a number of results that can be regarded as settled. The following
are some of them. The five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua
constitute one whole, the conquest of the Promised Land rather than
the death of Moses forming the true conclusion of the patriarchal
history, the exodus, and the wandering in the wilderness.
From a literary point of view, accordingly, it is more accurate
to speak of the Hexateuch than of the Pentateuch. Out of this whole,
the Book of Deuteronomy, as essentially an independent law-book,
admits of being separated most easily. Of what remains,
the parts most easily distinguished belong to the so-called
"main stock" ("Grundschrift"), formerly also called the Elohistic
document, on account of the use it makes of the divine name Elohim
up to the time of Moses, and designated by Ewald, with reference
to the regularly recurring superscriptions in Genesis, as the Book of
Origins. It is distinguished by its liking for number, and
measure, and formula generally, by its stiff pedantic style, by
its constant use of certain phrases and turns of expression which
do not occur elsewhere in the older Hebrew; its characteristics
are more strongly marked than those of any of the others, and
make it accordingly the easiest to recognise with certainty. Its
basis is the Book of Leviticus and thc allied portions of the
adjoining books,-- Exodus xxv.-xl., with the exception of chaps.
xxxii.-xxxiv., and Num.i.-x., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi., with trifling
exceptions. It thus contains legislation chiefly, and, in point of
fact, relates substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and
cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history
serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative
material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the
thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves
merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a