In raising the question to which department of literature the narratives of Genesis are to be referred, we approach a subject beset by difficulty, but one which cannot be avoided. We are not entitled to assume a priori that Israel is an exception to the general rule that a legendary age forms the ideal background of history: whether it be so or not must be determined on the evidence of its records. Should it prove to be no exception, we shall not assign to its legends a lower significance as an expression of the national spirit than to the heroic legends of the Greek or Teutonic races. It is no question of the truth or religious value of the book that we are called to discuss, but only of the kind of truth and the particular mode of revelation which we are to find in it. One of the strangest theological prepossessions is that which identifies revealed truth with matter-of-fact accuracy either in science or in history. Legend is after all a species of poetry, and it is hard to see why a revelation which has freely availed itself of so many other kinds of poetry—fable, allegory, parable—should disdain that form of it which is the most influential of all in the life of a primitive people. As a vehicle of religious ideas, poetic narrative possesses obvious advantages over literal history; and the spirit of religion, deeply implanted in the heart of a people, will so permeate and fashion its legendary lore as to make it a plastic expression of the imperishable truths which have come to it through its experience of God.
The legendary aspect of the Genesis traditions appears in such
characteristics as these: (1) The narratives are the literary deposit
of an oral tradition which, if it rests on any substratum of historic
fact, must have been carried down through many centuries. Few will
seriously maintain that the patriarchs prepared written memoranda for
the information of their descendants; and the narrators nowhere profess
their indebtedness to such records. Hebrew historians freely refer to
written authorities where they used them (Kings, Chronicles); but no
instance of this practice occurs in Genesis. Now oral tradition is the
natural vehicle of popular legend, as writing is of history. And all
experience shows that apart from written records there is no exact
knowledge of a remote past. Making every allowance for the superior
retentiveness of the Oriental memory, it is still impossible to suppose
that an accurate recollection of bygone incidents should have survived
twenty generations or more of oral transmission. Nöldeke, indeed, has
