In Q it is understood that men are scattered
over the whole earth; they are never represented as all living at
one point, and pains are accordingly taken to describe the flood
as quite universal. The division of the people comes about quite
simply in the way of genealogy, and the division of the languages
is not the cause but the result of it. Accompanying this we find
once more a notable difference in point of mental attitude; what
JE regards as unnatural, and only to be understood as a violent
perversion of the original order, is in Q the most natural thing
in the world.
The period between the flood and Abraham is filled up in Q by
another ten-membered genealogy, which, to judge from the analogy
of Genesis iv., had probably only seven members in JE. It cannot
have been wanting there, and may have passed straight from Shem
to Heber, and left out the grandfather Nahor (x. 21, 24, xxiv.
15, xxix. 5), who is even less to be distinguished from his
grandson of the same name than Adam from Enos. The original
dwelling-place of the Terahites is, according to Q, not the
Mesopotamian Haran (Carrhae), as in JE (xii.
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