CHARACTER OF THE SOURCES: GENESIS
Of the four main sources of the Pentateuch and Joshua, two are easily
recognizable, and may be distinguished with certainty in almost any
combination. The Book of Deuteronomy, though itself a composite work,
constitutes a whole, with a characteristic religious point of view and
marked peculiarities of language and style. The strand akin to it in
Joshua is not always so easy to discriminate from additions and
editorial retouchings in one of the other sources; but since these are
of approximately the same age, the difficulty is, from the historian's
point of view, not of very serious moment.
The second source, more closely interwoven in the narrative of
Genesis-Numbers, and Joshua, has also such strongly marked
peculiarities, not only in religious ideas and in phraseology and
style, but in its whole conception and treatment of the history, that
it stands out in salient contrast to any surroundings in which it may
occur. Its interest is concentrated on the origin of the sacred
institutions of Israel, especially on the priesthood, the worship, and
the distinctive religious customs of the people, for which reason it
is commonly called the "priestly" history and law.
The two remaining sources resemble each other much more closely in
religious conceptions, in language, and in their representation of the
history, so that, where their closely parallel narratives are
intimately interwoven to make one continuous and harmonious story, it
is often impossible to unravel them. As far as Exod. iii. 14 one of
them employs the name Elohim for God, while the other uses Jehovah
from the beginning (see Gen. iv. 26), and this difference frequently
serves as a first clue; but editors and copyists have so often,
purposely or thoughtlessly, interchanged the names of God that it is
by no means a decisive criterion. From Exod. 3 on, this criterion
fails altogether. Closer acquaintance with the two sources discovers,
under all their similarity, individual peculiarities by which they can
ordinarily be recognized. Frequently, also, the connection of the
story itself, references or allusions to incidents already recounted
and preparation for events subsequently to be narrated, serve to
identify passages with one or the other.
For the sake of brevity, it is customary to designate these sources by
symbols: J (Jahvist), the source in which God is from the beginning
called Jehovah (more exactly, Jahveh); E (Elohist), the closely
cognate source in which Elohim (God) is consistently used throughout
Genesis; D, Deuteronomy and the kindred narrative in Joshua; P
(Priestly), the source in which the interest in the religious
institutions predominates. This author also uses Elohim exclusively in
Genesis, and down to Exod. vi. 2 ff.
The two sources, J and E, both narrate the story of the patriarchs at
some length. J begins with the migration of Abraham from Haran (Gen.
12); the corresponding introduction of Abraham in E is not preserved,
and the first passage that can with confidence be attributed to that
source is Gen. 20. From that point through Genesis and down to Exod.
24, J and E furnished the author of the Pentateuch most of his
narrative. The contents of both were evidently drawn from the same
common stock of legend, and they tell in large part the same stories
in variant forms, with differences of incident or of localization.
Sometimes one is ampler and more detailed, sometimes the other. The
author of Genesis in such cases often chose the fuller version,
enriching it here and there from the other; in other places the two
are combined in more equal measure into one continuous narrative; or,
again, as in parts of the story of Joseph, extracts from the two
alternate in large blocks.
J and E are, as has been said above, much alike in language and style,
yet each has distinguishing peculiarities of expression. These of
necessity disappear in a translation, especially in a translation
which, like the Authorized Version, raises everything to one stately
level of noble English prose. Even in translation, however, a
difference in the story-teller's art and manner may be discerned. For
J the reader will find good examples in Gen. 18-19; 24; 38; 39; and
43-44 (which are nearly solid extracts from that source); with the
latter chapters, from the story of Joseph, should be compared Gen.
40-42, chiefly from E. Gen. 22 is also from E. From the literary point
of view, J is the better narrator; he tells his story directly,
swiftly, with almost epic breadth, and with just that measure of
detail which gives the note of reality, never overloading the story
with circumstance. Nor is it only the external action which he causes
thus vividly to pass before us; with the dramatic instinct of the true
story-teller he makes us spectators of the inner play of feeling and
motive.
The religious element in the stories of J is pervasive. The
forefathers are favourites of God, who directs their ways, and
protects and blesses them in all their doings. He appears to them in
human form, and converses with them as a man with his friends;
reflection has not yet found such too human behaviour unbecoming in
God. Gen. 18 is a striking instance of this familiarity in the deity:
Jehovah with two companions comes to Abraham's tent, eats of the meal
the patriarch's hospitality provides, predicts that Sarah shall bear a
son before the year is out--a prospect which moves the old woman
listening behind the door to incredulous merriment--and as he departs
announces that he is going down to Sodom to see whether they are as
bad there as has been reported to him. A still more drastic example is
the "man" who wrestles with Jacob, and finding himself no match for
the brawny patriarch, disables him by a foul, putting his hip out of
joint, and finally, to get loose, unmasks as a god, owns Jacob the
winner, and names him "Israel," the man who held his own against a
god (Gen. xxxii. 24 ff.). Or, again, as Moses is on the way to Egypt
by God's command to deliver his people, Jehovah encounters him where
he halts for the night, and tries to kill him, desisting only when
Zipporah bans him by smearing her imperilled husband with the bloody
foreskin of her son (Exod. iv. 24 ff.).
Such extremely human representations belong to the ancient legends
which are incorporated in the history; the author's own conception of
God, if we may judge him by passages like Exod. xxxiii. 12-23; xxxiv.
6-9, was much less crude; but it is significant that such traits were
allowed to remain with so little change.
The legends also attribute to God a partiality for the patriarchs
which lets him protect and prosper them in transactions such as are
repugnant not only to the most rudimentary morality but to savage
manliness, as in Gen. 12 and 26, variants of the story how one of the
forefathers exposed his wife's honour rather than risk his own neck.
Less striking, but no less instructive, is Jacob, who gains the
birthright by overreaching his brother and the blessing of the
first-born by deceiving his father, and in the end outwits the wily
Laban at his own devices and grows rich at his expense. It would be a
mistake to take such stories as reflecting the morality of the
author's time: they were the traditions of another age and another
order of things. But again it is significant that they are narrated
in J without any visible attempt to mitigate their offensive features.
Other authors, as we shall see, toned down these features or
eliminated them.
The second of the authors in the patriarchal history (E) is but little
inferior to J as narrator, and in translation the difference is even
less noticeable than in the original. Where they can be directly
compared, however, E is slightly less vivid and picturesque. A certain
learned, or antiquarian, interest is also apparent. E notes, for
instance, that Laban, who as a Syrian naturally spoke Aramaic, called
the boundary cairn Jegar Sahaduta, while Jacob named it in good Hebrew
Gal 'Ed (a popular etymology of Gilead), and that the ancestors of the
Israelites in their old homes beyond the Euphrates were heathen. He is
particularly well informed in things Egyptian; he knows, for example,
the Egyptian names of the chief personages in the story of Joseph. It
is in accord with this tendency that he introduces the name Jehovah
only after the call of Moses (Exod. iii. 14 ff.), and for the
patriarchal period employs only the appellative, God.
The conception of deity is less naïve than in J: God never appears in
tangible bodiliness like a man, but reveals himself in visions or
dreams, or makes known his will by a voice out of the unseen. Things
objectionable to morals or taste are frequently softened down. In J,
for example, Joseph's brothers, at Judah's instance, sell him to the
Ishmaelites; in E Reuben persuades them to put Joseph into a dry well,
intending to save him from them and restore him to his father; while
he is absent, Midianites steal Joseph out of the well and carry him
off to Egypt. Compare also Gen. 20 (E) with c. 12 (J), noting how in
the former the author takes pains to make clear that no harm came to
Sarah, and that Abraham is a prophet whose intercession is effectual
with God. On the other hand, the interventions of God in E often show
a disposition to magnify the miracle and to give it a magical
character. Thus at the crossing of the Red Sea, in J the waters are
driven back by a strong wind, leaving the shallow basin dry; in E the
miracle is wrought by Moses with his wand (like the plagues), and this
representation is followed by P, in which the waters stand in walls on
either hand while the people march between.
If the author of E was acquainted with J, as it would be natural to
assume, he certainly does not copy him; of literary dependence in a
strict sense there is no sign. The two appear, rather, to be parallel
narratives, drawing on a common stock of tradition, which had already
acquired by repetition, whether oral or written, a comparatively fixed
form. This common stock included traditions of different groups of
tribes and of holy places in different parts of the land. As might be
supposed, the tribes seated in central Palestine, with their kinsmen
east of the Jordan, which constituted the strength of the kingdom of
Israel, make the largest contribution; Judah with its allied clans in
the south comes second.
In the treatment of the common tradition in J and E, respectively,
local or national interests appear, from which it is generally
inferred that E was written in the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and J in
the Southern (Judah). The question of the age of these writings can be
more profitably considered at a later stage of our inquiry.
The patriarchal history which begins with the migration of Abraham,
Gen. 12, is preceded by what may be called the primeval history of
mankind, Gen. 1-11. In these chapters E is not represented, and it
seems probable that the Israelite historian began his book with
Abraham. The primeval history as we read it, therefore, is derived in
part from J, in part from P. From J come Gen. ii. 4b-iv. 25; vi. 1-8;
a part of the composite story of the Flood (vii. 1-5, 7-10, 12, 17b,
22-23; viii. 6-12, 13b, 20-22); the sons of Noah, ix. 18-27, and part
of the table of nations (x. 8-19, 21, 24-30); the Tower of Babel (xi.
1-9). These pieces do not form a literary unity, and they give
evidence, as we should expect, of diverse origin. There are some among
them which imply a continuous development of civilization, unbroken by
the catastrophe of the Deluge, and Noah himself was originally an
agricultural figure, the first vine-dresser and maker of wine, not the
navigator of the ark. The tradition which ascribes the invention of
the arts of primitive civilization to descendants of Cain (Gen. iv.
17-24) is obviously of different origin from the story of Cain and
Abel. Closer inspection shows that the narrative of J in Gen. 1-11 is
composed of two strands, each having a consistency and continuity of
its own, and similar phenomena appear in subsequent parts of the
history from Genesis to Samuel.
If these various elements are alike designated by the symbol J, it is
because they exhibit the peculiarities of conception and expression
which characterize that work. The God who walks for pleasure in his
garden in the cool of the day, misses his gardeners, and finding that
they have eaten the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, drives
them out of the garden for fear they might also put out their hands to
the tree whose fruit gives immortality, or who comes down to see the
tower the Babylonian heaven-stormers are building, and apprehending
more presumptuous attempts from their success, breaks up their concert
by the ingenious device of making them talk different languages, is
plainly imagined in quite the same way as the God who visits Abraham
on his way to Sodom or wrestles with Jacob or tries to kill Moses on
the road to Egypt. Even more primitive is the fragment, Gen. vi. 1-4,
telling how deities, captivated by the charms of mortal women, begot
with them a mythical race of giants.
The Deluge has long been known to be a Babylonian myth, which now
forms an episode in a poem celebrating the exploits of a hero named
Gilgamesh. But, though preserving even such details of the Babylonian
original as the sending out of the birds, the Hebrew author has
impressed upon it the stamp of his own religion, effacing its
polytheistic features, and making the Flood a just judgment on
universal sinfulness; while for the Babylonian hero he substituted a
figure of Palestinian legend, and shows his inland bringing-up by
converting the ship into an enormous box. It has frequently been
assumed or asserted that others of these myths of the early world,
particularly the Garden in Eden and the Tower of Babel, are also of
Babylonian origin, but no parallels to them have as yet been
discovered, nor does internal evidence point that way.
The scenery in the Garden in Eden is naïve enough, but the problem of
the myth is one which has exercised the minds of men through all time:
Why is man mortal? or, as it is usually put in myths, How did man fail
of immortality? Two other persistent questions are here joined with
it, Why has man to work so hard for a living? and Why must women bear
children with pangs and peril? The answer evinces a reflection of
which we often think primitive philosophy incapable: man aspired to a
knowledge that God jealously kept to himself--he would not respect his
limitations.
The third chief narrative source in the Pentateuch, commonly called
the Priestly History (P), is of a different character from those which
we have been examining. A more descriptive title for it would be,
Origins of the Religious Institutions of Israel. In the view of the
author, these institutions were successively ordained by God at
certain epochs in the history of mankind and in connection with
certain historical events; these events he narrates as the occasion or
ground of the institution, which the subsequent observance recalls and
commemorates. These institutions were not all first revealed to Israel
and prescribed for it; on the contrary, the author has a theory of a
progressive revelation of God's will, beginning with the first man and
woman, and amplified from age to age by the addition to its contents
of fresh ordinances, while at the same time its extension gradually
narrows, until, in the Mosaic Law, it is addressed to the chosen
people of Israel alone. The place of each new institution is therefore
fixed not only in a chronological system but in the genealogical
scheme of races and nations. The genealogies which connect one epoch
of revelation with the following one are thus not the bare bones of
history, stripped of its flesh and blood, but serve a distinct and
characteristic purpose.
The Origins begin with the creation of the world (Gen. i.-ii. 4), and
a comparison of this account with that of J in 2-3 well illustrates
the difference between the two sources. The God of P is not one who
fashions man and beast out of clay and breathes with his own lips into
the work of his hands the breath of life; he stands above and apart
from the world, and creates all things by fiat: "Let there be light,
and there was light"--so in sublime simplicity the formula runs. The
creative acts are six natural days: "Evening came and morning came, a
first day." "And he rested (kept sabbath) on the seventh day from all
his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and made
it holy, because on it he rested from all his creative work." The
ordinance of the sabbath thus has its origin and sanction in the
creation itself, and this is alleged in the Decalogue (Exod. xx. 11)
as the motive for man's sabbath-keeping.
The Flood gives occasion to the blessing of Noah and his sons, in
which for the first time animal food is permitted--like many of the
ancients, P made the first men vegetarians--and with this licence is
coupled a prohibition of flesh with blood in it and the sentence of
God upon murder, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed; for in the image of God made he man." These commandments,
given to Noah, are binding on all mankind, his descendants. The
genealogies of the antediluvians connect the creation with the Flood
and serve also the chronology; genealogies of the descendants of
Noah's sons follow, the chronology attaching to the line of Shem down
to Terah, the father of Abraham.
Abraham's migration to Canaan and the birth of Ishmael are briefly
told, and then, at large, the covenant with Abraham, the promise of a
son by Sarah, and the institution of circumcision, which is an
ordinance for all the Abrahamic peoples, the Arab descendants of
Ishmael as well as the Israelites and Edomites sprung from Isaac, and
for their slaves, home-born or foreign. The only other incident in
Abraham's life of which P gives a fuller account is the purchase from
the sons of Heth of the cave of Macpelah, the burial-place of the
patriarchs; meagre notices of marriages and deaths, and tedious
pedigrees take the place of the vivid stories of J and E. The contrast
is most striking in the case of Joseph, about whom we have from P only
a few verses. Doubtless this is in part due to the fact that the
author of the Pentateuch preferred the richer narrative of his other
sources, but what is preserved of P shows clearly enough that his
history of Joseph, even when complete, was brief and dry.
The diction and style of P are very unlike that of J and E; a
favourable example of his manner is Gen. 17. Even in a translation,
which necessarily obliterates much, some of the author's
peculiarities can be observed, foremost among them a certain stiffness
and a laborious circumstantiality, which will be felt if Gen. xvi.
1-2, 4-8, 11-14 (J) or xvi. 8-21 (E) be compared with c. 17 (P). In
Gen. 1, thanks to the subject, this dry simplicity gives an impression
of sublimity; but in general, narration is not the author's best gift.
On the other hand, the conception of God, as we have seen in Gen. 1,
is more elevated than in either of the other sources; and in the
little P tells of the patriarchs their deportment is unimpeachable.