outhouse

sources please

Toto

Google is your friend.

John Day "The Flood and the Ten Antediluvian Figures in Berossus and in the Priestly Source in Genesis" in On Stone and Scroll: Essays in Honour of Graham Ivor Davies, 2011, JK Aitken, KJ Dell and BA Mastin (eds.), BZAW 420; Berlin, W de Gruyter, pp.211-23

first page viewable here

summary here

outhouse

I think our earlier poster may be confusing the work and what is really happening in this scholarship, and taking it out of context.

outhouse

I dont think John Day states this in any way shape or form



amd its pretty obvious it was finished by P in its last compilation.



as far as if Berussus mythology being simular, im sure it is, the legends originated there.

and since Berossus is later then genesis as written, and he worked somewhat on its origins, how much he pulled from genesis is up for debate

Tenorikuma

What he says, after noting many of the ways in which the Priestly flood story and the preceding list of patriarchs are more similar to Berossus than to Enuma Elish and other more ancient accounts, is that they both independently drew on a common knowledge of late Babylonian traditions.

Day himself still dates the P source to some 220 years earlier than Berossus, but this is relatively close in time.

On the other hand, scholars like Thompson and Lemche have been pointing out how much of the dating of the Pentateuch is circular, and that it's hard to come up with any good evidence for much of Genesis existing before about the 2nd century BC. Even "minimalist" scholars have been guilty of assuming certain places and events to be historical simply because the Bible mentions them, then using that "information" as a basis for proving when different bits were written. This is no longer a tenable approach in Biblical studies. We have to start with the history we know from archaeology and more reliable sources, and then ask whether there's any good evidence for dating a particular book or source any earlier than the Hellenistic or Hasmonean period.

Meanwhile, Finkelstein has been showing the problems with the standard view of a Persian-period compilation of the Pentateuch in Yehud, since archaeology is showing Jerusalem to have been a mere hovel of a town prior to the Hellenistic period, with no chance of supporting the kind of Jewish scribal community that would have been needed for such an undertaking.

However you cut it, it was the last few centuries BCE in which Jewish literary production blossomed, and what works we do have that are old seem entirely unaware of the stories found in Genesis. Heck, only the Hellenistic/Hasmonean author of Chronicles seems to know of any traditions regarding Adam, aside from late pseudepigrapha and the New Testament. The only OT author who connects Noah with a flood outside of Genesis is the writer of Isaiah 54, dating perhaps to the 5th century BCE. However, his language differs from that of Genesis and might be independent (source: Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, p. 364).

James The Least

All responses to a biblical literalist are futile.

He'll just say that Gilgamesh supports the historicity of the global flood, and that the Babylonians copied it from the Israelites.

andrewcriddle

If Day is correct that the P flood account (but not IIUC the J flood account) can be shown to use late sources, then this would support a late date for the final version of the Genesis flood account, but the original version (J without P) could well be much earlier.

Andrew Criddle

outhouse

really no one is debating at minimum, 2 main sources J and P.


while J is tricky to date, there is no real debate within a 100 years.

P is pretty much nailed down and not debatable