Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

Dear Ian,
We haven't really got any further with this discussion than we were in the
early 1970s (see my Historicity, p. 303-308). It might help if we try to
sharpen our questions a little, if we hope to understand some of the
difficulties involved in chronology. 1) that the table of nations has 'been
finalised' in Genesis is more than is apparent. The existence of a variant
geography of nations in Jubilees suggests that we should ask whether this
table isn't perhaps 'finalised' in Jubilees? Or is Jubilees a potential
source for Genesis?
2) That Canaan is not only displaced to Africa in both Genesis and Jubilees,
and that both texts seem aware of this displacement suggests to me at least
that both Genesis and Jubilees are secondary texts drawing from a tradition
of narrative geography, if not of a prior variant of this particular work.
3) exilic is not a date: early or late. As I have argued elsewhere, we have
reasons to believe traditions of 'exile' and 'after exile' are potentially
at play within this cultural world from as early as the late eigth century
BCE to the common era.
4) What are we dating: the earliest known references to concepts such as Ur
Kasdim? the clustering of such concepts in geographical histories? the
latest of such terms (and thus an a quo for this particular geographical
construction? The text as we now have it within the massoretic tradition?
All these questions are both answerable and debatable, but they should not
be confused.
5) dating 'the reference to Ur, etc.' itself implies that we are dating a
specific literary form of the tradition' and not 'Ur of the Chaldees'.
Darting Genesis or part of it is quite different from dating its contents.

Thomas
Thomas L. Thompson
Professor, University of Copenhagen

Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>  Further, we've established that
> the table of nations must have been finalised rather late because of the
> wide range datable information contained therein. If it is late, ie after
> the exile, then there is no solid reason to believe that the reference to
> Ur of the Chaldeans is not also post-exilic.
> 
> 
>