Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

— Footnote 1. The distance of the narrator is not so very great in point of time from the events he deals with. He is a North-Israelite, as the )#R LYHWDH of xix. 3 shows: this may also be gathered from xix. 8 compared with Deuteronomy i. 2. A man of Judah could not easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been accustomed to assume. Another sign of antiquity is the way in which Elijah is represented as combating Baal in Israel, and in the land of Sidon associating with the worshippers of Baal on the most friendly terms (Luke iv. 25 seq.). — Footnote

historical position it belongs to, and is thereby magnified to colossal proportions. It may be said of this class of narratives generally, that the prophets are brought too much into the foreground in them, as if they had been even in their lifetime the principal force of Israelite history, and as if the influence which moved them had ruled and pervaded their age as well. That was not the case; in the eyes of their contemporaries they were completely overshadowed by the kings; only to later generations did they become the principal personages. They were important ideally, and influenced the future rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible importance is attributed to them. In the time of Ahab and Jehu the Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own, but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable fellows, who ate out of the king's hand and were treated with disdain by members of the leading classes. Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true, belonged to a younger generation, felt it an insult to be counted one of them. Elijah and Elisha rose certainly above the level of their order; but the first, whose hands remained pure, while he no doubt produced a great impression at the time by his fearless words, effected nothing against the king, and quite failed to draw the people over to his side: while Elisha, who did effect something, made use of means which could not bear the light, and which attest rather the weakness than the strength of prophecy in Israel.

VII.III.4. Let us conclude by summing up the results to which we have been led by our eclectic pilgrimage through the historical books. What in the common view appears to be the specific character of Israelite history, and has chiefly led to its being called sacred history, rests for the most part on a later re-painting of the original picture. The discolouring influences begin early. I do not reckon among these the entrance of mythical elements, such as are not wanting even in the first beginnings to which we can trace the course of the tradition, nor the inevitable local colour, which is quite a different thing from tendency. I think only of that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded history exclusively from the point of view of their own principles. Here we observe first a religious influence, which in the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical one. The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole. The song, Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it were actually composed by Deborah, the seer stands in no connection with the prophets. Least of all can the colleges of the B'ne Nebiim at Gilgal and other places be regarded as nurseries of historic tradition: the products which are to be traced to these circles betray a somewhat narrow field of vision (2Kings ii., iv. 1-6, 23). The prophets did not form the tradition at first, but came after, shedding upon it their peculiar light. Their interest in history was not so great that they felt it necessary to write it down; they only infused their own spirit into it subsequently.

But the systematic recoining of the tradition was only effected when a firmer stamp had become available than the free ideas of the prophets, the will of God having been formulated in writing. When this point was reached, no one could fail to see the discrepancy between the ideal commencement, which was now sought to be restored as it stood in the book, and the succeeding development. The old books of the people, which spoke in the most innocent way of the most objectionable practices and institutions, had to be thoroughly remodelled according to the Mosaic form, in order to make them valuable, digestible, and edifying, for the new generation. A continuous revision of them was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in the Babylonian exile. The style of the latter revision differed from that of the former. In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the law: transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the law is not disputed. In these works also the past is in some cases remodelled on the basis of the ideal, but as a rule it is simply condemned. That is one difference; another has to be added which is of far greater importance. In the Chronicles the pattern according to which the history of ancient Israel is represented is the Pentateuch, i.e. the Priestly Code. In the source of Chronicles, in the older historical books, the revision does not proceed upon the basis of the Priestly Code, which indeed is completely unknown to them, but on the basis of Deuteronomy. Thus in the question of the order of sequence of the two great bodies of laws, the history of the tradition leads us to the same conclusion as the history of the cultus.

CHAPTER VIII. THE NARRATIVE OF THE HEXATEUCH.

In the historical books the tradition is developed by means of supplement and revision; double narratives occur here and there, but not great parallel pieces of connected matter side by side. In the Hexateuch additions and supplements have certainly taken place on the most extensive scale, but the significant feature is here that continuous narratives which can and must be understood each by itself are woven together in a double or threefold cord. Critics have shown a disposition, if not in principle yet in fact, to take the independence of these so-called sources of the Hexateuch as if it implied that in point of matter also each is a distinct and independent source. But this is, even a priori, very improbable. Even in the case of the prophets who received their word from the Lord the later writer knows and founds upon the earlier one. How much more must this be the case with narrators whose express business is with the tradition? Criticism has not done its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution; it must aim further at bringing the different writings when thus arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition.

The striking agreement of the different works, not only in matter, but in their arrangement of the narratives, makes the office of criticism as now described not less but more necessary. There is no primitive legend, it is well known, so well knit as the biblical one, and thus it is no wonder that it became the frame for many others and infused into them some of its own colour. This connection is common in its main features to all the sources alike. The Priestly Code runs, as to its historical thread, quite parallel to the Jehovist history. This alone made it possible to interfuse the two writings as we now have them in the Pentateuch. That this was not done altogether without violence is less to be wondered at than that the violence which was done is so small, and particularly that the structure of each writing is left almost unimpaired. This can only be explained from the intimate agreement of the two works in point of plan. When the subject treated is not history but legends about pre-historic times, the arrangement of the materials does not come with the materials themselves, but must arise out of the plan of a narrator: even the architecture of the generations, which forms the scaffolding of Genesis, is not inseparably bound up with the matters to be disposed of in it. From the mouth of the people there comes nothing but the detached narratives, which may or may not happen to have some bearing on each other: to weave them together in a connected whole is the work of the poetical or literary artist. Thus the agreement of the sources in the plan of the narrative is not a matter of course, but a matter requiring explanation, and only to be explained on the ground of the literary dependence of one source on the other. The question how this relation of dependence is to be defined is thus a much more pressing one than is commonly assumed. /1/

— Footnote 1. The agreement extends not only to the thread of the narrative, but also to particulars, and even to expressions. I do not speak of mabbul (flood), or tebah (ark), but the following examples have struck me:-In Q Genesis vi. 9, Noah is said to be righteous in his generations, in J E vii. 1 he is righteous in his generation— an unusual form of speech, which gave a vast amount of trouble to the Rabbins and to Jerome. Similarly Q Genesis xvii. 21, the son whom Sarah shall bear at this set time next year, and JE xviii. 14: at the same time I will come to thee again next year, and then Sarah shall have a son. In the same way Q Exodus vi. 12 vii. 1. (Moses) I am of uncircumcised lips. (Jehovah) See, I make thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet; compared with JE iv. 10, 16. (Moses) I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue; (Jehovah) Aaron shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. Comp. Genesis xxvii. 46, with xxv: 22. — Footnote

This, however, is not the place to attempt a history of the development of the Israelite legend. We are only to lay the foundation for such a work, by comparing the narrative of the Priestly Code with the Jehovistic one. In doing so we shall see that Buttmann (Mythologus, i. p. 122 seq.) is right in asserting against de Wette (Beitraege, ii.), that, the Jehovistic form of the legend is the earlier of the two . /2/

— Footnote 2. The line indicated by Buttmann was first taken up again by Th. Noldeke in his Essay on the main-stock of the Pentateuch, which opened the way to a proper estimate of the narrative part of the work. — Footnote