Genesis 10

[dreamer_easy]

Here's the reading for today :-) Notes to self:

- I'm home! :-) Here are Babylon, Uruk, and Akkad, cities in the land of Shinar, aka Sumer. The deity Asshur, patron of the Assyrians, gets a cameo as the founder of Nineveh. Those are just the ones I recognise - must find out where the other places are thought to be.

- The Tower of Babel doesn't arrive until the next chapter, but there's already a mention of separate languages. Genesis is pretty clearly the reconciliation of a number of different stories to form a coherent history of the world, but the editors needed to do a little more work.

Comments

Genesis 10

[(Anonymous)]

"Genesis is pretty clearly the reconciliation of a number of different stories to form a coherent history of the world, but the editors needed to do a little more work."

I suppose I'm the wrong person for these notes - because too me it's not clearly obvious. Of course, I'm an orthodox Jew and as we're taught at Hebrew school that the Bible *is not* a History of the World. Many things are told out of order. If the Bible was a linear piece of story-telling than Leviticus and chunks of Numbers would be placed at the end as Tolkiensque-like Appendix.

Today we were reading from Leviticus - Achrei Mot/Kedoshim (I forget what chapters these are in English) and both chapters of the Bible so close together seem to repeating *exactly* the same laws - and even seem to repeat the 10 commandments for a second time. Now, for those people who believe the Bible is not divine, this is a sign of sloppy editing. But I don't accept that answer.

So perhaps these notes are not for me.

Not a criticism at all, I love what your doing here. I suppose I'm making you aware not everything about the Genisis is clear or obvious :-)

Seeya,

Mondy

Re: Genesis 10

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm the wrong person for these notes

Absolutely not! I'm reading the Bible as though it's literature because that's useful for my study of other ANE texts, but that's only one approach. Even reading it as literature, realising that what seems like a mistake maybe there for a good reason is extremely important - God might be trying to tell us something, or perhaps what was obvious to folks then isn't so obvious now. What's more, my knowledge of a book which underpins Western civilisation is embarrassingly slight. So your knowledge and perspective are invaluable and very welcome, as are Rebecca's! I just hope my amateur doodlings don't offend.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

The difficulty I see with analyzing the Bible according to modern literary standards of how a text (particularly a history) should be written is that ancient writings so often have their own, quite different, standards and principles of composition. As a result, something that looks redundant to us, or appears to be written in a different style from the previous section, may or may not actually be the work of a different author at a different time as we might assume.

Hebrew poetry, for instance, doesn't rhyme words like Western poetry does, but rather repeats concepts. To create the repetition, the same phrase may be used multiple times throughout the piece, like a chorus (i.e. "His mercy endureth forever" in Psalm 118), or the same idea expressed in two or more similar but subtly different ways ("Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning").

And here I go blathering about something I was going to post way back in your comments on Genesis 1 and 2, but might as well put here. :) We may look at the opening chapters of Genesis and conclude, "Ah, here are two different creation accounts, one of which some ancient redactor should have edited out but didn't," but I think that's jumping to conclusions.

If you look at the first chapter as a simple chronological account of the order in which God created the world, it serves as an outline or introduction to the concept of creation; then in the second chapter we zero in on man as the head and centre of God's creation, and are given a more detailed account of just how God "created them male and female" and of man's purpose and responsibilities as part of the new creation. The Gen. 2 account builds and expands on Gen. 1 -- they aren't redundant. Nor are they contradictory, because Gen. 2:8-9 describes the planting of the Garden of Eden specifically as a home for Adam and Eve to live in, and how for man's benefit God made every kind of beautiful and fruit-bearing tree spring up at that particular location -- it's not referring to the creation of all plant life everywhere as described in Genesis 1:11-12.

All that being said, I'm enjoying these posts of yours very much -- the questions raised and the resulting discussions are a lot of fun. So I hope I don't come across as raining on your parade, or trying to prevent you expressing your honest perceptions and opinions about the chapters! I find all this fascinating.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Yah - my question is not so much "Why was the editor so lax?" :-) as "Why is it expressed in this particular way? Did the text become 'frozen' and untouchable? Or is it a stylistic choice?" I'll bet the expression "after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations" in Genesis 10 is a stock phrase along the lines of "the rosy-fingered dawn", which might explain its odd appearance when, chronologically, there's still only one tongue.

I don't come across as raining on your parade

Not in the slightest! I'm very grateful for your comments.