Title B 220.7_New Bible Commentary (Gordon J. Wenham, J. Alec Motyer ).pdf ✅

New Bible Commentary 21st Century Edition Consulting editors: D. A. Carson Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, USA R. T. France Principal, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK J. A. Motyer formerly Principal, Trinity College, Bristol, UK G. J. Wenham Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham, UK
GENESIS Introduction Title The title Genesis comes from the Greek translation (the Septuagint) and means ‘origin, source, creation’, whereas the Hebrew title (taken from the book’s opening words) is ‘In the beginning’. Both titles aptly suggest the book’s subject-matter, for it describes the origins of the universe, the world, mankind, human institutions (such as marriage), the nations and, above all, the people of Israel. God’s creative work in bringing all these things into being is focused in Genesis. Another title, now more rarely used, is ‘The First Book of Moses’. This title highlights the fact that Genesis is the first part of a five-volume work, traditionally ascribed to Moses, otherwise called the Law or the Pentateuch. Genesis puts the lawgiving at Sinai (the subject- matter of Exodus to Deuteronomy) into historical perspective and provides a theological key to the interpretation of the laws and stories contained in those books. Place and contents Like the other books of the Bible, Genesis is primarily theological, i.e. it is concerned with describing who God is, how and why he acts and how he deals with mankind. Often the activity of God in human affairs is not obvious, either in our everyday life or even in some parts of the Bible (e.g. the book of Esther). But in Genesis, especially in the early chapters, God is the central actor. Here he constantly speaks and acts, displaying his power and character. Modern Christian readers, brought up to believe in one all-powerful holy God, may not be surprised by the religious content of Genesis. But ancient readers, coming to the book from a background of the many gods of paganism, would have been astonished by it. The God of Genesis is not one of many localized gods of limited knowledge and power but the almighty Creator of the whole universe and Lord and Judge of all. It is this God who created mankind, cares for them and judges their misdeeds. It is this God who spoke to Abraham, prompting him to leave his homeland, settle in Canaan (the land of Israel) and bring up his family there. God promised Abraham that his descendants would dwell in Canaan, and Genesis records how, despite numerous mistakes, these promises gradually began to be realized. In the following biblical books a more complete fulfilment of these promises is described. It is this divine perspective that gives Genesis its unity and is central to the author’s understanding, and it needs always to be borne in mind as we attempt to relate the stories of Genesis to history. Genesis is not interested in events for their own sake but for what they disclose about the nature of God and his purposes. Genesis and history Many individuals pass across the stage of world history in Genesis. Yet, for the most part, their recorded deeds concern their own private families, not national or international affairs. The
concern with birth and death, family disputes, grazing and burial rights etc. that characterizes these stories makes it plain that for the writer of Genesis the characters he described were real historical individuals. They are not personifications of clans or the products of his imagination. Yet can we be sure that the stories in Genesis are really historical? As yet, no patriarchal marriage document or evidence of, for example, Jacob’s visit to Paddan Aram or Joseph’s work as vizier of Egypt has been discovered outside the Bible. This is hardly surprising given the very small proportion of information committed to writing in ancient times and the small fraction of texts that have survived and been discovered by archaeologists. This makes the chances of demonstrating the reality of one of the patriarchs remote, apart from what we find in the Bible. But there are many pointers in Genesis to the antiquity of its traditions, and these make it unlikely that the stories were the creation of religious ‘novelists’ writing long after the era they profess to describe, as some scholars suggest. First, the names of the patriarchs are names that were frequently used in the early second millennium BC but only very rarely later. Names like Jacob, Isaac and Ishmael were standard names among the early Amorites (c. 1800 BC) but went out of fashion later. Other names in the patriarchal narratives, e.g. Serug, Nahor and Terah, confirm that the patriarchs came from the area of Haran. Secondly, the social customs of the patriarchs fit those mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts. Some of the practices (e.g. the custom of a man giving his daughter a dowry when she married) changed very little in two thousand years and so do not help us date the stories of the patriarchs exactly. They simply show the stories were true to life, whenever they were written. However, there are some customs which do seem to have changed with time, e.g. adopting a slave as an heir (Gn. 15) or calling the eldest boy rab (Gn. 25:23), and these place the biblical stories in an early period. Similarly, many features of the Joseph story find better parallels in second-millennium Egyptian texts than in later ones, and this again supports the antiquity of the stories about Joseph. Thirdly, the religion and morality of the patriarchs appear to be earlier than what is found in other books of the Pentateuch. Sometimes the practice and beliefs of the patriarchs contradict the demands of the later law. For example, Abraham married his half-sister (Gn. 20:12; cf. Lv. 18:9), Jacob married two sisters (Gn. 29:21–30; cf. Lv. 18:18) and Jacob erected a stone pillar (Gn. 28:18); cf. Lv. 26:1; Dt. 16:21–22). In Genesis, God nearly always introduces himself as El, e.g. El Shaddai (‘God Almighty’; Gn. 17:1), El Elyon (‘God Most High’; Gn. 14:19). Later (after Ex. 6:3), Yahweh, ‘the LORD’, became the standard Israelite name for God. These observations tend to confirm that the patriarchal stories are historical, though obviously we can never prove the details of particular incidents. But when we come to chapters 1–11 we are treading on different ground. Most of these stories deal with periods long before writing was invented, so they cannot be ‘history’ in the strict sense of the term or be verified by evidence from outside the Bible. However, Genesis does try to arrange the stories chronologically and explain things in terms of cause and effect. These are the hallmarks of history writing, so that T. Jacobsen has coined the term ‘mytho-historical’ to describe such literature (JBL, 100 (1981), p. 528). ‘Myth’ has negative overtones, so ‘proto-history’ is probably a better way to describe Genesis 1–11. In the present state of knowledge it is difficult to know how to relate these chapters to modern scientific discovery. It is more helpful (see below on the theology of Genesis and in the commentary) to read these chapters against the background of beliefs current in the ancient Near East. Then they will be seen to be offering a powerful critique of the belief in many gods. The writer of Genesis seems to assume the historicity of Adam, Eve
and their descendants, for he links them all together in long family trees that end with Abraham. This shows that for him Adam was a real individual like Abraham or Isaac. Authorship The authorship of Genesis has been one of the most discussed issues in biblical studies, so for a fuller explanation of the issues the reader should look at the article on the Pentateuch. However, the major viewpoints and the stance taken in the commentary are as follows: Traditionally, Moses (c. 1300 BC) was regarded as the main author of Genesis and the following four books. However, it was accepted that certain remarks (e.g. 12:6; 36:31) showed that some parts of the book had been added later. The text of Genesis does not claim Moses as its author, in any case. From the nineteenth century onwards main-line critical scholarship minimized the role of Moses in the composition of the Pentateuch. Indeed, the most widely-accepted view came to be that Genesis was composed from three major sources J (tenth century BC), E (ninth century BC), and P (sixth century BC). Genesis, it was held, went through a series of modifications with new material being added with each new edition. Since the 1970s there have been many questions raised about the J, E, P documentary theory, with some scholars contesting the dating of the sources and others doubting their very existence. So far, no theory has emerged to replace the old source-critical consensus, so it is still assumed in many textbooks and commentaries. While this critical debate has continued, it has become widely accepted that the commentator’s first job is to explain the present form of the text. Whether the author of Genesis used many sources or just one, what matters is the book as it stands. It is a beautifully constructed whole, full of vividly told stories, that convey a vision of God and his truth which is presupposed throughout the rest of the Bible. So what this commentary focuses on is the present final form of the text. This may well be considerably earlier than is often supposed (for fuller discussions see the article on the Pentateuch). Whoever wrote Genesis, in whatever period, was more interested in telling us about God than in giving us clues to his own identity. Theology The book of Genesis splits into two unequal parts. Chapters 1–11, the proto-history, focus on the origins of the human race, and chapters 12–50, the period of the patriarchs, focus on the origins of Israel. The much greater attention devoted to the patriarchs shows what was the chief concern of the author. So, in reviewing the main theological themes of Genesis, chapters 12–50 will be dealt with first and then chapters1–11, which give background to the choice of Abraham and his descendants. Theology of Genesis 12–50 The key theological themes of Genesis 12–50, indeed of the whole Pentateuch, are set out in 12:1–3: ‘The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” ’ Here God makes four promises to Abraham: that he will be given a ‘land’ (1); that he will