We may close this section by reproducing the words in which Buttmann (i. 208 seq.) indicates his disagreement with De Wette in regard to the treatment of the early legends of the Bible:  they are well worth noting.  “Thoroughly familiar with the antiquities of the race in whose sacred writings these monuments have been preserved to us, De Wette recognises and follows the national spirit of that race in their most ancient records.  In this way he discovers amidst these ruins the thread of an old connection, a kind of epos, the theme of which was the glorification of the people of Israel, a theme which finds a prelude even in the primitive history of the human race.  This view is of the first importance for the object he has before him, which is the true criticism of these books; and for the moment other considerations must necessarily yield to it.  My object in this whole investigation is only to find the universal element in the legends of different nations, and especially to discover what is common property in the myths of the different branches of the great family of nations to which the Hebrews and the Greeks and we ourselves alike belong.  Thus each myth reveals itself to me as existing for itself, having a basis and completeness of its own, and even when I find it in other nations I at once assert for it its character as already known to me.  Thus De Wette and I come to differ in the view we take of individual myths.  To him they commonly appear as spontaneous free inventions of individual men for their own purposes; not in the ignoble sense in which the vulgar view speaks of the religious narratives of ancient peoples, but free inventions in which there is no intention to deceive.  I, on the contrary, can allow no invention in these oldest portions of mythology.  A true myth is never invented; it is handed down.  It is not true, but it is honest.  From small elements which fancy offered as true, these myths arose and grew, without any contributor to their growth feeling that he had of himself added to them.  Those only had any conscious intention in the matter, who touched up the oldest pure myths, and drew them into the great circle of their national history; and their intention, though conscious, was quite innocent and harmless, as De Wette describes it.  Now De Wette sees the chief traces of that unity, or of that national epos which winds its way through the Mosaic history, in the Elohim document.  For his critical purpose, therefore, this document is the most important, and it he for the most part follows.  My aim forbids me to attend to anything but the inner completeness of the stories taken one by one, and this I see most clearly in the Jehovah fragments; whence I have had to yield the preference to them in the foregoing discussions.  Should each of us attain his end, our views will excellently supplement each other.”

We may add that just that linked unity of its narrative, which has procured for the Priestly Code the title of the “mainstock,” shows that it presents us with a more developed form of the myths; while the Jehovist, just because of the defective connection (in form) of his “fragments,” which long caused him to be regarded as a mere filler-up of the fundamental work, must be judged to stand nearer to the fountain.