Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/36

ii the division is obviously appropriate. Four centuries of complete silence lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the history of a nation as contrasted with that of a family; and its prevailing character of individual biography suggests that its traditions are of a different quality, and have a different origin, from the national traditions preserved in Exodus and the succeeding books. Be that as it may, Genesis is a unique and well-rounded whole; and there is no book of the Pent., except Deut., which so readily lends itself to monographic treatment.

Genesis may thus be described as the Book of Hebrew Origins. It is a peculiarity of the Pent. that it is Law-book and history in one: while its main purpose is legislative, the laws are set in a framework of narrative, and so, as it were, are woven into the texture of the nation's life. Genesis contains a minimum of legislation; but its narrative is the indispensable prelude to that account of Israel's formative period in which the fundamental institutions of the theocracy are embedded. It is a collection of traditions regarding the immediate ancestors of the Hebrew nation (chs. 12–50), showing how they were gradually isolated from other nations and became a separate people; and at the same time how they were related to those tribes and races most nearly connected with them. But this is preceded (in chs. 1–11) by an account of the origin of the world, the beginnings of human history and civilisation, and the distribution of the various races of mankind. The whole thus converges steadily on the line of descent from which Israel sprang, and which determined its providential position among the nations of the world. It is significant, as already observed, that the narrative stops short just at the point where family history ceases with the death of Joseph, to give place after a long interval to the history of the nation.

The Title.—The name 'Genesis' comes to us through the Vulg. from the LXX, where the usual superscription is simply (G$EM, most curs.$), rarely (G$72$), a contraction of  (G$A, 121$). An