56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But during the long time in which the traditions were transmitted 

 orally, the growth of the nation's ideas produced a change in 

 them without any fabrication or design, and it is probable that 

 the traditions affected only to this extent were set forth in the 

 earlier documents, long since lost, namely, the " Book of the Wars 

 of Jahveh " and the " Jasar." There were, however, special temp- 

 tations in the later history of Israel, in the contests between the 

 Elohists and the Jahvists, to manipulate the earlier documents. 

 When the compilers belonging to the two schools produced the 

 two versions, intermixed and confused in the books we now have, 

 they differed from all people in history if the contestants, for po- 

 litical and personal power, did not color the records to suit their 

 own views. 



Students who have devoted their lives to the study of the last 

 compilation have been able to identify, by linguistic and historical 

 exegesis, the fragments of the original traditions, the epic tales of 

 the first documents, the theocratic deductions and the later sacer- 

 dotal visions, though the two versions appear on the same page 

 and sometimes in the same paragraph. The results of this im- 

 mense labor by the Hebraists of this generation have lately been 

 presented by Renan in a popular form. His works, as well as 

 those of other authors whose names will be mentioned in this ad- 

 dress, I have used freely, though generally without exact quotation. 



In addition to the linguistic and historical tests, other internal 

 evidences, especially the antedating of conceptions several centu- 

 ries (some instances of which will be mentioned), show that the 

 books, as now presented, were written long after the periods re- 

 ferred to in them. 



The main document on the primitive age is the Book of Gene- 

 sis, regarded for the reasons mentioned, not as literally historical, 

 but as the tradition, written at a respectable antiquity, of an age 

 that really existed. In examining it the historical part is discov- 

 ered, not by belief in the miraculous, but by the proper compre- 

 hension of the mythical. 



Much can be learned from myths and legends of the times an- 

 terior to strict history. The Homeric epics are not history, yet 

 they throw a flood of light upon Greek life a millennium before 

 the Christian era. The ante-Islam tales and the Arthurian and 

 Niebelungen romances of the middle ages are not true in fact, yet 

 they are storehouses, preserving the social life of the days when 

 they were composed and to a less though still useful degree of the 

 time embraced by the still earlier traditions. The generalizations 

 derived from the details of ancient texts are truths obtained by 

 induction. 



It is expedient to make a disclaimer before entering upon the 

 necessary comparisons of religions. I absolutely repudiate any 



