A Sacred Heirloom - Genesis

A Sacred Heirloom
The book of Genesis is a pure, sacred and coveted record of our original ancestors, during the most important time of humanity’s existence – our beginnings. Unfortunately, it’s truth and reality had been obscured in the historical mire of human civilizations from the nearly six thousand years of embellishments of national biases and exaggerations.
The following text is from a book I don’t think is available in electronic form. So, I have edited my own copy of it just to reduce the full amout of text. This is a book I beleve that all Christians should have, especially any who needs more faith of the Holy Bible as the Word of God.

PART 1
INTRODUCTION: Wiseman, P.J. Ancient records and the structure of Genesis: a case for literary unity. T. Nelson Publishers, c1985.
This book is the outcome of studies in archaeology, completed while the author was working in Iraq. The investigation of the problems of the book of Genesis in its ancient environment, and in the light of the mass of facts regarding ancient literary methods, throws an entirely new light on the problem of its nature and authorship.
The aim is to state as simply as possible the evidence, which Genesis has to give concerning its own origin and composition. To many it will appear surprising that Genesis has anything whatever to say for itself regarding the method by which it was originally written, for scholars have discussed this very question for the last two centuries without even suggesting that it contains the slightest direct statement concerning its own authorship. The investigation is of the greatest possible importance, and the conclusions which results from it no less so, for this first book of Scripture is the basis on which much of the superstructure, not only of the Old Testament, but also of the New, is reared. Moreover, Genesis has an interest and significance to which no other document of antiquity can aspire.
For Genesis was permitted the rare privilege of being allowed to speak for itself in the light of all the knowledge we now possess of the methods of writing practiced in patriarchal times. It would seem that the key to its composition has previously remained unrecognized, and therefore unused. While prevailing theories have been unable to unlock the door to its literary structure, it is submitted that the following explanation does: The book of Genesis was originally written on tablets in the ancient script of the time by the patriarchs who were intimately concerned with the events related, and whose names are clearly stated. Moreover, Moses, the compiler and editor of the book, as we have it, plainly directs attention to the source of his information.
Until the beginning of the last century, the only known contemporary history that had been written earlier than 1000 BC was the early part of the Old Testament. The ancient historical records of Babylonia had not been unearthed but lay buried and unknown beneath mounds and ruins, which had hidden them for millenniums. It was because the earlier books of the Bible stood alone and unique in this claim to have been written centuries before any other piece of writing then known to the world, that a century ago critics endeavored to prove they must have been written at a date much later than Moses. On the other hand, the defenders of the Mosaic authorship could not then know that writing was in frequent use a thousand years before he was born. Consequently both sides in the controversy imagined that the contents of Genesis had been handed down by word of mouth, it being assumed that writing was impracticable, and almost unknown, in the times of the patriarchs.


Foreword by D.J.Wiseman:
Former Professor of Assyriology in the University of London and Assistant Keeper, Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, The British Museum.
In response to a growing number of requests, the study written by my late father, P.J.Wiseman {Air Commodore P.J.Wiseman, CBE, RAF (1888-1948). He was also president of the Victoria Institute and the Crusader’s Union in England}, is presented here in a single volume. It originally appeared as New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis in 1936. Despite publication in “war economy” format and in a limited edition, new printings were immediately required. These were followed by translations into German (Die Entstehung der Genesis, Wuppertal, 1958) and into Dutch (Ontdekkingen over Genesis, Groningen, 1960). References to his writings are made in a number of books (for example, R.K.Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, 1969, which summarizes the book on pp.545-53). These have increased the demand for a reprint.
My father’s interest as a Bible student was quickened by his residence in the Middle East, especially during 1923-25 and 1931-33 when in Iraq. He read extensively and took the opportunity of visiting the principal excavations; these included the British Museum and University Museum of Pennsylvania Expedition to Ur under Sir Leonard Wooley and that of the University of Oxford Ashmolean Museum at Kish under Professor S.H.Langdon. He had many discussions with these and other scholars there (especially Professor Cyril Gadd). While he himself did not read the cuneiform scripts and had a limited knowledge of classical Hebrew, he carefully checked his theories with competent scholars. His enthusiasm was in no small measure the encouragement to me to enter these specialized fields of archaeology and ancient Semitic languages, and we often discussed his ideas in their formative stages.
P.J.Wiseman’s primary idea is a simple one. Taking his cue from the recurrent “catch-lines” or colophons in Genesis of the form, “These are the family histories (generations) of...” he examines them as clues to the literary structure of Genesis and as indicative of its origin and transmission. He takes the Genesis narratives as they stand and relates them to well-attested ancient literary methods.
Since this book was first written there have been many more colophons discovered among the cuneiform texts, which have been found in Babylonia. They have been published by H. Hunger, Babylonische und Assyrische Kolophone(1968) and by E.Leichty, “The Colophon” in Studies Presented to A.L.Oppenheim (1964),pp.147-54. These substantiate the references to this scribal device, which is the “key” to the elucidation of the documents, which were composed in Genesis.
Recent discoveries of Semitic literature from Syria and Mesopotamia, among them many dated texts ca.2300 BC – notably the finds in 1975-76 from Tell Mardih (Ebla) and, from a millennium later, the Akkadian texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit) – show the continuity in tradition both of scribal education and literary practices. In many instances tablets show them to have continued virtually unchanged for a further two millenniums.
To the present writer the particular value of this theory in relation to Genesis is the implication of the early use of writing with the possibility that Genesis 1-37 could be a transcript from the oldest series of written records.


PART 2
DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA
It was not until the middle of the last century [the nineteenth century] that excavators began digging among the ruined mounds of Mesopotamia. Just a few decades ago these long undulating hills of earth were the undisturbed grave clothes covering the remains, of the oldest civilizations. In Egypt, the great monuments – the pyramids, temples and palaces – had at least kept their heads above the shifting sands of the desert. In Mesopotamia the cities were so thoroughly buried, that it had become a land of dead cities; moreover, so obliterated had the places of their internment become that their sites were either unknown or uncertain. Now jackals and scorpions make their homes in their ruins, “her cities are a desolation, dry land and a wilderness” (Jer. 51:43).
In early times, the southern part of the country was known as Babylonia and the northern as Assyria. Still earlier, the southern plain was called Sumeria and more northerly Agade (Accad). This country is a strip of land, some 600 miles long and 250 miles broad, now extending from the Kurdish mountains in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, with the Persian or Iranian mountains as its eastern border, and on its western, the desert of Arabia. It is a land uniform in its flatness, down which the two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, flow.
It must be admitted that in those early days excavators were searching mainly for sculptures, which would adorn the museums of London and Paris. Claudius James Rich may be called the first excavator. He visited Babylon in December of 1811 and wrote about the desolation and confusion that existed there, and of the brick robbers who had been carrying away Nebuchadnezzar’s bricks for ordinary building purposes. The East India Company requested him to send home specimens of these bricks, and the clay tablets inscribed with wedge writing.
In 1842 France sent Paul Emil Botta to Mosul as their consul. On the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite Mosul, lay the ruins of Nineveh. He was restricted to the northern mound known as Kouyunjik, but success did not attend his excavations. A peasant from the village of Khorsadab, some thirty miles north of Nineveh, happening to pass the diggings and finding that Botta was in search of stones with pictures on them, volunteered the information that in his village there were plenty of such stones. He sent some of his workman to the Arab’s village to see what they could find. As soon as the digging began they came across sculptured bas-reliefs and inscriptions. When the news of this discovery reached Paris it created such interest that funds were immediately placed at Botta’s disposal to continue the work. By 1844 numerous rooms in the palace had been unearthed, and it was identified as the palace of Sargon II, who is mentioned in Isaiah 20:1 as sending his general against Ashdod.
It was not long before Great Britain became represented in Assyrian archaeology in the person of Austen Henry Layard. On his way to Persia in 1840 he visited Mosul, and on the return in 1842 he met Botta at Nineveh. In 1845 Sir Stratford Canning, the Ambassador at Constantinople, instead of making him the attaché, gave him fifty pounds for archaeological research. With only six workmen, he went twenty-five miles down the eastern bank of the Tigris to a mound called Nimrud- the Calah of Genesis 10. On the first day he discovered an Assyrian palace, on the third he came across numerous fragments of cuneiform tablets, but for the latter he was not searching, for he could not decipher this cuneiform writing. On one occasion when he had dug a fifty-foot trench into one of the mounds, a workman unearthed a black marble monument – the now famous obelisk of Shalmaneser III – inscribed on which are the words, “I received the tribute of Jehu Son Omri silver and gold,” etc. When Colonel Rawlinson at Baghdad deciphered this inscription referring to the king of Israel, the news of the “find” created a considerable impression. Layard commanded a second expedition in 1849-51 and the results were so good that it required hundreds of cases to send even part of the acquired treasure to the British Museum.
Hormuzd Rassam, a resident of Mosul who had assisted Layard, took charge of the operations two years later. The tablets found by him were packed in the primitive fashion of those days and shipped to the British Museum, where, owing to the fact that they were so numerous and the deciphers so few, they remained in the cellars for many years before it was discovered that among them were the king’s copies of the Babylonian Creation and Flood tablets.
During all this time Babylonia had been almost ignored, excavators having concentrated their attention on the northern mounds of Assyria. In 1849 Colonel Rawlinson, and in 1854 J.E.Taylor, visited Ur of the Chaldees, while in the latter year Rawlinson made researches both at Babylon and at Birs Nimrud.
George Smith, who commenced his career at the British Museum as an engraver, unremittingly surmounted the difficulties in the translation of cuneiform writing, until he became one of the most skillful deciphers of his day. In the course of his work at the Museum he recognized and deciphered the Flood tablets (which had been discovered nearly twenty years before), and disclosed his find to the world in a paper read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology in December 1872. It was not until 1888 that America began to take a direct and active part in Babylonian excavation.
However, it is only in the last few years that excavation has reached back to the times outlined in the early chapters of Genesis. The discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia during the last century rarely took us back beyond the age of Moses.
In 1922 Mr. (later, Sir Leonard) Woolley of the British Museum, acting in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania, commenced the systematic excavation of Ur of the Chaldees. From the very beginning of the work, this expert archaeologist demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt the high state of civilization existing in early times.
In 1929 Sir Leonard Woolley instructed his workmen to dig a deep pit in a selected part of the city. In doing this they unexpectedly found a remarkable change in the character of the soil, for clean water-laid clay suddenly commenced. The Arab workmen reported it and were told to continue digging down. After a depth of eight feet this cleaned water-laid clay eased as suddenly as it had commenced, for below it broken pottery was found and other evidences of the existence of a village before the layer of clay became deposited. The place where this discovery occurred was down through strata, which covered the sloping face of a mound, and the thickness of the water-laid clay varied across it from eight to eleven feet in depth. The water necessary to lay such a great thickness of deposit must have been so considerable that Sir Leonard Woolley came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation of his discovery was that they had found definite evidence of the effects of the Flood. In the season 1929-30 he dug down through the clay of the Flood, discovering statues and pottery in the pre-Flood level. At the conclusion of this last season’s work, he told me that his findings regarding the Flood had been abundantly confirmed. I have examined this Flood earth. The complete absence of salt prevalent in other levels, its exceptional nature, the sudden beginning and as abrupt cessation, then the recommencement of broken pottery and bones beneath it, are certainly most remarkable evidence of a flood. –Footnote: [Published by the British Museum, Ur Excavations, 4(1956); Sir C. L. Woolley, Cf. Also M.E.L Mallowan, “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered,” Iraq 26(1964), pp.62-82].
Professor S.H.Langdon commenced researches at Kish and Jemdat Nasr in 1923, which have been exceedingly fruitful in their contribution to our knowledge of the earliest periods of civilization. Here also, a distance of 150 miles from Ur, evidence of the Flood was found.
At Nippur the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania found a large number of inscriptions dating before the time of Abraham; these have been published by the University Press. In the volume issued in 1914 by Dr. Arno Poebel (Historical Texts), he reproduces a series of tablets relating to the Creation and the Flood, and “ten rulers who reigned before the Flood.” It is quite possible that the latter corresponds to the ten patriarchs mentioned in Genesis 5. These tablets are written in one of the earliest forms of cuneiform script known.
Later, Mr. H.Weld-Blundell obtained a number of inscribed clay prisms, which had been found at Larsa. These he has presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and Professor S.H.Langdon studied and deciphered them. One known as WB 444 contains a complete list of men who “ruled before the Flood”; the names are then give of those who ruled “after the Flood” until the year 2000 BC. Another (WB 62) gives a list of ten persons who “ruled before the Flood.”
Reference should also be made to Dr. H.H.Frankfort’s Third Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tell Asmar (Eshunna). Under the chapter heading of “The Religion of Eshunna in the Third Millennium BC,” he writes:
...For instance, we discover that the representation on cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted-in to form a consistent picture in which a single god worshipped in this temple forms the central figure. It seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon.
This illuminating statement throws light on the way polytheism developed from monotheism; it used to be imagined that the reverse was the case.
Warka (the Erech of Genesis 10) has been partially excavated by German archaeologists who found remarkable evidence of an advanced state of civilization in pre-Abrahamic days.
During subsequent years excavators have been busy tracing the various strata of civilization backwards into the twilight of history.
Before these excavations this early period was considered legendary even by archaeologist. Now, in the opinion of these experienced men, Sumerian civilization had reached its zenith centuries before Abraham.
The archaeologists are by no means engaged in an attempt to find evidences, which agree with the Bible. This is far from being their aim. They sift their evidence in a most critical spirit and, if there is any bias, it is in favor of the critical standpoint rather than that of the Bible. Yet, in the words of more than one, they have expressed the truth of the matter when they have affirmed that they have been compelled by the evidence they have unearthed to accept that Genesis in this or that respect is accurate.
No more surprising fact has been discovered by recent excavation than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case. In this connection, Dr. H.R.Hall writes in his History of the Near East, “When civilization appears it is already full grown,” and again, “Sumerian culture springs into view ready made.” And Dr. L.W.King in Sumer and Akkad, says, “Although the earliest Sumerian settlements in southern Babylonia are to be set back in a comparatively remote past, the race by which they were founded appears at the time to have already attained to a high level of culture.”
In the face of these facts, the slow progress of early man is a disproved assumption, and the idea that an infinitely prolonged period elapsed before civilization appeared cannot be maintained.
Neither the Bible nor Babylonian excavations know anything of uncivilized man. Life at the beginning was necessarily simple, but it seems that it was not only enlightened, it was cultured.


PART 3
METHODS OF THE SCRIBES IN 3000 BC
One of the most remarkable facts, which has emerged from archaeology research, is that the art of writing began in the earliest historical times known to man. Until recent times it was the general tendency to insist on the late appearance of writing. Now the pendulum has swung to the opposite direction, and the present tendency is to thrust back the period for which written records are claimed to about 3500 BC. Egyptologists have discovered documents written on papyrus which they claim may be as early as 3000 BC.
Professor Langdon of Oxford University, who was excavating at Kish, unearthed what is to be the oldest piece of writing ever found. It was on a stone tablet and in the form of line pictures. This “line picture writing” is thought by many to be a development of still older writing by which the ancients made ordinary pictures convey their thoughts on stone or clay. This infant system of writing while decidedly primitive is by no means crude, for the Egyptians used it at the height of their art and power. Some of the ancient forms of picture writing are so old that they cannot now be deciphered; when, however, such picture writing as that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics is used, it conveys the thoughts of the writers intelligibly and accurately.
A conservative estimate is that the pictographic forms of writing which have been found may be dated from 3300 to 2800 BC; thereafter cuneiform writing came into use.
In the very early days clay became the common material on which to write, though stone was used in some instances. The clay of the Euphrates valley is remarkable for its fineness; it is as fine as well ground flour. When made plastic with water it is shaped into the size desired to be written upon and the writing done with a stylus made of metal or wood, one of which was triangular. This stylus was held in the palm of the hand, and a corner of it was pressed into the plastic clay, leaving a mark, which resembled a wedge (hence cuneiform writing, from cuneus, a wedge). All the signs were made up of single wedges, placed parallel, at various angles, or across each other. By these means nearly 600 entirely independent and distinct signs were made by use of from one to thirty wedges. There were scribes and, though the sizes of the stylus used and consequently that of the wedges varied, yet the general character of the script remained much the same in each period of history. The care and neatness bestowed upon a tablet is often indicative of its importance.
After this wedge writing had been impressed on the soft clay, the tablet was either dried in the great heat of the Babylonian sun or baked in a special kiln. The scribes mixed a little chalk or gypsum with the clay, because they found that by doing so, when the tablet dried, it scarcely shrank and did not crack. These clay tablets are, next to stone, the most imperishable form of writing material known to man. Even when dried in the sun they become so hard that for thousands of years they have remained intact and legible. Great care is however necessary when excavating sun-dried tablets if damp earth has come into contact with them. But after they have been dried, they again become so hard that it is difficult to tell they were not baked in a kiln.
As early as 2350 BC clay envelopes were used for private letters and contract tablets, and it became the practice to rewrite the contents of the tablet on the envelope, then to close it with a private seal. The owner could be assured that the contents had not been tampered with if the seal remained intact. Should a dispute arise the tablets within was examined.
In Egypt, where the papyrus plant flourished, papyrus became the usual material on which to write. The earliest papyrus manuscript still in existence is stated to have been written about 3000 BC. The papyrus rolls, written upon with pen and ink, were usually nine to ten inches wide, and one example is 144 feet long. Papyrus as a writing material does not appear to have been used to any extant in Iraq; the inscribed clay tablet, baked hard, was considered a more appropriate and endurable substance for that country. [Otherwise, developing such a specialized writing material indicates a much older, an advanced, and very isolated culture from the Babylonian, because writing on stone was standard in earliest times of Egypt and of the postdiluvim world].
The cuneiform system of writing became general in all the civilized countries east of the Mediterranean. It was also adopted by the Hittites who are so often mentioned in Genesis. That it was understood in Egypt is evident from the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, of which some 300 were found in that country in 1887. Among them we find letters dated about 1400 BC from Palestine officials to the Egyptian government, all written in cuneiform.
We must now turn to the story of the early attempts to decipher cuneiform writing; only a brief outline can be given here for it is a long and intricate one. When specimens of cuneiform writing first were brought to Europe, scholars even doubted whether it was real writing, thinking it merely a form of oriental decoration! Grotefend was the first to explain the use of the mysterious wedges. By 1802 he had, with tolerable certainty, read three proper names of the kings found on an inscription brought from Persepolis, but apart from these three words his conclusions were generally wrong.
Major (later, General, Sir) Henry Rawlinson, the British Representative at Baghdad, at great peril, succeeded in 1835 in copying the bilingual texts of Darius at Behistun near Kermanshah. By 1839 he had read 200 lines of this inscription. In 1847 Edward Hincks, an Irish clergyman, made a great advance towards discovery when he found that cuneiform was not an alphabetical system of writing, and by 1857 he had fixed the value of 252 combinations of wedges. Other scholars confirmed the findings of both Rawlinson and Hincks.
Since that time a succession of brilliant and able scholars such as S. H. Langdon, C. J. Gadd, A. Poebel, S. N. Kramer and A. Falkenstein have grappled with the continual problems and difficulties presented by the more and more archaic forms of writing which have been unearthed.
We first notice that when scribes were employed, they not only wrote the whole of the letter, record, or legal tablet but also took the owner’s seal and impressed it on the clay; for these scribes knew best just how much pressure the seal should have on the clay to make it distinct. The seal was usually a cylinder from half an inch to an inch and a half long, but sometimes a precious stone engraved and worn on a ring was used. Each seal was specially inscribed for the owner and often included his name in cuneiform. A reference to the use of the seal is found in Job 38:14, “It is changed as clay under a seal.” Judah carried a seal about with him, and Joseph was given Pharaoh’s seal ring (Gen.41: 42). At Ur of the Chaldees Sir Leonard Woolley found seals owned by men who lived before the Flood. The use of this seal impression was the equivalent of the modern signature. When the owner’s seal had been impressioned upon the clay, the tablet, if written by a scribe, had sometimes written on it the name of the owner of the tablet.
The matter to be inscribed on clay document varied greatly. There were historical tablets containing narrative concerning clans or nations; legal tablets relating to the sale of land, buildings, or loans; commercial tablets, detailing in a manner similar to a modern invoice, transactions in farm produce, cattle, or common merchandise; letters, both official and private, and tablets containing genealogical lists.
Anyone familiar with cuneiform tablets can tell almost at a glance the nature of their contents. Just as in the present day the size and style of paper used (whether foolscap or letter paper, parchment or postcard) generally indicates the nature of their contents, such as a legal document, a private letter, or an official communication, so the size and style of Babylonian tablets are similarly indicative of their contents. There were prisms, cylinders, tablets made of barrel-shaped; some of the latter as big as quarto paper and
others as small as a postage stamp.
Ordinarily, clay tablets were made of sufficient size to contain all the writing matter to be inscribed. But
in some instances this was only achieved by using a small stylus, thus enabling a larger number of words to be written on the limited space available. It was not considered satisfactory to make a clay tablet too large. This was for two good reasons; firstly its liability to breakage, and next, from consideration of weight and handiness. Instances of tablets eighteen inches by twelve are rare. As a general rule, single tablets sufficed for ordinary documents, such as letters, contracts, invoices, and genealogical lists.
When, however, the lengthy nature of the writing required more than one tablet, it was just as necessary then as it is today (with the pages of letters or books) to adopt means to preserve their proper sequence, especially when a considerable number of tablets were required to complete the series. This was achieved by the use of “titles,” “catch-lines,” and “numbering.” The title was taken from the first words of the first tablet, these were repeated at the end of each subsequent tablet, followed by the serial number of that tablet; just as a title is often repeated at the head of each page of a book and each page is numbered. By this method, not only the series to which each tablet belonged, but also the order in which they were to be read, was indicated.
As an additional safeguard it was also the practice to use “catch-lines.” This system was not entirely lapsed, but is frequently adopted in writing or typing modern documents of importance. The present usage is to repeat the first two or three words of a subsequent page at the end of the preceding page. In Babylonian tablets the same method was employed, for the first few words of the subsequent tablet are repeated as “catch-lines” at the end of the previous tablet. It will not surprise the student acquainted with ancient or eastern customs, that many of the literary habits were precisely the reverse of our own. The Hebrew commenced their writing on what to us is the last page of the book and wrote from right to left. Similarly we find that in ancient Iraq, it was the ending and not the beginning of a tablet, which contained the vital information as to the name of the writer, date on which written, and description of the composition.
We would suggest that there can now be little doubt that initially much of the book of Genesis would have been written on tablets. We know that they were in use in the days of Moses. Similarly, it is very probable that the Ten Commandments were written on tablets (not “tables”) of stone, and in a manner similar to Babylonian tablets in “that the tablets were written on both their sides” (Exod. 32:15). The Hebrew verb “to write” means to “cut in” or “dig,” a reference to the early method of writing.
In the following chapter we shall show how, on examining the book of Genesis, we find that some of these ancient literary usage’s are still embedded in the present English text. Just as the scribes of Nineveh 2,500 years ago, when copying tablets which had been written a thousand years earlier, ended the tablet with a short statement indicating from which library the original text had come, we suggest that the compiler of Genesis has done precisely the same.


PART 4
THE KEY TO THE STRUCTURE OF GENESIS
The master key to the method of compilation that underlies the structure of the book of Genesis is to be found in an understanding of the phrase “These are the generations of....”
The formula is used eleven times in Genesis. As to its importance there can be no doubt, for so significant did the Septuagint translators regard it, that they gave the whole book the title “Genesis.” This is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word translated “generations.”


The formula is used in the following places:


2:4
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.
5:1
This is the book of the generations of Adam.
6:9
These are the generations of Noah.
10:1
These are the generations of the sons of Noah.
11:10
These are the generations of Shem.
11:27
These are the generations of Terah.
25:12
These are the generations of Ishmael.
25:19
These are the generations of Isaac.
36:1
These are the generations of Esau.
36:9
These are the generations of Esau.
37:2
These are the generations of Jacob.

The Hebrew word for “generations” in this expression is toledot and not the ordinary Hebrew word dor, which is translated “generations” 123 times. Fortunately there can be no doubt about the meaning of this word toledot. Gesenius, the pioneer Hebrew critical scholar, in his lexicon, explains it's meaning as “history, especially family history, since the earliest history among oriental nations is mostly drawn from genealogical registers of families.
It will be seen, therefore, that the word is used to describe history, usually family history in its origin. The equivalent phrase in English is, “These are the historical origins of...” or “These are the beginnings of...” It is therefore evident that the use of the phrase in Genesis is to point back to the origins of the family history and not forward to a later development through a line of descendants. This is made abundantly clear from the only occasion of its use in the New Testament, where in Matthew 1:1, we read, “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ,” following which is a list of ancestors. Here it certainly means the exact opposite of descendants, for it is used to indicate the tracing back of the genealogy to its origin. This is precisely the meaning of the Greek word geneseos translated “generation.” So that when we read, “this is the book of the history of Adam” it is the concluding sentence of the record already written and not an introduction to the subsequent record.
Another important fact needs to be emphasized in connection with this formula’s use. On its second mention (5:1) we read: “This is the book of the origins of Adam.” Here the word seper, translated “book,” means “written narrative,” or as F. Delitzsch translate it, “finished writing.” Moreover, the Septuagint Version renders chapter 2:4 “This is the book of the origins of the heavens and the earth.” The “books” of that time were tablets; the word simply means “record.” The earliest records of Genesis, therefore, claim to have been written down, and not as is often imagined passed on to Moses by word of mouth.
To summarize, we have noted three things about this phrase:
1. It is the concluding sentence of section, and therefore points backward to a narrative already recorded. 2. That the earliest records claim to have been written.
3. It normally refers to the writer of the history, or the owner of the tablet containing it.
The book of Genesis, therefore, contains the following series of tablets possessed by the persons whose names are stated. All of these tablets could have come into the possession of Moses, who compiled the book as we now have it, in the way that family records were normally handed down.


Tablet
Series
Contents
1
1:1-2:4
This is the book of the origins of the heavens and the earth.
2
2:5-5:2
This is the book of the origins of Adam.
3
5:3-6:9a
These are the origins (or histories) of Noah.
4
6:9b-10:1
These are the origins (or histories) of the sons of Noah.
5
10:2-11:10a
These are the origins (or histories) of Shem.
6
11:10b-11:27a
These are the origins (or histories) of Terah.
7-8
11:27b-25:19a
These are the origins (or histories) of Ishmael and Isaac.
9-11
25:19b-37:2a
These are the origins (or histories) of Esau and Jacob.

In this way Moses clearly indicates the source of the information available to him and names the persons who originally possessed the tablets from which he gained his knowledge. These are not arbitrarily invented divisions; they are stated by the author to be the framework of the book.


Two remarkable confirmations of these divisions are:
1. In no instance is an event recorded which the person or persons named could not have written from his own intimate knowledge, or have obtained absolutely reliable information.
2. It is most significant that the history recorded in the sections outlined above, ceases in all instances before the death of the person named, yet in most cases it is continued almost up to the date of death or the date on which it is stated that the tablets were written.


An examination of the remaining sections reveals that in:
Tablet 2 (2:5-5:2), the history ceases abruptly with Jabal, “the father of such as dwell in tents and have
cattle”; Jubal “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ”; and Tubal-cain, “the forger of every sort of tool of copper and iron.” These men were the eighth generation from Adam, and a comparison with the chronology given in Genesis 5 shows that this generation lived immediately before Adam’s death.
Tablet 3 (5:3-6:9a) written or owned by Noah. The genealogical list ends with the birth of his three sons. This list is followed by a statement concerning the corruption of humankind, revealing that this was the cause of the Flood, which took place when Noah was an old man. In this instance he could have written the story of the Flood. This is contained in the tablets of the “history of the sons of Noah.”
Tablet (series) 4 (6:9b-10-1) written or owned by Noah’s sons. They contain the account of the Flood and the death of Noah. How long Ham and Japheth lived after Noah’s death we are unaware, but we know that Shem survived him by 150 years, hence there is nothing in this section which the sons of Noah could not have written.
Tablet (series) 5 (10:2-11:10) written or owned by Shem. He writes of the birth and formation into clans of the fifth generation after him. We know that he out lived the last generation recorded in this tablet, that is, the sons of Joktan.
Tablet 6 (11:10-27) written or owned by Terah. Terah’s genealogical list registers the death of his father Nahor, while he himself lived on until his son Abraham was seventy-five years old. If the words found at the end of the tablet, “and Terah lived seventy years,” refer to the date he wrote it, then according to the Samaritan Pentateuch it was written just one year after the last chronological event mentioned in it, that is, the death of Nahor, the father of Terah, which occurred one year before Terah was seventy. The history contained in this tablet ends immediately before his own death.
The series of Tablets 7 and 8 (11:27-25:19) written or owned by the two brothers Ishmael and Isaac. The latest chronological statement (25:1-4) refers to the birth of Abraham’s grandsons, and of their growth into clans. Ishmael died forty-eight years and Isaac one hundred five years after Abraham. As Abraham would seem to have married Keturah soon after Sarah’s death (which occurred thirty-eight years before Abraham died), this period of thirty-eight years added to the remaining one hundred five years of Isaac’s life, is a most reasonable period to assign for the birth of Abraham’s great grand sons by Keturah. This indicates that the history recorded in these tablets ceases just before the death of Isaac, whose name is given as the last writer, for Isaac survived Ishmael by fifty-seven years and records his death.
The remaining Tablets (series) 9, 10, and 11 (25:20, 37:2), were the tablets belonging to, or written by, Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the central figure in the record, and the latest chronological statement in them is that of the death of Isaac. Immediately before the ending formula, “these are the origins of Jacob,” we read, “and Jacob dwelt in the land of his father’s sojourning, in the land of Canaan.” Within a few years Jacob had moved down to Egypt. This sentence indicates where he was living when he closed his record. For although he tells us of the death of Isaac, he says nothing whatever of the sale of Joseph into slavery, which occurred eleven years before Isaac’s death. Neither does he tell of Joseph’s interpretation of the butler’s dream or of any other event in Egypt. Until Jacob went down to Egypt (ten years after he had buried his farther), thus leaving “the land of his father’s sojourning,” he could not know anything whatever about these things. Thus the record of Joseph closes precisely at the period indicated in the sentence in 37:1. He had gone back to the south country, Hebron (where his father lived), only ten years before Isaac had died, and he records his death. Within ten years of this latter event, Jacob was himself living in Egypt. So this previously obscure verse of Genesis 37 clearly indicates not only that Jacob wrote the tablets but also when and where they were written.


PART 5
THE GREAT AGE OF THE BOOK
Every part of the book of Genesis furnishes evidence that, it was compiled in the present form by Moses, and that the documents from which he compiled it were written much earlier. The various lines of evidence may be summarized as follows:
1. The presence of Babylonian words in the first eleven chapters.
(2) The presence of Egyptian words in the last fourteen chapters.
(3) Reference to towns, which had either ceased to exist, or whose original names were already so ancient in the time of Moses, that as compiler of the book, he had to insert the new names, so that they could be identified by the Hebrews living in his day.
(4) The narratives reveal such familiarity with the circumstances and details of the event recorded, as to indicate that they were written by persons concerned with those events.
(5) Evidences that the narratives were originally written on tablets and in an ancient script.
The earlier chapters of Genesis contain Babylonian words; in fact, it is said by some linguistic experts, that the whole environment of these chapters is Babylonian.
When the narrative reaches the point at which Joseph arrives in Egypt, the whole environment changes. We find definite Egyptian names such as “Potipher” (37:36) or “Zaphnathpaaneah and Asenath” (41:45). We find ourselves removed from the simple country life of the patriarchs in Palestine and introduced to the customs of a Pharaoh and the constitution of a kingdom.
In Genesis 10:19 we read, “and the boundary of the Canaanite came to be from Sidon as far as Ge’rar, near Ga’za, as far as Sodom and Gomorrah” This sentence arrests attention, for it must have been written before the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, which took place in Abraham’s day. So completely were those cities blotted out, that all trace of them became lost and it was believed that they were buried beneath the Dead Sea. In our study of the sources we have seen that this sentence occurs in Shem’s tablet, and in his day Sodom and Gomorrah were still standing.
The third line of evidence is that many of the original place names given in Genesis were so old, even in the age of Moses, that it became necessary for him to add an explanatory note, in order to identify these ancient names for the sake of the children of Israel entering the land after their exodus from Egypt. Several instances of this may be seen in Genesis 14. When in the time of Abraham this tablet was written, it recorded the movements of certain kings, and the names of the places, as they were then known, were put down. But in the 400 years that elapsed between Abraham and Moses, some of these names had become changed, or the localities were unknown to the Israelites. So Moses, with this ancient text (Genesis 14) before him, in compiling the book of Genesis, added a note to enable his readers to identify place names. Thus we have:
Bela (which is Zoar) verses 2 and 8.
Vale of Siddim (which is the Salt Sea) verse 3. En-mishpat (which is Kadesh) verse 7.
Hobah (which is on the left hand of Damascus) verse 15. Valley of Shaveh (which is the King’s Dale) verse 17.
These are the only occasions in which these ancient names are used in the Bible.
Further instances of the use of notes to explain ancient names or localities are to be found in 16:14: Beer-la-hai-roi (beheld it is between Kadesh and Bered); in 35:19 we read of Ephrath (which is Bethlehem); in 23:2 we are told that “Sarah died in Kirjath-arba (the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan).” This quote is of special interest as it was necessary to give not only its modern name but even to say that Hebron was in the land of Canaan. This surely indicates that the children of Israel had entered the land. No one in later times would need to be told where Hebron was. The children of Israel must have known it quite well after its capture in Joshua’s day, when the city was given to Caleb for an inheritance. It then became one of the “cities of refuge” and as such must have been familiar throughout the land. Besides all this, David was King in Hebron for seven years. On the other hand, it would be necessary for a people not yet entered into the land to be told, not only the name of the place where the founders of the race had lived
but where this place was situated.
Primitive geographical expressions such as the “south country” (20:1 and 24:62) and “the east
country” (25:6) are used in the time of Abraham. These ancient designations never reappear as a description of the countries adjoining the south and east of Palestine. After the time of Genesis they have well-known and well-defined names. They were written down in the early days, and no writer after Moses would have used such archaic expressions as these.
Another most significant mark of antiquity in Genesis is to be found in the existence of small “city- states” and of a large number of clans. By the time of Solomon these had ceased to be. This is in contrast to the period of Abraham’s life, when Babylon and Egypt were dominated by powerful monarchs ruling from their capitals over vast districts.
The fifth and final series of evidences for the antiquity of Genesis is found in the various indications that these records were originally written on tablets and in accordance with ancient methods. In Babylonia the size of the tablet used depended upon the quantity of writing to be inscribed thereon. If this was sufficiently small, it was written on one tablet of a size that would satisfactorily contain it. When, however, the quantity to be inscribed was of such a length that it became necessary to use more than one tablet it was customary:
1. To assign to each series of tablets a “title.”
(2) To use “catch-lines,” so as to ensure that the tablets were read in their proper order.
In addition, many tablets ended with a colophon. This was the equivalent of the modern title page. However, on ancient tablets it was placed at the beginning as is now done. This colophon frequently included among other things:
(3) The name of the scribe who wrote the tablet.
(4) The date when it was written.


Evidence of these literary aids may be observed in the following significant repetition of words and
phrases connected with the beginning or ending of each of the series of tablets, now incorporated in the book of Genesis.

1:1
God created the heavens and the earth.
2:4
Lord God made the heavens and the earth. 2:4 when they were created.
5:2
when they were created.
6:10
Shem, Ham, Japheth.
10:1
Shem, Ham, Japheth.
10:32
After the Flood.
11:10
After the Flood.
11:26
Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
11:27
Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
25:12
Abraham’s son.
25:19
Abraham’s son.
36:1
who is Edom.
36:8
who is Edom.
36:9
Father of the Edomites (lit. Father Edom).
36:43
Father of the Edomites (lit. Father Edom).

The very striking repetitions of these phrases exactly where the tablets begin and end, will best be appreciated by those scholars acquainted with the methods of the scribes in Babylonia, for those were the arrangements then in use to link the tablets together. The repetition of these words and phrases precisely in those verses attached to the colophon, “These are the origins of,...” cannot possibly be a mere coincidence. They have remained buried in the text of Genesis, their significance apparently unnoticed.
On cuneiform tablets the “title” was taken from the commencing words of the record. In a similar manner the Hebrew called the first five books of the Bible by titles taken from their opening words. Thus they called Genesis beresit, the Hebrew for “in the beginning”; Exodus was called we’elleh semot (“Now these are the words”) the words with which the book commences; so Leviticus is called wayyiqra’ (“and he called”); Numbers, bemidbar (“in the wilderness”); Deuteronomy, haddebarim (“the words”). To this day these are the titles given to the first five books of Moses in the Hebrew Bible.
In addition, some of these tablets show evidence of “dating.” After a tablet had been written and the name impressed on it, it was customary in Babylonia to insert the date on which it was written. In the earliest times this was done in a very simple fashion, for it was not until later that tablets were dated with the year of the reigning king.
The method of dating the Genesis tablets is seen in the following instances. The end of the first tablet (2:4) reads, “in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” The sense in which the phrase “in the day” is used may be seen from such a passage as verse 17 of the same chapter, where we read, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”; and also verse 2, “God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made.” At the end of the second tablet (5:1) we read: “This is the book of the origins of Adam in the day that God created man.”
Later tablets are dated by indicating the dwelling-place of the writer at the time that the colophon was written and these dates are immediately connected with the ending phrase, “these are the generations of....” Instances of this are:
25:11 – And Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi.
36:8 – And Esau dwelt in Mount Seir.
37:1 – And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father sojourned, in the land of Canaan.
This early method of dating is in agreement with the current literary usage of that early age and also with the rest of the text, as we have noted in a previous chapter. For instance, it was precisely at the time he was living in “the land of father’s sojourning” that Jacob’s tablets were written.
To recapitulate, we would emphasize that as such ancient literary aids and cuneiform usages are still discernible, they clearly reveal the purity of the text and the care with which it has been handed down to us. It also signifies that in the earliest times records were written on clay tablets, and that these tablets, forming the series from Genesis 1:1-37:1, were joined together in the same manner as we have them today.


PART 6
WHO WROTE THE ORIGINAL TABLETS
Of course, no man could have written the first series of tablets (1:1-2:4) from personal knowledge of the manner in which the world was created. Significantly enough it is the only tablet, which does not state the name of the author or writer. It simply says, “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth.” The facts contained in the narrative preserved on this tablet were also beyond the normal outlook of the time. For if it is not a concise account revealed by God of the order of Creation, it is merely a piece of literary speculation. We must face the fact that it contains facts that centuries of modern scientific research, aided by the use of recently perfected instruments of precision and power, have only lately discovered. Yet so profoundly accurate is this narrative that one scholar (Professor G. W. Wade in his Old Testament History) writes of the inherent improbability of an ancient writing anticipating accurately the conclusions of modern science.
Naturally the wording is simple, but the truth conveyed is profound. Human as the language is, it is still the best medium God could use to communicate with man. It is God teaching Adam, in a simple yet faultless way, how the earth and the things, which he could see on and around it, had been created. The Lord God talked with Adam in the Garden. This tablet purports to be a simple record of what God said and did. Adam is told just as much as his mind could understand. The details and process are not fully revealed. Had they been, how could he and later ages have understood them? We would claim, then, that this first section of Genesis is the most ancient piece of writing. It is a record of what God told Adam. It is not an impersonal general account. It is God teaching the first man the elemental things about the universe, at the dawn of human language. Here we get back the very inauguration of written history. For it may have been written before even the sun and moon had been given names. Let us note the simplicity with which the facts are presented. There is a type of repetition and simplicity rarely recurring in Scripture: “Let there be lights, in the firmament...and God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.”
We know that long before the time of the Flood men worshipped the sun and the moon and had given them names. Had this first chapter of Genesis been written even as late as Abraham’s day, instead of the simple expression “greater light” we should have had the Babylonian word for the sun, šamaš. Moreover, šamaš was the name of the sun god worshipped by the Babylonians. In his laws, Hammurabi depicts himself in the attitude of receiving his laws from this šamaš, Names for the sun and moon have been among the oldest words known in any language, yet this document was written before names had been given to the “greater and lesser lights.”
This earliest of all documents is written in a most exceptional way. Observe the method employed in writing this narrative. “And God said....And God called.” What God called the components of the universe is placed on record. “And God called the light day and the darkness He called night.... And God called the firmament heaven: and God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters He called seas.” It is written in the style of someone recording precisely what Adam heard when the narrative was told to him.
Further it is written in a personal note. There is no “I saw,” “I beheld,” “I heard.” It is direct speech, “And God said, Behold I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you, and it shall be for meat.” These words were spoken to the first man. It is not a vague and general account. All the reader needs to do is to realize its unique features and to compare it with the Babylonian versions. The Greek (Septuagint) version of the Old Testament translate the final sentence of this account, “This is the Book of the origin of the heavens and the earth.” The ancient literary methods, already referred to, show that the tablet could have been in existence by the time of Noah.
This first chapter is so ancient that it does not contain mythical or legendary matter; these elements are entirely absent, It bears the markings of having been written before myth and legend had time to grow, and not as is often stated, at a later date when it had to be stripped of the mythical and legendary elements inherent in every other account of Creation extant. This account is so original that it does not bear a trace of any system of philosophy. Yet it is so profound that it is capable of correcting philosophical systems. It is so ancient that it contains nothing that is merely nationalistic; neither Babylonian, Egyptian, nor Jewish modes of thought find a place in it, for it was written before clans, nations, or philosophies originated. Surely, we must regard it as the original, of which the other extant accounts are merely corrupted copies. Others incorporate their national philosophies in crude polytheistic and mythological form. This is pure. Genesis 1 is as primitive as the first human. It is the Threshold of written history.
The second tablet or series of tablets extends from 2:5-5:2 and contains an account of the beginning of man upon the earth, the Garden of Eden, the Fall, and the murder of Abel. This tablet also bears the clearest marks of extreme antiquity and simplicity, which could never have come from a late hand. For instance, the test of obedience is the eating or refraining from eating the fruit of a tree. The tempter is referred to after the Fall as “a serpent in the dust,” a form never afterwards used in the Old Testament. Again, it is one that no later writer was likely to employ. Then there are expressions such as “sin crouching at the door” in connection with the story of the offering made by Cain. Also there is the remark of Lamech, “I have slain a young man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt,” pointing to contemporary archaic event of which no explanation is given. Again the record shows evidence of being a personal one, “I heard Thy voice in the garden and I was afraid...I hid myself.”; “the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.” The expression “cool of the day” is most natural in the Near East; for the greater part of the year it experiences intense heat throughout midday, while in the evening a cool wind blows. Often in Iraq that expression used to indicate the time immediately after the sun has gone down and the evening wind begins to blow.
The one person who knew all the facts about the Fall is stated to be the source from which the account came. This second tablet takes the story up to the birth of the sons of Lamech. Soon after this Adam died; the concluding words of the tablet are, “This is the book of the origins of Adam.”


PART 7
THE TITLES FOR GOD
The chief imputation made against Genesis by modern scholars is that different names for the Almighty are used in various parts of the book. Each different writer, they allege, had only one name for God. On this assumption they endeavor to account for the use of different names, by asserting that each section or verse where a particular divine name is mentioned, indicates that it was written by the writer who uses that name exclusively or predominantly. It was on this basis of the divine name in Genesis that modern scholars first elaborated their theories.
It was Jean Astruc, a French physician, who invented the theory of separate documents based on these divine names. He found that in the first thirty-five verses of Genesis, that is, 1-2:4a, the word “Elohim” (God) was used and no other divine name, while in chapters 2:4b-3:24 the only designation given is “Jehovah Elohim” (Lord God), except where Satan uses the word God. The passages must have been written by different writers, he said, for if Moses wrote the whole of it himself firsthand, then he would have to attribute to him this singular variation, in patches, of the divine name. He then divided the book up into little sections according to the divine name used. Thus he alleged that the writer who used “Elohim” was the author of the Elohist document, and the writer who used “Jehovah” was called the “Jehovist.” As this two-fold theory was found to fail as an explanation, seeing that some verses which were obviously written by the same person contained both names for God, another contrivance was devised in order to separate the verse into two parts. This was done by introducing an editor, who combined these two documents into one. Even this complication did not satisfy, for the modern scholars had to admit that the word “Elohim” (God) appeared in passages which they attributed to the writer who was suppose to use the name “Jehovah” exclusively. A loophole out of this difficulty was soon devised by alleging another “redactor,” who has altered the divine names.
But, J. Astruc had found one important verse of Scripture to which he appealed in support of his theory, and all the succeeding workers have made this the foundation text of their arguments. In Exodus 6:3 we read, “I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty [El-Shaddai], but by my name Jehovah I was not known to them.” This, it was said, is a clear and explicit statement. One leading scholar writes, “unless the writer of Exodus 6:3 contradicts himself not one of these passages [in Genesis] can have issued from his hands” (J.E. Carpenter, Oxford Hexateuch).
On the other hand the defenders of Genesis most unreasonably dislike the modern scholars making their stand on this text of Scripture (“by my name Jehovah I was not known to them,” Exod.6:3). These scholars maintain that the verse cannot mean precisely what it appears to mean, because the name of Jehovah is in fact used nearly 200 times in Genesis. The usual explanation given for this by anti-critics is, “though the name was ancient and known to the Patriarchs, its full meaning was not known to them, and so God was not manifested to them by it,” or “the name of Jehovah was known, but not known to be understood.” These interpretations overlook first the fact that God distinctly states the alternative way by which he appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and secondly that there is no special explanation of the full meaning of the name, other than the simple yet profound declaration “I AM THAT I AM.” (Exodus 3:14).
The fundamental mistake made by both sides [is] in assuming that no part of Genesis had been written until the time of Moses. This crucial assumption has resulted in the desperate literary tangle of the modern scholars and the difficulties of the defenders. The critics find themselves in the hopeless position of employing numerous editors who had before them the explicit statement of Exodus 6:3, when they are said to have edited Genesis. Are we supposed to assume that the final editor was unaware that he was contradicting himself?
Neither side in this great and prolonged debate has realized that the book of Genesis is a record [1] written by persons whose names are stated in it, [2] that the earlier writers used a primitive script, and [3] that the later tablets were written in the cuneiform script and language of the day. When Moses came into possession of these tablets he would find on some of them the cuneiform equivalent for “God.” An instance of this may be seen in the tablet of Creation, where “God” is used thirty-four times [in a primitive script], and no other divine title or name appears. In others he would find in addition the cuneiform equivalent of “El Shaddai” (God Almighty or All Sufficient), the name by which Exodus 6:3 plainly states he appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
There are some noteworthy facts regarding this word “Shaddai” to which sufficient attention has not been given. In the first place, the full composite title “El Shaddai” as stated in Exodus 6:3 is not used elsewhere than in Genesis, and these uses are on important occasions (Gen. 17:1,28:3,35:11,48:3). The next impressive fact is that the word “Shaddai” alone is used forty-two times in almost every instance by persons writing or living outside Palestine, and in contact with Babylonian cuneiform modes of expression. Job uses it thirty-one times. Balaam who came from Mesopotamia, Naomi the Moabitess, and Ezekiel the prophet in Babylonia use it. This accounts for thirty-eight of the forty-two uses of the word and is surely significant.
It is necessary at this juncture to note the difference between a name and a title. The word “God” is not a name, it is title. Jehovah was [is] the name of God. This distinction may be seen in the second commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain.” The Jew did not mind writing and speaking of God (Elohim). However, he so regarded this commandment that he did not utter the name Jehovah when reading the Scriptures but substituted the word “Adonai” for it. Moreover, the Hebrews spoke of the Elohim, the true God, as contrasted with false gods, but never did they speak or write of the Jehovah, for there was only one Jehovah in heaven and earth. In Genesis we read of “my God,” but never of the “Jehovah of Israel,” for there was only one Jehovah. Not to enter into the exact pronunciation of the name. God says: “I am Jehovah, that is my name, and my glory I will not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.” (Isa. 42:8)
When men began to make “gods many and lords many,” they called them “gods”(1 Corinthians 8:5,6); but to distinguish them from each other, they gave each a name. Thus the word “god” ceased to be used, even in Scripture, exclusively of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. It is used for idols because we find Laban, (in Gen.31:30,32), calling his teraphim, which Rachael had stolen, “gods” (elohim), and Jacob does the same. In Exodus 12:12, we read of the “gods [elohim] of Egypt.” Chemosh and Dagon are the names of, and are called, elohim. Babylonia had dozens of “gods”,” but each of them had a distinguishing name, as well as the title “gods” who were worshipped in the time of Abraham, and whose names have been found in tablets with the determinative ilu (god), may be seen in Dr. Herman Ranke”s Early Babylonian Personal Names of the Hammurabi Dynasty published in series D of Researches and Treatises of the University of Pennsylvania.
When we reach the time of Moses, matters in this respect were even worse, for there were over forty petty states in Egypt, each with its own chief god, worshipped in the temple at the principle city of its name or state. All these gods had other gods associated with them, and each in his own territory was regarded as a “god almighty” and as the creator and preserver of all the world people. The Egyptian seemed to see nothing illogical in these scores of gods, each being creator and ruler of the world. All of them were given names to distinguish them from each other. Besides this, each town and village possessed its own god. Theban Recension of the “Book of the Dead” gives the names of over 450 gods, and the pyramid texts contain references to over 200. Although the names of many of the Egyptian gods have been lost to us, those of over 2,200 are known. Amidst all this polytheism it became necessary, when God was to reveal himself (as he did in Exodus 6) in a special manner both to the Hebrews and to the Egyptians, that he should use a name to distinguish himself, the only true God, from all the false gods around. That name was a most significant one, “I AM.”
When Moses, at a later date than the revelation of Exodus 6, was compiling the book of Genesis, with his patriarchal tablets before him (the ancient records of their race, preserved in purity and handed down by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), he would find the cuneiform equivalent of El Shaddai on many of them. Now that God had given himself a new name, Jehovah ([A PROPER NOUN], not a title), which word for God should he use in translating these ancient tablets? Every translator of the Bible has been confronted with the same problem. The title “God” may be repeated, but how is the description or name – the cuneiform equivalent of El Shaddai – to be transcribed where necessary, unless the new revealed name of God (that is Jehovah) is used? To use any other name would be to create a misunderstanding in the minds of those for whom Genesis was being prepared.
The translators of the Bible into Chinese had the same problem. Which of the Chinese names should be used? Tien-chu, meaning “the Lord of Heaven,” or Shang-ti, the Confucian name for the “Supreme Ruler,” or Shin which may mean “spirit.” If there had been a pure name of designation for “God” in China, a name not debased by association with the religions of the country, there would have been no difficulty.
In Arabic-speaking countries, the word Allah is used for the one God in heaven. The singular of Elohim is Elah, in the Arabic it is ilah, and with the article al’ilah the modern equivalent of Allah. This is a good Arabic title for God, but if you speak of Allah to a Christian or a Jew, you’re at once associated with Mohammedanism.
Now that, the ancient records of their race, preserved in purity and handed down by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were being edited and possibly translated by Moses, what name should he use? The most natural course was to use the name Jehovah. Thus then, is the presence of the word [name] Jehovah in Genesis quite naturally explained... but by the inspiration from God which led Moses in most instances to translate “El Shaddai” by the word Jehovah – his distinguishing name, that separated him from heathen gods around.