Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
"One of the questions I ask concerning the genealogies is the problem of
textual transmission. Where they differ, where, when and how did the
differences creep in (that's assuming a common, written source)?"


If you mean the differences between the genealogies in Genesis, Exodus and
Numbers and their "parallels" in Chr. (as far as they go) - we really know
very little about the state of the manuscripts of the Torah that were around
during the 5-3 centuries BCE. When was what we call the Torah "put
together". Did the Chronicler have a canonical Torah, or just copies of
individual books. From the LXX and the DDS, we know that there were variant
texts - maybe the Chronicler represents another tradition? This would
explain variations is spelling or in the positions of names.

As far as the rest of the material, if you've read my article you'll know
that I think that he had some documents, perhaps from the Temple, that
recorded things like the priestly lines and the Davidic family. I also think
that he had old census records. Beyond that, I thing that the genealogies
reflect the relationships between the various clans in his own time more
than anything else.


"It's obvious that the genealogies preserved in Tanakh mention only the most
important people, the founders of clans and tribal leaders, but was that
also true of the genealogies used to compile those in Tanakh? Is it not true
that at least some of those were kept in the temple until their destruction
under Titus? I had heard from a historian that that was the case, but was
that only a second Temple practice? Is it possible the prior to the second
Temple, the written genealogies were kept with each tribe, and some tribes
lost their genealogies when they were conquered? Are there any historical
references, or are we just guessing?"

Mostly just guessing. In any case, I don't believe that there were
genealogical records in the temple, except for Temple personnel. As far as
genealogies being kept "with each tribe", what's that? What do we know of
tribal leadership under the monarchy? Was there such a thing?



"The breadth and depth of the genealogies suggests more than just oral
transmission, as seen in modern examples studied by anthropologists"

Very true. The Chronicler used what was an oral genre that would have been
familiar to his readers, and developed it into a written opus.

"but what are the historical references concerning the genealogies? They are
simply listed in Tanakh."


I don't really understand the question.


Yigal