Biblical Hebrew Forum

["uri hurwitz" <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

    Undoubedly, there are later elements in Genesis, reflected in the
final edition we have. The material was reworked and edited many times, of
course, but the view that it contains older elements cannot be dismissed
easily. Following are just a few examples: In external sources, the name
Jacob - appears in Mari, many times, in Hyksos king, as a toponym -- all
in MB or LB. The custom of marrying two sisters, as Jacob did, is strickly
forbidden later on. Religious worship is radically different from what we
find later; there are no ritual specialists, such as priests among the
Hebrews.

      On the Joseph story, I have a question for Jonathan: some time ago,
I saw a neat paper by an Israeli Egyptologist. She traced the development
of the Joseph story by reworking it twice from a Egyptian source, much
earlier than the Saitic period. I wonder if this rings a bell (it was in
some Heb. publication).

      As a counter measure to Redford, I strongly recommend Hoffmeier and
Kitchen, both Egyptologists, the latter being a preeminent authority on
the New Kingdom. Both, for instance place the Egyptian sojourn and exodus
in the NK.

     In general, I follow Malamat and consider early HB narratives as
Outline History (not exactly his term) in which real events can be
reconstructed in general terms, rather than in details: for instance, one
would deal with relative rather than absolute chronology, and so forth.

     Uri