Originally Posted by NinJay

[sarcasm]
It's so obvious he probably thinks he doesn't need to explain it.

In binary, 2 = 0010.
In binary, 14 = 1110.

0010 AND 1110 = 0010, Q.E.D. 2 AND 14 = 2.

Duh. :Cheeky:

[/sarcasm]

regards,

NinJay

Originally Posted by shirley knott

Well, it is superior to, and more honest than, ANY response we have ever gotten from dave on any issue... [Portuguese, anyone? Spider tracks? Consilience? etc]

Originally Posted by Keith&Co.

Well, if someone were to issue an Ark toy with 14 animals...and a sacrificial altar, they'd be drummed out of business rather quickly.
Imagine the press conference, as Christain Parents and PETA join together to slam the toy advertised as 'most biblically accurate' with the official 'pleasing to God' aroma generator.

Originally Posted by Cege

Perhaps the redactor would have noticed, but maybe not.

Take the story of Noah, the ark, the animals two-by-two and consider how many average people, Christian or not, are aware that Genesis also describes animals 14-by-14 taken onto the ark?

I've never heard a sermon (that I can recall) about Noah and the ark. It's a story for children in Sunday School. Songs about, toy reproductions, and drawings of the ark show 2 of each kind, not 14 of each kind.

2-by-2 was the favored story, and the other story was probably just ignored, not read aloud, which continued to this very day.

Who knew!

Originally Posted by Barbarian

Just out of curiosity, what is the DH-compatible explanation for the existence of those internal contradictions? I mean, surely the redactor would have noticed them.

Originally Posted by angelo atheist

14-by-14 ? First time I have ever heard that! Mind, the last time I looked at a bible was 20 years ago. 2-by-2 would have meant an ark the size of Tasmania as is. Imagine 14-by-14 ? This bloody ark would have to be the size of a small continent to hold all living things aboard. There would not be enough wood in the world for such a craft. Not to mention the work force required.

Originally Posted by Amedeo

If I understand you correctly, the issue is whether the present Book of Genesis was written down from tablets or from oral traditions... and scholars have been debating the issue. But then it is obvious that the scholars ASSUME that the extant Book of Genesis was not written down by a prophet or God-inspired writer. I notice that they [or you and friend] ASSUME that some prophet or prophets received the information, which he either wrote down or transmitted orally unto others.

Is there any evidence that the exant Book of Genesis is NOT the original NARRATION of events? (If it is the original narration, then there is no oral tradition behind it and no tablets before it.)

Is there any information or any clue as to when Genesis-1 was narrated? And when Genesis-2 was narrated? Presumably the other chapters were narrated afterwords... according to their sequence in the extant Book of Genesis.

From a textual analysis, I see that Genesis-1 was narrated when Canaan was already established, when Ugarit and Ebla had cuiform writers, and Biblical names of persons and gods were in common use there. Most importantly, while Genesis-1 presents the Elohim (one male and one female), the ministers of El are absent from the Biblical creation scene. (Micha'El, Satan'El, gabri'El, et al, will appear out of nowhere in the Bible later on, but Genesis-1 is obviously a reduced-revised Canaanite pantheon. So, the narration (and possibly the writing down of the Hebrew version of the Canaanite supreme deity) is relatively late, long after the hayday of the Ebla empire, where cuneiform was used for writing down their own language.

I see that Genesis-2 was narrated when the Tigris and the Euphrtaes had already their names, and when (judging from Adam and sons), agricultures had already been established; and, of course, the very first Biblical humans were endowed with speech and all other Homo sapiens attributes. Needless to say, writing had already been established in Sumer. So, the first Hebrew narrator of Genesis-2 (whether it was Adam or Moses or somebobody else) may have written down the creation account.

It is impossible for there to be ONE narrator/writer of Gen.-1 and Gen.-2, since the humans by the fiat of the Elohim are different from the breathed-in clay Adam and the rib-extracted Eve. There are two Gods, two different creation performances, two sequences in what is created, and, therefore, two narrators/writers. It is possible, however, that the first Hebrew narrator or prophet or writen was ONE -- who made use of TWO traditions, whether oral or written down. Why, it may be the compiler of the extant Book of Genesis that combined two different oral or written traditions.

Moses could not have been the first Hebrew to tell two tales, precisely because he imposed only one God on the Israelites. So, he was a prophet of Yahweh, who was already known as a creator. But he may also have trasmitted the creator-story of Yah, since in Genesis-2, the word "elohim" has already become a mere adjective: "Yahweh elohim" in effect means "divine Yah" or "the creative [Elohim-like] Yah."

In effect, Moses repudiates the Cananite/Arabic Elohim and opts for the divine architect/farmer. Where does Yah come from, since he does not come from the Canaanites? Ya seems to be older than His first presence in a Hebrew prophet. He was known by the Eblaites (before and apart from the Hebrews), and the Bible itself lacks the awareness that "Yahveh "is, first of all , a vocative or invocation name, and then a subject-noun (along with Yah/Yoh/Yeh), as one can figure from other languages.

You ask: Are the sources of the Book of Genesis oral or written? That would be interesting to know, but first one has to establish the origins or gushing-forths of the two accounts of creation. It seems to me they go much further back than the extant Book of Genesis, and that originally they were spoken forth rather than written down as letters or for record-keeping.

The Table of Nations could not have been narrated and/or written down until the (historically) youngest of the nations was already established and generally known in the then-world (Middle East). (In a post somewhere or elsewhere, I noted down the years of the flourishing of the listed youngest nation, which tells pretty much when the extant Book of Genesis , or part of it, was composed.)
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I am an atheist and have no vested interest in any god or any specific theory.