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Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11

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This is a short, readable, but intelligent and provocative challenge to the documentary hypothesis, as applied to Genesis 1-11. The documentary hypothesis assumes that the Bible as we have it is the result of four (or more) strands of authorship, designated as J, E, P, and D. This book makes its challenge on the basis of comparisons to a five-part structure evidenced in other ancient epics, and other poetic structures and techniques. This book is particularly fascinating when read alongside Richard Friedman's _Who Wrote the Bible_ which is a popular exposition of the documentary hypothesis.

For example, Freidman's prize example of the documentary hypothesis, based on work by Julius Welhausen, shows that you can slice the Noah story into two separate accounts, written by two different authors, each with an allegedly separate vocabulary and concerns. Kikawada and Quinn look at the same passages, questioning the assumptions behind the documentary approach (showing, for example, other ancient writings that mix different names for diety in the same passages). They also show both large scale and local chiasms (inverted parallel structures) running through the Noah story, showing that the same repetition that documentary scholars see as evidence of multiple authorship, can be seen from another perspective, as evidence of concious artfulness. Reading Friedman and Kikawada and Quinn might also send you scrambling for another look at Thomas Kuhn's _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, so that you can consider how one goes about choosing between conflicting paradigms.

All in all, a fine, fascinating, surprisingly provocative work. It should also appeal to those who appreciate Robert Alter's books like _The Art of Biblical Narrative_. It has the same effect of renewing your appreciation for stories that you thought that you knew well.

In this fairly short and tightly reasoned book (unfortunately not now in print), Isaac Kikawada and Arthur Quinn argue very convincingly that the "documentary hypothesis" has had its day.

Their thesis: that a hundred-odd years of scholarship inspired by Wellhausen's theory has _itself_ produced the very evidence which proves it false. In order to support this contention, the authors examine the portion of the Bible at which support for the "documentary hypothesis" seems strongest: the story of Noah and the Flood. And true to their aim, they deftly show that the very features of the text which seem to support multiple authorship can, when viewed slightly differently, also be seen as evidence that the text is the work of a single author capable of great brilliance and subtlety.

It is this last point that I think deserves the greatest emphasis. Too often, the stories of the Jewish scriptures are written off as "primitive" or "barbaric," and superficial contradictions or immoralities are taken as evidence of the unsophistication of the text's author(s) and target audience. Recognizing and questioning our hidden assumption here is an essential step toward recognizing the possibility that -- as Kikawada and Quinn put it -- if we think we spot an error in the text, it is more likely we who are at fault.

For consider: since the "documentary hypothesis" requires a "redactor" who was not unduly concerned about obvious "contradictions," why do we rule out the possibility that a _single_ author might have been similarly unconcerned? And if the latter possibility is _not_ ruled out, why do we assume that these apparent "contradictions" are not stylistic contrivances that are intended for a more sophisticated audience than we have thus far considered?

And in that case, might not the very features of the text revealed by proponents of the "documentary hypothesis" be themselves evidence of a deeper unity and design? Why, rather than look for such unity and design, do we assume the "redactor" must have been so stupid as to be unable to recognize difficulties that are obvious to any child (and indeed were discussed in the Talmudic literature at least two millennia ago)?

Kikawada and Quinn have laid waste to the "documentary hypothesis" by accepting what is good in it and showing that it undermines itself. This little book will be of interest to all who wish to defend the integrity of Scripture, and especially to readers of Umberto Cassuto's _The Documentary Hypothesis_ (unfortunately not now in print either).

For any student of biblical exegesis who has been fed a diet of documentary hypothesis, and come away with a vague feeling of indigestion and a fear that you will not be able to keep it all down, this book will provide hoped for relief. It is solid food that leaves you feeling full and satisfied and hoping the authors will come back with another course in the near future.

Kikawada and Quinn take the hand grenades that have been tossed into the orthodox foxhole over the last century and lob them back at their owners with devestaing effect.

The authors meet the proponents of the documentary hypothesis on their own ground, tear down their strongholds and proceed to the high ground taking no prisoners.

If you long to read Genesis again with a sense of joy and wonder, this is a book that will refresh your spirit with it's powerful new hypothesis of the eseential unity of the authorship of the Book of the Beginning.

I am surprised that this book has never attracted the attention it should have. Quinn and Kikiwada, two Berkeley scholars, make a compelling case for reading Genesis 1-11 as a unified text. The documentary thesis, with the sometimes convoluted efforts to separated out even fragments of verses to various author,s was very much a product of late romanticism and the belief in the representation of time and progress in natural phenomena--from the discovery of time differentiation in sedimentary rocks to the awareness that star gazing was a look into different times simultaneously. This same documentary thesis was popular among Greek scholars at the same time. Few critics now argue that Homer's Iliad is a mere patchwork, yet the documentary thesis of the composition of Genesis remains.

With an extensive knowledge of linguistics, rhetoric, and literary theory as well as the careful use of the evidence used to jsutify the documentary thesis, Quinn and Kikiwada produce a reading of the first eleven chapters of Genesis which reveals a sophisticated and elegant construction that is far from being a patchwork or mosaic. Genesis 1-11 is a layering of chiasmus upon chiasmus, with each reinforcing the general themes of dispersion, a theme whic runs counter to that other closely related Near Eastern narratives of creation and the flood.

The late Arthur Quinn died prematurely, but it is time that biblical commentators and biblical scholars paid these two men their due.

This book should be shelved next to "The Bible Codes". The Bible codes claimed to find meaningful patterns in the way letters are distributed through the bible; Kikawada and Quinn claim to find a meaningful pattern in the repetitions and contradictions of the biblical text. They claim this is the author's art, rather than evidence of separate texts having been sutured together.

Their reading is simply not convincing. The repititions in Genesis do not look like the similar repititions in other Near Eastern literature. They have a different quality, which is evident to any reader who is willing to look at the texts as historical documents rather than as some kind of lifeline to God.

The documentary hypothesis lives. Kikawada and Quinn are forgotten by all but a handful of tenacious Christians. Do a websearch and see who supports their theory - evangelical Christian organizations.