Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches

by David McClain Carr

In Reading the Fractures of Genesis, David M. Carr shows how understanding the history of the formation of the book of Genesis impacts a reading of the book's final form. According to Carr, a clear understanding of Genesis can be obtained only when one takes seriously its complex and fractured nature, a multivoiced text that developed over many centuries. Drawing on the best in European and North American scholarship to present this new approach to Genesis, he produces a provocative interpretation that helps to bridge the widening gap between opposing methodological camps in the study of Genesis.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Religion

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, David Carr analyses how we got Genesis, the first book of both Jewish and Christian scriptures. To put it in technical terms, he uses a diachronic reading to inform a synchronic reading. He hopes thereby to build a bridge between these two ways of reading.

The recognition of literary tensions in the book of Genesis is old, and the attempts to account for them have varied. Carr presents a well-reasoned analysis and offers his findings. He is transparent in his methodology and honest about the varying levels of probability in his results.

Carr begins sensibly enough with what is commonly called P, the layer responsible for the first of the two creation accounts and which contributed one of the two accounts that have been conflated in the story of Noah’s flood. Carr concludes that P was written as a counter-narrative to a proto-Genesis with the intent to replace it.

The process resulting in this non-P was less straightforward, involving the reconstruction of precursor documents and varying social settings, for instance, a cycle of Jacob-Joseph stories that first circulated in the Northern kingdom, Israel, then reworked in the south, in Judah. The development was a bit hard to follow at times, but I found it worthwhile to follow closely. Carr aptly characterises his proposed model as a “simpler complexity”.

Above all, I was intrigued by his analysis of the contribution of the final redactor, “Rp”. Blending P into proto-Genesis resulted in the doublets, breaks, and inconsistencies that readers have long noticed. Why did the final redactor not harmonize these? The reason, Carr suggests, is that each document, P and non-P, had already attained proto-scriptural status among influential circles (priests and lay elders) in postexilic Judah.

I found it awkward that the Genesis composition against which P was written bears a negative name, “non-P”. This makes it sound minor compared to P, when in fact it’s a masterpiece of storytelling. Further, it obscures the fact that at least one of the precursors of non-P, the first primeval history, arose in priestly circles, although with different concerns and emphases than those of the postexilic priests among whom P was composed.

This book is highly recommended for anyone with more than a passing interest in how we got the Bible. It is a book to be chewed and digested.

[Cory Driver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting theory in the documentary hypothesis train of thought. the connection of the Jacob-Joseph story with the northern kingdom made a lot of sense to me, as well as the Promise portions being connected with exile. i'm not completely sold, but it has been very enlightening to read Genesis in light of latter contexts- i think, though, that it was my understanding of the latter events, rather than Genesis itself, which was enlightened.

[KA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful.