The Early Narratives of Genesis 87 Next, returning to the style of Gen. 1—w hat is called the “Elohistic” style—we have the genealogical line of Seth ex- tending from Adam to Noah. You are struck with the lon- gevity ascribed to those patriarchal figures in the dawn of time, but not less with the constant mournful refrain which ends each notice, Enoch’s alone excepted, “and he died.” This chapter connects directly with the account of creation in Genesis 1, but presupposes equally the narrative of the Fall in the intervening chapters. We often read in critical books assertions to the contrary of this. The “priestly writer,” we are told, “knows nothing” of a Fall. But that is not so. Well- hausen, that master-critic, *is on my side here. Speaking of the so-called “priestly” sections in the story of the flood, he says, “The flood is well led up to ; in Q. [that is his name for the priestly writing] we should be inclined to ask in surprise how the earth has come all at once to be so corrupted after being in the best of order. Did we not know it from J. E.? [that is, the Fall Narrative].” Another leading critical au- thority, Dr. Carpenter, writes in the same strain. Then you come to the flood story in Gen. 6:9, in which two narratives are held to be interblended. There are two writers here, criticism says—the Elohistic and the Jeho- vistic,—yet criticism must own that these two stories fit won- derfully into one another, and the one is incomplete with- out the other. If one, for instance, gives the command to Noah and his house to enter the Ark, it is the other that narrates the building of the Ark. If one tells of Noah’s “house,” it is the othter that gives the names of Noah’s sons. What is still more striking, when you compare these Bible stories with the Babylonian story of the deluge, you find that it takes both of these so-called “narratives” in Genesis to make up the one complete story of the tablets. Then, fol- lowing on the flood and the covenant with Noah, the race of mankind spreads out again as depicted in the table of nations in chapter 10. In verse 25 it is noted that in the
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