Theological Structure of Paradise

 
The Location of Paradise

 

Part Four:

Theological Structure of Paradise

 

 

 

 

“On the summit of Mount Paradise stood the Tree of Life, representing the divine presence, or the Holy of Holies, an area Adam and Eve were not allowed to enter ….

The Tree of Knowledge marked the demarcation line (analogous to the veil in the sanctuary …) to the next level, the slopes of the mountain.

The lower slopes, finally, indicate the realm where the animals lived.

Along the foothills is the fence, produced by the cherub with the revolving sword …”.

 

 

 

 

Matthias Henze writes of the Theological Structure of Paradise according to the interpretation of it by St. Ephrem Syrus, a Christian theologian, poet, hymnist, and doctor of the church (conventionally dated to c. 306 -373 AD):

 

Matthias Henze

THE MADNESS OF KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR

The Ancient Near Eastern Origins and Early History

of Interpretation of Daniel 4

Brill, 1999

....

2. In the beginning God created the creation,

the fountainhead of delights;

the house which he constructed

provisions those who live therein,

for upon His gift

innumerable created beings depend;

from a single table

does He provide

every day for each creature

all things in due measure (Ps. 145:15-16).

Grant that we may acknowledge

Your grace, O Good One.

 

RESPONSE: Through Your grace make me worthy

of that Garden of happiness.

3. A garden full of glory,

a chaste bridal chamber,

did he give to that king

fashioned from the dust,

sanctifying and separating him

from the abode of wild animals;

for glorious was Adam

in all things –

in where he lived and what he ate,

in his radiance and dominion.

Blessed is He who elevated him above all

so that he might give thanks to the Lord of all ….

 

In these two stanzas Ephrem articulates his view of Paradise and its (theological) geography.

He conceives of Paradise as a circular mountain which circumscribes the entire world. When Cain says to Abel in the Peshitta, “Let us go the valley …” (Gen 4:8, Syriac pqatā’, the Hebrew is lacking at this point; the LXX reads  εìς τò πεδíον, i.e., ‘to the field’), this implied for Ephrem that their home was on a mountain. ….

The Paradise mountain is then divided further into three concentric circles, designating three levels of sacred space. A careful reading of the Genesis narrative provides the key to understanding the distinctive qualities of these three degrees of holiness. In Gen 3:3 Eve reports to the serpent that God had commanded them not to touch the tree (Hebrew lō(̒) tigg’û bô). Hebrew nāga‘ is ambiguous and can mean either ‘to touch’, or ‘to draw near’. The ambiguity is retained in the Peshitta (Syriac lā(’) tetqarrbûn), yet the verb used in Syriac (qreb in the Ethpa.) readily lends itself to Ephrem’s interpretation, which reads the command to mean ‘to approach’, rather than ‘to touch’. The Syriac thus implies that the divine prohibition was rather strict in nature and ruled out not only the touching of, but even the drawing near to, the tree.

In his Commentary on Genesis, Ephrem offers the same interpretation.

The tempter then turned his mind to the commandment of Him who had set down the commandment, that [Adam and Eve] were not only commanded not to eat from one single tree, but they were not even to draw near to it. The serpent then realized that God had forewarned them abut even looking at it lest they become entrapped by its beauty. […]

The serpent remained silent, for it perceived immediately that Eve was about to succumb. It was not so much the serpent’s counsel that entered her ear and provoked her to eat from the tree at it was her gaze, which she directed toward the tree, that lured her to pluck and eat of its fruit…..

The fact that Adam and Eve were forbidden even to draw near to the tree called for an explanation.

In his commentary, Ephrem suggest that Eve had to be guarded from gazing at the tree simply because the tree’s beauty would have enticed her immediately into longing for the fruit – which is, after all, what happened after the serpent seduced her. In his Hymns on Paradise, however, Ephrem provides a different explanation. The closest analogue for the divine prohibition not to draw near in the Hebrew Bible is found in passages that deal with notion of sacred space, such as the theophany at Mount Sinai, or the Divine Presence in the Temple in Jerusalem. In either case we find a tripartite structure, i.e., three concentric circles which serve as demarcations of increasing degrees of holiness organized around the divine presence in the center. God’s command to Eve not to draw near to the tree therefore had to imply that the geography of Paradise followed the same pattern. On the summit of Mount Paradise stood the Tree of Life, representing the divine presence, or the Holy of Holies, an area Adam and Eve were not allowed to enter (cf. Hymns on Paradise III.3). The Tree of Knowledge  marked the demarcation line (analogous to the veil in the sanctuary; cf. III.13.17) to the next level, the slopes of the mountain. The lower slopes, finally, indicate the realm where the animals lived.

Along the foothills is the fence, produced by the cherub with the revolving sword (IV.1).

Returning to stanza three in hymn XIII, the “garden full of glory, a chaste bridal chamber” is a common epithet for Mount Paradise in Ephrem’s hymns. Adam, here referred to as king, was fashioned from dust, still within the lower slopes of the mountain, an area he shared with the beasts. He names the animals, as Ephrem reports in the previous hymn, … and is venerated by them. Adam then discovers his need for a mate, and God creates Eve. It is at this point that Adam and Eve are separated geographically from the animals and enter the middle slopes of the garden. In the words of our hymn (XIII.3), God was “sanctifying and separating him from the abode of wild animals; for glorious was Adam in all things – in where he lived and what he ate, in his radiance and dominion”.

Ephrem is quite specific about the distinctive qualities of Adam’s and Eve’s new environ: no animals dwell here. The first human beings are thus blessed with a unique domicile, food, radiance, and dominion. These last lines, of course, anticipate the comparison with Nebuchadnezzar, who claimed many of the same privileges.

 

4. The king of Babylon resembled

Adam king of the universe:

both rose up against the one Lord

and were brought low;

He made them outlaws,

casting them afar.

Who can fail to weep,

seeing that these free-born kings

preferred slavery

and servitude.

Blessed is He who releases us

so that His image might no longer be in bondage.

 

At this point, Ephrem introduces the key hermeneutic maneuver of the entire hymn, the exegetical coordination of Adam and Nebuchadnezzar. The obvious analogies between the two kings are quickly outlined. Like Adam, Nebuchadnezzar indulged in royal splendor. Yet, both heroes proved unable to remain content with their appointed status. Becoming increasingly greedy, they grew arrogant before God. Even their swift punishments were analogous in that both were expelled into an exile among the beasts.

 

5. David wept for Adam,

at how he fell

from that royal abode

to the abode of wild animals (Ps 49:13).

Because he went astray through a beast

he became like the beasts:

He ate, together with them

as a result of the curse,

grass and roots,

and he died, becoming their peer.

Blessed is He who set him apart

from the wild animals again.

 

The discussion returns to Adam, and a new text is introduced, Ps 49:13, “Man (Hebrew ’ādām) does not abide in (Hebrew yālîn) honor; he is like the beasts that perish.” Like the rabbis, Ephrem saw in the third part of the biblical canon a storehouse of interpretive tools which, once juxtaposed with a verse from the Torah, shed light on the cryptic line under consideration. Jewish exegetes read the verse from Psalm 49 as an explanation about how long Adam resided in Paradise: Adam was expelled from his elevated status in less than a day’s time. ….

Ephrem chooses a different interpretation. In the Peshitta, the first half of verse 13 reads, “Man (Syriac bārnā šā’) did not take notice (Syriac ’etbayyan) … of his honor”, which Ephrem understands to imply that Adam, here understood as the individual, rather than as the collective as the Syriac would suggest, took no cognizance of his elevated status he enjoyed at the moment when God led him (and Eve) away from the animals to the next higher level on Mount Paradise. Adam was careless and forfeit his privileged status.

The stanza provides us with the first glimpse into the ultimate message Ephrem seeks to communicate through his comparison of Adam and Nebuchadnezzar, and to which he will return at greater length in a short moment. Like Adam, we as well are unaware of our present status. Ephrem’s goal thus is to enable us to see what we have lost, since only by discerning this loss can we appreciate what we are lacking and develop a desire to be restored. ….

 

Professor Wyatt on four rivers of Genesis 2

The Location of Paradise

Part Three: Professor Wyatt on four rivers

 

“The mountain would … not only arise out of the netherworld, but implicitly afford

an entrance to it, a feature of cosmic centres such as this garden represents,

if my argument is cogent. This centrality is borne out by the reference to the four rivers, logically (schematically) radiating out from the centre”.

 Professor Nick Wyatt

 

The model of Paradise that professor Wyatt depicts agrees with the one that I (Damien Mackey) have been putting forward in this series, insofar, at least, as the Garden of Eden, with its one river, is world centrally (“Jerusalem-centred”) located.
Professor Wyatt, though, interestingly connects one of the four rivers, the “Gihon”, with the spring of that name in Jerusalem.
Here is the early part of his absorbing article:

A Royal Garden: The Ideology of Eden

 

https://www.academia.edu/27601631/A_Royal_Garden_The_Ideology_of_Eden

Nick Wyatt

….

1. a)

The rivers
Let us begin our discussion with the matter of the rivers. ….
The rivers of Eden echo the widespread appearance of four streams diverging from a common source in ancient Near Eastern glyptic art. In both cases, it is one stream which becomes many, here apparently outside the garden (Genesis 2.10). We shall return below to the identity of these streams, and their significance for the garden’s location.

1. b)

 A mountain tradition?
But the first problem to treat is the ultimate source of these rivers, the one primary stream. Is it, as most translators have it, a distillation from a mysterious “mist” (’ēd …) which wells up from the underworld? This would have no obvious parallel in the iconographic tradition, however realistic it may be. Cyrus Gordon’s suggestion that the term should be seen as relating to a Cretan (Minoan) term for or name of a mountain, as in Mount Ida, the traditional birthplace of Zeus, is intriguing. This would allow harmonisation with the Eden of Ezekiel 28, which is situated on a mountain. Gordon noted that

Ida, the high mountain in central Crete, was associated in antiquity with artistic workmanship. The name “Ida” may be the clue to the source of major elements in the Hebrew creation account, which are not of Egyptian or Mesopotamian origin. Gen 2,6 states that “’ēd rises out of the earth and waters all the surface of the ground.” The traditional rendering of “id as “mist” and the pan-Babylonian identification with Sumerian id “river” are unsatisfactory. Rivers do not rise; they descend. What rises from the earth to water the ground is a mountain carrying its streams to the surrounding countryside. Accordingly, it is worth considering that “ēd means Ida, pointing to East Mediterranean elements in the Biblical Creation. There is one objection, however, that requires clarification; namely, that the Greek form of Ida begins with long î-, whereas “ēd reflects short i-. ….

Gordon also cited hdm id in the Ugaritic text KTU 1.4 i 34, though this text is preferably to be corrected to hdm *il, and hdm here is in any case probably Hurrian (atmi, admi), not Minoan. …. But this caveat does not affect Gordon’s overall argument. Further support for such a harmonisation can be found in the vision of a future paradise in Isaiah 11,6-8 (see v. 9). …. And even if Gordon’s particular argument be rejected, it remains a useful heuristic tool in pointing us in the right direction: the welling up of the primal stream still implies an upland, that is mountain, scenario. For what it is worth, it should be observed that on the Mari fresco, to be discussed below, the foreground at the bottom shows a scale-pattern, which is the conventional way of representing mountains in glyptic art.
The mountain would, as in the description here, not only arise out of the netherworld, but implicitly afford an entrance to it, a feature of cosmic centres such as this garden represents, if my argument is cogent. This centrality is borne out by the reference to the four rivers, logically (schematically) radiating out from the centre. This approach would also obviate the necessity felt by some scholars to see in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 two different conceptions of Eden (one with, and one without, a mountain). It makes more sense to see two allusions to the same common symbolic tradition, and indeed in this instance to see one (Genesis) as literarily dependent on the other (Ezekiel) [sic], as we shall see. Margaret Barker’s observations may also allow us to see these gardens harmonised in Isaiah 14, which, while not explicitly Edenic, surely represents the same mythical nexus, though it has now diverged, and deals more specifically with a mortuary context. In Isaiah 14, the disobedient royal figure is the king of Babylon, or some other great power, but the narrative is a West Semitic myth. Barker argued that:
Ezekiel’s oracles [in chapter 28] are clearly in the same setting [as that of Isaiah 14]. The first deals with a fallen god, and the second apparently with the first man in Eden. If we read the two together, in the light of the fallen figure in Isaiah, we see that the two figures are one, and that the problems in reading this text come from our using categories and distinctions quite alien to Ezekiel. The fallen god and the figure expelled from Eden were one and the same. Thus Ezekiel forms a link between Isaiah 14 and Genesis 2-3. Ezekiel’s Eden is a strange magical place: I believe that we glimpse here the mythology of the old temple… ….

The kind of intertextuality Barker recognised here is exactly the level of sensitive comprehension that is essential for the appreciation of the mythical world of biblical literature. Furthermore, Bernard Gosse, followed by Terje Stordalen, also noted that the oracle of Ezekiel 28,12b-15, directed in its  present form against the ruler of Tyre, would originally have been addressed to the high priest (for which we should perhaps read rather the king) in Jerusalem. …. The question is even worth raising—though any answer must remain speculative—as to whether the melek ṣôr in 28,11 (and the corresponding nĕgîd ṣôr in 28,1) really does designate the ruler of Tyre, and not rather the “ruler of the rock”, that is, the sacred mountain in Jerusalem. ….
This is all the more plausible in a world of divine kingship, since “Rock” (ṣôr) was a title of Yahweh himself. …. We may further note that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 2,15 involves an allusion to a mountain; though it is not explicitly identified with the garden, this may be implicit:

And the Lord God took Adam from the mountain of the service, the place from where he had been created, and made him dwell in the Garden of Eden, so as to be serving in the Torah and observing its commandments.
 
The location of Eden at the centre of the world

Much ink has also been spilt on the vexed problem of the location of Eden, but the idea of four rivers radiating out from a single source (the reverse of what happens in nature, except at deltas) suggests the idea of a centre and its relationship to the cardinal points. Equally artificial is the location of El’s dwelling in Ugaritic tradition, which is also a cosmic centre, as described in Ugaritic texts KTU 1.2 iii 4, 1.3 v 5-7, 1.4 iv 21-22, 1.5 vi [-3 to -1, to be restored], 1.6 i 33-34:

Then he set his face indeed towards El at the source of the rivers, amidst the springs of the two deeps... ….

Though I previously took these rivers to be plural (four in number, corresponding to those of Genesis 2) … I think now that they may well be rather two, as riverine aspects of the two deeps of the second colon cited. …. One lay above the firmament, and one below the earth or netherworld, as in Hebrew cosmology. A remarkable citation of this in the Qur’an (18.61-62) indicates the longevity of the cosmology behind the formula. ….
 
The identity of the rivers

As to the identity of the rivers, two, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are immediately recognisable. The other two have been regarded as problematic. The Gihon was identified with the Nile by the LXX of Jeremiah 2,18, followed by Josephus, Antiquities 1.1.3 …. , who also in the same passage identified the Pishon with the Ganges. But Jeremiah himself had used the term šiḥôr for the Nile …., and the explicit identification with the Gihon can thus only be dated with certainty from the time of the Greek translation, ca 300 BC. On the contrary, it was the Pishon that was interpreted by Manfred Görg … as the Nile, from the Egyptian expression p3 šny, “the encompassing one,” the river being conceptualised as an extension of the cosmic ocean surrounding the world. This is perhaps more compelling than Neiman’s  proposal … to link the Pishon to Hebrew peten, “snake,” a metaphor for the serpentine ocean, though the term discerned by del Olmo … who proposed that bāšān (Ugaritic bṯn, usually cited as cognate with peten) should be recognised as having serpentine and maritime associations in various geographical contexts, followed up by myself … seems to be another reasonable etymological possibility. So I have suggested in a discussion of oceanic language that in Deuteronomy 33,22 we should understand the text as follows:
 
Dān gûr ^caryê                         Dan, the whelp of a sea-monster
yĕzannēq min-habbāšān                 springs forth from the Serpent (sc. the Ocean).

This meaning is concordant with Dan’s original maritime location in the Shephelah (cf. Judges 5,17) before its migration to northern Galilee. A link with the sea peoples [sic] is suggested for Dan and Asher by Judges 5,17 and for Zebulun by Genesis 49,13. The Egyptian and Ugaritic etymological  proposals for Pishon are both attractive.
Regarding the Gihon of Genesis 2,13, Neiman also proposed an interesting link between the Hebrew gîḥôn, which he associated with the snake’s belly (gāḥôn — gĕḥonĕkâ) in Genesis 3,14 and with Greek (Ὠκεανός). …. The latter, in encircling the Greek world, is like the Gihon, which “encircles the whole land of Cush”. Whether or not this be regarded as a viable etymology, it is at least a likely paronomasia, and the Gihon also had a local reference, as the stream supplying Jerusalem with water, and also used in royal rituals, as in 1 Kings 1,33-34. 38-40 (Solomon’s coronation), and presumably in Psalm 110,7:
 
 
Minnaḥal badderek yišteh       From the stream from the throne he drinks,
^cal-kēn yārîm r’ōš                   and thus he raises up heads ….

I have taken derek in this latter passage to represent the idea of “dominion”, translated here metonymically as “throne”, to be compared with Ugaritic drkt, as perhaps in Job 12,24 and Psalm 107,40. The Gihon in Jerusalem is perhaps also alluded to in Psalm 36,9-10:
 
yirwĕyun middešen bêtekâirw They are filled with the abundance of your house,
wĕnaḥal *^cēdenĕkâ tašqēm     and the stream of your Eden gives them to drink.
kî-^cimmĕkâ mĕqôr ḥayyîm                  For with you is the fountain of life:
*bĕ’ērĕkâ nir’ê-’ôr                 in your well a light is seen

reading the Masoretic text plural ^cӑdānêkâ (“in your delights”) as singular *^cedēnĕkâ, and Masoretic bĕ’ôrkâ (“in your light”) as *bĕ’ērĕkâ (“in your well”), in parallel with mĕqôr, “fountain,” of the preceding colon. “They” of the first colon here are “the gods and the sons of man” of v. 8. …. The stream is to be associated with the throne, as will be demonstrated below. If the  proposed singular reading *^cedēnĕkâ be accepted, we have a clear, implicit identification of Eden with Jerusalem, since “your house” of the preceding colon can only be the Jerusalem temple. ….

The implications of the identity of the rivers for locating Eden

What are we to make of these riverine data in terms of actually locating the garden? It hardly provides compelling evidence for a Mesopotamian location, as for those who took the name Eden (^cēden) to represent the Sumerian EDIN = Akkadian edinu, the plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates. …. Such a location ignores the claims of the Pishon and the Gihon for inclusion within the writer’s immediate purview. To reject the original identification of the paradisal and the Jerusalem Gihon in view of this evidence, on the strength of its later identification with the Nile (Jeremiah LXX et al.) would seem to me to be perverse. What we have here are two different explanations for the data, which on any analysis remain incompatible. (On Neiman’s analysis, mentioned above, the two are even reconciled.) To my mind the local significance of the Gihon for Jerusalem is to be taken seriously, in view of the evidence we have adduced. …. Even if the etymology of the cosmic Gihon  be unknown, and unconnected with the Jerusalem stream (the latter means “Gusher” …, which is quite improbable, it is hard to believe that the similarity—or even identity—of the two names was not clearly in the author’s mind. That is, he was intentionally evoking Jerusalem, even if not wishing to name it. …. This would also preclude any location of Eden further east, as far afield as Armenia, as proposed by a number of scholars … or even India, as suggested on various mediaeval maps. …. Furthermore, it would certainly remove Eden from the “never-never land” category some other scholars seem determined to apply to it. …. The four rivers represent the three major systems of the ancient Near East and the world-ocean, but crucially link them with the sacred waters of the city of Jerusalem itself. The point of allusions to the Tigris and the Euphrates in a Jerusalem-centred text is surely to extend the sacrality of the latter, the place from which the Jews had been deported, to the place of their exile (a feature which obviously has a bearing on the dating of the text). We see a similar pattern of the implicit inclusion of the place of exile within the sacred territory in the stories of Jacob’s dream and of Moses’s vision of the burning bush. ….

Cain and Abel may have been twins

 

“Do not be like Cain who was of the evil one and cut the throat of his brother”.

I John 3:12

The writers of the following two pieces believe that Cain and Abel definitely were twins:

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/cain-and-abel-were-twins.html


Susan Burns, a regular reader of Just Genesis and a fellow member of Open Anthropology Cooperative, has written an interesting and informative piece on Cain and Abel. She and I agree that the textual evidence indicates that Cain and Abel were twins. Here is what Susan has written:

Genesis 4: Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "I have gotten a man with the help of YHWH". She again bare his brother Abel. The Hebrew word used for again (yasaph) is an adverb meaning to continue to do a thing. Yasaph implies that Eve gave birth to Cain and continued to do the same thing by giving birth to Abel. In other words, Cain and Abel were twins. The profession of Abel was shepherd and Cain was a farmer and city builder.

Coptic twins

The tradition of twins as the progenitors of tribal units or city builders is very well documented in Semitic and Indo-European cultures. When birth order is specified, the younger twin always receives the blessing over the first born brother. In the account of the sons of Adam, the first born twin is envious of the second and commits fratricide. There are many variations on this theme in other twin genesis accounts. Jacob is fearful that Esau will kill him, Romulus killed Remus and Gwyn and Gwythurin in Celtic tradition duel every May.
The Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, shared a mortal and an immortal existence. Castor was killed on a cattle raid but Pollux persuaded Zeus to allow the brothers to switch places periodically. The word Gemini comes from the PIE root *ym which means 'to pair'. This word is very similar to the Hebrew im mimation suffix but, of course, linguists say they are unrelated (sigh). ....

[End of quote]

And, according to David Robinson:
https://ebible.com/questions/9639-were-cain-and-abel-twins





While scripture does not specifically state that the brothers Cain and Abel were twins, there is ample evidence to draw that conclusion. The evidence is found primarily in the wording of the text that records their birth (Gen 4:1-2). The clear pattern of speech for recording such events in scripture is to state that the man "knew" (or had relations with) his wife and she bore a son or daughter. If there was a subsequent child, the scripture then tells us that the man knew his wife again and she bore another child (see Gen 4:17, Gen 4:25, and others). In the record of the births of Cain and Abel this pattern is noticeably absent. After referencing the marital relations between Adam and Eve in verse 1, the birth of Cain is recorded. However, there is no mention of a future sexual encounter resulting in another pregnancy. Unlike some have said, there is no indication of a long pause or time period before the birth of Abel. Eve apparently had just enough time to make the observation that she had "gotten a man with the help of the Lord" before Abel was born. Some have mistakenly claimed that she named her first child Cain "before" Abel was born indicating that Cain was weaned before she bore Abel. The text neither says that nor supports that theory by inference. In fact, the clear inference from the text is that she bore Cain, then bore Abel in essentially the same birthing event making the boys twins by definition. Others have mistakenly concluded that even though the boys were born in the same birthing event, Cain's father was Satan (or the serpent from the Garden) while Abel's father was Adam. While I understand that it is theoretically possible (though extremely rare) for a woman to become pregnant with two embryos as a result of sex with two different men, there is absolutely no scriptural reason to draw that conclusion in this case. To begin with, Satan is a spirit being with no creative power. "Rosemary's Baby" notwithstanding, he has no physical body, nor can he become a man so that he could have sex with a woman. He cannot impregnate anyone with his tricks and illusions ("lying signs and wonders"). If he could, I'm sure there would be billions of little “demonoids” running around down here with physical bodies. Although there are some about whom we may have our suspicions, Satan does not have children in the natural sense! When the New Testament writers refer to Cain as evil or “of the evil one” (Heb 11:4, 1 John 3:12, Jude 11), they are referring to his spiritual condition as evidenced by his behavior, not to his physical lineage. Jesus often uses the same linguistic device when referring to the Scribes, the Pharisees, Judas Iscariot, and others saying they were of their father the devil, sons of Satan, sons of perdition, devils, etc. The Pharisees boasted in being “sons of Abraham,” which was, indeed, their physical lineage. Jesus changed the narrative by pointing out their spiritual affiliation. Their father was Satan because they followed him and rejected Jesus.
Likewise, Cain’s physical father was Adam, but his spiritual and metaphorical father was Satan because he followed the ways of Satan and rejected the ways of God. Even though Cain was not a righteous man, he was still the son of Adam and Eve and (most likely the twin) brother of righteous Abel as the Bible clearly states.

Professor A. Yahuda’s linguistic contribution to Book of Genesis

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

  

 

 

Yahuda … was an expert in his field. His profound knowledge of Egyptian and Hebrew combined (not to mention Akkadian) gave him a distinct advantage over fellow Egyptologists unacquainted with Hebrew, who thus could not discern any

appreciable Egyptian influence on the Pentateuch.

 

 

 

 

 

Whilst I have previously written on the important linguistic contribution to the Pentateuch as made by professor A. S. Yahuda (“a Palestinian Jew, polymath, teacher, writer, researcher, linguist, and collector of rare documents”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Yahuda  ) - and still continue basically to accept the professor’s findings - I would now be inclined to modify a few of the points that he had made.

 

For a better appreciation of what follows, one might like to read e.g. my article:

 

Structure of the Book of Genesis

 

https://www.academia.edu/28809452/Structure_of_the_Book_of_Genesis

 

 

….

It could be said that the ancient literary methods pointed out by P. J. Wiseman in favour of Mosaïc compilation of Genesis were also around much later than Moses, prevailing even into New Testament times (e.g. Matthew 1:1 gives a toledôt of Jesus Christ in the Gospels), and hence these literary methods could have been inserted into texts composed at the time of, say, the Babylonian Exile (C6th BC, conventional dating), almost a millennium after Moses, to give these texts an air of sacredness or antiquity.

 

After all, what Wiseman was drawing his information from were Babylonian scribal techniques, not, say, Egyptian ones, which were quite different.

 

So, why would Moses - let alone the patriarchs who preceded him - necessarily have had any involvement in the Book of Genesis?

 

Well, this is where the linguistic contribution of professor A. S. Yahuda (Language of the Pentateuch in Its Relation to Egyptian (Oxford UP, 1933) comes in to deal a shock blow to both the documentary theory and to the related Pan-Babylonianism.

 

Yahuda was, unlike Wiseman, an expert in his field. His profound knowledge of Egyptian and Hebrew combined (not to mention Akkadian) gave him a distinct advantage over fellow Egyptologists unacquainted with Hebrew, who thus could not discern any appreciable Egyptian influence on the Pentateuch. Yahuda however realized that the Pentateuch was absolutely saturated with Egyptian - not only for the periods associated with Egypt, most notably the Joseph narrative including Israel's sojourn in Egypt, but even for the periods associated with, as he thought, Babylonia.

For example, the Flood and the Babel incident.

 

Comment: This now need to be modified somewhat, however - so I think - in light of my more recent:

 

Tightening the Geography and Archaeology for Early Genesis

 

https://www.academia.edu/34936691/Tightening_the_Geography_and_Archaeology_for_Early_Genesis

 

For instance, instead of the Akkadian word for 'Ark' used in the Mesopotamian Flood accounts, or even the Canaanite ones current elsewhere in the Bible, the Noachic account Yahuda noted, uses the Egyptian-based tebah (Egyptian db.t, `box, coffer, chest').

 

Most important was the linguistic observation by Yahuda:

 

Whereas those books of Sacred Scripture which were admittedly written during and after the Babylonian Exile reveal in language and style such an unmistakable Babylonian influence that these newly-entered foreign elements leap to the eye, by contrast in the first part of the Book of Genesis, which describes the earlier Babylonian period, the Babylonian influence in the language is so minute as to be almost non-existent. 

 

Dead Sea Scrolls expert, Fr. Jean Carmignac, had been able to apply the same sort of bilingual expertise - in his case, Greek and Hebrew - to gainsay the received scholarly opinion and show that the New Testament writings in Greek had Hebrew originals: his argument for a much earlier dating than is usual for the New Testament books.

See my article on this:

 

Fr Jean Carmignac dates Gospels early

 

https://www.academia.edu/30807628/Fr_Jean_Carmignac_dates_Gospels_early

 

While Yahuda's argument is totally Egypto-centric, at least for the Book of Genesis, one does also need to consider the likelihood of 'cultural traffic' from Palestine to Egypt, especially given the prominence of Joseph in Egypt from age 80-110. One might expect that the toledôt documents borne by Israel into Egypt would have become of great interest to the Egyptians under the régime of the Vizier, Joseph (historically Imhotep of Egypt's 3rd dynasty), who had after all saved the nation of Egypt from a 7-year famine, thereby influencing Egyptian thought and concepts.

 

The combination of Wiseman and Yahuda, in both cases clear-minded studies based on profound analysis of ancient documents, is an absolute bomb waiting to explode all over any artificially constructed literary theory of Genesis.

 

Whilst I. Kikawada and A. Quinn (Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11, Abingdon, 1985) have managed to find some merit in the JEDP theory, and I have also suggested how its analytical tools may be useful at least when applied to the apparent multiple sourcing in the Flood narrative (and perhaps in the Esau and Jacob narrative), the system appears as inherently artificial in the light of archaeological discoveries.

U. Cassuto may not have been “diplomatic” (according to Kikawada and Quinn), but nevertheless he was basically correct in his estimation of documentism: "This imposing and beautiful edifice has, in reality, nothing to support it and is founded on air".

 

It is no coincidence that documentary theory was developed during the era of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who proposed an a priori approach to extramental reality, quite different from the common sense approach of the Aristotelian philosophy of being.

The philosophy of science is saturated with this new approach. See e.g.:

 

Gavin Ardley’s Marvellous Perception of the Nature of the Modern Sciences

 

https://www.academia.edu/23250163/Gavin_Ardley_s_Marvellous_Perception_of_the_Natur

 

Kantianism is well and truly evident, too - as it seems to me - in the Karl Heinrich Graf and Julius Wellhausen attitude to the biblical texts.

And Eduard Meyer carried this over into his study of Egyptian chronology, by devising in his mind a quantifying a priori theory - an entirely artificial one that had no substantial bearing on reality - that he imposed upon his subject with disastrous results.

Again an "imposing and beautiful edifice … founded on air".

See my article:

 

Berlin Chronologist Dr. Eduard Meyer Doubted Moses. Part Two: Irony of Meyer's Kantianism

 

https://www.academia.edu/37068598/Berlin_Chronologist_Dr._Eduard_Meyer_Doubted_Moses._Part_Two_Irony_of_Meyers_Kantianism