was to refute the traditional belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. That belief is now almost confined to the Church of Rome, and is only defended by the more erudite scholars of that body in deference to a despotic reactionary authority. The second point of the critics was to institute a searching analysis of the text, by which they discovered its composite and comparatively recent character, and were finally enabled to reproduce the original synthesis of the narrative. The history of the process is extremely interesting and instructive.
Although there had been sporadic deviations from the traditional view of the Pentateuch during the preceding two centuries, the modern controversy may be said to date from the middle of the last century. In the year 1753 a French physician, named Astruc, published a work at Brussels entitled "Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux dont il parait que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Génèse." He had noticed that the two names of God which occur in the Hebrew text—Elohim and Jahve, (Yahweh, or Jehovah, as the second is commonly read)—are not used indiscriminately, but seem to reveal the presence of two distinct writers who are severally characterized by them. He surmised that Moses had had two more ancient documents before him in composing Genesis. Thus was vaguely started the "Documentary hypothesis," around which all subsequent criticism has centred. Smith says: "That the way in which the two names are used can only be due to difference of authorship is now generally admitted." Astruc's suggestion was, however, treated with contempt in those days, and met with the usual theological stigma—"systema ineptissimum conjecturarum," such as is applied to the theories of Kuenen and Wellhausen to-day. A few years afterwards Eichhorn revived the teaching of Astruc, and strengthened it by other linguistic considerations in his "Einleitung." Michaelis also patronized it. Like Astruc, Eichhorn at first sustained that Moses was the compiler; but, as Mr. Addis forcibly urges, the Mosaic authorship is inevitably relinquished when the analysis is extended to the whole of the Hexateuch. It is impossible to think that any man wrote contradictory accounts of his own life, and systematically employed two different styles in his own narrative. Eichhorn had a powerful influence on the
