A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis

A. Nature of the Tradition.

§ 2. History or Legend?

The first question that arises with regard to these ‘origins’ is whether they are in the main of the nature of history or of legend,—whether (to use the expressive German terms) they are Geschichte, things that happened, or Sage, things said. There are certain broad differences between these two kinds of narrative which may assist us to determine to which class the traditions of Genesis belong.

History in the technical sense is an authentic record of actual events based on documents contemporary, or nearly contemporary, with the facts narrated. It concerns itself with affairs of state and of public interest,—with the actions of kings and statesmen, civil and foreign wars, national disasters and successes, and such like. If it deals with contemporary incidents, it consciously aims at transmitting to posterity as accurate a reflexion as possible of the real course of events, in their causal sequence, and their relations to time and place. If written at a distance from the events, it seeks to recover from contemporary authorities an exact knowledge of these circumstances, and of the character and motives of the leading personages of the action.—That the Israelites, from a very early period, knew how to write history in this sense, we see from the story of David’s court in 2 Samuel and the beginning of 1 Kings. There we have a graphic and circumstantial narrative of the struggles for the succession to the throne, free from bias or exaggeration, and told with a convincing realism which conveys the impression of first-hand information derived from the evidence of eye-witnesses. As a specimen of pure historical literature (as distinguished from mere annals or chronicles) there is nothing equal to it in antiquity, till we come down to the works of Herodotus and Thucydides in Greece.

Quite different from historical writing of this kind is the Volkssage,—the mass of popular narrative talk about the past, which exists in more or less profusion amongst all races in the world. Every nation, as it emerges into historical consciousness, finds itself in possession of a store of traditional material of this kind, either circulating among the common people, or woven by poets and singers into a picture of a legendary heroic age. Such legends, though they survive the dawn of authentic history, belong essentially to a pre-literary and uncritical stage of society, when the popular imagination works freely on dim reminiscences of the great events and personalities of the past, producing an amalgam in which tradition and phantasy are inseparably mingled. Ultimately they are themselves reduced to writing, and give rise to a species of literature which is frequently mistaken for history, but whose true character will usually disclose itself to a patient and sympathetic examination. While legend is not history, it has in some respects a value greater than history. For it reveals the soul of a people, its instinctive selection of the types of character which represent its moral aspirations, its conception of its own place and mission in the world; and also, to some indeterminate extent, the impact on its inner life of the momentous historic experiences in which it first woke up to the consciousness of a national existence and destiny.¹

In raising the question to which department of literature the narratives of Genesis are to be referred, we approach a subject beset by difficulty, but one which cannot be avoided. We are not entitled to assume a priori that Israel is an exception to the general rule that a legendary age forms the ideal background of history: whether it be so or not must be determined on the evidence of its records. Should it prove to be no exception, we shall not assign to its legends a lower significance as an expression of the national spirit than to the heroic legends of the Greek or Teutonic races. It is no question of the truth or religious value of the book that we are called to discuss, but only of the kind of truth and the particular mode of revelation which we are to find in it. One of the strangest theological prepossessions is that which identifies revealed truth with matter-of-fact accuracy either in science or in history. Legend is after all a species of poetry, and it is hard to see why a revelation which has freely availed itself of so many other kinds of poetry—fable, allegory, parable—should disdain that form of it which is the most influential of all in the life of a primitive people. As a vehicle of religious ideas, poetic narrative possesses obvious advantages over literal history; and the spirit of religion, deeply implanted in the heart of a people, will so permeate and fashion its legendary lore as to make it a plastic expression of the imperishable truths which have come to it through its experience of God.

The legendary aspect of the Genesis traditions appears in such characteristics as these: (1) The narratives are the literary deposit of an oral tradition which, if it rests on any substratum of historic fact, must have been carried down through many centuries. Few will seriously maintain that the patriarchs prepared written memoranda for the information of their descendants; and the narrators nowhere profess their indebtedness to such records. Hebrew historians freely refer to written authorities where they used them (Kings, Chronicles); but no instance of this practice occurs in Genesis. Now oral tradition is the natural vehicle of popular legend, as writing is of history. And all experience shows that apart from written records there is no exact knowledge of a remote past. Making every allowance for the superior retentiveness of the Oriental memory, it is still impossible to suppose that an accurate recollection of bygone incidents should have survived twenty generations or more of oral transmission. Nöldeke, indeed, has shown that the historical memory of the pre-Islamic Arabs was so defective that all knowledge of great nations like the Nabatæans and Thamudites had been lost within two or three centuries.¹ (2) The literary quality of the narratives stamps them as products of the artistic imagination. The very picturesqueness and truth to life which are sometimes appealed to in proof of their historicity are, on the contrary, characteristic marks of legend (Dillmann, 218). We may assume that the scene at the well of Ḥarran (chapte 24) actually took place; but that the description owes its graphic power to a reproduction of the exact words spoken and the precise actions performed on the occasion cannot be supposed; it is due to the revivifying work of the imagination of successive narrators. But imagination, uncontrolled by the critical faculty, does not confine itself to restoring the original colours of a faded picture; it introduces new colours, insensibly modifying the picture till it becomes impossible to tell how much belongs to the real situation and how much to later fancy. The clearest proof of this is the existence of parallel narratives of an event which can only have happened once, but which emerges in tradition in forms so diverse that they may even pass for separate incidents (12^10 ff. ∥ 20^1 ff. ∥ 26^6 ff.; 16. ∥ 21^8 ff.; 15. ∥ 17, etc.).—(3) The subject-matter of the tradition is of the kind congenial to the folk-tale all the world over, and altogether different from transactions on the stage of history. The proper theme of history, as has been said, is great public and political events; but legend delights in genre pictures, private and personal affairs, trivial anecdotes of domestic and everyday life, and so forth,—matters which interest the common people and come home to their daily experience. That most of the stories of Genesis are of this description needs no proof; and the fact is very instructive.² A real history of the patriarchal period would have to tell of migrations of peoples, of religious movements, probably of wars of invasion and conquest; and accordingly most modern attempts to vindicate the historicity of Genesis proceed by way of translating the narratives into such terms as these. But this is to confess that the narratives themselves are not history. They have been simplified and idealised to suit the taste of an unsophisticated audience; and in the process the strictly historic element, down to a bare residuum, has evaporated. The single passage which preserves the ostensible appearance of history in this respect is chapter 14; and that chapter, which in any case stands outside the circle of patriarchal tradition, has difficulties of its own which cannot be dealt with here (see page 271 ff.).—(4) The final test—though to any one who has learned to appreciate the spirit of the narratives it must seem almost brutal to apply it—is the hard matter-of-fact test of self-consistency and credibility. It is not difficult to show that Genesis relates incredibilities which no reasonable appeal to miracle will suffice to remove. With respect to the origin of the world, the antiquity of man on the earth, the distribution and relations of peoples, the beginnings of civilisation, etc., its statements are at variance with the scientific knowledge of our time;³ and no person of educated intelligence accepts them in their plain natural sense. We know that angels do not cohabit with mortal women, that the Flood did not cover the highest mountains of the world, that the ark could not have accommodated all the species of animals then existing, that the Euphrates and Tigris have not a common source, that the Dead Sea was not first formed in the time of Abraham, etc. There is admittedly a great difference in respect of credibility between the primæval (chapters 1–11) and the patriarchal (12–50) traditions. But even the latter, when taken as a whole, yields many impossible situations. Sarah was more than sixty-five years old when Abraham feared that her beauty might endanger his life in Egypt; she was over ninety when the same fear seized him in Gerar. Abraham at the age of ninety-nine laughs at the idea of having a son; yet forty years later he marries and begets children. Both Midian and Ishmael were grand-uncles of Joseph; but their descendants appear as tribes trading with Egypt in his boyhood. Amalek was a grandson of Esau; yet the Amalekites are settled in the Negeb in the time of Abraham.⁴—It is a thankless task to multiply such examples. The contradictions and violations of probability and scientific possibility are intelligible, and not at all disquieting, in a collection of legends; but they preclude the supposition that Genesis is literal history.

It is not implied in what has been said that the tradition is destitute of historical value. History, legendary history, legend, myth, form a descending scale, with decreasing emphasis on the historical element, and the lines between the first three are vague and fluctuating. In what proportions they are combined in Genesis it may be impossible to determine with certainty. But there are three ways in which a tradition mainly legendary may yield solid historical results. In the first place, a legend may embody a more or less exact recollection of the fact in which it originated. In the second place, a legend, though unhistorical in form, may furnish material from which history can be extracted. Thirdly, the collateral evidence of archæology may bring to light a correspondence which gives a historical significance to the legend. How far any of these lines can be followed to a successful issue in the case of Genesis, we shall consider later (§ 4), after we have examined the obviously legendary motives which enter into the tradition. Meanwhile the previous discussion will have served its purpose if any readers have been led to perceive that the religious teaching of Genesis lies precisely in that legendary element whose existence is here maintained. Our chief task is to discover the meaning of the legends as they stand, being assured that from the nature of the case these religious ideas were operative forces in the life of ancient Israel. It is a suicidal error in exegesis to suppose that the permanent value of the book lies in the residuum of historic fact that underlies the poetic and imaginative form of the narratives.¹

§ 3. Myth and legend—Foreign myths—Types of mythical motive.

1. Are there myths in Genesis, as well as legends? On this question there has been all the variety of opinion that might be expected. Some writers, starting with the theory that mythology is a necessary phase of primitive thinking, have found in the Old Testament abundant confirmation of their thesis.¹ The more prevalent view has been that the mythopœic tendency was suppressed in Israel by the genius of its religion, and that mythology in the true sense is unknown in its literature. Others have taken up an intermediate position, denying that the Hebrew mind produced myths of its own, but admitting that it borrowed and adapted those of other peoples. For all practical purposes, the last view seems to be very near the truth.

For attempts to discriminate between myth and legend, see Tuch, pages I–XV; Gunkel, page XVII; Höffding, Philosophy of Religion (Engish translation), 199 ff.; Gordon, 77 ff.; Procksch, Das nordhebräische Sagenbuch, I. etc.—The practically important distinction is that the legend does, and the myth does not, start from the plane of historic fact. The myth is properly a story of the gods, originating in an impression produced on the primitive mind by the more imposing phenomena of nature, while legend attaches itself to the personages and movements of real history. Thus the Flood-story is a legend if Noah be a historical figure, and the kernel of the narrative an actual event; it is a myth if it be based on observation of a solar phenomenon, and Noah a representative of the sun-god (see page 180 f.). But the utility of this distinction is largely neutralised by a universal tendency to transfer mythical traits from gods to real men (Sargon of Agadé, Moses, Alexander, Charlemagne, etc.); so that the most indubitable traces of mythology will not of themselves warrant the conclusion that the hero is not a historical personage.—Gordon differentiates between spontaneous (nature) myths and reflective (ætiological) myths; and, while recognising the existence of the latter in Genesis, considers that the former type is hardly represented in the Old Testament at all. The distinction is important, though it may be doubted if ætiology is ever a primary impulse to the formation of myths, and as a parasitic development it appears to attach itself indifferently to myth and legend. Hence there is a large class of narratives which it is difficult to label either as mythical or as legendary, but in which the ætiological or some similar motive is prominent (see page xi ff.).

2. The influence of foreign mythology is most apparent in the primitive traditions of chapters 1–11. The discovery of the Babylonian versions of the Creation- and Deluge-traditions has put it beyond reasonable doubt that these are the originals from which the biblical accounts have been derived (pages 45 ff., 177 f.). A similar relation obtains between the antediluvian genealogy of chapter 5 and Berossus’s list of the ten Babylonian kings who reigned before the Flood (page 137 f.). The story of Paradise has its nearest analogies in Iranian mythology; but there are faint Babylonian echoes which suggest that it belonged to the common mythological heritage of the East (page 90 ff.). Both here and in chapter 4 a few isolated coincidences with Phœnician tradition may point to the Canaanite civilisation as the medium through which such myths came to the knowledge of the Israelites.—All these (as well as the story of the Tower of Babel) were originally genuine myths—stories of the gods; and if they no longer deserve that appellation, it is because the spirit of Hebrew monotheism has exorcised the polytheistic notions of deity, apart from which true mythology cannot survive. The few passages where the old heathen conception of godhead still appears (1²⁶ 3^22. 24 6^1 ff. 11^1 ff.), only serve to show how completely the religious beliefs of Israel have transformed and purified the crude speculations of pagan theology, and adapted them to the ideas of an ethical and monotheistic faith.

The naturalisation of Babylonian myths in Israel is conceivable in a variety of ways; and the question is perhaps more interesting as an illustration of two rival tendencies in criticism than for its possibilities of actual solution. The tendency of the literary school of critics has been to explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian documents, and to bring it down to near the dates of our written Pentateuch sources.¹ Largely through the influence of Gunkel, a different view has come to prevail, viz., that we are to think rather of a gradual process of assimilation to the religious ideas of Israel in the course of oral transmission, the myths having first passed into Canaanite tradition as the result (immediate or remote) of the Babylonian supremacy prior to the Tell-Amarna period, and thence to the Israelites.² The strongest argument for this theory is that the biblical versions, both of the Creation and the Flood, give evidence of having passed through several stages in Hebrew tradition. Apart from that, the considerations urged in support of either theory do not seem to me conclusive. There are no recognisable traces of a specifically Canaanite medium having been interposed between the Babylonian originals and the Hebrew accounts of the Creation and the Flood, such as we may surmise in the case of the Paradise myth. It is open to argue against Gunkel that if the process had been as protracted as he says, the divergence would be much greater than it actually is. Again, we cannot well set limits to the deliberate manipulation of Babylonian material by a Hebrew writer; and the assumption that such a writer in the later period would have been repelled by the gross polytheism of the Babylonian legends, and refused to have anything to do with them, is a little gratuitous. On the other hand, it is unsafe to assert with Stade that the myths could not have been assimilated by Israelite theology before the belief in Yahwe’s sole deity had been firmly established by the teaching of the prophets. Monotheism had roots in Hebrew antiquity extending much further back than the age of written prophecy, and the present form of the legends is more intelligible as the product of an earlier phase of religion than that of the literary prophets. But when we consider the innumerable channels through which myths may wander from one centre to another, we shall hardly expect to be able to determine the precise channel, or the approximate date, of this infusion of Babylonian elements into the religious tradition of Israel.

It is remarkable that while the patriarchal legends exhibit no traces of Babylonian mythology, they contain a few examples of mythical narrative to which analogies are found in other quarters. The visit of the angels to Abraham (see page 302 f.), and the destruction of Sodom (page 311 f.), are incidents of obviously mythical origin (stories of the gods); and to both, classical and other parallels exist. The account of the births of Esau and Jacob embodies a mythological motive (page 359), which is repeated in the case of Zeraḥ and Pereẓ (chapter 38). The whole story of Jacob and Esau presents several points of contact with that of the brothers Hypsouranios (Šamem-rum) and Usōos in the Phœnician mythology (Usōos = Esau: see pages 360, 124). There appears also to be a Homeric variant of the incest of Reuben (page 427). These phenomena are among the most perplexing which we encounter in the study of Hebrew tradition.¹ We can as yet scarcely conjecture the hidden source from which such widely ramified traditions have sprung, though we may not on that account ignore the existence of the problem. It would be at all events a groundless anticipation that the facts will lead us to resolve the patriarchs into mythological abstractions. They are rather to be explained by the tendency already referred to (page ix), to mingle myth with legend by transferring mythical incidents to historic personages.

3. It remains, before we go on to consider the historical elements of the tradition, to classify the leading types of mythical, or semi-mythical (page ix), motive which appear in the narratives of Genesis. It will be seen that while they undoubtedly detract from the literal historicity of the records, they represent points of view which are of the greatest historical interest, and are absolutely essential to the right interpretation of the legends.¹

(a) The most comprehensive category is that of ætiological or explanatory myths; i.e., those which explain some familiar fact of experience by a story of the olden time. Both the questions asked and the answers returned are frequently of the most naïve and childlike description: they have, as Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt has said, all the charm which belongs to the artless but profound reasoning of an intelligent child. The classical example is the story of Paradise and the Fall in chapters 2, 3, which contains one explicit instance of ætiology (2²⁴: why a man cleaves to his wife), and implicitly a great many more: why we wear clothes and detest snakes, why the serpent crawls on his belly, why the peasant has to drudge in the fields, and the woman to endure the pangs of travail, etc. (page 95). Similarly, the account of creation explains why there are so many kinds of plants and animals, why man is lord of them all, why the sun shines by day and the moon by night, etc.; why the Sabbath is kept. The Flood-story tells us the meaning of the rainbow, and of the regular recurrence of the seasons: the Babel-myth accounts for the existing diversities of language amongst men. Pure examples of ætiology are practically confined to the first eleven chapters; but the same general idea pervades the patriarchal history, specialised under the headings which follow.

(b) The commonest class of all, especially in the patriarchal narratives, is what may be called ethnographic legends. It is an obvious feature of the narratives that the heroes of them are frequently personifications of tribes and peoples, whose character and history and mutual relationships are exhibited under the guise of individual biography. Thus the pre-natal struggle of Jacob and Esau prefigures the rivalry of ‘two nations’ (25²³); the monuments set up by Jacob and Laban mark the frontier between Israelites and Aramæans (31^44 ff.); Ishmael is the prototype of the wild Bedouin (16¹²), and Cain of some ferocious nomad-tribe; Jacob and his twelve sons represent the unity of Israel and its division into twelve tribes; and so on. This mode of thinking was not peculiar to Israel (compare the Hellen, Dorus, Xuthus, Aeolus, Achæus, Ion, of the Greeks);¹ but it is one specially natural to the Semites from their habit of speaking of peoples as sons (i.e. members) of the collective entity denoted by the tribal or national name (sons of Israel, of Ammon, of Ishmael, etc.), whence arose the notion that these entities were the real progenitors of the peoples so designated. That in some cases the representation was correct need not be doubted; for there are known examples, both among the Arabs and other races in a similar stage of social development, of tribes named after a famous ancestor or leader of real historic memory. But that this is the case with all eponymous persons—e.g. that there were really such men as Jerahmeel, Midian, Aram, Sheba, Amalek, and the rest—is quite incredible; and, moreover, it is never true that the fortunes of a tribe are an exact copy of the personal experiences of its reputed ancestor, even if he existed. We must therefore treat these legends as symbolic representations of the ethnological affinities between different tribes or peoples, and (to a less extent) of the historic experiences of these peoples. There is a great danger of driving this interpretation too far, by assigning an ethnological value to details of the legend which never had any such significance; but to this matter we shall have occasion to return at a later point (see page xix ff.).

(c) Next in importance to these ethnographic legends are the cult-legends. A considerable proportion of the patriarchal narratives are designed to explain the sacredness of the principal national sanctuaries, while a few contain notices of the origin of particular ritual customs (circumcision, chapter 17 [but compare Exodus 4^24 ff.]; the abstinence from eating the sciatic nerve, 32³³). To the former class belong such incidents as Hagar at Lahairoi (16), Abraham at the oak of Mamre (18), his planting of the tamarisk at Beersheba (21³³), Jacob at Bethel—with the reason for anointing the sacred stone, and the institution of the tithe—(28^10 ff.), and at Peniel (32^24 ff.); and many more. The general idea is that the places were hallowed by an appearance of the deity in the patriarchal period, or at least by the performance of an act of worship (erection of an altar, etc.) by one of the ancestors of Israel. In reality the sanctity of these spots was in many cases of immemorial antiquity, being rooted in the most primitive forms of Semitic religion; and at times the narrative suffers it to appear that the place was holy before the visit of the patriarch (see on 12⁶). It is probable that inauguration-legends had grown up at the chief sanctuaries while they were still in the possession of the Canaanites. We cannot tell how far such legends were transferred to the Hebrew ancestors, and how far the traditions are of native Israelite growth.

(d) Of much less interest to us is the etymological motive which so frequently appears as a side issue in legends of wider scope. ♦Speculation on the meaning and origin of names is fascinating to all primitive peoples; and in default of a scientific philology the most fantastic explanations are readily accepted. That it was so in ancient Israel could be easily shown from the etymologies of Genesis. Here, again, it is just conceivable that the explanation given may occasionally be correct (though there is hardly a case in which it is plausible); but in the majority of cases the real meaning of the name stands out in palpable contradiction to the alleged account of its origin. Moreover, it is not uncommon to find the same name explained in two different ways (many of Jacob’s sons, chapter 30), or to have as many as three suggestions of its historic origin (Ishmael, 16¹¹ 17²⁰ 21¹⁷; Isaac, 17¹⁷ 18¹² 21⁹). To claim literal accuracy for incidents of this kind is manifestly futile.

(e) There is yet another element which, though not mythical or legendary, belongs to the imaginative side of the legends, and has to be taken account of in interpreting them. This is the element of poetic idealisation. Whenever a character enters the world of legend, whether through the gate of history or through that of ethnographic personification, it is apt to be conceived as a type; and as the story passes from mouth to mouth the typical features are emphasised, while those which have no such significance tend to be effaced or forgotten. Then the dramatic instinct comes into play—the artistic desire to perfect the story as a lifelike picture of human nature in interesting situations and action. To see how far this process may be carried, we have but to compare the conception of Jacob’s sons in the Blessing of Jacob (chapter 49) with their appearance in the younger narratives of Joseph and his brethren. In the former case the sons are tribal personifications, and the characters attributed to them are those of the tribes they represent. In the latter, these characteristics have almost entirely disappeared, and the central interest is now the pathos and tragedy of Hebrew family life. Most of the brothers are without character or individuality; but the accursed Reuben and Simeon are respected members of the family, and the ‘wolf’ Benjamin has become a helpless child whom the father will hardly let go from his side. This, no doubt, is the supreme instance of romantic or ‘novelistic’ treatment which the book contains; but the same idealising tendency is at work elsewhere, and must constantly be allowed for in endeavouring to reach the historic or ethnographic basis from which the legends start.