The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
semiopen
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Re: The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Post by semiopen »

lpetrich wrote: Fri May 18, 2018 6:49 am Being a chiasm may only mean that a single author created that structure. That author could easily have used material from more than one source, as the author of the Noah's-Flood story apparently did.
The Noah chiasm is interesting but I'm not sure it means a whole lot. Chiasmus seems to be more of a Christian thing.

Maybe just a personal quirk, but if part of a post is bullshit, chances are the whole thing stinks.
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ConfusedEnoch
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Re: The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Post by ConfusedEnoch »

semiopen wrote: Fri May 18, 2018 11:54 am
lpetrich wrote: Fri May 18, 2018 6:49 am Being a chiasm may only mean that a single author created that structure. That author could easily have used material from more than one source, as the author of the Noah's-Flood story apparently did.
The Noah chiasm is interesting but I'm not sure it means a whole lot. Chiasmus seems to be more of a Christian thing.

Maybe just a personal quirk, but if part of a post is bullshit, chances are the whole thing stinks.
What part of his post was "bullshit", the part where he says "Jews DID keep Shabbat in Elephantine"? If so, then you should really reconsider what you think "bullshit" means.

Your previous post was basically agreeing with him that the evidence does seem to indicate that they kept Shabbat (SBH) but the conclusion was that he was "spinning bullshit"... Quite disingenuous if you ask me.
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ConfusedEnoch
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Re: The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Post by ConfusedEnoch »

lpetrich wrote: Sun May 06, 2018 5:39 pm
Ethan wrote: Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:57 pm The authors of Genesis were Phoenicians, ...
Nonsense. The Phoenicians practiced old-time Semitic religion instead of YHWH-only worship. Like most other old-time religions, it was polytheistic, featuring several deities. BTW, the Bible is very unhistorical about that, portraying worship of YHWH only as the Israelites' ancestral religion. That was a rewrite of history invented by the YHWH-only sect to discourage worship of rival deities. Archeological evidence shows that they originally worshipped several deities and not just YHWH.
The early chapters of Genesis don't mention YHWH at all, so what you're saying is irrelevant. The Hellenistic Jews' revisionist view of their ancestral religion does not invalidate the existence of a more archaic version of these stories in Ancient Israel and Northern Samaria. The Phoenicians "writing" Genesis makes sense considering the similarities between Sanchuniathon's cosmogony and the admittedly pre-Monotheistic origin myths found in the Bible.

>Archeological evidence shows that they originally worshipped several deities and not just YHWH.

This much is evident without resorting to Archaeological evidence at all. Most of the pre-Exilic books like Judges, Psalms and Micah refer to polytheistic (or at least monolatric) concepts such as the "Assembly of Gods" and the "Elohim" themselves.
Even Genesis 1:2 shows a Khaoskampf-like cosmogony with the Tohu wa Bohu roaming above the rivers.

I see what Ethan is saying as a reference to Moses' appropriation of the entire YHWH-Baal cycle myth found in the Northern Canaanite mythos. Whether Moses was a powerful priest of Ptah or a Pharaoh's scribe/vizier doesn't matter because his era was known as the one where the Egyptians invaded and conquered most of the Levant, logically appropriating and syncretizing the local myths.
yakovzutolmai
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Re: The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Post by yakovzutolmai »

Ethan wrote: Fri May 04, 2018 8:31 am Thus why do we see 'Queen Daphne (Tahpenes) in 1 Kings 11:19-20 alongside Solomon & Rehoboam?
Is this a rhetorical question?

Anyway, of course the Pentateuch is explaining how the Judea of 300 BC and its neighbors came to be.
yakovzutolmai
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Re: The Two Genesis Creation Stories

Post by yakovzutolmai »

lpetrich wrote: Fri May 18, 2018 6:49 am Being a chiasm may only mean that a single author created that structure. That author could easily have used material from more than one source, as the author of the Noah's-Flood story apparently did.
Agreed and consistent with the premise of Gmirkin. The diaspora had a variety of religious texts but the Pentateuch and Writings consolidated them into a single, modern, cogent work of literature. We could even identify the literary excellence of the work as one key reason for the resonance and influence of the Jewish religion by Roman times. Judaism - via the Pentateuch and Jerusalem Temple - was the ideal Greek religion.
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