Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter Mattfeld" <mattfeld AT mail.pjsnet.com>]

In regards to Genesis, we can only speculate as to whether it was really
created in the 15th century BCE as it claims, and that later generations
updated the text with later additions.  It is also just as possible that the
text was written "at one go" in the 5th century BCE and is not a later
editing of an ancient history. That is not to say the contents were all
dreamed up from nothing in the fifth century, the author would have had
access to pre-exilic myths, stories, royal annals, etc. to compose his
history from. Whybray made this proposal some years ago.

As pointed out earlier, the big mistake is to study Genesis in isolation
from the greater composition of which it is apart, which ends in 560 BCE (2
Ki.25:27). The end dates the beginning. I note that modern Classical
scholars have concluded that the earliest histories in prose form for the
Greeks is the middle of the 6th century BCE. This date fits nicely with
Genesis-2 Kings as a "prose" history dated to the same middle of the 6th
century BCE (560-550 BCE).


All the best,

Walter Reinhold warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany