incidental statements as that the Canaanite was _then_ in the
land, xii. 6, xiii, 7, imply that by the author's time the situation
had changed; and, as their subjection was not attained till the time
of Solomon (1 Kings ix. 21) the documents can hardly be earlier than
that. The sanctuaries glorified in the Pentateuch are the very
sanctuaries at which a sumptuous but misguided worship was practised
as late as the eighth century, in the days of Amos and Hosea (cf.
Amos iv. 4; Hosea xii. II); but, generally speaking, the conception
of God found in the prophetic history, though as robust and intense
as that of the early prophets, is more primitive. It is not afraid
of anthropomorphisms (Gen. iii. 8; Exod. iv. 24), and theophanies,
and it has not very clearly grasped the idea that God is spirit. On
these grounds alone it would not be unfair to place the prophetic
documents somewhere between Solomon and Amos. J probably belongs to
the ninth century, and E, which, as we saw reason to believe, was
later, to the eighth.

P takes us into a totally different world. The witchery of the
prophetic documents has disappeared; poetry has given place to
legislation, theophany to ritual, religion to theology. From the
late historical books, such as Ezra-Nehemiah, we learn that legalism
dominated post-exilic religion to an extent out of all proportion to
what can be proved, or what is probable, for pre-exilic times; and
it would be natural to suppose that another writing, such as P,
dominated by precisely the same spirit, is a product of the same
time. This supposition becomes a practical certainty in the light of
two or three facts. Firstly, in not a few respects P is at variance
with the legislative programme drawn up by the exilic prophet
Ezekiel (xl.-xlviii.). Now if P had been in existence, such a
programme would have been unnecessary, and, in any case, Ezekiel