Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Another item in our critical apparatus is this George. The agreement we see
that this statement is also in the Samaritan Pentateuch suggests this to
have been a confirmed part of the Torah at least before the split of the
kingdoms.

James Christian

On 14 May 2010 20:06, James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com> wrote:

> 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
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>
>