410 - Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis

Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11
By Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn
Nashville, Abingdon, 1985. 144 pp. $9.95.

The composite nature of Genesis 1-11 (two "sources," one perhaps five hundred years older than the other) as asserted by the documentary hypothesis, is brought into question by this informed and provocative little volume. Appeal is made to such well known ancient literary techniques as chiasmus and repetition and by comparison with other ancient Near Eastern "primeval histories." Whether these techniques are an adequate explanation for the apparent disunity of the text will be debated. In any case, it is not clear, contrary to the authors, that the hypothesis has the diversity of these chapters as its "foundation stone." In the classic formulation of the hypothesis (by Julius Wellhausen in 1878), it is the conflicting legal materials in Exodus-Deuteronomy, (datable by what appears to have been operative in the books of Joshua-Kings) that are the foundation.

Lloyd R. Bailey
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, N.C.