Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz>]

Dave wrote:

> The approach deals with much more than just title and author.  To get the 
> full
> idea one 
> needs to check out P. J. Wiseman, "New Discoveries in Babylonia About 
> Genesis"
> (London: 
> Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1946) where the idea was first presented in a more
> or less full 
> form.  There's a summary of the whole approach at
> 
> http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/genesis.htm
> 
> The lectures Karl remembers were probably based on Wiseman's work.  I read 
> the
> book in 
> the early 80's and it made a lot of sense.  Your reduction of it to nothing
> more than a 
> colophon of title and author doesn't do it any kind of justice.

Thanks for posting this. It was the type of thing I was asking for. It seems
to me that the supporters of reading the tolodoth formulas as ending a
section are banging a round peg through a square hole. I followed through
some of the so-called ``tablets'' on that web site and these formulas more
naturally open the next ``tablet'' or section rather than close the previous
one. One rather curious feature is that the end of Genesis does not have one
of these tolodoth formulas. Given that the texts of Genesis and Exodus would
have us understand there was a very long period of time between these events
the lack of a title and author for the last section is quite strange.


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