Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/109

 hold of the imagination as no abstract statement of the principle could ever do. The central doctrine is that the world is created,—that it originates in the will of God, a personal Being transcending the universe and existing independently of it. The pagan notion of a Theogony—a generation of the gods from the elementary world-matter—is entirely banished. It is, indeed, doubtful if the representation goes so far as a creatio ex nihilo, or whether a pre-existent chaotic material is postulated (see on v.$1$); it is certain at least that the kosmos, the ordered world with which alone man has to do, is wholly the product of divine intelligence and volition. The spirituality of the First Cause of all things, and His absolute sovereignty over the material He employs, are further emphasised in the idea of the word of God—the effortless expression of His thought and purpose—as the agency through which each successive effect is produced; and also in the recurrent refrain which affirms that the original creation in each of its parts was 'good,' and as a whole 'very good' (v.$31$), i.e. that it perfectly reflected the divine thought which called it into existence. The traces of mythology and anthropomorphism which occur in the body of the narrative belong to the traditional material on which the author operated, and do not affect his own theological standpoint, which is defined by the doctrines just enumerated. When to these we add the doctrine of man, as made in the likeness of God, and marked out as the crown and goal of creation, we have a body of religious truth which distinguishes the cosmogony of Genesis from all similar compositions, and entitles it to rank among the most important documents of revealed religion.

The Framework.—The most noteworthy literary feature of the record is the use of a set of stereotyped formulæ, by which the separate acts of creation are reduced as far as possible to a common expression. The structure of this 'framework' (as it may be called) is less uniform than might be expected, and is much more regular in G than in MT. It is impossible to decide how far the irregularities are due to the original writer, and how far to errors of transmission. Besides the possibility of accident, we have to allow on the one hand for the natural tendency