Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

George,

you raise a number of issues:

1) Who gave who the authority to classify which parts of Greek literature?

2) When did I claim that the 'aetiology' in Genesis is from a legend?

3) What aspects of finding some hot springs in a desert to be typical of a
legendary epic of heroism?

There is nothing spectacular in the tale in itself. It's purpose is
evidently to help readers in some way identify with what is otherwise a dry,
dull and boring genealogy. The logical conclusion is that the author had
good reason to assume his readership were familiar with the tale of a guy
who found some hot springs in the desert not too far away from Seir. And so
the analytical question that remains is which group of people were most
likely to have been familiar with such a tail:

1: The returning Jews from Babylon?
2: The average temple goers of the first temple?
3: The Israelites of a rising Kingdom in Canaan?
4: A bunch of refugee nomads in the desert very close to said hot springs?

My opinion, not guided by faith but by common sense is that the likelihood
increases as you go down the list. You're welcome to disagree but you would
need to come up with some kind of plausible model that builds the foundation
of your reasoning.

In conclusion, this was either a very expert attempt at date forgery or a
good indicator of an early composition.

James Christian
T19:40, Stoney Breyer <stoneyb AT touchwoodcreative.com> wrote:

>
> * George -
> *
>
> >> James, I think you may be mixing the categories of myth and legend. A
> myth has absolutely no historical basis at all, even though it may be
> trying to explaining something very real. The Greek gods belong to this
> category. Legend, on the other hand, has an historical kernel around which
> an embellished tradition has accrued. The Greek heroes Heracles and
> Odysseus are probably just such 'legendary' figures.
>
> Without prejudice to your rejection of James' Euhemerism, I don't think the
> old myth/legend dichotomy is very useful: it speaks to the accidents of our
> historical knowledge, not to either the historical knowledge of the
> narrator and his audience or any other property of the narrative itself.
> The historical Charlemagne doesn't tell us much that's useful about the
> Chanson de Roland.
>
> And it opens some very iffy doors. You're willing to postulate a
> 'historical' (in some sense) Heracles and Odysseus; will you extend the
> same conjecture to Arthur or Gradlon? How about Siegfried? David and
> Solomon? Samuel? Joshua? Moses? Abraham? Noah?
>
> But it's always fun to watch the discussions of 'myth' and 'history'. I
> anticipate considerable heat and maybe a little light, along the lines of
> Edmund Kean's Lear - "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning."
>
> Stoney Breyer
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>