Coiling the rope and weaving between the rows eventually produces a giant round floppy basket, which is then stiffened with a set of J-shaped wooden ribs. These stanchions could be placed in diverse arrangements; set flat on the interlocked square ends of the ribs, they would facilitate subdivision of the lower floor space into suitable areas for bulky or fatally incompatible animals. At first sight, the very broken lines 51—52 of the Ark Tablet looked unpromising. The surface, if not completely lost, is badly abraded in this part of the tablet.
I needed, then, to bring every sophisticated technique of decipherment into play: polishing the magnifying glass, holding it steady, repeatedly moving the tablet under the light to get the slightest shadow of a worn-out wedge or two. What gave me the biggest shock in 44 years of grappling with cuneiform tablets was, however, what came next. Two each, two by two. This is a very rare word among all our texts — when the dictionary was published there had only been two occurrences. For the first time we learn that the Babylonian animals, like those of Noah, went in two by two, a completely unsuspected Babylonian tradition that draws us ever closer to the familiar narrative of the Bible.
Another interesting matter: the Babylonian flood story in cuneiform is 1, years older than the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, but reading the two accounts together demonstrates their close, literary relationship. Coracles, including fairly large ones used for transferring livestock, were common modes of conveyance along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient times, and were in daily use in Iraq until the middle of the twentieth century.
He accounts for each and every last detail, often to entertaining effect. And then he needed to weave this rope into a coil and waterproof it. This version, he says, was written in the dry and concise style of a business document. Finkel conjectures that this version of the flood story was more like theatrical notes, a prompt for an oral storyteller. With some props and aids—a headdress for the god, a drummer, and a flautist—an ancient Babylonian actor could transport his audience into the scene of the Deluge, a world that was ancient even to the ancients.
That story, alas, is lost to us: we may never know what scenarios, plot turns, and improvised details, what jokes and character studies, the ancient oral storytellers may have given to the men and gods of their flood stories. Because, during this time, the Song was read as an allegory of the relationship between God and his people.
Indeed, the Targum a Jewish paraphrase of the Song written in Aramaic in the 9 th century AD read these verses as a reference to the Exodus from Egypt! The woman, Israel, begs the man, God, to take her into his bedroom the Promised Land.
Getting the genre right is pivotal to getting the message right. Most people today, myself included, believe that the Targum got it wrong.
What then is the genre of Genesis ? To answer this question, we need to look for those signals that the author sends his readers. But before describing those signals, let me make two more introductory comments. First, the question of genre of Genesis is often presented as a choice between two alternatives. Is it history giving a literal depiction of events or is it myth having no real connection with actual events?
There is no reason to think there are only these two possibilities. People on both sides of the question want us to think so.
Again, we need to avoid this unfortunate and unnecessary characterization of the question of genre. Second, as we address the question of genre, we need to remember that the Bible, while written for us, was not written to us. The authors of the books of the Bible had an original audience in mind when they wrote, and that audience is not us.
It was written to the church in Rome and when we read it, we need first to put ourselves in the place of the church of Rome before applying it to ourselves.
Just the fact that the Bible was written in ancient Hebrew illustrates this important point. Modern 21 st century readers need to first translate the text from ancient Hebrew into a modern language in my case, English. Of course not everyone can do this, so God encouraged some of us to go to graduate school to study ancient Hebrew as well as related languages like Akkadian, Aramaic, Ugaritic, etc.
And as we will see, we put ourselves in that ancient cognitive environment by also studying ancient Near Eastern literature, including ancient stories about floods. Previously, I talked about the importance of genre.
Whenever we read anything, we identify either consciously or not the genre of what we are reading. Sometimes it is natural and easy because we are so used to certain types of writing whether a novel or a textbook or a newspaper editorial , but sometimes we need to be self-conscious about identifying the genre.
To do so is particularly important as we consider the truth claims of the Bible. Genre triggers reading strategy and helps us see what message the author wants us to learn from his words.
So, what is the genre of the Flood story? There are continuities that unite these three sections and we will take those seriously, but there are also significant stylistic differences that signal different levels of interest in reporting historical details.
These continuities and differences will come out in my following comments. My focus will be on how Genesis relates to Genesis First, those toledot I mentioned a moment ago. After all, even granting that Moses is the author of Genesis, he would have used earlier sources to talk about the distant past.
So the toledot of Terah Gen. The first toledot occurs in Genesis and then occurs eleven more times, four times in the rest of Genesis ; [the toledot of Noah], ; and six times in the rest of the book ; , 19; , 9; In other words, the toledot formula does, in my opinion, show a continuity of genre between Genesis and Genesis Further, I would say that the toledot formula indicates a consistent interest in history, recounting past events.
This is true of Genesis as much as Genesis In short, the narrative employs the Hebrew waw -consecutive verbal form that is typical to narrate past events. The caveat, of course, is that the waw -consecutive can also be used in a non-historical narrative like a parable.
I think the continuity with the rest of Genesis and indeed with the redemptive history that follows established by the toledot formula renders it much more likely that the use of the waw -consecutive intends to tell us about past events. Many would point to the genealogies in Genesis as compelling evidence of the literal historicity of the whole book.
After all, the stories in Genesis are connected by various genealogies for instance, Gen. They are not intended to be historical records. That said, while not strictly historical, I think they are partly historical. First, Genesis contains many obviously figurative descriptions of real events. We have already mentioned two in previous posts. As the early church fathers and many others up to the present day have said, you cannot have a literal twenty-four hour day without a sun, moon, and stars.
In Genesis 2, God creates the first man from the dust of the ground and his breath. But, since God is a spiritual being and does not have lungs, this description is clearly figurative. We could go on with other examples and in our next post we will give examples from the Flood story , but a fair reading of Genesis will recognize that it uses figurative language much more extensively than in the chapters that follow.
Second, Genesis has an intense interplay with ancient Near Eastern texts, particularly creation and flood stories. We reserve the latter for the next post and here will talk about the creation. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh dates back nearly 5, years and is thought to be perhaps the oldest written tale on the planet. In it, there is an account of the great sage Utnapishtim, who is warned of an imminent flood to be unleashed by wrathful gods.
He builds a vast circular-shaped boat, reinforced with tar and pitch, that carries his relatives, grains and animals. After enduring days of storms, Utnapishtim, like Noah in Genesis, releases a bird in search of dry land. Various archaeologists suggest there was a historical deluge between 5, and 7, years ago that hit lands ranging from the Black Sea to what many call the cradle of civilization , the flood plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
The translation of ancient cuneiform tablets in the 19th century confirmed the Mesopotamian flood myth as an antecedent of the Noah story in the Bible.
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