One more trait must be added to the character of the Jehovist.  Each of his narratives may be understood by itself apart from the rest; the genealogy serves merely to string them together; their interest and significance is not derived from the connection in which they stand.  Many of them have a local colour which bespeaks a local origin; and how many of them are in substance inconsistent with each other, and stand side by side only by compulsion!  The whole literary character and loose connection of the Jehovist story of the patriarchs reveals how gradually its different elements were brought together, and how little they have coalesced to a unity.  In this point the patriarchal history of the Jehovist, stands quite on the same footing with his legend of the origins of the human race, the nature of which we have already demonstrated.

VIII.II.2.  It is from the Jehovistic form of the legends that we derive our picture of the patriarchs, that picture which children learn at school and which they find it easy to retain.  To compare the parallel of the Priestly Code it is necessary to restore it as a whole, for few are aware of the impression it produces.

“And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.  And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came (xii. 4b, 5).  And the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together, for their substance was great so that they could not dwell together.  And they separated themselves the one from the other; Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the Kikkar. 1

******************************************* 1.  Where the Dead Sea was afterwards. ******************************************

And it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the Kikkar, that God remembered Abram, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow-, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt... (xiii. 6, 11b, 12ab, xix. 29).  And Sarai was barren:  she had no child.  And Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.  And Hagar bare Abram a son; and Abram called his son’s name which Hagar bare, Ishmael.  And Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram” (xi. 30, xvi. 3, 15, 16) Then follows the covenant of God with Abram, whose name he now changes to Abraham, and the institution of circumcision as the mark of those who belong to the covenant; then the announcement of the birth of Isaac by Sarai, now ninety years old, who is henceforth to be called Sarah, and Isaac’s nomination as heir of the covenant in place of Ishmael (chapter xvii.).  “And Sarah bore Abraham a son at the set time of which God had spoken to him.