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.