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THE PRELUDE TO ISRAEL'S HISTORY

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF GENESIS

SUBMITTED TO

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

OT6313 GENESIS

BY ROSIE LEWIS

OCTOBER 21, 2013

Term paper example; used with permission

THE PRELUDE TO ISRAEL'S HISTORY

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF GENESIS

The book of Genesis derives its name from the LXX title Γενέσεως. The Hebrew Bible named

the book after the first word, ּבראשית. Originally, the book of Genesis was written for Israel, to

teach them about where they came from as a nation.1 Further, the book informs the people that

the God of Israel was not merely the god of an obscure Semitic nation that had come out of

Egypt and was headed for the Levant. Rather, Yahweh was the god of all nations and the god

who made the whole world. This paper will briefly discuss the authorship of Genesis, the

structure of the book, and several selected theological themes.

Authorship / Composition

Prior to the eighteenth century, Moses had traditionally been recognized as the author of

Genesis.2 This reasoning is not based on the internal claims of the book, since there is no

mention of Moses in the book of Genesis itself. Rather, this traditional understanding of

authorship is based on Genesis' association with the rest of the Pentateuch, which is frequently

attributed to Moses.

1 Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (WBC 1; Waco: Word Books, 1987), xxii, comments that, "This helps

to put Genesis into perspective. It does not stand on its own, but rather contains essential background for

understanding those events which constituted the nation of Israel as the LORD's covenant people… It is also

essentially preparatory in function and puts the patriarchs into their cosmic context. The God who called Abraham

was no local divinity but the creator of the whole universe."

2 Mishna Pirkei Avos 1.1; Talmud Baba Batrha 14b; Philo De Vita Moses Book III; Josephus Antiquities

IV 8.48. Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 11-12,

writes that, "For almost eighteen hundred years… hardly anyone questioned the unity of Genesis, whether the

writers were the rabbinical scholars of Judaism or the ecclesiastical scholars of Christendom. Thus a Maimonides

within Judaism, an Augustine within Catholicism, and a Calvin within Protestantism shared no disagreement on the

point of Genesis' origin and composition. For all of them, Genesis was a unified work, and more specifically, the

work of Moses."

The case for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch proceeds on three grounds.3 First, there

are several passages in the Pentateuch itself where Moses is told to write something (Exod.

17:14; 24:4; 34:27; Num. 33:1-2; Deut. 31:9).4 Second, the remainder of the OT attributes the

law largely to Moses (Josh. 1:7-9; 8:31-32; 1 Kgs. 2:3; 2 Kgs. 14:6; 21:8; Ezra 6:18; 2 Chr. 25:4

Neh. 13:1; Dan. 9:11-13; Mal. 4:4). Third, the New Testament not only affirms Mosaic

authorship, but also assumes it (Matt. 19:7-8; 22:24; Mark 7:10; 12:26; Luke 2:22-24; John 1:17;

5:45-47; 7:19-23; Acts 3:22; Rom. 10:5).5 Jesus particularly states that while Moses gave the

people circumcision, it was really the "fathers" that gave it, which seems to presuppose material

(written or oral) that actually predates Moses.6 Since Jesus affirms that the law came from

Moses, it is appropriate and probably necessary for Christian believers to similarly affirm that

the Pentateuch is largely the product of Mosaic authorship.

The first serious challenges to Mosaic authorship took place in the 1700s. Jean Astruc

was one of the first to suggest that Moses compiled Genesis from a combination of sources,

distinguished by the names they used for God.7 J. G. Eichhorn adapted Astruc's views and

3 These three lines of argumentation are cited in Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament

Introduction: Revised and Expanded (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 94; Raymond B. Dillard and Tremper

Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 39.

4 The mention of Moses writing something does not really prove that Moses wrote every word in the

Pentateuch, since it is redundant for Moses to write, "Moses wrote the words in a book." Ephraim A. Speiser,

Genesis (AB 1; Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), xviii-xix, is correct in stating that, "This particular statement [Deut.

31:9] points either to the portions of Deuteronomy that precede, as most moderns assume, or to the poetic sections

which follow, as some scholars believe. In neither event could the Pentateuch as a whole be at issue."

5 Obviously, this third argument would only have persuasive force for Christians who assign authoritative

weight to the statements of Jesus, and would likely not have much impact on the conclusions of modernist /

naturalist scholars.

6 "Because of this, Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but it is from the fathers), and

on the Sabbath you circumcise a man" (John 7:20).

7 Astruc's work Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux don’t il parait que Moyse s’est servi pour compser

le livre de Genèse was published in 1753, but is inaccessible to me since it is in French. I am reliant on the citations

in Hamilton, NICOT, 12 for this information.

created additional criteria for delineating sources, such as differences in style.8 These ideas

became firmly cemented into the scholarly realm with the monumental work of Julius

Wellhausen, who attempted to demonstrate that the OT as it presently exists was largely the

product of post-exilic redaction and editing of pre-existing materials.9 While there are probably

few left who hold to Wellhausen's exact model in its original form, he has nevertheless built the

presuppositions and the framework around which much of modernist OT criticism has thrived.

This documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch's composition argues that the Torah is

composed of four sources: J ("Jahwist") a Southern Kingdom source characterized by frequent

use of the name Yahweh for God, E ("Elohist") a Northern Kingdom source that favors "Elohim"

as a name for God, D ("Deuteronomist"), a work usually considered to be the product of Josiah's

religious reforms, and P ("Priestly source"), the product of Jewish priests during the exile in

Babylon. Since the Deuteronomist is largely considered limited to Deuteronomy, only J, E, and P

are relevant to the discussion on Genesis. The sources are distinguished by differing names for

God,10 doubled or tripled material,11 differences in style or distinctive theology,12 literary

8 Eichhorn's work, Enleitung in das Alte Testament, 3 Vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1780-1783), is similarly

inaccessible to me, since I do not have the necessary German facility. I am reliant on Hamilton, NICOT, 13 for this

information.

9 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegommena to the History of Ancient Israel: The Classic and Original Statement of

the Theory of "Higher Criticism" of the Old Testament (trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies; Cleveland:

World Publishing Company, 1961), was originally published in German in 1878. He states on page 2 that, "the pre-

exilic portion of the Old Testament amounts in bulk to little more than the half of the entire volume. All the rest

belongs to the later period, and it includes not merely the feeble after-growths of a failing vegetation, but also

productions of the vigour and originality of Isa. xl.-lxvi. and Ps. lxxiii."

10 "Yahweh" and "Elohim" are the two usually singled out.

11 Examples include the two creation accounts, two flood accounts, multiple promises to Abraham, three

instances of Abraham (or Isaac) lying that his wife is really his sister, two banishments of Hagar, two name changes

for Jacob, etc.

12 The P source is viewed as more formal or legalistic, while the J source is viewed as simpler and more

relational. Similarly, the J source has God interacting with man directly, while the E source has God communicating

to man via dreams and visions.

anachronisms,13 and the usage of "late" Hebrew words in the early material.14 These sources

were later compiled together by a redactor to form what is now known as the Pentateuch.

The Documentary Hypothesis was widely accepted by liberal-critical scholars throughout

the bulk of the 20th century,15 while conservative writers largely rejected it.16 Other writers

continued to add to it or modify it, but its core assumptions remained the same. Hermann

Gunkel's work, originally published in German in 1901, argued for the antiquity of the Genesis

material, largely bound up in oral tradition.17 However, Gunkel regarded most of this material as

fanciful legend rather than history, claiming that, "Genesis reports many things that contradict

our advanced knowledge."18 Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth both build on the work of Gunkel by

examining not only the oral traditions, but also the various forms into which they were

13 Some of the material in Genesis requires knowledge of information that postdates the Pentateuch by a

considerable amount of time, such as the mention of Dan (14:14), or the mention of Edomite and Israelite kings

(36:31-39).

14 Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch, 130, correctly notes that, "Too much reliance was placed, in

view of our relative ignorance of the history of the Hebrew language, on differences of language and style."

15 John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1910),

xlii, writes, "That the Book of Genesis is a composite work is now so generally recognised that it would be hard to

name a writer of importance who denies it." Speiser, AB, xix, writing nearly a half-century later, recycles the same

viewpoint. "The five books as we now have them contain many instances of duplication, inconsistencies, and mutual

contradictions, aside from manifest stylistic disparities. In a collective work, however, all such irregularities become

self-explanatory, once they are viewed as the natural result of various traditions and different individual styles and

approaches."

16 William Henry Green, The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

1898); John William McGarvey, Short Essays in Biblical Criticism (Cincinnati: The Standard Publishing Company,

1910); Robert Dick Wilson, A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Sunday School Times

Company, 1926); Oswald T. Allis, The Five Books of Moses: A Reexamination of the Modern Literary Theory that

the Pentateuch is a Late Compilation from Diverse and Conflicting Sources by Authors and Editors Whose Identity

is Completely Unknown (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1949); Merrill F. Unger,

Introductory Guide to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1951), 213-276; Edward J. Young, An

Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1965), 45-46.

17 Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997).

18 Ibid, ix. Hamilton, NICOT, 18, comments that, "for Gunkel great antiquity and facticity had nothing to

do with each other. This is one reason why the conservative movement in OT scholarship has never been enamored

of Gunkel, and even less of his Genesis study (where historical concerns are paramount) than with his work on

Psalms (where historical concerns are meager)."

structured, in an attempt to create a "pre-literary" history of the text.19 In 1987, Whybray

challenged several of these assumptions by demonstrating that supplementary or fragmentary

models were more convincing than the documentary model.20

In spite of all of these shifts, much discussion on the origin of the Pentateuch is still

heavily reliant on Wellhausian assumptions and terminology, even if Wellhausen's hypothesis

has largely been discarded. The notion that such delineations between various sources and

contributors have been correctly identified in spite of the general lack of almost any kind of

primitive citation is largely questionable.21 Most of the criteria for distinguishing sources fails to

convince, and archaeological discovery has failed to yield convincing evidence than any ancient

document was ever compiled in this documentary fashion.

Of course, even if Moses is the primary author of the Pentateuch, he does not have to be

its only author.22 Even if one attributes the work largely to Moses, some of the literary

19 Albrecht Alt, "The Origins of Israelite Law," in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. R.

A. Wilson; Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (trans. Bernhard W.

Anderson; Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972).

20 R. N. Whybray, The Making of the Pentateuch (JSOTSup 53; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,

1987). The "documentary" model was the prevailing critical view since Wellhausen, suggesting that the Pentateuch

is the awkward joining and compilation of several existing documents. The "fragmentary" model is the same as the

documentary model, except that instead of utilizing four (or more) independent sources, the Pentateuch is simply a

collection of fragments. See Rolf Rendtorff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 1986), 77-128; The "supplementary" model, (which I find most convincing), holds that the

Pentateuch was originally a single document, that was supplemented with additional other materials at a later date.

See John Van Seters, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster / John

Knox Press, 1992); Gordon J. Wenham, "Genesis: An Authorship Study and Current Pentateuchal Criticism," JSOT

42 (1988): 3-18.

21 On this point, I agree with Wenham, WBC, xxxviii, who writes, "That Genesis makes uses of multiple

sources is doubtless true, but it is much more difficult to be very specific about where one source ends and another

source or editor begins."

22 On this point, I agree with Peter Enns, "William Henry Green and the Authorship of the Pentateuch:

Some Historical Considerations," JETS 45 no.3 (2002), 402, who suggests that, "a more proper line of inquiry would

be to speak of mosaic origin of the Pentateuch rather than mosaic authorship." Again, Young, Introduction to the

Old Testament, 45, writes, "When we affirm that Moses wrote, or that he was the author of, the Pentateuch, we do

not mean that he himself necessarily wrote every word. To insist upon this would be unreasonable. Hammurabi was

the author of his famous code, but he certainly did not engrave it himself upon the stele. Our Lord was the author of

the Sermon upon the Mount, but He did not write it Himself."

anachronisms in the Pentateuch strongly suggest that Moses' hands were not the last to touch the

material. Deuteronomy 34 for instance, mentions Moses’ death, and dead people aren't really

known for their writing ability.23

Similarly, Genesis itself contains several statements that suggest a posthumous editing.

Genesis 12:6 for instance contains the narrator's comment that, “The Canaanite was then in the

land.” This comment seems to imply that at the time of the book's final form, the Canaanite was

not in the land anymore. Since the Canaanites were not dispossessed until after the death of

Moses, and since their removal from the land took several centuries, this suggests that book has

undergone at least some kind of minor historical update.

While describing Abram's defeat of Chedorlaomer's coalition of kings, the text states that,

"When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he led out his trained men, born in

his house, three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan" (Gen. 14:14). The name

Dan is anachronistic.24 Dan was a city at the northern extremity of what would later become

Israel, but the city did not receive its name until Laish was captured by the Danites (Jdg. 18:29).

Not only had the city of Dan not been named at this time, but the person whom the city was

23 Josephus Antiquities IV 8.48 argues that Moses wrote his death account beforehand so that the people

would not speculate about him ascending to heaven. For a more recent attempt to defend Mosaic authorship of

Deuteronomy 34, see William D. Barrick, "The Authorship of Deuteronomy 34: Moses or Redactor?" (paper

presented at the Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting, Sun Valley, California, November 14-16, 2001).

Barrick's main constructive argument comes from minute verbal parallels, coupled with accusations of anti-

supernaturalistic biases and compromises among evangelicals. Theoretically of course, the Holy Spirit could have

forced Moses to write this out his death account beforehand by some kind of dictated inspiration, since God can do anything He wants. However, the question under discussion is not what God is capable of doing, but what God

actually did. Further, if Moses wrote his own death account, then the statement in Deuteronomy 34:10-12 becomes

entirely nonsensical. It must essentially read: "Since the time of my death [which has not happened yet], until now

[the time before my death], there has not risen a prophet like me who knew the Lord face to face." 34:10-12

indicates that Moses is dead when it is written, and that enough time has passed to be able to make a statement

prefaced with the clause "since that time." To argue otherwise in the interests of sustaining an implausible view of

inspiration is to argue for a level of deception on God's part that is inconsistent with His character elsewhere.

24 This is contrary to the opinion of J. Noel Merideth, "Introduction to the Book of Genesis," in A Homiletic

Commentary on the Book of Genesis, (ed. Garland Elkins and Thomas B. Warren; Lebanon: Sain Publications,

1985), 7, who incorrectly infers the existence of a "Dan" in Gilead based on a misreading of Deuteronomy 34:1; 2

Samuel 24:6.

named after had not even been born yet at the time of Abram. In describing the kings of Edom,

the narrator makes the comment that this took place, “before any king reigned over the sons of

Israel” (Gen. 36:31). Since Israel did not have kings until the days of Saul (excepting

Abimelech), almost 500 years would have had to elapse from the time of Moses before such a

comment was made.25

Again, these examples do not deny Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Rather, these

examples hint that authorship cannot be limited to Moses. The present form of the book of

Genesis has almost certainly undergone some kind of updating to get it into its present form.26 If

the Bible is to be believed, the process of updating seems to have actually been fairly

commonplace in Old Testament books. Jeremiah appears to have delegated some of the writings

in his prophecy to his scribe Baruch. Samuel certainly did not write the book that bears his name,

since he dies in 1 Samuel 25:1. The book of Psalms continues to include Psalms of David after

the statement, "The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended" (Psa. 72:20). Proverbs similarly

includes an editorial comment that, "These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of

Hezekiah, king of Judah, transcribed" (Prov. 25:1).

These facts should not be troubling to those who hold a high view of inspiration, unless

one's view of inspiration is that human authorship must be sole authorship.27 There is nothing in

25 Of course, one could theoretically argue that Moses "knew by inspiration that the descendents of Israel

were destined to have kings in the course of time," as suggested by Merideth, "Introduction," 7. However, as was the

case with Deuteronomy 34, the issue is not what Moses "could" have written, but rather what he did. While it is

impossible to be dogmatic, the comment in Genesis 36 seems at best awkward unless written from a post-monarchy

perspective.

26 Granted, without a paper trail of some sort, it is virtually impossible to detail the editorial processes that

led to the final form of the text. The discussions of the Pentateuch's redaction yield little exegetical or literary

insight, since all of their conclusions are built on minimalistic evidence. It is thankful that the focus in recent years has been on interpreting the final form of the Biblical text (i.e. "canonical criticism"), rather than on trying to discern

previous drafts or editions for which there is no solid evidence.

27 For instance, David W. Hester, "The Inspiration of Scripture" (Handout received in Critical Introduction

to the New Testament with Professor David W. Hester, Montgomery, Alabama, August 27, 2012), lists one of the

Scripture to indicate that a specific human author is necessary for inspiration to work. Many

books of the bible have completely anonymous authors (Judges, Kings, Chronicles, Job, etc.) Far

more important than defending the human author is recognizing the true Author of all things as

God.

literary characteristics of inspired Scripture as "perfection," and states that, "no updating is ever done by the biblical

writers to what was written before; no corrections or modification." The problem with this view on inspiration (aside

from its total absence of evidence from the Scripture itself) is that it actually places human limitations on God,

claiming the he must act only in the ways that his readers imagine, and ignoring the possibility that he can work

through editors as surely as he can work through writers. On this point, I would agree in principle with the

observation of Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books,

1966), xxiv, who states that, "Is it not to circumscribe the power of God in a most extraordinary manner to assume

that the Divine can only work effectively through the medium of a single document, but not through four? Surely

God can as well unfold His revelation in successive stages as in a single moment of time." good, reasonable

assessment (as throughout)