CC44: The Book of Genesis

It's hard to argue with the reality that the Book of Genesis has had a profound influence on the growth of three major world religions. It's a powerful set of tales that evoke intense emotions. It's been retold over and over to breathless audiences. Its images appear in great masterworks of art. If its authors were here today, they'd be proud.

 

"At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more" (Genesis 8: 6-12). Ancient myths about creation, floods, trees of life, Divine signs, and hidden places pop up in cultures all over the world. Photo credit JAT 2014.

But I get frustrated by the attention given to the Book of Genesis. To my way of thinking, when the standard tools of socio-historical criticism are applied (form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, social-scientific context), two things become clear: (1) Genesis is entirely a work of fiction and (2) Genesis was cut and pasted together much later than most of the historical, prophetic, and remaining Torah books of the Hebrew canon.

Let me be clear: I believe the Book of Genesis is NOT the inspired word of God given to an anonymous prophet thousands of years ago. I believe it is largely an extended myth. A work of fiction with some bits of historical truth. A book that has much more in common with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings than with other Hebrew works such as Ezra-Nehemiah or Leviticus.

When I was doing research for my Master's research essay (short thesis), I came across the most wonderful book in the university library. I was looking for a different book, which I couldn't seem to find, when suddenly my eyes fell upon a strange title: Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus.* Say who? (For those who are interested, the full bibliographic data is below).

Russel Gmirkin, the author of this admittedly highly academic book, uses careful research into early sources to suggest quite convincingly that the first part of Genesis (chapters 1-11) couldn't have been written before 278 BCE. He also shows why it's likely that Genesis was first written in Alexandria, Egypt -- not, as you'd expect, in the land of Judah.

Meanwhile, it's no coincidence that another important work known to scholars as the Septuagint began to be assembled at almost exactly the same time (c. 275 BCE) in exactly the same place (Alexandria, Egypt). What is the Septuagint? The Septuagint is the oldest known collection of Hebrew scriptures -- sort of an early version of the "Old Testament" (as Christians call it). What's striking about this collection is that it was written not only in Hebrew but also simultaneously in Greek -- translated from Hebrew texts for the Greek-speaking Jewish population of 3rd century BCE Alexandria. Fragments of the early Greek Septuagint have been found by archaeologists.

Much to the embarrassment of modern orthodox Jewish and Christian scholars, until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 at Qumran (east of Jerusalem), scholars hadn't found any pre-Common-Era versions of the Jewish canon written in Hebrew** (or any major chunks of the Hebrew Bible, for that matter). The next-oldest-known authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic Aleppo Codex) dates from the early 10th century CE -- a mere 1,100 years ago or so!

Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars now have much more material to work with, but it's important to note that among the hundreds of scrolls found at Qumran, almost all are individual scrolls that contain only a single "book" (such as the Book of Genesis or the Book of Exodus). All but one of the "books" that are found today in the Hebrew Bible have been recovered in part or in whole at Qumran (proving their early origins, though not the date at which they became canonical). But many other kinds of texts have been found there, too -- non-canonical works that bear little resemblance to today's Rabbinic Judaism. And, despite everyone's curiosity, it seems there's no evidence in the Qumran material for the existence of a fixed canon in the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE (in Judean Qumran, at least). Scholars have found many Hebrew and Aramaic scrolls at Qumran, but no relatively stable canonical list to define and shape them. 

Meanwhile, the Septuagint was apparently already known in Greek-speaking Jewish communities outside Judea. (These communities are called the Diaspora). One of the biggest of these Diaspora Jewish communities happened to be centred in . . . Alexandria, Egypt. This is important because the evidence available to us suggests very strongly that sometime around 275 BCE (in the early Hellenistic period that followed Alexander the Great's conquest of vast territories, including Egypt), a group of scholars got together in Alexandria, Egypt, and assembled a collection of pre-existing theological writings into the "proto-canon" we call the Septuagint. They decided on a list of scrolls or "books" that belonged together as part of this canon. The Alexandrian scholars certainly didn't write all the scrolls or "books" themselves. They merely collected together some scrolls that had been written by earlier Jewish thinkers, probably centuries prior to their collation in the Septuagint.

These earlier scrolls had something important to say about God, in the view of the Alexandrian scholars. But when these assorted teachings were put together, they made a mishmash. The collection was disjointed -- really just a bunch of prophecies and histories strung together. They didn't make much sense when read one after the other on their own. So the scholars had to do quite a bit of editing and rewriting to tie everything together (a process called redaction). Then, as I understand it, they added their own contribution: they wrote an introduction to the collection -- a myth that would tie together all the earlier prophecies into a cohesive theological paradigm that would make sense (well, sort of).

Enter the highly influential book of Genesis, pieced together from bits and pieces of earlier material during the Ptolemaic period in Egypt, and placed at the very beginning of the collection to serve as a theological "preface" for everything else that would follow.

To be sure, many elements of Genesis can be traced to Ancient Near East sources (elements such as the Flood narratives), but all this proves is that the authors knew their sources and wanted to draw on them. It's part and parcel of theological writing: you always try to draw on earlier sources in order to establish your own authority.

Unless, of course, you're Jesus.


*Russel E. Gmirkin. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 433 and Copenhagen International Series 15 (New York: T & T Clark, 2006).

 ** The books that have been included in the Septuagint for at least 2,000 years were not all accepted into the tri-partite Jewish canon when rabbinic scholars in the late 1st century CE made some final decisions about which books to include in the Jewish canon. Jewish scholars, followed later by Protestant theologians, decided to exclude from the canon such Apocryphal books as "The Wisdom of Solomon" and "The Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach." (The latter book is usually just called "Sirach" -- the Jesus referred to in the full title is not that Jesus, but an earlier man who had the same name.) The Septuagint, though modified many times over the centuries, is still the official Old Testament of the Roman Catholic Church.