The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

XVI
extraordinary influence in Germany. The theory main-
tained with so much ability by this school entirely reorgan-
izes the evolution of the Pentateuch. It represents docu-
ment I (Annalistic narrator), which the elder school of
criticism had regarded as the oldest as well as fundamental
document of the Hexateuch, as being on the contrary the
latest. According to Wellhausen the Jehovist work was
composed in the regal and prophetic period preceding the
downfall of the Israelite kingdom; Stade assigns it the
approximate date 850— 800.* Next follows document II
(Theocratic narrator or Second Elohist) which was composed
perhaps" 100 years later and was combined by the Deuter-
onomic redactor with the preceding Jehovist work. Last
and most important of the successive accretions, we have the
document designated I, called by Schrader the Annalistic
writing. This document w:ith its large body of legislative
ordinances was drawn up in the age of Ezra and incor-
porated in the Pentateuch.
Such are the main outlines of a theory which in a great
measure revolutionizes our conceptions of Old Testament
literature and in the words of Dr. Delitzsch "upsets the
scheme of history". To the disciples of Vatke , Graf and
Kuenen the current phrase "law and prophets" involves a
voTSQOv jiQOTEQov. The prophetic Tdrah came first with
no legislative retrospects, no sanctions of Mosaic ordinance
to rest upon, such as we have been accustomed to presup-
pose. Coincidences of ideas and phraseology noted by the
elder critics of every shade, from Hengstenberg to Noldeke,
between the language of the earlier prae-exilic prophets
and that of the Mosaic Torah, have, we are told, no bearing
* Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel p. 58.