Like eternal, infinite, unchangeable, meaningless existence, being.
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Yes. It would be rather odd to insert non-polemical material into a collection of polemical material. And given that everyone darned well knew that the SKL numbers were symbolic, that would have been the obvious way to regard the Genesis numbers.
There’s a YEC blind spot: they seem to think that because a writer picks up a form and/or method from some source then it gives credence to the source. But that contradicts a very common literary device called “satire”, where someone mocks someone else using their own devices! ANE polemic definitely has a satirical edge, as exemplified by the taunts given by Elijah to the prophets of Ba’al, and that frequently takes the form of “stealing” the other side’s methods and forms. It’s a way of saying, “No, Ba’al isn’t the storm-bringer, Yahweh is”, a way of reclaiming a status that actually belongs to Yahweh.
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This enmity is not declared by the person but assigned by another – as enmity often is. It is certainly relational and not a property of the thing itself. Nor is it a product of consensus. I suppose you can think this is an observation by God rather than an assignment. But I think this a bit tenuous and not how the passage reads. No, “role” is a better word for it than “status.”
Some things are just too difficult to grasp. There is no book you can check out of the library to sort it out for you. No magic number of hours logged in a discussion forum that will solve all mysteries. Lesson learned.
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I do not yet have enough of knowledge to say much of those claims. The interpretation seems possible but maybe too simplistic.
It is difficult to imagine that the stories in Genesis 1-11 were just a polemic attack against particular Sumerian stories. A polemic attack may well be one part of the explanation but I assume that the stories includes teaching about the relationship between humans and God in a way that is not just a polemic version of a previous Sumerian story.
Edit:
I prefer to speak about Sumerian or Mesopotamian mythology rather than ANE mythology in this context because there were differing stories in other ANE cultures.
We can even find the idea of creating by speaking from the creation story of Hermeapolis (ancient Egyptian name of the city was Khmunu). The patron god of Hermeapolis was Toth (Djehuti) who could make thoughts to become reality through a combination of correct words, correct expression and creative life force. When the priests in Hermeapolis wanted to lift the status of their patron god and city, it was a natural choice to present their patron god as the god who expressed a creating voice at the start of the creation - their explanation about the world was that everything created is basically harmonic sound that solidified.
What the priests in Hermeapolis did was not unique - most or all key religious centers in Egypt made their own version of a creation story where their patron god was put to a central role. I do not know how widespread this habit was in ANE world but probably many religious centers had creation stories that somehow lifted up the role of their patron god and the religious center.
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Absolutely. All phenomena, ultimately, are. Yet we wallpaper stories on them.
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It seems that from an anthropology perspective, stories are the glue that hold human societies together, so they serve functions that are more essential than wallpaper. We need our narratives to make sense of our experiences and define our identities and roles in the world. Maybe stories are what hold individual humans together too.
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Anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who works on the evolution of language, believes control of fire and “fireside chat” was a crucial step.
“Fire and conversation are two things that have been of crucial importance for our evolutionary story, yet they have received only rather casual attention. Yes, we know that fire was used for cooking (probably casually at first, but later as a matter of regularity), and, yes, we know that language evolved at some point and has been important for human culture. However, there has been a longstanding tendency to take these two phenomena for granted as something self-evidently useful and hence presumably of ancient origin. In PNAS, Wiessner brings these two phenomena together in a way that has significant implications for our understanding of both why they evolved and when they did so. In the first such study of its kind, she recorded the topics of conversation during the day and around the campfire at night among a group of Ju’/hoansi (or !Kung) Bushman in Botswana, a people whose living hunter-gatherer ecology is similar to that which characterized most of our evolutionary history. In this sample, most daytime conversations were functional (discussions of land rights, economic matters, norm regulation), but most evening conversations were social (more than 80% were stories). Stories are important in all societies because they provide the framework that holds the community together: we share this a set of cultural knowledge because we are who we are, and that is why we are different from the folks that live over the hill.”
How conversations around campfires came to be
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Levirate marriage is another complication that can produce discrepancies between versions of genealogies. Another proposal to reconcile Matthew and Luke versions is that Matthew traces the royal succession rather than biological descent.
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You’re right about this. The stories in Gen 1-11 weren’t just a polemic against Sumerian, Old Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian mythologies. (I use ANE out of convention as a simple shorthand.) The polemic aspect shows up in the fact they adopted the literary form of their adversaries, but the theology is monotheistic Judaism. That aspect is what strikes me as genius. The theology shows up in the stark differences between the original ANE myths and the Jewish versions. Genesis held up long after Babylon fell, cuneiform fell into disuse and Gilgamesh was forgotten.
I greatly respect your knowledge of Egyptian mythology. I know next to nothing about it, but there’s a reason for my blind spot. There are thousands of cuneiform clay fragments in ancient Israel, even after the appearance of alphabetic Hebrew, but hieroglyphics, by comparison, are virtually non-existent. The reason is fairly simple. Ancient Israel primarily lived in the shadow of the empires of Neo-Assyria and Neo-Babylon during the time the Hebrew Bible (OT) was being written. Cuneiform was the writing system of the empire – the lingua franca of international trade and diplomacy. Scribes in Israel were trained to write cuneiform by copying ANE myths approved by the empire.
Israel was threatened by Babylon and Assyria pretty much from the time of Solomon’s death onward. Egypt was a distant memory. The northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and deported to Assyria in the 8th century BC. The library of Ashurbanipal was filled with 30,000 tablets. He sent teams all over old Babylon to recover ancient texts and bring them to Nineveh: Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish, Adapa (the first man), the King lists, Enmerkar and the Lord of Arrata, etc. These were the training materials of scribes across the empire, including vassal states like Judea.
In short, my personal opinion is that Gen. 1-11 took final form shortly before the Exile. The scribes and elite were deported to Babylon, where they would be exposed to the riches and gods of the empire that had just defeated them. The danger was syncretism and worshipping the gods of Babylon, and Gen. 1-11 was an inoculation against that disease.
Addendum: There’s a reason neither Adam nor Eve appear elsewhere in the OT. The story was likely a late addition.
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That’s the very thing that YEC throws in the trash by not letting the Bible be what it is – ancient literature. The unfailing result of YEC is theological bankruptcy.
Interesting thought – have you got a source that argues for the point?
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This was Seth Sanders first book. He’s gone on to a distinguished career. From the introduction:
Fantastic book.
I should’ve included the next paragraph of Sanders introduction, but it’s worth a post on its own. If I could give it a title, it would be The Politics of the Bible
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That direction fits to my impression after diving to the ancient Egyptian worldview. I assumed that I would find similarities between the Egyptian mythology and the beginning of Genesis but there seems to be very little (if any) connections between the two. The start of the creation story (Genesis 1:2) includes such elements that an ancient Egyptian would immediately recognize that we are speaking about the very beginning of the creation. Some details seem to be general to ANE worldviews. The idea of creating by speaking was included in one creation story (the Hermeapolis cosmogony). Otherwise, the Genesis stories do not seem to reflect Egyptian creation mythology.
The Egyptian mythology is interesting in that it helps to understand the worldview of the ANE people but the main finding has been that the Genesis stories do not seem to originate from the Egyptian cultural background.
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If you will send me your email address I will send you my essay “Reading Genesis.” It’s based on my reading of the Hebrew text and an old Rabbinical interpretation.
I appreciate your post. It’s rare that anyone reflects and backtracks around here (or anywhere, for that matter). Takes a bit of humility and courage. I appreciate you for that. Don’t make me confess how much time I’ve spent on rabbit holes myself!
Edit: Forgot to mention that this rules out a Mosaic authorship of Genesis. Why would “Moses” primarily allude to Babylonian mythology in his writings if the people had just escaped from slavery for hundreds of years in Egypt?
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The opening Creation account fits an Exodus situation quite nicely, which is why I think the core is Mosaic. At the same time it shows signs of editing, so I have no issues with it being modified to address Babylonian views as well.
That editing rules out a purely Mosaic authorship, but I don’t see why that affects inspiration – God can certainly inspire editors, not just authors!
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Where do you draw the line on inspiration?
Author
Editor/Redactor
Scribe
Canon formation
Textual Critic
Translation
Tradition
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We should not forget that according to Genesis, Moses and the Israelites had roots in Mesopotamia. In addition, it is told that Moses spent 40 years outside of Egypt, shepharding in Midian and the surrounding areas. If there were old oral stories, they preceded the time in Egypt - Egypt was just a temporary period of 400 years. 400 years may feel much in USA but elsewhere it is just a short period of history.
I have no problems in accepting that the Hebrew version was compiled much later, under the cultural influence of Mesopotamian states. That does not exclude the possibility that there were much older roots behind the stories, from the ages before Israelites lived in Egypt.
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Scribes, critics, translations, traditions, no – canon formation yes “but”. The concept is that “holy men moved by God wrote”, where “wrote” points to authorship, which includes editing. Scribes copy, they don’t author (though a number of scribal alterations are theologically interesting).
Though I do have a soft spot for the Septuagint, it’s more heavy-weight commentary than inspired text.
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