IS THE SO-CALLED " PRIESTLY CODE " OP POST-EXILIC DATE ? 67 



could cast their prophecies into the earlier and purer Hebrew 

 form, whilst simple narrators, like Ezra and Nehemiah, betray, 

 as will be hereafter seen, the fact of their long sojourn in a 

 strange land at every step. " P," of course, has its narrative 

 passages, as well as its legal specialisms. But never once does the 

 " Priestly Code " fall into any expression which betrays 

 Babylonian or Persian origin, as the returned exiles continually 

 do.* 



I. — We proceed to discuss the critical question in detail. The 

 words and expressions specially characteristic of " P " are stated 

 by Dr. Driver to be 45 in number, beside geographical terms. 

 These last need not be discussed. To avoid wearying my hearers 

 and readers by technicalities unfamiliar to them, I shall only 

 discuss some of the most significant instances ; I shall relegate 

 some more to the notes, where the reader can investigate them, 

 it he pleases, at his leisure. For the rest I must refer those who 

 read this paper, or hear it read, to two papers in the American 

 Bihliotheca Sacra for January and April, I910.t I must also 

 premise that although I and II Chronicles are allowed on all 

 hands to be post-exilic books, a formal analysis is impossible ; 

 because, as Prof. Driver declares, Hebrew historians were 

 compilers, and their method of compilation consisted almost 

 entirely in transferring bodily to their pages the passages they 

 extracted from those whose works they used. Therefore, as the 

 Chronicler tells us that he quotes many pre-exilic authors, some 

 portions of his narrative must have been written by himself, and 

 some, ages before his time.J This would make a linguistic 

 analysis of his work practically impossible, though it might be 

 a useful exercise for the critic in a region where we possess 

 some information whereby to test his assertions. 



1. The Name of God. — As everyone who studies the subject 

 knows, this has been, and sometimes still is, represented to be 



* English law terms now in use frequently take us back to the days 

 when French was the language of the law courts, but Haggai and 

 Zechaviah, Ezra and Nehemiah, use words denoting offices of state and 

 the like, which are indubitably of Babylonian or Persian origin, 

 t London Agent, C. Higham & Son, Farringdon Street, 

 I I showed years ago in Lex Mosaica that this statement of Dr. Driver 

 is far from correct. But he has continued to repeat it. If he is right, 

 I am justified in regarding Chronicles as full of exact quotations, though 

 Dr. Driver asserts (without proof) tliat the Chronicler did not use the 

 authorities he pretends to follow. As a fact, he sometimes introduces, 

 bodily, portions of Kings, and sometimes re-writes them. We may take 

 it, therefore, that he has dealt with his other authorities in the same 

 way. 



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