As we have noted, we have no specific evidence from archaeology or epigraphy confirming events described in the book of Genesis or mentioning any of the characters of the book. However, we have a body of literature from the ancient Near East suggesting cultural parallels to Israel's ancestors. For example, more than five hundred texts were discovered from two distinct periods in the history of the ancient city of Alalakh (modern Tell Atchana): the eighteenth-seventeenth and fifteenth centuries BCE. Alalakh was located on the southeast corner of the Hatay plain, on the Orontes River, in what is now southern Turkey (see fig. 1.1). Most of these inscriptions were written in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets, but reflect features of the local dialect. The Alalakh archive contains administrative records, a few treaty texts, and literary texts such as hymns and omens, as well as a statue inscription of King Idrimi from around 1500 BCE (although discovered in a later stratum). The Idrimi Inscription is an autobiographical account of the king's exploits after fleeing the kingdom when his father was murdered, living in exile for years, returning to Alalakh to reclaim the throne, and extending his rule into Hittite territory"
Collectively, the texts of Alalakh illuminate the society and economic life at an important city-state of Syria-Palestine during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. Numerous social customs attested at Alalakh and known also from other sites, such as Ugarit and Nuzi, have been compared to the customs in the ancestral narratives. But such customs have been criticized as not necessarily distinctive to the Bronze Age and not helpful as direct comparisons to the ancestral practices. The method of drawing such comparisons has been refined, and we understand the limitations of making such connections. Nevertheless, the concentration of such a large number of these cultural parallels in a Bronze Age society on the Mediterranean coast remains suggestive as background to the ancestral narratives. These include (1) a betrothal gift for the wife's father, allowing the bridegroom to marry (Gen. 34:12); (2) provisions for the use of a surrogate mother in cases of barrenness after seven years (Gen. 16:1-4); and (3) seven years of barrenness before a second wife compared to Jacob's seven years of service before he was allowed to marry Rachel (Gen. 29:15-35).b
A. Tremper Longman III, "The Autobiography of Idrimi," COS 1.148:479-80.
B. Richard S. Hess, "The Bible and Alalakh," in Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations (ed. Mark W Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger; JSOTSup 341; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 209-21, esp. 210-12; see also idem, "Seven Years of Barrenness before a Second Wife," COS 3.101C:252-53.
Such a source approach altogether. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, investigation continued unabated into the original sources of the Pentateuch, including again Genesis as a primary focus, with special attention given to the literary parameters of each source and their relative dating. Today, little
Consensus has been reached on these issues, and a thorough review of the research is beyond the scope of the present task.
For our purposes it is sufficient to explain that the book of Genesis has largely been perceived as composed from two primary threads of materials,
Priestly and nonpriestly traditions (sometimes referred to as P and non-P materials), although no general consensus has been achieved as to their extent or relative dates. The nonpriestly materials were compiled at some unreconstructed point in early Israel as an epic history (sometimes referred to as J, JE, or some similar siglum), and they formed one of the three expansive narrative complexes from ancient Israel.47 It has been combined with the priestly materials to comprise the book of Genesis as an introduction for the Pentateuch as a whole. As such, this older epic history introduces the reader to the beginnings and development of the cosmos and humanity generally (parts of Gen. 1-11) and to the ancestors of Israel as explanation of Israel’s origins (portions of Gen. 12-50). Regardless of one’s conclusions about the specifics of how these materials were compiled in the present text of Genesis, I think it is helpful to acknowledge the two types of materials found in the book, priestly and non-priestly48 In my view, either type of literary tradition is capable of preserving reliable historical information, and so I eschew skepticism as a legitimate position vis-a-vis the textual evidence. However, I also believe that literary features of these materials occasionally alert us to genres and literary types that are not intended to be taken as historiography in any modern sense of that term. Such complexity requires a nuanced methodology that takes each episode of the narratives individually in the process of assessing them for historical value.
Mytho-Historical/Pre-Ancestral Accounts (Gen. 1-11)
The people, places, and events described in the opening chapters of Genesis have no corresponding association with what we might call verifiable history. Events of these chapters (especially Gen. 1-4) cannot be confirmed or denied by the study of history, because history begins with the invention of writing. We know what we know about ancient people, society, and events primarily by the written records left behind, although archaeology and other social sciences contribute to our understanding of ancient history. The Primeval History (Gen. 1-11) addresses the origins of the universe, the creation of humanity, and the first institutions of human civilization.49 We retain the term “history” in the title of this first unit of the Bible—the Primeval History—because, on the one hand, it arranges themes along a time continuum using cause and effect and generally uses historical narrative as the literary medium for communication. On the other hand, those themes themselves are the same ones explored elsewhere in the ancient Near East in mythological literature (creation of the universe, creation of humanity, the great flood, etc.). The Primeval History narrates those themes in a way that transforms their meaning and import, and for these reasons we may think of these chapters as a unique literary category, which some have termed “mytho-historical.”50 This designation in no way identifies these chapters as myths or mythical, but rather draws attention to the way certain themes that are explained through mythmaking elsewhere in the ancient Near East have been transformed in the Genesis narrative account.51
This unique blending or merging of literary categories—myth and history—in Genesis 1-11 is readily apparent in the way the chapters have been composed. These chapters are no simple history or example of ancient historiograph). At most, we may say that mythical themes have been arranged in a forward-moving, linear progression, in what may be considered a historicizing literary form, using genealogies especially, to make history out of myth.52 The famous personal names Adam (humanity) and Eve (life) provide both literary wordplay in the first biblical narratives and possess elements and roots that occur in the earliest West Semitic names attested outside the Bible.53 The place name Eden (well-watered) also attests to an ideal garden with a description that contains clues connected to ancient realities.54 Along with these, the land of Assyria and the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Gen. 2:14) illustrate the merging of literary forms. This is Israel’s version of ancient Near Eastern mythic history, in which a founding account is given of the universe, and events are traced back to a time in which the gods are the principal actors and reality is given essential features. In Israel’s distinctive founding, mythic history events are traced back to a single creator, God, and the historicizing features are more prominent because of the prevalence of genealogies, as we will see.55
The prevalence of genealogical lists in the Primeval History is one of the most important literary features of this portion of Genesis (4:17-24, 25-26; 5:1-32; 10:1-32; 11:10-26). We have related materials from other cultures of the ancient Near East, and yet none of the extrabiblical examples have precise parallels with the use of genealogies in Genesis 1-11, either in form or function. Most ancient Near Eastern genealogies are intended to establish a certain status for a political leader or official, whereas in the Primeval History genealogies are blended with narrative portions to move the reader forward in history56 The characters involved are not political leaders rooted in the past; rather, they are key figures in religious history highlighted for their failures as much as for their successes.
Anthropological explorations of the genealogies of Genesis have demonstrated the highly sophisticated way in which they function in the book.57 In general, Genesis has two types of genealogies: the “linear” or vertical genealogy, tracing a single line of descent, and the “segmented” or horizontal genealogy, which traces various descendants. Which of these two forms is used depends on its function in the text. In addition to these two forms, the genealogies of Genesis have three functions. First, by means of a process known as “divergence,” each patriarch of ancient Israel is the father of other children who are not part of the Israelite ancestry and who become the ancestors of other people groups in the ancient world. Through such a process of differentiation, Genesis explains how Israel related to other populations of the ancient world. Second, Israel’s lineage itself is traced through a straight line from Adam to Jacob in a process known as “invergence,” in which only one son continues the Israelite ancestry. This lineal descent gives way to twelve subunits in a single generation with the children of Jacob (Gen. 29:31-30:24, counting Dinah; the birth of Benjamin is recorded in 35:16-21), and from that point forward a third process, known as “segmentation,” becomes primary. With the children of Jacob, the genealogies of Genesis focus on the branches of the ancestral family, all considered within the covenant blessing of Israel’s ancestry. Thus the book traces through this system of genealogies a line of descent for all humanity through twenty-five generations from Adam to the children of Jacob, creating a literary framework or skeleton for the entire book.
Most anthropologists and historians working with genealogies emphasize their origins in the oral culture of tribal societies and their fluid nature in telescoping and reorganizing details of a given genealogy. They function to provide social identification for a person or people group, or to establish the legitimacy of individuals within certain groups, rather than to trace the history of those individuals or groups. They are fluid because they can be adapted to reflect changing realities of the social groups. Some argue that such fluidity makes genealogies fictitious and of no historical value. A more fitting approach is to recognize that genealogies are not intended as historiographical documents in the first place, although at times they can contain elements that have historical value.58 Their use in Genesis is more natural in the ancestral narratives (Gen. 12-36), and so it is possible that genealogies have been extended into the Primeval History in Genesis 1-11 as a means of overlaying formal literary continuity with those ancestral narratives and to provide unity for the book as a whole. In any case, the presence of genealogies in Genesis cannot simply preclude the possibility of historical value in these materials, any more than their presence can be taken as documented historical events.
The account of Noah and the great flood (Gen. 6:9-9:29) resembles similar accounts in the ancient world, especially in Babylonia, where we have remarkably close literary parallels in the famous Gilgamesh Epic.59 The similarities between the Genesis account of the flood and Gilgamesh are so exact, especially in the episode of the birds—the raven and the dove (Gen. 8:6-12)—that we must admit some literary dependence in either direction, although there is little agreement about which direction. It is therefore possible to argue that the story arose from a specific historical flood that took place in parts of southern Mesopotamia, perhaps as early as 2900 BCE.60 Yet the nature of the literary presentation is quite beyond anything like a verifiable historical account, so the characterization of these chapters as “proto-historical” seems most appropriate.61
World History
