The Primeval history (German: Urgeschichte) is the name given by biblical scholars to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis. It covers the first years of the world's existence, from the Creation to Abraham. The narrative tells how God creates the world and all its beings, and places the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) in a divine garden, the Garden of Eden, how the first couple are expelled from God's presence, of the first murder which follows, and God's decision to destroy the world and save only the righteous Noah and his sons. A new humanity then descends from these sons and spreads throughout the world, but although the new humanity is as sinful as the old God has resolved never again to destroy the world by flood, and the History ends with ends with Terah, the father of Abraham, from whom will descend God's chosen people.[1]
Structure and content
The History contains some of the best-known stories in the Bible plus a number of genealogies, structured around the five-fold repetition of the toledot formula ("These are the generations of..."):[2]
• The toledot of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1-4:26)
- The Genesis creation narrative (the combined Hexameron or six-day cosmic creation-story of Genesis 1 and the human-focused creation-story of Genesis 2)
- God's covenant with Noah, in which God promises never again to destroy the world by water
- Noah the husbandman (the invention of wine), his drunkenness, his three sons, and the Curse of Canaan
• The toledot of the sons of Noah (10:1-11:9)
- the Table of Nations (the sons of Noah and the origins of the nations of the world) and how they came to be scattered across the Earth through the Tower of Babel
• The toledot of Shem (11:10-26)
- the descendants of Noah in the line of Shem to Terah, the father of Abraham
Composition history
Sources
There is general agreement among scholars that Genesis 1-11 combines two sources, the Priestly and the non-Priestly, usually alternating but sometimes combined. The Priestly source provides the main narrative and most of the genealogies, while the non-Priestly source contributes stories and is more concerned with human questions.[3] The following table is based on "An Introduction to the Bible", by Robert Kugler and Patrick Hartin:[4]
Verses
Priestly
Non-Priestly (Yahwist)
1:1-2:4a
First Creation story
2:4b-4:26
Second Creation story, Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel
5:1-24
Descendants of Adam
6:1-8
Sons of God (Nephilim), reason for the Flood
6:9-13
Reason for the Flood
6:14-8:22
Flood and post-Flood renewal
Flood and post-Flood renewal
9:1-17
Covenant with Noah
9:18-27
Drunkenness of Noah/Noah and his sons (the curse of Canaan)
10:1-32
Table of Nations
Table of Nations
11:1-9
Tower of Babel
11:10-32
Descendants of Noah
Near Eastern myth
Both sources borrow extensively from earlier Near Eastern myth (the following list is not exhaustive):
• The Enuma Elish (Babylon), written to legitimate the primacy of Marduk among the Babylonian gods, parallels many elements of Genesis 1, including the opening words, the Biblical cosmology, and mankind's status as the earthly regent of God.
• Memphis Theology (Egypt) tells how the god Ptah, like the Israelite God in Genesis 1, creates the world through speech.
• The Atrahasis Epic (Mesopotamia), like Genesis 2, tells how man was created from dust.
• The myth of Enki and Ninhursag (Sumeria), like the Genesis 2 story of Eden, tells of a divine couple and a Tree of Life.
• Dumuzi and Enkimdu, a Mesopotamian shepherd and farmer-god who competed for the love of a goddess, parallel the story of Cain and Abel.
• The Sumerian King List, like the genealogy of Cain, explains the origins of civilization; it also divides history into two epochs before and after a great flood.
• The Gilgamesh epic, like the story of Noah, provides for the survival of humanity after a great flood sent by the gods.[5]
Composition and relationship to the Book of Genesis
Genesis 1-11 shows little relationship to the Genesis 12-50 (the remainder of the Book of Genesis) or to the Pentateuch (Torah) as a whole.[6] For example, the names of its characters and its geography - Adam (man) and Eve (life), the Land of Nod (wandering), and so on - are symbolic, and much of the narratives consist of lists of "firsts" - the first murder, the first wine, the first empire-builder; most notably, almost none of the persons, places and events in it are ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.[7] This has led some scholars to suppose that the History forms a late composition attached to Genesis and the Pentateuch to serve as an introduction.[8]
Nevertheless, the source J (an element of the non-Priestly source, and the only one represented in the Primeval History) has been dated by some scholars (e.g., John Van Seters) to the exilic pre-Persian period (the 6th century BCE) precisely because the History contains so much Babylonian influence.[9]
Hess, Richard S.; Tsumura, David Toshio, eds. (1994). "I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood": Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11. Sources for Biblical and Theological Study. Vol. 4. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. ISBN0-931464-88-9.
Louth, Andrew, ed. (2001). Genesis 1-11. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Vol. 1. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press. ISBN0--8308-1471-X.
Thompson, John L., ed. (2012). Genesis 1-11. Reformation Commentary on Scripture. Vol. 1. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press. ISBN978-0-8308-2951-4.
