J-D

The genealogies in Genesis give the name of the father of Tubal-cain as 'Lamech', and also give the name of the father of Noah as 'Lamech', but they have two different genealogies (the father of Tubal-cain's father is named as Methusael the son of Mehujael, while the father of Noah's father is named as Methuselah the son of Enoch), and there's nothing in the text to indicate that the father of Tubal-cain and the father of Noah are the same Lamech, or that Tubal-cain and Noah were brothers.

semiopen

Hi Arnoldo, been a while - nice to see you again... hope you weren't away getting a lobotomy but actually you are referring to Genesis 37:28

I've written many posts about this subject.

From an economic standpoint, slaves have to produce more than what is required for their subsistence. This isn't easy to do in a primitive economy. Therefore, if you wanted a generic person to do work, why not just hire one of the local yokels?

The 20 shekel rate (of course this is before coins were invented, and whether the bible authors are talking about weights here is highly questionable) might have been an acceptable price back in the good old days, but then again it might not. It sort of depended on market conditions, sex of the slave, etc. The price seems high for the conditions described in the Joseph story - this was a wholesale transaction after all; were the brothers in a position to bargain?

However, using the same logic, this was also the price of a slave (with the same cautions) for over a thousand years afterwards. Therefore, one has to question the effectiveness of this as any type of argument for some kind of historical accuracy in Genesis. I suspect your hero Kenneth_Kitchen was the person who started this dubious defense of biblical accuracy.

Keith&Co.

Isn't the tectonic and topographic upheaval associated with The Flood something invented by creationists to explain fossils and strata?

To the authors of Genesis, the waters rose and the waters lowered and the world was pretty much unchanged except for all the dead sinners (and every other living thing).
As for the source of the antedeluvian river, 'magic.' Or, you know, physics were different in olden days, as demonstrated by the fact it didn't rain. So the water cycle would involve some magic or technobabble step anyway.

semiopen

There is a dispute about the actual dates of camel domestication, but the presence of camels as domestic pack animals is probably anachronistic.

Interestingly, the Israelites don't take camels out of Egypt in Exodus.

An important book on this subject is Abraham in History and Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk)

It is available on Questia.

Seters points out that the use of tents is also probably anachronistic.

I've also pointed out above that the presence of money is a little dubious, but the references are not completely clear... I don't think there is any doubt that the Sages thought the references were to actual coins.

Tommy

Tubalcain in Genesis 4 is 8th generation after creation. Noah in Genesis 5 is 10th generation. In both lineages there are ancestors Enoch, name beginning "Methus...", Lamech in that order. Possibly brothers or cousins or if the number of generations is significant there was time for Tubalcain's iron innovations to be known to Noah's clan.

Tommy

Biblical chronology has Joseph at 1900 BC, no? When did coins first emerge in Egypt/the Levant?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Arnoldo,

You are the victim of junk science or perhaps a theological hoax.

In ancient Mesopotamia a certain amount/weight of barley was used to judge price around 2200 B.C.E.

In Egypt loaves of bread and jugs of beer were measurements of value.

There would have been no standard price for a slave as what you gave for a slave would have depended on a number of factors: Age, health, profession, history and sex of a slave; buyer's need and desire for a slave, and general cost of maintaining a slave. All of these would have changed drastically from year to year and deal to deal.

In the chart, there are 3 biblical passages cited:

2 Kings 15:20 does not talk about the price of slaves:

This describes an event in the 8th Century B.C.E. Since a metric ton is 1000 kilograms, this would suggest 27,200 wealthy men each contributing 1 1/4 lbs. of silver. Were there really 27,200 wealthy men in Israel at this time? In any case, it tells us nothing about the price of slaves.

Exodus 21:32

This does not tell us anything about the price of a slave, but is just how much you pay when a bull gores a slave. A person today might pay $100 if a dog bites a person or $1,000,000 if a dog kills a person. It tells us nothing about the value or a person's value.

How much was 30 sheckels equal to?
From Weights, Measures, and Coins From the Bible Through the Talmudic Period

In excavations carried out in Palestine some of the weights which have been found have their weight marked on them, but most are without any notation. The shape of the weights, for the most part, is semicircular (dome-shaped). There are also some cast metal weights that are rectangular and cube-shaped, and some that are oval or in the shape of animals. Most of the weights found in Palestine are from the end of the period of the monarchy (the seventh to sixth centuries BCE).

Thus, even within the time period 600-500 B.C.E. what a sheckel of silver weighed varied quite a bit. Nobody knows what it equaled earlier.

The Third and final Biblical reference is to Genesis 39:28. This does not exist as Genesis 39 ends at 23. There is a reference at 37:28:

Twenty shekels or approximately 200 grams (7 ounces) of silver is worth about $150 today. It may have been an average price for a slave in the 17th century or in the 7th century B.C.E. It is difficult to determine.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Tommy

A straight reading of Genesis 1 has God separating water above from below with a "firmament" (vault) within which he then placed the sun, moon and stars - thus the cosmology has Earth above water at the centre of a cosmic bubble with water outside. If the lack of rain in Genesis 2 is significant then when the flood commenced water could have flown from below through the fountains of the deep and from above (passing the stars!) through the apertures of heaven.

I'm with the creationists, the flood would have been an almighty kahblooie.

Keith&Co.

Then so is every rainstorm. Accordingto scripture, the apertures in the firmament open to allow rain. And there are chests of hail next to the apertures in case God feels like throwing hail down with the rain.

But anyway, the upheavel is not scriptural, it's a later addition moving backwards from the conditions of the strata, to trying to find a place in scripture that could explain it.

But the biblical description of Earth is that it's dirt spread across the surface of the Waters below. It's a mud pie. There's just not that much geology to form the geologic column, much less churn like a fossil bearing blender. The upheaval of the creationist model would have torn the biblical Earth asunder like Kleenex tissues in the washing machine.

semiopen

Coins aren't found anywhere until about the time of the Babylonian exile, nothing directly to do with the Judeans but just an example of how important this period was in human history.

Alyattes_II

I'm not sure about the introduction of coins into Egypt and there are several interesting hoax and fraud stories. However, coins do not appear there before 600 BCE.

The 1900 BCE date for Joseph looks pretty early, more like 1500 would be more conservative. Abraham is usually figured at 1800 BCE.