Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/107

 the production of land animals, $24. 25$; and (8) the creation of man, $26-31$. Finally, the Creator is represented as resting from His works on the seventh day; and this becomes the sanction of the Jewish ordinance of the weekly Sabbath rest (2$1-3$).

Character of the Record.—It is evident even from this bare outline of its contents that the opening section of Genesis is not a scientific account of the actual process through which the universe originated. It is a world unknown to science whose origin is here described,—the world of antique imagination, composed of a solid expanse of earth, surrounded by and resting on a world-ocean, and surmounted by a vault called the 'firmament,' above which again are the waters of a heavenly ocean from which the rain descends on the earth (see on vv.$6-8$). That the writer believed this to be the true view of the universe, and that the narrative expresses his conception of how it actually came into being, we have, indeed, no reason to doubt (Wellhausen, Prol.$6$ 296). But the fundamental difference of standpoint just indicated shows that whatever the significance of the record may be, it is not a revelation of