Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity? What Sort of Unity Were You Looking For?
A source-critical or tradition-historical approach to the Genesis Apocryphon will quite justifiably emphasize the features of the Apocryphon that point toward what can be described as its lack of compositional unity. There exists, however, a level on which the Apocryphon can be shown to be a whole; that is its narrative unity. The latter is the result of the ways in which the final author/composer organized and manipulated the sources and traditions, whether written or oral, with which he worked. The acknowledgment that the Apocryphon is unified on this level opens the door to its treatment as an integral (if fragmentary) literary artifact, as I shall demonstrate in further studies.