Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

Quoting K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>:

> Bill:
> You wrote:
>
> “If the literary structure they are supposed to copying had both title
> and author, it is curious that none of the Biblical formulas indicate an
> author.”
>
> This formula is found only in Genesis, and except for Genesis 2:4, it is
> followed by the author’s name. In Genesis 2:4, the implication is that God
> is the author.
>
> What confuses people is that
>
>    - the form is followed in all but Genesis 2:4, 6:9 and 37:2 by a list of
>    generations that lived after the author listed,
>    - those generations were of the author listed,
>    - the word has a secondary meaning of “generation” and used for that
>    meaning in Genesis,
>    - the division into chapters and verses did not take the formula into
>    account.

What 'confuses' me is that *all* of them can better be interpretted as  
headings for the following section rather than conclusions to the  
previous section.

> This is a formula that went out of use during the late early bronze age.

You still haven't provided any references that prove this.

> While I have yet to see a full explanation written down by another author,
> that after it was verbally mentioned to me I was able to recognize it in
> Genesis makes me think that this is a legitimate understanding of the
> formula.
>
> You wrote:
>
> “Its not particularly clear that these tolodoth formulas were intended to
> be titles. In their current structure, where they end a section, they
> aren't all that different in function to the concluding formulas in 2 Kings.
> For example 2 Kings 12:19
>
> 19: And the rest of the acts of Joash, and all that he did, are they
> not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?”
>
> This is exactly what I meant when I said that Kings and Chronicles used a
> different formula to indicate the sources from where they drew their
> information. Rather than weakening my argument, I think their use of a
> different formula strengthens it. But this use in Kings and Chronicles also
> indicates that Kings and Chronicles are condensations, i.e. that they
> utilized only part of the information then available and where the author
> possibly used his own words instead of that found in the original documents,
> not the full original documents, to make the final document that we
> presently have.

My understanding is that they picked out the bits of spiritual  
significance. The rest we don't care about, in the editor's mind, it's  
just secular history.

James Christian

> Karl W. Randolph.
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