INTRODUCTION TO GENESIS
§ 1. ITS TITLE AND CONTENTS
1.
Its title. Like the other four divisions of the
Pentateuch, the First Book
of Moses derives its title in the Hebrew
Scriptures from its initial word,
Bereshith; in the Septuagint, which is followed by the Authorized Version, it
is designated by a term which defines its
contents, Γένεσις (Genesis). Γένεσις
referring to the source or primal cause of either
thing or person, the work to
which it has been assigned as a descriptive appellation
has been styled the Book
of Origins or Beginnings (Ewald);
but since the Septuagint employ Vedette as the
Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Tol’doth, which signifies not the causes,
but the effects, not the antecedents, but the
consequents of either thing or
person (vid.
2:4: Exp.), the writing might be more exactly characterized as
the Book of Evolutions or Developments.
2.
Its contents. As a Book of Origins or Beginnings, it
describes:
· the creation or absolute origination of the
universe,
· the formation or cosmical
arrangement of this terrestrial sphere,
· the origin of man and the commencement of
the human race,
while it narrates the primeval histories of
mankind in the three initial ages
of the world:
· the Antediluvian,
· the Postdiluvian, and
· the Patriarchal.
Subsidiary to this, it depicts the pristine
innocence of man in his first or Edenic
state; recites the story of his fall through the
temptation of an unseen adversary,
with the revelation of Divine mercy which was made
to him in the promise of
the woman’s seed, and the consequent
establishment on earth of a Church of
believing sinners, looking
forward to the consummation of that glorious promise;
traces the onward course of the divided human
family, in the deepening impiety
of the wicked, and the decaying godliness of
the righteous, till, ripe for
destruction, the entire race, with the exception of
one pious household, is
wiped out or washed off from the face of the
ground by the waters of a
flood; then, resuming the thread of human
history, after first sketching the
principal features of that appalling catastrophe,
pursues the fortunes of this
family in its three sons, till it sees their
descendants dividing off into
nations, and spreading far and wide across the surface
of the globe; when,
returning once more to the original center of
distribution, it takes up the
story of one of these collateral branches into
which the race has already
separated, and carries it forward through successive
stages till it connects
itself with the later history of
mentioned aspect, as a Book of Evolutions or
Developments, by which the
standpoint of the writer is changed and brought round
from the historical
to the prophetic, from the a posteriori to
the a priori, after sketching in a
preliminary section the original creation of the
universe and the
arrangement of the present terrestrial cosmos, in ten
successive sections it
relates the Tol’doth or
generations, i.e. the subsequent evolutions or
onward developments of the cosmos which lead down
to the point of
departure for the history of
divisions of the Book, according to the principle
just stated, are indicated
by the formula: “These are the generations
of....” The following tabular
view of these successive sections will afford
an idea of the wide range of
topics comprehended in the First Book of Moses:
·
Section
1. The beginning - Genesis
1:1-2:3
·
Section
2. The generations of the heavens
and the earth - Genesis 2:4-4:26
·
Section
3. The generations of Adam - Genesis
5:1-6:8
·
Section
4. The generations of Noah - Genesis
6:9-9:29
·
Section
5. The generations of the sons of
Noah - Genesis 10:1-11:9
·
Section
6. The generations of Shem - Genesis
11:10-26
·
Section
7. The generations of Terah Genesis 11:27-25:11
·
Section
8. The generations of Ishmael <012512>Genesis 25:12-18
·
Section
9. The generations of Isaac Genesis
25:19-35:29
·
Section
10. The generations of Esau Genesis
36:1- 37:1
·
Section
11. The generations of Jacob Genesis
37:2 - 50:26
§ 2. ITS SOURCES AND AUTHORSHIP.
1.
Its sources of information. That writings of an earlier period may
have
been employed in the compilation of the present
narrative, however
alarming the idea was when first propounded, and
notwithstanding the fact
that it is still frequently advanced in a
hostile spirit, is now seen to be a
comparatively innocuous hypothesis, at least when
considered in itself.
That the author of the Book of Origins
should have availed himself of preexisting
materials in the composition of his great historical
work seems no
more an unreasonable suggestion than that the
four evangelists should have
drawn upon already circulating memoirs of our
Lord’s life and work in the
construction of their respective Gospels. Nor does any
sober critic or
intelligent student of the Bible now believe that such
a supposition is fatal
to the claims either of the Pentateuch and
the Gospels to be received as
canonical Scriptures, or of their writers to be
regarded as inspired teachers.
Accordingly, the documentary hypothesis, as
it is now familiarly styled,
counts among its supporters not a few of those
who maintain the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, and therefore of
Genesis, as well as the vast
majority, if not all, of those by whom that
authorship is assailed. The germ
of the theory appears to have suggested
itself so early as the seventeenth
century to Hobbes, who wrote in his ‘Leviathan’ “that
the Pentateuch
seems to have been written rather about than by
Moses” (“Videtur
Pentatcuchus potius de Mosequam a Mose scriptus”), though doubtless it
was based upon originals from his hand. About
the beginning of the eighteenth
century Vitriuga, in his
‘Observationes Sacrae,’
propounded the view that Moses
had employed sketches written by the patriarchs:“Schedas et scrinia Patrum
(or ὑπομνήματα - hupomnaemata - a public record - Patriarcharum) apud
Israelitas conservata Mosen opinamur, collegisse, digessisse, ornasse, et
ubi deficiebant compilasse, et exiis priorem librorum suorum confecisse.”
Plausible and probable as this conjecture
was, it seems to have attracted
little attention to the subject of the
composition of the Book of Genesis
beyond causing written sources to be assumed by one
or two subsequent
writers, such as Clericus
and Richard Simon. In 1753 the well-known
theory of two principal documents, an Elohistic and a Jehovistic, was
broached by Astruc, a
Parisian doctor and professor of medicine, who
believed ten additional but smaller memoirs to have
been also employed by
Moses. A few years later (1780)
substantially the same view was espoused
and recommended to public favor by the German
scholar Eichhorn. In the
hands of Ilgen (1798)
and his follower Hupfeld (1853) the two original or
primary documents were subdivided into three, a
first Elohist, a second
Elohist, and a Jehovist,
all of which were manipulated and pieced together
by an editor or redactor. In 1815 Yater, and in 1818 Hartmann,
adopted
the idea that the Pentateuch, and in
particular Genesis, was composed of a
number of disconnected fragments; but this was so
obviously erroneous
that in due time (1830) it was followed by the
supplementary hypothesis of
De Wette, Bleek, Stahelin, Tuch, Lengerke, Knobel, Bunsen, Delitzsch,
and others, which recognized two documents, of
which the older and the
principal, that of the Elohist,
was a continuous narrative, extending from
the creation to the close of the conquest as
recorded in the Book of
Joshua; while the other, that of the Jehovist, was the work of a later writer,
who made use of the earlier as the foundation
of his composition. The
latest form of the theory is that of Ewald, who claims for the Great Book
of Origins at least seven different authors
(thus reducing the Pentateuch, as
Keil observes, into atoms), and assigns the
Book of Genesis, in its present
state, to an author whom he designates as “the
fourth or fifth narrator of
original history,” who must have lived in the
eighth century in the kingdom
of
§ 3. ITS METHOD AND PURPOSE.
1.
Its method. On this point, after what already has been
written (vid. p.
1.), a few words will suffice. The most
cursory reader of the Book of
Genesis cannot fail to discern that, so far
from its being open to the charge
of incoherency and want of arrangement which
has been brought against it
by some of its less scrupulous assailants, it
is all through constructed on a
simple, perfectly intelligible, and
well-sustained plan. After
the initial
section, in which the sublime program of the Divine
cosmogony is
unfolded, it divides itself into ten successive books,
in each of which the
story of human history is advanced a stage, till the
period of the first
captivity is reached. While possessing to each other the very closest of
relations as parts of the same connected
composition, it is observable that
these successive subdivisions have the
appearance of being each in itself a
complete piece or monograph on the subject to which
it relates. The cause
of this, however, is not that each has been a
separate document prepared
without relation to the others, possibly at a
different time and by a different
hand, as is so commonly suggested; it rather
seems attributable to the
peculiar genius of Hebrew composition, which, being
governed less by
logo than by dramatic interest, advances more
by sketching tableaux of
events and scenes than by presenting a detailed
narration of each historical
incident exactly in its proper time and place. A
remembrance of this will go
far to account for the appearance of
repetition and prolixity which in some
parts the narrative exhibits. Then it is
deserving of attention that, while
treating of the fortunes of the human race, the
record, almost instantly on
starting, confines its regards, in the earlier
portion, to one particular section
(the line of
Seth), and, in the later, to one particular family (the children of
Abraham, in the line of Isaac and Jacob),
and deals with the other branches
of the human family only in so far as they
are needful to elucidate the story
of the chosen seed. And still further it is
noticeable that, in the elaboration
of his plan, the author is always careful to
keep the reader’s eye fixed upon
the special line whose fortunes he has set
himself to trace, by dismissing at
the outset of each section with a brief notice
those collateral branches, that
nothing may afterwards arise to divide the
interest with the holy seed, and
the narrative may flow on uninterruptedly in
the recital of their story. “The
materials of the history,” writes Keil, “are arranged and distributed
according to the law of Divine selection; the families
which branched off
from the main line are noticed first of all; and when
they have been
removed from the general scope of the history, the course
of the main line
is more elaborately described, and the history
itself is carried forward.
According to this plan, which is strictly
adhered to, the history of Cain and
his family precedes that of Seth and his
posterity; the genealogies of
Japheth and Ham stand before that of Shem;
the histories of Ishmael and
Esau before those of Isaac and Jacob; and
the death of Terah before the
call and migration of Abraham to
composition,” he further adds, “the Book of Genesis
may be clearly seen to
be the careful production of one single
author, who looked at the historical
development of the human race in
the light of Divine revelation, and thus
exhibited it as a complete and
well-arranged introduction to the history of
the Old Testament
2.
Its purpose. Consideration of the plan naturally leads
to an examination
of the purpose of the Book. And here it is at
once obvious that Genesis
was not designed to be a universal history of
mankind. But just as little was
it written (by a post-Mosaic author) with the
special view of glorifying
Judaism by tracing back
the roots of its institutions to a hoary antiquity. It
had indeed an aim which may be said to have
been Jewish, but it had also a
design which was cosmopolitan. As an integral
part of the Pentateuch, it
was intended to unfold the necessity and
nature of the new economy which
was about to be established; to show how the
theocratic institutions of
salvation had been rendered indispensable in
consequence of the fall and
the entire corruption of the race so signally
punished by the Deluge, and
again so strikingly displayed by the
tower-builders of
clear that they were not a new departure on the
part of God in His efforts at
redemption, but only a further development of the
line He had pursued from
the beginning. As the opening volume of revelation in which
the history of
salvation was to be
recorded, it was designed to exhibit the primeval
condition of the human
race, with its melancholy lapse into sin which first
of all rendered
salvation necessary, and to disclose the initial movements of
that Divine grace
which ever since had been working for man’s restoration,
and of which the
theocracy in
while the Book of Genesis could not fail to be
possessed of undying
interest to every member of the
writing of transcendent value and paramount importance to
every scion of
the human race, containing as it does the only
authentic information which
has ever yet reached the world of the original
dignity of mankind, and of
the conditions under which it commenced its career on
earth; the only
satisfactory explanation which
has ever yet been given of the estate of sin
and misery in which,
alas, it all too plainly finds itself today, and the only
sufficient gospel of salvation that has ever yet been recommended
to its
attention and acceptance