Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/240



obscure, and is complicated by the double genealogy of ch. 4; but that a connexion exists it seems unreasonable to deny.

III. Relation of the Sethite and Cainite Genealogies.—The substantial identity of the names in Gn. 4$1. 17. 18$ with Nos. 3-9 of ch. 5 seems to have been first pointed out by Buttmann (Mythologus, i. 170 ff.) in 1828, and is now universally recognised by scholars. A glance at the following table shows that each name in the Cainite series corresponds to a name in the other, which is either absolutely the same, or is the same in meaning, or varies but slightly in form:

..

1. 'Ādām 2. Šēth 3. 'Ěnôš (Man)                  'Ādām (Man) 4. Ḳênān                         Ḳáyin 5. Mahălal'ēl                    Ḥănôkh 6. Yéred  'Îrād 7. Ḥănôkh                         Mĕḥûyā'ēl 8. Mĕthû-šelaḥ                 Mĕthû-šā-'ēl 9. Lémekh                               Lémekh 10. Nōăḥ                                 | |                                      |    |            |         |            |             |            | Šēm   Ḥām   Yépheth Yābāl   Yûbāl   Tûbal-Ḳáyin.

While these resemblances undoubtedly point to some common original, the variations are not such as can be naturally accounted for by direct borrowing of the one list from the other. The facts that each list is composed of a perfect number, and that with the last member the single stem divides into three branches, rather imply that both forms were firmly established in tradition before being incorporated in the biblical documents. If we had to do merely with the Hebrew tradition, the easiest supposition would perhaps be that the Cainite genealogy and the kernel of the Sethite are variants of a single original which might have reached Israel through different channels; that the latter had been expanded by the addition of two names at the beginning and one at the end, so as to bring it into line with the story of the Flood, and the Babylonian genealogy with which it was linked. The difficulty of this hypothesis arises from the curious circumstance that in the Berossian list of kings, just as in the Sethite list of patriarchs, the name for 'Man' occupies the third place. It is extremely unlikely