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b-hebrew - Re[2]: burial (was Life after Death)

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org
  • To: mc2499 AT mclink.it, b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[2]: burial (was Life after Death)
  • Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1999 12:56 -0500 (EST)


Dear Ian,

How, then, would you explain the accurate reflection of early 2nd
millennium Egyptian customs in the text of Genesis? I know that you
wrote:

"It is probably wisest not to make any speculative hypotheses
regarding Egyptian connections based on the biblical literature for
there is just no way of knowing the historical context in which most
of it was written or rewritten."

But why do you say this? Is it perhaps because such hypotheses would
support the position that you have rejected, that Genesis (or at least
its source) is a genuine early 2nd millennium document?

As for preservation, I understand your difficulty. But how about this
scenario: a text of (proto-)Genesis was preserved at the Egyptian
court from Joseph's time, as the record of his family, and was found
by Moses when he, as an Egyptian courtier, was showing interest in his
own people (Exodus 2:11), and later taken by him into the desert,
perhaps transcribed into Canaanite characters, and then preserved
along with the Tabernacle and written records of the Law - where they
could have remained for centuries, until the period of the monarchy.

By the way, why are people in villages unable to maintain written
records?

All of this is of course very speculative, but it is one possible
mechanism for the preservation of such a text. I know this mechanism
doesn't tie up with my earlier suggestion that we have Joseph's actual
Hebrew words recorded, but no-one seems to have picked up on the
obvious objection that any untidy grammar he might have used would
have been tidied up by later scribes.

Peter Kirk






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