IV

When people asked how this translation is different from the others, there was one other matter that I would sometimes explain to them. This explanation involves a lesson in textual scholarship. I will make it brief.

The stories in Genesis were composed, some of them from ancient folk material, by a number of different writers, as biblical scholars have established beyond a doubt. There are at least four writers, and probably half a dozen more: J, the author of many of the most famous stories in Genesis (J for Yahwist, or Jahwist in its German spelling, so called because he almost always uses the name YHVH, “the Lord,” for God); E, whose greatest story is “The Binding of Isaac” (E for Elohist, because he uses the name Elohim, “God” in a curious, seemingly plural form, for God); P, the Priestly Writer; the author of “Joseph and His Brothers”; and a number of other writers whom I call “early sources” and “late sources.” In addition, there was an editor, known as R (for Redactor), who collected all these texts and tried to reconcile them and make one continuous narrative out of the disparate sources. The (very approximate) dates of these writers are: J, 950-800 B.C.E.; E, 850-750; P, 700-500; the Joseph author, 1000-900; early sources, 950-750; late sources, after 587; and R, 450-400.

If there is any author of Genesis as a whole, it is R. He was in certain ways a very skillful editor, and I w ill discuss the shape of his book in the last section of this essay. But Genesis as it is presented to us in R’s recension — as we read it in the Hebrew text and in all the translations, except for a few scholarly ones — is a disservice to the original authors. That is why in this book I have separated the text into its sources, printing each story as a distinct work by a particular writer. (For many of these attributions, there is general scholarly consensus. Much of the time I have agreed with the contemporary German scholar Claus Westermann, whose three-volume commentary on Genesis is one of the great works of Hebrew textual scholarship.)

A peculiarity of the text that the present format makes much more obvious is what scholars call doublets: two (sometimes three) versions of the same story, by different authors. There are many doublets in Genesis: “The Creation” according to P and according to J; “The Flood” according to J and according to P; “Wife and Sister” (three versions: J, E, and a late source); “The Promise to Abram” (J and one or possibly two late sources) and “The Covenant with Abraham” (P); “Hagar and Ishmael” according to J and according to E; “Beer-sheba” (three versions: E, J, and a late source); “Why Jacob Was Sent to Laban” according to J (“Esau Cheated of the Blessing”) and according to P; “Jacob at Beth-El” according to J and according to E; and “Jacob Becomes Israel” according to J (“Jacob Wrestles with God”) and according to P.