hi Arach, thanks for the reply.
sure, but genesis is NOT a history. i'm talking literature here, not archaelogy. there are parts of it that are CLEARLY based on real people or places or events: bab-el is a real place.
If you go back to what I said at the beginning:
Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
How is this different to what you are saying??????????
You are agreeing that parts of Genesis are clearly historical, that’s exactly what I am saying.
Sure there are many fairy tales in it, but there’s history there too. Just because it doesn’t conform to the modern day definitions of the word doesn’t mean it isn’t historical.
Abraham could well have been a wandering Aramean, and any narratives about him and events concerning him ARE historical narratives, they may be largely false but they are still historical narratives.
but what genesis does not do is accurately record the histories, events, genealogies, of the stories described.
I really don’t know how you can say this!!
How do you know that Abraham did not go to Egypt during a famine, it is entirely possible.
How do you know that the war in Genesis 14 is unhistorical? It reads like history to me.
it tells tales, and usually tall ones.
Yes, it USUALLY tells tall tales, but not the entire book, which is what I am saying.
how is this hard to understand?
It isn’t hard to understand, I just don’t think you fully understand what history is.
george washington was a real person. but he probably did not cut down a cherry, and tell his father that he couldn't tell a lie.
But he is a historical character, PART of the tradition is true, which is what I am saying about Genesis. How can we say that there was no Abraham or Jacob, of Joseph? We can’t, and if a narrative about them concerns a past event then that is an historical account, because you and I don’t believe the tales doesn’t mean that everyone thinks it is unhistorical, a few billion people would disagree with us.
that story is not historical, but a biography of him would be. see the difference yet? these aren't hard concepts.
I know the difference, I just think you have a narrow view of what history is. If someone claimed that the story was true, would you say the ENTIRE tradition is false? Of course you wouldn’t, this is a tradition involving a real historical person. Genesis has many tales similar, but we cannot sweep the entire corpus aside as unhistorical, it isn’t possible.
you're mistaking my point. my point is not that abraham didn't exist. it's that the stories told about him are fiction.
My point is that there is no way you can dismiss everything about Abraham as fiction.
For example: Now Abraham moved on from there into the region of the Negev and lived between Kadesh and Shur. For a while he stayed in Gerar.
How can we say that this is fiction?
i don't know whether or not he was a real person, but any one skilled in reading any sort of literature notices immediately that genesis is written as fiction: traditional stories.
NO, no, no.
We are saying it was written as fiction. It was written in the style of the time, it was believed to be historical, and still is by a great many people. You are mistakenly applying a post renaissance view of literature onto a text that was written about 2000 years previous. It wasn’t originally written to be taken as fiction, it was written to be a history.
Would you say that Herodotus wrote history, because his ‘history’ books are rife with anachronisms, flights of fancy and wild, unsupported claims. It’s simply the way ancient’s recorded history. Thucydides was the same, and even Polybius did not achieve his own recommended standards.
sure, maybe abraham existed. maybe he was really the father of the jews and the muslims. but stories about him are most likely made up.
Yes, MOST LIKELY, there is no way to tell if they are entirely untrue!
Could Abraham have been a wandering Aramean? YES
Could he have been married to Sarah? YES
Are there unlikely events associated with his life. YES
Does this mean the narratives are unhistorical? NO
They are historical narratives, but most of them are likely to be FALSE history.
because it is very unlikely that part of genesis are historical accurate.
But you have just said that parts of Genesis are based on real people and real events.
a story based on history, a history, and historically accurate story are three different things.
And they are all open to the interpretation of the investigator. That’s why I define history as a narrative about the past that is created in the historian’s mind and presented as a written record. Every history is a creation of the historian’s mind, it is his interpretation of the data.
How many different histories have been written about Jesus based on the NT texts? They do not all agree. Some ‘prove’ that he was the Son of God, some ‘prove’ he was a revolutionary’ and they all use near enough the same sources for their conclusions.
Because you and I think that Genesis is unhistorical doesn’t mean that all historians would, it is just down to what you and I, or any other historian accept as historically plausible, that’s all history is.
Say we agree that all Abraham’s tales are fictional but based on history, that doesn’t mean that every historian will agree. Some will completely reject it, some will completely accept it, it is how they interpret the data.
besides, genesis is full of anachronism, which is pretty much the opposite of "historically accurate."
But, this doesn’t mean that the narrative is not a historical narrative! The authors may very well have believed that they were recording accurate history, no one was critically analysing the sources to see if they were accurate or not.
But, again, before the Renaissance anachronisms were not a problem at all for people who were writing and reading history. The historians probably never even considered whether anything they wrote was anachronistic or not.
Look how long that the Donation of Constantine was considered historically accurate, how long did it take before anyone’s curiosity was aroused?
It wasn’t until the rise of Documentary Criticism during the renaissance that anachronisms were considered to be problematic.
Even although evidence of documentary criticism can be found as early as 1355 when, in a letter to Charles IV, Petrarch provided evidence that a document exempting Austria from imperial jurisdiction was clearly a forgery. The full value wasn’t really realised until 1439 when Lorenzo Valla famously exposed the Donation of Constantine as a very poor forgery.
So, yes, anachronisms can indicate inaccuracy, but, it doesn’t follow that ancient historians were not writing history because of anachronisms. They weren’t even aware of them but they were aware that they were trying to record past events.
Even the Joseph stories undoubtedly belong to post monarchy, most likely the Saite period, it doesn’t mean they never happened.
But, you read some pre-renaissance books that claim to be history and you will be shocked to learn that most contain anachronisms.
There was no critical history writing being done in Israel.
It is well-known that the rise of Christianity was a tragedy for history writing, they suffocated the discipline for about 1500 years.
parts could have really happened, sure.
But this is what I said in the first post.
just like dracula could have really trapsed around romania sucking on necks. dracula is, after all, based on a real person.
Yes, parts of Dracula could well be historical. There was a Vlad the impaler as you say.
it has nothing to do with impossibility. it has to do with style of writing.
It has to do with style of writing NOW, but what histories written 700 year before Christ were written in what we would call a historical style?
you picked a good chapter, btw. genesis does appear to have been based on some kind of history, as the opening section reads like one. for the most part, this is NOT what genesis does.
I know it’s a good chapter, that’s why I picked it, because it is plausible.
But I am actually agreeing with you, I am saying that PARTS of Genesis could be historical, that’s all I claimed.
I honestly think that you are making the mistake of applying modern day literary definitions on to an ancient text. I have done this myself many times before.
(and don't start on genealogies, as they appear to be rigged)
I would argue that every genealogy in the Bible is artificial.
i'm not saying that genesis is not historically set, or not based on historical events in some parts, i'm saying that genesis itself is NOT a history.
That’s exactly what I said in the first post about this:
Of course there are parts of The Book of Genesis that are historically plausible, it isn't entirely unhistorical.
This is exactly the same as what you are saying.
I know that Genesis is not completely historical, very little in it is historically plausible. I agree it isn’t what you and I would call history, but you can guarantee that people will disagree with us.
how do i know this? i've read genesis. i've read kings and chronicles. i know the historical difficulties with kings and chronicles, and why they're not really even considered ture histories.
They aren’t considered true histories by people like us. But there are people who think that they are.
maybe joseph did exist. maybe he didn't. but the story is at the very least heavily fictionalized.
Yes, it is heavily fictionalised, but there is possible history there too, which is my point. Even if a history is clearly exaggerated, it is still history, it is just inaccurate.
sure, and what i'm saying is that for the most part, there is no real historical information designed to keep records in the book of genesis. it's not terribly difficult to look around and found which stories have an element of truth in them and were based on something in the real world.
Yes, I agree 100%, but this is the thing. What you and I find easy to identify as inaccuracies can be deemed legit by certain people, they have a different criteria fromus for accepting evidence.
Look at this gem from Mitt on another thread:
kenneth kitchen found price of slaves in josephs time so jososeph was real bible is true you are a real loser like a idiot.
You and I both know that this is a ludicrous approach to history, and biblical studies, but there are people out there who have different level of acceptance of evidence. I know this is an extreme example it was just an easy one to find.
i'm not saying he didn't. i'm saying the story is a traditional one, not a historical record.
It isn’t a historical record to our eyes, that doesn’t mean that the ancients never viewed them as history. This was the way that they recorded history.
now look at the two contradictory creation accounts. the two halves of the noah story. the three instances on abraham telling a foreign king sarah is his sister. see the similarity?
I think it was two instances of Abraham and one instance of Isaac and the three tales may be based on one event. Which one came first is anyone’s guess.
the redactor didn't even care to consolidate his sources, change them a little to streamline it and make it all agree nicely. why? to preserve the integrety of the tradition.
But no one at the time would see this as a problem!
We both know that the Bible is rife with contradictions, it is obvious, but to the ancient historian or reader this was not a problem, they did not view history as we do.
The first person that we know of who sifted through his sources and attempted to reject what he thought was impossible was Hecataeus (550-475 BCE). When he wrote:
What I write here is the account which I considered to be true: for the stories of the Greeks are numerous, and in my opinion ridiculous’
This was the first example we have of a critical approach to history writing.
The ancients simply recorded history in a different way from us.
history is to some degree the telling of stories, yes. but explaining a history in context is different than spinning yarns.
Yes it is different for us.
does it? find me morality in genesis.
What about the three wife/sister motif tales?
Esau and Jacob, Lot, there’s an abundance of moral stories there.
when god says "don't eat from that tree" he doesn't say "because it would be wrong to do so, and i care that you do the right things." he says "if you eat it, you'll die." sounds distinctly like cause and effect.
But how is this the same as Van Seter’s ‘Modern scientific theories’? It isn’t, it is a cause and effect caused by something that is outside scientific enquiry, namely God.
genesis does not record national history. because there is no nation of israel or judah during the time it is set. rather it tells fictionalized biographies.
It was written AFTER Israel became a nation, and it does allegedly record how that Nation came into being, it is that nations ‘pre-history’. It was written to give that nation a history of how it came into being.
What about the conquest narratives? We know that they are completely inaccurate but what other claim to the land does Israel have? The State if Israel makes its claim to the land based on these texts and they were concerning Israel before she was a nation.
It is actually quite difficult to pinpoint when Israel actually did become a nation!
Brian.
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