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ABRAHAM.

Critical Note.—In this section of Genesis the broad lines of demarcation between J, E, and P are so clear that there is seldom a serious diversity of opinion among critics. The real difficulties of the analysis concern the composition of the Yahwistic narrative, and the relation of its component parts to E and P respectively. These questions have been brought to the front by the commentary of Gu., who has made it probable that the Yahwistic document contains two main strata, one (J$h$) fixing Abraham's residence at Hebron, and the other (J$b$) regarding him as a denizen of the Negeb.

1. The kernel of J$h$ is a cycle of legends in which the fortunes of Abraham and Lot are interlinked: viz. 12$1-8$; 13$2. 5-18$; 18; 19$1-28$; 19$30-38$. If these passages are read continuously, they form an orderly narrative, tracing the march of Abraham and Lot from Ḥarran through Shechem to Bethel, where they separate; thence Abraham proceeds to Hebron, but is again brought into ideal contact with Lot by visits of angels to each in turn; this leads up to the salvation of Lot from the fate of Sodom, his flight to the mountains, and the origin of the two peoples supposed to be descended from him. In this sequence 12$9$-13$1$ is (as will be more fully shown later) an interruption. Earlier critics had attempted to get rid of the discontinuity either by seeking a suitable connexion for 12$9ff.$ at a subsequent stage of J's narrative, or by treating it as a redactional expansion. But neither expedient is satisfactory, and the suggestion that it comes from a separate source is preferable on several grounds. Now 12$9ff.$ is distinguished from J$h$, not only by the absence of Lot, but by the implication that Abraham's home was in the Negeb, and perhaps by a less idealised conception of the patriarch's character. These characteristics reappear in ch. 16, which, as breaking the connexion of ch. 18 with 13, is plausibly assigned to J$b$. (To this source Gu. also assigns the Yahwistic component of ch. 15; but that chapter shows so many signs of later elaboration that it can hardly have belonged to either of the primary sources.)—After ch. 19, the hand of J appears in the accounts of Isaac's birth (21$1-7*$) and Abraham's treaty with Abimelech (21$22-34*$): the latter is probably J$b$ (on account of the Negeb), while the former shows slight discrepancies with the prediction of ch. 18, which lead us (though with less confidence) to assign