What is/are the earliest text/s of Genesis,used as the source for our present book of the bible, and from what date/s ? Has Genesis the oldest textual source/s of the Old Testament books ? +++++++++++ 02-02-03, 02:28 AM newnickname http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tora.htm
04-09-03, 09:04 PM mahal There are many ways of looking at this question, here are a few options:
1) If you take the Bible literally, you can place the chapters of Genesis on the following rough estimates:
1--written 4000 BC 2--written 2200 BC 3/4--written 4000 to 3500 BC 5--compiled 4000 to 2500 BC, written 2500 to 2400 6/7/8/9--apparently journaled during the flood and written some time just after 10/11--both from historical records, probably written around 2100 BC 12 to 50--variously written from 2100 to 1800 BC
The biggest problems with a literal translation is that there is scant evidence corroborating the details of the stories, and the Hebrew language is not known to have existed at such early dates. That would point to the Bible having an earlier source in an earlier language.
2) There are striking resemblances between the first 9 chapters of Genesis and Sumerian legends of the early Bronze age (2400 to 2200 BC). The Sumerian legends in turn are widely believed to have come from much older oral traditions. The stories of these chapters are mirrored in these legends, including the flood story, the flood survivor, pre-flood histories of men, and even a certain man who "walked with God". (The Sumerian Noah was Utnaphistim.)
It's tempting to argue that the source of the early chapters in Genesis would be similar to that of the Sumerian legends. The biggest problem with this is that many Sumerian legends proliferated into many other cultures over the next 3000 years, all the way to Byzantine Europe, to an author who writes of Gilgames but tells of adventures more like Pericles.
3) Individual chapters can be suggested to have a great antiquity, such as chapter 12. 5 cities are mentioned in the area of Sodom and Gomorrah that were destroyed (never to be rebuilt) during the Bronze Age, and the same 5 cities turned up at another Bronze Age city in the same order given in Genesis. The city, Ebla (Tel Mardikh) also did not survive the Bronze Age.
It can easily be said that the story survived in memory and was written down later. The problem with this is that chapter 12 exactly characterizes the political situation of the middle east from about 2400 BC to 1800 BC, a situation that never existed again!
(The entire middle east was dominated first by the Akkadians then by the Assyrians during their merchant period. Genesis 12 describes the enemies of the 5 cities as 4 kings spread from Persia to Turkey. This situation could never have happened again after the rise of the Hittites in Turkey, the Babylonians and Hurrians further south, each claiming chunks of the old empire for the next thousand years.)
Once again, there must be an explanation for the Hebrew language at this early date. The story of the war of the 5 kings against 4 took place during the period of Assyrian domination.
If I think of more, I'll post them.
04-09-03, 11:30 PM mahal Correction to #1 above: I should have said that chapter 2 was written AFTER 2200 BC. It could have actually been written by Moses around 1600. It could not possibly have been written as early as the chapters before and after it because of the names mentioned, names of people who weren't born until several generations after the flood (Havilah and Cush, who are named again in chapter 10).
Chapter 2 also seems to have been written from the point of view of someone living in Canaan or Egypt, not Mesopotamia. The clue is in the gold mentioned near Havilah. Mesopotamians traded for gold in Persia; Egypt traded for gold in Havilah (western Saudi Arabia) among other places.
04-10-03, 12:11 AM mahal In my recent research, something interesting came up that affects how we look at the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (chapters 12-50).
As you read this, keep in mind that the Philistines of the Old Testament were not indigenous to Canaan, they were actually Greeks! This has been known for some time, and it can now be proven beyond doubt. It can be clearly shown that most of the pottery, some architecture and even some myths of the Philistines match closely even exactly those of cities in Greece around 1400 BC just after the fall of the Mycenaean cities there, and so it's pretty obvious that thousands of Mycenaeans migrated from Greece to Canaan around that time and settled the five famous Philistine cities (Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Ekron and Gaza).
Here are some interesting points about Genesis with regard to the Philistines:
1) Of the five cities, only one existed when the Genesis stories supposedly took place, Gaza. None of the five cities are mentioned in Genesis (or even in the Penteteuch) except for one, Gaza (see Genesis 10.19).
It gets better:
2) Abraham and Isaac both had relationship with a people called the Philistines (400+ years before they arrived!)
This is not the only people with whom this type of confusion arrises. There is also mention of the Hittites living in the wrong place, the wrong time, and speaking the wrong language. The reason is obvious: they're a different people whom the writer called by the same name. (In the case of the Hittites of Genesis, they were the sons of a man named Heth, hence the name. The real Hittites lived in Turkey and were named for their capital city, Hattusa.)
The Philistines of Genesis lived in the northern Sinai. They were never mentioned as living in the five cities mentioned above.
The Philistines of Genesis were ruled by a king called "Abimelech", which is a Semitic name meaning "father-king", or perhaps "the king, my father". Greek is not a Semitic language, it's Indo-European (not even closely related).
The Philistines of Genesis inhabited the land around 2000-1800 and are never mentioned again. The later Philistines are mentioned no earlier than Joshua and Judges (around 1400/1300). So there's a gap of several centuries between the two unrelated peoples of the same name.
The best explanation for this would seem to be that the chapters calling this people "Philistine" were written after 1400 BC, and that the writer forgot their original ethnicity. In fact, this is the wide-spread belief for this and other reasons.
I suggest that they were called Philistines becasue of where they lived, just as the Canaanites were called that because they lived in Canaan. (The Canaanites were actually many different ethnic groups called Canaanites collectively, though they held different territories.)
The Philistines of Genesis descended from Cashluhim and were related to the Egyptians (see Genesis 10.14, the sixth son of Mitzraim, also called Egypt). This explains why they would live so near Egypt and not in Canaan. So the writer of the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remembered an older ethnic group from which the later Greeks took a Semitic name of the land close by.
(Incidently, the "land" of the Philistines is mentioned in Exodus twice, but the people were not. They seem to have been absorbed into another group or disappeared after 1800.)
04-10-03, 02:01 AM mahal There is a popular theory that the Penteteuch was written by four authors who were responsible for varied portions, the "J" documents, the "E" documents, the "D" documents adn the "P" documents, as mentoined in Newnickname's web site.
Genesis alone had at least 10 authors, and possibly closer to 30 if you count each individual contribution in its time. That pretty much blows that theory.
Further, I've found an interesting contradiction of the theory in Genesis 3, the story of the original sin.
According to the theory, the "J" documents were written by an author who referred to God as Jehovah (yahweh), and the "E" documents were written by an author who referred to God as "Elohim". In chapter 3 (if you read it in Hebrew), God has 3 names: Elohim, Jehovah, and Jehovah-Elohim. (Most English translations will call him "God", "the LORD", and "the Lord God" respectively).
So how do you know which author wrote that story?
The way I see it, language changes over time with use, and of course, over the centuries, God's name can evolve. In the oldest parts of Genesis (chapters 1, 3 and 4) God is referred to as Elohim mostly. In the later chapters and in the rest of the Penteteuch, God is referred to almost exclusively as Jehovah. In some places, especially in the first 10 chapters, God is referred as a combination of the two, as if there was an evolution.
First, God is referred to as "Elohim", probably meaning "god of the seas" (El=god, ha-yam=the sea). Later, as it says in the last verse in chapter 4, men began to call upon the name of "Jehovah", and it's in this chapter that God is called by both. In later chapters, Elohim is dropped altogether.
The interesting part is back in chapter 3. Whoever wrote the story called God Jehovah, but when quoting Eve, they used the older Elohim, as if Eve did not want to give up the older form! (This is the only way that Elohim is used in the chapter.)
Hey, it's just a theory, but I can't see any other explanation for using all three forms in a single story! If true, this would be an interesting testimony to Hebrew being a living language as far back as the writing of this story.
04-23-03, 12:09 PM FredPuli This has been grand stuff. Thanks very much for your help.
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