The Priestly Code has the rainbow, which the Jehovist, as we now
have him, wants. But we have to remember that in Genesis vi.-ix.
the Jehovist account is mutilated, but the priestly one preserved
entire. If the rainbow occurred both in JE and in Q, one of the
accounts of it had to be omitted, and according to the editor's
usual procedure the omission had to be from JE. It is accordingly
very possible that it was not at first wanting in JE; it agrees
better, indeed, with the simple rain, which here brings about the
flood, than with the opening of the sluices of heaven and the
fountains of the deep, which produce it in Q, and it would stand
much better after viii. 21, 22 than after ix. 1-7. In the
Priestly Code, moreover, the meaning of the rainbow is half
obliterated. On the one hand, the story is clumsily turned into
history, and we receive the impression either that the rainbow
only appeared in the heavens at this one time after the flood, or
that it had been there ever since; on the other hand, it is made
the token of the covenant between Elohim and Noah, and the use of
language in other passages, with the analogy of Genesis xvii.
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