Fw: Genesis 1:1 - a standing miracle

From: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>

> At present I do not know the state of Babylon maths in 1950BC, as most of
> the stuff available is about 1500BC so off hand I dont know when
sexagesimal
> system devised.

According to Kenneth A. Kitchen, Egyptology professor at the U. of
Liverpool, in his new book, _On the Reliability of the OT_, Eerdmans, p.
445:

"The Mesopotamian mode of reckoning was sexigesimal; i.e., it operated with
tens and sixties ... That was in about 2000 [BC]; but such a concept was
still alive and well in the third century B.C. in Babylonia."

He goes on to give examples of sexigesimal use earlier, in Sumeria, and on
page 446 says this:

"So much for Sumer. What about Gen. 1-11? There was no sexigesimal system in
Hebrew usage, ... "

He discusses numbers in the context of ages of kings from the king list and
biblical patriarchs, and notes that in the given Hebrew ages, none of the
60-divisible numbering occurs, such as the 3,600 year multiplier in the king
lists.

> If it was 1500BC it points to Genesis being written in c600BC during the
> exile, but I would not commit myself.

As for a late dating for when Genesis was written, Kitchen says much to
discredit it. One interesting point is that the Hebrew of Genesis is a far
older Hebrew than post-exilic Hebrew. He argues against the J(H)EDP theory,
in summary as follows:

1. No objective, independent evidence exists for these four compositions.
2. Defective modes of analysis are used to support the theory. To wit:

"The _final_ form of the Pentateuch may well lie with the time of an Ezra;
but of course, on _external, factual_ data, the origins of much of its
constituent books lie much farther back. Gen. 1-11 has origins in the early
second millenium, as does most of that book. Exodus-Leviticus contain (as
does Deuteronomy) a covenant in the format exclusive to circa 1400-1200,
along with the building account for a tabernacle of a type in use in the
late second millenium. Many items in P and H are long prior to the
Babylonian exile, and in fact belong in many cases also to the late second
millenium. Laws in Exodus and elsewhere find ther closest analogs not in the
Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar II, but in the law collections down to the Old
Babylonian period."

3. "Literary strata" including that of JEPD do not correspond to
archaelogical strata.

He then proceeds to take Welhausen ("undisturbed by inconvenient facts from
the (ancient) outside world") thoroughly apart.

Dennis Feucht
Received on Mon Jul 26 12:53:23 2004