Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi,

Quoting dwashbur AT nyx.net:

> Just a few comments:
>
> On 17 May 2009 at 10:12, James Read wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > The second issue which you keep sidestepping and not dealing with
> > directly is the use of the name and title 'Yhwh God' which we do not
> > find in Genesis 1:1-2:3 but is typical of the language of the author
> > of Genesis 2:4 onwards. Do you intend to even acknowledge this at some
> > point?
>
> He acknowledges it, but like me, he doesn't consider it significant.  
>   I find the whole JEP
> thing unconvincing, and to deal with a theory such as this one based  
>  on it is nothing but
> presupposition.

Just so we're absolutely clear here. I don't buy into the whole JEP  
thing either. That's not what I'm saying at all. However, we have to  
recognise that there is a shift in style from Genesis 1:1-2:3 to  
Genesis 2:4 onwards and that shift in style can be characterised by  
the use of 'Yhwh God'. This sudden shift in style does not sit well  
with the colophon theory independently of whether someone goes for the  
JEP thing, which, I cannot stress enough, I don't either.

> [snip]
> > > Read that section again: it starts and ends with Joseph, and in   
> > the middle,
> > > with a couple of minor exceptions, is about Joseph´s life in Egypt, his
> > > father´s reaction to his "death", how he dealt with his brothers as told
> > > from Joseph´s viewpoint, etc. That Israel ended up in Egypt is only
> > > incidental to the story.
> > >
> >
> > Read it again. It starts with Isreal and his family not in Egypt and
> > in a land where they would have died through famine. It ends with
> > Isreal and his family in Egypt, eating as much as they like, with
> > their own land and very much in a privileged position.
>
> No, Karl is correct here.  You're reading it in light of subsequent   
> events in Exodus.  But if
> you read it strictly from the POV of the Genesis material it's about  
>  Joseph, not the location
> of his family.

I'm sorry but I'm not. Even the internal evidence shows that this  
story is about much more than just being about Joseph. If it was just  
about Joseph then let's sod his 11 brother and let starve in Canaan  
and have Joseph living happily ever after being best buddies with 'The  
Man'.


> > >> The promised 'seed' is not through his lineage but through   
> > Judah's lineage.
> > >
> > >
> > > That is irrelevant to the story, as presented in Genesis.
> > >
> >
> > I'm sorry but this is extremely relevant. The story of each and every
> > patriarch climaxes with which of his sons is to receive the blessing
> > and, therefore, in whose line we are to wait for the 'seed'. The whole
> > point about Eve being given Seth in Abel's place is for who the seed
> > would be born through. Eve is mentioned as having unnamed sons and
> > daughters but it does not concern us what they are called because the
> > whole account serves to track the seed.
>
> Wrong again, James.  Once again you're reading it in light of   
> subsequent materials as well
> as theological assumption.  That's not an appropriate way to read it  
>  for determining things
> like authorship or the validity of this colophon hypothesis.

Yeah, I was in two minds whether to mention the Seth thing or not. But  
in the end decided to include it because it simply cannot be ignored.  
Eve is described by the author as having sons and daughters. Why are  
none of them named other than Seth? So, at this point you either have  
to accept one of two things

a) the original author felt it was necessary to include
b) a later redactor (e.g Moses) added it because he felt it was necessary

Also, I don't rightly think that I can be accused of reading the  
recurrent theme of promises into the text from later accounts because  
I distinctly remember noticing this as I was reading Genesis for the  
first time i.e. before I had read Exodus etc.


> [snip]
> > > Where do you get this thing about the original intention? And what´s this
> > > about "focus"? Again this does not sound like Genesis as written.
> > >
> >
> > I'm sure you've read Genesis many times so I'm not going to go away
> > and get the references for you. But I'm sure you have noticed that
> > throughout Genesis there is this recurring theme of promises regarding
> > the seed and which partiarch gets the blessing concerning the seed
> > from his father. For Isaac and Jacob this is made more obvious and we
> > are left in no doubt. Having seen this pattern in Genesis when reading
> > it for the first time I was expecting Joseph to be the one to receive
> > the blessing and the promise about the seed. I was shocked to find
> > that he wasn't and that it was, in fact, Judah that received the
> > prophetic blessing. Granted, this is not as entirely obvious as with
> > Isaac and with Jacob. This is because Isreal is to become one united
> > nation with no further immediate refinements. The split between Judah
> > and the northern kingdom was to come much much later.
>
> No, this is not a recurring theme *in Genesis*.  It becomes a theme   
> later, but again, that
> doesn't help us when we look at Genesis by itself to try and   
> determine sources, authors and
> all that, unless one is predisposed to the whole JE business.  The   
> fact is, if this theory has
> merit, then it contradicts, not to say negates, the JE idea.  Once   
> again, I won't go to the wall
> for this idea, but to simply write it off because it doesn't fit   
> another theory is not a legitimate
> approach.

I'm sorry but it is. I thought I could rely on people's memory of  
reading Genesis and not have to go away and dig them all out (there  
are so many of them) but there doesn't seem to be any other option now.

Genesis 3:15

And I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed  
and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him  
in the heel.

Genesis 4:25

And Adam proceeded to have intercourse again with his wife and so she  
gave birth to a son and called his name Seth, because, as she said:  
?God has appointed another seed in place of Abel, because Cain killed  
him.

Notice how Eve calls Seth her 'seed in place of Abel'

Genesis 5:4

And the days of Adam after his fathering Seth came to be eight hundred  
years. Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters

Then notice how Adam is the father of 'sons and daughters' but we only  
seem to care about Seth's lineage to Noah.

Genesis 6:18

And I do establish my covenant with you

Yhwh makes a deal with Noah.

Then lo and behold guess what happens. Ham, the father of the nation  
of Canaan, get's in a spot of bother and consequently Shem gets a  
blessing

Genesis 9:26

Blessed be Jehovah, Shem?s God,
And let Ca´naan become a slave to him

Even Japheth, who apparently didn't do anything wrong doesn't get as  
good a blessing:

Genesis 9:27

Let God grant ample space to Ja´pheth,
And let him reside in the tents of Shem.
Let Ca´naan become a slave to him also

And then by a massive stroke of coincidence, after receiving this  
blessing, we get a quick summary of the nations the brother's fathered  
and then onto what Shem's descendants did. We get a story about why  
everybody speaks different languages and a quick summary of uneventful  
descendants of Shem until we get to Abraham. And then:

Genesis 12:1-3

Go your way out of your country and from your relatives and from the  
house of your father to the country that I shall show you;  and I  
shall make a great nation out of you and I shall bless you and I will  
make your name great; and prove yourself a blessing.  And I will bless  
those who bless you, and him that calls down evil upon you I shall  
curse, and all the families of the ground will certainly bless  
themselves by means of you

Genesis 13:14-17

Raise your eyes, please, and look from the place where you are,  
northward and southward and eastward and westward,  because all the  
land at which you are looking, to you and to your seed I am going to  
give it until time indefinite.  And I will constitute your seed like  
the dust particles of the earth, so that, if a man could be able to  
count the dust particles of the earth, then your seed could be  
numbered.  Get up, go about in the land through its length and through  
its breadth, because to you I am going to give it.

Genesis 15:5

He now brought him outside and said: ?Look up, please, to the heavens  
and count the stars, if you are possibly able to count them.? And he  
went on to say to him: ?So your seed will become.?

Genesis 15:13-16

You may know for sure that your seed will become an alien resident in  
a land not theirs, and they will have to serve them, and these will  
certainly afflict them for four hundred years.  But the nation that  
they will serve I am judging, and after that they will go out with  
many goods.  As for you, you will go to your forefathers in peace; you  
will be buried at a good old age.  But in the fourth generation they  
will return here, because the error of the Am´or·ites has not yet come  
to completion.

Genesis 15:18

To your seed I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the  
great river, the river Eu·phra´tes

Genesis 17:7,8

And I will carry out my covenant between me and you and your seed  
after you according to their generations for a covenant to time  
indefinite, to prove myself God to you and to your seed after you. And  
I will give to you and to your seed after you the land of your alien  
residences, even the entire land of Ca´naan, for a possession to time  
indefinite; and I will prove myself God to them

Genesis 17:15,16

As for Sar´ai your wife, you must not call her name Sar´ai, because  
Sarah is her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son from  
her; and I will bless her and she shall become nations; kings of  
peoples will come from her.

Genesis 17:19

Sarah your wife is indeed bearing you a son, and you must call his  
name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him for a covenant  
to time indefinite to his seed after him

And after testing Abraham's faith:

Genesis 22:16-18

By myself I do swear,? is the utterance of Jehovah, ?that by reason of  
the fact that you have done this thing and you have not withheld your  
son, your only one, 17 I shall surely bless you and I shall surely  
multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens and like the grains  
of sand that are on the seashore; and your seed will take possession  
of the gate of his enemies. 18 And by means of your seed all nations  
of the earth will certainly bless themselves due to the fact that you  
have listened to my voice.

Then after Isaac gets everything we get a quick summary of Ishmael's  
lineage and then back on track with Isaac's.

Genesis 27:28,29

See, the scent of my son is like the scent of the field which Jehovah  
has blessed. 28 And may the [true] God give you the dews of the  
heavens and the fertile soils of the earth and an abundance of grain  
and new wine. 29 Let peoples serve you and let national groups bow low  
to you. Become master over your brothers, and let the sons of your  
mother bow low to you. Cursed be each one of those cursing you, and  
blessed be each one of those blessing you.?

Jacob gets the lion's share of the blessing blessing.

Genesis 28:13-15

I am Jehovah the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The  
land upon which you are lying, to you I am going to give it and to  
your seed.  And your seed will certainly become like the dust  
particles of the earth, and you will certainly spread abroad to the  
west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and by means  
of you and by means of your seed all the families of the ground will  
certainly bless themselves.  And here I am with you and I will keep  
you in all the way you are going and I will return you to this ground,  
because I am not going to leave you until I have actually done what I  
have spoken to you

Jacob gets the blessing Yhwh spoke to Abraham.

Probably missed a few more but doing this in a rush. Then when all  
Jacob's kids have been born and had a chance to grow up a bit we move  
on to the story of Joseph. The whole family ends up in Egypt and then,  
in usual Genesis style, everybody gets a blessing:

Genesis 49
?Reu´ben, you are my firstborn, my vigor and the beginning of my  
generative power, the excellence of dignity and the excellence of  
strength. With reckless license like waters, do not you excel, because  
you have gone up to your father?s bed. At that time you profaned my  
lounge. He went up to it!
?Sim´e·on and Le´vi are brothers. Instruments of violence are their  
slaughter weapons. Into their intimate group do not come, O my soul.  
With their congregation do not become united, O my disposition,  
because in their anger they killed men, and in their arbitrariness  
they hamstrung bulls. Cursed be their anger, because it is cruel, and  
their fury, because it acts harshly. Let me parcel them out in Jacob  
and let me scatter them in Israel. ?As for you, Judah, your brothers  
will laud you. Your hand will be on the back of the neck of your  
enemies. The sons of your father will prostrate themselves to you. A  
lion cub Judah is. From the prey, my son, you will certainly go up. He  
bowed down, he stretched himself out like a lion and, like a lion, who  
dares rouse him?  The scepter will not turn aside from Judah, neither  
the commander?s staff from between his feet, until Shi´loh comes; and  
to him the obedience of the peoples will belong.  Tying his full-grown  
ass to a vine and the descendant of his own she-ass to a choice vine,  
he will certainly wash his clothing in wine and his garment in the  
blood of grapes.  Dark red are his eyes from wine, and the whiteness  
of his teeth is from milk.
 ?Zeb´u·lun will reside by the seashore, and he will be by the shore  
where the ships lie anchored; and his remote side will be toward Si´don.
 ?Is´sa·char is a strong-boned ass, lying down between the two  
saddlebags.  And he will see that the resting-place is good and that  
the land is pleasant; and he will bend down his shoulder to bear  
burdens and he will become subject to slavish forced labor.
?Dan will judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Let Dan  
prove to be a serpent by the roadside, a horned snake at the wayside,  
that bites the heels of the horse so that its rider falls backward. I  
shall indeed wait for salvation from you, O Jehovah.
?As for Gad, a marauder band will raid him, but he will raid the extreme rear.
?Out of Ash´er his bread will be fat, and he will give the dainties of a king.
?Naph´ta·li is a slender hind. He is giving words of elegance.
?Offshoot of a fruit-bearing tree, Joseph is the offshoot of a  
fruit-bearing tree by the fountain, that propels its branches up over  
a wall. But the archers kept harassing him and shot at him and kept  
harboring animosity against him. And yet his bow was dwelling in a  
permanent place, and the strength of his hands was supple. From the  
hands of the powerful one of Jacob, from there is the shepherd, the  
stone of Israel.  He is from the God of your father, and he will help  
you; and he is with the Almighty, and he will bless you with the  
blessings of the heavens above, with the blessings of the watery deep  
lying down below, with the blessings of the breasts and womb. The  
blessings of your father will indeed be superior to the blessings of  
the eternal mountains, to the ornament of the indefinitely lasting  
hills. They will continue upon the head of Joseph, even upon the crown  
of the head of the one singled out from his brothers.
 ?Benjamin will keep on tearing like a wolf. In the morning he will  
eat the animal seized and at evening he will divide spoil.?


Doesn't that strike supporters of the 'this is a story about Joseph'  
as just a little odd. Joseph is the hero of the day but according to  
his fathers blessing he will bow down to Judah who will hold the  
scepter just like the rest of the brothers.

Now, in the face of the evidence how can it still be said tracking who  
receives what blessing is something I'm reading into the text. It is  
so pervasive in the entire book that I might as well have cut and  
paste the entire book of Genesis in fear of missing one of them out.

> [snip]
> > > I´m sorry, I don´t mean to be rude or disrespectful, but this last section
> > > sounds like a bunch of theological gobbilygook of the sort I have  
> >  learned to
> > > distrust and reject. It looks as if you are imposing an   
> > overarching theme of
> > > which I see no evidence from the text itself. In short, your objections
> > > sound like eisegesis,  not exegesis.
> > >
> >
> > No worries. I didn't interpret anything you said as rude or
> > disrespectful. I can see where you are coming from even if your theory
> > does present lots of problems which you still haven't addressed.
> >
> > One observation I will make though. My understanding of eisegesis is
> > that when you are doing it you are 'reading things *into* the text'
> > e.g. reading a colophon into the text because you have seen other
> > ancient documents do this and are convinced that this must also be the
> > case for the document in question
> >
> > Likewise, my understanding of exegesis is that when you are doing it
> > you are 'reading things *out of* the text' e.g. observing that each
> > individual narrative climaxes with the blessings and which son will
> > get the dominant blessing, be the carrier of the covenant for his seed
> > to become many and inherit the land flowing with milk and honey
>
> No.  Eisegesis is reading things in that aren't there, such as this   
> whole "promised seed"
> business that is anything but prominent in Genesis, and is only   
> really seen later on.  After
> some subsequent events, narratives and interpretations, it's   
> possible (though not
> necessary) to see hints of it in Genesis, but it's not a prominent   
> theme in Genesis when
> Genesis is read on its own.  Hence, pulling that out and making it a  
>  prominent or
> overarching theme is eisegesis.  Exegesis is reading what's there   
> and sorting it out, such as
> looking at the structure of a certain narrative and recognizing that  
>  it strongly resembles
> some other ancient documents.  This is how genre criticism has been   
> done for ages.  Now
> all of a sudden it's eisegesis.  Fascinating.

I think what the Genre critics would be doing here would be taking  
most of these blessings out of the text theorising that they reflected  
a foreknowledge of what was to come or being alterations made by the  
Isrealites to prove that they are God's people and therefore couldn't  
possibly have been part of the original. That's their usual trick,  
anyway.

James Christian

> Dave Washburn
>
> Ibuprofen, Hebuprofen, Shebuprofen, Theybuprofen, wouldn't you like   
> to be a profen too?
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