revise further the description of the newest version of the Babylonian Creation-story, given on pp. 312 to 322. After the appearance of the book, however, I shall supplement, if need be, these pages, and correct any errors, at present unavoidable, that I may discover. On p. 307, above, in the third line from below, the possible translation of the Sumerian phrase is: "When he spake, he made the decree."

572ND ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING,

HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL,
WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, JUNE 21ST, 1915,
AT 4.30 P.M.

THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF HALSBURY, F.R.S., PRESIDENT
OF THE INSTITUTE, OCCUPIED THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the preceding meeting were read and confirmed. The SECRETARY announced the election of the Revd. James L. Evans as an Associate of the Institute. Also that the Council had selected as the subject for the Essay in the Gunning Prize Competition

“The Influence of Christianity upon other Religious Systems."

THE PRESIDENT regretted to announce that Professor Naville was prevented by ill-health from being present with them, but he had sent his Address, which the Secretary would read.

ANNUAL ADDRESS.

THE UNITY OF GENESIS.

By H. EDOUARD NAVILLE, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at the University of Geneva.

It

HO has not heard of the Higher Criticism and of the microscopical analysis it has made of the Old Testament, especially of the Pentateuch? Taking its rise in Germany, it has spread rapidly in the neighbouring countries, in France, in Holland, and even in the British universities. asserts its authority, I may even say its dominancy, in a somewhat arrogant tone, pretending that its principles and systems are above discussion, and treating opposition with contempt. It is a relief to find that there are critics, particularly in England, who are not only thoroughly scientific, and I may add courteous, in discussion, but who approach these questions with a profound and innate reverence for what we call Holy Writ. I am thinking among others of the late Professor Driver and of Professor Skinner. It is the eminent Cambridge Professor whom I shall quote in preference in this lecture.

I intend neither to argue with the critics on general questions nor to show how weak, and even baseless, are some of

their arguments. My purpose is to consider the first book of the Pentateuch according to the principles of a school which is coming more and more to the front, especially in France, a school which does not found its claims chiefly and almost exclusively on philology or language, but on archæology, anthropology; in a word, on all sciences which may contribute to a better understanding of the past. Great literary works are explained by the customs and turn of mind, at the time, of the people amongst whom they were produced, by the geographical circumstances of the country, and very often also by what we see and hear at the present day.

For we do not admit that there is a deep break between the past and the present; the laws which govern the human mind continue in many respects the same from age to age. In my opinion, we often go very far astray in our interpretations of the past because we do not pay sufficient attention to what is seen or heard in our own time. We often resort to far-fetched explanations, we credit the ancients with inventions which rest on nothing but our imagination, or, in order to support certain theories, a great number of writers are supposed to have existed and worked, who have remained anonymous, and may have lived at epochs separated by centuries. In this way great poems are said to be the joint work of generations, which unconsciously created a work to which an author, also unknown or anonymous, is supposed to have given its unity.

In accordance with the other principles I have mentioned, the new school shows that a poem like the Odyssey proceeds from the thoughtful mind of one author, who is its creator, and from whom it springs.

I wish to show how admirably these principles apply to Genesis, how perfect is the unity of the book, and how no one but Moses could have been its author.

Let us look first at the Genesis of the critics. I shall use for that the form which is most generally accepted, that of Socin. and Kautzsch, out of which Professor Bissell niade the "rainbow" Genesis printed in various colours. In that form the book is represented as being a mosaic consisting of 264 fragments of seven different stones. The number of fragments would be much greater, if we added a quantity of what may be called chips, which in the written text are represented by less than a line or even by a single word. Genesis is a composite work, compiled by a redactor, of pieces selected here and there from the works of six different authors, with the addition of glosses of later time. Of these documents, those which have been used

the most are assigned to the so-called Priestly Code, a document which nearly all critics consider as post-exilian; some of them attribute it to Ezra. Wellhausen gives as its date the year 114 The first chapter of Genesis belongs to that document, but not the second, which was written by the Jahvist or Jehovist, an author belonging to the Southern kingdom, and said to have lived in the ninth century. The Jahvist begins at chapter ii, with the narrative of the Fall, which has been modified by the insertion of words or sentences by the redactor. A hundred years later arose, in the Northern kingdom, the Elohist, who appears first in one sentence of chapter xv, and to whom we owe many portions of the text relating the lives of Abraham and Joseph. To these principal documents must be added another, said to be an older source of the Jahvist. It appears first in the genealogy of the family of Cain, afterwards in the history of the Tower of Babel. Its most important fragment is that relating the blessing of Jacob's sons. Another document is called J.E., because it is impossible to separate in it the two elements; its fragments are not very numerous, they are chiefly found in the life of Abraham. Chapter xiv is a document apart, its author's sole contribution, to which the redactor has added a good deal out of his own wisdom. Besides, there are later glosses, some of which are obvious, they are explanations for later readers; others are called glosses merely because they do not agree with. the critics' systems. The date of the redactor also is conjectural. It could not have been early, since he made use of the Priestly Code, which we saw Wellhausen assigns to the year 414, and it must be earlier than the Septuagint. Concerning the date of these translators, scholars disagree. It seems probable that the Law must have been the first to be translated into Greek, and that the traditional date, that of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 285–247, may be adopted. It is the earliest admitted by the critics. Thus the authors who may be said unconsciously to have contributed to the composition of this little book, Genesis, are scattered over a space of more than 600 years.

Let us now take a fragment of the book and see how it appears according to this theory. We have seen that chapter xiv is a document by itself; we shall have to revert, further on, to the circumstances in which it is said to have been written. We go on to chapter xv. It begins with words from J.E.:

After these things the word of the Lord

came unto Abram.

.. is mine heir.

J.E., unknown date.

And he said unto him: Take me an Jahvist again, ninth cenheifer . . . drove them away.

And when the sun was going down.

is not yet full.

And it came to pass

the river Euphrates.

tury.

Redactor.

Jahvist.

The Kenite . . . and the Jebusite.

Redactor.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bare him no Priestly Code, fifth cenchildren.

And she had a handmaid, an Egyptian.

tury. Jahvist.

Leaving aside chapter xiv, in the twenty-one verses of the xv and the first verse of chapter xvi, we have no fewer than eleven changes of author. We pass from the unknown native place of J.E. to the Southern kingdom of the Jahvist, to the Northern of the Elohist, to the Southern again, to the unknown residence of the redactor, to the Northern kingdom again, to Babylon, where the Priestly Code was made, and we end in the Northern kingdom. The eleven various fragments correspond to the following dates: we pass from an unknown date to the ninth century, then to the eighth, to the ninth again, then to the fourth, again we go up to the ninth, come down to the fourth, up to the ninth, down to the fourth, then to the fifth and the ninth.

This is a picture of a part of Genesis which is the result of the labour of the most eminent critics. Moses does not appear in it, but at least five different authors absolutely unknown, all of them anonymous, without any one of the scholars who are responsible for their discovery saying where they lived, under what circumstances and for what purpose they wrote. They are nothing but literary creations; there is no clue whatever to their existence, except in the imagination of the critics.