THE UNITY OF GENESIS. 



:u<) 



consider it otherwise than another misconception of the leading 

 idea of the writing. 



We have now come to the end of the first part of Genesis, we 

 have reached Abraham, the first elect, and the father of the 

 chosen people. We have before our eyes his complete pedigree, 

 as far hack as the birth of heaven and earth, and let us consider 

 how the whole narrative is directed towards Abraham. The 

 earth is created, and man ; in consequence of the Fall, the 

 descendants of Adam become wicked and corrupt, except Noah. 

 He escapes in the ark, and he has three sons ; from these, all the 

 nations are divided, they were scattered after the attempt to 

 build the tower of Babel, but among all these nations who were 

 dispersed over the earth, one family is chosen in Shem's posterity, 

 the family of Arpachsad, the ancestor of Terah. We have in 

 these six tablets all that is necessary, a sufficient introduction to 

 show from where Terah originates, but nothing useless. The 

 posterity of the three sons of Noah is necessary to show how the 

 earth was replenished by a great number of nations after the 

 Deluge, but after Arpachsad has been chosen, we shall hear 

 no more of the posterity of Ham, Japheth and even Shem. 

 Can such a remarkable unity of purpose and idea be expressed 

 otherwise than by unity of composition ? 



As I said, these six tablets I consider as having been brought 

 from Mesopotamia when Abram went to Canaan. There is 

 nothing extraordinary in this assumption. We know how those 

 tablets travelled, and we have seen now of what peculiar interest 

 they were to Abram ; it may be that they had for him a religious 

 value which was disregarded by his countrymen. Anyhow they 

 were his pedigree, they showed who were his ancestors as far as 

 Adam ; and such genealogies are greatly valued by Orientals, 

 even at the present day, and not only for themselves, but, for 

 instance, for their horses. 



When I say that these tablets were brought from Mesopo- 

 tamia, and that Moses merely rewrote them and embodied them 

 in his own collection of documents, which for convenience w r e 

 shall call a book, people will object that I only throw back the 

 difficulty. Who first wrote them in Mesopotamia, and how came 

 the author to have all this information about the Creation and 

 the Fall, the Deluge, etc. ? I intentionally do not touch this 

 point, where I should have to speak of revelation ; I do not go 

 further back than the author of Genesis, Moses. 



Abraham is the first elect, the father of the elect nation which 

 has to go out of Egypt. One may fancy that Abraham's life is 

 the most important narrative Moses has to write, his choice by 



