Biblical Literalism

Just a side remark: when dealing with pre-modern cultures, I don’t think the presence of genealogy can be taken as a sure-fire indicator of historical-factual intent, and my favorite example of this is with the Japanese Imperial House. Traditionally - and to this day even - the Imperial House of Japan traces the ancestry of the Emperor back to the mythical Jimmu, a descendant of the gods. Read about it here: Family tree of Japanese monarchs - Wikipedia. Somewhere along the way the genealogy transitions from purely historical to quasi-historical to mostly, and then purely, fictional, and it is a matter of scholarly debate where those transitions lie - showing how unclear it is and paradoxically how little it matters. That’s because the purpose of the Imperial genealogy has never been to record only factual history; above all else, the genealogy has been a way of saying that the Emperor’s rule is cosmically legitimate. That it is still used for that purpose to this day, even when most Japanese do not take it literally, shows that genealogy is not necessarily an indicator of historicity, when used in a similar, deeply traditional context. This doesn’t prove that ANE genealogy, from an entirely different culture of course, is doing something similar, but I think the parallels are rather striking.

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