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 in Genesis
Genesis, like the other books of the Torah, draws on a number of distinct "sources", including the Priestly source, the Yahwist and the Elohist – the last two are often referred to collectively as "non-Priestly", but the Elohist is not present in the Primeval History and "non-Priestly" and "Yahwist" can be regarded here as interchangeable terms.[3] Dating these sources, particularly the Yahwist, has proved problematic, with various scholars arguing for various dates from the earliest days of the Monarchy to the Exilic period or later, but there is general agreement that the the Priestly source belongs to the early post-Exilic (or Persian) period, and that the Torah, the collection of five books of which Genesis is the first, achieved something like its current form in the 5th century BCE.[4][5] The following table of sources in the Primeval History is based on "An Introduction to the Bible", by Robert Kugler and Patrick Hartin:[6]
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
Relationship of the Primeval History to Genesis 12-50
Genesis 1-11 shows little relationship to the remainder of Genesis.[7] 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 rather than real, and much of the narratives consist of lists of "firsts" - the first murder, the first wine, the first empire-builder.[8] Most notably, almost none of the persons, places and stories in it are ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.[8] 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.[9] Just how late is a subject for debate: the Yahwist source (an element of the non-Priestly source) has been dated by some scholars to the exilic pre-Persian period (the 6th century BCE) precisely because the Primeval History contains so much Babylonian influence in the form of myth:[10][Note 1]
• 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 Gilgamesh epic, like the story of Noah, provides for the survival of humanity after a great flood sent by the gods.[11]
• The Sumerian King List, like the genealogy of Cain, explains the origins of civilization; and like the Primeval History, it divides history into two epochs before and after the flood.
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.