Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/201



2. The fragmentary genealogy of vv.$25. 26$ corresponds, so far as it goes, with the Sethite genealogy of P in ch. 5. It will be shown later (p. 138 f.) that the lists of 4$17-24$ and 5 go back to a common original; and if the discrepancy had been merely between J and P, the obvious conclusion would be that these two documents had followed different traditional variants of the ancient genealogy. But how are we to account for the fact that the first three names of P's list occur also in the connexion of J? There are four possible solutions. (1) It is conceivable that J, not perceiving the ultimate identity of the two genealogies, incorporated both in his document (cf. Ew. JBBW, vi. p. 4); and that the final redactor (R$P$) then curtailed the second list in view of ch. 5. This hypothesis is on various grounds improbable. It assumes (see $25b$) the murder of Abel by Cain as an original constituent of J's narrative; now that story takes for granted that the worship of Yahwe was practised from the beginning, whereas $26b$ explicitly states that it was only introduced in the third generation. (2) It has not unnaturally been conjectured that v.$25f.$ are entirely redactional (Ew. Schr, al.); i.e., that they were inserted by an editor (R$P$) to establish a connexion between the genealogy of J and that of P. In favour of this view the use of (as a proper name) and of  has been cited; but again the statement of $26b$ presents an insurmountable difficulty. P has his own definite theory of the introduction of the name (see Ex. 6$2ff.$), and it is incredible that any editor influenced by him should have invented the gratuitous statement that the name was in use from the time of Enosh. (3) A third view is that vv.$25. 26$ stood originally before v.$1$ (or before v.$17$), so that the father of Cain and Abel (or of Cain alone) was not Adam but Enosh; and that the redactor who made the transposition is responsible also for some changes on v.$25$ to adapt it to its new setting (so Sta.) (see on the v.). That is, no doubt, a plausible solution (admitted as possible by Di.), although it involves operations on the structure of the genealogy too drastic and precarious to be readily assented to. It is difficult also to imagine any sufficient motive for the supposed transposition. That it was made to find a connexion for the (secondary) story of Cain and Abel is a forced suggestion. The tendency of a redactor must have been to keep that story as far from the beginning as possible, and that the traditional data should have been deliberately altered so as to make it the opening scene of human history is hardly intelligible. (4) There remains the hypothesis that the two genealogies belong to separate strata within the Yahwistic tradition, which had been amalgamated by a redactor of that school (R$J$) prior to the incorporation of P; and that the second list was curtailed by R$P$ because of its substantial identity with that of the Priestly Code in ch. 5. The harmonistic glossing of v.$25$ is an inevitable assumption of any theory except (1) and (2); it must have taken place after the insertion of the Cain and Abel episode; and on the view we are now considering it must be attributed to R$J$. In other respects the solution is free from difficulty. The recognition of the complex character of the source called J is forced on us by many lines of proof; and it will probably be found that this view of the genealogies yields a valuable clue to the structure