The primeval history is the name given by biblical scholars to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. These chapters convey the story of the first years of the world's existence.[1]
The body of material tells how God created the world and all its beings and placed the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) in his Garden of Eden, how the first couple were expelled from God's presence, of the first murder which followed, and God's decision to destroy the world and save only the righteous Noah and his sons; a new humanity then descended from these sons and spread throughout the world, but, although the new world was as sinful as the old, God resolved never again to destroy the world by flood, and the history ended with Terah, the father of Abraham, from whom descended God's chosen people.[2]
The primeval history is generally considered to have been completed along with the rest of the Book of Genesis in the 5th century BCE, but a sizeable minority of scholars have dated it to the 3rd century BCE, pointing to discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible.
- ^ Blenkinsopp 2011, p. ix.
- ^ Blenkinsopp 2011, p. 1.