The Genesis record also
oriented the nation of slaves to the concept of sacred history. The Israelites
in Egypt were continually exposed to the Egyptian mythologies and world view,
but the accounts in Genesis were quite different from the religious beliefs of
the other peoples of the ancient Near East. The gods of the Egyptians,
Mesopotamians and Canaanites were gods of nature, personifications of the
mysterious forces of thunder, rain, fertility, the celestial bodies and the various
landforms and bodies of water. The pagan festivals were the reenactment of
sacred myths in which people celebrated the never-ending cycles of life, death
and rebirth in nature, the changes of the seasons and the fertility of the
soil.
The patriarchs, by
contrast, came to know God by his mighty acts within history, his
self-revelations and interventions. Yahweh had made himself known through a
series of extraordinary events and self-disclosures. He appeared in visions
(Ge. 15:1), dreams (Ge. 28:12-13) and theophany (Ge. 32:24-30). God himself
interpreted and anticipated history so that his people could understand its
meaning (Ge. 6:5-7; 11:5-9; 12:1-3; 15:13-16; 16:9-12; 18:20-21; 25:22-23;
26:2-5; 28:12-15; 35:9-12; 45:4-8; 50:19-21).
All these Genesis
narratives focus upon the action of Yahweh. In the annals of other nations of
the ancient Near East, the national histories tell of the glories of the nation
and her military victories. Defeats were rarely recorded. In the stories of the
patriarchs, the success of the clans depended upon the grace of God. The
Genesis record quite graphically depicts the failures of the patriarchs. Some
of them were little more than scoundrels. Yahweh is the one who did great
things, and he kept his promises in spite of the patriarchs as much as because
of them. Thus, the history of Genesis is sacred history.
Etiology is the use of a
story to explain an ancient name, place or custom, and the Genesis record has a
considerable number of them. When
the Israelites made the trek from Egypt to Canaan, they encountered a variety
of place names in the land of promise that recalled particular events in the
Genesis record. Also, certain customs had been handed down for generations.
Many of the stories of Genesis are etiological in nature, that is, they give
historical explanations as to why certain places and people were named as they
were (cf. Ge. 32:1-2, 7-10; 17:17; 18:11-15; 21:3-7) or why certain practices
were observed (Ge.32:32). Explanations found later in the Pentateuch look
backward to patterns found in Genesis (e.g., Ex.20:8-11). Such stories would
have given the nation in the exodus a special sense of identity, and
particularly, such stories would have assured them that the land of Canaan was
rightfully theirs, since it was the land of their ancestors deeded to them by
divine decree.
The power to name persons,
objects and places was for the ancient person equivalent to holding power over
that which was named, since the name was inextricably bound up with existence.
Thus, to know that Jacob named Bethel (Ge. 28:16-19) and Peniel (32:29-30), for
instance, or that Abraham and Isaac named Beersheba (Ge. 21:27-31); 26:32-33)
would have enabled the Israelites in the conquest to regard these places as
their own.
Because Israel’s faith was
grounded in history, her creeds were historical in nature rather than
abstractions of theology. They did not begin, “I believe in God, the Father
Almighty...” Rather, they began, “Yahweh freed us from the land of Egypt, from
the house of bondage...” (Ex. 20:1; Dt. 5:6; 6:21; Ps. 81:10). One of the
oldest confessions, which depends upon the Genesis stories and which the
Israelites were instructed to recite after entering the land, stressed that the
patriarchs themselves did not see the fulfillment of the promise for numerous
progeny and the full possession of Canaan (Dt. 26:1-11). Rather, their ancestor
Jacob was a wandering Aramean. It was his descendants that Yahweh delivered
from Egypt and brought into this good land. Such a recitation was to remind
them that the proper fulfillment of the covenant in Genesis was accomplished in
the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan.