From: Peter Ruest (pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 00:52:52 EST
Paul Seely wrote:
> Peter wrote,
> <<Even if their writing system may have been "primitive" (which I still
> doubt), their language certainly was not primitive a mere 5000 or 5600
> years ago. And most certainly, Adam's language was not "primitive"! Nor
> were his capacities for planning transmission of revelations received
> from God, no matter how he did that. What "society's financial,
> religious and political leaders" did at that time may not be the key to
> what a man of God did. It may even be that Adam belonged to the line of
> the 10 pre-flood Sumerian "kings" found on a clay tablet. It seems that
> our disagreement focuses on the historicity of Adam as a person. I think
> this has theological implications, as well.>.
>
> The accounting records that were written in Archaic Sumerian were the work of
> the financial, religious and political powers that existed. The point is that
> since writing narratives such as exist later would have been a means of
> increasing their power, and since historically the powers that be virtually
> always aim at increasing or at least solidifying their power, they would have
> written narratives if the writing system had allowed for it. The historicity
> of Adam has nothing to do with it.
I understood perfectly well what you meant by the powers that existed
and the interest such powers usually have in (mis)using the means of
communication for manipulating people. However, manipulating the masses
by means of written material is hardly possible with a mostly illiterate
population. So their interest in writing stories might not have been
that large. We certainly cannot retroject the politics of modern mass
media back into those days.
The historicity of Adam _does_ have to do with it, because in his case,
historicity does not just mean he existed, but one would have to
consider _who_ he was. If Adam was a historical person, his intellectual
capacities and motivation probably were not below but rather above those
of his contemporaries, and he may very well have been a (or even _the_)
leader (or king) in that society. I suppose he would have been able to
invent writing himself - without precursor scripts. J.R.R. Tolkien,
admittedly a genius, invented a whole series of new languages, with
their grammar and rune-type scripts.
By the way, a recent publication shows that we are not yet able to
clearly distinguish, in a language, between statistical elements
(describing, e.g., an arrangement of Sumerian pictograms) and genuine
grammar (presumably required to write a story): Seidenberg M.S.,
MacDonald M.C., Saffran J.R., "Does grammar start where statistics
stops? (perspectives: neuroscience)", Science 298 (2002), 553-554. Of
course, they are not talking about Sumerian, but the impossibility of
disentangling statistics and grammar, or putting a demarcation between
them, seems to be clear enough. And the Sumerian expert, Dr. Englund,
whom you recently consulted (your post of 8 Nov) apparently confirmed
that we don't yet really understand how to read Sumerian pictographs. He
replied, "We are not well positioned to judge the capability of
proto-cuneiform to write involved narratives... By the way, we also
cannot say with certainly whether these earlier texts were in Sumerian;
my view is that they were probably not, but represented a language
entirely unknown to us." Could it have been a Semitic precursor
language, capable of forming Semitic wordplays?
With all the unknowns of dating and early languages and scripts, we
obviously are not yet in a position of deciding whether or not Adam
could have written Gen.1-4 (or more precisely, 1-5:1a, not 1-5 as I
wrote somewhere earlier).
> ... the speculation that Adam received Gen 1 by revelation
> (which I find improbable because Gen 1 is related to Enuma elish which cannot
> be dated before 1800 BC, and if the Babylonian creation account came second,
> how is it that the Babylonians of all people were the only ones who followed
> the divine revelation about the dividing of the primeval waters and the
> sequence of the days?)
We have no proof that the Babylonians were the only ones corrupting
Gen.1, and even if they were, this doesn't prove anything about a Gen.1
text which might have been written 2-3 millenia earlier.
> ... In the scenario you painted, Adam is no longer the author, owner or
> commissioner of the section bearing his name. The section with his name is an
> oral tradition passed to Lamech (who kept it in his head for hundreds of
> years before writing it down), and you said the 2nd colophon could mean,
> "information obtained from Adam." But, if the clause "These are the
> generations of ..." does not necessarily refer to the author, owner or
> commissioner of the tablet, then the "information obtained from whoever" in
> the rest of the toledoth could also be oral traditions written down long
> after the person named.
My scenario depended on my provisional concessions that there might not
have been any writing before the earliest known clay tablets, and that
these represented Sumerian. These concessions are not even needed. Why
do you keep insisting on an extremely long oral tradition (or worse) -
much longer than absolutely necessary? Don't you just assume it? We
don't have any evidence that the oral tradition had to span many
centuries, or even millennia. My hypothetical model just postulated two
people, Adam and Lamech, to have kept an unwritten record (if indeed
they didn't know how to write). The reliability of such tradition could
possibly have been greatly enhanced by repeatedly telling the stories to
others. And that even oral tradition may have been very reliable in
ancient societies is indicated by the fact that in the intertestamental
period, legal decisions were transmitted by word of mouth for several
centuries (R.T. Beckwith, book review of: J.R. Davila, "Liturgical
Words" (Eerdmans, 2000), Themelios 28/1, 54 (2002)).
> Further, the toledoth clause does not have to mean "obtained from Adam." The
> clause could just as well mean "information concerning Adam" or, as Hamilton
> translates, "the story or history of Adam." So, all of the toledoth content
> could have been separate oral stories which were written down long afterward.
If the toledoth of Gen.5:1 would refer to what follows, it definitely
would _not_ represent "the story or history of Adam", since Gen.5-6:8
tells the history from Adam to Noah, not the "history of Adam's descent
[toledoth]". And why do you insist on "long afterward" even for those
records originating after writing was common (Shem and all later
patriarchs)? Just because no patriarchal clay tablets have been found? I
have argued before that it would be an extremely lucky accident if such
tablets would be found, even if they recopied them often.
> <<If, for the sake of argument, you postulate tablets written at the time
> of Abraham or Jacob: what do you make of the colophon names (and the few
> dating indications cited by Wiseman)? You again have to ignore them as
> traditional colophons, destroying the obvious Genesis structure.>>
>
> As I said above, the names relate to the content of the section. Also, there
> is no reason outside of just liking the colophon theory to identify them as
> traditional cuneiform colophons. Hamilton explicitly disputes the idea that
> they are colophons at the end of a section as is the case with the cuneiform
> colophons. He, like most OT scholars, understands them to be introductions to
> the sections, so not colophons as the theory defines them. Yet, they are the
> first thing he mentions when he discusses the structure of Genesis. So, one
> does not have to interpret the toledoth as traditional cuneiform colophons in
> order to maintain the obvious Genesis structure.
I agree that some of the toledoth clauses can be (mis)understood as
introductions to what follows. But sometimes what follows the toledoth
says little of nothing about the person mentioned; so, how can it be the
content of that section? In earlier responses (10 & 14 Oct), I showed in
detail why Hamilton's remarks don't refute Wiseman's colophon theory in
any way.
> Since most OT scholars understand the biblical toledoth to be introductions
> not conclusions, one cannot say that the theory is "in agreement with the
> most natural understanding of Scripture." Gen 2:4 may be an exception placed
> after the content of Gen 1 for polemical purposes (to completely obviate any
> possible suggestion of a generation of the gods), but since it does not name
> someone as author, owner or commissioner of the supposed tablet, it is an
> exception to the traditional colophon theory as well. And, if the biblical
> colophons are introductions, then the textual and archaeological evidence,
> which is about conclusions, is irrelevant. This leaves the theory resting on
> nothing more than a probable misinterpretation of the toledoth clauses in
> Genesis. That is not better than the theory of Wellhausen.
I don't like mere appeals to authorities ("most OT scholars"), without
evidence. They may be wrong. (And I certainly won't defend Wellhausen!).
You call the textual and archaeological evidence irrelevant because they
fit the interpretation of the toledoth clauses as conclusions? Do I have
to understand that because you believe they are introductions, the
contrary evidence is irrelevant? That would be a strange way of arguing.
Gen.2:4 is not the only toledoth which cannot be an introduction (cf.
Gen.37:2). The polemics argument depends on dating Gen.1 after Enuma
Elish and on the corresponding mythological interpretation, which is
unconvincing, to say the least. The Genesis toledoth theory implies that
the colophon refers to a history of descent, as found in the text
preceding the colophon, usually giving the origin of the person(s)
named. So, if Gen.1:27 does not refer to Adam, but to the first humans
living very much earlier than Adam (cf. A. Held & P. R¸st, "Genesis
reconsidered", PSCF 51/4 (Dec. 1999), 231-243;
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF12-99Held.html), then Gen.2:4 has
no person(s) to name, whose history of descent would be described in
Gen.1, because Gen.1 describes the history of the descent or evolution
of the universe and the biosphere, naming "the heavens and the earth",
rather than a person. For this case, you are right in saying that a
colophon refers to the content of a section, not to a person. If
Gen.1:27 would refer to Adam, we should expect Gen.2:4 to name him.
> As for Jim, I don't see where Pentateuchal theories influenced him. Further,
> would you prefer that he had remained in creation science? I don't think so.
> You presumably would have preferred that he remained in day-age concordism;
> but, day-age concordism is no different in principle from creation science:
> Creation science ignores the great majority of scientists in order to
> maintain a private interpretation of the scientific data, and concordism
> ignores the great majority of OT scholars in order to maintain a private
> interpretation of the biblical data. In my opinion they are both unbiblical
> illusions, and I am glad he gave them up. His outgrowing of two illusions
> suggests that he can outgrow "agnosticism" as well. Though I am not a
> five-point Calvinist, I think it is biblical to believe that if his faith was
> really of God and he continues to seek the truth, he will outgrow
> "agnosticism."
>
> Paul
There is a great difference between "the great majority of scientists"
and "the great majority of OT scholars"! The Documentary Hypothesis is
conceded by its proponents to remain largely speculative, but the age of
the earth is no longer speculative, but _known_ to better than +-1%. I
never claimed certainty about my proposals of how to harmonize biblical
creation and evolution, but emphasized that there is no proven
contradiction. And I am certainly not basing my faith on any particular
interpretation of Gen.1; I am open to reasonable alternatives. On the
other hand, in my opinion, it is the documentary hypothesis of the
Pentateuch which is an unbiblical illusion.
I very much sympathize with MIT physicist Prof. Ian Hutchinson, one of
the 2002 ASA Annual Meeting's keynote speakers, who said, as quoted in
the last ASA Newsletter (Sep/Oct 2002):
"Actually the more troubling intellectual challenges I faced were ...
when I was studying liberal theology and higher criticism. It seemed to
me rather absurd that theology should adopt a materialistic position,...
and then after constructing elaborate stories about how the Scriptures
came to be what they are, conclude that the Bible is nothing but a human
book. Of course, the conclusion was ... embedded in the premises."
Peter
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
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