of the story of Joseph, extracts from the two alternate in large blocks.

J and E are, as has been said above, much alike in language and style, yet each has distinguishing peculiarities of expression. These of necessity disappear in a translation, especially in a translation which, like the Authorized Version, raises everything to one stately level of noble English prose. Even in translation, however, a difference in the story-teller's art and manner may be discerned. For J the reader will find good examples in Gen. 18-19; 24; 38; 39; and 43-44 (which are nearly solid extracts from that source); with the latter chapters, from the story of Joseph, should be compared Gen. 40-42, chiefly from E. Gen. 22 is also from E. From the literary point of view, J is the better narrator; he tells his story directly, swiftly, with almost epic breadth, and with just that measure of detail which gives the note of reality, never overloading the story with circumstance. Nor is it only the external action which he causes thus vividly to pass before us; with the dramatic instinct of the true story-teller he makes us spectators of the inner play of feeling and motive.

The religious element in the stories of J is pervasive. The forefathers are favourites of God, who directs their ways, and protects and blesses them in all their doings. He appears to them in human form, and converses with them as a man with his friends; reflection has not yet found such too human behaviour unbecoming in God. Gen. 18 is a striking instance of this familiarity in the deity: Jehovah with two companions comes to Abraham's tent, eats of the meal the patriarch's hospitality provides, predicts that Sarah shall bear a son before the year is out—a prospect which moves the old woman listening behind the door to incredulous merriment—and as he departs announces that he is going down to Sodom to see whether they are as bad there as has been reported to him. A still more drastic example is the "man" who wrestles with Jacob, and finding himself no match for the brawny patriarch, disables him by a foul, putting his hip out of joint, and finally, to get loose, unmasks as a god, owns Jacob the winner, and names him "Israel," the man who held his own against a god (Gen. xxxii. 24 ff.). Or, again, as Moses is on the way to Egypt by God's command to deliver his people, Jehovah encounters him where he halts for the night, and tries to kill him, desisting only when Zipporah bans him by smearing her imperilled husband with the bloody foreskin of her son (Exod. iv. 24 ff.).

Such extremely human representations belong to the ancient legends which are incorporated in the history; the author's own conception of God, if we may judge him by passages like Exod. xxxiii. 12-23; xxxiv. 6-9, was much less crude; but it is significant that such traits were allowed to remain with so little change.

The legends also attribute to God a partiality for the patriarchs which lets him protect and prosper them in transactions such as are repugnant not only to the most rudimentary morality but to savage manliness, as in Gen. 12 and 26, variants of the story how one of the forefathers exposed his wife's honour rather than risk his own neck. Less striking, but no less instructive, is Jacob, who gains the birthright by overreaching his brother and the blessing of the first-born by deceiving his father, and in the end outwits the wily Laban at his own devices and grows rich at his expense. It would be a mistake to take such stories as reflecting the morality of the author's time: they were the traditions of another age and another order of things. But again it is significant that they are narrated in J without any visible attempt to mitigate their offensive features. Other authors, as we shall see, toned down these features or eliminated them.

The second of the authors in the patriarchal history (E) is but little inferior to J as narrator, and in translation the difference is even less noticeable than in the original. Where they can be directly compared, however, E is slightly less vivid and picturesque. A certain learned, or antiquarian, interest is also apparent. E notes, for instance, that Laban, who as a Syrian naturally spoke Aramaic, called the boundary cairn Jegar Sahaduta, while Jacob named it in good Hebrew Gal 'Ed (a popular etymology of Gilead), and that the ancestors of the Israelites in their old homes beyond the Euphrates were heathen. He is particularly well informed in things Egyptian; he knows, for example, the Egyptian names of the chief personages in the story of Joseph. It is in accord with this tendency that he introduces the name Jehovah only after the call of Moses (Exod. iii. 14 ff.), and for the patriarchal period employs only the appellative, God.

The conception of deity is less naïve than in J: God never appears in tangible bodiliness like a man, but reveals himself in visions or dreams, or makes known his will by a voice out of the unseen. Things objectionable to morals or taste are frequently softened down. In J, for example, Joseph's brothers, at Judah's instance, sell him to the Ishmaelites; in E Reuben persuades them to put Joseph into a dry well, intending to save him from them and restore him to his father; while he is absent, Midianites steal Joseph out of the well and carry him off to Egypt. Compare also Gen. 20 (E) with c. 12 (J), noting how in the former the author takes pains to make clear that no harm came to Sarah, and that Abraham is a prophet whose intercession is effectual with God. On the other hand, the interventions of God in E often show a disposition to magnify the miracle and to give it a magical character. Thus at the crossing of the Red Sea, in J the waters are driven back by a strong wind, leaving the shallow basin dry; in E the miracle is wrought by Moses with his wand (like the plagues), and this representation is followed by P, in which the waters stand in walls on either hand while the people march between.

If the author of E was acquainted with J, as it would be natural to assume, he certainly does not copy him; of literary dependence in a strict sense there is no sign. The two appear, rather, to be parallel narratives, drawing on a common stock of tradition, which had already acquired by repetition, whether oral or written, a comparatively fixed form. This common stock included traditions of different groups of tribes and of holy places in different parts of the land. As might be supposed, the tribes seated in central Palestine, with their kinsmen east of the Jordan, which constituted the strength of the kingdom of Israel, make the largest contribution; Judah with its allied clans in the south comes second.

In the treatment of the common tradition in J and E, respectively, local or national interests appear, from which it is generally inferred that E was written in the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and J in the Southern (Judah). The question of the age of these writings can be more profitably considered at a later stage of our inquiry.