Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

11’:27-32 ’
narrated, but is, on the contrary; d characteristic markcof
the legend.’ But though legends :-do usually abound in
picturesque details, the things narrated. in Genesis very
evidently bear the stamp of sober truth. Christ and the
appostles recognized the patriarchs as historical .characters;
cf. such remarks as John 8: 56 and the’ almost- two dozen
references of Christ to Abraham alone,,
“More farfetched than either of 2 the two theories de-.
scribed thus far is the ustral-mytht tr5eoi.y. Briefly stated,
it amounts to this: even as Greek mythology had certain
tales by way of explanation of the origisfi of .the signs of
the zodiac, so did the Babylonians, and so; ’ of .necessity,
must Israel. An illustration: Sarah’s going. down into
Egypt as a sterile woman is the Israelitishi way of stating
the Babylonian myth of the descent of the goddess Ishtar
into the underworld to receive the boon of fertility. Even
though the story primarily tells of Abram’s going into
Egypt, and though Egypt has to be taken to signify the
underworld-a thing utterly without parallel in the Scrip-
tures-and even though Sarai must be interpreted to be
an adaptation of the name of the Babylonian goddess
Shavratu, the wife of the moon god, in spite of all these
forms of unwarranted treatment of the text, the adherents
of this theory fail to see its folly. We cannot but label
such a theory as an attempt to discredit Scripture.
“A fourth mode of misinterpreting the sacred narra-
tive is the attempt to account for it on the basis of what
we might term the Bedziin-ideal theory. Briefly, this in-
volves the notion that the writer or the writers of the
patriarchal history were in reality setting forth the type
of Beduin life as found in patriarchal times as an ideal for
a later more civilized and more degenerate age. The writer
is supposed to be enthusiastic for the Beduin type of life
and td see in it the cure for the social ills of his time. So
the Beduin religion is also set forth as an ideal of mono-
theistic religion. Incidentally, that utter simplicity sup-
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