07 - Is There a Difference in Style?

Is There a Difference in Style?

The critics see a radical difference between the first and second chap­ters of the book of Genesis. However, in over two hundred years criticism has not reached any agreement as to when the first chapter was written: at the beginning of the era of the kings, or after the Babylonian captivity? Nevertheless, it is possible to indicate a convenient clue in the text which points to the antiquity and unity of origin of both chapters. This clue is the “giving of names.” In the first chapter: “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 gatherings of the waters He called seas…” In the second chapter: “And God formed… all the wild beasts of the field, and all the birds of the sky, and He brought them to Adam, to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called any liv­ing creature, that was the name of it. And Adam gave names to all the cat­tle and to all the birds of the sky, and to all the wild beasts of the field…” After woman was created for him, Adam said: “She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband.” It would seem that such details, e.g., the giving of names, indicated in the history of the creation of the world, are unessential. But we encounter them in both chapters, and this indicates a unity of thought, a tendency. What language for this name-giving did the author of Genesis have in mind? If we attribute the writing of these chapters to the most ancient times, to the age of Moses, then the author of Genesis obviously had in mind a time when the original unity of language was still sensed, when the traditions of the time before the con­struction of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues, were kept - traditions which were brought from Mesopotamia by the Patriarch Abraham. How exactly is the unity of thought in both chapters demonstrated here, where in the first God gives the names; in the second, Adam? We answer: the unity is evident in the concept of the value of the word, the value of human speech, as a gift of God. Originally, in the first chapter, the naming of God’s creations proceeded from the mouth of God Himself; and later, in the second chapter, the gift of speech is communicated by God to man. He is left to create names for the creations of God, but under the direction of God Himself. The form of the providential actions of God changes, but the thought of the author of Genesis concerning them con­tinues according to a single, harmonious plan. This is no mechanical amal­gam of two texts. We see the same close bond of concepts, not accidental but organic, between the first and third chapters of the book of Genesis. The problem of evil already arises in the first chapter. If, as we read there, everything left the hands of the Creator perfect; if “God saw that... they were very good,” then from whence do evil, illness, suffering, death, arise? The answer is given immediately: the account of the fall into sin at the end of the second and in all of the third chapter. The difference of styles between the “two versions” is determined by the critics in the following manner: the “E” version is dry, but more ele­vated and intellectual; the “Y” version, while livelier and more concrete, is naive and worldly in spirit. But this absence of uniformity can be explained naturally. It is sufficient to assume that Moses had two sources for his narratives. One was oral traditions, more picturesque, the material for “Y”; the other sources were genealogical, ancient cuneiform inscrip­tions on tablets, legends about events of the past that might have been pre­served in the family of Abraham and brought with them out of Mesopotamia, comprising the material designated by critics as “E.” Besides which, is it at all possible to call simplistic or primitive the pro­found content that is hidden, for example, in the expression “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” considered to be part of the “Y” version? This expression has retained its vividness for ages and millennia. All of mankind’s culture which always carries within itself two opposing ele­ments - good and evil - can be defined by it, when access to the Tree of Life is so difficult and when the fruits of culture are so readily capable of leading to death, both spiritual and physical.