* Exod. iv. 14 and xxxii. 10, anger of Jahveh against Moses and against Israel; Gen. vi. 6, 7, where He repents and is sorry for having created man; and Exod. xxxii. 14, where He repents Him of the evil He had intended to do unto Israel.

     ** Gen. xi. 5-8.

     *** Gen. xviii.

     **** Gen. xviii. and xix.

Elsewhere He wrestles a whole night long with Jacob;* or falls upon Moses, seeking to kill him, until appeased by Zipporah, who casts the blood-stained foreskin of her child at her husband’s feet.** This book, though it breathes the spirit of the prophets and was perhaps written in one of their schools, did not, however, include all the current narratives, and omitted many traditions that were passing from lip to lip; moreover, the excessive materialism of its treatment no longer harmonised with that more idealised concept of the Deity which had already begun to prevail.  Consequently, within less than a century of its appearance, more than one version containing changes and interpolations in the narrative came to be circulated,*** till a scribe of Ephraim, who flourished in the time of Jeroboam II., took up the subject and dealt with it in a different fashion.****

     * Gen. xxxii. 24, 25.

     ** Exod. iv. 24-26.

*** Schrader and Wellhausen have drawn attention to contradictions in the primitive history of humanity as presented by the Jehovist which forbid us to accept it as the work of a single writer.  Nor can these inconsistencies be due to the influence of the Elohist, since the latter did not deal with this period in his book.  Budde has maintained that the primitive work contained no account of the Deluge, and traced the descent of all the nations, Israel included, back to Cain, and he declares he can detect in the earlier chapters of Genesis traces of a first Jehovist, whom he calls J1.  A second Jehovist, J2, who flourished between 800 and 700 B.C., is supposed to have added to the contribution of the first, certain details borrowed from the Babylonian tradition, such as the Deluge, the story of Noah, of Nimrod, etc.  Finally, a third Jehovist is said to have thrown the versions of his two predecessors into one, taking J2 as the basis of his work.

**** The date and origin of the Elohist have given rise to no less controversy than those of the Jehovist:  the view most generally adopted is that he was a native of the northern kingdom, and flourished about 750 B.C.

Putting on one side the primitive accounts of the origin of the human race which his predecessors had taken pleasure in elaborating, he confined his attention solely to events since the birth of Abraham;* his origin is betrayed by the preference he displays for details calculated to flatter the self-esteem of the northern tribes.  To his eyes, Joseph is the noblest of all the sons of Jacob, before whom all the rest