enmity Joseph’s brethren bore to him, there is not a word in the Priestly Code.  It is not merely that “psychological decorations,” as they have been called, are left out; the very heart of the business has been cut out.  That Moab and Ammon, Ishmael and Edom, were Hebrew peoples, all more nearly or more distantly related to the Israelites, that the Aramaeans too were closely connected with the Hebrews by blood and by marriage, that this tribe lives in one district contiguous to Palestine, that in another—­this is what the Priestly Code has to tell.  Dry ethnographical and geographical facts like these are presented in a genealogical form; all we learn of the patriarchs is their marriages and births and how they separated to the various dwelling-places of their descendants.  And folklore could not possibly be directed to such facts as these at a period when these relations were all matters of fact and familiar to every child.  The Priestly Code, moreover, strips the legends of the patriarchs of their local as well as their historical colour; they are kept at a distance from all the places of the sacredness of which the Jehovist makes them the founders. 1

********************************************** 1.  Hupteld gives a curious turn to this, saying that in the Priestly Code Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have much more permanent settlements.  But it is this work that insists so often on the fact that the patriarchs were pilgrims and had nowhere a fixed residence:  it only says that Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan, and names no particular place even as the scene of the theophany in chapter xvii.  It is only when the question of burying Sarah and Abraham arises that there is a change.  Something must be done, and the field of Machpelah near Hebron is acquired (no doubt JE reported this, but the account of it in that source is lost) as a possession of the patriarchal family, where it now settles more permanently.  That Isaac and Jacob continue to dwell at the grave of Abraham is a statement of which the significance is negative rather than positive, and on the other hand the patriarchal journeys up and down in JE are not designed to represent them as wandering nomads, but serve to bring them in contact with all the sacred places with which they had special associations, ***********************************************

No historical geography is needed in order to understand the narrative of the Priestly Code in Genesis:  but that is only to say that it stands quite away from the soil out of which oral tradition arises.  It deals in no etymology, no proverbs nor songs, no miracles, theophanies nor dreams, and is destitute of all that many-coloured poetic charm which adorns the Jehovistic narratives.  But this proves not its original simplicity but its neglect of the springs from which legend arises, and of its most essential elements. 1 What remains is anything but historical objectivity:  it is the formula and nothing more.