From: PASAlist@aol.com
Date: Sat Oct 19 2002 - 14:38:40 EDT
<< David wrote concerning George's comment on two sources in the flood story
(" The 2 & 7 of every kind in the flood story"),
<< 7 of clean kinds and 2 of unclean kinds does not seem to be a very
strained harmonization. The chiastic structure thoughout the Flood
story supports a single source. >>
In the final text, it is not a _strained_ harmonization, but note that 6:19
says,
"And of _every_ living thing of _all_ flesh, two of _every_sort" And then in
the next verse, "of the birds after their kind, and of the cattle after their
kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, _two_ of every
sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive." Most of the birds and cattle
are clean, yet still you have "two of every kind shall come unto thee" not
"shall come in pairs."
But, the change from 2 to 14 of the clean birds and animals in 7:3 is not
the only change. There is also the classical difference of 6:19 being in an
Elohim section (vv. 13 and 22) and 7:3 being Jehovah. And, there is a change
in style. P's style is formal and exacting, "male and female." J's style is
more folksy story-telling, and although 7:3 uses the words "male and female",
6:2 says something not said elsewhere about animals, but often used with
respect to humans: "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee seven and
seven, the _man and his wife_." ish beishto." The animals are likened to
married couples---a rather folksy way of putting it.
Wenham and others have made a case for the unity of the Flood story, but
J.A. Emerton made a critique of those arguments that should also be read
before making a final decision. See J. A. Emerton, "An Examination of some
attempts to defend the unity of the flood narrative in Genesis," Vetus
Testamentum 37 (1987) 401-20.
The old Wellhausian "sure results" of higher criticism is dead in any case,
but I still see sources in the Pentateuch, wherever they may have come from.
The emphasis should be on the final form of the text, but not as if it did
not have a history.
More important than the sources issue, the statement in 7:2 that the animals
came on the ark as married couples implies that they were adults, thus
falsifying the speculation of the creation science crowd that the really
large animals, sauropods in particular, came on as "juveniles." Yet without
this contradiction of Scripture, creation science cannot get all of the
animals on to the ark: adult sauropods alone would fill it.
Paul
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