Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

jim, firouz,

that the ancients used in-clan marriage, this is no surprise. even salmon fish
return to their original breeding place, across the ocean and up the river.
the few guarany villages along the brazilian coast do it too and the
grooms-to-be travel large distances (nowadays, by bus...) to marry girls 
from another village.

this is a necessary strategy for a small group within bigger groups of the
same species, in order to maintain its ethnic identity. recall laban's 
reply to jacob: i'd better give my daughter to you than to
another person (...since you are family).

that the ancients often married incestually (by today's criteria), is
also not a big surprise. this happens in all small and isolated human
societies, and part of the same strategy, as well as a necessity at times.

that jacob's suns did not go to aram to wed, this is also obvious because
supposedly jacob and laban quarreled and made a pact never to cross each
other's territory again (another biblical device to demarcate the 
territory?). 

so, they HAD to marry canaanite girls. therefore i do not see your ethnic
buildup theory as a fruit of choice but of circumstance. 

nevertheless i accept it as a POSSIBLE strategy by the biblical narrator to
establish territorial rights. this requires us to assume the narrator faked
the main facts.

but then i have a question: if so, why didnt the biblical source invent 
right away that abraham, isaac, jacob were eldest suns (biblically, 
none of them was)? this would be the perfect solution, wouldnt it?
but it was not done, so we must conclude that some element of truth 
pervades the story.

this leads me to the following conjecture: the order of sons of an ancestor
represents, primarily, the relative order of dominance/population of the
corresponding tribes at the time of recording the history. a possible 
reason for this might be to increase the credibility of the story, or to 
close lacunas in a fading story. i guess that such a conjecture could be
checked by looking at other cultures, and checked on the first chapters
of genesis and chronicles.

nir cohen

>>>>>>>De: JimStinehart AT aol.com
Para: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Data: Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:23:07 -0400 (EDT)
Assunto: [b-hebrew] Milcah vs. the "Daughters of Canaan"
...The reason why Isaac and Jacob must not marry “daughters of Canaan”,
whereas it’s perfectly fine for Judah and Simeon to do precisely that, makes
sense if and only if viewed from a tribal perspective...



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b-hebre