This alone made it
possible to interfuse the two writings as we now have them in the
Pentateuch. That this was not done altogether without violence
is less to be wondered at than that the violence which was done
is so small, and particularly that the structure of each writing
is left almost unimpaired. This can only be explained from the
intimate agreement of the two works in point of plan. When the
subject treated is not history but legends about pre-historic
times, the arrangement of the materials does not come with the
materials themselves, but must arise out of the plan of a
narrator: even the architecture of the generations, which forms
the scaffolding of Genesis, is not inseparably bound up with the
matters to be disposed of in it. From the mouth of the people
there comes nothing but the detached narratives, which may or may
not happen to have some bearing on each other: to weave them
together in a connected whole is the work of the poetical or
literary artist. Thus the agreement of the sources in the plan
of the narrative is not a matter of course, but a matter requiring
explanation, and only to be explained on the ground of the
literary dependence of one source on the other.
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