THE beauty of the legends of Genesis has always been a source of delight to readers of refined taste and it is not mere chance that painters have been so fond of choosing the subjects of their works from Genesis. Scholars have more rarely expressed appreciation of the beauty of these narratives, often perhaps for personal reasons, and perhaps often because the æsthetic point of view seemed to them incompatible with the dignity of science. However, we do not share this prejudice, but, on the contrary, are of the opinion that one who ignores the artistic form of these legends not only deprives himself of a great pleasure, but is unable properly to satisfy the scientific demands of the understanding of Genesis. Nay, more: it is no insignificant question for science to answer, in what the peculiar beauty of the legends consists,--a problem whose solution requires a thorough investigation of the contents and the religion of Genesis. The first question is, whether the form of the diction is prose or poetry. Aside from Genesis xlix. which is a poem and not a narrative, and on that A second question is, whether these poetic versions are popular traditions or the productions of individual poets. Modern investigators have answered the general principle of the question to the effect that Genesis is popular oral tradition written down. We are able to explain clearly how such popular traditions originate. Of course, in the ultimate beginning it was always an individual who improvised or devised this or that poem. But it is characteristic of such popular traditions that we are never able to observe them in the germ, any more than we can in the case of language, but that they appear, wherever we hear of them, as primitive possessions inherited from the patriarchs. Between the poet who first conceived them and the time when they were fixed for transmission to posterity a long period elapsed, and in this period the legends were repeated from generation to generation and passed through many hands. Yet however faithfully such legends are transmitted, they are inevitably altered in the course of the centuries. And thus they finally become the common product of the people. This transformation of the legends was unconscious, at least in its earlier stages. Only in the more recent modifications is it reasonable to assume the operation of conscious art. Both narrators and auditors regarded the legends as "true" stories. That this is true of the legends of the Old Testament is shown in the historical books of the Bible, where the narrators proceed by Accordingly, we should attempt in considering Genesis to realise first of all the form of its contents when they existed as oral tradition. This point of view has been ignored altogether too much hitherto, and investigators have instead treated the legendary books too much as "books." If we desire to understand the legends better we must recall to view the situations in which the legends were recited. We A new and fundamental question is: What unit is really the constituent unit in Genesis, the one which we should first apply ourselves to? For there are a number of different units in Genesis. The most comprehensive unit is the whole Pentateuch, then Genesis, and then the single collections of legends that preceded it; then the individual legends of which the book was composed. Among these a distinction has to be made between the independent individual legends, such, for example, as those of the flight of Hagar and the sacrifice of Isaac, and on the other hand certain groups of several legends constituting legend-cycles, such as the cycle which treats the destinies of Abraham and Lot down to the birth of their sons, or the one comprising Jacob's experiences with Esau and with Laban, or the one of which Joseph is the hero. All of these various units must be considered. But the first question is, Which of these units is most important for our purposes, that is, which of them was the original unit in oral tradition? This is a question that arises in many similar cases: Which is the elemental unit: the song-book, the individual group of songs in it, or the individual song? Is it the gospel, the address, or the individual utterance that is reported of Jesus? The Popular legends in their very nature exist in the form of individual legends; not until later do compilers put several such legends together, or poets construct of them greater and artistic compositions. Thus it is also with the Hebrew popular legends. The legends of Genesis even in their present form give clear evidence of this. Every single legend that is preserved in an early form is a complete whole by itself; it begins with a distinct introduction and ends with a very recognisable close. Compare certain specific cases: Abraham wishes to sue for a wife for his son; being too old himself he sends out his oldest servant--thus the story opens. Then we are told how the old servant finds the right maiden and brings her home. Meantime the aged master has died. The young master receives the bride, and "he was comforted for the death of his father." Everyone can see that the story ends here. Abraham is directed by God to sacrifice his son; this is the exposition (from xxii. on), which makes an entirely new start. Then we are told how Abraham
Similarly, the unity of the separate legends is shown in the fact that they are in each case filled with a single harmonious sentiment. Thus, in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, emotion is predominant; in that of Jacob's deception of Isaac, humor; in the story of Sodom, moral earnestness; in the story of Babel, the fear of Almighty God. Many stories are entirely spoiled by following them up immediately with new ones which drive the reader suddenly from one mood to another. Every skilful story-teller, on the contrary, makes a pause after telling one such story, giving the imagination time to recover, allowing the hearer to reflect in quiet on what he has heard while the chords that have been struck are permitted to die away. Any one, for instance, who has followed the story of Isaac sympathetically, feels at the close the need of repose in which to recover from the emotion aroused. Those stories especially which aim to give a reason for some present condition (Cp. pp. 17, and 25-36) require a pause at the close so that the hearer may compare the prophecy and its present fulfilment; as evidence of this consider the close of the story of Eden, of the Flood, or of the drunkenness of Noah. In later times there were formed of these individual legends greater units, called legend cycles, in which the separate legends are more or less artistically combined. But even here it is not at all difficult in most cases to extricate the original constituent elements from one another. Thus the legend cycle which treats Abraham and Lot separates clearly into the following stories: (1) The migration of Abraham and Lot to Canaan; (2) their separation at Bethel; (3) the theophany at Hebron; (4) the destruction of Sodom; (5) the birth of Ammon and Moab; (6) the birth of Isaac. The legend cycle of Jacob-Esau-Laban divised clearly into the legends of Jacob and Esau, of Jacob and Laban, the legends of the origin of the twelve tribes, with various legends interspersed of the origin of ritual observances. In the stories connected with Joseph, also, those of Joseph's intercourse with his brothers are clearly distinguished from those of Potiphar's wife, of Pharaoh's dreams, and those of the agricultural conditions of Egypt (Gen. xlvii. 13-26). This leads to the practical conclusion for the exegete that each individual legend must be interpreted first of all from within. The more independent a story is, the more sure we may be that it is preserved in its original form. And the connexion between individual legends is of later origin in many cases, if it be not simply an hallucination of the exegete. As an example of a primitive legend which is almost wholly without antecedent assumptions, take the story of Hagar's flight, Gen. xvi., for which we What are the limits of such a story? Many of the stories of Genesis extend over scarcely more than ten verses. This is the case with the stories of Noah's drunkenness, of the tower of Babel, of Abraham's journey to Egypt, of Hagar's flight or the exile of Ishmael, of the trial of Abraham, of Jacob at Bethel and at Penuel. After these very brief stories we can group a series of more detailed stories occupying about a chapter, such as the story of Paradise, of Cain's parricide, of the Flood, of the theophany at Hebron, of the betrothal of Rebeccah, of the fraud perpetrated upon Isaac by Jacob. Finally the legend cycles exceed this limit of space. This matter of the compass of the legends constitutes a decided distinction between them and our modern productions. Even the most complex legend groups of Genesis, such as that of Joseph, are of very modest extent by modern standards, while the older legends are absolutely abrupt to modern taste. Now, of course, the brief compass of the old legends is at the same time an index of The brevity of the legends is, as we have seen, a mark of the poverty of primitive literary art; but at Further simplicity is attained by means of the arrangement of parts, which, as we have noted, resolves the story into a number of little scenes. And in these scenes it is rare that all the persons of the story appear at once, but only a few, usually only two, are shown us at once. Compare the The survey of the various personages is further facilitated by a very distinct separation of leading and subordinate parts. The hearer does not have to ask many questions to learn which of the personages should receive his especial attention; the narrator makes this very plain to him simply by speaking most of the chief personage. Thus in most of the legends of the patriarchs the patriarchs themselves are as a matter of course the chief personages. In the following cases the personages of their respective stories are arranged in the order in which they interest the narrator: Cain, Abel; Abraham, Sarah, Pharaoh (Genesis xii. 10-20); Abraham, Lot; Hagar, Sarah, Abraham (chap. xvi.); the servant and Rebeccah are the chief personages in chap. xxiv., the others being all of second rank; in chap. xxvii. the chief personages are Jacob and Esau, while the parents are secondary; in the story of Jacob and Laban these are the chief personages, the women secondary. In this classification sympathy and veneration are not to be confused with interest; the artistic interest of the narrator is greater in Cain than in Abel, in Hagar than in Sarah; in chap. xxiv, the servant is the chief personage while Abraham has only a subordinate part.--In many cases it In attempting to discover the method by which characters are depicted we are first struck by the brevity with which subordinate personages are treated. Modern literary creations have accustomed us to expect that every personage introduced be characterised if possible with at least a few touches as an independent individual. The method of the primitive saga-man is entirely different. The personages whom he considers altogether or temporarily subordinate receive little or no characterisation. In view of the primitive feeling on the subject it is a matter of course that not much attention was paid to slaves. The attendants of Esau (xxxii. ff.) or of Laban (xxxi. 23) are introduced merely to show their masters' importance, and have no further significance. The narrators did not even consider it necessary to mention the sin of the two chamberlains of Pharaoh (xli. 1), or the feelings of Dinah (xxxiv.), or those of Sarah on the journey to Egypt (xii. 10 ff.). Hirah, the friend of Judah (xxxviii. 1, I2, 20), is not characterised; the sin of Er (xxxvii. 7) is not specified; nothing is told of Shuah, the wife of Judah (xxxviii. 2-12), that is really characteristic; the same is true of Joseph's steward (xliii. 16), of Potiphar, and others. And even the characterisation of the chief personages is remarkably brief according to our notions. Only a few traits are ascribed to them, often but one. Cain is jealous of his brother, Canaan is It is, on the contrary, a peculiar popular conception of man that we meet in Genesis. This conception was unable to grasp and represent many sides of man, much less all; it could see but a little. But so much the more need had it to catch the essential traits of the individual, wherefore it constructed types. Thus in the story of the flight of Hagar, Hagar is the type of the slave (xvi.) who is too well treated, Sarah of the jealous wife, Abraham the type of the conciliatory husband. Rachel and Leah are types of the favorite and of the unloved wife; in the story of the migration of Abraham to Egypt, or the story of Joseph, Pharoah acts like the typical Oriental king in such cases; his courtiers are courtiers and nothing more; Abraham's servant, chap. xxiv., is an old and tried servant; Isaac, in the story of the deception, is a blind old man, and Rebeccah a cunning, partial mother; Abraham in his migration and in chap. xxii. is the type of the pious and obedient man. A number of figures are the types of the races which are said to be descended from them: the shameless Canaan, the generous but stupid Esau, the crafty Laban, the still more crafty Jacob (cp. p. 23). Doubtless it is another sign of the lack of creative grasp when the legends thus present to our eyes species instead of individuals; but the narrators have made a virtue of necessity. Within the limited sphere assigned to them they give us extraordinary achievements. The types which they had the opportunity to observe they have depicted with a confidence and a clearness similar to those displayed in the national types preserved to us by the Now if we ask what principle the story-teller follows when he does emphasise definite characteristics of his personages, we discover that the characterisation is generally subordinated to the action. The particular quality of the person is emphasised that is necessary for the development of the action; all others are ignored. The story of the deception practised by Jacob tells how the latter, following his mother's counsel, induces his father to bless him instead of Esau: here Jacob is crafty, he practises deception; Esau is stupid, he lets himself be cheated; Isaac is easily deceived, is blind; Rebeccah is cunning, she gives the deceitful advice and is partial to Jacob. This is further portrayed in a more detailed narrative: Jacob is a shepherd who What means do the narrators use for the representation of the character of their heroes? The modern artist is very apt to explain in extended descriptions the thoughts and feelings of his personages. When one turns from such a modern story-teller to the study of Genesis, one is astonished to find in it so few utterances regarding the inner life of the heroes. Only rarely are the thoughts of even a leading personage expressly told, as in the case of the woman when she was looking desirously at the tree of knowledge, or of Noah, when he sent forth the birds "to see whether the waters were dried up off the earth," or the thoughts of Lot's sons-in-law, who judged that their father-in-law was jesting; the thoughts of Isaac, who feared at Gerar that he might be robbed of his wife (xxvi. 7); or the cunning thoughts with which Jacob proposed to evade the revenge of his brother Esau (xxxii. 9), and so on. But how brief and unsatisfactory even this appears compared with the psychological descriptions of modern writers! Now what is the reason for this strange proceeding? We can find it in an instance like that of xix. 27 ff. In sight of the city of Sodom Abraham had heard certain remarkable utterances from the three men; they had said that they were going down to Sodom to examine into the guilt of the city. This strange remark he let run in his head; in the morning of the following day he arose and went to the same place to see whether anything had happened in Sodom during the night. And in fact, he sees in the valley below a smoke, whence he must infer that something has taken place; but this smoke hides the region, and he cannot make out what has happened. For the story-teller this little scene is plainly not of interest because of the thing that happens, but because of the thoughts which Abraham must have thought, and yet he does not tell us what these thoughts were. He merely reports to us the outward incidents, and we are obliged to supply the really important point ourselves. This story-teller, then, has an eye for the soul-life of his hero, but he cannot conceive these inward processes with sufficient clearness to express them in definite words. This is a typical instance for Genesis. In very many situations where the modern writer would expect a psychological analysis, the primitive story-teller simply presents an action. The spiritual state of the man and woman in Paradise and after the Fall is not analysed, but a single objective touch is given by which we may recognise it. The narrator says nothing of the thoughts of Adam when But even when the story-teller said nothing of the soul-life of his heroes, his hearer did not entirely fail to catch an impression of it. We must recall at this point that we are dealing with orally recited stories. Between narrator and hearer there is another link than that of words; the tone of the voice talks, the expression of the face or the gestures of the narrator. Joy and grief, love, anger, jealousy, hatred, emotion, and all the other moods of his heroes, shared by the narrator, were thus imparted to his hearers without the utterance of a word. Modern exegesis is called to the task of reading between the lines the spiritual life which the narrator did not expressly utter. This is not always such a simple matter. We have in some cases got-ten out of touch with the emotions of older times and the expressions for them. Why, for instance, did Rebeccah veil herself when she caught sight of But even in this connexion we find many things to surprise us. First of all, that the personages of Genesis often fail to speak where the modern writer would surely have them do so, and where the very nature of the case seems to require it. We may well imagine that Joseph complained aloud when Even such utterances do not always reveal the ultimate purpose of the actors, and reveal their spiritual life only in an indirect way. Hence the expressions are not always entirely clear for us, and require an especial gift for their interpretation. We are told that God forbade to man the fruit of the tree of life, but his reason for this is not given. What thought was in God's mind when threatening man with immediate death, whereas this result did not actually follow? So, too, we learn that the serpent desires to betray the woman, but not his Very many of the legends are no less laconic in their descriptions of incidental circumstances. In this respect also there is a great difference between the primitive literary art and that of modern story-tellers. Of course, the ancients have no touch of the intimate feeling for the landscape; there is no trace of nature-love in Genesis. The facts that the story of Eden is set among green trees, the story of Hagar in the barren desolation of the wilderness, the story of Joseph in the land of the Nile, affect the course of the story in certain respects, indeed, since the first pair clothe themselves with leaves and since the desert is a place where one can get lost, and where there is no water. But these facts in no wise affect the mood or sentiment of the action. But aside from this intimate feeling for the life of nature, which was foreign to the primitive man, how easy it would have been to give a description of Paradise! What modern poet would have missed the opportunity! But the early story-tellers were content to say that there were beautiful trees there, and the source of mighty rivers. It is a piece of the same method that the narrator does not tell us with what weapon Cain slew Abel; he tells us merely that Noah planted vines and then that he From the above observations we conclude that in the primitive legends everything is subordinated to the action. In other literatures there are narratives in which the action is merely a garb or a thread, while the chief concern is the psychologic study, the brilliant conversation, or the idea; but not so with the primitive Hebrew legend. The primitive man demanded from his story-teller first of all action; he demands that something shall happen in the story to please his eye. But the first essential in such a story is to him its inner unity; the narrator must furnish him a connected series of events each necessarily dependent on the preceding. One of the chief charms of the early legend is just this: to show how one thing resulted from another. The more plausible and necessary this connexion appears, the more attractive seems the whole story. A famine forces Abraham to go to Egypt; but he is Many of the legends are fond of varying a given motive. Consider how the story of Eden makes everything dependent on the nakedness and the clothing of man, and how the relation of "field" and "field-tiller" (this is the etymology of the Hebrew word here used for "man") pervades this whole legend; how the story of Joseph's sale into Egypt treats the coat-sleeve (coat of many colors) and the dreams; how the story of Jacob's last testament (xlvii. 29 ff.) constantly connects his actions with his bed: in praying he bows at the head of the bed, xlvii. 31; in blessing he rises up in bed, xlviii. 2; in dying he stretches himself out upon his bed, xlix. 33 (English version: "gathered up his feet in his bed"), and so on. In this the rule is, quite in opposition to our sense of style, to repeat the expression every time the thing is referred to, so that one and the same word often runs through the story like a red thread. Undoubtedly this custom originated in the poverty of the language; but the narrators of our legends follow it in order to produce an impression of unity and simplicity. Precisely because of this inward connexion in the story it is possible in many places where our received text shows gaps or distortions to recognise the original form of the legend: the text-criticism is in this point very much more positive than in the Furthermore, the course of the action must be probable, highly credible, even unavoidable. Nowhere must the hearer be able to make the objection that what is being told is inconsistent with what has preceded or with itself. Hagar, when elevated to too high station, could not fail to grow haughty; and Sarah could not help feeling offended. True, the probability aimed at by these old story-tellers was different from that of which we speak. Their understanding of nature was different from ours; for instance, they regarded it as entirely credible that all the kinds of animals could get into the ark; furthermore, the way in which they speak of God and his participation in the affairs of the world was naïver than is possible for us of modern times; they regarded it as quite plausible that the serpent should have spoken in primitive times; that Joseph, the grand vizier, should look after the sale of the corn in person. Hence it would be quite unwarranted to speak of the "arbitrariness" and "childish recklessness" of the legends simply because the assumptions of the narrators are impossible to us in modern times. Only in a very few places can the eye of the modern reader, even though trained for criticism, detect improbabilities. In this line we may ask why Joseph, who was so much attached to his father, failed to communicate with him all the long years. Even after Hagar and her son were once rescued, were not the dangers of the desert sure to recur On the other hand, in a well-told legend the incidents are not so simple that one can guess the whole course of events from the first few words; if it were so, the legend would lose its interest. No one cares to hear of things that are self-evident. On the contrary, our story-tellers are dealing with what they regard as a complicated situation, whose final outcome cannot be surveyed in advance by the hearer. This leads him to listen the more intently. Jacob wrestles with a supernatural being; which of the two will conquer? Jacob and Laban are equally gifted in cunning; which will succeed in deceiving the other? The shrewd but unwarlike Jacob has to meet the dull but physically superior Esau; how will he manage him? Abraham has to go down into Egypt, and how will he fare there? Thus all these stories are more or less exciting. The child-like listener holds his breath, and rejoices when the hero finally escapes all the threatening dangers. The narrators are very fond of contrasts: the child cast out into the desert becomes a mighty people; a poor slave, languishing in prison, becomes the ruler of Egypt with all her abundance. They try if possible to focus these contrasts into a single point: at the moment when Hagar is in utter despair, God takes compassion on her; the very instant when Abraham raises his arm to slay Isaac, 10-12 and 25-26, we can conjecture a form of the account in which more personages appear and in which the world is created after a conflict of God with Chaos. In like manner, the accounts of Abraham's migration and of his league with Abimelech are not real legends, but only legendary traditions which have originated probably from the decay of earlier and fuller legends. As we have seen in the second division of this treatise, the legends are not free inventions of the imagination. On the contrary, a legend adopts and works over certain data which come from reflexion, tradition or observation. These fundamental data have been treated in the preceding pages; our present task is to consider the part taken by the imagination in the development of the legends. With this subject we have reached the very heart of our investigations. As has been shown above, many of the legends seem intended to answer definite questions. That is, these legends are not the thoughtless play of an imagination acting without other purpose than the search for the beautiful, but they have a specific Other legends reflect historic events or situations, and in such cases it was the duty of the narrator to bring out these references clearly enough to satisfy his well-informed hearer. Thus in the legend of the flight of Hagar the actors are at first mere individuals whose destinies are interesting enough, to be sure, but at the climax, with the words of God regarding Ishmael the narrator shows that in Ishmael he is treating of a race and its destinies. Hebrew taste is especially fond of playing about the names of leading heroes and places, even when no etymology is involved Many of the legends are quite filled with such references to names. Thus The etymologies usually constitute such subordinate motives. Thus in the story of the worship at Jeruel a scene is interjected which is to explain the name of the place, "God sees"; but this little scene, the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac, xxii. 7 f., expresses so completely the tone and sentiment of the whole story that we should not be willing to dispense with it even if it had no particular point of its own. In other cases the artists have joined together two leading motives; then they invented a very simple and plausible transition from one to the other: thus the first part of the legend of Hebron presents the establishment of worship there under the guise of the story that We have to do, then, even in the oldest legends of Genesis, not with aimless, rude stories, tossed off without reflexion, but on the contrary, there is revealed in them a mature, perfected, and very forcible art. The narratives have a very decided style. Finally, attention should be called to the fact that the narrators scarcely ever express a distinct opinion about persons or facts. This constitutes a clear distinction between them and the later legends and histories worked over under the influence of the prophets. Of course, the narrators of the early legends had their opinions; they are by no means objective, but rather intensely subjective; and often the real comprehension of the legend lies in our obtaining an impression of this opinion of the narrator. But they almost never gave expression to this opinion: they were not able to reflect clearly on psychological processes. Wherever we do get a more distinct view of such an opinion it is by 15-17, this is different, for they aim to answer questions of a general nature. Out of the type of legend which has been sketched in essentials in the preceding pages there was evolved, as we may discover even in Genesis itself, another type relatively much nearer to modern fiction. While the story of Hagar's flight is a classic instance of the former sort, the most conspicuous example of the second is the story of Joseph. It is necessary only to compare the two narratives in order to see the great differences in the two kinds: there, everything characteristically brief and condensed, here, just as characteristically, everything long spun out. In order to judge of the artistic quality of these compositions we must first of all examine the joints or edges of the elder stories. Usually the narrators make the transition by means of very simple devices from one of the stories to the other. The transition par excellence is the journey. When the first portion of the Jacob-Esau legend is finished Jacob sets out for Aram; there he has his experiences with Laban, and then returns to Esau. In the story of Joseph the carrying off of Joseph to Egypt, and later the journey of his brethren thither, are the connecting links of the separate stories. Similarly in the story of Abraham and Lot, we are first told that the three men visited Abraham and went afterwards to Sodom. Now we must examine how these various journeys are motivated. The sale of Joseph into Egypt is the goal at which everything that precedes has aimed. The journey of his brethren to Egypt is prompted by the same great famine which had already been the decisive factor in bringing Joseph to honor in Egypt. And the experiences of the brethren in Egypt are based upon Joseph's advancement. Thus we see that the story of Joseph is very cunningly blended into a whole. There is less of unity in the story of Jacob; but even here there is a plausible motive why Jacob goes to Laban: he is fleeing from Esau. In other respects we find here the original legends side by side unblended. On the contrary, in the story of Abraham and Lot no reason is alleged why the three men go directly from Abraham to Sodom; that is to Another characteristic feature of the Joseph story is its discursiveness, which stands in notable contrast with the brevity of the older narratives. We find in it an abundance of long speeches, of soliloquies, of detailed descriptions of situations, of expositions of the thoughts of the personages. The narrator is fond of repeating in the form of a speech what he has already told. What are we to think of this "epic discursiveness"? Not as an especial characteristic of this particular narrative alone, for we find the same qualities, though less pronounced, in the stories of the wooing of Rebeccah, of Abraham at the court of Abimelech (Genesis xx.), in some features of the story of Jacob (notably the meeting of Jacob and Esau); and the stories of the sacrifice of Isaac and various features of the story of Abraham and Lot also furnish parallels. Very evidently we have to do here with a distinct We do not always agree with this taste of the later time; for instance, the story of Joseph approaches the danger-line of becoming uninteresting from excessive detail. On the other hand, this discursiveness is at the same time the evidence of a newly acquired faculty. While the earlier time can express its inner life only in brief and broken words, the new generation has learned to observe itself more closely and to express itself more completely. With this there has come an increase of interest in the soul-life of the individual. Psycho-logical problems are now treated with fondness and with skill. Thus in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac there was created the perfection of the character study. The narrator of the stories of Joseph shows himself a master of the art of painting the portrait of a man by means of many small touches. Especially successful On the relative age of these styles, also, an opinion may be ventured, though with great caution. The art of narrative which was acquired in the writing of legends was applied later to the writing of history, where, accordingly, we may make parallel observations. Now we see that the oldest historical writing known to us has already adopted the "detailed" style. Accordingly we may assume that this "detailed" style was cultivated at least as early as the beginning of the time of the kings. And 43:1 Reuss, AT III., p. 73: "Originally the legends of the patriarchs arose individually without connexion and independently of one another."--Wellhausen, Composition 2, p. 9: "Tradition in the popular mouth knows only individual legends."THE LITERARY FORM OF THE LEGENDS.
GENESIS IS PROSE.
ECONOMY OF DETAILS.
LEGENDS NOT PURE INVENTION.
AN EARLY ISRAELITISH ROMANCE
EPIC DISCURSIVENESS.
