VII.I.3.  The view is happily gaining ground that, in the mythical universal history of mankind in Genesis i.-xi., the Jehovist version is more primitive than the priestly one.  And we are, in fact, compelled to adopt this view when we observe that the materials of the narratives in question have not an Israelite, but a universal ethnic origin.  The traces of this origin are much more distinctly preserved in the Jehovist, whence it comes that comparative mythology occupies itself chiefly with his narratives, though without knowing that it is doing so.  The primitive legend has certainly undergone alterations in his hands too; its mythic character is much obliterated, and all sorts of Israelite elements have crept in.  Even the fratricide of Cain, with the contrast in the background between the peaceful life of the Hebrews in the land of Canaan and the restless wanderings of the Cainites (Kenites) in the neighbouring desert, quite falls out of the universal historical and geographical framework.  Still more does the curse of Canaan do so; here the trait is evidently old, that Noah was the first to make wine, but this has been made a merely subordinate feature of a pronouncedly national Israelite narrative.  But in the Jehovist the process of emptying the primitive legend of its true meaning and contents has not gone nearly so far as in the Priestly Code, where it actually creates surprise when some mythic element shines through, as in the cases of Enoch, and of the rainbow.

The mythic materials of the primitive world-history are suffused in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism:  as if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4).  We notice a shy, timid spirit, which belongs more to heathenism.  The rattling of the chains at intervals only aggravates the feeling of confinement that belongs to human nature; the gulf of alienation between man and God is not to be bridged over.  Jehovah does not stand high enough, does not feel Himself secure enough, to allow the earth-dwellers to come very near Him; there is almost a suggestion of the notion of the jealousy of the gods.  This mood, though in many ways softened, is yet recognisable enough in Genesis ii. iii., in vi. 1-4, and xi. 1-9.  In the Priestly Code it has entirely disappeared; here man no longer feels himself under a secret curse, but allied to God and free, as lord of nature.  True, the Priestly Code also recognises in its own fashion the power of sin—­this we saw in the chapter on sacrifice; but sin as the root of ruin, explaining it and capable of being got rid of, is the very opposite of blind, not-to-be-averted fate.  The slavery of sin and the freedom of the children of God are in the Gospel correlated.  The mythical mode of view is destroyed by the autonomy of morality; and closely connected with this is the rational way of looking at nature, of which we find the beginnings in the Priestly Code.  This view of nature presupposes that man places himself as a person over and outside of nature, which he regards as simply a thing.  We may perhaps assert that were it not for this dualism of Judaism, mechanical natural science would not exist.