It is less easy to account on the theory of pure fiction for the numerous names sometimes arranged together like a catalogue than for reported circumstances and numbers.  There can certainly be no doubt that the forty places which are mentioned in the list of encampments in the wanderings, really existed in the region the Israelites are reported to have traversed.  But he who is satisfied with this as evidence that we have before us here a historical document of primitive antiquity, will never be disturbed by criticism.  Was it such a difficult matter to find out forty definite stations in the wilderness for the forty years of the wanderings?  Even if the elements of the composition are not fictitious, that is far from proving the composition itself to be authentic.  And in the case of lists of the names of persons, the elements are often of an extremely doubtful nature; and here it is well to keep in view the principle of Vatke (op. cit. p. 675) that no confidence is to be placed in subjects devoid of predicates, and that persons are not to be taken for real who have nothing to do.  The dozens of names in Numbers i. vii. x. are almost all made to the same pattern, and have no similarity whatever to the names genuinely old.  The fact that the name of Jehovah does not enter into their composition only shows that the composer was not forgetful of his religio-historical theory.

By its taste for barren names and numbers and technical descriptions, the Priestly Code comes to stand on the same line with the Chronicles and the other literature of Judaism which labours at an artificial revival of the old tradition [VI.I.2 VI.III.2., VI.III.3. ad fin.].  Of a piece with this tendency is an indescribable pedantry, belonging to the very being of the author of the Priestly Code.  He has a very passion for classifying and drawing plans; if he has once dissected a genus into different species, we get all the species named to us one by one every time he has occasion to mention the genus.  The subsuming use of the prepositions Lamed and Beth is characteristic of him.  He selects a long-drawn expression wherever he can; he does not weary of repeating for the hundredth time what is a matter of course (Numbers viii.), he hates pronouns and all abbreviating substitutes.  What is interesting is passed over, what is of no importance is described with minuteness, his exhaustive clearness is such as with its numerous details to confuse our apprehension of what is in itself perfectly clear.  This is what used to be described in the phraseology of historical criticism as epic breadth. 1

************************************** 1.  Riehm, p. 292.  “The style is quiet, simple, free from all rhetorical and poetical ornament, and the expression in speaking of similar objects has an epic uniformity.  Impressive as many pieces are, just from their unassuming simplicity and objectivity, there is nowhere any apparent effort to produce effect or to raise the interest of the reader by the resources of literary art.”  For an opposite opinion compare Lichtenberg, Werke, ii. 162. ***************************************