27, v. 1, ix. 6, sound exactly like a protest
against the view underlying Genesis ii. iii., a protest to be
explained partly by the growth of moral and religious
cultivation, but partly also no doubt due to the convulsive
efforts of later Judaism to deny that most firmly established of
all the lessons of history, that the sons suffer for the sins of
the fathers. /1/
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1. A coarser counterpart to Genesis ii. iii, is Genesis vi. 1-4.
Here also there is a kind of fall of man in an attempt to overpass
the boundary between the human race and the divine. In the priestly
narrative (Q) the gulf between spirit, which is divine substance,
and flesh, which is human substance, is bridged over by the doctrine
of man's creation in the image of God.
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What are generally cited as points of superiority in Genesis i.
over Genesis ii. iii. are beyond doubt signs of progress in outward
culture. The mental individuality of the two writers, the systematiser
and the genius, cannot be compared, and the difference in this
respect tells nothing of their respective dates; but in its general
views of God, nature, and man, Genesis i.
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