Before Abraham Was

The Unity of Genesis 1–11

Kikawada, Quinn

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781498276757
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Rebelling against a century of Old Testament scholarship, Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn persuasively argue that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not a literary patchwork by different editors as widely supposed, but are the work of one author of extraordinary subtlety and skill.Comparing Genesis 1-11 with primeval histories from the ancient Near East, Kikawada and Quinn urge their readers to appreciate the ingenuity of Genesis's author: "When we think we find this author napping, we had better proceed very carefully. As with Homer or Shakespeare, when you think you have seen something wrong, there may well be something wrong with your own eyes. You are more likely to be wrong than either of them."Providing a solid case for the unity of Genesis's first eleven chapters, Kikawada and Quinn move on to show how these chapters provide a formal structure for other Old Testament histories. Destined to have lasting impact on biblical scholarship, Before Abraham Was will give scholars, clergy, and students a new appreciation of critical biblical studies and a new hypothesis for the formation of Genesis.

CHAPTER I

Before the Patriarchs Were: Genesis 1–11 as a Paradigm of Biblical Diversity

1

The most important clue that a plurality of sources lies behind Genesis 1–5 is to be found in the changing name for God. From Genesis 1:1 to 2:4 God is called “Elohim.” Then abruptly, for no apparent reason, a new name, “Yahweh,” is introduced. This was the name of God that would eventually be revealed to Moses from the burning bush, but we also, somewhat inappropriately, find it here, long before that revelation, in the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel. Only at the beginning of Genesis 5, when the generations of Adam are recited, is the use of Yahweh discontinued and a strict use of Elohim returned.

So: “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth. . . . and the Spirit of Elohim was moving over the face of the waters. And Elohim said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And Elohim saw that the light was good; and Elohim separated the light from the darkness. Elohim called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (1:1-5).

But: “In the course of time Cain brought to Yahweh an offering of the fruit of the ground. . . . And Yahweh had regard for Abel and his offering. . . . Yahweh said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry?’” (4:3-6).

Then again, only a chapter later: “When Elohim created man, he made him in the likeness of Elohim,” and “Enoch walked with Elohim; and he was not, for Elohim took him” (5:1, 24).

These shifts suggest that Genesis 1–5 is a combination of two original sources: one that uses Elohim exclusively, the other that also uses Yahweh. These two sources have come to be called by biblical critics the Priestly and Yahwist sources respectively. But the shift in divine names is only a clue that such sources might exist. This shift cannot possibly establish anything by itself. The names have to be a clue to deeper differences between the sections, if they are to support a documentary interpretation. But before we seek these deeper differences let us first explore briefly the difference between these two names.

Elohim—traditionally translated “God”—is the more general of the two names. It can just as easily be applied to the putative gods of other peoples as to the God of the Hebrews. Thus in II Kings 1:3 an angel orders Elijah to ask, “Is it because there is no Elohim in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baalzebub, the Elohim of Ekron?” Of course, the Hebrews were supposed to realize that their Elohim was the only true Elohim and that they should not go whoring after others. But the term “Elohim” was a general one that polytheists, and even sarcastic prophets, could use as a plural.

Yahweh—traditionally translated as “Lord”—was quite a different kind of name. This name would not have been known had it not been revealed to the Hebrews by God himself. This was, therefore, not a term they would share with the Canaanites. It was a personal name, not one that would be used in the plural.

Perhaps an analogy might be helpful. Elohim and Yahweh seem to have been different for ancient Hebrews much as God and Trinity would have been for a medieval Christian. Aquinas could use pagan philosophy to prove, or try to prove, many things about God. The Trinity, in contrast, was something revealed only to Christians, and ultimately a mystery even to them. There is the God of the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Trinity of the Summa Theologica. This analogy works fairly well.

When we look at Hebrew excursions into wisdom literature—that ancient Near Eastern equivalent of natural theology—we find the name Elohim consistently used. When, in contrast, we look at the specifically Hebrew revelations of the prophets (and their unyielding opposition to religious cosmopolitanism), we find Yahweh predominating.

Once we are sensitive to the difference between the divine names, a possible documentary interpretation becomes obvious. In Genesis 1–5 we have an older tradition of Hebrew exclusivity framed by more recent and advanced Priestly accounts. Wellhausen notes this point in general terms: “What are generally cited as points of superiority in Genesis 1 over Genesis 2–5 are beyond doubt signs of progress in outward culture. . . . In its general views of God, nature, and man, Genesis 1 stands on a higher, certainly on a later, level.”1

This is obviously a plausible explanation of the shifts, but not the only one consistent with the evidence, at least the evidence we have seen so far. After all, a single author, Thomas Aquinas, could use either God or Trinity depending on the context—and also could combine these two into God the Holy Trinity, much as Elohim and Yahweh are combined into the Lord God in some places in Genesis 2–4. In other words, Genesis 1–5 might just have an author with a strong sense of decorum about the use of divine names. When discussing aspects of primeval history appropriate to wisdom literature, he would use Elohim; when dealing with those aspects emphasizing specific revelations he would feel inclined to introduce Yahweh.

Divergent traditions or a decorous author—the divine names themselves do not permit us to decide between these two alternative accounts.2 If this were all that could be adduced in favor of the documentary hypothesis, it would be only an interesting speculation. But this is just the beginning.

The change in divine names is paralleled by other changes in vocabulary. Bārāʹ (“created”), the distinctive verb of Genesis 1–2:4, is replaced in Genesis 2:5–4:26 by (“formed”), but then reappears in Genesis 5:1. In both Genesis 1 and 5 man is made in the “image and likeness” of God, whereas in between he is described only as a “living being”; “male and female” in the frame sections becomes “man and woman” in the middle. “Hāʹādām” in the creation account refers to humanity in general, whereas in the Eden story it becomes the personal name of the first man.

Vocabulary changes are themselves but local manifestations of broader stylistic contrasts. The Elohim sections are organized formulaically. Each of the six days of creation follows almost the same form. God says let there be, it was so; he sees that it is good, and gives it a name, and there was evening and morning of that day. And the genealogies of chapter 5 are, if anything, even more ritualized. In both sections the repetitions make the narratives seem dignified, if hardly exciting. And this is consistent with Elohim as he is revealed in Genesis 1–2:3, the transcendent lawgiver of the universe which he rules by his word.

The Yahwist section could scarcely read more differently. Here, rather than formulas, we have colorful human dramas, dramas in which Yahweh himself is a member of the cast. Yahweh walks in the garden in the cool of the day, holds conversations with his human creatures, even worries (for instance, that man “has become like one of us”). Actually, in these sections it is Yahweh who has become like one of us. In short, the contrasting styles of narrative seem to express contrasting conceptions of God. Apparently, the divergent traditions had incompatible theologies.

We might think it strange that an ancient editor would not have felt uneasy about these apparent inconsistencies. However, the implicit theological contradictions within Genesis 1–5 fade before explicit factual contradictions. For instance, both man and plants seem to have been created twice. Or, more precisely, man is first created, then formed—and the plants were first created three days before man’s creation, and then once again shortly after his formation. An editor who would not worry about such simple problems within the narrative could scarcely be expected to worry about deeper conceptual issues.

So what we find in Genesis 1–5 are not only changes in vocabulary, narrative styles, and theologies, but also unnecessary, even contradictory repetitions—and all these obey the general sectioning of Genesis 1–5 suggested by the divine names. Of course, if we have predetermined to save the unity of Genesis 1–5 at all costs, we can explain each of these anomalies away. Perhaps only part of the plant kingdom was created on day three, and the rest the next week. Perhaps an ancient Near Eastern audience would not have felt a double-creation of man to be a contradiction. Perhaps we are dealing with an author so sophisticated that he would vary his complete narrative style (and theology?) from section to section. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But why bother with these interpretative gymnastics when the documentary hypothesis can account for all these anomalies with such ease, economy, and grace?

2

If Genesis 1–5 is the product of a single author, then that author is capable of two quite different narrative styles and has no compunction about using them to express two quite different conceptions of God. He would be a very sophisticated author, indeed. Presumably he would think that his two apparently divergent theologies were ultimately reconcilable. From his thesis and antithesis we would expect him to attempt a synthesis, a synthesis that would exhibit to an even greater degree his theological profundity and literary virtuosity. If we could find a story in which such a synthesis was achieved, then we would have the strongest possible argument in favor of a unitary reading and against the documentary hypothesis. And the closer this story was to Genesis 1–5, the better.

The story that at first seems to meet our requirements could not in fact be any closer to Genesis 1–5, for it is the story of Noah that occupies Genesis 6–10 and dominates the latter half of the primeval history.

The narrator of that story moves easily back and forth from Elohim to Yahweh, from an immanently anthropomorphic God to a supremely transcendent lawgiver, from formulaic expression to human drama. All the contrasts found earlier between separate sections are here together in a single story of considerable charm and power. The documentary hypothesis drowns in the flood—or so it seems.

Actually, the documentary hypothesis had its own Noah, and his name was Wellhausen. Perhaps Wellhausen’s greatest achievement was to show how the Noah story could be transformed from a decisive defeat into a decisive triumph for the documentary hypothesis.3 E. A. Speiser summarizes how this transformation was achieved in his own much praised 1964 commentary on Genesis: “The received biblical account of the Flood is beyond reasonable doubt a composite narrative. . . . Here the two strands have become intertwined, the end result being a skillful and intricate patchwork. Nevertheless—and this is indicative of the great reverence with which the components were handled—the underlying versions, though cut up and rearranged, were not altered in themselves.”4

The last sentence of this quotation is the key to why the document...