Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley100 AT gmail.com>]

There is always the possibility that the incident is remembered as part of a
longer story about which we have no details.  We don't know if this fragment
is the whole story, or if the whole story contains fantastic elements or
not.  It *may* be part of a story explaining how local landmarks got their
name, it *may* be part of a story where gods and demons abound, or it *may*
be a boring recollection from a few weeks ago.  We do not know what happened
before or after the finding of the hot springs.  We do not have any way of
knowing why this incident is remembered, so, as is often the case, most of
us will understand it in line with however we understand Scripture to have
been written or to function.  I don't see that, as it stands, it says
anything about the age of this part of Scripture unless we make assumptions
not based on the text.

Kevin Riley

On 15 May 2010 17:36, James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com> wrote:

> 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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