concludes to face it: "May we not suppose," he timidly asks, "that we
have here traces of a separate document, interwoven by a later writer,
with the former history? The passage has not, indeed, been incorporated
intact, but there is a coloring about it which seems to indicate that
Moses, or whoever put the book of Genesis into its present shape, had
here consulted a different narrative. The distinct use of the divine
names in the same phrase (vi. 22; vii. 5), in the former Elohim, in the
latter Jehovah, suggests that this may have been the case." [Footnote:
Art. "Noah," iii. 2179, American Edition.]

"May we not suppose," the good doctor asks, that we have traces of two
documents here? Certainly, your reverence. It is just as safe to suppose
it, as it is to suppose, when you see a nose on a man's face, that it is
a nose. There is no more doubt about it than there is about any other
palpable fact. The truth is, that the composite character of Genesis is
no longer, in scholarly circles, an open question. The most cautious,
the most conservative of scholars concede the point. Even President
Bartlett, of Dartmouth College, a Hebraist of some eminence, and as
sturdy a defender of old-fashioned orthodoxy as this country holds, made
this admission more than twenty years ago: "We may accept the traces of
earlier narratives as having been employed and authenticated by him
[Moses]; and we may admit the marks of later date as indications of a
surface revision of authorized persons not later than Ezra and
Nehemiah." And Dr. Perowne, the conservative scholar already quoted, in
the article on the "Pentateuch" in "Smith's Bible Dictionary," sums up
as follows:--

"1. The Book of Genesis rests chiefly on documents much earlier than
the time of Moses, though it was probably brought to very nearly
its present shape either by Moses himself, or by one of the