A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis

§ 5. Preservation and collection of the traditions.

In all popular narration the natural unit is the short story, which does not too severely tax the attention of a simple audience, and which retains its outline and features unchanged as it passes from mouth to mouth.¹ A large part of the Book of Genesis consists of narratives of this description,—single tales, of varying length but mostly very short, each complete in itself, with a clear beginning and a satisfying conclusion. As we read the book, unities of this kind detach themselves from their context, and round themselves into independent wholes; and it is only by studying them in their isolation, and each in its own light, that we can fully appreciate their charm and understand, in some measure, the circumstances of their origin. The older stratum of the primæval history, and of the history of Abraham, is almost entirely composed of single incidents of this kind: think of the story of the Fall, of Cain and Abel, of Noah’s drunkenness, of the Tower of Babel; and again of Abraham in Egypt, of the flight or expulsion of Hagar, of the sacrifice of Isaac, etc., etc. When we pass the middle of the book, the mode of narration begins to change. The biography of Jacob is much more a consecutive narrative than that of Abraham; but even here the separate scenes stand out in their original distinctness of outline (e.g. the transference of the birthright, Jacob at Bethel, the meeting with Rachel at the well, the wrestling at Peniel, the outrage on Dinah, etc.). It is not till we come to the history of Joseph that the principle of biographical continuity gains the upper hand. Joseph’s story is, indeed, made up of a number of incidents; but they are made to merge into one another, so that each derives its interest from its relation to the whole, and ends (except the last) on a note of suspense and expectation rather than of rest. This no doubt is due to the greater popularity and more frequent repetition of the stories of Jacob and Joseph; but at the same time it bears witness to a considerable development of the art of story-telling, and one in which we cannot but detect some degree of professional aptitude and activity.

The short stories of Genesis, even those of the most elementary type, are exquisite works of art, almost as unique and perfect in their own kind as the parables of our Lord are in theirs. They are certainly not random productions of fireside gossip, but bear the unmistakable stamp of individual genius (Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt page xxx). Now, between the inception of the legends (which is already at some distance from the traditional facts) and the written form in which they lie before us, there stretches an interval which is perhaps in some instances to be measured by centuries. Hence two questions arise: (1) What was the fate of the stories during this interval? Were they cast adrift on the stream of popular talk,—with nothing to secure their preservation save the perfection of their original form,—and afterwards collected from the lips of the people? Or were they taken in hand from the first by a special class of men who made it their business to conserve the integrity of the narratives, and under whose auspices the mass of traditional material was gradually welded into its present shape? And (2), how is this whole process of transmission and consolidation related to the use of writing? Was the work of collecting and systematising the traditions primarily a literary one, or had it already commenced at the stage of oral narration?

To such questions, of course, no final answers can be given. (1) It is not possible to discriminate accurately between the modifications which a narrative would undergo through constant repetition, and changes deliberately made by responsible persons. On the whole, the balance of presumption seems to us to incline towards the hypothesis of professional oversight of some sort, exercised from a very early time. On this assumption, too, we can best understand the formation of legendary cycles; for it is evident that no effective grouping of tradition could take place in the course of promiscuous popular recital. (2) As to the use of writing, it is natural to suppose that it came in first of all as an aid to the memory of the narrator, and that as a knowledge of literature extended the practice of oral recitation gradually died out, and left the written record in sole possession of the field. In this way we may imagine that books would be formed, which would be handed down from father to son, annotated, expanded, revised, and copied; and so collections resembling our oldest pentateuchal documents might come into existence.¹

Here we come upon one important fact which affords some guidance in the midst of these speculations. The bulk of the Genesis-tradition lies before us in two closely parallel and practically contemporaneous recensions (see page xliii ff. below). Since there is every reason to believe that these recensions were made independently of each other, it follows that the early traditions had been codified, and a sort of national epos had taken shape, prior to the compilation of these documents. When we find, further, that each of them contains evidence of earlier collections and older strata of tradition, we must assume a very considerable period of time to have elapsed between the formation of a fixed corpus of tradition and the composition of Yahwist and Elohist. Beyond this, however, we are in the region of vaguest conjecture. We cannot tell for certain what kind of authority had presided over the combination of the legends, nor whether it was first done in the oral or the literary stage of translation. We may think of the priesthoods of the leading sanctuaries as the natural custodians of the tradition:¹ the sanctuaries were at least the obvious repositories of the cult-legends pertaining to them. But we cannot indicate any sanctuary of such outstanding national importance as to be plausibly regarded as the centre of a national epic.² Or we may assign a conspicuous share in the work to the prophetic guilds which, in the time of Samuel, were foci of enthusiasm for the national cause, and might conceivably have devoted themselves to the propagation of the national tradition. Or, finally, we may assume, with Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt, that there existed in Israel, as among the Arabs, guilds of professional story-tellers, exercising their vocation at public festivals and such like gatherings, for the entertainment and instruction of the people. The one certainty is that a considerable time must be allowed for the complex mental activities which lie behind our earliest literary sources. It is true that the rise of a national epos presupposes a strongly developed consciousness of national unity; but in Israel the national ideal was much older than its realisation in the form of a state, and therefore we have no reason for placing the unification of the traditions later than the founding of the monarchy. From the age of Samuel at least all the essential conditions were present; and a lower limit than that will hardly meet the requirements of the case.

We may here refer to a matter of great importance in its bearing on the possibility of accurate oral transmission of the legends: viz. the recent effort of Sievers (Metrische Studien, ii., 1904–5) to resolve the whole of Genesis into verse. If his theory should be established, it would not merely furnish the most potent instrument of literary analysis conceivable, but it would render credible a very high degree of verbal exactitude during the period of unwritten tradition. The work of Sievers is viewed with qualified approval both by Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt (page xxix f.) and Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch: die Elohimquelle (210 ff.), and it is certain to evoke interesting discussion. The present writer, who is anything but a ‘Metriker von Fach,’ does not feel competent to pronounce an opinion on its merits. Neither reading aloud, nor counting of syllables, has convinced him that the scansion holds, or that Hebrew rhythm in general is so rigorously exact as the system demands. The prejudice against divorcing poetic form from poetic feeling and diction (of the latter there is no trace in what have been considered the prose parts of Genesis) is not lightly to be overcome; and the frequent want of coincidence between breaks in sense and pauses in rhythm disturbs the mind, besides violating what used to be thought a fundamental feature of Hebrew poetry. Grave misgivings are also raised by the question whether the Massoretic theory of the syllable is (as Sievers assumes) a reliable guide to the pronunciation and rhythm of the early Hebrew language. It seems therefore hazardous to apply the method to the solution of literary problems, whether by emendation of the text, or by disentanglement of sources.