extends beyond the Pentateuch into the later historical books. However, a more important issue that arose was whether there was sufficient evidence to justify the positing of a separate E source at all. Many scholars freely acknowledged that of all the sources it was the most fragmentary, that it hardly began before the patriarchal narratives and that it was difficult to trace in much of Exodus and Numbers. A rather full-scale attack on the separate existence of E was made by Paul Volz and Wilhelm