the sources embodied in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10; and (2) on the career of that great patriarch as it comes out of these records.

As regards the first point, critical students of the Old Testament agree generally that the account of Abraham's life given in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10, is traceable to three chief sources of information which are usually called the Judean, the Ephraimite, and the Priestly narratives, and which were finally combined by an unknown writer into their present form. The existence of these main documents,-which are commonly denoted by their respective initial letters: J., E., P.,is rendered antecedently probable by the fact (1) that the author of the book of Genesis lived centuries after the events narrated in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10, and therefore necessarily depended on earlier sources of information; and (2) that Hebrew historians usually employed documents for the composition of their works. It is ascertained by a careful examination of the peculiarities of style, vocabulary, mode of representation, etc., which can even now be discovered in the chapters of Genesis which record Abraham's life; for it is admitted, on all hands, that Oriental writers of history are essentially compilers or arrangers of pre-existing documents and preserve carefully the various literary features of the excerpts which they combine together to make up a book. In fact, it is this actual combination of different sources in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10, which accounts best for most of the difficulties and discrepancies which may be noticed in the present narrative. Only a few instances of this need be given here. The use of different sources explains naturally how in one case," "Ur of the Chaldees" is given as Abraham's own country, while in another," "Haran" is named as such. It accounts naturally also for the twofold narrative. of Sara's seizure, once in Egypt," and a second time in Gerara.5 Again, the number of times that the promises made to Abraham appear in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10,-they appear not less than eight times," is due to the compilers having selected this as the most conspicuous feature in the narrative of Abraham in each of the sources of tradition. The seemingly strange fact, that the narrative in chapter xvii should take no notice of the mention of the same promise in chapter xv, is at once accounted for when it is seen to be an instance of the manner in which the different narratives overlap one another. The promises,

56 Gen. xi, 31; see also xi, 28.

57 Gen. xi, 32; xii, 1.

58 Gen. xii, 10 sqq.

59 Gen. xx.

contained in different traditions seemed to the compiler so important in view of the general purpose of his book, that, at the risk of considerable repetition, he has incorporated them all."60

As regards the manner in which Abraham's life and character are appreciated by most critical students of the sources embodied in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10, it may be described as conservative in its general tenor. At the present day, but few scholars venture to regard the great patriarch as a pure mythical creation, or as an impersonation of a Semitic tribe. Modern criticism distinctly feels that for such bold assertions there is no real ground in the sources imbedded in Abraham's life as told in Genesis; that, on the contrary, these sources when carefully studied afford material evidence-even apart from the inspired character of the narrative, for the views that Abraham was a historical person, with a definitely marked religious character. The following are the principal reasons for regarding the Judean and Ephraimite as historical narratives, which, although they exhibit a picture of Abraham somewhat idealized, contain trustworthy information concerning him. Their variations with regard to certain. details tend to confirm their reliability as to the main features of Abraham's life upon which they agree. Again, the supernatural occurrences which they record are marked by great sobriety of statement and representation, and thus stand in the strongest contrast with the fantastic extravagances of the Jewish and Arabic stories of a later date. Throughout their description of natural events, they are truthful to Eastern life even in modern times, and constantly set forth the facts of Abraham's career as moving on by the orderly sequence of natural cause and effect. Abraham remains, from the beginning to the end of his life, a wandering sheik, whose name is a distinctly personal name, and whose character is sketched with both its moral good traits and its blemishes. Besides these, three other important remarks go far, in the eyes of most modern critics, to show that the narrative of Abraham's life in Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10, contains a substantially correct picture of his career: (1) the history of religion shows that a great religious advance such as Genesis said was made by Abraham, has always an individual character and experience as its starting point; (2) the documents embodied in Genesis agree in setting forth as the divine purpose that Abraham shall provisionally take possession of the land of Chanaan, yet they never represent him.

H. E. Ryle, in Hastings Dict. of the Bible, vol. i, p. 15.

as actually possessing the whole: Abraham dwells in the South, pasturing alternately in very limited districts. Now, if the patriarch had never lived in Chanaan, if his abode there and his very personality had belonged merely to the realm of legend, it might have been confidently expected that later legends would have provided firmer and more lasting foundation for the Israelite's claim to the whole land than this mere partial possession by their great ancestor; (3) had not positive historical recollections forbidden it to do so, Israelite tradition would have naturally concentrated all the glory of founding the national Church and State upon Moses. Now since, in spite of the great deliverance undoubtedly achieved by Moses, Hebrew tradition nevertheless goes back of him, and finds in Abraham the primary source not only of the possession of the land, but also of the people's higher worship of God, this can be reasonably accounted for only by the assumption that memory had retained a hold of the actual course of events."

The foregoing survey of our various sources of information. concerning Abraham suggests a few important conclusions.

In the first place, despite the undeniable fact that some of these sources contain much of the legendary and fictitious, yet they all presuppose a great patriarch whose actual life and individual features. have supplied matter for history and legend.

In the second place, the source which affords most, and also best historical information, is, as might be well expected, the oldest which has come down to us, viz.: Gen. xi, 26-xxv, 10.

Lastly, modern criticism far from doing away with the historical character of Abraham, has rather confirmed it by showing that our oldest source of information is based on earlier documents which it has faithfully transmitted with their varying particulars of style and representation.

FRANCIS E. GIGOT.

See Driver, Commentary on Genesis, p. xlvii.

LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA AND THE ASIATIC AND SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY OF HIS TIMES

Ernesto Buonaiuti, D. D.

In the following study, we propose to analyze the ideas and attitude of Lucian, with reference to the events, currents of thought and social conditions of his times. Hence, after making a rapid survey of the writings of the Christian Fathers who were his contemporaries, especially the Asiatic and Syrian ones, we propose to determine the limits of his real aversion to Christianity, and to examine the psychological reasons thereof. A patient examination of the Dialogues in which the rhetor of Antioch has exhautsed the hilarious and petulant humor of decadent paganism, causes us to suspect that the difference between his ideas (we are not speaking here of his morals) and those of the Syrian Christians of the end of the II century, are not so deep nor so wide as has been commonly supposed. Our essay, therefore, is not of a character exclusively critico-literary. We are

'Some of his Dialoaues (amongst others De Morte Peregrini) were placed on the Index by Alexander VII in 1664, but were afterwards taken off. We wish here simply to give a basis for estimating the very summary and rather superficial judgment which Harnack has pronounced upon the works of Lucian in general and upon De Morte Peregrini in particular: "In Peregrinus Lucian has overwhelmed the Cynics with the bitterest scorn, whereas he has shielded the Christians. . . . His motive, however, as is quite evident, is far from being a friendly one. But it is significant that he treats them not as swindlers, not as lawbreakers, not as revolutionaries; but as blind believers, capable of becoming enthusiasts for self-sacrifice and for the common good. The one word "Sophist" as applied to Christ has sufficed, in the eyes of posterity, to stamp Lucian as a blasphemer not to be trusted even in the reports wherein he, as an historian, bears witness to the purity of Christian life and customs." See Realencyklopadie, vol. xi, p. 665. Cf. Freppel, Les Apologistes, vol. ii. Cotterill, in his Peregrinus Proteus, Edinburgh, 1879, has attributed De Morte Peregrini to a forger of the V century. But his opinion was never followed up. H. Kestner, in his De Agape, Jena, 1819, wrote concerning the conversion of Lucian, but his arguments are not very conclusive. Others (such as Scholaste and Volateranus) have said that Lucian was an apostate. Bernays, in his Lucian und die Kyniker, Berlin, 1879, has maintained that De Morte Peregrini was directed solely against the Cynics. This thesis is demonstrably one-sided. Cf. the article by L. Tonetti, "Il Peregrinus di Luciano e i christiani del suo tempo" in the Miscellanea di St. e Cult. Eccl., for Dec. 1904, pp. 72-84.

not here concerned to know just what degree of historical reality must be attributed to the protagonist of De Morte Peregrini, nor to determine what verisimilitude there may be in the rare notes left by the Epicurean dialogist concerning the organization of the Christians; neither shall we ask what personal relations Lucian may have had with the religious community from which there went forth one day to Rome and to martyrdom Ignatius the Bishop; nor shall we inquire which were spurious and which authentic amongst the Dialogues." Our essay, on the contrary, is of an historico-psychological character; and, presupposing the solution of all these critical problems, we put the question: Concerning the character of Lucian in his social and intellectual surroundings, do we not notice at the bottom of the spirit of this sceptical scouter of religious beliefs, an affinity with the Christians ridiculed by him; an affinity which was arrested in its natural evolution only by exterior circumstances? And again, can we not verify here, the oft-occurring moral paradox by which individuals, working under the most diverse circumstances, may conceive of life under aspects substantially parallel? Let us endeavor to get a clear notion of the problem, which is liable to be misunderstood: we do not say that Lucian had once been Christian, or that he became one in later life; upon this obscene author, who, with sarcasm upon his lips, and not a ray of ideality regarding the future, seems to lean over the open tomb of the old world and to croon over it the most idle of funereal chants, surely the Good Tidings never took any hold, but fell as amongst the thorns of the Gospel parable; still, under these thorns, thick as they were by nature, and doubtless forced into an exuberant growth by a mistaken education, did there not lie a magnificent soil, eager to be dug by some beneficent husbandman? This is the case of conscience which we propose to resolve from the pages of a writer who, eighteen hundred years ago, constructed the caricature of the world about him: a world that had, in those times been slowly disintegrated by the new spirit of the Christian life. This research seems to us interesting, because all critical inquiries are vain which do not strive to resolve problems of the soul and attitudes of thought.

"The traditional judgments on Lucian have always been of an extreme severity. Prescinding from the examinations instituted by modern writers, amongst whom we must number Voltaire, it will suffice to recall the long-standing contempt which has obscured the figure of Lucian, from the time of Suidas, who called him a blasphemer, down to the anonymous vituperation of the medieval Mss., which abound in marginal exclamations of: accursed Lucian . . . impious execrable..

Cf. Martha, Les Moralistes sous l'Empire Romain, Paris, Hachette, 1881.