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Torah - Textual Criticism

The Pentateuch, or five books fo Moses, is a compilation of legends loosely and awkwardly put together, with enough of pretended history to connect the different stories, legends and laws to pass among the uncritical, the ignorant and credulous, who are blinded to the absurdities, the contradictions, and the incoherencies, through a reverence for the supernatural and impossible that forbids them to think, to question or to doubt. From the time these booke were prepared to the present hour they have been used and accepted as a faith and as a guide for the ignorant believer.

Religionists have tried for a thousand years to harmonize the first and the second chapters of Genesis, as well as some other things in the book, and have failed. This book had at least two authors. In the first place, there are two sets of gods running through the book. In the first chapter, and the first three verses of the second chapter the word God occurs thirty-two times. In all these places the Hebrew word is Elohim, and is plural. It should in every instance be rendered, the gods. Beginning with Gen. ii. 3, and going through, the entire second and third chapters a god who is called Yahweh, is introduced. The English Bible, in these chapters, calls him "The Lord God" nineteen times. In the Book of Genesis the evidence of the combiation of two documents is obvious. These two documents are distinguished from each other, partly by the style of writing, and partly by different names which they apply to the Supreme Being, One of these old writers calls the deity Elohim, the other calls him Yaveh, or Jehovah. These documents are known therefore as Elohistic, and Jehovistic narratives.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God — the gods made heaven and the earth, and the firmament, and then had the earth bring forth grass, fruit and herbs. Next, God, - or rather the gods, made light; the sun, moon, "and he made the stars also." Then the "waters brought forth abundantly" "the many creatures." Not only whale but fowl, "and every living creature that moveth." Then the earth brought forth cattle and creeping things. After .all this man and woman are made "in our image; and after our likeness." Then the gods gave man and woman everything. No "garden was planted eastward in Eden." Then he, or they, wind up by "ending his work" and resting on the Sabbath.

In the second chapter Jehovah, or "The Lord God," goes to work, but he works in a different manner from the other gods called Elohim. He begins by making plants and herbs, "before they were in the earth." Though the Elohim had just made a man and a woman "there was not a man to till the ground." Then he planted a garden for him in the eastern portion of Eden. He puts every thing that was good in the garden and one tree besides, that bore poison fruit. He caused four rivers to head there and run out in different directions.

Scholars worked more than a thousand years to harmonize these difficulties, but without success. Finally about the year 1750 the thought occurred to the French physican Astruc, that the book of Genesis was made up of older documents, and that originally it had at least two authors—worshippers of two different deities. He separated the documents one from the other. When he had done this he had the outlines of two different books; for this discovery he was bitterly persecuted, and came near losing his life. Now all criticism says he was right.

Each narrative has characteristics of its own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other; that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that, thus, and thus alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in Genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of commentators, especially of the two accounts of the creation, so utterly inconsistent with each other.

The two stories of the flood are so mixed that it would take a smart lawyer to separate them. In Gen. vi. 19, the Elohim says: "And, of every living thing of all flesh, two of every kind shalt thou bring into the ark." Now turn to Gen. vii., Elohim gives place to the other God, Jehovah, who says in verse 2, "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female."

In some, places these stories very nearly agree, yet they are two documents coming from two different sources. In Gen. vi. 5, we read: "And God (Jehovah) saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of his heart was only evil continually." -Now go to verses 11 and 12, and the other "God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." Go back to verse 7, and you will hear Jehovah say: "I will destroy man whom I have created." But Elohim is not to be beaten in that, so in verse 13 he says: "The earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy them from the earth." In verse 9 : "Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generation, Noah walked with God" — Elohim. In vii. 1, Jehovah says to Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me."

By the late 19th Century Assyrian research had testified in many ways to the historical value of the Bible record;, but at the same time Chaldean history had an antiquity fatal to the sacred chronology of the Hebrews. Very many of the early narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition. The Accadian king Sargon was born in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king. Sargon lived a thousand years and more before Moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years before Moses was born; and it was told of several other important personages of antiquity.

These old documents contain certain anachronisms which prove them to have been edited or redacted not earlier than five hundred years before the Christian era. The Pentateuch, as brought down to the modern era, is much younger than many other portions of the Bible; in fact it did not assume its present form until about four hundred years before Christ. The older stories, the history of creation, the flood, etc., have been found to be old Assyrian poems, much older than the oldest parts of the Bible.

After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, there were not yet so many Hebrew manuscripts in existence. Even the Jews in Palestine, as innumerable Greek inscriptions there found, and the New Testament show, spoke Greek in preference to the Hebrew. It is probable, that in the time of Herod many a scribe still kept a copy of the Hebrew Bible; but in the time of Akiba, after the temple, the metropolis and all the cities of Palestine had been destroyed by fire, and many Jews killed or sold as slaves; in that time, certainly, Hebrew manuscripts must have become scarce in the world.

Thus, then it was easy to alter the small number of manuscripts remaining in Palestine, according to Akiba's readings. Besides, in that time, as ancient manuscripts sufficiently show, every book was full of mistakes and obliterations; and it was a custom among the Ancients, to compare different copies of a book, the one with the other, as often as possible, and to mark different readings in the margin or in the text itself. Therefore, whoever saw a Hebrew Pentateuch altered according to Akiba, would suppose, that he found here better and original readings, and mark them, as such, in his own copy. This alteration of the genuine Biblical chronology was particularly promoted by the supposition, that Akiba's or Aquila's new Greek translation of the Pentateuch was based upon very old and correct manuscripts.