EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



purposes, used current concepts, purged them of idolatrous 

 and immoral elements, and exploited them as vehicles of truth. 

 He took over much of their scenery, imagery, and idioms of 

 speech, and forged them into an expression of truth about 

 the true God and His creative activity. 



An important factor leading to an understanding of what 

 the sacred writer meant to convey is a comparison of the 

 sources he employed. Before his time there were circulating 

 in Israel two ancient traditions about the origins. Though they 

 differ considerably in the selection of facts and their religious 

 significance, they agree on the most basic points and form a 

 more or less harmonious whole. Since the final author did not 

 find to hand new documents on the history of the beginnings 

 and did not, so far as we know, receive any fresh revelation 

 from God about them, he limited himself to placing these two 

 ancient traditions side by side, or rather to combining them so 

 skillfully that, up to modern times, biblical scholars did not 

 even suspect their existence. 



One of these sources is known as the "Yahwist" tradition, 

 because it consistently uses the name "Yahweh" as the proper 

 name for the God of Israel. It was probably put down in 

 writing during the reign of Solomon in. the tenth century B.C. 

 We cannot specify when it began to circulate orally, but 

 scholars think that it took shape at the time of Moses and 

 perhaps even earlier. Its origin is to be sought in Judea. The 

 other tradition is called "Sacerdotal" or "Priestly," because 

 it stems from the sacerdotal environment of the Temple in 

 Jerusalem. The Priestly tradition is thought to have received 

 written form during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century 

 B.C. 



The first chapter of Genesis plus the first four and a half 

 verses of the second chapter belong to the Priestly account; 

 the rest of the second chapter and the whole third chapter 

 represent the more ancient Yahwist tradition. The text as it 

 stands, not these hypothetical earlier sources, is the inspired 

 word of God. By artistically combining the two traditions, the 

 sacred writer sought to teach true history; but we can hardly 

 suppose that a mind as keen and deep as his could have 

 believed and meant to assert as historical facts certain strange 

 elements appearing in the narrative, elements which he himself 



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