early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain
how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard
to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis.

(1) Driver, _Modern Research as illustrating the Bible_ (The
Schweich Lectures, 1908), p. 23.

I need not remind you that Genesis is the book of Hebrew origins, and
that its contents mark it off to some extent from the other books of the
Hebrew Bible. The object of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua is to
describe in their origin the fundamental institutions of the national
faith and to trace from the earliest times the course of events which
led to the Hebrew settlement in Palestine. Of this national history
the Book of Genesis forms the introductory section. Four centuries of
complete silence lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus,
where we enter on the history of a nation as contrasted with that of
a family.(1) While Exodus and the succeeding books contain national
traditions, Genesis is largely made up of individual biography. Chapters
xii-l are concerned with the immediate ancestors of the Hebrew race,
beginning with Abram's migration into Canaan and closing with Joseph's
death in Egypt. But the aim of the book is not confined to recounting
the ancestry of Israel. It seeks also to show her relation to other
peoples in the world, and probing still deeper into the past it
describes how the earth itself was prepared for man's habitation.
Thus the patriarchal biographies are preceded, in chapters i-xi, by an
account of the original of the world, the beginnings of civilization,
and the distribution of the various races of mankind. It is, of course,
with certain parts of this first group of chapters that such striking
parallels have long been recognized in the cuneiform texts.