But this is, even _a priori_, very
improbable. Even in the case of the prophets who received their
word from the Lord the later writer knows and founds upon the earlier
one. How much more must this be the case with narrators whose
express business is with the tradition? Criticism has not done
its work when it has completed the mechanical distribution; it
must aim further at bringing the different writings when thus
arranged into relation with each other, must seek to render them
intelligible as phases of a living process, and thus to make it
possible to trace a graduated development of the tradition.
The striking agreement of the different works, not only in
matter, but in their arrangement of the narratives, makes the
office of criticism as now described not less but more necessary.
There is no primitive legend, it is well known, so well knit as the
biblical one, and thus it is no wonder that it became the frame
for many others and infused into them some of its own colour.
This connection is common in its main features to all the sources
alike. The Priestly Code runs, as to its historical thread,
quite parallel to the Jehovist history.
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