The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 132 Reviews provides helpful, if general, background. He rejects the case for the Black Plague as having been responsible for the fall of Ur III as unlikely. John H. Walton Moody Bible Institute Chicago, IL 60610 THE BOOK OF GENESIS, CHAPTERS 1-17. By Victor P. Hamilton. NICOT. pp. xviii + 522. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. Cloth, $27.95. The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 has long been anticipated by those who patiently await each new installment of R. K. Harrison's New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Like the other volumes in this series, Victor Hamilton's commentary represents the best of current evangelical scholarship, with its strong belief in the authority and infallibility of Scripture. Biblical scholars and informed lay persons will fmd this an excellent resource for the study of Genesis. Hamilton shows a remarkable familiarity with the central issues in the book of Genesis and leaves no doubt that he has searched far and wide for bibliography to fill its pages with learned footnotes. Nevertheless, the book has significant weaknesses. Hamilton begins with a discussion of several introductory questions. Under the rubric "Structure," he focuses almost entirely on the role and meaning of the "toledoths," which he takes to be colophons providing the key to the book's present shape and meaning. His lengthy discussion ends inconclusively, however, leaving the reader with little understanding of just how this basic structural feature will affect one's reading of the book. Further discussion of the structure of Genesis is limited to a short page and a half of mere snippets of "other indicators of structural design in Genesis" (p. 10). In light of the fact that the following section, dealing with "Composition," attempts to give a refutation of classical and modem forms of literary criticism in favor of the book's unity, one would have expected a fuller discussion of the nature of the book's coherence. In that following section, Hamilton gives a series of more or less typical conservative (a la Harrison, Cassuto, and others) arguments against the Documentary Hypothesis. Oddly enough, he fails to discuss or even men- Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 133 Reviews tion Wbybray's The Making ofthe Pentateuch (1987). Because he does not go beyond much of what was already said a generation ago, his arguments are not likely to be convincing to modem critical scholars, nor will his interaction with contemporary scholarship be found satisfactory. For example , he regards the difference between Rolf Rendtorff's view of the composition of Genesis and the classical Documentary Hypothesis as "more cosmetic than substantive" (p. 26). This leaves one with the impression that, for Hamilton, anyone who holds to a non-Mosaic view of the Pentateuch's composition can automatically be classified as adhering to some form of the Documentary Hypothesis. Nor does he offer a solution of his own to address the question of the book's authorship. Evangelicals will find it surprising that, for Hamilton, even the views of fellow evangelicals like K. A. Kitchen and R. K. Harrison are "neither more nor less hypothetical than Wellhausen's JEP Genesis or Rendtorff's Uberlieferungen Genesis" (p. 37). For Hamilton, the question of the nature of the composition of Genesis is an "exercise in futility" or an "endless" pursuit "never coming to a knowledge of the truth" (p. 38). Such a conclusion is very inadequate. Hamilton's preoccupation with literary criticism comes out again in his section on the "theology" of Genesis. Here, the issue is not so much the theology of the book as whether it contains a single theology or multiple theologies. Since he holds that the narrative's theology resides in its repeated "promises," his discussion quickly reduces to the question of whether these promise sections are "originaL" Some idea of this book's general approach to Genesis can be gained from a glance at the particular "Problems in Interpretation" singled out for discussion. First is the question of whether the "days" of Genesis are literal twenty-four-hour days or geological ages. This intramural evangelical discussion is of little importance to anyone outside those boundaries. Hamilton's solution-that the term "day" is to...