THE CNITY OF GENESIS, 



years. He has endeavoured to account both for what the writer of 

 the book has omitted and what he has admitted, and this is a good 

 and right way in which to study any book. 



Next, Dr. Naville has studied Genesis from the point of view of 

 the first audience to which the book would appeal. Such an 

 audience must be one which would be interested in Israel as a 

 whole : Israel with a bright prospect before it, not with a long train 

 of disasters behind it. Dr. Naville finds that this agrees with the 

 traditional date, and whether he be right or wrong in his conclusions, 

 this is the correct way of working ■ the critics should try to envisage 

 the surroundings of the book. 



I will not criticise Dr. Naville's suggestion that Genesis was 

 originally written on clay tablets ; and with regard to his other 

 suggestion, that it was written in Babylonian, translated into 

 Aramaic, and then into Hebrew, I do not feel free to discuss it, 

 seeing that he is not present with us to reply. As Plato says : " A 

 book always says the same thing, however often you consult it " ; if 

 the writer of the paper were present with us he could add to what 

 he has written or could explain it further. 



But if Dr. Naville were present, there is one question that I should 

 much like to ask, since I cannot answer it myself, even in my 

 capacity of an infallible " professor." 



The book of Genesis gives us a number of etymologies of names, 

 and these are Hebrew etymologies of Hebrew names ; they do not 

 mean what they are alleged to mean, except in Hebrew. Take, for 

 example, the etymology of the name Jacob, which is given in 

 Genesis xxvii, 36 : — " Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath 

 supplanted me these two times 1 " This means nothing in Babylonian 

 or Aramaic, but it is most significant in Hebrew. I cannot imagine 

 that that passage was written originally in any other language than 

 Hebrew. 



So again in Genesis xxxi, we have " the cairn which witnesses " ; 

 Laban called it Jegarsahadutha, but Jacob called it Gained. Laban's 

 name was Aramaic, Jacob's Hebrew, but both names meant the same 

 thing. This chapter, therefore, also seems to have been written 

 originally in Hebrew. 



Then when we come to the life of Joseph, we find that whereas his 

 parents call him by a Hebrew name with a Hebrew etymology, he is 

 called in Egypt by an Egyptian name ; we may not now be able to 



