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TechnoratiNowhere is the task of the modern biblical scholar filled with more difficulties than in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Indeed, the very subjects contained in these chapters and the admittedly long interval of time that separated the writer (or, as some have judged, the writers) from the topics discussed are more than enough to keep the researcher busy.1
The first major challenge to the reliability of these chapters came in the form of literary source criticism. What had begun as J. Astruc's "clue" in 1753 (that at least two different names for God were used in Genesis 1 and 2) ended in the full documentary theory just before the turn of the twentieth century in the works of K. H. Graf, A. Kuenen, and especially J. Wellhausen. At first it was thought that there were just two literary sources for this early material in Genesis. This was based on the two different divine names used for God, "Elohim" and "Yahweh."
As the theory grew, however, it soon became possible to speak of the J, E, D, P, L, K and S documents as sources from which the Pentateuch was written over a period of time. But all of these "sources" were purely hypothetical ones abstracted from an internal investigation of the Pentateuch. No one had ever seen a document either with these materials or labeled as any of these literary sources.
This source theory, it will be remembered, was built mainly on a Hegelian philosophy of history that claimed that reality moved dialectically, that is, in such a way that each thesis was opposed to an antithesis that resulted in a synthesis. Accordingly the agrarian mentality and way of life was set in opposition to the pastoral life just as the priestly argument for the cultus was seen as opposed to the prophetic call for justice and mercy to all. As the theory of source criticism grew, it became heavily indebted to the mid-nineteenth century of the reigning philosophy of Charles Darwin's concept of evolution.2 In this, however, it was applied to social and religious progress: everything was said to move from a simple to a more complex form of the cultus and doctrine. Both of these applications from other fields of knowledge were adopted as the basis for the system that was to have the four to seven documents listed as the sources from which the materials in all the Pentateuch were derived. Eventually, however, the philosophical undergirding of the theory of source criticism collapsed, at least in its role as the ground floor on which to built the documentary theory. Alas, few have investigated whether the second story of the documents fell intact when the first floor on which the system was built had been removed.
One or two scholars who have attempted to argue that the source documents did not survive the crash were Umberto Cassuto and Kenneth Kitchen.3 It is beyond the limits of this chapter to trace this development, but students of the Scripture are advised that study of the ancient Near Eastern documents in their original languages will be of enormous help. The key question is whether the criteria set forth for each of the alleged sources of the documentary hypothesis are trustworthy or not.4
Another challenge emerged as a result of the collection of tablets uncovered in the 1850s by the British Museum. Especially significant was the 1872 publication by George Smith of the Gilgamesh Epic, from one of the tablets from Ashurbanipal's library in Nineveh: a story about a Babylonian flood. This was followed in 1876 with a publication entitled The Chaldean Account of Creation.5
The next major contribution came in 1890 when a young American scholar named George Barton read a paper connecting the Old Testament (hereafter, OT) passages concerning Rahab, Leviathan, Lotan and the Dragon in the book of Revelation with similar representations in Babylonian myths. It was published in 1893. Barton seems to have influenced the German scholar Hermann Gunkel, for in 1895 Gunkel continued this same line of thought by pointing to a series of poetic texts in the OT where he thought he discerned a battle between Yahweh and the various sea monsters named above. That tradition, he affirmed, was the background for the creation story of Genesis, though it had been purged, naturally, for the purposes of the Hebrew monotheistic faith.Continue »
