The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-31

ma0e with nm, ms reialsouS 10 Aot and others Gas Amraphel or Hammu- rabi. Chedorlaomer. Meichizedek and Pharaoh) the beginning of races that sprang from him. especially the He- brews. whose fortunes constitute the chief interest Of the author. Ir the narrative portions of this section God is called Jehovah and Elohim. while in the Melcfizedek conversation he Is called ElElyon. From 25.i2 to 25:1S Is the eighth section, entitled The gem erations of Ishmael.' giving the de- scendants of Abraham's son by Hasar; and this is followed at verse nineteen by the ninth section which is entitled The generations of Isaac" and ex- tends to the close of chapter thirty five In this section appear the ex- tended stories of Esau and Jacob. An address by Jehovah to Rebekah con- corning her twin sons is in poetry, as are also the blessings of Isaac on Ja-
 Thenames of the twelve sons of Jac cob and Esau. The names of the twelve sons of Jacob are given, and the Supreme Being is called Jehovah. Eiohim and Fl Shaddai. The tenth section begins with the first verse of Chapter 36. and bears the title. The generations of Esau.". The descend ants of Esau, the father of the Edom- ites. are given, with a list of certain ancient kings that reigned over the land of Edom. At xxxvii,2 begins the eleventh (and last) section, headed .aThe generations of Jacob" and ex-
 tending to the close of the book. Here
 is the, story of the sons of Jacob Cor
 Israeli who are to become the heads Of the tribes. The fortunes of the
 house are traced through the various experiences in Egypt to the death of Joseph and the beginning of the op- pression. The author Is preparing for
 the story of the Exodus. which will soon follow in another book. Jacobs blessing on his sons and those of Jo- seph appears in the xAx chapter, and IS in poetry. In this closing section the Divine names are Jehovah. Fl Shaddai and Elohim.
 It is evident from the foregoing that the author has thrown his narrative into the framework of a genealogy. He Is in the consciousness and enthusiasm of historian, bat he threads his his tory on a lineage from Adam through Noah to Abraham and from Abraham to Jacob and the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. No one can fail to ob- serve the unity of his purpose and the unity of his plan. His style varies with his subject, as should be the case with every writer of history. The story of the creation is Tn one style, while that of the courtship of Isaac and Re- bekah is In another. We could not ex- pect it otherwise. That the author used materials older than his own time, that he sometimes drew on sources quite outside Of himself. is evident from the nature of the case, as we'll as from the poetry he quotes and the genealogical data he employs. He em- ploys the different names of the Su- preme Being with marked discrimina- tion, and aptness. Elohim Is God in his cosmic relations. Jehovah Is the covenant God of his people, Jehovah Elohim is simply the two united (the cosmic God and the covenant God being
 ('Gods Most High') and Fl Shaddai
 ("God Almighty") are descriptive epi- thets of God.
 The book Is certainly the product of one experimenting mind and one di- recting hand. Was 1t Moses, as claimed in the title of the book?
 That Moses was substantially the author was practically the universal view of Jews and Chrfstians up to the middle of the seventeenth century A. D. and Is yet the prevailing view. though
 many of their leading scholars have
 abandoned it. In the twelfth century
 Aben Ezra called attention to certain expressions in Genesis and the other books which he regarded as post
 Mosaica. These were emphasized by Hobbess in 1851 and Spinoza in 1870 (both adding to the number) and have
 been a point of departure for all critics
 since In Genesis the expressions are: The Canaanite was then in the land" (xii6). The oaks of Mamre. which
 are in Hebron" (xiii;1S). Pursued as
 far as Dan" (xiv;1D. The kings that
 reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the chill
 dren of Israel" (xxxvi;3), and T was
 stolen out of the land of the Hebrews" words of Joseph (xl;15). The conser- vative reply to the argument was sim ply that each of these expressions could
 be explained consistently with a Mo-
 saic authorship of the book; and here.
 with the taking of a position on one
 ter would have rested but>for a certain turn which criticism began to take in
 about the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury.
 In 1753 Jean Astruc. a French physi-
 clan, struck upon the notion that the appearance in the book of different names for the Supreme Being indicates
 a diversity of authorship, so that Moses was simply the compiler of pieces that had been written by various authors, one using the name Elohim, another the name Jehovah, another combining the two, and so on. This was the cue to 1 subsequent criticism. which extending over the first six books of the Bible,
 passing through the various phases of a , documentary hypothesis, a fragmentary hypothesis and a supplementary hy- pothesis, and representing many emil
 nent scholars in Europe and America, extends to our own time. The analy-