174 JASTROW — THE HAMITES AND SEMITES. [ApriU, 



world, certainly of the ancient Orient. Apart from a certain 

 instinct — to speak indefinitely — which correctly led a people to 

 predicate its own closer or remoter relationship to others, reliance 

 was placed on more or less uncertain traditions, and the value of such 

 tradition was still further diminished by the subjective factors — a 

 people's likes and dislikes, its experiences and ambitions — that 

 entered as elements into its formation ; and when we pass beyond 

 the immediate political environment of an ancient people, we must 

 be prepared for a nebulousness of views that is almost inconceiv- 

 able to a modern mind and for inconsistencies that are as bewil- 

 dering as they are numerous. In view of this, it is evident that the 

 critical analysis of the chapter to which modern scholarship has 

 devoted itself with marked success is insufficient for a solution of 

 the problems involved unless it also takes into account the uncriti- 

 cal attitude of the ancient world toward ethnological and geo- 

 graphical data. 



The critical analysis of the loth chapter of Genesis has reached 

 a stage that may, with reasonable certainty, be regarded as definite 

 and as having attained its utmost limits.^ Of the two documents 

 combined to form the present Volkertafel — to use the convenient 

 German term — the one that forms part of the Priestly Code, dis- 

 tinguished by critics as P, forms the chief element, as is the case 

 throughout the first eleven chapters of Genesis,^ while the other, 

 designated as J, has only been drawn upon to the extent of furnish- 

 ing supplementary data, though at times those supplementary data 

 exceed in length the account in P, and, occasionally, J furnishes 

 material, like the story of Cain and Abel, not found in P at all. In 

 the case of the loth chapter, while J is actually longer than P, 

 yet the latter document represents a far closer approach to a syste- 

 matic arrangement, whereas J, marked by many glosses, is extracted 

 in so arbitrary a fashion in order to supplement P that it is difficult 

 to obtain an accurate view of the system followed by the "J" 

 document in its original form. 



When the two documents are placed side by side, the differences 

 between them will become clear. 



1 Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateiichs (3d ed., 1899, pp. 4-7). 



2 Budde's Urgeschichte, pp. 499 sq., pp. 464-465, and also pp. 521-531, 

 where the Jahwistic source in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is put 

 together. 



