SOURCE: “From Analysis to Synthesis: The Interpretation of Genesis 1-11,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 97, No. 1, March, 1978, pp. 23-39.

[In the following essay, Anderson argues that while scholars have often examined the source materials of Genesis,and how these materials were formulated into the final version of Genesis, a new critical approach examines Genesis as a synthesized whole. Anderson follows this approach in examining the flood story in Genesis.]

The vitality of biblical scholarship is shown by a disposition to test and challenge working hypotheses, even those that are supported by a broad consensus. Today there are new signals that call for advance, like the rustling of leaves in the tops of the balsam trees, to cite a biblical figure of speech (2 Sam 5:24).¹ The purpose of this essay is to reexamine some old-fashioned views that have constituted the critical orthodoxy of the twentieth century and to look toward the new era of biblical study that is dawning. Attention will focus on the book of Genesis which has been a storm-center of biblical criticism in the modern period. In order to make the task somewhat manageable, however, I shall bracket out the patriarchal history and consider only the primeval history (Gen 1:1-11:26). But even this is too much to deal with; so, within the primeval history, I shall concentrate on the flood story. Everyone will admit that we have more than enough problems to handle within this pericope!

I. THE GENESIS OF GENESIS

Before coming to the flood story, let us consider briefly the methodological crisis in which we find ourselves. As we look back over the history of pentateuchal criticism in the twentieth century, it is clear that the mainstream of biblical scholarship, as represented by the Society of Biblical Literature, has been concerned with the genetic development of the biblical materials. Otto Eissfeldt's little book, Die Genesis der Genesis (1958), the German version of his article on “Genesis” in IDB, is symptomatic of the major interest of past generations. In this period the interpretive task has been both analytic and diachronic: analytic in the sense that one dissects the received text into its component parts, and diachronic in the sense that one seeks to understand the genesis of the text from its earliest origin to its final formulation. Thus the source critic begins by analyzing the text into its component “documents” on the basis of criteria applicable to literary texts. As Eissfeldt points out, however, these “narrative threads” have had a prehistory. Accordingly, it is the task of the form critic, following the lead of Gunkel, to venture behind the literary sources into the previous period of oral tradition and to recover the Urform of a particular text and its setting in life. Finally, the task of the historian of traditions is to realize Gunkel's goal of presenting a Literaturgeschichte, that is, a reconstruction of the whole genetic development from the early phase of oral tradition through the stages of various literary formulations to the end-result of the pentateuch which we have received.

It is not my intention to denigrate this period of scholarship, for it has contributed to our understanding of the depth-dimension of the texts. To borrow a figure of speech used by Gerhard von Rad in his Genesis commentary and employed effectively by Brevard Childs in his commentary on Exodus, the final text must not be read on a flat surface, “superficially,” but in a dimension of depth,² that is, with sensitivity to the voices of the past—the whole history of traditions—that resound in the final polyphonic presentation. Nevertheless, we ought to be aware of the assumptions that have governed this genetic interpretation. Let me list three of them. First, the early period of tradition, which we seek to recover, is the creative stage of tradition. This was clearly Gunkel's conviction, apparently influenced by romanticism;³ and it survives in a modified form in von Rad's emphasis on the primacy of the Yahwist's epic which, being based on early creedal formulations, provided the determinative (“canonical”) tradition that was accepted basically in the final priestly formulation of the traditions. Secondly, the earliest stages of the transmission of traditions are reconstructed with help from the literary models employed in source or documentary criticism. Tensions in the text, as evidenced by literary style, vocabulary, inconsistencies, and duplications, are transferred from the literary stage to an earlier, preliterary stage. Using these accepted literary criteria, one attempts to reconstruct the prehistory of the written text, that is, “scripture.” And thirdly, it has been assumed that the way to understand the combination of strata in the final text is to explore their origin and development. As Eissfeldt's essay on “the genesis of Genesis” indicates, excursions into the prehistory of the text are motivated by a concern for historicity, that is, criticism enables us to make judgments about the historical value of narratives for the time about which they claim to speak or about their place in religious history.⁴ This seems to imply that the scriptural text points to a meaning that lies, to some degree, outside of the text: in the history of the ancient world or in the ideas or customs reflected in various circles during the history of traditions.

If I am not mistaken, a new generation of biblical scholars has arisen that wants to move beyond this kind of analysis to some sort of synthesis, beyond a method that is rigidly diachronic to one that gives appropriate weight to the synchronic dimension of the text. Without attempting to survey the whole scholarly scene, let me mention several scholarly impulses that are potentially significant for the study of Genesis.

First of all, let me call attention to the stylistic or rhetorical criticism that was given new impetus by James Muilenburg's presidential address to this society a few years ago on “Form Criticism and Beyond.”⁵ My esteemed teacher certainly did not intend to throw overboard the substantial contributions of past scholarship, including Wellhausen, in spite of increasing reservations about his kind of historical criticism and Gunkel from whom he learned most. An essay that summarizes his career concludes: “‘We affirm the necessity of form criticism,’—and that demands appropriate exploration of the prehistory of the text; ‘but we also lay claim to the legitimacy of what we have called rhetorical criticism’—and that requires attention to the text itself: its own integrity, its dramatic structure, and its stylistic features.”⁶

This type of study is evidenced in a recent book by J. P. Fokkelman, dealing with various specimens of narrative art in Genesis;⁷ and his study, in turn, is influenced by the so-called new literary criticism advocated, for instance, by René Wellek and Austin Warren who call into question scholarly preoccupation with questions of authorship, social context, and prehistory of the text and insist that the proper task of the literary critic is the study of the work itself.⁸ Using a vivid figure of speech, Fokkelman writes:

The birth of a text resembles that of man: the umbilical cord which connected the text with its time and the man or men who produced it, is severed once its existence has become a fact; the text is going to lead a life of its own, for whenever a reader grants it an adequate reading it will come alive and become operative and it usually survives its maker. Whereas the creation of a text is finite, finished after hours, years or centuries, its re-creation is infinite. It is a task for each new age, each new generation, each new reader, never to be considered complete.⁹

Frankly, I must admit to misgivings about some exercises in rhetorical criticism which seem to be purely formal, almost mathematical, and lack a dimension of depth that adds richness to the text. Moreover, some biblical theologians wonder whether this new form of literalism, which disavows interest in historical questions, leads us to a docetic view of revelation, if indeed revelation is considered a meaningful term at all. Despite these reservations, one is compelled to agree that the proper starting-point methodologically is with the text as given, not with the reconstruction of the prehistory of the text which, as Fokkelman observes, is usually “an unattainable ideal.” Something more is involved, however, than the epistemological problem that the prehistory of the texts is unknowable in any certain sense. What is at stake is the question, to which Hans Frei has directed our attention, as to whether the narrative can be split apart from its meaning (a hermeneutical presupposition inherited from the 18th century) or whether, alternatively, “the story is the meaning,” as he puts it.¹⁰ The beginning and end of exegesis is the text itself—not something beyond it. Given this textual basis, excursions behind the text are appropriate and often illuminating; but, as Amos Wilder has reminded us, we should be on guard against “the historicist habit of mind” that “may operate unconsciously to handicap a free encounter with a writing in its final form.”¹¹

Secondly, recent studies in oral tradition should make us more cautious about basing our study of the depth-dimension of the text on the literary presuppositions which, in the past, have been applied by both source criticism and form criticism (i.e. differences in style and vocabulary, seams and inconsistencies, duplications and repetitions). Field studies in oral tradition, to which scholars like R. C. Culley and recently Burke Long have drawn our attention,¹² challenge the view, near and dear to source and form critics, that it is possible to recover an Urtradition and even an Urtext behind the final, written formulation of the pentateuch as we have received it.

This problem struck me as I was reviewing the work of Martin Noth and Claus Westermann. Careful rereading of Noth's study of pentateuchal traditions¹³ will disclose that, although he was in bondage to the literary model of source criticism and could even “out-Wellhausen” Wellhausen in refined source analysis, he was somewhat sensitive to the fluid, dynamic character of the transmission of the traditions, based on major themes and their elaboration. This central thrust of Noth's work has not escaped the attention of Westermann, a consistent form-critic who has carried Gunkel's work to a logical and brilliant conclusion. “Gunkel's new impulse,” Westermann observes, “was that he elevated the significance of the preliterary history of the individual narrative”—a narrative that had its own life (Eigenleben) and that was governed by “laws other than that of a written text;” but, Westermann insists, Noth fails to stress “the smallest literary units” and their respective forms, and, instead, he concentrates on the major themes of the Israelite tradition that were elaborated and filled out in the course of their transmission.¹⁴

Almost everyone will admit—even conservative scholars like Umberto Cassuto and Benno Jacob—that ancient traditions have been utilized in the final formulation of the pentateuch. The debatable question is twofold: (a) whether these traditions were cast into a fixed form, and (b) whether we are in a position to recover the Urform or Vorlage. In the past, scholars have proceeded on the assumption that, as Albert Lord puts it in the context of a study of Homeric texts, poets “did something to a fixed text or a fixed group of texts,” as though they composed “with pen in hand.”¹⁵ This scribal view of composition does not do justice to the dynamic of oral performance which involves the role of the narrator, the response of a live audience, and improvisation on traditional materials in various and changing settings. Some of the phenomena which in the past have prompted source or form critical analysis, such as repetitions or inconsistencies, may well be the stigmata of oral transmission. Burke Long wisely reminds us that, in view of our limited knowledge of the sociology of ancient Israel and the nature of oral composition, we should be cautious about attempting to reconstruct the original wording or Vorlage of a text that comes to us only in its final, written form.¹⁶ I would add a further caveat: since efforts to recover preliterary stages lead us away from the givenness of the text itself into the realm of hypothesis, it is not valid to regard the reconstructed Urform as normative for interpretation or as having some superiority to scripture itself. Whatever excursions into the prehistory of the text are possible or necessary, the beginning and end of interpretation is “a free encounter with a writing in its final form” (Wilder).

There is a third scholarly movement which I mention with some hesitance, for I do not claim to understand it fully or sympathetically, and therefore I shall treat it with an undeserved brevity. Structuralism is an invitation to explore the “depth dimension” of biblical texts in a new way: not by analytically juxtaposing various levels of tradition and tracing a genetic development to the final composition, but by exploring the sub-surface unity, coherence, and even dramatic structure at “deep levels” of language that generate the text as it is heard or read. In the view of one of the advocates of this method, Hugh White, it is structural exegesis that lies beyond form criticism and beyond redaction criticism; for the “artistic power” of the narrative art that we have received cannot be accounted for adequately by understanding the text as a function of an ancient Sitz im Leben, whether social or cultic, nor can “the large contours of the narrative” be simply the product of “a more or less insensitive redactor of relatively fixed traditional materials.” In his judgment, “the enormous role played by the narrator of ancient tales in the formation of the structure and texture of the form of literature” (as emphasized by Lord, Culley, Long, et al.) calls for a method that enables us to penetrate and articulate the deep linguistic and dramatic structure that is implicit in the narrative.¹⁷ Whatever more should be said about structuralism, at least this deserves attention: in contrast to analytic methods of the past, this method attempts to grasp wholes or totalities (l’attitude totalisante).

II. PAST ANALYSIS OF THE FLOOD STORY

Thus various scholarly impulses have moved us away from an excessive preoccupation with the genetic development of the text to exegesis that takes with greater seriousness the style and structure of the received texts and that considers how these texts function in their narrative contexts. In a previous essay,¹⁸ I tried to show that form and content are so inseparably related that attempts to separate out traditions (Tatbericht and Wortbericht) are not successful. That endeavor was facilitated by the general recognition that the present creation story is homogeneous (P). Now, however, I turn to a pericope, the flood story, about which there is just as great scholarly agreement, only in this case it is agreed that the text is composite (a combination of J and P).

Evidences for the disunity of the story in its present form can be recited easily. (1) Some passages prefer the divine name Yahweh, others Elohim (e.g., 6:13 and 7:1). (2) There are irregularities and inconsistencies: (a) some passages speak about a downpour (gešem) lasting forty days and forty nights (7:4, 12, 17a), others of a cosmic deluge (mabbûl) whose waters maintained their crest for 150 days (7:11, 24); (b) some passages make a distinction between clean and unclean animals—seven pairs of the former and a pair of the latter (7:2-3), while others speak only of the pairing of every kind of animal (6:19-20). (3) There are instances of parallel or duplicate passages; for instance, the command to enter the ark (6:18b-20) seems to be paralleled in 7:1-3, and the execution of the command (7:5, 7-9), is paralleled in 7:13-16a. (4) Peculiarities of style and vocabulary suggest that the story is not of one piece (see the standard commentaries). In his monumental commentary on Genesis, Hermann Gunkel declared that the analysis of the story into separate sources, J and P, is “ein Meisterstück der modernen Kritik.” According to him, the redactor had at hand two full and distinct versions of the flood story, quite similar in structure and sequence. “The Redactor,” he averred, “attempted to preserve both accounts as much as possible” and allowed no Körnlein to be lost, especially from the priestly version that he highly esteemed.¹⁹

Since Gunkel's time, there has been a broad consensus regarding this scribal view of the composition of the flood story. Commentators have agreed that the first step is to separate analytically the two component parts and to comment on each independently, although—like Gunkel—giving only short shrift to the artistic work presented in the whole, that is, the accomplishment of the “redactor.” Take as an example the excellent commentary by the late Gerhard von Rad. In his introduction, von Rad draws attention to Franz Rosenzweig's observation that the underrated siglum “R” (redactor) should be understood to mean Rabbenu, “our master,” because it is from his hands that we have received the scriptural tradition as a finished product. In this context, however, von Rad jumps immediately to the question of what it means in the Christian community to receive the OT “from the hands of Jesus Christ,” Rabbenu.²⁰ True, von Rad stresses the overall thematic unity of the hexateuch in which the themes of the early Israelite credo are elaborated; but in exegetical practice he does not reflect on the final shape of the pentateuchal (hexateuchal) tradition. Hence, in his exegesis of the flood story he comments separately on the isolated J and P versions and even resorts to textual rearrangement to restore the putative original texts.

It is noteworthy that the Jewish scholar, E. A. Speiser, who accepts the view that “the received biblical account of the Flood is beyond reasonable doubt a composite narrative, reflecting more than one separate source,” admits to misgivings about “reshuffling the text” in violation of “a tradition that antedates the Septuagint of twenty-two centuries ago.”²¹ He does not follow up on the possible implications of his caveat, however, but settles for translating the received text with slash marks to indicate J and P sources. It is a fact, of course, that at least since the time of the LXX translation the flood story has functioned in its final form in Judaism and Christianity, rather than in separable traditions lying behind the text; and it is in this form that the story continues to make its impact upon the reader today.

These scholars, though operating within the scholarly consensus of the twentieth century, seem to raise questions about the relative priority of a genetic vs. a synthetic, a diachronic vs. a synchronic approach to the task of exegesis. Claus Westermann, in his massive and impressive commentary on the Urgeschichte, also addresses himself to this issue. At one point he observes:

To interpret the flood story of J and P separately, as in most commentaries, threatens a neglect of the peculiarity of the narrative form as it has been transmitted to us. It cannot be denied that the formulation of the combined narrative by R represents an important voice of its own, and that the subsequent impact [Wirkungsgeschichte] of the flood story is neither that of J nor of P, but that of R.²²

In exegetical practice, however, Westermann juxtaposes J and P and at times relocates verses for the sake of emphasizing the separate identity of the two sources. In his view, the unity of the flood story lies primarily in a prehistory of tradition that is refracted separately in the two sources. At the conclusion of his commentary, however, he devotes a couple of paragraphs to the work of the redactor whose intention, he maintains, was to preserve the Mehrstimmigkeit of the tradition—a musical figure suggesting a polyphonic performance in which each voice sings its own part according to fixed texts. He writes: “R created out of both [i.e., J and P] a new, flowing, self-contained narrative composition” in which the separate voices of J, P, and R are heard; and this was possible because all three shared the same “basic view of the primeval event and of reality.”²³

Westermann's commentary is a laudable witness to the need to go beyond analysis of separate sources to interpretive synthesis, to grasping the text as a whole. Even in this endeavor, however, he falls into the genetic fallacy of the past in that he posits a unity outside of and before the text which, he maintains, may be recovered by a phenomenological exposition of the religious consciousness expressed in ancient myths. The creativity of R(edactor) is evidenced in his ability to combine texts, each of which gives its own variation on the basic mythical datum. The question is whether this view is adequate to account for the final narrative which, to use Westermann's adjectives, is “new,” “flowing,” and “self-contained.” Similar claims for the final composition have been made by others, for instance by Eduard Nielsen, a representative of the Scandinavian circle. “Our present text,” Nielsen observes (speaking of the flood story), “is a work of art, composed of different traditions, it is true, but in such a way that a unified work has been the result.”²⁴ If we are dealing with “a work of art,” however, is not the final whole greater—or at least, different—than the sum of its parts? This, it seems to me, is the basic issue. Without denying the legitimacy of excursions into the prehistory of the text in their proper place, the question is whether the present narrative art can be understood and appreciated by a genetic study of its origin and development.

Finally, the symbol R constitutes a special problem.²⁵ R(edactor) is a shadowy figure, to whom virtually nothing is attributed except the synthesis of discrete traditions, J and P. Gunkel said precious little about this mystery man in his commentary and, as indicated above, Westermann devotes very brief space to him in the lengthy conclusion to his commentary on the Urgeschichte. R is merely a synthetic agent; and statements about him are inferences from the fact that traditions have been reworked or reshaped so as to produce a new totality. My own study of the primeval history has corroborated the judicious proposal of Frank Cross that P and R should be merged into one. While accepting the broad results of source criticism, Cross observes that “the Flood story has been completely rewritten by P.” “The interweaving of the sources,” he writes, “is not the work of a redactor juxtaposing blocks of materials, but that of a tradent reworking and supplementing a traditional story.”²⁶

This tantalyzingly brief reference to the flood story contains implications that may lead us beyond the rather artificial source analysis of the past. This story is not a mere combination of discrete texts (J juxtaposed to P and conflated by R), according to the usual understanding; rather, we have a story from the priestly circle or “tradent” into which traditional epic material has been incorporated. The priestly version is a reworking and recasting of the story, not just a preservation of past traditions in their Mehrstimmigkeit. The re-presentation of the flood story in this elaborated and expanded form is a work of art in its own right, and deserves to be considered in the form in which it is given. We must admit our ignorance about the circumstances of the composition. Was the story the scribal result of retelling in situations of performance? Was it the result of purely literary activity in the time of the exile? There is much that we do not know. However, the important point is that, whatever the history of transmission or whatever the immediate occasion of final composition, the priestly “tradent” shaped the story to produce a dramatic effect as a totality.

III. THE DRAMATIC MOVEMENT OF THE STORY

Let us turn, then, to the flood story itself and consider some of the structural and stylistic features that make it a dramatic unity in its present form.

In an important monograph on the priestly work, Sean McEvenue shows that priestly narrative style, far from being pedantic and unartistic, displays rhetorical and structural features that are characteristic of narrative art generally, such as a sequence of panels in which formulaic patterns are repeated. (He uses the homely example of the story of “The Little Red Hen.”)²⁷ With specific regard to the flood story, he maintains that in the P version the narrative builds up dramatically to the turning point reached in 8:1a: “However, God remembered Noah and all the wild and tame animals that were with him in the ark.” The narrative, as he puts it, “swells toward the climax” and, after the turning point is reached, moves “toward repose.”²⁸ His stylistic study, it should be noted, is based exclusively on the juxtaposition of J and P components of the story. He maintains that P was “writing from a Yahwist narrative, which he either knew by heart or had in front of him;” and he aims to understand the divergences of P from J—divergences that are all the more striking since “P has stuck so closely to his source.”²⁹ McEvenue, however, does not take the step that we are advocating and that is implicit in his own view that P reworked J tradition, namely, to consider the narrative as a totality in which the priestly tradent has absorbed into his composition elements of old epic tradition.

Since the story in its final form has been shaped by the priestly tradent, McEvenue's observation about the dramatic movement of the P narrative applies also to the story as a whole—as people read it today. Indeed, it is not surprising that the Jewish scholar, Umberto Cassuto, who rejects source analysis,³⁰ makes a similar observation. According to Cassuto, the story is organized into a series of “paragraphs” that move in crescendo toward a climax as the rising waters of chaos lift up the ark on their crest and then, after the turning point in 8:1 (“God remembered Noah”), falls away in decrescendo as the waters of chaos ebb and there is the beginning of a new creation. Of the twelve paragraphs that comprise the story, according to his division, he writes:

The first group depicts for us, step by step, the acts of Divine justice that bring destruction upon the earth, which had become filled with violence; and the scenes that pass before us grow increasingly gloomier until in the darkness of death portrayed in the sixth paragraph there remains only one tiny, faint point of light, to wit, the ark, which floats on the fearful waters that have covered everything, and which guards between its walls the hope of future life. The second group shows us consecutively the various stages of the Divine compassion that renews life upon earth. The light that waned until it became a minute point in the midst of the dark world, begins to grow bigger and brighter till it illumines again the entire scene before us, and shows us a calm and peaceful world, crowned with the rainbow that irradiates the cloud with its colours—a sign and pledge of life and peace for the coming generations.³¹

Readers who submit to the text of the story in its present form find themselves caught up in this rising and falling movement, corresponding to the tide and ebb of the waters of chaos. At the climax, God's remembrance of Noah and the remnant anticipates the conclusion, where God promises to remember the “everlasting covenant” that signals the beginning of a new humanity and, indeed, a new creation, paralleling the original creation portrayed in Genesis 1. In short, the flood narrative in its present form is composed of a sequence of episodic units, each of which has an essential function in the dramatic movement of the whole. The story as a totality deserves attention.

To begin with, notice the immediate context in which the story is placed, namely, the genealogical outline followed by the priestly tradent. Between 6:1 and 9:27 we find a long block of narrative material dealing with Noah's lifetime which has been inserted into the heart of Noah's genealogy as presented in the toledoth document (5:1). In this document the genealogies follow a fixed lineal, rather than ramified, pattern: (a) N lived x years, (b) and he fathered S; (c) after the birth of S, N lived y years; (d) he fathered sons and daughters; (e) the lifetime of N was z years; and (f) then he died. Now, the first two elements of Noah's genealogy (a and b) are found in 5:32, right at the end of a series of excerpts from the toledoth document, namely, (a) Noah lived 500 years, and (b) he fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The conclusion of the genealogy is found in 9:28-29, although the pattern is modified to refer to the flood, the principal event in Noah's lifetime: (c) After the flood Noah lived 350 years; (d) … ; (e) the lifetime of Noah was 950 years; and (f) then he died. Whether the Noachic entry in the toledoth document once contained a brief reference to the flood, on the analogy of some editions of the Sumerian King List,³² cannot be said with confidence. In any case, the narrative material extending from the episodes that deal with the promiscuity of the celestial beings (6:1-4) and the “Sorrow of Yahweh” (6:5-8) to the post-diluvian story of Noah's intoxication and the condemnation of Canaan (9:20-27), is encased within the genealogical frame. According to this sequence, the initial epic material constitutes the prologue to the flood, or as Speiser phrases it, “Prelude to Disaster,” and the subsequent material, dealing with Noah's post-diluvian situation, is an epilogue.

The priestly drama proper begins with the transitional passage concerning the saddîq, Noah and his three sons, which is formulated in the style of the toledoth document (6:9-10); and at the end of the priestly story we find another transitional passage (9:18-19) which both recapitulates previous elements and prepares for the sequel by saying that the sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and that from them the whole earth was repopulated.³³ In between these boundaries the drama of the flood unfolds in a succession of episodic units, each of which has a definite function in relation to the whole. Let us follow the sequence as it is given to us, at the expense of paying closer attention to details.

(1) The keynote is struck in 6:11-12: violence and corruption in the earth—first announced as an objective fact (v. 11) and then reiterated in terms of God's perception (v. 12). These verses display noteworthy stylistic features, such as the emphasis achieved through repetition, the play upon the verbal root šāhat in three variations (“become corrupt,” “spoil,” “ruin”), and the climactic use of the particle kî (“for”) to provide explanation (v. 12b). The discordant note struck at the beginning is resolved at the end with the restoration of harmony and peace in God's creation (9:1-17).

(2) The main action of the drama begins in 6:13-22, introduced by the declarative formula, “Then God said.” God's first address, in good priestly narrative style, is structured according to a twofold announcement-command sequence: announcement of God's resolution to destroy (6:13) followed by the command to build the ark (vv. 14-16); repeated announcement of the imminence of the mabbûl waters (vv. 17-18), followed by a command that deals mainly with laying away supplies of food for those to be saved (vv. 19-21). This passage concludes with the execution formula: “Noah did this. Just as Elohim commanded him, so he acted” (6:22).

(3) The divine command to load the ark with its passengers is the subject of the next unit in 7:1-10, usually ascribed to J (except for the chronological notation in v. 6). Strikingly, the second divine address is introduced by the declarative formula, “Then Yahweh said.” Also, the execution of the command is indicated in the formula, “Noah did just as Yahweh commanded him” (7:5), though at the conclusion of the unit (7:9) we find “just as Elohim commanded him.” It is incontrovertible, in my judgment, that in this passage the priestly tradent has drawn upon and reworked old epic tradition whose pecularities are evident in various matters of content (for instance, seven pairs of clean animals and a pair that are not clean, 7:2-3; but cf. 7:8-9), and in turns of speech (e.g., “a male and his mate” rather than “male and female,” 7:2; but cf. 7:9).³⁴ However, the question is whether these phenomena, which we perceive as inconsistencies, actually disturb the structure and movement of the narrative in its final form.³⁵ I do not see that this is the case. On the contrary, this unit, which is also formulated in a command-execution sequence, advances the motion of the previous unit by showing that the disaster is at hand, only seven days away, and therefore it is time to get on board the ark! In spite of modern views based on alternation in the usage of divine names in the book of Genesis, the priestly tradent seems to have had no compunction about using both names, Yahweh and Elohim, in his reworking of the pre-Mosaic traditions.³⁶

(4) The two divine addresses are followed by a unit found in 7:11-16 which source critics have credited to priestly tradition, except for the statement about the forty-day downpour (gešem) in 7:12 and the brief anthropomorphic touch in 7:16b, “Yahweh closed him inside.” This unit clearly involves repetition, for it resumes and summarizes the earlier narrative, beginning with the point reached in 7:10 of the previous episode (“At the end of seven days the waters of the Flood were upon the earth”) and harking back to the command regarding the saving of animals and humans, anticipated in 6:18b-21 and definitely mandated and executed in 7:1-10. The new element in the dramatic movement of the story is the announcement of the manner in which “the waters of the flood” came upon the earth (vv. 11-12). Clearly the priestly tradent sought to rework the received tradition of a violent forty-day rainstorm into his own conception of the mabbûl as a cosmic catastrophe which threatened the earth with a return to primeval chaos. The chief function of this unit, however, is to indicate the inception of the disaster, and this provides the opportunity to rehearse once again the number of those whom God commanded to be saved in 7:13-16a, a passage that harks back to the priestly command passage in 6:18b-21 by way of resumption and inclusion. Notice that the recapitulation of the divine command is indicated once again by the obedience formula: “just as Elohim had commanded him” (7:16a). This is followed by the celebrated sentence, “Then Yahweh closed him inside.” Usually this is regarded as a fragment of the J epic because of the usage of the name Yahweh and the anthropomorphism which allegedly is out of keeping with priestly tradition. However, this brief sentence—a snippet of only three Hebrew words (wayyisgōr YHWH bă ‘adô) in a predominantly P context, calls into question the analytical procedure of the past. How does this notice function in the received text? Coming after the summarizing recapitulation of the divine command to enter the ark and its execution, these words serve as a final punctuation of the unit and at the same time they anticipate what follows, God's “remembrance” of those who were sealed in the ark—the anthropomorphism stressed in the priestly recension (cf. Exod 2:24-25).

(5) The storm is now raging, as indicated in the next unit, 7:17-24. This unit is framed within two chronological statements, the first (7:17) stating that the mabbûl innundated the earth for forty days (apparently the priestly tradent's reinterpretation of the epic tradition [7:4] to mean the time required for the ark to be buoyed on the waters), and the last (7:24) giving the total duration of the cresting waters, that is, 40 + 110 + 150 days. The swelling of the waters is vividly portrayed by the repeated use of the key words “the waters prevailed” to create an ascending effect.

wayyigběrû hammāyîm

(v. 18)

                                        wěhammāyîm
gāběrû

(v. 19)

                                                                                gāběrû
hammāyîm

(v. 20)

Source critics find traces of old epic tradition (J) in vv. 22-23, largely because these verses seem to repeat the content of vs. 21, “All flesh died that moved upon the earth. …” But in the reworking of the tradition, the repetition serves to heighten the dramatic contrast between the perishing of “every human” (v. 21) and the climactic statement, “Only Noah was left [the verb suggests the “remnant”], and those that were with him in the ark” (7:23b).³⁷ Thus the narrative swells to a climax, with the ark and its precious remnant tossed on the waters of chaos. “We see water everywhere,” Cassuto comments, “as though the world had reverted to its primeval state at the dawn of Creation, when the waters of the deep submerged everything.”³⁸

(6) The next unit, 8:1-5, brings us to the turning point of the story with the dramatic announcement of God's remembrance of Noah and the remnant with him in the ark. The statement, “God caused a wind to blow over the earth,” which recalls the “wind from God” (rûah ’Elōhîm) of Gen 1:2, introduces by way of contrast the theme of the new creation which becomes explicit in 9:1-17 where the imago Dei reappears. Source critics attribute this passage to P, with the exception of the notice about the restraining of the downpour (gešem) from the sky (8:2b). This traditional element, however, should not be separated out, for the priestly tradent, as we have already noticed, has absorbed the forty-day rainstorm into his view of a cosmic deluge and into his chronology. The effect of the text at this point is to show dramatically that when all seems to be lost, from a human point of view, God's faithfulness makes possible a new beginning.

(7) The decrescendo from the climax is effectively carried out in the next unit, 8:6-14. The first part, the vignette about the release of the birds (8:6-12), is derived from old epic tradition (J). This material, however, should not be detached from its present context, for it now has a definite narrative function, namely, to portray the gradual ebbing of the waters from their crest and the emergence of the dry land, as at the time of creation (cf. 1:9-12). The dramatic action is retarded and extended over a span of time so that the hearer or reader may sense in Noah's experiment with the birds (including his tender treatment of the dove, vv. 8-9!) the wonder of what was taking place. The unit concludes by dating the emergence of the dry land, and therefore the possibility of the earth's renewed fertility, in relation to the New Year, which was also the 601st anniversary of Noah's birth. This wonderful event is indicated in two ways (as in 6:11-12): one in terms of Noah's perception (8:13b) and the other as an objective fact (8:14)—sentences that source critics attribute to J and P respectively.

(8) After the drama of the rising and the falling of the waters, the story returns to a scheme of divine addresses, as at the beginning. Notice that the address in 8:15-19, which is attributed to priestly tradition, is also structured in a command-execution sequence. In this case, the theme is God's command to leave the ark (vv. 16-17), accompanied by a special word that the animals should swarm, be fertile, and increase on the earth, and the fulfillment of that command (vv. 18-19).

(9) Next comes a unit, 8:20-22, dealing with Noah's sacrifice and Yahweh's resolution never again to engage in wholesale destruction but, rather, to maintain the regularities and rhythms on which earthly existence is dependent. It is true that this episodic unit, derived from old epic tradition, harks back to the passage about “The Sorrow of Yahweh” (6:5-8) and forms an inclusion with it.³⁹ The episode, however, has an important function in its present narrative context. On the one hand, it provides the appropriate sequel to disembarking from the ark, namely, a human act of praise; and, on the other, the divine response to the sacrifice (i.e., Yahweh's resolution) serves as a transition to the final priestly discourse which elaborates God's pledge in the theological perspective intended to govern the whole story.

(10) The final unit, 9:1-17, is also cast in the form of a divine address, though this one is articulated in three parts, each marked by the declarative formula, “Then God said” or variations of it (9:1, 8, 12). In the fourth address the narrator rounds off the story by re-sounding tones that were heard earlier. God's promise to establish his covenant with Noah (6:18a) is fulfilled in the “everlasting covenant” (běrît ‘ôlām)—a covenant that is made, however, not just with Noah but with “every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth” (9:8-11). God's remembrance of Noah and the remnant in the ark (8:1a) is consummated in his pledge to “remember” his covenant, whose visible sign is the rainbow (9:12-17). And above all, the initial discordant note—violence in God's creation (6:11-12)—is resolved into the harmony of a new creation, as shown by the renewal of the blessing given at the original creation (9:1: “Be fertile, multiply, and fill the earth”), by a restatement of the role of man who is made in the image of God (9:6), and by the creator's pledge, based unconditionally on his faithfulness, that the earth would not be threatened by a return to pre-creation chaos.

IV. THE OVERALL DESIGN

Thus the present flood story, in which the priestly tradent has incorporated old epic tradition into his narrative, discloses an overall design, a dramatic movement in which each episodic unit has an essential function. McEvenue attempted to demonstrate that the story displays a chiastic structure—or, as he prefers to put it, “a rough palistrophe.”⁴⁰ He would have had more success in tracing a symmetrical design had he not restricted his attention to the analysis of P, regarded as a discrete document, and had he concentrated, instead, on the total priestly revision of the tradition. It is indeed striking that the story in its final form flows in a sequence of units toward a turning-point and then follows the same sequence in reverse, as the following outline indicates:

Transitional introduction (6:9-10)
. 1. Violence in God's creation (6:11-12)
.. 2. First divine address: resolution to destroy (6:13-22)
... 3. Second divine address: command to enter the ark (7:1-10)
.... 4. Beginning of the flood (7:11-16)
..... 5. The rising flood waters (7:17-24)
...... GOD's REMEMBRANCE OF NOAH
..... 6. The receding flood waters (8:1-5)
.... 7. The drying of the earth (8:6-14)
... 8. Third divine address: command to leave the ark (8:15-19)
.. 9. God's resolution to preserve order (8:20-22)
. 10. Fourth divine address: covenant blessing and peace (9:1-17)
Transitional conclusion (9:18-19)

The first part of the story represents a movement toward chaos, with the hero Noah and the remnant with him as survivors of the catastrophe. The second part represents a movement toward the new creation, with Noah and his sons as the representatives of the new humankind who were to inherit the earth.

As I see it, there is no need to try to harmonize the flood story by denying the irregularities and inconsistencies which source analysis has sought to understand in its own way and according to its presuppositions. The question is whether we are to be bound exclusively or even primarily by this analytical method. This method demands that we begin by analyzing and juxtaposing “sources” or “levels of tradition” under the assumption that by charting the genesis of the text we can best understand the text itself, which is regarded as a conflation of discrete, identifiable traditions, loosely joined together by a redactor. There is an alternative to this analytical method which, I believe, is overdue, namely, to begin by examining the structural unity of the story that we have received from the priestly tradent who is actually Rabbenu, to recall once again the remark of Rosenzweig. In this case, our first priority would be to understand the text in its received form and to consider what George Coats has termed its “functional unity;”⁴¹ and after that we would turn—as our second priority—to an investigation of the prehistory of the text, hoping to find further light on the richness and dynamic of the text that we have received. In regard to the flood story, this set of priorities is dictated by at least two considerations. First, the priestly tradent has absorbed the old epic tradition into his presentation, though under circumstances that are not as yet clear to us; and second, the result of this reinterpretation of the tradition is not a literary patchwork but a story whose overall design and dramatic movement make it a work of art, one that even yet stirs and involves the hearer or reader.

It is not enough, however, to consider the dramatic unity of the story by itself, in isolation. If we are to understand the story theologically, it is equally important to consider how this story functions in its present context in the book of Genesis and specifically within the toledoth scheme used by the priestly tradent to organize the primeval history. When the priestly revision of the story is regarded as a separate pericope, the hāmās (“violence,” “lawlessness”) that prompted God's resolve to bring the flood hangs in the air (6:11, 13), and the prohibition against murder in 9:6 is unmotivated. “P's summary statement referring to violence and corruption,” Frank Cross observes, “must presume a knowledge of concrete and colorful narratives of the corruption of the creation. Otherwise, it has neither literary nor theological force.”⁴² By appropriating the old epic tradition, the priestly tradent has provided a vivid portrayal of the disorder rooted primarily in creaturely freedom, as illustrated in the stories of primeval rebellion in the garden, fratricide in the first family, Lamech's measureless revenge, and the marriage of celestial beings with human daughters.⁴³ Thus the Urgeschichte in its final form displays an overall design: a dramatic movement from the original harmony of creation, through the violent disruption of that order and the near return to chaos, and finally to a new creation under the rainbow sign of the everlasting covenant.

Notes

1. Recent examples, inter alia, of the new ferment are Hans Heinrich Schmid, Der sogenannte Jahwist: Beobachtungen und Fragen zur Pentateuchforschung (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1976) and Rolf Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1977).

2. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972) 28.

3. See my introductory essay, Martin Noth, A History of Pentateuchal Traditions (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972) xviii-xx.

4. IDB, 2. 378-80.

5. JBL 88 (1969) 1-18. See further my essay, “The New Frontier of Rhetorical Criticism,” in Jared J. Jackson and Martin Kessler, eds., Rhetorical Criticism (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1974) ix-xviii.

6. “The New Frontier of Rhetorical Criticism,” xviii.

7. J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis: Specimens of Stylistic and Structural Analysis (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975).

8. R. Wellek and A. Warren, Theory of Literature (3rd ed.; London: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963).

9. Narrative Art, 3-4.

10. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1974).

11. Amos N. Wilder, “Norman Perrin, What is Redaction Criticism?” in Christology, Norman Perrin Festschrift (Claremont, CA: The New Testament Colloquium, 1971) 153.

12. Burke O. Long, “Recent Field Studies in Oral Literature and their Bearing on Old Testament Criticism,” VT 26 (1976) 187-98, who carries forward the discussion of R. C. Culley, “An Approach to the Problem of Oral Tradition,” VT 13 (1963) 113-25.

13. A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, my translation of a basic study first published in German in 1948.

14. Claus Westermann, Genesis (BK 1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1976) 765. See further my reviews of this work; JBL 91 (1972) 243-45 and 96 (1976) 291-94.

15. Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1960) 11; cf. 57.

16. “Recent Field Studies,” 194-98.

17. Hugh C. White, “Structural Analysis of Old Testament Narrative,” unpublished manuscript (Sept. 1975) 5.

18. “A Stylistic Study of the Priestly Creation Story,” in Canon and Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theology, ed. G. W. Coats and B. O. Long (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 148-62.

19. Herman Gunkel, Genesis (HKAT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910) 137. See his brief treatment of the redactor, 139-40.

20. Genesis, 41.

21. E. A. Speiser, Genesis (AB; Garden City: Doubleday, 1964) 54.

22. Genesis, 580.

23. Ibid., 797-98.

24. Eduard Nielsen, Oral Tradition (London: SCM, 1954) 102. For his criticism of source analysis of the flood story, see pp. 93-103.

25. This has already been observed by Samuel Sandmel in “The Haggada within Scripture,” in Sandmel, ed., Old Testament Issues (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), esp. 97-98; reprinted from JBL 80 (1961) 105-22.

26. Frank M. Cross, “The Priestly Work,” Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973) 305. See also Samuel Sandmel, “The Haggada within Scripture,” 106.

27. Sean E. McEvenue, The Narrative Style of the Priestly Writer (AnBib 50; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1971) chap. 1. See further Joseph Blenkinsopp. “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976) 275-92.

28. Ibid., 36.

29. Ibid., 27. McEvenue adopts as a working basis K. Elliger's delimitation of P set forth in Elliger's “Sinn und Ursprung der priesterlichen Geschichtserzählung,” ZTK 49 (1952) 121-42, esp. 121-22.

30. See U. Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961).

31. Cassuto, Commentary on Genesis(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964) 2. 30-31.

32. ANET, 265-66.

33. Usually these verses are assigned to J, mainly because P has already mentioned Noah's sons by name (6:10; 7:13) and a third mention seems too repetitious, and because the scattering-verb (nāpěsâ) is found in other passages that must be assigned to J. Westermann (Genesis, 650) quotes with approval Gunkel's dictum: “The expression has its Sitz in the Babel story.” But these arguments are questionable. The argument based on repetition is not strong when dealing with priestly material; and there is no reason why the priestly tradent could not have used the scattering-verb, one that is prominent in his approximate contemporary, Ezekiel. Furthermore, the participial expression “those who went forth [hayyôsě’îm] from the ark (9:18) corresponds to the same formulation in the preceding priestly material (9:10: yôsě’ê hattēbâ). In any case, the passage now has a transitional function in the overall narrative.

34. See the commentaries for a treatment of words and phrases characteristic of J and P. It is noteworthy that in the execution passage (7:7-9) it is stated that the animals, clean and unclean, went into the ark by pairs, “two and two.” The priestly tradent, who reworked the epic tradition, may have been concerned at this point with the sexual pairing of the animals, not the total number of clean and unclean.

35. The same question is asked by George Coats in his study of the Joseph Story, From Canaan to Egypt: Structural and Theological Context for the Joseph Story (CBQM S4; Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1976) 57.

36. Arguments based on the alternation of divine names in Genesis, which appeal to Exod 6:2-3 for support, perhaps need to be reexamined. It is noteworthy that the priestly tradent clearly uses the divine name Yahweh in Gen 17:1 (“Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am El Shaddai.”); and he has even hyphenated Yahweh and Elohim in the paradise story.

37. See Martin Kessler, “Rhetorical Criticism of Genesis 7,” in Rhetorical Criticism (see note 5) 1-17.

38. Genesis, 2. 97.

39. See McEvenue, Narrative Style, 28.

40. Ibid., 31.

41. From Canaan to Egypt, 7-8.

42. “The Priestly Work,” 306.

43. See Paul D. Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in I Enoch 6-11,” JBL 96 (1977) 195-233, who points out that in old epic tradition (J) the mythic fragment in 6:1-4 serves to illustrate the degeneration of humankind and specifically to highlight two related themes: “the divinely ordained separation of heaven and earth as two distinct realms, and the enforcement of distinct limits upon the human race” (p. 214). Clearly the priestly tradent saw in this enigmatic episode the final evidence of “violence” and “corruption” in God's creation.