Strack's Genesis, Exodus, and LeviticusGenesis, Exodus, und Leviticus. D. Hermann Strack , D. Otto Zöckler

W. Taylor Smith
1895 Hebraica  
The first two parts of Professor Strack's valuable commentary, containing the two most important of the Books of Moses, indicate clearly enough this veteran scholar's general attitude to the Pentateuchal question. The results of critical analysis as respects the composition of Genesis and Exodus are accepted almost in toto as to the distribution of the matter between P. and JE. Only in a very few places is there divergence from the generally received arrangement as stated in Canon Driver's
more » ... duction. The most noteworthy occurs in the Deluge story. Professor Strack cannot find an adequate reason why VII. 12-17 and vIII. 6-12 should not be assigned to P. The arrangement is exhibited in the text by the use of two different sets of type. The verses, however, mentioned above as probably belonging to P. are with strange inconsistency (unless it be owing to a printer's error) represented as belonging to JE. The complete separation of J. and E. is considered to be at present impossible, and therefore no attempt has been made to distinguish between these two authorities in the text. The analysis of modern criticism is followed up to a certain point, but many of its conclusions are decisively rejected. One example will illustrate our author's courage in opposing these "false inferences," as he calls them. Unlike most modern critics, he sees no contradiction between the two accounts of the creation and supports his contention by a strange, if not unnatural, rendering of Genesis ii. 19. That verse is translated thus: "Therefore Yahveh Elohim brought every beast of the field and all birds of the heaven which he had made out of the ground to Adam to see what he would cry to them and whatever the man should cry to any living creature that should be its name." This singular method of construing the sentence is declared to be not only possible but necessary. Unless we are mistaken, the necessity will be far from obvious to many readers. It is stated in the preface that polemics have been avoided, but this is by no means wholly the case. The paragraph entitled "The Bible and Natural Science," (pp. 6 and 7) is strongly controversial. In fact the combative element in the Professor's nature has sometimes seriously interfered with judicial impartiality. The theological tone is in the main conservative. Those who deny the supernatural will find this commentary uncongenial. The Elohistic account of creation, for instance, can only be accounted for, we are assured, on the assumption of revelation. It is neither the result of laborious speculation nor the product of poetic fancy. Its substance must repose on divine revelation. The arrangement differs a little from that observed in the well known commentaries of Orelli in this series. There is no continuous
doi:10.1086/369204 fatcat:brkg6mcw6vf7zhbnp2xuskuwfy