602 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1879 



decided in favour of the second alternative, occupies the 

 volume now before us, filling as large a space as the author 

 proposes to devote in his second volume to the whole 

 narrative of Israel s history. And this is not unreason 

 able ; for the solution of the problem in the compre 

 hensive form in which Wellhausen presents it to his 

 readers involves inquiries which practically exhaust two 

 of the most important topics of Old Testament history. 

 The key to the problem of the Mosaic law lies (i) in the 

 history of religious observances ; (2) in the history of 

 the spoken or written tradition current in Israel as to 

 the past ages of the nation. The investigation of these 

 topics fills the two largest sections of the volume. The 

 results are resumed, and outlying objections are met in 

 a third section on &quot; Israel and Judaism,&quot; which closes 

 with some general considerations preparing the way for 

 the second volume, and indicating the bearing of our 

 author s historical criticism on Biblical theology. 



I suppose that one must adopt the current expression, 

 and say that Wellhausen is a follower of the Grafian 

 hypothesis. But his argument owes very little to Graf, 

 more to Kuenen, whom he happily names &quot; Graf s 

 Goel &quot; most of all to Vatke, whose book is, in Well- 

 hausen s judgment, &quot; the most important contribution 

 ever made to the history of ancient Israel,&quot; and who 

 appears to be almost the only scholar except Ewald. who 

 has given our author ideas as well as information. But 

 Wellhausen s argument is much more telling than Vatke s, 

 because it rests on a thorough critical analysis of the 

 sources of the Pentateuch and historical books of the 

 Old Testament. From this point of view the present 

 volume may be regarded as the historical and synthetic 

 complement of the analyses of the Hexateuch in the 

 Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie of 1876 and 1877, and 

 the not less important analysis of the prophetae priores in 

 the fourth edition of Bleek s Einleitung. 



The first section of the work investigates the history 



