بحث:سفر پیدایش

• Smith, Mark S. The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2010.

When God beganto create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of waters.

Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God seperated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Then God said, "Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth."

So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

• Hiebert, Theodore. The Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Meyers, Carol. Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up - for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground -

then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Then God said, "Let us make humans [adam] in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

So God created humans [adam] in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

• Robert Alter, Genesis, pp. xi–xlvii.
• Elliot Rabin, Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader’s Guide, pp. 1–47.

• Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis, pp. 1–23.
• Robert Alter, Genesis, pp. 3–6 = Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, pp. 17–19.
• Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts, pp. 3–16.
• Pamela T. Reis, Reading the Lines: A Fresh Look at the Hebrew Bible, pp. 15–26.

• first creation story (Genesis 1:1–2:4a) / description of the world as preexistent, with matter symbolic of evil (noting that the belief in creation ex nihilo is a later theological development) / God’s actions bring goodness into the world / the literary form of the story parallels its content, with order out of chaos as the prevailing theme /
• the world is not created ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing.” / the earth begins as a mass of preexistent matter, with four of the five key words listed in verse 2 (unformed, void, darkness, deep) symbolic of chaos and evil (only the wind is not of that ilk) / the beginning of the story seeks to explain the question of evil in the world / this story gets God “off the hook,” / this is the answer to the problem of evil forthcoming from the pen of the author of Genesis 1.

Other biblical authors, such as the prophet Second Isaiah, will have different answers

• Days 2 and 3 continue the story of creation, with the sky created on day 2, and the dry land and the vegetation created on day 3, in two separate stages.
• demythologizing / on day 4, where the words sun (shemesh) and moon (yareah) are consciously avoided / the singular form sea (yam), which was also the word for the sea god of the ancient Canaanites, is studiously avoided in favor of the plural seas (yamim) / The author does not want the reader to think for a moment that God is responsible for the existence of pagan deities
• The living creatures are created on days 5 and 6. Fish and fowl are created on day 5, and the land animals and the first human couple are created on day 6, again via two stages of creation
• Genesis 1:26: “Let us make a human in our image, by our likeness.”
  • could be an echo of an earlier polytheism lurking behind or beneath our text, but that seems most unlikely for a text that goes out of its way to demythologize at every turn
  • a reference to the angels, but the belief in angels developed in the later biblical period, and there is no hint of angels anywhere else in this chapter
  • The most likely explanation appears to be the royal we, as well known from English style, except to note that nowhere is this usage attested in all of ancient Near Eastern literature
• The six days of creation are aligned according to a pattern, with the first three days paralleled by the second three days.
  • Light in day 1 is paralleled by the lights in day 4
  • The waters and the sky in day 2 are paralleled by the fish and the birds in day 5
  • There are two stages of creation in day 3—first, the dry land, then, the vegetation—corresponding to two stages of creation in day 6—first, the land animals, then mankind, both of whom inhabit the dry land and eat the vegetation
• This pattern acts as a blueprint and establishes the overall theme of Genesis 1, namely, creation of the world according to an order, representative of goodness, continuing the theme of order out of a chaos, or good out of evil, expressed above. As such, our text is an example of “form follows content.”
• note, however, that the second of these (“And God saw that it was good.”) is lacking in day 2. The reason for this is that the second day deals with the separation of the waters into the waters above and the waters below. Because the watery mass is symbolic of evil, as noted above, the refrain must be omitted. That is to say, the author sacrificed literary perfection here in order to make the theological point

• Robert Alter, Genesis, pp. 7–15 = Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses, pp. 20–28.
• Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, pp. 16–23.

• The second creation story begins properly in the middle of a verse, at 2:4b, and continues through the end of chapter 3 / both a different account of how the world came to be and the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden / four major differences between the two creation accounts / why / the first story is cosmocentric / second story is anthropocentric / Both foci are required in Israel’s approach to religion: God and man in their separate realms yet inextricably interlinked
• Stephen Langton (c. 1150–1228), the Archbishop of Canterbury in England (Magna Carta)
• Sabbath serves as the culmination of the first creation story, prompting comparison with the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish (which means “when on high”)
  • conflict among the gods / Tiamat, who is the goddess of salt water and is symbolic of evil, and the god Marduk, who is the heaven god or storm god and symbolizes good / Marduk kills Tiamat, and he creates the world out of her body, using the upper part of her body to create the vault of heaven and the lower part of her body to create the earth / Babylonian story ends with the construction of the temple to Marduk in Babylon—holiness in physical space—as is typical of the polytheistic world / The biblical story ends with the establishment of the Sabbath—holiness in time—a unique contribution of ancient Israel to world religion
• Genesis 2:4b–25, the second creation story / note the segue between the two stories in verse 4, whose first half has the wording “heaven and earth” and whose second half has the wording “earth and heaven.”
  • Different names for the deity are used: Elohim (“God”) in the first story and Yahweh (“LORD”) in the second story, though actually in a combined form, Yahweh Elohim (“LORD God”)
  • The method of creation is different: creation by fiat (the spoken word) in the first story versus creation by physical means in the second story (for example, God plants a garden)
  • The order of creation is different: The first story progresses from vegetation to animals to humans, while the second story begins with humankind (only male, though), then comes the vegetation (in the form of the Garden of Eden), and finally, comes the animal kingdom
  • In the first story, male and female are created at once (1:26), while in the second story, male alone is created first, with female following later
• This is the essence of ancient Israelite religion: the two working in sync together, the melding of the world of God and the world of man, in unique relationship with each other. / Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, deities were associated with nature, and thus, there was a distance between the gods and humankind. / In Israel, by contrast, God was seen in close relationship with humankind, as illustrated in the mind of the Israelites by the covenant concept
• Genesis 3, the Garden of Eden (an extension of the second creation account) / Note that the divine name “LORD God” continues to be used in this chapter, as does the theme of the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge / “Good and evil” may be a merism, a literary device / The main point of the story is how man gained knowledge, or the ability to obtain knowledge, and that is a trait which distinguishes man from the animal kingdom. Far from being the fall of man, one could argue that we are dealing here with the rise of man.
  • man still violated God’s command / This may be the author’s attempt to present an alternative answer to the problem of evil / By so doing, the author of Genesis 2–3 introduces us to the concept of free will, a dominant motif in the Bible and in Judaism in general.
  • Note one further instance of later interpretation that is not present in a surface reading of the chapter. I refer to the (mainly) Christian interpretation that understands the snake in Genesis 3 (“the shrewdest of all the wild beasts”) to be Satan. There is no hint of this in the biblical text, and in any case, the belief in the Satan figure is a very late development in Jewish theology, from which it passed into Christian belief
• The biblical narrative begins with a journey—Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden— paralleling both Israel’s journey in a physical sense (beginning with Abraham) and the metaphorical journey of all humankind (“the game of life” we may call it)

• Hershel Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel, 2nd ed.
• Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East, pp. 109–314.
• Marc Z. Brettler, “The Canonization of the Bible,” in A. Berlin and M. Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Bible, pp. 2072–2077.

• the history of ancient Israel from Abraham c. 1400 B.C.E. to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C.E. / the development of the biblical canon, that is, how and when the books of the Bible came to be considered sacred
• The first major period is the pre-monarchic period (1400–1020 B.C.E.) - three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob / the experience in Egypt, with the highlights being Joseph, the Slavery, Moses, and the Exodus / the emergence of Israel as a nation (Three shorter periods fit here: the wandering through Sinai, the settlement in Canaan, and the period of the Judges)
• The next major epoch is the monarchic period / Israel moves to a monarchy c. 1020 B.C.E., with Saul as the first king (1020–1000 B.C.E.) / The united monarchy, marked by the reigns of David and Solomon (1000–930 B.C.E.), is Israel’s glory period / On the death of Solomon, Israel splits into two kingdoms, what we call the period of the divided monarchy, with the kingdom of Israel in the north comprised of nine tribes (930–721 B.C.E.) and the kingdom in Judah in the south comprised of three tribes (930–586 B.C.E.) / In the year 721 B.C.E., Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, including its capital city of Samaria, and exiled the population to Mesopotamia
• Finally, there is the late period, closing out the era of biblical history. / The Babylonian Exile (586–538 B.C.E.) resulted from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the people to Mesopotamia / The Persian period (538–333 B.C.E.) commenced with the Persian conquest of the Babylonians and the decree by their king, Cyrus the Great, to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, which was dedicated in the city of Jerusalem in the year 516 B.C.E. / During the Babylonian Exile and the decades right after the Exile, Israel transitioned from a monolatry to a pure monotheism / The conquest of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.E.) brought an end to the era of biblical history. The period that follows is called either late antiquity or the post-biblical period
• The implication of this outline is that the Bible is essentially historically accurate, but the picture is more complicated than that. In recent decades, two competing schools of scholarship have developed. / maximalists + minimalists / here maximalist camp
• The writing of the biblical books took place over the course of 1,000 years / A small amount of the Bible is archaic poetry (1150–1000 B.C.E.), representing the earliest preserved literature from ancient Israel. Examples include Exodus 15, some snippets in Numbers 21, and Judges 5. / The flowering of ancient Hebrew literature occurred during the 600-year period commencing with the United Kingdom in 1000–B.C.E. and continuing into and beyond the Babylonian Exile (narrative from Genesis through Kings) / A second category in this period is that of the classical prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so on). / A number of other important biblical books date to this period, too, including Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ezra-Nehemiah / a few biblical books were written at a later stage (400–150 B.C.E.), including such works as Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), Esther, Chronicles, and Daniel (authored in 164 B.C.E.)
• The canonization of the biblical books is another matter / The books did not become holy or sacred or canonized overnight. Much time passed between the authorship of these books and the establishment of a canon, or collection of sacred writings
  • The Jewish canon is a tripartite one: Torah, Prophets, Writings. The first letters of the three Hebrew words for these texts (Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim) form the Hebrew word Tanakh, meaning “the Bible.”
  • The Jewish canon is a tripartite one: Torah, Prophets, Writings. The first letters of the three Hebrew words for these texts (Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim) form the Hebrew word Tanakh, meaning “the Bible.”

• Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East, pp. 32–108.
• Michael Roaf, The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East.
• Bill T. Arnold and Bryan Beyer, Readings from the Ancient Near East: Primary Sources for Old Testament Study.
• Victor H. Matthews and Don C. Benjamin, Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East.

• the ancient Near East is divided into three major geographical regions: Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia. / Abraham is born in Mesopotamia, migrates to Canaan, and visits Egypt. Jacob is born in Canaan, lives for 20 years in Mesopotamia, returns to Canaan, and dies in Egypt. Joseph is born in Mesopotamia, moves to Canaan with his family at a young age, and spends his entire adult life in Egypt.

...

• important distinctions between the way the polytheistic world saw matters and the way ancient Israel understood the world. / Genesis 3 illustrates this. Note that the Tree of Knowledge is the central issue in this chapter, not the Tree of Life, though this second tree is also present in the garden / Most ancient Near Eastern people saw eternal life as the ultimate quest for mankind / The Gilgamesh Epic has this as its main theme, and the story ends with Gilgamesh crying to himself in resignation of the fact that he will not achieve immortality and even the next best thing, rejuvenation, has slipped through his fingers. / Egyptians were the only people in antiquity who believed one could live forever after one’s death in a pleasurable, positive afterlife / Not so Israel, however, which places the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden as a token nod in that direction, but there is no danger that Adam and Eve will eat from that tree because we all know that immortality is unattainable / The main issue, instead, is the Tree of Knowledge, which demonstrates that for the ancient Israelites, the main quest was knowledge, and not eternal life.

• Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?
• Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, pp. 131–154.
• Richard E. Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed, esp. pp. 1–31.
• William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book.

• contradictions in the book of Genesis, including:
  • we saw major differences between the two creation stories in Genesis 1–2.
  • The number of animals that Noah took on board the ark differs: 6:19–20 states that one pair of each species shall be brought on the ark, while 7:2 makes a distinction between pure species (seven pairs) and impure species (one pair).
  • There is divergent material concerning the identification of Esau’s three wives; compare 26:34, 28:9 with 36:2–3.
  • there is the question of who took Joseph down to Egypt: Was it the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:28, 39:1) or the Medanites (Genesis 37:36)? And note also the Midianites mentioned in Genesis 37:28.
• Scholars developed the documentary hypothesis, or the JEDP theory, as a reasonable explanation for the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch / The Enlightenment led scholars to begin looking at the Bible with fresh eyes, as they turned away from the traditional view that the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch are divine in origin / Jean Astruc (1684–1766) took the first steps in this direction, while Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) is the person credited with developing the JEDP theory in its classical formulation
• Four separate sources are posited, written at different times in ancient Israel:
  • J = Yahwist, 10th century B.C.E. (“Jahweh” is German for Yahweh)
  • E = Elohist, 9th century B.C.E.
  • D = Deuteronomist, 7th century B.C.E.
  • P = Priestly, 5th century B.C.E.
• The four sources were then brought together by the redactor, called R, to create the Torah or Pentateuch in its final form in the 5th century B.C.E.
• The social and cultural background of 19th-century Germany influenced Wellhausen’s reconstruction of the development of the sources of the Torah or Pentateuch. He was a Protestant (Lutheran, specifically), and his anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic biases led him to date D and P after the time of the classical Prophets
  • Wellhausen dated J and E early, because they are essentially the basic narratives of ancient Israel, devoid of any overriding theology
  • Wellhausen saw the Prophets, dated to the 8th century B.C.E. (the time of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah), as the earliest expression of ancient Israel’s religious thought. The Prophets emphasized ethics and morality, the aspects of religion most heavily emphasized by Protestants
  • Because D is mostly legal in nature and Jews continue to uphold the laws of the Torah, Wellhausen dated D to after the Prophets and viewed the legal tradition as a downward turn away from the religious ideals of the Prophets.
  • Similarly, because P is mostly cultic material and Catholics continue to re-create this worship system, with priests offering incense on an altar, Wellhausen also dated P to the late period, regarding cultic concerns as a downward turn away from the Prophetic ideal.
  • Nevertheless, even with the anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic bias at the heart of the documentary hypothesis, the theory took hold and continues to dominate biblical studies into the 21st century
• pros and cons

...

Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 1–25.

VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 1–12.

VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 3–17.

Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 3–19.

Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome.

Feldman, “Flavius Josephus Revisited.”

all scholarship about the crucial historical period approximately 2,000 years ago has been affected by Dead Sea Scrolls research / examine the state of scholarship concerning ancient Judaism and early Christianity just before the scrolls’ discovery

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a group of 930 documents found at Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, between 1947 and 1954. / The texts date to 250 B.C.E.–50 C.E., although the heyday of Qumran was 150–50 B.C.E. / The texts are divided into three groups / 230 (25 percent) of them are copies of the books of the Jewish Bible— oldest biblical manuscripts / 250 (27 percent) are compositions that were read and used by various Jewish groups of the period / 350 (38 percent) are the sectarian works / another 100 texts (11 percent) too fragmentary to be identified as either sectarian or nonsectarian / to identify “sectually explicit” literature

shed light on both the transition from biblical to postbiblical Judaism during the last two centuries B.C.E. and the development of Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism during the 1st century C.E.

background information on the Qumran community in the greater world of early Judaism—the epoch of the Maccabees and the Roman Empire / points of contact between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the development of both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity

In 1947, seven scrolls in earthenware jars were accidentally discovered in a cave by a Bedouin shepherd / In 1948, the scrolls reached scholars in Jerusalem and were quickly published. / C. Between 1948 and 1954, the nearby caves were systematically combed, and 11 yielded scrolls. The mother lode was found in Cave 4: more than 500 documents, though most were fragmentary. Pottery, textiles, and remains of foodstuffs were found as well / From 1951 to 1956, the nearby archaeological site of Qumran was excavated / the largest scroll, called the Temple Scroll (11QT) / the Halakhic Letter (4QMMT)

vast majority of the texts are in Hebrew, with a few in Aramaic and Greek / vast majority of the documents are written on parchment

early Judaism and nascent Christianity before the discovery of the scrolls? / The original Hebrew or Aramaic versions of the books of Enoch, Jubilees, and Maccabees, which were not canonized by Judaism, were lost / before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars typically viewed Judaism through a single lens— namely, the rabbinic one / three main sects within Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes / Rabbinic texts strongly suggest that the rabbis are the heirs to the Pharisees / Philo mentions the Essenes as an unusual sect of Jews / of all these groups, the only one that has a true voice is the Pharisees, via the later rabbis / Essene hypothesis

Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 26–48.

VanderKam and Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 209–238.

Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls, 15–38, 73–89, 160–189.

Two of the seven scrolls are copies of Isaiah that are approximately 1,000 years older than oldest copies. / At a very early stage, scholars began to see correspondences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes / full Essene hypothesis was developed by a French scholar, André Dupont-Sommer, in his monograph Aperçus préliminaires sur les manuscrits de la Mer Morte (The Jewish Sect of Qumran and the Essenes) / 3 + 4 = (an incomplete manuscript of the book of Isaiah & The Thanksgiving Hymns & The War Scroll) + (a complete manuscript of the book of Isaiah & The Community Rule & Pesher Habakkuk & Genesis Apocryphon, which provides expansive retellings of portions of the book of Genesis (Noah and flood))

in a cave above Qumran? / their sacred writings, in the cave shortly before the Roman army advanced towards the Dead Sea region

two different versions of the book of Isaiah? / incomplete copy, called 1QIsa b / complete copy, called 1QIsa a , incorporates linguistic forms particular to Qumran Hebrew, a dialect that diverges considerably from standard biblical Hebrew, and the text has numerous linguistic updatings /

Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 97–114.

VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 57–58.

Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 97–112.

Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls, 113–127.

Rendsburg, “lśwh in 1QS 7.15.”

Community Rule or the Manual of Discipline (1QS) / defines the Qumran group better than any other Dead Sea Scroll / initiation rites, the pooling of financial resources, the eating of communal meals, and a set of statutes governing regular meetings / emphasis on dualism, mention of a priestly group known as the sons of Zadok, reference to predetermination or predestination, the prominence of purity, and a statement about two messiahs

Serekh ha-Yahad, with “Yahad” being the sect’s self-designation / The Introduction & The Tractate on the Two Spirits & The Statutes & The Rules for the Master & The Hymn of the Master

Introduction, column 1, lines 9–17. / “Sons of light” refers to members of the sect; “sons of darkness” refers to other Jews. (oppressed minority)

Tractate of the Two Spirits (3:12–4:25) essential dualism of the sect and predestination / “prince of lightness” and “angel of darkness,” both very reminiscent of terminology from Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion

sons of Zadok / “the coming of the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel,” “eat,” “bless” (i.e., pray), and “advise” together—the communal aspects of the group in clear terms / The statutes section includes punishment by confinement for various offenses / The Community Rule refers to ritual immersion / removal of ritual impurity / 1QS 5:13–14 indicates that ritual bathing can remove not only ritual impurity but also sin and transgression. / There are no references to women in the Community Rule

Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 65–72.

Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, 1–176.

Jaffee, Early Judasim.

outline of the history of Israel during the biblical period / First the premonarchic period (1400–1020 B.C.E.), including the era of the patriarchs, the time in Egypt, the Exodus, and the emergence of the nation of Israel through the period of the Judges / Next the monarchic period, the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon and the division of Israel into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah after Solomon’s death / Finally the late period, including the Babylonian Exile, the Persian period, the reconstruction of the Temple, and the conquest by Alexander the Great

The empire of Alexander the Great (333–323 B.C.E.) (Hellenistic period) / During the 1 st and 2 nd centuries C.E., when the biblical canon was established by Jewish sages, one criterion for inclusion was authorship during the pre-Hellenistic period

Ptolemies ruled Egypt / the translation of the Bible into Greek / Septuagint fragments / The Seleucids ruled in Antioch / Antiochus IV (r. 175–164 B.C.E.) / Two passionate Hellenizers, Jason and Menelaus, vied for the high priesthood / royal decree that forbade Jewish modes of worship, forbade the observance of the Sabbath and the festivals, outlawed circumcision, and forced Jews to sacrifice pigs to Greek gods in the Jerusalem Temple / Hasidim / Maccabee / Hanukkah / Hasmonean dynasty, ruled until 63 B.C.E. Judea / Jonathan Maccabee assumed the role of high priest in 152 B.C.E. / Essene movement (“sons of Zadok” / Yahad) / coming of the Romans / John Hyrcanus (r. 134–104 B.C.E.), Judea expanded greatly; his conquests included Idumea (biblical Edom), whose people were forcibly converted to Judaism, and Samaria, where he destroyed the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim ... / The Dead Sea Scrolls occasionally refer to the arrival of the Romans (Kittim (originally referring to Cyprus in the Bible))... / Zealot / The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 C.E.

• Mark S. Smith - The Birth of Monotheism (Tangier Global Forum)

• The narrative covenant ; transformations of genre in the growth of biblical literature (David Damrosch)
  • 1: History Versus Dtructure in Biblical Study
  • 2: History and Epic
  • 3: Gilgamesh and Genesis 88
    • History and Myth in the Gilgamesh Epic / The Gilgamesh Epic is the longest and the most beautiful of the Mesopotamian epics to have come down to us, and it provides the fullest example of the treatment of historical concerns within the epic tradition. The full richness of this text has rarely been appreciated, as biblical scholars have usually examined it only cursorily as a source for surface parallels to the Flood story. To be genuinely effective, however, a comparison must treat the Mesopotamian text as fully as its biblical counterpart. The first half of this chapter will accordingly develop an extended close reading of the Gilgamesh Epic, as only in this way can one properly appreciate both the text's beauty and its relevance to the Bible. / The comparison needs to be developed not only with similar care in both cases, but also with similar methods: like Genesis, the Gilgamesh Epic can best be understood through an examination of its historical development.1 The epic's intricate compositional history has been slighted in accounts that focus on the theme of mortality, which has often been treated as the epic's sole concern. The problem of mortality is indeed the hallmark of the Old Babylonian version of the epic, but this theme gradually loses its dominance as the epic develops over the course of the second millennium. The epic's eventual standard form, produced around 1250, interweaves a whole series of themes in a synoptic exploration of the limits and meaning of culture. It is this final form of the epic that is closest in time and in theme to Genesis. Consequently, a close examination of the development of the epic can tell us much about the Bible's debt to the old epic tradition as well as its differences from it. / According to the Sumerian King List (ANET, 265-66), Gilgamesh was the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk, a citystate in southern Mesopotamia; he would have lived around 2600. Inscriptions indicate that he was regarded as a god by a century or two later, and by the twenty-first century he was identified as king and judge of the underworld. It is, of course, difficult to say that much of the story really stems from the historical Gilgamesh, around whose name much later (and perhaps also earlier) material has gathered. Sumerian poems from the close of the third millennium tell various stories about Gilgamesh and his adventures both above ground and in the underworld. The popularity of the figure of Gilgamesh is attested not only by the survival of several separate stories about him but also by the recovery of these stories from different sites around Mesopotamia, including Uruk and Ur. In a recent study, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic , Jeffrey H. Tigay has shown that the first unified Gilgamesh epic was formed on the basis of these old stories and written in Akkadian in the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600). / Versions of this text circulated widely, and several portions from the Middle Babylonian period (1600-1000) have been found, not only in Ur but also in Palestine: Akkadian fragments from circa 1400 in Megiddo and in the Hittite capital Hattusha (Boghazkoi), which has also yielded fragments of translations into Hittite itself and into Hurrian, the language of the Mitanni empire in central Mesopotamia. The standard late form of the epic was eventually produced, in around 1250, through an extended literary revision of the Old Babylonian text. The late version is the longest and richest, but the wealth of surviving material from the earlier stages is of great value for the assessment of developments in Mesopotamian epic traditions into biblical times. Specifically it allows us to see the late version as parallel and complementary to the Bible in the generic combining of history with mythic epic. / In respect of genre, both the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis 1— 11 can best be understood in relation to an ancient literary form: the epic story of primordial times, from the creation of human beings to the Flood. Both the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis 1-11 owe much to this genre and also distance themselves from it in its classic forms, through a process of adaptation, suppression, and outright polemic. The creation-flood narrative was a major and long-established genre; surviving examples are found both in Sumerian and in Akkadian. A given epic may range over the whole of this period, with a focus on the Flood, as in the case of the Atrahasis Epic and the Sumerian "Flood, Story,"2 or it may concern itself only with primordial history up until the creation of humanity, as in the case of Enuma elish. These texts remain closely linked, however, and it could be said that the flood stories represent a historicizing extension into human history of primordial conflicts depicted among the gods in Enuma elish.3 We do not have enough evidence to say whether an older, purely heavenly tradition developed humanhistory analogues in Sumerian times late in the third millennium, or whether the two variant traditions coexisted from much earlier.4 In either case, as Claus Westermann says, "the creation and the flood are the themes which occur most often in the stories of primeval times. . . . creation and flood complement each other" ( Genesis 1-11, 5). / Four fundamental story elements appear in the creation-flood epics: the creation of the world, the creation of human beings, the cataclysm of the Flood, and the establishment of the postFlood human order, symbolized in the Atrahasis Epic by the reestablishment of ritual and in Enuma elish by the building of a temple for Marduk in Babylon. All these elements are taken up into Genesis 1-11, though with major thematic alterations, as will be seen below. If Genesis 1-11 develops away from this ancient paradigm, the Gilgamesh Epic develops toward it. In the process, the text loses its former exclusive emphasis on the problem of death and becomes a wider meditation on the limits of culture; in this there is a notable parallel to the movement from the problem of mortality to the theme of knowledge in Genesis 1-11. / The earliest Gilgamesh stories, in Sumerian, described the heroic adventures of Gilgamesh, who was sometimes accompanied by his servant Enkidu. These unconnected stories were refocused in the Old Babylonian period into an exploration of the problem of mortality. Enkidu is elevated from Gilgamesh's servant to his best friend, enabling the author to unify the epic around the tragedy of Enkidu's early death. As Tigay says, "The epic is not a study of friendship per se. The motif of friendship serves as a device whereby Enkidu's death can be made to shock Gilgamesh into an obsessive quest for immortality" (28). As alternative to the immortality Gilgamesh fails to achieve, the Old Babylonian version suggests a carpe diem policy, expressed in a speech by a barmaid. She tells him to eat well, make every day into a feast day, have good clothing, and enjoy his wife and children. / The late version of the epic, though usually viewed as having the same theme, in fact redirects it altogether. The barmaid's hedonistic speech is displaced and de-emphasized, a prologue and epilogue with a broader wisdom perspective are added, and a series of striking additions to the body of the epic expand the scope of the work. Three of these are particularly noteworthy: an extended description of the creation and early life of Enkidu; a marriage proposal from Ishtar to Gilgamesh; and a long account of the Flood, retold by its hero Utnapishtim, whom Gilgamesh visits in search of immortality. / These scenes have usually been viewed as inorganic accretions; even Tigay, who gives a spirited defense of the importance of the increased emphasis on Enkidu, merely notes the new material on Ishtar without attempting to account for it; of the longest addition, the flood story, he suggests only that it serves as a delaying device to heighten our suspenseful interest in knowing how things will work out after the interruption. 6 All three of these additions, however, take on coherent meaning and unified purpose if they are seen in relation to the creation-flood epics; for the consistent effect of these additions is to assimilate the Gilgamesh Epic toward this genre. / The remarkable thing about this assimilative process is its occurrence at the very time that the poetic epic tradition reaches its furthest degree of historicization. Already the Old Babylonian version of the epic exhibited historicizing aspects of the sort noted above in the Atrahasis Epic and the Erra Epic. These tendencies were developed much further in the late version, but not, as one might have expected, through a simple abandonment of the mythic tradition. Rather, the late version takes up the mythic epic tradition in its fullest form, the creation-flood epic, not in order to remythologize but in order to carry through a far-reaching process of self-definition vis-a-vis the mythic tradition. In this way the late version explores the nattire and limits of human culture and history through an explicit process of separation from divine culture and divine ways of acting, as represented in the older creation-flood epics. / This process is of direct value in assessing the relation of Genesis 1-11 to its polytheistic past, as a related effort at separation and self-definition can also be observed there. The similarity here between Genesis and the late version of the Gilgamesh Epic is neither a chance occurrence nor necessarily a sign of direct dependence of one tradition on another, but is a natural feature, perhaps almost an inevitable feature, of the self-definition of historical epic as it separates itself from the trans-historical patterns of myth. In this respect, indeed, the Gilgamesh Epic has as much in common with the Iliad as with Genesis; some of these parallels will be noted below. The Gilgamesh Epic , like the opening section of Genesis, is very much a transitional form, and this may indeed be an aspect of its compelling power, as it gains in richness, almost producing an effect of parallax, from the coexistence of elements that had formerly been separated and had now been mixed but not yet collapsed into each other.
    • Enkidu and the World of Nature
    • The Rejection of Ishtar
    • The Flood and the End of the Age of Myth
    • Myth as History in Genesis 1-11
    • From Yahwist Epic to Court History
  • 4: Yahwist(s) and Deuteronomist(s)
  • 5: The Growth of the David Story 182 / Epic and Saga in the Ark Narrative
  • 6: Law and Narrative in the Priestly Work 261
  • Conclusion: Deconstruction or Reconstruction?