Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/37

 ;

The Book of Genesis Exile, when, torn

from the land of

19

and

birth

its

settled in a

foreign country and in a strange environment, Israel never-

continued

theless

What more

to

as

exist

a

unique,

religious

people.

natural than that in such times and Imder such

conditions, Israel's spiritual leaders should evolve a positive,

conception

universalistic

own

Israel's

drama

destined

Similar

God and

of role

in

the

mankind and of

of

great,

eternal,

human

and concepts are discernible in the prophetic writings of this same period witness such passages as Jeremiah XVIII, 7ff. XXV, 15fif. XXVII, 2ff. XXIX, 4ff., and above all the writings of the ?

universalistic

thoughts





unknown prophet of the Babylonian Exile, commonly known as Deutero-Isaiah, Isaiah XL-LV. The procedure of the authors of these hrst eleven chapters of Genesis is readily comprehended. They took a numgreat,

ber of ancient legends and folk-tales, which had been curin Israel for many generations. They also borrowed from Babylonian literature, with which the dominant Babylonian culture had acquainted them, such myths as those of creation (Genesis I) and of the flood. And they reinterpreted these stories from the standpoint of Judaism, as they had come to understand it, and wove them together and wrote them down in their present, connected, literary form.

rent

Thus they

Abraham

led

in

up,

naturally and logically,

chapters

XII-XXV,

18, with

the

to

its

story

of

central tliought

of God's selection of Israel.

Here



only incidentally do

Abraham was

sons.

really

we hear

to

virtues

God and

and

faults,

Israel's lived,

life.

his trials

and

The

life

disci])line.

his consciousness of divine selection

were recounted only

to

is

of other per-

represented by these authors as

the prototype of the people of Israel. his

Abraham

the interest of the authors narrowed.

the main figure

mirror

Not impossibly

these

the man,

of

Abraham,

his

relation

and mission,

same conditions in Abraham, may have

and may have been the actual progenitor of

Israel, or