330 PROF. H. EDOUARD NAVILLE, D.C.L., LL.D., ON 



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 archaeology, 

 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 geo- 

 graphical 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 made 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 



