What if Genesis predates ANE civilisations?

I learned from Morgan Freeman’s ‘story of God’ that even as far away as Cambodia, there is cosmic temple imagery in the Angkor Wat. I highly doubt Adam’s descendents would be there.

Written in Hebrew no less, a Canaanite language that the Israelite patriarchs did not even speak.

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Yes, the scrolls were like backup copies. The real authority behind the text was vested in those who communicated them orally. That’s how things worked in oral societies. Written texts secondary and derivative and not as authoritative as the human keepers of the story.

So what language did they speak? Before they landed in Egypt that is.

Pretty sure all the people mentioned in the Bible spoke 1611 English.

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Akkadian was the language of Ur at the time.

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On second thought, there is the hypothesis of Douglas Petrovich who argues that Hebrew is the world’s oldest alphabet, existing in writing form in the 18th century BCE (perhaps @Christy can comment) :

If Petrovich is correct then @Reggie_O_Donoghue might be on to something here with his original post.

“As to be expected, his controversial proposals have ignited contentious debate.”
" the pushback from other scholars is covered in part two."
“Now, new evidence that may change everything has been announced by Dr. Douglas Petrovich, an archaeologist, epigrapher and professor of ancient Egyptian studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada.”
“Petrovich believes he has gathered sufficient evidence to establish the claim that not only was the alphabet in use centuries earlier than some believe, it was in the form of early Hebrew, something that almost no one has previously accepted.”
“The ironic thing is that these Paleo-Hebrew writings are often impossible to distinguish from the Phoenician ones and were just as much a natural development from the earliest Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite examples. Yet most sources continue to communicate the standard paradigm.(…)Might this practice be conveniently retained by those who don’t want Moses to be considered as a possible author of the Torah?”
The mainstream of scholarship has not gone in that direction.…”
“However, these assertions have not shifted the position of most scholars.”

All this sounds pretty typical of wing-nut “scholarship” to me. Call me highly skeptical.

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I hazard the guess that they spoke the language of the Shasu… Edomite… very similar to Moabite.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Amz-plake_province_Tiznite.JPG

Just for interest’s sake, the desert Tuareg in Niger and the Sahara have an alphabet said to be related to Phoenician (the middle line). Pretty cool stuff how that all spread.

Doesn’t look Phoenician at all, it appears to be mixed with local petroglyphs, such as the symbol which resembles a man.

image
compare to:
image

It’s interesting how the same image appears everywhere on earth, I share Robert Schoch’s view that they are derived vrom experiences of coronal mass ejections (though I otherwise do not endorse his ideas regarding sphinx erosion, Easter Island, etc).

you would certainly know, whereas I would not. It’s only something that somebody told me. I had fun with using the alphabet as a child to play around a bit, as though it was a secret code. Maybe you would know more about the interrelationship among different hieroglyphs, and what this one might actually be related to. Thanks.

Oh it’s true that there is a Phoenician link, tifinagh, the name of the alphabet is cognate to Punic.

"The Tamajaq writing system, tifinaɤ (also called Shifinagh), descends directly from the original Berber script used by the Numidians in pre-Roman times.

The ancient Lybico-Berber alphabet is from the Punic script, which was used in the extinct Phoenician language and was used irregularly up until the time of Augustine by various languages. Today, it survived irregular usage with the Tuareg."

Got it! I had forgotten there is that name. I had no idea there is a relationship to the numidian script as well. Very interesting. It’s interesting to hear the language. There’s a lot of guttural sound in it as well. I guess they’re a type of Berber? I know there’s an old story of originally being Christian, and there are stylized crosses that they still carry. there is a woman warrior of the Touareg / Berber type that resisted Arab Invasion at one point, and there’s even a statue of her somewhere. I remember the greeting “matrhalaka” and “alharass,” but I could not write it to save my life. Maybe you know of a transcription app. thanks for teaching.

isn’t there a Chinese script for man that that’s similar?

yes, but what was considered the law in his time? I thought that there was not just the Torah but also the gap literature between testaments that were referred to, but the Law itself was only part of Torah? And as there were 2 versions of the law sometimes, which were referred to? Thanks. @Reggie_O_Donoghue would probably know
Thanks.

When he used the word “law” he was probably referring to the 1st 5 books of the OT. The Hebrew Scriptures consisted of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. What you refer to as the “gap” literature has never been accepted as divinely inspired by the Jews. One reason is that they only knew about the Greek version. These are referred to as the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books. They are accepted as Scripture by the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Anglican/Episcopal churches regard them as valuable for teaching but not for doctrine. They can be read in Anglican/Episcopal churches. They were included in the original King James translation of the Bible.

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Thanks. I just listen to a podcast by Onscript.study, where they interviewed somebody who wrote about the intertestamental literature. the book was called “Mind the Gap,” and asserted that the Apocrypha and extra apocryphal writings were apparently in wide circulation of the time of Jesus, though they were not, as you said, canonical. Apparently they help us understand the background of Jesus’ sayings. I know very little about this. My main question was if Jesus was saying that the law never passed away, how much of Torah, as you say, was he referring to? As the first 5 books were both history and law, I was guessing at context. But the book was over my head and I only understood part of the podcast!

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