Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Gods versus humans doesn't really work. The Iliad and the Odyssey are both
full of humans and gods. The gods meddle with human affairs. We then have to
sift through each sentence saying 'myth', 'legend','legend','myth','myth and
legend together' as we classify each and every utterance.

Anyway, this is all getting quite far from the original discussion. Later
classifications of text are irrelevant and trying to force an account into a
category doesn't really help or say anything about the age of the account in
genesis.

In any case Genesis doesn't say "this was the guy who shot lightening bolts
from his a**e and slayed the golden dragon and the 5 headed mander beast
from hell" it says "this was the guy who found some hot springs in the
desert while looking after his dad's herd". Nothing strikes me as either
mythical or legendary in any sense of the words in this story. Trying to
force the story into either category adds nothing of any benefit to an
analysis which is trying to attempt to age the text. We have a fairly good
idea of the readership of the Torah over a long period of time and so the
logical question to ask is which group of people were most likely to have
been familiar the spectacularly unspectacular story of the bloke from the
mountains of Seir who found some hot springs in the desert while looking
after his dad's flocks.

Of all the categories of readerships throughout the timeline of the
Israelites the most likely target readership of this statement is the one
that is most likely to have been familiar with such a story. i.e. the one
that lived in the desert where the hot springs were found.

Why would captives in Babylon be familiar with such an unspectacular story?
Why would temple going Jews from Jerusalem be familiar with such a story?
Why would battling nomads hoping to gain a fertile land for themselves be
familiar with such a story?(now a little more likely)
Why would guys who lived in the same desert as the hot springs were found in
be familiar with such a story?(likelihood is now hitting the roof)

Conclusion. Either this a very very good forgery to make the Torah appear
more ancient or this is a genuine hallmark of the Torah's age (or at least
this particular section of the Torah). Does anyone have any good reasons for
disagreeing?

James Christian

On 15 May 2010 01:19, Stoney Breyer <stoneyb AT touchwoodcreative.com> wrote:

>
>
> >>My understanding of the difference was "gods" vs "humans." That is, if
> the story concerned humans and human events, it was legend; if it
> concerned the gods or prehistorical events, then it was myth. This is
> very close to Stoney's definition.
>
> Yah. Actors/scene/time cohere. Though as Frye pointed out, it's not so much
> definition as identification of points on a continuum.
>
> Stoney Breyer
>
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