INTRODUCTION.

CRITICISM

RITICISM at present fixes the date of the main bulk of the Pentateuch, the so-called Priest Codex, together with the Law of Holiness, which has so striking a relation to Ezekiel, at the time of the captivity and the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah. The Book of Deuteronomy however presupposes the primary legislation contained in Ex. xix.-xxiv. and the work of the Jehovistic historian. Hence we cannot avoid relegating the origin of certain component parts of the Pentateuch to the middle ages of the kings; and, if we continue our critical analysis, we find ourselves constrained to go back. still farther, perhaps even to the times of the Judges, and thus to tread the soil of a hoar antiquity without incurring the verdict of lack of scientific knowledge. Even those who insist upon transferring the conception of the account of the creation in Gen. i. 1-ii. 4, and of the primæval histories, which are of a form homogeneous with it, to the post-exilian period, do not, for the most part, deny that they are based upon subjects and materials handed down from long past ages. For the most part, we repeat; for there are even some who think that these primæval histories, e.g. the account of the Deluge, were not brought with them by the Terahites at their departure from Chaldea, but first obtained by the exiles in Babylon from Babylonian sources, and remodelled in Israelite fashion. Under these circumstances, and especially on the threshold of Genesis, that book of origins and primæval history,—it will be a suitable preparation for our critical problems to attain to historical certainty as to how far the art of writing reaches back among the people to whom the

A

authorship of Genesis belongs, and as to the date at which the beginnings of literature may be found or expected among them.

It is a self-understood fact that writing originally consisted of ideographic signs (figures of things), and that these were partly figurative signs (representations of what was meant) and partly symbolical signs (emblems of what was meant). Picture writing is the beginning of all writing, not only in Egypt, but also in ancient Anahuac. The Babylonio-Assyrian cuneiform writing likewise bears evident traces of having been originally a picture writing. Nowhere however is the progress by which the invention of writing was developed so perceptible as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The cuneiform never advanced beyond the stage of syllables. Even in the Persian cuneiform of the first kind, the transition from syllable to letter writing was not as yet so complete that the former did not still encroach upon the latter. Egyptian writing, on the contrary, exhibits a matured alphabet of twenty-six letters, and we see plainly how an advance was made in the department of phonetic signs (signs of sound) from those denoting syllables to those denoting letters. The invention of writing came to perfection by the discovery of the acro-phoenician principle, and J. Grimm and W. von Humboldt will be found to be right in regarding the invention of the alphabet as the world famed act of the Egyptians. But when Egyptian writing had distinguished separate letters, one advance had still to be made. For even after letters became fixed signs of sounds, the use of pictures of things, partly per se, partly as determinatives, was continued as a means for the expression of thought. It was the Semites perhaps, as Stade (Gramm. § 18) conjectures the Hyksos, who on the one hand. derived their knowledge of writing from the Egyptians, and on the other settled the supremacy of the acro-phoenician principle by remodelling and simplifying the alphabet contained in the Egyptian system of writing. Although a secondary relation of the Semitic letter signs of sound to the Egyptian (hieroglyphic or hieratic) could not be shown

(as by Bickell, de Rougé, Lenormant, and Halévy), this would prove nothing against the secondary relation in general, the acro-phoenician principle admitting of infinite variation. The alphabetic names-says Jacob Grimm in his history of the German language-show the natural surroundings of a people. Accordingly, the pictures of things used in the Semitic alphabet as signs of sounds correspond with the simple life of a nomadic people. It was not the variegated and mingled Egpytian writing, but this simple stereotyped Semitic alphabet, to which, as Hitzig says in his work on the invention of the alphabet (1840), all culture adheres, and with which the human mind traffics.

It is no slight commendation of the fidelity of Scripture history that in the transaction between Abraham and the Hittites respecting the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, which is related with the accuracy of a protocol (Gen. xxiii.), not a word is said of the use of writing. Nor does the verb an occur in Genesis, either in chap. xxiii. or elsewhere; while we find in Exodus, and onwards down to Deuteronomy, both an acquaintance with, and the most various use of writing an (together with o, in the official designation

, which occurs in Ex. Num. Deut.) is, in distinction from monumental writing (by chiselling), лn, Ex. xxxii. 16, or graving on fine plaster (Deut. xxvii. 1-8), and ornamental writing (by carving ), which recalls Egyptian sculpture and lithoglyphy, the usual word for "to write;" to put anything in writing. To record officially is an, Ex. xvii. 14;

Num. v. 23. Of writing on papyrus, not a trace is found. The
Hebrew term for book, " (from D, to strip off, to smooth, syn.

), refers to the skin of an animal with the hair stripped off and smoothed (compare, a scribe, a writer, with ", the postbiblical term for a barber), or to membranæ (2 Tim. iv. 13).1

Hence the patriarchal ancestral families of Israel do not as yet manifest a knowledge of writing, which first appears among

1 In Assyrian neither and nor D is found, the usual word for "to write" being sataru (DW).

the people on their departure from Egypt. The Pentateuchal history itself impresses upon us the fact that Israel learned the art of writing in Egypt, where the possession of this art reaches far back in pre-Mosaic times. For the exodus took place under Menephthes, the fourth Pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, and Herodotus already saw the pyramid belonging to the 1st Manethonian dynasty covered with hieroglyphics.

Thus the people of Israel possessed in the Mosaic period at latest the prerequisites for committing their memorable events to writing. In ancient times, however, and especially in the East, the precursors of all literature were those discourses which were orally disseminated before they became written documents. The sword-lay of Lamech, Gen. iv. 23 sq., and other antediluvian sayings cannot be regarded as such precursors of Hebrew literature, for the Hebrew language originated in post- diluvian times. But the testamentary utterances of Isaac concerning his twin sons, Gen. xxvii., and of Jacob concerning his sons as ancestors of the twelve tribes, Gen. xlix., were, assuming their historical nature, delivered in the language of Canaan, which Abraham and his descendants had there appropriated. Their contents show them to be no vaticinia post eventum, and the memory of the Orientals performs marvels; hence it may be at least esteemed possible that tradition, i.e. oral narration, propagated them in their original form. We have undoubtedly such an orally propagated discourse in the lay in Num. xxi. 27-30, which Israel heard from the mouth of Amorite poets () when they conquered the domain of the Amorite King Sihon, to whose kingdom the formerly Moabite land northward from Arnon to Heshbon then belonged. This lay is quoted as a proof that Heshbon, which was then Amorite, had formerly been Moabite. Its peculiar and antique stamp speaks for the originality of the document. It is as follows:

27 Come ye to Heshbon,

Let the city of Sihon be built and established: 28 For a fire is gone out of Heshbon,

A flame from the city of Sihon.

It hath devoured Ar of Moab,

The Lords of the high places of Arnon.

29 Woe to thee, Moab !

Thou art undone, oh people of Chemosh :

He hath given his sons as fugitives,

And his daughters into captivity

(Unto Sihon, king of the Amorites).

30 We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon, And have laid waste, so that fire was kindled unto Mêdebâ.

No other Canaanite (Phoenician) written record of even approximate antiquity is extant. Nevertheless, DP, Josh. xv. 15, and np, Josh. xv. 49 (comp., to furrow, to line, to draw, to trace with a sharp instrument), the ancient name of Debîr, situate on the southern mountain range not far from Hebron, gives reason to conjecture that the use of writing dates back to the Mosaic, nay, pre-Mosaic (though not to the patriarchal), period among the heathen population of Canaan. Hitzig (Gesch. i. 31) goes too far when he advances to the hypothesis that the alphabet was invented in Debîr. But the notice (Num. xiii. 22) that Hebron, the neighbour town of Debîr, was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, certainly gives rise to the supposition that this Debîr has an importance with respect to culture consisting in some sort of connection with Egypt.1

In the circle of patriarchal family life, oral tradition was sufficient to hand down the experiences of the fathers to their descendants, authorship everywhere begins when the family increases to the people, and when this people has attained to such a climax in its development as to have behind it a great past and before it a great future. Hence we may expect the beginnings of Israelite literature in the time of the sojourn in Egypt. But of this time we know little. The Thorah hastens past these four (Gen. xv. 13; Ex. xii. 40; comp. Acts vii. 6) or two hundred years (Ex. xii. 40, LXX.; comp. Gal. iii. 17)

1 The name of the city of Sippar, in which Xisuthros is said to have hidden the sacred books of the Chaldees before the Flood, does not mean ville des livres (Ménant and others), but is the Semiticized Sumerian Zimbir. See Friedr. Delitzsch, Paradies, p. 210.