Genesis Text: Response or Documentary? Allegory or Narrative?

I have information that disagrees, and says that in antiquity including at the time of Christ, Jewishness went with the father's side as does Islam and so forth among Arabs today.

This suggests that it was not until the era of 1100-1300 AD that the present custom of requiring a Jewish MOTHER, not father...became the rule...and that this was in part because of persecution and scattering of small populations, declining literacy and moral standards, crime, rape, incest, leading to doubt as to who WAS the father, etc.

Genesis is replete with information that no one however learned in the fifth century BC could have known. No one in his senses can ascribe its "writing" to someone who just sat down to scribble at that time.

Any such person (ie Ezra) would have been a mere editor and redactor, of epic poetry and legends, stories handed down for centuries and millennia. There is nothing to say that Hebrews per se would have had to be the originators of these oral histories: --they would have simply adopted, adapted, and/or translated this literature of nearby more advanced peoples...just as the Bible stories today are in the hands of remote tribes in Africa or New Guinea and there are being passed on as oral history.

In fact, the Hebrew language of the book is far more antique than the 5th century date would indicate: persons who look at the language tend to say it was put into virtually its exact present words in the TENTH century BC, not the fifth.

It is a hobgoblin of small minds to claim that whenever an editor of some ancient work supplies the modern terms for cities or states, therefore the book must date from now. The Living Bible says that Paul preached in "Turkey"! Does that mean that Paul lived in the last century or two?

As place names changed, or as other spots with similar names that might cause confusion arose...the editor would have used terms, or even changed names, to make clear what city or country was meant, at least unless the term was so antique that he himself was at a loss. All of this argues FOR, not against, the antiquity of the document.

On another thread 3 or 4 days ago, I state that the mere fact that Genesis says that when Abraham arrived in Israel, "the Amorite was in the land,"...that ALONE would establish that we are dealing with a string of history going back to the very time itself. The Amorites were so forgotten, that no one living in David's or Ezra's or Jesus' time, much less the KJV era or Jefferson's day-- would have had any idea who or what they were.

Only very recent archaeology, well within my lifetime, established who and where they were, and that they ruled suddenly from about BC 2210 to BC 2020, then vanished without trace.

This both dates Abraham quite securely, and also rules out that the [Abraham/Genesis] story was written from scratch at any time much after BC 1900. Everything subsequent to that must be rather incidental literary redaction.

Sigh. Well, it's difficult any more to be very patient with articles like this, in which the author breathlessly unveils new discoveries of cutting-edge modern scholarship — which very literally were thoroughly debunked at least fifty years ago.

The Old Testament knows virtually nothing of allegory. When it even comes close, the characteristics are worn on the sleeve — as is a trademark of the genre (cf. Ezekiel 17).

By starkest contrast, not only do Genesis 1 and 2 bear none of those marks, but (1) they are written in standard, richly-attested Hebrew prose style; (2) chapters 1 and 2 flow seamlessly into chapters 3-10, and 11-50 — chapters which no responsible Hebrew student would brand as "allegory" on the evidence; and (3) they are frequently and consistently referred to in both Old and New Testaments as narratives of historical events (e.g. Exodus 20:9-11, Matthew 19:4-6).

And this idea that Moses — or even, if one were to insist, "the editor(s)" — somehow patched on Genesis 2, as if the reader had not read Genesis 1 and could not be counted on to remember the concise and plain timeframe provided as a framework to Genesis 2.... Well, it's discouraging. It's discouraging because it assumes that those who would read such a suggestion will be unreflecting and stupid enough to believe it. And it's discouraging because too many have borne out that assumption.

Articles like this are old, worn-out rabbit trails. Good heavens,they're even posted with "dead end" signs! They convince only those who have moral, spiritual, personal problems with the infinite/Personal God revealed in Scripture. They have nothing to do with the evidence.

Dan
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