Book of Genesis. (Torah. Pentateuch of Moses)

Myths and legends

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. 4 And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water. 7 And God made the firmament, and separated the waters that were under the firmament from the waters that were above the firmament. And so it became. 8 And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning: the second day. 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And so it became. 10 And God called the dry land earth, and the meeting of the waters he called seas. And God saw that [it] was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, grass yielding seed, fruitful trees, bearing fruit according to its kind, in which is its seed on the earth.” And so it became. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, grass yielding seed according to its kind, and tree yielding fruit, in which is its seed according to its kind. And God saw that [it] was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning: the third day. 14 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; 15 And let them be lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth. And so it became. 16 And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth, 18 and to rule the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that [it] was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning: the fourth day. 20 And God said, Let the water bring forth living things; and let the birds fly over the earth, across the firmament of heaven. 21 And God created the great fish and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that [it] was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. 23 And there was evening, and there was morning: the fifth day. 24 And God said, Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, cattle and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth after their kinds. And so it became. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to their kinds. And God saw that [it] was good. 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth. 27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed; - [this] will be food for you; 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every thing that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food. And so it became. 31 And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.

"The Bible: What 'really' happened?"

The biblical text is not easy to relate to historical reality. There are many readings and interpretations of the text to consider. Moreover, written sources and artifacts discovered by archaeologists raise new questions and provide virtually no answers. In the book “The Bible: What “Really” Happened? (Tanakh / Old Testament)" (Alpina Non-Fiction Publishing House) biblical scholar Andrei Desnitsky tells how to read the Bible through the eyes of a scientist, how history and myth are related to each other, and what can be said about the historicity of the texts of the Old Testament. N+1

invites its readers to familiarize themselves with a fragment that tells what in the biblical narrative coincides with information about life in the Ancient Near East and what does not.

Background of Israel

The Book of Genesis traces the Israeli (and not only Israeli) people to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - three legendary figures who are usually called patriarchs. The biblical narratives about the prehistory and early history of Israel, undoubtedly, do not reflect the point of view of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the memories of their distant descendants, therefore, based on the material of these narratives, we can judge, first of all, what was significant and relevant for the Israeli people in subsequent times, and it is on the basis of these observations to approximately date the final version that has come down to us in the biblical books.

It is clear that we can hardly expect to find independent confirmation of these stories and least of all can we confirm them with archaeological finds, but does this mean that the stories about the patriarchs should be recognized as mythical and fundamentally unverifiable narratives, like the tales of Ilya Muromets in Russian folklore ( despite the fact that a person with that name actually existed)?

Apparently, we can pose the question this way: what in these narratives coincides with the information we know about life in the Ancient Near East, and what differs from them? Next, you can try to approximately date the events that formed the basis of these stories (relatively speaking, to determine the time of life of the patriarchs), as well as the era when the stories about them took their current form.

The first thing that catches your eye is some anachronisms in the narrative. According to any calculations, Abraham could not have lived earlier than the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e., but in the Book of Genesis (12:16) he breeds camels, although, according to reference publications, this animal was domesticated no earlier than the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. - however, disputes about the exact time of their domestication continue to this day, and the main fuel for these disputes is the reliability of the biblical stories about the patriarchs.

But there is another, already undoubted example of anachronism: in Genesis (21:34) it is told how Abraham lived in the Philistine land, although the settlement of the Philistines in Canaan is reliably dated to the 12th century. BC. Obviously, in both cases, the compiler of the final version of the text described the world in which he himself lived, but this does not mean that the rest of the narrative is unreliable. Actually, by calling this land Palestine, we allow the same anachronism, because it is a Latin name.

W. Albright was the first to think about linking these narratives to archaeological data, placing them in the Middle Bronze Age (beginning of the 2nd millennium BC). In those days, judging by archaeological data, cities flourished in Canaan. Albright linked Abraham's wanderings with documents from Kültepe in Anatolia, which spoke of trade with Mesopotamia (his departure from Mesopotamian Ur and initial advance to the north) and the subsequent invasion of the nomadic Amorite people into Canaan (apparently, its scale and significance were greatly exaggerated , we will talk about the Amorites below). Further, R. de Vaux proposed shifting this chronology to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e., to the time of a significant decline in that same urban culture. However, in any case, the city life of Canaan has a rather indirect relation to Abraham.

Non-biblical documents again played a key role here: tablets found in the 1920s and 30s. in Nuzi in northern Iraq, dating from the 15th–14th centuries. BC e. These were Hurrian archives that revealed many aspects of the family and social life of that society. In particular, a childless couple could adopt a slave who became her heir (like Eliezer for Abraham and Sarah in Genesis (15:1–2)), and a barren wife could send her maid to her husband so that the child born to her would be considered the wife's own child ( as Sarah did to Hagar in Genesis 16). In other words, it turned out that, minus small anachronistic details that could easily be omitted, the history of the patriarchs fits perfectly into the social context of that time.

But does this mean that the social practices and institutions attested by the archive from Nuzi specifically for the middle of the 2nd millennium BC are characteristic exclusively of this period? Apparently not. This could be a certain general background of that era, and precisely because the biblical author separately stipulates such episodes and sometimes specifically explains them, we can conclude that at the time of writing the final version of the text they already seemed strange (while the camels and Philistines mentioned in passing were, on the contrary, quite common).

As Finkelstein noted, the time of composition of this epic can be judged by the topics that receive special attention. A significant place in the Book of Genesis is given to the rivalry between two twins: Jacob-Israel and Esau-Edom, the ancestors of the nations of the same name. At the same time, Israel turns out to be younger and generally weaker, but more intelligent and, in modern terms, “civilized”: it is engaged in settled cattle breeding and agriculture, while Edom obtains food by hunting. A special role in the narrative is played by Israel's crossing of the Yabbok (Jabbok) stream as the border of the territory of Edom in the 32nd chapter of Genesis, which we discussed in section 3.6. “The Contest of Jacob” is a potentially extremely dangerous event that ends quite happily thanks to divine intervention.

It is not at all difficult to imagine that this story was especially relevant in the conditions of intense rivalry between the Israelites and the Edomites, who felt at the same time their kinship (for comparison, we note that nothing in detail is said about the rivalry of the other two brothers - Isaac and Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs). Assyrian sources mention Edom as an established state from the end of the 8th century. BC, so it would be logical to attribute the composition of the epic of the patriarchs, or at least a significant part of it, to approximately this period. This, of course, does not mean that in more ancient times there were no stories about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Just the mention of the ancient customs of adopting slaves or children of maidservants (we do not find such examples in the Bible outside the stories of the patriarchs) shows that such stories existed before, but were collected, updated and recorded in a very specific era.

This time is the end of the 8th century. BC. - at first glance seems unremarkable, but archaeological excavations indicate that rapid demographic and economic growth began in the Kingdom of Judah around this time. In 722 BC. The northern kingdom of Israel was captured by Assyria, its capital Samaria was destroyed and, apparently, a significant number of northerners moved to Judea, which remained relatively independent, but was included in a single economic space with Assyria. Accordingly, it can be assumed that it was at this time that a demand arose for texts that would explain the origin of the Israelites and Jews, their internal unity in contrast to the alien Edom and other peoples.

However, it is quite difficult to date the time of the final composition of this or that legend, and the datings of different authors are different. For example, in the will of Jacob (Genesis 49), the seniority between the brothers, the sons of Jacob, is clearly redrawn in favor of Judah: Reuben desecrated his father’s bed by going to his concubine, and Simeon and Levi showed unjustified cruelty by slaughtering the entire male population of Shechem when they were sick after circumcision. On the contrary, Judas is spoken of exclusively in complimentary terms. Tantlevsky notes that all this material is found only in those parts of the Pentateuch, the author of which is considered to be a Yahwist. It is quite logical to assume that he himself belonged to this tribe. At the same time, Tantlevsky at the same time attributes the time when this text arose to the era of the unified monarchy of David and Solomon (this is a much more controversial statement).

Another small example: the Book of Genesis mentions the city of Hebron. There Abraham erects an altar to the Lord (13:18), Sarah dies and is buried there (23:2,19), Isaac lives there (35:27), and Jacob sets off on a long journey from there (37:14). In the Book of Exodus, Hebron is where the spies sent by Moses to Canaan reach (13:23). Finkelstein believes that this may indicate a post-exilic period when Hebron found itself outside of Judah, although on the very border, and therefore attracted the attention of the inhabitants of the Southern Kingdom. But this seems to be a stretch: one can imagine many other scenarios in which this city acquired special significance - after all, it still plays a special role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but this does not mean that the legends about Hebron composed in modern times.

Archaeologists are always cautious in associating their finds with certain ethnic groups when we are talking about an ancient, unwritten era. Usually associated with the ancestors of the Israelites is the culture of pithos of a certain type (with collared-rim jars) and houses with four rooms, which spread to the Palestine Highlands in the Iron Age I, that is, at the end of the II millennium BC. e. But, as Finkelstein notes, the problem is that such a culture was spreading at the same time in Transjordan (in the territory of the future Moab and Ammon), and in addition, its undoubted differences from the urban culture of the Late Bronze Age can be explained by differences in the types of economic activity, and not ethnic groups. The carriers of this culture were gardeners who cultivated terrace farming.

It is especially noted that they did not raise pigs, this perfectly coincides with the strict prohibition of the Israeli religion on the consumption of pork. But even here, as is easy to understand, there may be other explanations: for example, it is simply inconvenient for nomads to raise pigs, especially in waterless areas, unlike goats, sheep and cows, and they could maintain this attitude towards pigs even after the transition to semi-sedentary or sedentary existence. It is logical to assume that this is exactly what happened to the new inhabitants of the Highlands. As for the rise or decline of cultures in a particular area, this does not necessarily reflect a change in population—the reasons may lie in climate change or the development of technology.

In other words, based on archaeological data, it would be quite logical to assume that during the Iron Age I, nomads gradually began to settle in the Palestine Plateau, combining cattle breeding with agriculture. But it cannot be said with complete confidence that this happened exclusively with the Israelites (or proto-Israelites); it is quite likely that this was part of the general processes of that time. As Mazar notes, we do not know how these people would answer the question: “Are you Israelis?”, but there is good reason to believe that they were the ancestors of those whom we call Israelites.

However, as L. Grubb notes, in modern historical science the issue of defining ethnic identity is actively discussed, and most historians agree that several factors are key to it: a common self-name, the idea of ​​a single origin, common historical memory, key elements of culture, representation about one’s own territory (sometimes idealized) and solidarity in behavior. Thus, the history of Ancient Israel is the very key elements of the culture of the Jewish people, especially their common historical memory and ideas about their origins. By exploring this history, we inevitably “throw back” modern ethnic identity into the past, even if in some way we refute the historicity of traditional texts.

So, if the Israelites are not mentioned, as far as we can tell, in any non-biblical text until the end of the 13th century. BC e. (the Merneptah Stele, which was discussed in section 4.2. “Israel on the Merneptah Stele”), it is quite natural for a historian to wonder with which peoples of antiquity, known to us from other sources, their origin may be connected.

Read more:
Desnitsky,
A. Bible: What “really” happened? (Tanakh / Old Testament) / Andrey Desnitsky. - M.: Alpina non-fiction, 2022. - 300 p.

Exodus Thematic Dictionary:

• see {C} in Exodus 12:33
• flight of the Israelites from Egypt