Genesis

John D. Currid

INTRODUCTION

The name of the first book of the Hebrew Bible derives from the opening word of the Hebrew text, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. This word means "in the beginning," and it is an appropriate designation because the book is about beginnings: the beginning of the universe; the beginning of time, matter, and space; the beginning of humanity; the beginning of sin; the beginning of redemption; and the beginning of Israel. By deliberating over Genesis, then, we are essentially engaging in protology, the study of first things. That the cosmos has a beginning implies that it also has an end and that everything is moving toward a consummation (the study of these last things is called eschatology). The Scriptures, therefore, present a linear history, a movement from inception to completion.

Scholars have commonly tried to distinguish between this Hebraic view of history and that of other ancient Near Eastern cultures. Many have argued that the pagan cultures of the time believed in a cyclical history, teaching that nature is locked in an unending sequence of birth, life, death, and rebirth. And therefore, the world is heading nowhere; it is merely in a ceaseless, natural cycle. In reality, that contrast is too simplistic. The ancients were actually quite aware of history, which the great volume of historical records these peoples kept confirms. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians were skilled and proficient in preserving historical documents, annals, and chronologies. The contrast between the two conceptions of the universe really boils down to the question of what is the foundation of history. The Hebrews had a worldview that centered on God as the Lord and overseer of history. Everything that happens in the cosmos unfolds according to God's plan; he is the One who moves history from a beginning toward a final climax (Isa. 41:4; 43:1–15; 44:6; 48:12). He is sovereign and sits on the throne of history. The other cultures of the ancient Near East had no such theological conception.

BACKGROUND ISSUES

Authorship

For the past 150 years, the question of the formation and development of the book of Genesis, and the rest of the Pentateuch for that matter, has dominated Old Testament studies. Inquiries into authorship, date of writing, and place of writing have stood at the very forefront of Old Testament scholarship. Although people have asked such questions throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity, perhaps the first to struggle seriously with the issues was Jean Astruc (AD 1684–1766), a professor of medicine at the University of Paris. Astruc determined that someone brought together four original documents to make up the Pentateuch. He noticed that certain names for God dominated different parts of the literature, and this became one factor in determining what belonged to which source. He also believed that doublets — that is, a second telling of the same incident — demonstrated different sources. Although Astruc likely believed that Moses was the author of each of the four sources, his studies laid the foundation for the biblical criticism that would soon follow.

So what started the belief that Genesis was the writing of not one person but rather various authors whose sources redactors (i.e., editors) stitched together over time? Perhaps the most important impetus for this notion was the thinking not of a biblical scholar but of a philosopher. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) formed an influential worldview that argued that all things in reality are changing or in process. Everything is developing from lower to higher degrees of perfection. This process occurs by means of the dialectic that moves things from one state (thesis) to its opposite (antithesis) and finally achieves a higher synthesis between the two. It repeats itself so that higher states of existence come into being. This is a natural process that affects all areas of life: culture, social systems, political systems, biology, economics, and religion. It is an evolutionary view of existence.

One of Hegel's colleagues, a biblical scholar named Wilhelm Vatke (1806–1882), took and applied Hegel's philosophy to the study of the Old Testament and, in particular, to the formation of the Pentateuch. This marked a major turning point because "the application of Hegelian philosophy to the study of the Old Testament led to [Julius] Wellhausen's [1844–1918] establishment of the modern Documentary Hypothesis of the Pentateuch and eventually to the death of Old Testament theology." Building upon these foundational presuppositions of Astruc, Hegel, and others, subsequent biblical scholars theorized that the Pentateuch was indeed a collation of numerous sources brought together by later editors. However, they did not agree on the sources and how they were collated. For example, those who adhere to the Supplementary Hypothesis argue that there was one core document of the Pentateuch to which redactors added numerous fragments over the centuries. On the other hand, others argue that the Pentateuch lacks a core document altogether and consists merely of a mass of fragments from numerous sources that have been collated and edited (this is called the Fragmentary Hypothesis).

The major source theory developed in the nineteenth century was the Graf-Wellhausen Theory, otherwise known as the Documentary Hypothesis. This theory proposed four basic sources for the Pentateuch, referred to as J, E, D, and P:

1. J is the Jahwist (or Yahwist) source. This is a source that primarily uses the name Jehovah (that is, Yahweh) to refer to God. The J source is considered the oldest source, and it can be viewed in Genesis 2:4–4:26, and in portions of Exodus and Numbers. The originators of the hypothesis thought that it had been derived from the period of the united monarchy during the reigns of David and Solomon.

2. E is the Elohist source. It employs the...