Karl,
Nowhere does the Genesis "claim" to be "accurate history", at least not in
the modern sense of the word, that is, a factual reconstruction of events
based, as much as possible, on critical evaluation of as many sources as
possible. Or, I'll put it another way - where do Gilgamesh or Kirtu NOT
claim to be "accurate history"? In what way is Genesis different? The
ancient simply did not have the same conception of "history" that we have.
Ask yourself, where would the Israelite writer have even gotten a list of
the descendants of Esau to the third and fourth generation - including
people who do not seem to have been particularly prominent in themselves? ...
... If
you assume, as Shoshanna does, that the Torah as we know it was given by God
to Moses directly, than no problems. As a scholar, I can not accept that as
a solution. So either he, or the tradition that he was following, "invented"
the list. Out of the blue? No. He used the traditions available to him (that
we now have no way to trace) and created the genealogy in order to connect
the tribes that he knew of that lived in the area, which he pictured as
being "Edomite" territory. Why do I think this. Because that's how
genealogies are used in tribal societies.
Is it possible that Esau had a grandson named "Amalek", whose name had
nothing to do with the tribe that lived in the same general area as did
Esau's descendants? Anything is possible, but not very likely. And if he
did, why would the author of Genesis bother to tell us about it?
Do you agree that Gen. 10 is a literary description of the relationships
between the nations of the world (as the author knew them)? Or did Japheth
just happen to have sons whose names were the same as several non-Semitic
nations, all on the northern periphery of the biblical world, and did his
son Yavan ("Greece") just happen to have sons named Cyprus, Crete and
Rhodes? If you see this, what makes Gen. 36 any different besides the scale?
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