CHAPTER VI THE EARLY NARRATIVES OF GENESIS BY PROFESSOR JAMES ORR, D. D., UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND By the early narratives of Genesis are to be understood the first eleven chapters of the book—those which precede the times of Abraham. These chapters present peculiarities of their own, and I confine attention to them, although the criti- cal treatment applied to them is not confined to these chapters, but extends throughout the whole Book of Genesis, the Book of Exodus, and the later history with much the same result in reducing them to legend. We may begin by looking at the matter covered by these eleven chapters with which we have to deal. See what they contain. First, we have the sublime proem to the Book of Genesis, and to the Bible as a whole, in the account of the Creation in Gen. 1. However it got there, this chapter mani- festly stands in its fit place as the introduction to all that fol- lows. Where is there anything like it in all literature ? There is nothing anywhere, in Babylonian legend or anywhere else. You ask perhaps what interest has religious faith in the doc-' trine of creation—in any theory or speculation on how the world came to be ? I answer, it has the very deepest interest. The interest of religion in the doctrine of creation is that this doctrine is our guarantee for the dependence of all things on God—th e ground of our assurance that everything in nature and Providence is at His disposal. “My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth.” Suppose there was anything in the universe that was not created by God —* that existed independently of Him—ho w could we be sure that that element might not thwart, defeat, destroy the ful- 85
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