Catholic Apologetics International
For those biblical scholars who have had the unfortunate experience of having the JEPD theory of the Documentary Hypothesis jammed down their throats the past forty years in Catholic biblical scholarship, and as long since the time of Julius Wellhausen in the late 1800s, this will be a real treat. This article will show what an absolute sham Catholic biblical scholarship has been since the 1960s; how innocent Catholics have been deceived by these pseudo-scholars; and why Catholic students all over the world have lost the faith. After you read this article, if you own Raymond Brown's "New Jerome Biblical Commentary," it may come in handy this winter when you need kindling for the fireplace. I hear that liberal biblical scholarship burns especially well. I can just hear those pages crackling now!
For those who are not biblical scholars, "JEPD" refers to the theory of modern liberal scholars positing that the the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) were not written or complied by Moses (as the Bible claims) but by a series of unknown authors separated by many hundreds of years. For example, the Documentary Hypothesis claims that Genesis 2 was written long before Genesis 1, the latter being written between 587-517 BC just before the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon. In the scheme of the J-E-P-D hypothesis, Genesis 1 was a "P" (Priestly) document. Why? Because, we are told, the Jews needed a refresher course on their divine heritage and there was no better place to start than with a wonderful creation story in order to get everyone excited about their return trip to Jerusalem. In other words, the "priest" or his trusty scribe who wrote Genesis 1 was basically making up a fairy tale for the delight of those returning captives.
All this hypothesizing comes under the name of "Catholic biblical scholarship," but it is nothing more than an attempt to discredit the Bible. If the Bible is a product of men, then it is prone to mistakes, and that is why these same "biblical scholars" teach that the Bible cannot be trusted when it gives historical information, or if a certain book claims to be written by a certain author. If you've had enough of this intellectual garbage, you will find the following paper to be very refreshing. If it were possible, his paper should be at the head of every Bible issued today, to make up for the fabrications perpetrated on the public by the fantasies of Julius Wellhausen and company for the past hundred and fifty years. For your convenience, I will underline what I believe are the more important points of the essay.
Robert A. Sungenis, M.A.
The "Toledoths" of Genesis
By Damien F. Mackey
This article is all about the true structure of the Book of Genesis; a structure that is so simple and straightforward - as the reader is going to discover - that even a child would have no trouble understanding it in its basic form. The chief credit for having laid bare this structure in all its profound simplicity belongs to the British scholar, P. J. Wiseman(1), upon whose thesis the following article will be based.
Introduction
As the brilliant Australian philosopher Gavin Ardley(2) pointed out, there are two ways of going about the process of analysing or dissecting something, depending on one's purpose. Ardley well illustrated his point by comparing the practices of the anatomist and the butcher. When an anatomist dissects an animal, he traces out the real structure of the animal; he lays bare the veins, the nerves, the muscles, the organs, and so on. "He reveals the actual structure which is there before him waiting to be made manifest"(3). The butcher, on the other hand, is not concerned about the natural structure of the animal as he chops it up; he wants to cut up the carcase into joints suitable for domestic purposes.
In his activities the butcher ruthlessly cleaves across the real structure laid bare so patiently by the anatomist. "The anatomist finds his structure, the butcher makes his"(4).
The same sort of analogy may be applied, I believe, to the different methods that have been employed to analyse the structure of the Book of Genesis. Here I am only going to contrast the archaeologically-based approach, as used by P. J. Wiseman and others(5) (which method, I believe, resembles that of the anatomist in Ardley's example), with the Graf-Wellhausen approach (that to my mind approximates to the activities of the butcher).
Astruc's Theory
It was really Jean Astruc (d. 1766) who invented the theory of separate documents, based on the Divine names used. The French physician found that in the first 35 verses of Genesis (chapters 1-24a), the word 'Elohim', "God", was used, and no other Divine name; while in chapters 2:4b to 3:24, the only designation given is 'Jehovah Elohim', "Lord God" - except where Satan uses the word God.
Astruc claimed that the passages must have been written by different writers; for if Moses himself had written the whole of it, first-hand, then we should have to attribute to him this singular variation, in patches, of the Divine name.
This was really the beginning of the documentist dissection, into fragments, of the Book of Genesis. By the middle of the 19th century, owing largely to the efforts of the German critics K. H. Graf (d. 1869) and Julius Wellhausen (d. 1918), liberal scholarship had, to its own satisfaction, isolated four main Pentateuchal sources: J-E-D-P.
Thus it was alleged that a writer who used 'Elohim' was the author of a so-called E document, and the writer who used 'Jehovah' was the author of "J"(6). But since some verses that were obviously written by the same person contained both names for God, an editor had to be introduced, then a "redactor". A Deuteronomist source, "D," was identified(7). After a century of conjectures and further redactors, it was decided that a further document, "P" (Priestly) had been written nearly 1,000 years after Moses, and so on ....
In this way Genesis has been reduced to a series of confused fragments and authors, in order to account for the way in which the name of God is used in the book. The fourfold sigla, JEDP, of Graf-Wellhausen is now dogmatically retained (though in modified form) in academic institutions the world over. Nonetheless, the critical scholars have to admit that their literary expedients break, not only the logical, but also the grammatical sequence of the passages. As Wiseman commented(8): "It is confusion confounded!"
Really, since what was formerly known as the "Documentary Hypothesis" had its inception based upon an unrealistic premise: the presumption that a single author would not be likely to use more than one name to designate God, it does not come as a surprise to discover that the modern end-product of such a line of reasoning is a totally artificial form of analysis; a butcher-like activity, ruthlessly cleaving across the natural structure of the scriptural texts - so chopping and hewing them into fragments that their original form and shape are no longer recognisable. Wellhausen himself had in fact acknowledged that the result of all of this dissecting was "an agglomeration of fragments"(9). Despite this, his History of Israel (1878) "gave him a place in Biblical studies comparable, it was said, to that of Darwin in biology."(10)
The Archaeological Approach
Because of the newness of the science of archaeology - a science that is only about 150 years old - we can say that from an archaeological/historical point of view the study of Scripture is still in its infancy. Pre-archaeological theories, such as those advanced by the 19th century documentists, suffer from an almost total ignorance of the methods and styles of the ancient scribes, since these really became known only in our present century, after the vast libraries of the ancient world had been excavated and their data slowly and painstakingly sifted by modern sholars.
The modern awareness of ancient scribal methods would serve to show up with embarrassing starkness the numerous defects in the old "Documentary Hypothesis".
P.J. Wiseman, on the other hand, was fortunate to have had the opportunity of participating in some of the most important archaeological digs that took place in Mesopotamia midway through this present century; for example, that of Sir Leonard Woolley at the site of Ur, and of Professor S. Langdon at Kish. Wiseman had many discussions about ancient writing methods and related subjects with these and other scholars (most notably, Professor Cyril Gadd).
In the light of all of this first-hand evidence and expertise that had become available to him, Wiseman found himself perfectly equipped to re-examine the structure and authorship of the Book of Genesis. He discovered that the book's structure was really quite straightforward, and was completely explained by the facts of archaeology. In true anatomist fashion - according to Ardley's analogy - Wiseman was able to lay bare the real structure of the Book of Genesis, and thereby scientifically to expose, by stark contrast, just what an unholy mess the JEDP dissecters were leaving behind them. In fact, nowhere do the clumsy techniques of the documentists show up so embarrassingly as when contrasted against the light of Wiseman's patient uncovering of the real structure of the Genesis texts.
Wiseman had at least been prepared to concede on behalf of the early documentists, as an excuse for their radical fragmenting of the texts, that they had not been in a position to compare the literary form and structure of Genesis with other ancient methods of writing, that would have enabled them to have read Genesis in the light of the times and circumstances in which it was written. But, in the case of contemporary exegetes, he considered that:
"... it cannot be regarded as other than serious that notwithstanding archaeological discoveries, many still read Genesis not as ancient, but as though it had been written in relatively modern times."(11)
The mistake had been made, he said, despite the very obvious fact that the Genesis narrative itself "is constructed in a most antique manner by use of a framework of repeated phrases."(12) These phrases, that form the skeleton of the structure of Genesis, are of two kinds, namely (a) COLOPHON phrases and (b) CATCH-LINE phrases, the former being the more important.
In the following pages I shall try to bring home to the reader the full significance of these literary indicators, colophon and catch-line, that reveal the Book of Genesis to be a most ancient document - much older than the documentists would have it. My explanation will lead naturally into a special consideration of the controversial and famous first chapter of Genesis. A grasp of the proper and true structure of the Book of Genesis will enable the reader to understand why, for example, biblical commentators have proposed the so-called "two accounts of Creation" theory (Genesis 1 and 2), and how this theory ought to be modified.
Also, following Wiseman, I shall be able to account quite simply for the perplexing problem of the variations of the Divine Names throughout Genesis; a variation that has led the documentists to fragment so much of the Scriptures into their J and E compartments.
Who borrowed from whom? Did the authors of the scriptural books really borrow much of their written material, their stories, their poetry, their wisdom, from the pagan mythology and the literature of the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, for instance, or do the latter owe a debt to the Hebrews? Since here I am interested only in the Book of Genesis; my question can be more specific: Which are the more ancient, the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Flood, Babel, etc. in the Mesopotamian and/or Egyptian writings, or those recorded in Genesis?(13).
This is a further question that I shall be addressing in the following pages.
THE KEY TO THE STRUCTURE OF GENESIS
(A) The Colophon Phrase
Documents written in Mesopotamia were generally inscribed upon stone or clay tablets. It was customary for the ancient scribes to add a colophon note at the end of the account, giving particulars of title, date, and the name of the writer or owner, together with other details relating to the contents of a tablet, manuscript or book.(14) The colophon method is no longer used today - the information originally given in a colophon having been transferred in our day to the first or title page. But in ancient documents the colophon with its important literary information was added in a very distinctive manner.
Thus the colophon ending to one of the mythological Babylonian accounts of creation reads(15):
"First tablet of...after the tablet...Mushetiq-umi...A copy from Babylon; written like its original and collated. The tablet of Nabu-mushetiq-umi [5th] month Iyyar, 9th day, 27th year of Darius."
My primary purpose in this article will be to demonstrate that the MASTER KEY to the method of compilation that underlies the structure of the Book of Genesis is to be found in the use of the colophon.
Now scholars seem to agree at least that structurally the most significant and distinguishing phrase in the Book of Genesis is the phrase:
"THESE ARE THE GENERATIONS OF..."
The formula is used eleven times throughout the Book of Genesis. Wiseman, commenting on the importance of this phrase, wrote:
"... for so significant did the Septuagint translators regard it, that they gave the whole book the title 'Genesis'", which is the Greek version of the Hebrew word for "generations."(16)
Following Wiseman, though, I shall be preferring the Hebrew word for "generations," Toledoth.
The Toledoth formula, "These are the generations of ...," is to be found in the following places throughout the Book of Genesis:
Verse Wording
2:4: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth".
5:1: "This is the book of the generations of Adam".
6:9: "These are the generations of Noah".
10:1: "These are the generations of the sons of Noah".
11:10: "These are the generations of Shem".
11:27: "These are the generations of Terah".
25:12: "These are the generations of Ishmael".
25:19: "These are the generations of Isaac".
36:1: "These are the generations of Esau".
36:9: "These are the generations of Esau".
37:2: "These are the generations of Jacob".
In the past, scholars of all schools had recognised what was obvious, and had admitted the importance of the repetitious Toledoth phrase. However, as we are going to find, there is a disturbing tendency amongst more recent exegetes practically to ignore the phrase, as though it did not even exist in the text. Moreover, it seems that virtually all have misunderstood both its use and its meaning.
There is a simple reason for this, as Wiseman has explained. Many of these sections of Genesis that conclude with a Toledoth, commence, "as is frequent in ancient documents, with a genealogy or a register asserting close family relationships."(17) This has led commentators to associate the Toledoth phrase, "These are the generations of ..." with the genealogical list where this follows. Hence they have assumed that this phrase is used as a preface or introduction.
For instance, S.R. Driver wrote in his Genesis [commentary]:
"This phrase...properly belongs to a genealogical system; it implies that the person to whose name it is prefixed is of sufficient importance to mark a break in the genealogical series, and that he and his descendants will form the subject of the section which follows, until another name is reached prominent enough to form the commencement of a new section."(18)
But Dr. Driver's assertion is plainly contrary to the facts, as anyone will realise simply by reading through the narrative of the Book of Genesis.(19) It does not take the attentive reader long to discover that the Toledoth phrase does not always belong to a genealogical list, for in some instances no genealogical list follows. Hence Wiseman was entirely correct when he stated that "the main history of the person named has been written before the 'Toledoth' phrase and most certainly it is not written after it."(20)
To illustrate this fact, Wiseman pointed firstly to what he called the "classic example" of the second Toledoth: "This is the book of the generations of Adam" (Genesis 5:1). After this Toledoth we learn nothing more about Adam, "except his age at death." Again, the record following the phrase, "These are the generations of Isaac" (Genesis 25:19), clearly is not a history of Isaac, but of Jacob and Esau. Similarly, after, "These are the generations of Jacob" (Genesis 37:2), we read mainly about his son Joseph(21)
Commentators have been puzzled by these presumed peculiarities. But the whole thing ceases to be puzzling as soon as one realises that the Toledoth phrase is not an introduction, or the preface to the history of a person, as is so often imagined. "Rather", as Wiseman had discerned, "it is to be read as a colophon ending, for only as such does it make proper sense."(22)
So much for the first part of Dr. Driver's statement that the Toledoth is tied to a genealogical system. When we test the second part of his statement we find that it, too, does not square with the facts and is therefore quite erroneous. Driver had imagined that the Toledoth phrase had served to introduce the next "prominent" person in the narrative. Who would doubt, however, that the most "prominent" individual in the Book of Genesis is ABRAHAM? He, more than all the other great Patriarchs, would be entitled to be named in a Toledoth were Driver's interpretation correct. "Yet," as Wiseman had observed, "it is remarkable that while lesser persons such as Ishmael and Esau are mentioned, there is no such Toledoth phrase as "These are the generations of Abraham."(23)
'Toledoth', or Family History
The Hebrew word Toledoth was used to describe history, usually family history, in its origins. Wiseman had proposed, as an equivalent phrase for Toledoth in English: "These are the historical origins of ..." It is evident, he wrote, that the use of the phrase in Genesis "is to point back to the origins of the family history,"(24) and not forward to a later development through a line of descendants.
Wiseman's conclusion here is entirely consistent with what we find in the New Testament. The colophon phrase is used only once in the New Testament, where in Matthew 1:1 we read: "The book of the generations of Jesus Christ," following which is a list of ancestors. In this context, Wiseman noted, it certainly meant quite the opposite to descendants, for it was used to indicate the tracing back of the genealogy to its origin.(25)
This is precisely the meaning of the Greek word, genesios, translated as "generation." The first use of the Toledoth phrase is in Genesis 2:4: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth." Amazingly, in this one instance only, the majority of scholars have found themselves logically forced to accept the natural placement of the Toledoth formula:
"... for they have seen that it obviously points back to the narrative of the creation contained in the previous chapter, and that it cannot refer to the narrative which follows, for this section contains no reference to the creation of the heavens."(26)
The phrase is appropriate only as a concluding sentence. So, most commentators (against the usual practice) make the story of creation end with the Toledoth. "Had they seen that all sections of Genesis are concluded by the use of this 'Toledoth' formula," wrote Wiseman, "they would have recognised the key to the composition of the book".
Since, as we [are] now coming to appreciate, the scribal method used in Genesis was the general literary method of early antiquity, then surely the genuineness of the Genesis records is attested by their adherence to the prevailing literary method of these remote times!
Commentators generally however, having assumed that the Toledoth formula begins a section, and not realising that it ends it, "have used this key to its compilation upside down."(27) Consequently, the problem of the composition of the book of Genesis has remained unsolved for them.
For instance, we read in Skinner's Genesis: "The problem of the TOLEDOTH headings [sic] has been keenly discussed ... and is still unsettled."(28)
Again, Eugene Maly, the commentator on "Genesis" in the Jerome Biblical Commentary - with only the bankrupt JEDP theory to guide him - has fallen into the double trap of thinking that:
The "Toledoth [story] usually refers to a genealogical account [sic]", and that it serves as an introduction: "In P [sic] it marks the important stages in salvation history .... It is placed here [i.e. in Genesis 2:4] to preserve the majestic beginning [sic]."(29)
This is exactly the sort of hopeless tangle in which the exponents of the JEDP "dissection" inevitably end up. (Though some of them actually opt for the easy way out, by entirely ignoring the crucial Toledoth phrase).
[NB: The Jerome Biblical Commentary (JBC) and the New Jerome Biblical Commentary (NJBC) are edited by Fr. Raymond Brown and Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer and Fr. Roland Murphy, three of the leading liberal Catholic scholars in the world. The NJBC is more or less the standard Catholic commentary in all seminaries, universities and even secondary schools. Almost all modern Catholic Bible translations (The New American Bible, The New Jerusalem Bible, The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, Today's English Version Catholic Edition, and many others, all follow the Documentary Hypothesis and state so in the Introductory notes. For a sample of how the methodology of Historical Criticism has desecrated our Catholic Bible translations, see the work of Ben Douglass on our website at http://www.catholicintl.com/catholicissue/nab1.htm ]
Written on Tablets
Another important fact needs to be emphasised in connection with the use of the Toledoth formula. The second time that it occurs, in Genesis (5:1), we read: "This is the book of the origins of Adam." Here the Hebrew word sepher, translated "book," means "written narrative," or as F. Delitzsch has translated it, "finished writing."(30) The Septuagint actually goes so far as to render the first Toledoth (Genesis 2:4) as: "This is the book of the origins of the heavens and the earth." Regarding this fact, Wiseman has pointed out:
"We must realise that the 'books' of antiquity were tablets, and that the earliest records of Genesis claim to have been written down, and not as is often imagined passed on to Moses by word of mouth."(31)
Moreover, a careful examination of the name of the person stated at the end of the various phrases, "These are the generations of..." makes it clear that the Toledoth refers to the owner or writer of the tablet, rather than to the history of the person named. Thus for instance: "These are the generations of Noah" does not necessarily mean: "This is the history about Noah," but rather the history written or possessed by Noah. To put this into a modern perspective, the Toledoth, or colophon is really like a kind of signature from a contemporary of the events recorded. In the case of Noah's document, the Toledoth would convert to something like: "This is Noah signing off."
As previously mentioned, nowhere is there a phrase: "These are the generations of Abraham," yet the great Patriarch's story has been written in full; for we are told that Abraham's own sons, Isaac and Ishmael, either wrote or owned the series of tablets con-taining their father's story.(32)
Nature of the Colophon
To summarise so far, we find that we have learned three important things about the Toledoth, colophon phrase:
(a) it is the concluding sentence, not the beginning, of each section and therefore points back to a narrative already recorded;
(b) the earliest records claim to have been written;
(c) it normally refers to the writer of the history or the owner of the tablets containing it.
Genesis therefore contains the following series of tablets possessed by the persons whose names are stated in the various colophons:
TABLET: 1
CONTENTS: 1:1 to 2:4
WORDING: This is the book of the origins of the heavens and the earth.
TABLET: 2
CONTENTS: 2:5 to 5:2
WORDING: This is the book of the origins of Adam.
TABLET: 3
CONTENTS: 5:3 to 6:9a
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of Noah.
TABLET: 4
CONTENTS: 6:9b to 10:1
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of the sons of Noah.
TABLET: 5
CONTENTS: 10:2 to 11:10a
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of Shem.
TABLET: 6
CONTENTS: 11:10b to 11:27a
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of Terah.
TABLET: 7-8
CONTENTS: 11:27b to 25:19a
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of Ishmael and Isaac.
TABLET: 9-11
CONTENTS: 25:19b to 37:2a
WORDING: These are the origins [or histories] of Esau and Jacob.
(The reader will notice that the first series only does not conclude with a signature).
In this way the compiler of the Genesis documents (traditionally believed to have been Moses) clearly indicated the source of the information available to him, and named the persons who originally possessed the tablets from which he gained his knowledge. "These", Wiseman insisted, "are not arbitrarily invented divisions. They are stated by the author to be the framework of the book."(33)
Now we are really beginning to understand the nature of the sources used for the compilation of the first book of our Bible. Genesis, it appears, was not compiled from sources that long post-dated the Mosaic era - as Graf/Wellhausen and their colleagues had imagined. These latter had commenced their analysis, "without a single piece of writing of the age of Genesis to assist them."(34) They ended up by dissecting Genesis into a series of unknown writers and editors all of whom they alleged could be detected by their "style" or "editorial comments." They committed the fallacy of subjecting Genesis to a type of contemporary literary analysis, just as if it were a piece of modern writing. They were clearly wrong!
Genesis was in fact compiled from multiple sources that pre-dated the time of Moses. And, while the book does indeed disclose many "styles" - as the documentists have correctly observed - it does not, as they have claimed, disclose a plurality of authors in its final form.
The Supporting Facts
Wiseman had been able to provide two remarkable confirmations of the accuracy of his Toledoth thesis. These were that:
1. "In no instance is an event recorded which the person or persons named could not have written from his (their) own intimate knowledge, or have obtained absolutely reliable information."
2. "It is most significant that the history recorded in the sections outlined above ceases in all instances before the death of the person named, yet in most cases it is continued almost up to the date of death, or to the date on which it is stated that the tablets were written."(35)
To give a couple of examples:
TABLET 4, written or owned by Noah's sons, contains the account of the Flood and of the death of Noah. How long Ham and Japheth lived after Noah's death we are unaware, but we know from Scripture that Shem long survived Noah. Hence there is nothing in this section that could not have been written by the sons of Noah.
TABLET 5, written or owned by Shem, who wrote of the birth and the formation into clans of the fifth generation after him. We know that he survived the last generation recorded in this tablet, namely the sons of Joktan.
It could not be a mere coincidence that each of these sections, or series of tablets, should contain only that which the person named at the end of them could have written from personal knowledge. For, as Wiseman had correctly suggested: "Anyone writing even a century after these Patriarchs could and would never have written thus."(36) Hence, we can see that the key-formula: "These are the origins of ..." that is acknowledged by reliable scholars as constituting the very framework upon which the records of Genesis are constructed, is consistently used by the compiler of the book.
A rule to which Bible exegetes often adhere is that 'the first use of a word or phrase fixes its future meaning.' We have seen that the obvious and admitted meaning of the first Toledoth (Genesis 2:4) is appropriate for the remaining instances of its use. With this key in hand, we are delivered from having to grope like blind men or women in a dark labyrinth of conflicting guesses; for we find, in the scriptural text itself, clearly indicated sources.
(b) The Catch-Lines
Apart from the presence of the Toledoth colophons throughout Genesis, there is further compelling evidence that these ancient records were originally written on tablets, and in accordance with ancient methods. In ancient Babylonia, as Wiseman has explained, the size of the tablet used depended upon how great a quantity of writing was to be inscribed upon it. If this were a smallish quantity, for instance, it would be written on one tablet of a size that would contain it satisfactorily. But when the quantity to be inscribed was of such a length that it became necessary to use more than one tablet, it was customary:
(a) "to assign each series of tablets a 'title'";
(b) "to use 'catch-lines', so as to ensure that the tablets were read in their proper order".(37)
In addition, as has already been explained, the colophon with which many tablets concluded, frequently included, among other things, the name of the scribe who wrote the tablet, and the date when it was written. Now there are clear indications throughout Genesis of the use of some of these methods. Though naturally, of course, since these literary aids relate to the tablets as they came into the possession of the final compiler, it is unlikely that we should find them all in the document as completed by him, which we call Genesis.
But one of the sure proofs that the Book of Genesis was compiled at an early date is indicated by the presence of these literary aids. To quote Wiseman on this subject: It "is remarkable confirmation of the purity with which the text has been transmitted to us, that we find [these literary aids] still embedded in this ancient document."(38)
Evidence of these "catch-lines" serving as literary aids may be observed in the following significant repetition of words and phrases connected with the beginning or ending of each of the series of tablets, now incorporated in the Book of Genesis:
GENESIS....CATCH-LINE
1:1...."God created the heavens and the earth"
2:4...."Lord God made the heavens and the earth"
2:4...."When they were created"
5:2...."When they were created"
6:10..."Shem, Ham and Japheth"
10:1..."Shem, Ham and Japheth"
10:32.."After the Flood"
11:10.."After the Flood"
11:26.."Abram, Nahor and Haran"
11:27.."Abram, Nahor and Haran"
25:12.."Abraham's son"
25:19.."Abraham's son"
36:1..."Who is Edom"
36:8..."Who is Edom"
36:9..."Father of the Edomites"
36:43.."Father of the Edomites"
According to Wiseman:
"... the very striking repetition of these phrases exactly where the tablets begin and end, will best be appreciated by those scholars acquainted with the methods of the scribes in Babylonia", for this arrangement was the one then in use to link the tablets together. The repetition of these catch-phrases, precisely in those verses attached to the colophon, "cannot possibly be a mere coincidence. They have remained buried in the text of Genesis, their significance apparently unnoticed."(39)Titles and Dating of Tablets
On cuneiform tablets the TITLE was taken from the commencing words of the record. Similarly, the Hebrews called the first five books of the Bible by the title taken from their opening words. Thus they called Genesis, 'Bereshith,' the Hebrew for "in the beginning." Wiseman explained exactly how this practice was carried out in the ancient Near East. When two or more tablets formed a series, they were identified together because the first few words of the first tablet were repeated in the colophon (or title-page) of the subsequent tablets, "somewhat similar to the way in which the name of the chapter is repeated at the head of each page of a modern book."(40) Where pages of the book were not bound to-gether, as they are now, the advantage would be obvious; for "... by the repetition of such words as those listed above, the whole of the Genesis tablets were connected together."
In addition to the title, Wiseman pointed out that some of these tablets showed evidence of DATING.(41) After a tablet had been written and the name impressed upon it, it was customary in Babylonia to insert the date on which it was written. In the earliest times this was done in a very simple fashion, for it was not until later that tablets were dated with the year of the reigning king. It was the custom for the ancient scribes to date their tablets in the following way:
"Year in which canal Hammurabi was dug."
As an early example in which the method of dating the Genesis tablets can be seen, Wiseman pointed to the end of the second tablet series, Genesis 5:1, where we read: "This is the book of the origins of Adam in the day God created man."(42)
Later tablets were dated by indicating the dwelling-place of the writer at the time that the colophon was written, and these dates were immediately connected with the ending phrase, "These are the generations of ..."
Instances of this are:
GENESIS.....DATING
25:11..."And Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi" 36:8...."And Esau dwelt in Mount Seir" 37:1...."And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father sojourned..."
Clearly both the purity of the text, and the care with which it has been handed down to us, are manifested by the fact that such ancient literary aids and cuneiform usages as these are still discernible in the Genesis narrative. Their presence also signifies, according to Wiseman, that in the earliest times these records were written on clay tablets, and that these tablets, forming a series from Genesis 1:1 to 37:1, were joined together in the same manner as we have them today.(43)
Joseph's History
The long last section of Genesis, that is, Genesis 37:2 to 50:26, does not conclude with a colophon. Why not? Because this last section of Genesis is mainly a history of Joseph in Egypt. At least the family history centers around him. This record begins with the words, "and Joseph being seventeen years old," and ends with, "and he [Joseph] was put in a coffin in Egypt." In this section we have passed from Babylonia (or, at least, from Babylonian influence) to Egypt, where in all probability the account would be written on papyrus. Since the Egyptians did not use the colophon ending, the lack of one at the end of the Joseph narrative is perfectly harmonious with our Toledoth theory.
THE TITLES FOR GOD
As we saw earlier on, one of the chief imputations made against Genesis by the documentists is that different names for God are used in various parts of the book. Each different writer, they allege, had only one name for God, and so they endeavour - from this rather tenuous assumption - to account for the use of different names. They assert that each section of verse in which a particular Divine name is mentioned indicates that it was written by the writer who uses that name exclusively or predominantly.
Numerous contradictory explanations of the variations in the use of the Divine name have been given both by critics and by defenders, to account for the fact that in Exodus 6:3 we are told that God was not known to the Patriarchs by the name of "I AM WHO AM" (that is, 'Yahweh' or 'Jehovah'); while, on the other hand, Genesis frequently represents Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as using that name.
But Wiseman was convinced that these contradictory explanations and evasions "have been due to a fundamental mistake made by both sides in assuming that no part of Genesis had been written until the time of Moses." This crucial assumption, he stated, "has resulted in the desperate literary tangle of the documentists, and the difficulties of the defenders of Mosaic authorship."(44)
The critics find themselves in the hopeless position of having to concede that the numerous editors who (so they think) had a hand in the compilation of Genesis, must have had before them the explicit statement of Exodus 6:3. In the face of such a theory, Wiseman asked: "Are we supposed to assume that the final editor was unaware that he was contradicting himself?"(45). The critical "explanations" only increase their difficulties!
All these evasions are made because neither side in this great and prolonged debate has realised that the Book of Genesis is a record written by the persons whose names are stated in it, in the colophons.
The Problem for the Compiler
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the tablets that Abraham would have taken with him from his original home in "Ur of the Chaldees"(46) would have been written in the cuneiform script prevalent at the time. When the compiler of the Genesis texts came into possession of these tablets, he would have found on some of them the cuneiform equivalent of "God." In others, he would find the cuneiform equivalent of 'El Shaddai', "God Almighty"; the name by which Exodus 6:3 plainly stated that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
In regard to the word, "Shaddai," Wiseman wanted to draw attention to certain facts "to which sufficient attention has not been given":
"... in the first place, the full composite title 'El Shaddai', as stated in Exodus 6:3, is not used elsewhere than in Genesis, and these uses are on important occasions (17:1, 28:3, 35:11 and 48:3)."(47)
"... the next impressive fact is that the word "Shaddai" alone is used 42 times, and in almost every instance by persons writing or living outside Palestine, and in contact with Babylonian cuneiform modes of expression."
When, at a date later than the revelation of Exodus 6:3, the compiler was putting the Book of Genesis into the form of it with which we are now so familiar, with all of his Patriarchal records before him, he would have found the cuneiform equivalent of "El Shaddai" on many of them. At this stage, according to Wiseman (who had accepted the traditional identification of the compiler of Genesis as Moses), he would have found himself confronted with the following, peculiar problem: "Now that God had revealed to him the new name "I Am Who Am," which word for God should he use in transcribing these ancient tablets?"(48)
Every translator of the Bible has been confronted with this same problem. The title "God" may be repeated, but how is the description or name to be transcribed where necessary, unless the new revealed name of God is used? To use any other name, as Wiseman had noted, "would be to create a misunderstanding in the minds of those for whom Genesis was being prepared."
What name then was the compiler to write? God had since revealed Himself by the name of "I Am Who Am," and that name had been announced to the children of Israel in Egypt and was revered by them. Wiseman provided the following answer to the difficulty with which the compiler would at this point have been confronted:
"Now that the ancient records of their [the children of Israel's] race, preserved in purity and handed down by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were being edited and possibly translated by Moses, what name should he use? He saw that the ancient title "El Shaddai," God Almighty..., had been corrupted by its use in connection with scores of other "gods," each of whom were called "god almighty" by their devotees? The most natural course was to use the name Jehovah [Yahweh]. Thus, then, is the presence of the word Jehovah in Genesis quite naturally explained. It is not by assuming a complicated jumble of tangled documents written by unknown writers as the modern scholars do, or by an evasion of the literal meaning of Exodus 6:3, but by the inspiration from God which led Moses in most instances to translate "El Shaddai" by the word Jehovah - his distinguishing name, that separated him from the heathen gods around."(49)
As one discovers from reading Wiseman, tremendous instruction can be gained from studying the pattern of the Divine names used according to the context of each successive Toledoth history.
FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS
Really, the whole documentary approach to Biblical interpretation is due to mythologising tendencies that - employing all possible and impossible kinds of combinations - seek to work into the Genesis stories - and even into the narratives of the Patriarchs - features and elements drawn from the Babylonian or Egyptian myths that are absolutely remote from, and completely alien to, the Hebrew spirit.
One has only to compare the Genesis account of Creation with the Babylonian one, for instance, to realise how intrinsically different they are. The two accounts are as follows:
Bible.....................Babylonian Creation Tablets
Bible: Light
Babylonian: Birth of the gods, their rebellion and threatened destruction.
Bible:. Atmosphere, water
Babylonian: Tiamat prepares for battle.
Bible: Land,
Babylonian: The gods are summoned and wail bitterly at vegetation their threatened
destruction.
Bible4: Sun and Moon
Babylonian4: Marduk promoted to rank of 'god': he receives (regulating the
lights) his weapons for fight. These are described at length; he defeats Tiamat,
splits her in half like a fish and thus makes heaven and earth.
Bible:. Fish and birds
Babylonian: Astronomical poem.
Bible: Land animals
Babylonian: Kingu who made Tiamat to rebel is bound and, as a punishment,
his arteries are severed and man created from his blood. The 600 gods are
grouped; Marduk builds Babylon where all the gods assemble.
A comparison of the two accounts makes it immediately apparent that the Bible owes nothing whatever to the Babylonian tablets, despite the efforts of commentators to try to convince us that whoever wrote this portion of Genesis had actually borrowed his concepts from these corrupted Mesopotamian myths. If we rely solely on the text of Genesis, without being biased by the Babylonian mythology, we find no trace of any contest with a living monster in the sense of the Babylonian myth of the fight of the gods.
The Primeval Deep
Almost all the modern biblical critics take it for granted that 'tehom,' the Hebrew word translated as 'deep' or 'waters' - as used in the Creation and Flood stories (Genesis 1:2 & 7:17) - is identical with 'the Akkadian word, 'tiamat'; the name of the dragon of darkness that Marduk slew in bitter conflict, before the creation of the world. Maly(50) for instance, in the Jerome Biblical Commentary, makes this identification.
A notable dissenter from this view, however, was the brilliant linguist, Professor A. S. Yahuda. He, commenting upon this almost universal identification of the biblical with the Akkadian word, wrote:
"The positiveness with which this assumption is put forward, and the stubbornness with which it is maintained, are based on no intrinsic or philologically well-founded facts; since besides the similarity of sound of [tehom] and tiamat, no other proofs for such an identification can be put forward."(51)
The fact that the documentists have so stubbornly persisted with a view that has so little in its favour, is due, I believe, to the stranglehold that those mythologising tendencies (to which I have already referred) have over them. The word 'tehom,' according to Yahuda, "means nothing else but the primeval water, that ocean which filled the chaos";(52) a fact that becomes quite apparent from the complete biblical phrase itself, translated into English as "on the face of the waters [that is, 'tehom']" (Genesis 1:2). This unmistakably indicates the real nature of 'tehom' as water.
From its biblical context, Yahuda concluded that 'tehom' ought to be identified philologically, not with 'tiamat', but with another Akkadian word, 'tamtu'; a word that, he said, often occurs - not only in Creation myths, but also in many other kinds of myths - most distinctly in the sense of primal ocean, exactly like 'tehom,' "and not as the personi-fication of any divinity like tiamat.'"
THE ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD
Regarding the story of the great flood, one might perhaps be inclined to ask us: If the Toledoth theory is correct, then how would you account for the fact that commentators of the Graf-Wellhausen persuasion have been able to identify two - or in the case of Astruc, three - accounts of the Flood story interwoven into the text of Genesis chapter 7?
Well, thanks to Wiseman's findings, I believe that one ought no longer have any difficulty at all in answering this sort of query; for it is quite naturally accounted for by his Toledoth theory. Chapter 7 of Genesis is, as we saw, part of Tablet (series) 4, written, or owned, by Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and signed by them.(53)
Their story is taken up almost entirely with the account of the Flood of which they were the only eye-witnesses. Jean Astruc, who claimed to have discerned "three accounts" of the Flood story, instanced in support of his claim such repetitious passages as:
Genesis Chapter 7, verse 18: "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth." 19: "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth." 20: "Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail."
Also: Verse 21: "And all flesh died that moved upon the face of the earth." 22: "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life and all that was in the dry land died." 23: "And every living substance was destroyed."
In regard to Astruc's theory, then, it is sufficient here to note with Wiseman "two significant facts":(54)
- firstly, the conclusion of the tablet informs us that more than one person was connected with the writings of the narrative, "for it is the history of the three sons of Noah."
- secondly, an examination of the story reveals every indication that it was written by several eye-witnesses of the tragedy.
The documentists have given considerable attention to the Flood narrative, thinking that the Hebrews would have borrowed it from the Babylonian mythology (we have already accounted for one of the main philological reasons why they have been under this impression). Although they have been quite correct in identifying multiple accounts of the Flood story; they have completely missed the mark when it has come down to identifying the actual authors of it.
TWO ACCOUNTS OF CREATION
Ignorance of the nature of the sources from which the Book of Genesis was compiled has led modern scholars into saying things like: "The second chapter of Genesis is more ancient than the first," or: "The order of Genesis is wrong," or again: "There are two accounts of creation, each written centuries after Moses."
The documentist view is that the first chapter of Genesis was put into writing by an unknown author, or school of writers, in about the 8th century BC (many hundreds of years after Moses). I believe that the arguments presented in this article completely lay to rest any such claims.
But, asked Wiseman, does the narrative of the first chapter of Genesis itself give any clue as to the time when it was written? To which question he answered that, in addition to the ancient literary method of the colophon dating, there are "some pieces of evidence which seem to assist us in ascertaining the chronological place of Genesis chapter 1 in the Old Testament."(55) And he went on to list these as follows:
1. No anachronisms: "...it contains no reference whatever to any event subsequent to the creation of man and woman, and of what God said to them." By contrast, the Babylonian version of creation, for instance, contains reference to events of a relatively late date, such as the building of Babylon.
2. Universality: All the references in this chapter "are universal in their application and unlimited in their scope." We find no mention of "any particular tribe or nation or country, or of any merely local ideas or customs. Everything relates to the earth as a whole and to mankind without reference to race."
3. Simplicity: The Sun and Moon, for instance, are referred to simply as the "greater and lesser lights" (Genesis 1:16). It is well known that astronomy is one of the most ancient branches of knowledge. In earliest times the Babylonians had already given names to the Sun and Moon.
4. Brevity: Compared with the lengthy Babylonian series of six tablets of creation, the Bible uses only one fortieth the number of words.
Tablet (series) 2
The universality of the references in Genesis chapter 1 cannot be found in the second series (Genesis 2:4b to 5:1). In this second series there are historical notes: rivers are named, as are countries. Minerals are being developed. This, we believe, is Adam's own recorded history. It is not a repetitious second account of chapter 1, and even more ancient, as scholars would have us believe. The writer gives more detail about the creation of the first man; the Garden is planted; geographical locations for Eden are given; the animals are named, and so on. Tablet (series) 2 is utterly different from chapter 1 in style and content, and would seem to be a much later production.
FROM ADAM TO MOSES
We do not know the extent of writing before the Flood, but, if our thesis is correct, we can know something about the literary method employed. It appears that the original form of the ancient tablets was considered to be so sacred that future copyists and translators left it embedded in their new texts. Adam's and Noah's histories (and probably those of other antediluvian Patriarchs, such as Enoch) were preserved in the Ark and were then taken into the post-diluvian world by the sons of Noah, who, according to the sources compiled by Ginzberg, had books.(56)
These sacred histories, undergoing translation and possible transliteration, were brought from Mesopotamia by Abraham and his family and remained in Canaan during the years of sojourning there. They were added to by each successive generation. Finally, when Jacob migrated to Egypt, he would have carried the histories with him; copies of which almost certainly found their way into the Egyptian archives to which Joseph would have had access. Later Moses, too, had access to these same archives and to all the wisdom of Egypt (Acts 7:22).
The Compiler
The compiler(57) would have summarised the histories of his forefathers, making textual notes for the sake of his contemporaries. For instance, the names of some of the locations in Canaan had changed since the time of Abraham and so the compiler had to indicate the new name of an ancient site. There are some examples in Genesis 14 of the compiler's identifying for his contemporaries some of the ancient place names of Abraham's time. We have:
"Bela (which is Zoar)" in verses 2 and 8;
"Vale of Siddim (which is the Salt Sea)" verse 3;
"En-mishpat (which is Kadesh)" in verse 7;
"Hobah (which is to the left of Damascus)" in 15;
"Valley of Shaveh (which is the King's Dale)" in verse 17.
Furthermore, it seems that the compiler greatly edited the texts of his ancestors. Doubtless, the original series of Isaac, for instance, or Esau, would have been much longer than has come down to us in Genesis. The compiler retained only what he considered to be fitting and beneficial to his people. This does not mean that the texts that he had before him were necessarily fragmentary, but rather that he found little that he considered to be relevant to the book that he was editing, that we now call "Genesis."
Nowhere in the Scriptures is there any statement suggesting that Moses actually wrote the narratives and genealogies of Genesis. Not even in Genesis itself do we find any statements referring to Moses in the same way as, or similar to, those so often repeated in the remainder of the Pentateuch, "The Lord said unto Moses ..." Wiseman claimed that the non-occurrence of this phrase in the book is surely a clear indication that when it is used in the remaining Books of Moses, it is likely to have been used authentically and accurately, the text being preserved in a pure state.(58)
New Testament Witness
The New Testament method of referring to the Books of Moses is also worthy of note. "It is a significant example of the accuracy with which references to authorship are made in the Bible," wrote Wiseman.(59) Though Christ and the Apostles repeatedly quote from Genesis, "they never actually say that Moses wrote or spoke the statement quoted." But when we read references or quotations taken from the beginning of Exodus and onwards to Deuteronomy, "it is then we begin to read in the New Testament, 'Moses said ...'"(60)
The World's Oldest Books
In conclusion, I would like to say that Genesis, as we now know it, is composed of a series of some of the world's oldest books. Dr. Charles Taylor has identified the following "nine volumes" of which he claims the Book of Genesis originally consisted:(61)
I: "God's Book, an account of his activities at the beginning
of things. (Gen. 1:1 to 2:4a)"
II: "Adam's Diary, some of it parallel to Vol.I. (Gen. 2:4b to 5:2)"
III: "Noah's Family Tree and Diary. (Gen. 5:3 to 6:9a)"
IV: "Noah's Sons' File on the Deluge. (Gen. 6:9b to 10:1)"
V: "The Dispersion and Shem's Table of Nations. (Gen. 10:2 to 11:10a)"
VI: "Terah's Family Tree. (Gen. 11:10b to 27a)"
VII: "Isaac's Biography of Abraham, with Ishmael's Family Tree as Appendix.(Gen.
11:27b to 25:19a)"
VIII: "Jacob's Biography of Isaac and his Descendants, including Jacob's Autobiography;
with Esau's Family Trees in two Appendices. (Gen. 25:19b to 37:2a)"
IX: "Moses' Biography of Joseph and his Brothers. (Gen. 37:2b to 50:26)."
It is to be hoped that future biblical students will greatly advance humanity's knowledge of the Book of Genesis, by humbly and patiently studying its Toledoth histories.
Notes and References
1. Wiseman, P.J., 'New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis', Marshall, Morgan & Scott (1936); 'Clues to Creation in Genesis', Marshall, Morgan & Scott (1936); 'Die Entstehung der Genesis', Wuppertal (1958); 'Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis', Thos. Nelson (1985).
2. Ardley, G., 'Aquinas and Kant', Longmans, Green & Co. (1950), p.5.
3. Ibid., 6.
4. Ibid.
5. Wiseman's findings have captured the imagination of, for instance, the renowned Old Testament scholar, Professor R.K. Harrison. See e.g. his 'Introduction to the Old Testament', Eerdmanns (1969), in which he summarises Wiseman's 'Toledoth' theory on pp. 545-553. Also, the linguist, Dr. Charles Taylor, who - on the basis of the same theory - wrote 'The Oldest Science Book in the World', Assembly Press (1984). It is also worth mentioning here that P.J. Wiseman's son, Donald J. Wiseman, who wrote the Foreword to 'Ancient Records' (see footnote 1), is one of the pre-eminent Assyriologists of our time.
6. 'Jehovah' being German for 'Yahweh.'
7. With R. K. Harrison, I believe that the so-called Deuteronomist source is the only valid one amidst the JEDP 'sources.'
8. Wiseman, P.J., 'Clues to Creation in Genesis,' 143.
9. Wellhausen, J., as quoted by Wiseman in Clues, 144.
10. Wiseman, Clues, 145. Wellhausen resigned from Greifswald University in 1882. Orthodox Lutherans there were alarmed at the doubts that he had been casting on the inspiration of Scripture (see 'New International Dictionary of the Christian Church', ed. J. Douglas, The Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1974, under "Wellhausen").
11. Ibid., 143.
12. Ibid., 144.
13. However, as those involved in a revision of ancient chronologies would appreciate, a full scientific answer to this question cannot be given until a complete and accurate revision of the chronology of the ancient world has been achieved.
14. Wiseman, Clues, 143.
15. Ibid., 159.
16. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 60.
17. Ibid.
18. Driver, as quoted by Wiseman, ibid.
19. R.K. Harrison, 'Introduction to the Old Testament,' 543-553, discusses this mistake by some modern scholars.
20. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 61.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Wiseman, Clues, 35.
24. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 63.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Wiseman, Clues, 40.
28. Skinner, J., 'Genesis' (1929).
29. Maly, E., "Genesis", in JBC 2:21 (1968).
30. F. Delitzsch, as quoted by Wiseman, Ancient Records, 67. To those who might be under the misconception that there were no registers of births and deaths in such distant days, we might suggest that that is just exactly what the fifth chapter of Genesis is. The family records that were preserved in those days were little else but records of births, marriages and deaths.
31. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 67.
32. This does not mean that Abraham could not have had his own separate history, or that he had perhaps written part of his sons' records. Again, whilst his sons may have owned the tablets, Abraham may have written them.
33. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 69. He noted here that all of these ancestral histories could have come into the possession of Moses in the way that family records were normally handed down.
34. Wiseman, Clues, 77.
35. Ibid., 42.
36. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 79.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 80.
39. Ibid., 81.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 82.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 128.
45. Ibid., 129.
46. Note that "Ur of the Chaldees" is not to be confused with the famous Babylonian city called Ur that Sir Leonard Woolley excavated.
47. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 129.
48. Ibid., 132.
49. Ibid., 133.
50. Maly, ibid., 2:16.
51. Yahuda, A., 'The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian' (Oxford, 1933), 127. Yahuda further notes, in footnote 3, that: "The argument that ['tehom'] must be identical with tiamat because like the latter it is feminine, is untenable, for the simple reason that in our particular passage the gender of ['tehom'] is not apparent, and further because, there are examples of its being used in the masculine as a poetical expression for sea."
52. Ibid., 128.
53. It is an eye-witness acount.
54. Wiseman, Ancient Records, 93.
55. Wiseman, Clues, 170.
56. Ginzberg, L., 'The Legends of the Jews', Vol. V (Philadelphia, 1955), 196-197. It has been drawn to my attention that the C7th BC Assyrian king, Asshurbanipal, claimed to have seen (read) a copy of the pre-Flood tablets.
57. In a follow-up article, I shall produce compelling evidence in support of the traditional view that the compiler of Genesis was, in fact, Moses.
58. Wiseman, Clues, 66.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Taylor, C. (see footnote 5), 20.
(Other articles in CompuServe libraries by the same author are: 'The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar'; 'Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? A Reply to TIME'; 'Pharaoh Who Looted Solomon's Temple'; 'Queen of Sheba: Hatshepsut').
END
INTRODUCTION
In "The Toledoths of Genesis," the previous article in this computer Bible series, I introduced the reader to the excellent discoveries of P. J. Wiseman, who had been able to identify the nature of the sources that were used in the compilation of the Book of Genesis. Wiseman, drawing most effectively upon the information supplied by modern archaeology about ancient scribal methods, had had no difficulty proving that the original sources used in Genesis were most ancient, even pre-dating the time of Moses.
Moses, of course, has traditionally been identified as the compiler(1) of the Book of Genesis, and indeed as the author, substantially, of the remainder of the Pentateuch.
Now I had mentioned, in the course of my writing "The Toledoths of Genesis," that I would provide a follow-up article(2) in which I would be producing evidence in support of this traditional view. That will indeed be the main purpose of this present article, "Moses as Compiler of Genesis."
Whereas in "The Toledoths of Genesis" the focus had been upon the structure of the Book of Genesis, in this new article it will be upon its language. Professor A. S. Yahuda (3) had already shown beyond a shadow of doubt that the language of Genesis is so saturated with Egyptianisms that the book could only have been written in its final form during an era of history when Israel was profoundly under the influence of Egypt.
Yahuda's discovery was a tremendous breakthrough in discussions about the Book of Genesis. Prior to it, the fact that Egyptian had exerted such a telling influence upon the language of Genesis had remained completely hidden from biblical scholars. Why was this? Seemingly because of the fact that so few of them were able to combine in one person both an expertise in Hebrew as well as a thorough knowledge of the Egyptian language.
For Yahuda, who was an expert in both Hebrew and Egyptian,(4) the fact of the Egyptian influence upon the language of Genesis was inescapable. It "leaped to the eye," to use his own phrase.(5) Yahuda's thesis turned out to be a most potent, scientific argument in support of the traditional view about the compilation of Genesis; for really the only time in its history when Israel was so significantly under the influence of Egypt was during its "Egyptian Epoch," that is the phase of its history from Joseph to Moses.
Yahuda's fine work does however suffer to some degree from a chronological defect; even though chronology was not his concern in writing his book. Because he had accepted the standard view of history (which is rejected here) that Moses had lived during the New Kingdom Era of Egyptian history, the Late Bronze Age (thus, in the C13th BC), Yahuda had tended to search almost exclusively for linguistic examples from that era, from which to draw his parallels with the Bible, and thus to verify his linguistic thesis.
But, as is becoming more and more obvious now to some of the most reputable archaeologists researching in the Sinai and the Negev deserts (e.g. Professor Emmanuel Anati and Dr. Rudolf Cohen, see PART ONE) - and as I have argued in a previous article in this series, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? A Reply to TIME" - the era of Moses and the Exodus definitely well pre-dated Egypt's New Kingdom.(6) (Please refer to footnotes, which are very important in this article).
Fortunately, many of Yahuda's New Kingdom examples of the Egyptian language do still hold good for what I have shown to be the correct time of Moses, during the Old/ Middle Kingdoms (that is, Early Bronze/Middle Bronze).(7) But since, naturally, the pre-New Kingdom examples from the Egyptian language will be the ones that are going to throw the clearest light on the time of Moses, it is on these that I shall be concentrating in the course of this article.
From what I have said so far, the reader will be able to appreciate that the historical aspect cannot be completely overlooked in this discussion about the compilation of the Book of Genesis and linguistics. I shall therefore devote PART ONE to history, to "The Era of Moses," and this will serve as a kind of introductory section to the main part of this article "The Language of Genesis", which will occupy PART TWO. PART ONE (the historical introduction) of this article properly follows on from my, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? A Reply to TIME", in which I presented a revised chronology for the Exodus and the Conquest of Palestine, and offered a far more satisfactory historical location for Moses than is conventionally provided. PART TWO (on the linguistics of Genesis) will be - as said above - the natural follow up to "The Toledoths of Genesis", and can be read independently from PART ONE if the reader so wishes.
The inclusion of a substantial historical introduction to this subject of the compilation of Genesis will now afford me the perfect opportunity to do two things:
FIRSTLY, to provide further examples (following on from "The Toledoths of Genesis") of why the conventionalist(8) historians, using a faulty chronological scheme, must always end up by concluding that the biblical writers borrowed from pagan stories or myths.
SECONDLY, to introduce some compelling new evidence in favour of the revised(9) chronology pertaining to the Mosaic era. I am referring here chiefly to the research of Pro-fessor Emmanuel Anati, a most experienced archaeologist of the Sinai and Negev deserts, who, in his recent books "The Mountain of God" (1986) (10) and "Har Karkom in the Light of New Discoveries" (1993), (11) has shown from exhaustive archaeological data obtained from these regions that the conventional C13th BC (or Late Bronze Era) placement in history for Moses (including the Exodus and the Wanderings of the Hebrews in the desert) can no longer possibly be sustained.
Thus Anati has written:
"In the last 100 years, many efforts have been invested on finding some hints of the Israelites and their exodus in the Egyptian ancient literature. In the many Egyptian texts that date to the New Kingdom, and there are plenty, there is no mention of the flight from Egypt or the crossing of the "Red Sea." Not even the general historical and social background correspond. The biblical episodes in Egypt refer to the presence of significant groups of Asians in the area of the Delta. Political changes upset their social standing. If all of this tradition has a minimal basis in historical fact, then it cannot have been totally ignored by the Egyptians."(12)
Nor, according to Professor Anati, did the Egyptians totally ignore it:
"And in fact it was not ignored. The relevant texts do not date to the New Kingdom at all, but to the Old Kingdom. In other words, it is our humble opinion that the archaeological evidence of the above mentioned sites, the tribal social structures described in the Bible, the climatic changes and the ancient Egyptian literature all seem to indicate that the events and situations which may have inspired the biblical narrations of Exodus do not date to the thirteenth century BC but ... to the late third millennium BC."(13)
Anati, as I have already noted and explained in the important footnotes (6), (7) & (11) at the end of this section, still accepts the conventional dating of the Old and New Kingdoms, which is actually far too high. But this only means that his discoveries are all the more valuable, because he has admitted to having grown up with the conventional system, and because he did not actually set out to make any chronological statement.(14)
Professor Anati had simply been researching the archaeology on, and in the vicinity of, an intriguing mountain known by the beautiful and appropriate Israeli name, Har Karkom, "Saffron Mountain,"(15) in the Negev desert, and had come to realise that this mountain - rather than the traditional one, Jebel Musa (the so-called "Mountain of Moses") in the Sinai Peninsula - had all the earmarks of being the real Mount Sinai.
The sheer weight of testimony of the archaeological data itself, with which Professor Anati had found himself confronted at this site, had forced him radically to reassess the estimate of the conventional historians in regard to the Exodus and Israel's Wanderings.
Anati's research impressed upon him that Har Karkom - far more than any other mountain in the Sinai and Negev regions, including Jebel Musa - had been regarded by the ancients as a "holy" (cultic and sacral) mountain, from Stone Age times(16) down to (and most especially during) what he terms the "BAC complex" (that is, Early Bronze to Middle Bronze I). (By contrast, Jebel Musa, showed little occupation until the Byzantine Christian era). Most significantly, Anati found no traces whatsoever of Late Bronze Age archaeology (the conventional time for Moses) on, or around, Har Karkom.
PART ONE: THE ERA OF MOSES
Here I intend to supplement, with valuable supporting data - especially from the recent discoveries of Professor Anati in the Negev desert regions - what I have already written about the era of Moses in "Is the Bible fact or Fiction?"
The Starting Point
The Bible reveals that Egypt, for at least the four centuries (approximately) from the time that Abraham came to Palestine, until the Exodus (that is, from c.1900-1500 BC),(17) was a power to be reckoned with.
Then there occurred the Exodus, the basic details about which most of us are familiar. During this catastrophic time, the pride of Egypt was humbled to the dust, and it remained thus humbled throughout the entire era of the Judges in Palestine (c.1450-1000 BC). Hence it took the land of the Nile some 450 years to recover, and to become again a world power, after the affects of the Ten Plagues; of having been pillaged by some two million foreigners who then quit the country; and finally of having suffered the loss of its pharaoh, his army and chariotry, as the Sea closed over them.
Such, according to the Bible, is the pattern of events in relation to Egypt. The version that greets us in the standard history texts, however, tells us of quite a different scenario. According to this version, Egypt continued to maintain a fair degree of its power and prestige, even after a so-called 'Exodus.' Hence, we are told, the Biblical account of the event must be a gross exaggeration of what really happened - the 'Exodus' actually having been a modest affair; perhaps involving only a few families.
But we now know that this conventional system, based upon an artificial use of the Sothic cycle, has completely missed the mark in its estimation of this extraordinary era. That the very foundations of the Sothic system of chronology (used for dating the successive dynasties of Egypt) are unstable, having been raised upon artificial and unrealistic premises, has recently been shown from high-level research.(18) Now, since so artificial a scheme cannot, and does not provide any satisfactory synchronisms between the early history of Egypt and that of Mesopotamia/Palestine, the system ought to be discarded and replaced by something far more workable.
In regard to this more workable alternative, I should like here briefly to outline the newly emerging, revisionist system for the Exodus and Conquest, some of whose most recent additions are based upon the authoritative findings of Professor Anati and Dr. Cohen.(19)
A. The Israelites
I submit that, as a starting point for a revised chronology, it must be recognised that:
The nomadic Middle Bronze I people, who came from the direction of Egypt, during a period of history when Egypt was in absolute chaos; who dwelt in the Sinai and Negev (especially at Kadesh-Barnea); who eventually entered Palestine from Transjordan, by crossing the Jordan River; and who then proceeded to dispossess the local inhabitants of their cities (most notably at Jericho, where the walls fell flat and the city was burned to the ground), were the Israelites.
In regard to the Exodus and Conquest, the Bible has recorded for us two of the most unique incidents in the history of humankind. Hence, the appropriate archaeological data at these points in time ought to be absolutely unequivocal as to their interpretation. I suggest that they truly are.
Our starting point, that the Middle Bronze I people are to be identified with the Israelites of the Exodus, has already been worked out by the best revisionist historians. This view has recently been verified by Dr. Cohen, the conventionally trained authority of the Sinai and Negev. And it is now being greatly bolstered by the findings of Professor Anati.
Commencing, then, with this most unique situation in the history of the world, one can work both backwards and forwards on the time scale, to fill out the historical picture for the era of Moses. Let us then, point by point, correlate with the Egyptian data some of the major incidents from the Book of Exodus:
B. The Israelites in Bondage
This situation fits nicely during the extensive building activity in brick in the Nile Delta region, during the mid/late Twelfth Dynasty period. I have already proposed in "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?" that this period was concurrent with the latter part of the Sixth Dynasty. I showed in that article that there were many Asiatics living in Egypt at this time, even as slaves, and that the contemporary pharaohs (20) had used slave labour to build pyramids of brick mixed with straw, just as recorded in Exodus about the Israelites (5:16). I was not alone in noting the grim visages of the mid-Twelfth Dynasty kings.(21)
Now whilst some have interpreted this grim-ness as being a kind of studied thoughtfulness - occasioned, as they imagine, by the economic hardship (due to erratic Nile levels) that Egypt was then supposedly experiencing - I prefer to regard these faces as belonging to the grim task-masters whom the chief Pharaoh of Memphis (probably the long-reigning Pepi II) had placed over the Israelites (Exodus 1:11).
C. The Baby Moses Exposed on the River Nile
I have already drawn attention to the Egyptian myth about the god Horus, and his mother, Isis, that reflects the account of Moses' exposure in a basket on the Nile.(22) Only since I pointed this out have I become aware of the fact that Professor Yahuda had provided an extensive list of striking parallels between the Egyptian mythology and incidents that had occurred during the Patriarchal to Judges history of the Israelites.(23) The burning question to be answered is: Who borrowed from whom?
The conventional and documentary historians, enmeshed as they are in their faulty chronology and/or their belief that the Scriptures were written very late (after centuries of oral tradition), invariably conclude that the scriptural writers were the ones who had bor-rowed from the pagans. A classic example of this occurs in the case of a legend about one of the most famous of the Mesopotamian kings, Sargon of Akkad, who is conventionally dated to the 23rd century BC,(24) well before the time of Moses.
After reading the legend of Sargon, one can only conclude that it must - to use a phrase of Anati's that we are going to meet again further on - "have a common matrix"(25) with the story of Moses, placed in a basket and subsequently saved from the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus 2:3-6). Thus we read about Sargon:
"My mother, the high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose not (over) me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki (who took me) as his son (and) reared me ..."
What we need to understand about the "Legend of Sargon", however, is that the accounts of it that we now have were written many centuries after (by any estimation) the time of either Sargon or Moses. The extant accounts of this legend belong to the neo-Assyrian period, later than 1000 BC. Sargon almost certainly pre-dates Moses. Even so, Mesopotamian history has still to undergo a great deal of revision. Once a true model has been achieved, once Mesopotamian history has undergone a shortening similar to what the revisionist historians have shown to have been necessary for Egyptian history (because of the fact that Egyptian chronology had been artificially over-stretched by many centuries), then we might learn some surprising things about great monarchs like Sargon of Akkad.(26)
D. Slaughter of Male Hebrew Children
In "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?" I already referred to evidence, from the Twelfth Dynasty site of Illahun, of the mass burials of babies, "buried two to three to a box" underneath the floors of many houses there, and I had noted that: "Internment of bodies at domestic sites was not an Egyptian custom."
Now, David Rohl, in his new book, "A Test of Time,"(27) has further suggested that multiple graves in the region of the Delta, at Tell el-Daba (ancient Avaris) during the same approximate period, had an excessively large proportion of babies:
"... it was discovered that there was a higher percentage of infant burials at Tell ed-Daba [sic?] than is normally found at archaeological sites of the ancient world. Sixty-five per cent of all the burials were those of children under the age of eighteen months. Based on modern statistical evidence obtained from pre-modern societies we would expect the infant mortality rate to be around twenty to thirty per cent. Could this be explained by the slaughter of the Israelite infant males by the Egyptians?"
Moreover, the Brooklyn Papyrus reveals that Egyptian households at this time were filled with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names. In fact the name "Shiphrah", mentioned in this papyrus, is identical to that borne by one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded (unsuccessfully) to kill the male babies (Exodus 1:15).
E. Moses Departs for Midian
The Book of Exodus recounts Moses' slaying of an Egyptian foreman whom he had seen beating an Israelite; after which Moses had had to flee Egypt because Pharaoh (once he had learned about the incident) had sought Moses' life. Moses fled to the land of Midian, where he found refuge with Jethro, the priest of Midian, whose daughter Moses married. Moses lived in Midian for forty years and reared a family (Cf. Exodus 2:11-22). The Egyptians seem later to have recalled aspects of this story (though in a characteristically distorted fashion) in one of their most popular tales, "The Story of Sinuhe".
This Sinuhe, an officer of an early Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh (28), lived in the harem and served the hereditary princess. It seems that he committed a violation of some sort, and when the Pharaoh died Sinuhe feared his successor. He fled into Asia, "in the land of Yaa near the desert", where he was welcomed by the local chieftain. He took the chieftain's eldest daughter as his wife and tended his father-in-law's pastures and flocks. Finally he was called back to Egypt and returned to his homeland from exile. Anati, by way of comment upon this story, wrote:
"The chronicle of Sinuhe contains many elements in common with the biblical account of Moses, who escaped to Midian, and of his father-in-law, Jethro. It is hard to believe that these two similarities are pure coincidence. It seems, instead, quite legitimate to hypothesize that the two accounts have a common matrix ..."(29)
F. The Ten Plagues
Professor Anati has added his name to the ever-growing list of those who have come to accept that the Ipuwer Papyrus - another very famous Egyptian document - reflects the tragedy for Egypt of the Ten Plagues(30); a tragedy that brought about the collapse of the Old Kingdom, simultaneously ushering in Egypt's dark age, known as the First Intermediate Period.(31)
But it was no tragedy for the Middle Bronze I Israelites, whose Exodus from Egypt had set them free from the harsh rule of Pharaoh. Their fate however, due to their lack of faith, was to wander in the desert until their new generation could begin the conquest of the Early Bronze III (32) Canaanite civilisation in the Promised Land. Rohl describes the archaeology at Tell el-Daba (ancient Avaris, in the eastern Nile Delta), which he thinks may be evidence for the Tenth Plague:
"At the end of stratum G/1 ... [Manfred] Bietak and his archaeological team began to uncover a gruesome scene. All over the city of Avaris they found shallow burial pits into which the victims of some terrible disaster had been hurriedly cast. These were no careful internments of the deceased. The bodies were not arranged in the proper burial fashion but rather thrown into the mass graves, one on top of the other. There were no grave goods placed with the corpses as was usually the custom. Bietak is convinced that we have here direct evidence of plague or some other sudden catastrophe at Avaris."(33)
According to Rohl, the Asiatics who had dwelt in Egypt during this Middle Kingdom period were thoroughly 'Egyptianised' (just as one would expect the Hebrews to have been on the eve of the Exodus, after having sojourned in Egypt for centuries). It appears (see quote below) that these 'Egyptianised' foreigners fled Avaris at this time of plague, only to be replaced some time afterwards by other Asiatics (stratum level F) who show no evidence of their having been 'Egyptianised'. These latter would therefore be the 'Hyksos' invaders, whom Velikovsky had identified (rightly, I believe) with the Amalekites: the perennial foe of Israel (cf. Exodus 17:14 & 17:16).
Rohl describes this archaeological sequence at Avaris; firstly referring to the Exodus situation (34):
"What is more, analysis of the site archaeology suggests that a large part of the remaining population of the town abandoned their homes and departed from Avaris en masse."
And, secondly, to the 'Hyksos' influx:
"The site was then reoccupied after an interval of unknown duration by Asiatics who were not 'Egyptianised' like the previous population of stratum G. Stratum F marks a new beginning in the settlement of purely Asiatic (Canaanite) people...The inhabitants of stratum G seem to have left the site before the arrival of [this other] wave of Asiatic immigrants, who settled and remained there until the beginning of the New Kingdom."
More than four centuries later, with the simultaneous rise of Egypt's New Kingdom and of the Israelite monarchy of Saul and David, these Hyksos/Amalekites dwelling in Avaris (stratum F), and at other locations, would be driven out of both Egypt and Palestine
G. The Conquest of Canaan
Further to what I have already written about the Conquest of (Early Bronze) Canaan by the (MBI) Israelites - and especially about that most unique of all incidents, the destruction of Jericho - I can now add an intriguing detail of supporting evidence in favour of the Early Bronze stratum, as gleaned by Professor Anati from the Book of Joshua:
"With regard to the correspondence between archaeology and biblical descriptions, if the latter is reliable in terms of historical reconstruction, then the following passage may prove to be particularly significant: 'Rahab let them down from the window by a rope, for her house was against the city wall itself' (Jos 2:15). Which of the archaeological layers that have been excavated might correspond to this description?...This...description can only refer to a form of urban planning and surrounding wall from the Early Bronze Age .... There were no windows that looked towards the outside of the walls, during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, either at Jericho or at any other site in the Syro-palestinian region."(35)
The presence of the nomadic MBI people at this Early Bronze site, coincident with the city's destruction, is to be expected from a revisionist point of view, according to which the MBI people were surely the Israelites. We have seen that even Dr. Rudolf Cohen, the Israeli authority in this area, seems to think that the evidence supports this conclusion.(36)
THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD
In this section, in which we take a look at Professor Anati's findings on and around the sites of Har Karkom, we shall briefly be considering the archaeology of this mountain according to (i) its chronological implications; (ii) its location in relation to the Exodus route; and (iii) its religious and physical characteristics.
(i) Chronological Implications
Anati first laid eyes on Har Karkom back in 1954. However, it was not until 1983 that he ventured the suggestion that it might be Mount Sinai. Thus he explains:
"Although Har Karkom's religious character was quite evident, no connection was made at first between that mountain and Mt. Sinai. Never before had we had to deal with problems concerning the Exodus and Mount Sinai and never did we have reasons for questioning the conventional belief that the Exodus had occurred in the 13th century BC. Indeed, this appeared to be an established 'fact.'"
However, Anati's research led him to a different conclusion:
"There is no evidence of any human occupation at Har Karkom in the 13th century BC, or for centuries before and after. The usually accepted date for the Exodus occurred right in the middle of a long archaeological gap at Har Karkom."(37)
But not only at Har Karkom, for:
"Now we know that the hiatus concerns most of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev if we leave aside military and trading stations. Thus it is not a peculiarity of Har Karkom. In fact the description of daily life of Midianites, Amalekites, Amorites, Horites and other tribes appearing in the Bible, if nor pure mythology, must refer to either before or after the 2nd millennium BC. According to the archaeological evidence, such dynamic tribal life can hardly belong to the 2nd millennium BC."(38)
[Please note comments that I made on p.3, as well as in footnotes (6,7 & esp. 11) about the Professor's erroneous dating system; a hangover from his conventional training].
Thus we find that (abstracting for a moment from which mountain ought to be identified with the true Mountain of Moses) the archaeology of the entire Sinai and Negev regions shows us that there is, factually speaking, an irreconcilable disagreement between the conventional view of an Exodus during the Late Bronze Age/New Kingdom Era (Anati's conventional "C13th BC") and the biblical testimony about the tribes (Amalekites, Midianites, etc.) living in these deserts at the time of Moses. Essentially, then, the issue in-volves far more than a mere debate about which mountain is the true Sinai.
(ii) The Location
How did the traditional Jebel Musa come to be accepted as the true Sinai? It seems that Christian explorers of Byzantine times went in search of the highest mountain that they could find in the Sinai Peninsula, in which direction they estimated that the Israelites would have travelled after the Exodus. Some of these explorers selected the impressive Jebel Musa, at the foot of which the monastery of St. Catherine was built; though others preferred Jebel Halal, a little to the west of Kadesh-Barnea.
Today, a visitor to St. Catherine's monastery will be shown what the monks there claim to be "the burning bush" (Exodus 3:2). The science of archaeology, however, has revealed that there is no trace of the MBI people in this southern region. In other words, the Israelite wanderers did not - according to the revised chronology - go anywhere near Jebel Musa. In maps showing the major ancient routes between Asia and Africa, we find that none of these well-trodden routes veers down into the southern Sinai Peninsula.
Professor Anati has come to light with many other compelling reasons as well for why neither Jebel Musa, nor Jebel Halal, can be a suitable candidate for Mount Sinai. For example, he wrote that:
"The presently named "Jebel Musa", at the foot of which the monastery of St. Catherine was built, has not provided any evidence of cult sites previous to Byzantine times. The same applies to...Jebel Halal. The only evident traces of ancient human presence were several Palaeolithic stations, a few clusters of funerary tumuli...and some sites of rock art belonging to Roman-Byzantine and to Islamic times. No traces of BAC [that is, from Early Bronze to Middle Bronze I] cult sites were found."(39)
Anati extends his case to the whole of the so-called "Sinai" region:
"Other mountains which have been proposed by various authors as a possible "Mount Sinai" also lack the same sort of archaeological evidence. Some ... have advocated the possible existence of several mounts Sinai. However, if that is the case, where are they? So far, no other mountain in the Sinai peninsula has provided archaeological evidence of being such a paramount cult high-place in the Bronze Age like Har Karkom."(40)
Professor Anati has actually likened Har Karkom in this, its sacral or cultic aspect, to "a kind of prehistoric Mecca", to whose foothills large groups of people would come and build their camps, so that they could worship in the vicinity of the mountain.(41)
A decade of research (1983-1992), following on from his first estimation that Har Karkom might be Mount Sinai, has served to convince Anati that his initial idea was correct. During that decade of further findings, he says, other scholars, "after the first shocked refusal of evidence", have come to agree with him.(42)
Adding further strength to Anati's thesis is his success in having been able to provide the most plausible identifications of sites along the route of Exodus, and to pinpoint the homes of the various tribes mentioned in the Bible for this period.(43)
Just to mention some examples that he gives, the "Hill Road of the Amorites" (Numbers 13:29) is likely to be in the territory of the Amorite tribe which, according to the Bible, lived in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. "Hazeroth" (Numbers 11:35), near, or in, the Paran Desert, is described as the place of departure of the twelve scouts who reached Hebron by "the desert [or wilderness] of Zin" (Numbers 13:21). This desert in the biblical narration is likely to include what is presently called Nahal Zin, from the Arabah Valley to present Sde Boker. The site of "Bene Yaakan" (Numbers 33:31) has a Horite name and the Horites lived on the eastern side of the Arabah. "Hattavah" and "Abronah" (Numbers 33:33 & 33:34) are localities in the Artava and "Ezion Geber" (Numbers 33:35) is near Eilat.
On the other hand, as Anati goes on to explain, no such plausible series of identifications as these can be made for any locations in the Sinai Peninsula:
"If one starts the analysis with the preconceived idea that Mount Sinai must be near St. Catherine, or somewhere else in the southern or central ...Sinai peninsula, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to give a geographical sense to the sequence of the exodus stations. In any case, in our view, the itinerary described must have been topographically meaningful to people from the first millennium BC who were acquainted with the region."(44)
Anati goes on to describe some typical criticisms that his discovery has provoked - to which criticisms he replies by drawing support from Cohen's findings:
"...[there] were those who could not agree with our chronology, saying "Since the Exodus took place in the 13th century BC, Mt. Sinai should have at its foot remains of 13th century camping sites." Should the date be as certain as some believe, this rule should apply to any site candidate for Mt. Sinai, not just to Har Karkom. In such a case, it is probable that not a single mountain in the Sinai Peninsula would fit because the 13th century BC is part of a hiatus in settlement....This fact was further confirmed by extensive archaeological research carried on by Rudolf Cohen of the Antiquities Authority. It led him to propose for the "Age of the Exodus" the same dates as those resulting from Har Karkom (R. Cohen, BAR, 1983)."(45)
The Scriptures provide a detailed description of the deserts and tribal areas around Mount Sinai. "One of the main emerging points", writes Anati, "is that Mt. Sinai ... must be located on or near the border between the land of Midian and the land of Amalek"; a scenario that, as he explains, applies only to the Har Karkom region.(46)
The Bible also indicates that the Amalekites occupied the highlands of the Central Negev and the area of Kadesh Barnea, and the Midianites were on both sides of the Arava [Arabah] Valley. Mt. Sinai, according to the biblical narration, should be located between these two regions, meaning in the Har Karkom area. A thorough examination of the topographical details described in the Bible locates Mount Sinai in the Har Karkom region even without the findings at Har Karkom.
I suggest that it is only a matter of time before archaeologists in the Sinai-Negev desert regions will be able to trace for us the entire Exodus route, from at least the vicinity of Egypt's borders to the Arabah, and beyond, by pinpointing all of the stopping stations and camping sites of the MBI Israelites.
(iii) Religious and Physical Features of Har Karkom
To date nearly 1000 archaeological sites in this area have been surveyed. The remains of numerous villages of the Late Stone Age and BAC periods are found in the valleys surrounding the mountain. The plateau is covered by sites of cult and worship; standing pillars, tumuli, stone circles, altar-like structures, geoglyphs or large ground-level pebble drawings, as well as a unique concentration of rock art including over 40,000 figures. Some of these drawings feature persons praying to an indefinable, abstract form. Most interesting for our purposes are the drawings of the rod and serpent (cf. Exodus 7:9) and the tablet with ten divisions (cf. Exodus 20:1-17 & 32:15).
In the Book of Exodus (19:12-23) we read where God forbade the people to touch the holy mountain. Now Anati has found that, whilst pilgrims came in multitudes to the foothills of Har Karkom, only "a few people climbed to the plateau to perform worship activities."(47) And he adds in a footnote on the same page:
"It is unlikely that the multitudes of the BAC camping sites at the foothill stepped on this ground. It seems that they had no access to the plateau which is likely to have been reserved to a very restricted number of people. An analogous situation is narrated in Exodus about the prohibition for the people to step on the mountain..."
I shall conclude this section by mentioning briefly three other of Anati's striking proposed similarities between Har Karkom and Mount Sinai.(48)
(a) The Grotto, or Cleft in the Rock
The cleft on one of the two tops at Har Karkom forms a small rock-shelter; an uncommon feature in the Sinai peninsula, according to Anati.
"In the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai is described as having such a characteristic: "And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by ..." (33:21-22)."
Again, this is a topographic feature that the Bible attributes to Mount Sinai.
(b) The Twelve Pillars
At the foot of the mountain, Anati and his team found a group of twelve pillars or standing stones facing a stone platform.
Concerning this distinctive situation, Anati wrote: "It is reminiscent of a passage in Exodus (24:4): 'And Moses ... built an altar under the hill (or mountain) and 12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel.'"
(c) The Shrine
On the Har Karkom plateau there are remains of a BAC shrine, with a stone platform (altar?) oriented toward the east. In the Book of Exodus, there are several references to a temple that is said to have been seen by Moses (Exodus 25:40; 26:7; 26:30; 27:8). "Some biblical scholars believe that Moses may have had a vision of a "celestial" temple while on the mountain, but the Bible says that there was a temple and this again is a topographic feature."
CONCLUSION
In this PART ONE, and in the preceding paper, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?", I hope that I (following on from other revisionists) have succeeded in showing that we can now historically pin-point Moses and his era to the late Old/Middle Kingdom period. Moses belongs to the era of those 'Egyptianised' Asiatics of whom we spoke earlier, who eventually quit Egypt en masse, and whose place was subsequently occupied by the non-'Egyptianised' Hyksos invaders. The Exodus event coincides with (was actually the cause of) the collapse of Egypt's Old Kingdom, ushering in the intermediate dark age of early Egyptian history.
Added to this, we now have a much firmer identification for the famous Mount Sinai that played so significant a role in Moses' life.
With this historical basis now properly established, we can the more confidently tackle PART TWO of this article, in which we are going to take a serious look at the language of the Book of Genesis, to see what light it may throw upon the traditional view that Moses compiled this book.
Notes and References
1. Although, according to tradition, Moses is supposed to have had a hand in producing most of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy), it is really only the last four books of which he was supposed to have been the actual author. The New Testament, for instance, never says of Moses that he "wrote" any part of Genesis, as it does when referring to the remaining four books.
2. Mackey, D., "The Toledoths of Genesis", Computer Bible Series (AMAIC Sydney, 1996), in footnote (57).
3. Yahuda, A., "The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian" (Oxford U.P., 1933).
4. Yahuda was, in fact, an expert in linguistics generally. He knew many of the ancient languages, including the old Aramaic, Akkadian and Arabic. He also knew the Coptic language. See op. cit., xi.
5. Ibid., xxix. Actually he has "leap to the eye".
6. According to the "revised" reconstruction of history that I am presenting in this computer Bible series, Moses led the Exodus right at the end of the Old Kingdom, which is separated in history from the beginning of the New Kingdom by many centuries. In previous articles I have given reasons why the "conventional" dates for the Old and New kingdoms of Egypt need to be lowered each by about half a millennium. So that when we encounter in the standard, or "conventional" texts the era "C3rd millennium BC" (for the Old Kingdom) and "C13th BC" (for part of the New), we ought immediately to reduce each of these figure in our minds by about half a millennium. See also footnotes (7 & 11). In this article, I use the word "conventional", "conventionalist", to designate the historical scheme (the "Sothic" chronology) that one encounters in the standard texts of ancient history. I reject this scheme. See also footnote (18). By contrast, I apply the description "revised", "revision", "revisionist", to the new chronology that I am following, and (hopefully) developing - and with which I am trying to acquaint the reader in this computer series.
7. These Archaeological Ages (Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, and also the Late Bronze) need to be lowered correspondingly (in accordance with the lowering of the dates for the Old, Middle and New kingdoms of Egypt) by approximately half a millennium from the standard date, according to what I have explained in the previous footnote.
8. See footnote (6) for an explanation of what I mean by this term, "conventionalist".
9. See footnote (6) again for explanation of this term "revised".
10. Anati, E., "The Mountain of God", Rizzoli (NY, 1986).
11. Anati, E., "Har Karkom in the Light of New Discoveries", Vol. 11 Studi Camuni (Edizioni del Centro, 1993). It is important to note that Anati, whilst finding that there is no evidence to support the view that the Exodus, or Wanderings of the Israelites in the desert took place during the Late Bronze Era (to which era these events are conventionally assigned) has not gone that important step further and re-dated the Late Bronze and the other Archaeological Ages according to the biblical information. Thus the revisionist scholar Dr. D. Courville wrote, concerning Anati's chronology (following on from Anati's identification of Har Karkom as Mt. Sinai), in relation to Courville's own scheme: "... I accept the recent thesis of Anati, which proposes a new nomination for the identification of Mount Sinai of Scripture. The evidence noted at this altered site for the Israelite encampment belongs to the end of Early Bronze, in agreement with my placement of this event. While Anati mentions my work in his report, he does not point out the obvious fact that acceptance of my thesis would allow this identification of the evidence for the Israelite camp without having to move the Exodus back into the 20th century - a suggestion that few indeed would be willing to accept". "The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications", C&AH, V. 10, pt. 1 (January, 1988), 46.
12. "Har Karkom", 76.
13. Ibid.
14. Indeed, Anati is far from being a biblical 'literalist'. He does not baulk at rejecting as fact a given statement of Scripture for which he himself can find no factual evidence. Moreover, he appears to follow the liberal "Documentary Hypothesis" of scriptural interpretation that I have criticised in the previous article (and see also PART TWO of this article).
15. When Anati first saw this mountain, as "a young student, in 1954", it was called Jebel Ideid, Arabic for "Mountain of the Multitude". He had no idea then of its being Mount Sinai. When he returned to the site in 1980, "as head of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Israel", the name had been changed to the Israeli name of Har Karkom, "The Saffron Mountain". "This name is apt since the mountain reflects this peculiar color at certain times of the day. It soon became clear that Har Karkom had been a very special mountain in the past. In 1983, after four years of archaeological survey, sufficient data was at hand to propose that this mountain might be the biblical Mount Sinai". Har Karkom, 7.
16. Especially the Upper Palaeolithic and Chalcolithic Stone Ages. For a revised placement of these so-called 'Stone Ages', the reader is strongly urged to read Dr. John Osgood's two papers, "A Better Model for the Stone Age" (Part One), Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol.2 (1986), 88-102 & (Part Two), Ibid., Vol.3 (1988), 73-95. Osgood, for instance, dates Late Chalcolithic to the time of Abraham in Canaan. The question comes to mind (certainly Anati had thought of it): Why did this Har Karkom come to be revered as a sacred mountain? The only reason that I can suggest, in the light of Dr. Osgood's research (see previous paragraph), is that it, like Mount Moriah in Jerusalem where the Patriarch Melchizedech had lived (Genesis 14:18), had originally been the home of - or upon whose summit had worshipped - one of Noah's mighty descendants (whose era, according to the revised chronology, would approximate to the Palaeolithic Age, hence pre-Abrahamic). Apparently the Jews have a tradition that Melchizedech was none other than Noah's son, Shem.
17. I follow the biblical dating system so carefully worked out by Martin Anstey, "The Romance of Biblical Chronology", Marshall Bros. Ltd. (1913), and later summarised and slightly amended by Philip Mauro, "The Wonders of the Bible Chronology", Reiner Publications (1933). I consider Anstey's dating system to be by far the best chronology of the Bible that I have found so far.
18. In a successful MA thesis by the author, "The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar", University of Sydney (1994). This thesis has since been favourably reviewed by David Down in an article entitled, "University Scholar Attacks the Sothic Cycle", Archaeological Diggings, Vol.3, #2 (April/May, 1996), 23-24.
19. Cohen, R. "The Mysterious MBI People - Does the Exodus Tradition in the Bible Preserve the Memory of Their Entry Into Canaan?", BAR, Vol.IX, #4, 16-29.
20. According to Artapanus, there were many pharaohs in Egypt at the time of Moses. See C. McDowell's "The Egyptian Prince Moses", Proceedings of the Third Seminar of Catastrophism & Ancient History, C&AH Press (1986), 4.
21. "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?", footnote (37). See also, D. Rohl's "A Test of Time. The Bible - From Myth to History", Century (1995), 341.
22. In a recent article in this computer Bible series, entitled "Queen of Sheba: Hatshepsut".
23. Yahuda, op. cit., ch.vi, 231-268.
24. On this point of early Mesopotamian dates, what Dr. Courville wrote in "The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications", Vol. II (Loma Linda CA, 1971), 289, about the efforts of historians to settle upon a fixed date for the era of the famous Babylonian king, Hammurabi, having "Hammurabi floating about in a liquid chronology of Chaldea ...", seems to apply also to Sargon of Akkad. At the start of this century it was thought that Sargon should be dated to about 3800 BC. In 1923, Stephen Langdon placed Sargon at about 2872 BC (CAH 1923, Vol. I, 403). His dates have now been lowered to about 2250 BC. The "Legend of Sargon" has been deemed by critics as being the literary basis for the story of Moses. D. Hickman, however, is of the contrary opinion. He wrote that: "... the "Legend of Sargon" was partially based on Moses' story and composed for the purpose of aggrandizing the Akkad king". In "The Dating of Hammurabi", C&AH, Proc. of Third Seminar (Parma, Ohio, 1986), 20-21.
25. "Mountain of God", 158. Anati actually uses this phrase in connection with the Sinuhe story, however. Extract from the "Legend of Sargon" taken from J.B. Pritchard, "ANET: Ancient Near Eastern Text Relating to the Old Testament", (Princeton UP, 1969), 119.
26. I do not anticipate, however, that the necessary chronological adjustment will be so radical in the case of Sargon that we shall find - as according to Hickman's ingenious reconstruction (see footnote 24) - that Sargon of Akkad is to be equated with the great Mesopotamian conqueror, Cushan-rishathaim, who harrassed the Israelites and actually ruled over them for "eight years" during the early period of the Judges (3:8).
27. Rohl, D., "A Test of Time. The Bible - From Myth to History", Century (1995), 271. Rohl is another scholar who, due to his dissatisfaction with the Sothic chronology, has found himself forced to search for an alternative system. In this interesting and beautifully illustrated book, he has weighed in with some further devastating criticisms of the conventional system. That, I believe, is the positive side of his book. Unfortunately, however, Rohl has - as I believe - "thrown out the baby with the bath water" with his "New Chronology", which departs from that absolutely fundamental identification of the Israelites with the MBI people. Hence, despite Rohl's own ingenious efforts to locate biblical events within an Egyptian context, he in fact misses out on practically every single wonderful synchronism that has already been so painstakingly worked out by previous revisionist historians. Except perhaps for brief moments in relation to the Thirteenth Dynasty, and the Hyksos invasion, Rohl's "New Chronology" is not contiguous at any single point with the one that I have been proposing in this series.
28. Interesting, from the point of view of this reconstruction, is the fact that the "Story of Sinuhe" is retrospectively dated (since the extant versions of it that we have belong to the New Kingdom) to the Twelfth Dynasty. This fits in nicely with our reconstruction for the time of Moses. What doesn't fit in, however, is that the pharaohs named in the Sinuhe document are the early Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs, Amenemhet I and his son Sesostris I. According to the present reconstruction, these pharaohs ought rather to be the mid-Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs, Amenemhet III and Sesostris III. But see next footnote (29) for an explanation of the hybrid (from an historical point of view) nature of the Story of Sinuhe.
29. "Mountain of God", 158. Whilst I most heartily concur with Anati's view that the "Story of Sinuhe" shares a "common matrix" with Moses' adventure in Midian, I think that Anati could have allowed his description to have a much wider application, to include a "common matrix" with other Old Testament stories as well (apart from that of Moses in Midian). Let me explain. The more that I study the "Story of Sinuhe", the more convinced do I become that, whatever it may have been like in its original form, it is now primarily an amalgamation of episodes from the life of several famous biblical characters, in somewhat jumbled form, viewed retrospectively from the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history. For instance:
- the early Twelfth Dynasty setting for the story suits JOSEPH, rather than Moses. So, perhaps, the obscure 'harem' incident, due to which Sinuhe found himself in trouble, reflects the incident of Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:6-20);
- Sinuhe's flight from Egypt, and his adoption by the chieftain of the desert, certainly reflects aspects of MOSES' flight to Midian and sojourn there, as Professor Anati has appreciated;
- Sinuhe's duel with the great warrior of Palestine - one of the most famous incidents in the story - is, as many agree, very similar to the biblical account of DAVID'S battle with Goliath. Thus J. Kaster wrote of the "Story of Sinuhe", in "The Literature and Mythology of Ancient Egypt" (The Penguin Press), 23: "The reader will recognize several motifs of the folktale in the story, among them the victorious fight with the boastful, overconfident giant, recalling David and Goliath." K. Simpson, in "The Literature of Ancient Egypt" (Yale UP, 1973), 64, n.12, has drawn the same conclusion, typically adding that the account of the fight in Sinuhe "may have served as a literary prototype [sic]" for the biblical account of the David and Goliath duel. I personally believe that, apart from some obviously Egyptian flavouring in the story (for instance, its setting during the Egypt of the early Twelfth Dynasty), the "Story of Sinuhe" reflects more the adventures of the Israelite hero, David (his flight from Saul, his adoption by the Philistine king and the battles that he fought for him, his protestation of innocence) than of any other biblical character, including Moses. Since: "No trace of the real Sinuhe...has yet been found through tomb reliefs, statuary, or stelae" (Simpson, op. cit., 57), we may well be dealing here with a real, non-Egyptian hero (hence Israelite?) whom the Egyptians later incorporated into their own folklore.
30. "Mountain of God", 158. Before him, this same conclusion had been reached by I. Velikovsky, "Ages in Chaos", Vol. I (Abacus, 1953), 18-26; and D. Courville, op. cit., Vol. I, 129-131. David Rohl, op. cit., 283, refers favourably to Velikovsky in relation to his reconstruction of the Exodus.
31. I accept Dr. Courville's v