Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

On 18 May 2009 at 10:26, Bill Rea wrote:

> 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.

A very good point, and one of the reasons I won't go to the stake for the 
theory.  But I do 
think it has a certain amount of merit.  I haven't checked out the Babylonian 
tablets myself, 
but it's on my "to do" list.

Dave Washburn

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