(5.) An objection to the unity of the authorship has been drawn from the repetitions ithich occur in the book; for it is said that these are a sure mark of at least two authors, whose accounts have been thrown into one. This objection presented a more formidable aspect as long as tlie hypothesis was in favor according to which there were two independent and continuous histories, the Elohistic and the Jehovistic, afterwards combined : the occurrence of double narratives gives an air of plau- sibility to this supposition. But as soon as we recollect that this hypothesis has been generally abandoned for another, according to which there is only one original continuous history, subsequently interpol; ted. the ob- jection \oiGS any jwimn facie verisimilitude that it ever possessed : for why should an editor burden and dis- figure the clear narrative as it lay before him, by inter- polating accounts which had the look of repetitions, un- less the events did really occur a second time? The attempt to assign one of these double accounts to the Elohist and the other to the Jehovist breaks down from time to time by the confession of the critics themselves. Here we introduce a remark in explanation of one or two passages in which a repeated account is given of the same event: this repetition in full, instead of a mere reference which we might prefer to make, is of a piece with the simple and nninvolved style of thought which characterizes the very structure of the Hebrew language. In cases where our Western languages would express a complex proposition by a compound sentence, in which the subordinate members are intro(Uiccd and kept in their true place by means of relative pronouns and conjunctions, the Hebrew uses simple sentences, and unites his statements by his favorite conjuuctiou
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"and," to which translators assign a great variety of meanings, according to the exigencies of the moment. By this method, however, his gain in simplicity is counterbalanced by a loss of terseness ; since he has often to repeat at length what might have been no- ticed only incidentally and by an allusion. This mode of dealing with sentences is extended to paragraphs, and has given rise to the occurrence of titles prefixed to sections, and of repeated statements, which misled the earlier disintegrating critics into the belief that here they had evidence of fragments which were after- wards brought together with little care or judgment; whereas their successors have thrown aside the liy- pothesis of fragments, having become more wary by experience. The clearest case of such repetition is the Elohistic account of creation (Gen. i, I-ii, 3), and the Jehovistic account (ch. ii, 4-25). But it is surely plain enough that the second is an incomplete account, im- plying that the general comprehensive narrative had gone before ; and throwing in additional information of a particular kind in reference to the creation of man, the creature formed in God's image and placed under his moral government, as briefly stated in the first chapter, but now stated more fully in this introduction to the history of redemption, which throws the account of the creation of other beings more into the baclc- ground.
Besides, it is an entirely erroneous philosophy which prompts men to find fault with the unity or truthful- ness of a history because it contains narratives bearing a resemblance to one another. Such repetitions (if this be the correct designation of these narratives) are re- corded in all histories of individuals and communities ; indeed otherwise experience would not be the great means of disciplining and training mankind. To take no wider range, instances of sucli repetition, certainly not less remarkable than anything in the books of Moses, occur in other parts of the Bible, including the life of our Lord ; and they cannot be escaped, unless by a universally destructive criticism.
Occasionally the charge is put differently in this way : instead of the allegation that tliere are two varying re- ports of one transaction, which have been erroneously understood of two different events, it is alleged that tico accnunts occur of what is confessedly the same matte?; and that these accounts are varying or even contradic- tory ; and the explanation given of these alleged con- tradictions is that they proceed from two different au- thors. The instances arc obtained sometimes by com- paring the first four books of Moses among themselves, and sometimes by comparing them with Deuteronomy.
((/.) Tliose of the former class, contradictions within the compass of the first four books, are of little impor- tance, and demand no lengthened consideration in this condensed statement. Such are the two accoimts of creation, to which we have had occasion to refer as il- lustrating the different aspects of a narrative according as logical connection or the chronological principle of arrangement predominates; the names of Esau's wives. See AnoLiBAMAir. A favorite instance is the account in Exod. xxxiii, 7-11 of the tabernacle of the congre- gation which Moses was to pitch "without the camp, afar off from the camp," whereas the ordinary accounts place the tabernacle inside the canpp. at its very centre. But there really is no serious difliculty in the way of accepting the common explanation that this was a pre- liminary tabernacle, used till the regular tabernacle was constructed, and placed outside the camp at the time when the people were saved by the special intercession of Moses, when on the point of being destroyed for the sin of the golden calf: an opinion which has been slight- ly modified by those who think it was the private tent of jMoses which received this honor at the time when he had declined the Lord's offer to make of him a great nation on the ruin of apostate Israel. Yet the simplest view would be to take ver. 5-1 1 as one speech of the Lord to Moses, the whole being in the Hebrew in the