Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the PeopleGladden, Washington
Religion
Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People
Gladden, Washington
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
More curious than any other of these combinations is the account of the
Flood, in which the compiler has taken the narratives of these two old
writers and pieced them together like patchwork. Refer to your Bibles
and note this piece of literary joiner-work. At the fifth verse of the
sixth chapter of Genesis this story begins; from this verse to the end
of the eighth verse the Jehovistic document is used. The name of the
Deity is Jehovah, translated LORD. From the ninth verse to the end of
the chapter the Elohistic document is used. The word applied to God is
Elohim, translated God. With the seventh chapter begins again the
quotation from the other document, "And the LORD [Jehovah] said unto
Noah." This extends only to the sixth verse; then the Elohistic
narrative begins again, and continues to the nineteenth verse of the
eighth chapter, including it; then the Jehovistic narrative begins
again, and continues through the chapter; then the Elohist takes up the
tale for the first seventeen verses of the ninth chapter; then the
Jehovist goes on to the twenty-seventh verse, and the Elohist closes the
chapter. It is true that we have in the midst of some of these Elohistic
passages a verse or two of the other document inserted by the compiler;
but the outlines of the different documents are marked as I have told
you. If you take this story and dissect out of it the portions which I
have ascribed to the Elohist and put them together, you will have a
clear, complete, consecutive story of the Flood; the portions of the
Jehovistic narrative inserted rather tend to confusion. "The
consideration of the context here," says Bleek, "quite apart from the
changes in the naming of God, shows that the Jehovistic passages of the
narrative did not originally belong to it. It cannot fail to be observed
that the connection is often interrupted by the Jehovistic passages, and
that by cutting them out a more valuable and clearer continuity of the
narrative is almost always obtained. For instance, in the existing
narrative certain repetitions keep on occurring; one of these,
especially, is connected with a difference in the matters of fact
related, introducing no slight difficulty and obscurity." [Footnote:
Vol. i. p. 273.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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