The writers of Genesis and related topics illustrating divine revelation

Preface

When abroad, in 1872, I read in the Daily Telegraph Mr. George Smith's Chaldean Account of the Creation, which he had just deciphered. Previous knowledge of Layard's discoveries enabled me to estimate their importance, and to continue the study of Oriental discoveries. So, in 1879, I ventured to give a brief series of sermons on the Religion and Learning of Egypt in the era of Moses, in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, JNew York.

A few years later, Mr. Spencer, in his " Ecclesiastical Institutions," struck off the roots of the Divine in Religion. As no one else appeared to answer him, I felt bound (God being my helper) to examine and refute him, or yield to the inevitable.

In some other papers 1 have ventured to defend the Revelation of the Old Testament against the gross naturalism of Renan and the negative criticism of Kuenen and Wellhausen. Thus I have traversed some crucial points from Genesis to the Prophecies of our Lord.

This may best explain why I presume to add to what has been so ably — in some instances so foolishly — written upon the Origin of Genesis. I can

IV PREFACE.

but think that the reader will here find that the last word had not been said, and that the application of modern discoveries to the Oracles of God will flash the new light of His providence across them, and enable us to determine who were the writers of Genesis and of some other books.

The Right Rev. Bishop Perry, of Iowa, a most competent witness, reports that some members of the last Pan- Anglican Council had doubts of portions of the Bible, notably Genesis, which illustrates the importance of the subject now considered. To them, and to all seekers after the truth, I commend what is here offered : to Professors Green and Harper, Bissell and Briggs, Cave and Cheyne, Dods and Driver, and all other Bible students. While I presume not to instruct them, I may suggest that the more they yield to negative criticism, the greater is the danger to be apprehended from it. Though the old traditions may be wrong, they do not err in implying a very ancient date for the Writers of Genesis, and an early writer of Isaiah 40-66.

My suggestions of authorship are not based on Astruc, who died in 1766. He was a physician, not a Bible expositor. That his theory should form the basis of so much modern criticism surprises me. " God is His own Interpreter" of Revelation and of Creation. The discoveries and decipherments of our generation supply abundant reasons for believing that four or five early patriarchs wrote their own memoirs. These were incorporated into our Gene-

PREFACE. V

sis by Moses, and later prophets explained names of persons and places.

This idea I have worked out by careful analysis and examination of various facts brought to light by the Egypt Exploration Fund and other Oriental societies. Professor Sayce corrects Henan. The literatures of the oldest nations sustain my view ; a decent respect for the opinions of mankind supports it ; the culture and good sense of the covenantpatriarchs support it. It honors Inspiration and God, the Revealer.

The essay on the Scientific Method Applied to the Bible is the outcome of reading Mr. John Burroughs's article in a late North American Review / Babylonians and Egyptians, not Totemists, was evoked by recent lectures under the auspices of Columbia College, and by W. Robertson Smith ; Hebrew and Greek Ethics was to correct Mr. Gladstone's third paper upon Holy Scripture. If my aim has been high, I trust I have been enabled to reach the mark.

May the Enlightening Spirit guide us all unto a right conclusion. The Author.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Writers of Genesis 9

§ 1. What we Seek 9

Section 1. — What we seek

I shall endeavor in these pages to put the average reader in possession of the facts and methods whereby he can determine who were the probable writers of the first book of the Bible. Men now talk learnedly about the Hexateuch, thus massing together that they may afterward pulverize the first six books of Holy Scripture. But it is of chief importance to know if there were not a Primus or First Book, before the redaction of what Moses revised.

Our investigation proposes to show that there was a Primer which Abraham learned, and later prefixed to his Memoirs ; and that these Memoirs were continued by Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. From them we obtain the substance of our Genesis ; so, even after the revision by Moses, may be discovered differences of style in those early writers.

Thus we may learn whence arose those distinc- 1*

10 THE WKITEKS OF GENESIS.

tions in the use of certain names for the Deity, whicli no late writer would have observed, but which indicate a contemporaneous writing. Thus, too, primitive names of places occur here and there, which were subsequently changed to later ones. If we are charged with instructing our teachers, who are more learned than ourselves in such matters, we may answer, that is only what scholars often do who do their teachers honor.

Indeed, all that may be adduced in favor of Moses being the original writer of Genesis, or of its being the work of several writers and redactors according to the critics, may be said in favor of the authorship herein suggested. Abraham certainly, if not Noah, wrote the memoirs of his times ; while those who followed him added to and revised to date under the guidance and revelation of God. This largely accounts for the differences in style and treatment which now puzzle the critics. It is the key which unlocks the mystery of the authorship of Genesis.

" No other book in existence of such varied styles, composed by so many hands, and occupying so long a period in its compilation is marked by so marvellous a unity. A single great scheme underlies, traverses, and interpenetrates the Bible, a great and connected system of truth, as bone and cartilage the human frame ; a single, high, gracious and inflexible aim pervades this majestic volume from end to end. In principle and essence the faith of David and Paul, Daniel and John, Abraham and Peter is but one. Genesis and Revelation greet each other across the gulf of ages. God's word is a unit." — Rev. William T. Sabine.

" This sacred story, even without the assured and solemn authority which it derives from the inspired character of the Book in which it is found, should always form in sound criticism the base of all history ; for considered from a merely human point of view, it contains the most ancient tradition as to the first days of the human race, the only one which has not been disfigured by the introduction of fantastic myths of disordered imagination run wild." — M. Lenormant.

The seeming purpose of its first chapters was to instruct man as to the process and Agent in Creation, so as to induce him to serve the God who made him, and to regard His saving methods. Though evidence is wanting that such an account was vouchsafed to the first men, Noah was fairly and Abraham more fully instructed in the origin of things and in Divine revelations. He by the inspiration of God was enabled to correct prevailing errors. Yet it was not given him to teach the absolute and ultimate truth, but what was fundamental touching matter and Spirit.

§ II. — What we find.

Thus we find that Genesis was not written to teach modern geology ; for the people to whom it was given would not have understood a scientific treatise. But the Creation account in Genesis was to set forth who was the Author of the Cosmos, rather than the precise order and method of it. As St. John says, " Without Him was not anything made that had been made." In other words, all material and animal existences were by the creative power of God.

The record is somewhat complex, jet brief. It at once meets and corrects the old Accadian and Zoroastrian ideas and legends of the origin of the Cosmos. Neither Tiamat nor Ahriman, as independent creative powers, had any part in the creation of the "universe. There is just enough of detail recorded to remove current errors and to present God as the Creator and Upholder of all worlds and of all existences. The account of creation was to disclose the Creator.

The earth was before those who lived upon it. Darkness was before the light and the sun was before the moon, but both were by the Supreme Being who separated between the day and the night. Light and darkness, angels and archangels, good spirits and those who became evil spirits, were the creation of God. His work was perfect, " excellent." Why, then, Abraham might say to the men of Ur, do you worship the Moon God, or any created objects ? and to the men of Larsa, Why do you worship the Sun God, or any powers of nature ? Jehovah Elolrm was the Creator of matter and spirit, of the sun and the moon. Him alone should men worship, who is above all and who created all. Simply and chiefly to teach these two grand but elementary facts was the creation account in Genesis given to man. We are apt to impose too much upon it.

" The history of the creation in Genesis is not merely a cosmogonic account of primitive date, but above all else it is an express counter statement opposed to the conceptions of Egypt and of Babylon." Yon Ranke attributes this to Moses at Sinai, " which no terrestrial vicissitudes have ever touched, and where nothing interposes between God and the world." How, then, could Moses have had any knowledge of the Babylonian conception of the Cosmos ? But the universe, according to Mr. H. Spencer's sesquipedalian definition, is the outcome of " a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations." Whereupon says Mr. Gold win Smith, " This universe may well have heaved a sigh of relief when, through the cerebration of an eminent thinker, it had been delivered of this account of its origin."

The second chapter sets forth the institution of the Sabbath, describes the abode of man upon his creation, his conscious superiority to the creatures about him, and how God made woman to be his helper and companion in life. The two were not an outgrowth or development from other creatures, but the creation of God, who brought them together and blessed them. They were to replenish the earth.

Genesis 2 : 15-25 relate how, after the creation of man, he was put in the Garden of Eden to dress and to keep it. This, of course, implies the impartation of needful instruction to him. Large liberty was allowed him, and only one prohibition was imposed : he must not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Abraham was familiar with such legends, and that man was divinely instructed as to his duty.

Adam was also tested whether he was capable of choosing a companion from among all the creatures to whom he gave names ; the choice and the naming suggest considerable intelligence. But Adam did not find an " answering" companion in all the living beings which passed before him. No female gorilla or chimpanzee would please his fancy.

Who but an anti-evolutionist could write the account of the creation of woman at that time ? She is made for man, and brought to him as his helpmeet in life. He was an intelligent observer of much that passed, and there was no " almost a woman" among the creatures he had named. He had skill, order, and analysis. He may even have learned to write the account of his education and of Eve's creation before he died. Quite likely it was written before the Deluge, and preserved to the times of Abraham, or of the legends of Ur. They at least taught that God was the Creator and Instructor of man, and that he had sinned against Him. Of how they worshipped Him, the great temple at Ur to the Moon God bore witness. See " Chaldean Account in Genesis," Sayce's " Hibbert Lectures" and Dr. Cave's " Inspiration of the Old Testament."

If we regard the first chapters of Genesis as the Inspired account to Abraham rather than a revelation to Moses, we find it just such a version as a man in that age would give to the people of his day and to those who followed him. But to make it a Revelation to Moses three thousand years after the creation of man, and for the science of the nineteenth century, is to put a meaning upon the record which was not intended when first communicated.

" Science," says Professor J. D. Dana, has made no real progress toward proving that the Divine act was not required for the creation of Man. No remains of ancient Man have been found that indicate a progenitor of lower grade than the lowest of existing tribes ; none that show any less of the erect posture and other essential characteristics of the exalted species. Made in the image of God, Man was capable of moral distinctions and of spiritual progress ; and hence with him began a new era in history," viz., human accountability and immortality for the crowning work of creation. Surely being made in the image of God implies eternal existence? — 0. and JV". Test. Student for August, 1890, pp. 94, 95.

Chapter third relates how man sinned, the penalty inflicted, how a Redeemer was promised, and the expulsion from Eden. That this account was revealed to Abraham may be inferred from the corrections of prevailing errors. Not in Noah's time had the Babylonians come to speak of Merodach as their Saviour, nor had the men of Ur and of Larsa become worshippers of the heavenly bodies. But they each were this respectively when Abraham was called out of Chaldea. Thus a revelation of what was to come and of what men ought to do was given for instruction in righteousness as well as in knowledge. The account suffers greatly by being relegated to the time of Moses. To Abraham it was disclosed how man had failed in his first trial in Eden, and in his longer trial in the world before the deluge. He was himself a witness of the idolatry in his day among the peoples about the Euphrates. Merodach had failed to save the Babylonians ; Osiris had failed to save the Egyptians, and Sosiosh had failed to save the Iranians. Thus the supposed saviours of Hamites, of Semites, and of Aryans had alike failed in saving those representative peoples.

Wherefore the Creator of all chose Abraham to found a new family for the preservation of the true religion among men, and to prepare the world for the Advent of its Redeemer. To Abraham also it was given to understand why he was thus chosen, and the right of Him who had chosen him. Such a revelation was needed for his instruction and future guidance. So in Canaan and in Egypt he never fell into idolatry, and in Gen. 14 : 19-22 he finely distinguishes between Melchizedek's (i God Most High" and" Jehovah, God Most High." It appears in the Revised Version, and marks the difference between the Covenant God of the chosen people and the god or gods of the Gentiles.

§ III. — Abraham distinguishes Jehovah from the God of Melchizedek.

We need not go further than Gen. 14 to learn that it was not originally written by Moses. Melchizedek said, " Blessed be God Most High, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand." " And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Zord, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth" (verses 20 and 22 of Revised Version). To suppose that the nice distinction of adding Jehovah, the Lord, to the name of Melchizedek's God, to designate the God of Abraham, would have been handed down orally for five or six hundred years without understanding the strong reason for it, or to suppose that it was all revealed to Moses together with all other instances of Divine revelations and religious distinctions, amid the deserts of Sinai, is to my mind the top of folly and critical indiscretion.

I invite the proof that the writer of Ex. 6 : 2-4 was the writer of Gen. 14 : 20, 22. He must have been nodding ! And the difficulty here arising, I explain thus : Abraham and his fathers for the first sixty years of his life were worshippers of the heavenly bodies. Joshua 24 : 2 decides this as well as contemporary history, " Beyond the River, your fathers served other gods. " Now make the pronoun " them" in Ex. 6 : 3 refer to those fathers and to Abraham during the first sixty years of his life, and it is literally true that none of them knew their God or gods by the name of Jehovah. Even to Isaac and Jacob new revelations of Him were given at the Mount of Sacrifice and at the flight of Jacob. The narrative implies that neither of them had clear ideas of Jehovah till He more fully revealed Himself. See this in Gen. 22 : 1-9, and note the recurrence of Jehovah in verses 11-18. , Moreover, it was not the purpose of Exodus to trace the progress and unfold the methods of revelation. Some matters once known had become forgotten in large measure ; and Abraham and his sons may never have understood the full import of the Divine name when disclosed to them at the first. With all his knowledge, even Moses did not know it. Thus he saw the similarity of his position with that of his forefathers in this respect.

Of the many expositions of these passages, that now offered satisfies the requirements of the text and the judgment of the writer. It is conclusive of different writers, and the critics claim a high antiquity for Gen. 14. It was not orally transmitted during several centuries, nor was it a new revelatiou to Moses ; but it was written by Abraham. He certainly had no motive to misstate anything in writing his memoirs. Little by little he received Divine revelations in Palestine, but he had lived there twenty-four years before he received circumcision, and he knew not what next would be required. It proved to be the promise of Isaac, and the relief of Lot in Sodom. There was nothing like the development of a theory of religion, but it mostly pertained to family affairs, and needed only a truthful scribe. Its slow growth marks the unfolding of revelation to Abraham.

Professor W. W: Martin's is a striking illustration of a criticism which overlooks the point to be observed. He appears not to see that A brain's God was all that Melchizedek and the king of Sodom recognized, and as much more as was implied by the addition of the name Jehovah by Abram, Jahveh, the ever-living God Most High. So, later in the records, Joseph .realized that Jahveh was his Protector, Guide, and Deliverer ; yet when he was approached by a wanton woman he reminds her of her God, El or Ra, whom she acknowledged ; but not of his covenant Jahveh. As well say that Joseph then denied Him, as that Abram was in danger of making such a denial. (See Old and New Testament Student for July, 1890, pp. 46, 47.)

§ IY. — New Testament Authority.

We have also a New Testament reason for our suggestion of early patriarchal memoirs. Thus St. Stephen explicitly told his hearers that Moses supposed that his brethren understood how that God by his hand was giving them deliverance (Acts 7 : 25, Revised Version). Add to this what Moses said of himself, that 'when he was grown up he visited his brethren, looked on their burdens, and smote the Egyptian who was smiting a Hebrew. Again he went out, and behold two men of the Hebrews strove together : and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow ? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us ? thinkest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the

Egyptian ? And Moses feared, for Pharaoh sought to slay him, and he fled from his face, and dwelt in the land of Midian. In other words, rejected by his own kinsmen and pursued by Pharaoh, he fled to the descendants of Abraham in the desert (Ex. 2 : 11-15).

He had been instructed in the learning of Egypt, of which his brethren knew little, and knew but little of their family and tribal history, nor that Jehovah had promised Abraham to bring them out of that land, with great substance (Gen. 15 : 14). But Moses had learned all this. Readers of the Speaker's and other late commentaries, as well as recent lectures on Egypt, know somewhat of its arts and its literature, and are prepared to follow us in asking, Why did Moses suppose that his brethren understood that God would deliver them by him ? The records of his life do not inform us how he learned the history of his own people. Not even his Hebrew mother and elder sister could have taught him all those ancient documents, many of which had become very scarce after those centuries in Egypt. And it is too much to assume that he found the history of Israel among its literature.

In the " Tale of the Two Brothers" he saw a version of the story of Joseph, and he may also have learned other details of the family of Jacob. Indeed, he may have read in Egyptian records an account of the visit of Abraham six or seven centuries before, and a list of the presents made him by the reigning

Pharaoh. But it contained no word for him about Jehovah's covenant with the patriarch, nor about his being the chosen one of God to found a new nation which should prepare for the Messiah, nor that the predicted four hundred years had well-nigh passed, when Israel was to return to Caanan (Gen. 15 : 16).

Yet St. Stephen, who evidently spoke by Divine inspiration, clearly states that Moses supposed that God by his hand would deliver Israel. And it may have been the knowledge he had which prompted him to act precipitately in smiting that Egyptian. Moreover, if the tradition of his success as an Egyp ■ tian general going against her enemies were true, if the princess who had rescued him were dead, if a Pharaoh like Barneses II. was on the throne, who was jealous of Moses, a man of leisure and of influence about the court, then these were other reasons which might have led him to suppose that he was the one to deliver his countrymen, and lead them to the land of their fathers. But success under such conditions would have given a secular aspect to the Exodus, leaving no play for the Divine in the passage of the Red Sea, nor for the giving of the Law at Sinai. So his first attempt failed.

Let us put ourselves in Moses's place. With all his knowledge of Egyptian literature, what could he know of the God of the Hebrews who had covenanted with Abraham ? What could he know of the most important parts of his people's history ?

He was forty years old. He had not learned the lessons of the Desert, nor the lessons which Jethro taught him, nor the legends and traditions of the Midianites. But he was a man of intellectual activity and capacity. In what, during the ten years of his life from thirty to forty, was he occupied ? St. Stephen's words must be remembered and accounted for. Moses supposed that his brethren tenderstood (we must trace up the grounds for that supposition and understanding) how that God by his hand was giving them deliverance ; but their conduct showed that they understood not. Prophets had not arisen to tell them, and Moses himself had not then received his commission, nor been vouchsafed a Revelation to teach them ; and he anticipated the time and mistook the methods for the deliverance of his brethren from Egypt. But he had learned some things which were suggestive.

How had Moses learned the history of his people, whereby he could be led into such a supposition ? For, according to the critical view, and even according to the traditional view of Genesis, this book was not then written. Did Moses, before the act which precipitated his flight, receive the patriarchal history which induced him to form his supposition from the direct inspiration of God — his precipitate conduct notwithstanding — or did he learn that history from the family records of the Hebrews ? In other words, was the Book of Genesis a Revelation • to Moses, or were the patriarchal portions of it family records made at the time of the events narrated ? Were the Divine voices, visions, and promises recorded when first vouchsafed to man, or were they all left to be revealed a second time from God ?

Consider the supposition of Moses before his commission ; consider that only one preacher of warning was given to the antediluvians ; that only one grand pleading for Sodom is preserved to ns ; that only one prophet was sent to warn Nineveh, though other prophetic messages were sent ; that no new Table of the Law was made for the new Temple at Jerusalem after the return from exile ; that no substitute for Divine worship was provided for the Ten Tribes after the disruption by Jeroboam, notwithstanding the apostasy which followed. So no new Revelation was made to the compiler of Genesis at the close of the patriarchal records which ended with the death and embalming of Joseph in Egypt.

From Abraham to Moses was about six hundred years. During that time revelations were made from God, which were not repeated as revelations, for they had been carefully preserved in the Hebrew records, and only needed a correct copyist or an inspired commentator. Such copyist they had in Egypt, and Moses had obtained copies of those records by purchase long before his flight ; and he became an inspired commentator of them while in Midian, having been a diligent student of them, From such study he came to form the supposition

24 THE WEITERS OF GENESIS.

which St. Stephen attributed to him — i.e., from the study of the records of the patriarchs.

My belief is, and I shall endeavor to show, that Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and Joseph were the original writers of those portions of Genesis in which they appear as the active subjects. And it matters not upon this method of treatment who was the first redactor, according to the critics, nor whether E or J or P or R find any place in the early or late editions of the Book. But my treatment will assign to Moses the first editing of the records of Judah, which ended with the death of Joseph. In Egypt and in Midian he collected all the Hebrew records and traditions. They had kindled his enthusiasm and incited him to undue haste, when he slew the offending Egyptian. It was the outcome of the first active decade of his life. Then, with his literary treasures, he escaped from an indignant and angry court.

We may believe that Rameses II. was the Pharaoh at this time, and was not disposed to look lightly on such an offence as that which Moses had committed. And the hiding the body of the Egyptian in the sand, where it was not to be seen, embalmed, and buried, was to deprive the dead of immortality. For however just his soul may have been, yet without his body, which could be preserved for three thousand years only by embalming, the Egyptian supposed immortality to be impossible. It aggravated the crime. The rage of Rameses II. against the Hyksos incited him to obliterate every trace of them from the region they had occupied for centuries. And M. Maspero has shown us the sculptures from which he had erased the Hyksos legends and inscribed those of himself instead. This alone is strong proof against the rhetoric of Renan, that the Hyksos were permitted to remain in Egypt and to fight the battles of the Hebrews in their oppression ! No ; not even Moses himself felt safe till he had fled to the desert of Midi an. There he married the daughter of the priest-king ; there he learned other details and traditions of that branch of Abraham's descendants, and there, during his forty years' exile, he worked over and arranged for the Hebrew people the Book of Genesis as preserved to us, from the earlier writings of the patriarchs. But he attempted no account of the residence in Egypt.

He was a learned man, an active man, a born leader of his people. His character when he fled from Pharaoh Rameses II. became more mature and ripe, and was permeated with the Divine Spirit when he returned and stood before Pharaoh Menephtah, saying, " Thus saith Jehovah, let my people Israel go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness." It was not an unknown region, but the country from which the now duly commissioned leader had just returned after a memorable interview with the God of Abraham, and where for ages the Egyptians had mines which they worked, 2