1. Unity and Authenticity. The unity and composition of the work, which is a point in dis pute among the critics in regard to all the books of the Pentateuch, have been particularly ques tioned in the case of Genesis.
(1) Objections. Some suppose that Genesis is founded on two principal original documents, dis tinguished by the terms Elohim and Jehovah, the names which they respectively give to God. That of Elohim is closely connected in its parCs, and fortns whole, while that of Jehovah is a mere complementary document, supplying details at those points where the former is abrupt and de ficient, etc. These two documents are said to have been subsequently combined by the hand of an editor, so ably as often to render their separa tion difficult, if not altogether impossible.
But Ranke, Hengstenberg, Drechsler, Haver nick, and others, maintain that Genesis is a book closely connected in all its parts, and composed by only one author, while the use of the two dif ferent names of God is not owing to two different sources on which Genesis is founded, but solely t'o the different significations of these two names. The use of each of the two names, Jehovah and Elohim, is everywhere in Genesis adapted to the sense of the passages in which the writer has pur posely inserted the one name or the other. This point of view is the more to be considered, as it is the peculiar object of the author to point out in Genesis the gradual and progressive development of the divine revelations.
The opponents have in vain attempted to dis cover in Genesis a few contradictions indicative of different documents in it ; their very admission, that a fixed plan and able compilation visibly per vade the whole of the book, is in itself a refuta tion of such supposed contradictions, since it is hardly to be conceived, that an editor or compiler who has shown so much skill and anxiet'y to give unity to the book should have cared so little about the removal of those contradictions. The whole of Genesis is pervaded by such a freedom in the selection and treatment of the existing traditions, such an absence of all trace of any previous source or documents which might in some measure have confined the writer within certain limits of views and expressions, as to render it quite impractica ble to separate and fix upon them specifically, even if there were portions in Genesis drawn from earlier written documents.
(2) Authorship and Date. That first ques tion concerning the unity of the book is closely connected with another question, respecting its authenticity, or whether Moses was the author of Genesis. We confine ourselves here to only a few remarks on the authenticity of Genesis in particu lar, and refer the reader for further informa tion to the article Pentateuch.
Some critics have attempted to ascertain the pe riod when Genesis was composed, from a few passages in it, which they say must be anachron isms, if Moses was really the author of the book (see, for example, Tuch, Co2nmentar fiber Genesis, p. lxxxv. sq.).
.Among such pasSages are, in particular, Gen. xii :6; xiii :7; 'And the Canaanite was then in the land.' This remark, they say, could only have been made by a writer who lived in Palestine after the extirpation of the Canaanites.
But the sense of the passage is not that the Ca naanites had not as yet been extirpated, but mere ly that Abraham, on his arrival in Canaan, had already found there the Canaanites. This notice was necessary, since the author subsequently de scribes the intercourse between Abraham and the Canaanites, the lords of the country. According to the explanation given to the passage by the op ponents, such an observation would be quite a superfluous triviality.
Also the name Hebron (Gen. xiii :r8; xxiii:2), they say, was not introduced till after the time of Nloses (Josh. xiv :15; xv :r3). This, however, does not prove anything, since Hebron was the original Hebrew name for the place, which was subsequently changed into Arba (by a man of that name), but was restored by the Israelites on their entrance into Canaan.
The opponents also maintain that the name of the place Dan (Gen. xiv :14) was given only in the pOst-Mosaical period (Josh. xix:47; Judg.