Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Friday 13 August 2004 17:19, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Yigal:
>
> Or does Genesis claim that it is based on previous sources?
>
> I can’t point to any written sources, but I have heard in lectures that
> there was an ancient literary style that went out of use about the same
> time as Joseph went down to Egypt. That literary style had the title and
> author at the end of the document, not at the beginning as is modern
> practice. The phrase which points to the end of the document is )LH TWLDWT
> “These are the bringing forth…” followed by the author and title. There is
> nothing to say that Jacob couldn’t have kept track of his brother and his
> brother’s descendents through grandsons and even some greatgrandsons,
> seeing as Jacob was 110 when he went to Egypt.

I saw a book years ago that said the same thing, based on where the cognate 
phrase appears in several Akkadian/Babylonian genealogy lists.  It seems that 
keeping such a list within the family was just SOP for the time...

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No good.  Hit on head."   -Gronk