Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Goldsmith
To: Biblical Hebrew
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 3:55 PM
Subject: RE: Iron and Bronze.


Yes. I'd thought of most of this already, but when do
you suppose this part of Genesis to have been written?
Was it during the so called iron-age or bronze?

Are we giving Genesis a date of formulation after
David etc? If so it may solve the problem, but if it
was composed during the bronze-age, how does iron get
into the equation?

----
We've been into most of this before on this list. Even a non-minimalist like
me can find plenty of evidence in Genesis placing it chronologically smack
into the middle of the Iron Age. Benjamin Mazar presented in JAOS in 1976(?)
his evidence for dating the Patriarchal Narratives no later than the
11th-12th centuries BCE - reprinted in Hebrew in his colection _From Canaan
to Israel_ as "The Historical Background to the Book of Genesis:.
The Table of Nations in Gen. 10 lists peoples that first appeared on the
stage of history in the 7th-6th century BCE (Ashkenaz=Scythians), but no
later than the mid-6th (no Persians). Redford in his study of the Joseph
Narrative (SVT 20) presents evidence for the Saitic dating of that story.
My own small contribution to dating Genesis appeared as "Ahuzzath and the
Pact of Beer-sheba" in ZAW in 1989, in which I identified Ahuzzath of Gen.
26 with the merhum-official mentioned in Mari. Such an official does not
appear in the lists of David's or Solomon's officials, perhaps placing that
narrative before the institution of kingship in Israel.
The battle rages on.
--------------
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl Post Office
44905 Israel

"sha'alu shelom yerushalayim yishlayu kol 'ohavayikh"