Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>]

I wasn't attempting to make fantastic lifespans "believable" by pointing out 
that the Hebrew tradition that is presumably behind the LXX figures in Gen 11 
"looks" more credible than the outcome with the figures we see in the MT. The 
historical accuracy game is a game I'd rather not play. What I'm saying is 
something along the lines of Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 
1981, i.e. that there is here in this LXX tradition a more credible view of 
the past conveyed by the narrator (= usually the author of the final form of 
the text). Whether that tradition actually reflects reality is irrelevant to 
a literary-critical approach: it is enough to recognize that the biblical 
writers believed in the stories they told. That's why we have them.

Tory Thorpe

P.S. I thought bible-believing evangelic Christians did not question the data 
in Genesis?