The historian’s difficulties increase the further back he goes into past. The most intractable problem is 024… that of the first ancestors whom Israel claimed as her own, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose “history” is told in Genesis 12–35. The history of Joseph, which occupies the rest of Genesis with the exception of Genesis 38 and 49, belongs to the following period, that of Israel’s stay in Egypt. Despite the enormous amount of work that has been done during the past two centuries in the field of literary criticism, especially in connection with the Pentateuch in general […]
