See Bissell, Introduction to _Genesis printed in Colours_ (1892), pp. xi-xiii; also p. vii, where he says: ‘The argument from language outside the divine names requires extreme care for obvious reasons. It is admitted to be relatively weak, and can never have more than a subordinate and supplementary value. There is no visible cleavage line among the supposed sources.’ Professor Bissell’s work is an attempt to represent by different colours the text of Genesis as it has been analysed and disintegrated by the ‘higher critics,’ and the result at which he arrives in his Introduction is that the analytical theory is a house built upon sand. As regards the account of the Flood, in which ‘it is claimed’ that two distinct narratives can be distinguished from each other, he remarks: ‘Two flood-stories, originating, according to the theory, hundreds of years apart, and literally swarming with differences and contradictions ... are found to fit one another like so many serrated blocks, and to form, united, a consecutive history whose unity, with constant use for millenniums, has been undisputed till our day. Is this coincidence, or is it miracle? But let us take a closer look. We shall find no loosely joined, independent sections, but mutually dependent parts of one whole. An occasional overlapping of ideas, a repetition for emphasis, or enlargement, in complete harmony with Hebrew style, there undoubtedly is. But there is also a marked interdependence and sequence of thought wholly inconsistent with the theory proposed. Let the reader test what J’s story would be alone. Beginning it has none; no preliminary announcement of the catastrophe; no command to make preparations; no report of Noah’s attitude.... And so P’s story, taken by itself, would be equally incomplete.... As to the alleged discrepancies in other respects, they appear, as we have seen, to be true in other cases, only after the text is rent asunder. The lighting system of the one does not exclude the one window of the other; nor the covering for the roof, the door in the side. Without the door, for which one document alone is responsible, how is it supposed that the occupants of the ark got in and out of it? If objects are thrown out of their due perspective, as in a mirage, it need surprise no one if they appear distorted and grotesque.... It is particularly in the matter of language and style that resort is taken to this illogical and dangerous means of text-mutilation. There are certain stylistic peculiarities of one or the other document, it is claimed, which are fixed from the usage of previous chapters. But unfortunately for the scheme, they appear not unfrequently in the wrong place. For instance, the expression “male and female” is held to be characteristic of P, J using another for it. In vii. 3, 9, J uses this expression twice, and our critics must make the redactor deny it.