Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Redaction Criticism

  • Book Notes: God’s Problem (Ehrman)

    Ehrman, Bart D. God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-06-117397-4. 294 pp.

    I have previously noted that Bart Ehrman’s books are much more controversial on their jackets than on their pages (see notes on The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot and Response to Misquoting Jesus). This is not to say that there is nothing controversial. Rather, well-known issues are stated in a stark and controversial way.

    This book is no exception to this prior experience. I was both amused and annoyed that my copy from the library had been “annotated” by some previous user. That always annoys me, because defacing library books is vandalism and I don’t like it. But the form it took is interesting.

    On the title page the words “fails to” are crossed out of the subtitle, and and “s” is added to “answer” to that it says “How the Bible Answers Our Most Important Question.” Then there is a note that says simply “sin, In the 1st Book Genesis 3.” Of course, as any competent scholar would, Ehrman covers the role of sin in human suffering according to various Biblical authors.

    In the conclusion he also notes how people are divided between two groups. Those who announce their answer as though it was conclusive and obvious, as this annotator did, and those who really don’t want to discuss the topic at all.

    I have thought a great deal about the problem of suffering and am willing to talk about it a great deal, but I don’t actually think I have any very good answers. It was interesting to me that neither Ehrman nor I will give a definitive answer, but we have a certain amount of affinity for similar answers. The bottom line for me is simply, “That’s the way the universe works.”

    Of course there is also suffering caused by human evil, so the “sin” solution is certainly a part of suffering. But any of these leaves one with the question of just how God fits in. And there I would differ with Ehrman considerably. The problem of suffering itself is one thing; one can even ask the question why we should not suffer. The problem of suffering when one also believes in a “good” God is another matter entirely.

    And that’s why the book is titled “God’s Problem.” On one level this is simply a summary of how the various Bible writers answer the question of why we suffer. On another, it is Dr. Ehrman’s journey in dealing with the fact that we do suffer and the implications of that fact for our understanding of God. Some may dislike the idea of mixing one’s personal experience with a book of scholarship, even a popular one. I would disagree. I think the personal reflections, however much they differ from my own, enhance the book and help one to connect the various scriptural responses to real life.

    Let me look at these two levels separately. It was interesting to read this book nearly simultaneously with Bruce Waltke’s An Old Testament Theology. The books differ a great deal in size, intended audience, style, and the level of presentation, yet they very clearly illustrate a significant divide in Biblical scholarship. Do we look try to see the scriptures as ultimately unified, and thus reconcile apparent differences theologically or do we lay out those difficulties as starkly as possible?

    That question outlines extremes. There are many variations along the way, including a kind of unity in diversity. I like to refer to the unity of a large river system, rather than that of a carefully delineated pathway. But Waltke approaches the Bible as a unity to be brought into subjection to his christology, while Ehrman sees the Bible as many individual schools of thought and tends to demarcate these schools rather strictly.

    As an outline, I’m rather happy with Ehrman’s work. He points out what the major positions are. I think there could be some more work done on seeing how those positions might coexist. For example, the view that suffering is a punishment for sin can co-exist with the apocalyptic view that sees suffering as something inflicted by evil forces. I know people in real life who will respond with either of these options according to the circumstances. They don’t always have any logic other than whether they feel that a particular person is deserving of “discipline” or is demonstrating strength as they face the forces of evil.

    Scholars tend to try to keep things more logically disciplined than that, which is probably a good attitude for a scholar to have. But it can get in the way of describing real people who are quite frequently a great deal messier.

    In particular, I question some of Ehrman’s work on Job. I think he takes a view on Job that would require the final redactor to be some sort of idiot. See my notes on this on my Participatory Bible Study Blog.

    Those who would be very critical of Ehrman’s approach, however, should consider the almost casual way theologians often try to brush aside such objections. I did not include this topic in my notes on his book, but Waltke brushes aside major issues in this fashion, particularly when talking about genocide in Joshua.

    There he dismisses the problem by suggesting that those who were willing to repent and convert, such as Rahab were subject to destruction, while those in Israel who failed to maintain the standards, such as Achan, were also destroyed. Many people, myself included, would not see a “convert or die” approach as substantially more acceptable than genocide. In fact, any theory of inspiration that does not take adequate account of human failings and ideas runs aground on this problem. If God in fact said “kill them all, even babies” and intended this as a good thing, then God is monstrous. It is possible that God allowed them to think that, because that was what they were inclined to do. It is sufficiently difficult to explain God allowing such a thing, much less explaining why he would positively demand it.

    Yet of course the text says that God did just that. For me, that is a strong sign of how the Bible deals with people, still steeped in the culture and moral standards of the time, struggling with what God would have them to do. This is an aspect of the problem that Ehrman only touches on as part of the punishment for sin view.

    As for Ehrman, just as I noted in my review of his book Misquoting Jesus, I think he responds largely to a fairly conservative evangelical view of Biblical inspiration, such as would be espoused by Waltke. I don’t mean that a bit of adjustment in one’s view of inspiration solves all the problems. Hardly! But it does make the discussion much more interesting and offer more avenues for a solution.

    And this is where we come to the more personal issue. While I did not go on to get a doctoral degree, nor have I written such popular books, I really empathize with Ehrman’s experience. I came out of seminary with a “this can’t be” kind of feeling, and departed the faith at that point. Twelve years later I came back, but to a much more liberal theology. I came to the realization that I did believe in God, however much I might prefer not to, and thus I would have to deal more with my concept of God.

    I’m not trying to present my position as the better option, though obviously I prefer it since it’s mine! But if I’m to believe that the physical universe reveals its creator, then I have to be willing to adjust either the adjectives I use in referring to God or the meanings of those adjectives. In general, it may be more honest to use different adjectives.

    That’s why I have written that God is more interested in freedom than comfort. Ehrman discusses the “freedom of the will” explanation for suffering, though he correctly points out that the Bible isn’t that much concerned with such an explanation, and also that it fails to deal with natural disasters that are chosen by nobody. At the same time the Bible does address this issue from the direction of responsibility. Sin comes through one man and thus death (Romans 5:12). But the Bible tends to lay responsibility without really acknowledging freedom, something that puts Paul into contortions in chapter 9, from which he extracts himself (if one is generous) by breaking into a bit of doxology.

    By freedom, however, I mean something more than freedom of choice. Rather, God constrains the universe within laws rather than directing particulars. God didn’t want Hurricane Ike to destroy so many homes on the gulf coast; he wanted each hurricane to behave as hurricanes do. If you want to see God as loving, you also have to see him as willing to allow hurricanes to be hurricanes.

    Is that a solution? All I can say is that it works for me, but I know plenty of people, my wife being one, who do not find that very satisfying. I found it interesting that Dr. Ehrman and his wife also differ, more profoundly than I do with my wife, on the very issues involved.

    The bottom line here is that I deeply appreciate this effort to discuss such a difficult problem, and to relate it to one’s personal struggle. I disagree substantially with the conclusions, but largely because I start with different premises. My belief in God, with the kernel being “ground of all being” (Tillich) is fundamental, while my concept of God is more flexible. I’m much less likely to say, “I see that my old concept of God won’t fit with the suffering in the world, so there must not be a God” than to say, “My concept of God doesn’t fit with the suffering in the world, so I must have misunderstood God.”

    That difference is personal and experiential at root, I think, and would be very hard to reconcile. It lies way too far outside the realm of “mostly certain” knowledge. In the meantime, you could do worse than to read this book and see how it helps you think about the problem of suffering.

  • Source and Redaction Criticism: Ehrman on Job

    In chapter six of his book God’s Problem, Ehrman tackles the book of Job.  (My notes on the book as a whole are here.)  He describes the book as coming from two sources, one containing the narrative portions, and one containing the poetic dialogues.

    This view is not that exceptional, though one should also consider a very common alternative, that the dialogues were written separately, but that one and same person wrote the narratives and redacted the entire book.

    Ehrman says:

    Most people who read Job do not realize that the book as it has come down to us today is the product of at least two different authors, and that these different authors had different, and contradictory understandings of why it is that people suffer. . . . (p. 162)

    The prose author, he says, sees suffering as a test of faith, while the author of the dialogues believes that there ultimately is no answer.

    Ehrman correctly notes differences of genre, and differences of style.  The seams in the book suggest the possibility of multiple sources.  Ehrman adds to this a difference in the portrayal of Job.  While I have been aware of the possible sources since college, and have read the book many times, I have never seen a problem with the characterization of Job.  I chalk this one up to the common scholarly exercise of trying to make people more coherent and logical than they normally are.

    Ehrman also feels that the parts were not combined very well.  On page 167 he notes the reaction of God in chapter 42:

    . . . It is obvious that a bit of the folktale was lost in the process of combining it with the poetic dialogues, for when it resumes, God indicates that he is angry with the three friends for what they have said, in contrast to what Job has said.  This cannot very well be a reference to what the friends and Job said in the poetic dialogues, because there it is the friends who defend God and Job who accuses him.  And so a portion of the folktale must have been cut off whent he poetic dialogues were added.  What the friends said that offended God cannot be known. (p. 167)

    All of which treats the final redactor as an idiot.  This is one of the key problems when source and redaction criticism are viewed as providing “the” answer to the meaning of a passage or book.  Source critics tend to think they’re done when they have finished identifying the sources and mourning the missing parts.

    But is the redactor (or final author) actually so silly that he fails to miss the fact that the friends are defending God and Job is challenging him?  I think there is good evidence to suggest not.  In the dialogues, the friends hold that Job is guilty of something and that God is punishing him.  The narrative portions clearly state that this is not the case.  In other words, the friends have been making false claims about God and accusing Job of wrongdoing, when no such wrongdoing has taken place, according to the narrative portions.

    If one takes the resultant whole as a polemic against the Deuteronomistic approach (or at least a supplement to it, as the two are not completely incompatible), which holds that blessing comes to those who do right and curses to those who don’t, then I think the combined text makes quite good sense.  It is not a theodicy.  I want to scream when people insist it is; there is no intention of justifying God in the book of Job.  If there is, it is a miserable failure.  It is not a coherent picture of why people suffer.  In fact, it makes clear that one cannot know.  From the point of view of the text as a whole, Job never gets to know what the problem was.  He may have been enduring a test of faith, but all he knows is that he is a) innocent and b) suffers.  He is satisfied that God appeared, and he is affirmed as a righteous man by God’s actions.

    I think a better redaction theory would be that the narrative author had the dialogues before him, which fail to present an answer.  Suffering there is mysterious, and the issue is never resolved.  He wraps this in a story that makes the mysterious suffering have a cause, in this case, the test.  While Job still remains in mystery, he is satisfied that at least God showed up.

    Ehrman comments on Job’s response to God’s presence:

    . . . God is not to be questioned and reasons are not to be sought.  Anyone who dares to challenge God will be withered on the spot, squashed into the dirt by his overpowering presence.  The answer to suffering is that there is no answer and we should not look for one.  The problem with Job is that he expects God to deal rationally with him, to give him a reasonable explanation of the state of affairs; but God refuses to do so.  He is, after all, God.  Why should he have to answer to anybody?  Who are <em>we</em>, mere mortals, to question GOD? (p. 188, emphasis in original)

    The problem, in my view, is that this does not give adequate credit to even the literary concept of an encounter with God, much less the reported personal experience.  People speak of being terrified, spent, and shattered, yet they come out encouraged and feeling positive.  Those who have had mystical encounters, amongst whom I count myself, may well not record such encounters as entirely joyful, and may not come out with all answers, but at the same time, generally don’t feel that they can no longer seek answers.

    In this concept, the friends have to repent of trying to represent God, and doing so incorrectly.  They have to repent of accusing an innocent man.  Job, on the other hand, at the same time repents of thinking he’s going to be able to handle it and understand it, yet he is not condemned for seeking an answer, and for upholding his own innocence even in the face of seemingly irrefutable theological positions.

    The redactor is thus not an idiot.  I personally don’t find his approach to suffering all that helpful, but I do find it challenging.  It provides a way to think further.  This redactor, or final author, if he is trying to present Job as squished into the dust and intimated into no longer seeking answers, has a rather odd way of doing so.  He presents a book that seeks after answers, challenging old ones and suggesting new ones.

    I think that Ehrman has misunderstood the narrative portion, and done so in such a way as to present some unknown final redactor in the worst possible light.  Careful reading of the final whole finds a viewpoint that is worth considering in itself.

    This doesn’t detract fromt he sources, though personally I think that there is only one source, the poetic dialogues.  The author of our canonical book took those dialogues and wrapped them in prose, forcing them to serve him.  Far from being an idiot who couldn’t tell that his ending didn’t match his beginning, he was a creative author who molded older material into a new and useful form.

  • Genesis 10: The Table of Nations

    Genesis 10 is one of those chapters that Bible students often try to avoid, because it is filled with names that are difficult to pronounce, and it’s hard for our modern ears to hear it as anything other than an interruption. But to the redactor of Genesis, these genealogies were serious business.

    Genesis 5 provides a key genealogy, and its major purpose is to show the preservation and continuity of the patriarchal line. We will see another genealogy much like it in Genesis 11. But Genesis 10 provides genealogies that deal with a number of people and nations.

    The key point here, I would suggest, is to show Israel as part of the world, related to those with whom she would interact over the centuries. As suggested in the Interpreter’s Bible (Exegesis on Genesis 10:1-32), this may be the beginning of Israelite universalism. God (YHWH) is not just interested in Israel, he is interested in the whole world. All the world’s peoples are in one family, however distant they may be. This idea is fairly weak in Genesis, but it will get stronger, especially in 2nd and 3rd Isaiah (40-55; 56-66).

    The Bible Knowledge Commentary comments:

    The table of nations is a “horizontal” genealogy rather than a “vertical” one (those in chaps. 5 and 11 are vertical). Its purpose is not primarily to trace ancestry; instead it shows political, geographical, and ethnic affiliations among tribes for various reasons, most notable being holy war. Tribes shown to be “kin” would be in league together. Thus this table aligns the predominant tribes in and around the land promised to Israel. These names include founders of tribes, clans, cities, and territories.1

    Other commentators generally agree on the purpose of the list, but vary in their view of the historicity.2

    There is a final question of historicity. I think this is really the wrong question to ask here. The story thus far tells us of the population of the earth. If the flood is to be regarded as a large, but nonetheless local event, then the issue is one of the groups of people most closely related to Israel. I believe there is good reason to expect that these lists arose from traditions, and not from some kind of direct revelation, and thus should be seen to paint a general picture and not to provide historical details.

    In particular, the interchange of personal names with the names of people groups is a key. The interest is less with the historical descent of the people involved than it is with the way the land is divided and their relationship to one another, and particular to the chosen people.

    Chapter 10, combined with chapter 11, forms a bridge between the history of the world in general that runs from Genesis 1-11 and the very specific history of Israel that begins in chapter 12 with the call of Abraham.

    I have only a small number of notes on this chapter. If you are looking for details on the various names, you will need a Bible dictionary, and even there facts will be a little bit scarce. I based the following working translation on the ASV simply to save myself the trouble of getting the transliteration of all the names in standard form. None of the transliterations are mine.

    Finally, this is an excellent example of Biblical criticism, particularly source and redaction criticism, in action, though one shouldn’t assume that there is sufficient information in this one chapter to build a character of the sources. Nonetheless there is a critical pattern in the language used that helps identify the sources, in this case J (Yahwist) and P (Priestly). I will use blue text for P, and black text for J. In addition, I will underline the key introductory phrases that separate the sources.2

    It is very likely that each source contained overlapping material, but the redactor combined all of this information into a single picture suitable for his purpose–displaying Israel as God’s servant in the broader world.

    The translation and notes will be below the fold.

    (more…)

  • The Story in Scripture

    One of the ways I believe we frequently misunderstand scripture is by trying to take elements of it outside of the story in which they are set. My view of interpretation places the story above, or perhaps better around the propositional statements. I do not intend this approach to settle disputes about propositional statements in scripture and whether they are true and reliable, as I am not denying that there are numerous propositional statements. God must have wanted them there.

    The problem is that it’s terribly easy to miss the story, and to take particular propositions from scripture apart from the means by which God communicated those propositions and the way it which that was done. The most typical, and probably most extreme example of this problem comes in the interpretation of Job. Often the speeches of Job’s three friends are cited as support for theological propositions, even though God later declares these to be “words without knowledge” (Job 38:1). God’s declaration can certainly be applied to the speeches of the friends, who are later instructed to ask for Job’s intercession (Job 42:7-8). It can probably also be applied to Job’s, even though we are told that Job didn’t sin with his lips (Job 2:10). Nonetheless Job’s words in the depths of despair should receive careful consideration before they are used in support of a theological proposition.

    Job provides a good example of the different ways in which a proposition can be set in various stories. First we can ask when Job was written and what the general purpose was for writing it. That is, in itself, a story. There was a need to answer questions about the way God deals with people. Do just people always get rewarded? Is suffering always the result of sins? Second, each proposition falls into a place in the story of the book. This latter one is easy to discover, as the speeches are identified. By reading the whole story, you can guess that the speeches written by the guys who are told to offer sacrifices (Job 42:7-8) are less likely to be true than the ones uttered by God out of the whirlwind!

    Currently I’m continuing my study of Isaiah. Now I’ve been through this book a number of times, but during the past year I’ve been working through it multiple times. I’m continue to study through 2nd Isaiah (chapters 40-55) in connection with Brevard Childs’ commentary. One of Childs’ major contributions in Biblical studies was in canonical criticism, looking at Biblical passages in their canonical context. This goes well beyond what I’ve just described about Job in several ways.

    Let me quote Childs:

    In my commentary, in contrast to those who would fragment the chapter [referring to chapter 30-HN] I have argued that the different layers of the present text are to be seen as reflecting the accumulated experience of a faithful community with God through the lenses provided by Israel’s sacred scriptures. In the later levels of compositional growth the message of divine judgment and salvation are organically linked in a way that was at first, on the primary level of the tradition, unclear. However, increasingly the prophetic message gained in clarity as the anticipated eschatological salvation was painted with colors enriched by later apocalyptic imagery to form an organic whole. Hermeneutically speaking, it is crucial to understand how the major force in the shaping of the prophetic corpus derived from the experience by Israel of an ongoing encounter with God mediated through scripture rather than through the direct influence of allegedly independent events of world affairs. It is precisely this filtering process of scriptural reflection on the ways of God that gave a coherent meaning to the changing life of Israel in the world of human affairs. — Childs, Isaiah, pp. 228-229

    Now I quote that full paragraph to tie in the history of composition into the story of scripture. Just as I noted in my recent book that the Bible was written by people who “heard voices,” so also the Bible was written by people who perceived God as active in history, and who interpreted both their experiences and their existing texts in the light of that understanding. God did not simply speak by speaking; God spoke (and speaks) by acting.

    I believe I tend to be slightly more optimistic about the value of such methods as form and redaction criticism than Childs is. Nonetheless I am very grateful to him for his influence on Biblical studies in general, because he was able to bend the use of those methodologies toward a use in understanding the text that we have and setting it in a context of revelation, and away from fragmentation. He was also able to wean many away from looking for the earliest form of the tradition in order to discover the “true meaning.”

    The scriptures came into existence as God acted in and communicated with a community, and their understanding grew and clarified as they went along. They learned new things about God’s actions in history. They took literary forms and altered them to teach new lessons. This is yet another story in which we need to set scriptural propositions–the story of how those propositions got where they are now. I believe this is the continuing value of much critical methodology. It can suggest to us, and on a few occasions establish for us, the history of a piece of text so that we can see how that would grow in the community for which it was intended.

    Ultimately I believe that we would understand the use of the Old Testament in the New much better if we saw this interaction of action and revelation in continuous play. The early Christians have a number of motifs with which they are familiar from Hebrew scriptures. At the same time they have the experience of Jesus. Rather than sitting back and studying the Hebrew scriptures to determine whether they predict Jesus and the events of his life as they are read in historical context, they read them with the view that Jesus must be the ultimate divine revelation (Hebrews 1:1-3), and they also know that the scriptures they have are the result of divine action.

    Thus they start reading those scriptures through a new lens, and incorporating those motifs into their theologies, their lives, and and their communities in a new light. While some of the results may be startling, they are not so radical in method. They simply continue the process of God’s revelation and the way in which those on and through whom God acts work to understand that action.

    I add to the challenge of finding the immediate story in a Biblical book the challenge of asking how the elements of the book came together into a whole, if that was the process, and of asking what role it played in the broader story of salvation narrated and illustrated in scripture.

  • A Short Note on the REB of Isaiah 38:21-22

    The REB is one of my favorite versions, and indeed for personal reading is my favorite. Nonetheless it has one feature that often makes me mildly uncomfortable, its tendency to move texts around with a minimum of textual evidence. Even in cases in which I find the balance of internal evidence favorable to such a move, doing so without any manuscript evidence at all makes me a bit uncomfortable as part of a translation.

    A good example of this is found in Isaiah 38, in which the REB moves verses 21 and 22 from the end of the chapter and places them prior to verse 8, reading 1-7, 21, 22, 8-20. Now before you have an excessively negative reaction, there are some reasons for this move.

    • This chapter of Isaiah parallels 2 Kings 20:1-11, and the new order is in accord with the order in that chapter. There are strong verbal parallels that suggest either that one was copied from the other, or that both came from the same source.
    • Placing the healing together with the promise seems logical in context.
    • The REB provides a note and marks the verses by numbers so you can reconstruct the original chapter.

    But I still have a problem for this one. The REB note is cryptic: “Cp. 2 Kgs. 20:1-11” and the added note in my Oxford Study Bible doesn’t help that much more: “The Revised English Bible has moved these verses from the end of hte chapter to their more logical place in the narrative.” But there are two questions, first whether one can impose a logic on the text without evidence of disruption, and second whether the new order is, in fact, any more logical. As the chapter appears in all manuscripts, We have the sicknesses, the report of a short prayer, the promise of healing, a longer prayer of thanksgiving that retells the story, then the act of healing. Especially if one regards the longer prayer as an addition from a different source, I could easily see how a compiler would produce the existing order. It makes good enough sense, though having something written after his healing appear in the text before the healing may offend our sense of chronology. One should note, however, that included in the prayer is the narrative of what happened and of Hezekiah’s prayer itself.

    Even further, we need to consider issues of composition, and ask the question of how the chapter came together as it is. The narrative in 2 Kings 20:1-11 is more complete (except for the thanksgiving prayer), and well ordered. I don’t think that only on the basis of looking at the two texts we can be certain of the order of composition. It looks to me offhand as though both were brought together from the same source material for different purposes. Obviously this entry is not a study of the composition history (I would recommend Childs, Isaiah, pp. 282-283 for a brief discussion, noting that Childs also sees 21-22 as logically following verse 7.) Nonetheless, I would suggest that the purpose of composition of this chapter is different from that of Kings, and there is a good possibility that the redactor wished to have the chapter end on the note of “going up to the house of the Lord” just before discussing the visit of Merodach-baladan.

    In any case, unless one can posit a scribal error, such questions go back to source and redaction criticism, rather than textual criticism. There doesn’t seem to be any basis for suggesting a simple scribal error. Even if one believes that a later redactor inserted verses 21-22 at the end of the chapter, one would still have to deal with whatever logic caused that redactor to place the text where it is. Further, if one cannot see the logic in terms of this chapter, even better logic would be produced by bracketing it as unoriginal.

    All of those options would be acceptable in a commentary or a scholarly study. In a translation, I’m concerned with this type of change based on the level of evidence available.

  • The Two Flood Stories Updated

    I’ve just reposted my essay The Two Flood Stories, correcting some links, improving the notes a bit, making some verse numbering a little bit clearer, and adding a section concluding the flood story. This editing was in preparation for continuing my Genesis series here by discussing the flood story. Thus far, I’ve discussed through Genesis 5. Probably later today, I’ll make a general post on Genesis 6.

  • Genesis 5: Preservation of the Patriarchal Line

    Introduction

    Genesis 5 continues the priestly account of origins. Now I don’t want us to get the idea that there are two separate messages here, because the two sources (priestly [P] and Yahwist [J]) have been brought together with their own message. Nonetheless, we can get some additional breadth and depth to this message by noting how we might understand these passages if we had only one of the two sources.

    The priestly writer continues from the creation that is found good and moves to the patriarchal line. He mentions the curse in connection with Lamech, who believes that his son Noah represents some form of relief (see comment below), but he doesn’t mention the corruption of the world until Genesis 6:11, though the comment that Noah was found perfect in his generation suggests that there was something less than perfect going on. For P, the preservation of the patriarchal line is critical. We learn that the world became corrupt, but not how. More of the action is placed in God’s hands and less in people’s hands.

    J, on the other hand, emphasizes the human side. We have an explanation for the corruption in human action, we have a line of people who are in rebellion, and then, at the end of chapter 4, we have the simple statement that there was also a patriarchal line. Seth is born, then he has a son, and with that we are told that people began to call on YHWH.

    There is a certain elegance and simplicity to each of these source documents, but there is a depth that is provided by combining them. I’m reminded of the debate between Calvinists and Arminians, specifically about the sovereignty of God, and which view gives God more glory. By attitude, P could be a Calvinist and J an Arminian, as P puts all the focus on God, while J spends his time talking about the action of creatures. The redactor combines these into a story of God in relationship to people. This is one of the benefits I see in using critical methodologies. It is easy, however, to stop by observing the sources, as though identifying sources amounted to interpreting the text. It doesn’t. Sometimes it doesn’t even produce anything of real interest. But at other times it does help us get a bit closer to the author’s aim.

    There will be only a few verse by verse comments. Most of Genesis 5 is self-explanatory. At the end I will deal with an overview of the type of literature involved, chronological calculations, and ways in which the chapter has been understood.

    Genesis 5: Translation and Notes

    1This is Adam’s genealogical record. When God created humankind he created them like himself, 2he created them male and female, blessed them, and called them Adam (human).

    Note that Adam produces a son in his likeness as God produced Adam in his own likeness. I would imagine that those who support a physical likeness, i.e. that God physically looks like a human being, might use this verse for that purpose. I would see the reverse. The likeness is not primarily physical, it is in being a choosing, acting, moral creature. This was the foundation of the patriarchal line.

    The likeness of God must somehow be preserved, and as we can see in chapter 4, Cain’s clan is not doing so well at preserving it.

    3Adam lived 130 years and gave birth to someone like him, in his image, and he called his son’s name Seth. 4After he gave birth to Seth Adam lived 800 years, and gave birth to sons and daughters. 5His full lifetime was 930 years. after which he died.

    6Seth lived 105 years, and gave birth to Enosh. 7and Seth lived 807 years after he gave birth to Enosh, and he gave birth to sons and daughters. 8And Seth’s full lifetime was 912 years, after which he died.

    9And Enosh lived 90 years, and gave birth to Kenan. 10And Enosh lived 815 years after he gave birth to Kenan, and gave birth to sons and daughters. 11Enosh’s full lifetime was 905 years, after which he died.

    12Kenan lived 70 years, and gave birth to Mahalalel. 13And Kenan lived 840 years after he gave birth to Mahalalel, and gave birth to sons and daughters. 14Kenan’a full lifetime was 910 years, then he died.

    15Mahalalel lived 65 years, and gave birth to Jared. 16And Mahalalel lived after 830 years after he gave birth to Jared, and he gave birth to sons and daughters. 17Mahalalel’s full lifetime was 895 years, after which he died.

    18Jared lived 162 years, and gave birth to Enoch. 19And Jared lived 800 years after he gave birth to Enoch and gave birth to sons and daughters. 20Jared’s full lifetime wsa 962 years, after which he died.

    Thus far note the pattern. The phrase “and he died” is not likely to be accidental, as it is repeated throughout. We are noting physical mortality.

    21Enoch lived 65 years, and gave birth to Methuselah. 22Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah for 300 years, and he gave birth to sons and daughters. 23Enoch’s full lifetime was 365 years, 24but Enoch walked with God, and he was just no longer there, because God took him.

    We tend to focus on long lives in reading this passage, but the focus of the Bible writer is on the walk with God. Even those who have long lives are living on the ground that is under God’s curse. The one who is truly blessed is Enoch, who lives on earth a short time, and then is taken. The structure of the chapter points an arrow at Enoch because his story is missing that one phrase: “and he died.”

    Cain’s line goes seven generations, though the focus is on the sixth, named Lamech as is the ninth patriarch of Genesis 5. Lamech in Cain’s line is a murderer. The seventh in the patriarchal line walks with God and proves it is still possible. In Genesis 3 God walks in the garden, and Adam and Eve are afraid (Genesis 3:10). Enoch doesn’t have this fear of going for a walk with God. This passage affirms the possibility of a walk with God.

    25Methuselah lived 187, and gave birth to Lamech. 26And Methuselah lived 782 years after he gave birth to Lamech, and gave birth to sons and daughters. 27And Methuselah’s full lifetime was 969 years, after which he died.

    Methuselah is the longest lived patriarch, but he is not the hero. He is more or less a footnote to his father, Enoch, who walked with God.

    28Lamech lived 182 years, then gave birth to a son. 29He called his name Noah, saying, “This child will comfort us as we work and toil with our hands as the result of the ground being cursed by YHWH.” 30And Lamech lived 595 years after he gave birth to Noah, and gave birth to sons and daughters. 31And Lamech’s full lifetime was 777 years, after which he died.

    32Noah was 500 years old. He gave birth to Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Translation taken from my TFBV project.)

    Note that it can be presumed that Noah bore his three sons over the course of those 500 years, and that this is a summary. The 500 years note gives us some chronological data, and suggests that Noah’s call to build the ark may have come around this time, while the flood began, according to this chronology, when Noah was 600 years old (Genesis 7:6).

    Discussion

    The single most discussed and debated issue of this chapter deals with chronology, which was probably a secondary consideration of the author/redactor. He was more concerned with demonstrating the preservation of the patriarchal line, which then leads to the genuineness of the call to Abraham.

    But the simple fact is that on the surface, at least, it appears that one can generate some chronology from a genealogy like this. I have reproduced a portion of this chronology below.

    Name Age at Firstborn Remaining Years Age at Death Birth AM First Child AM Death AM
    Adam 130 800 930 0 130 930
    Seth 105 807 912 130 235 1042
    Enosh 90 815 905 235 325 1140
    Kenan 70 840 910 325 395 1235
    Mahalalel 65 830 895 395 460 1290
    Jared 162 800 962 460 622 1422
    Enoch 65 300 365 622 687 987
    Methuselah 187 782 969 687 874 1656
    Lamech 182 595 777 874 1056 1651
    Noah 500 *600 500 1056 1556 1556
    *Beginning of the flood. Noah’s death will be dealt with later.

    Looking at this from the point of view of known history, there are several problems. Around the time suggested for the flood (between 2300 and 2400 BCE, depending on how one dates creation), there was a flourishing Eblaite civilization, there had been a Sumerian civilization for around a thousand years, and Egypt was being ruled by its fifth and sixth dynasties. To put it quite simply, this chronology cannot be reconciled with what we know of ancient near eastern history. It is not simply a small discrepancy; the issue would be thousands of years. You not only need to move the flood prior to the advent of Sumerian and Egyptian history, you also need to leave enough time for the population to grow such as to form the people groups involved and produce an adequate population.

    There have been a number of solutions to this problem. One, of course, is to stick with the chronology as “God’s word” no matter what it may imply. This is often presented as the choice of faith. But faith in what? Actually the faith involved is in a chronology and in a particular way of reading the text. Is it truly honoring God to insist on reading the text of scripture, his written word, in such a way as to blatantly contradict his history as written in the natural world? I think we must consider the possibility that insisting that the form of chronology presented in the chart above is God’s word–the message God intended from this passage–is perhaps a bit arrogant.

    Old earth creationists, though they are particularly dealing with geological evidence and the age of the earth solve this problem as well by assuming gaps in the chronology. If you look at the structure of the chronology, however, it looks as though it was put together rather tightly. The father’s birth is recorded, followed by his age at his son’s birth, followed by the years he lived after that, and then the full lifespan. In response to this, old earth advocates would note that there is also a formal element in the number of patriarchs. There are ten here and another ten in Genesis 11; ten before and ten after the flood. In addition, if one had a longer list of patriarchs, one could remove individual names while leaving the remainder of the list unchanged. Thus if there was someone removed after Seth, we would understand “gave birth to” as “starting the genealogical chain that gave birth to” Enosh.

    There is a further option, which is the view that I have taken throughout these chapters. They are simply not narrative history. There is a theological point being made. There are two lines, or two categories of people: Those who follow God and those who don’t. The ultimate goal of those who follow God is to be with God (Enoch), while the ultimate goal of those who oppose God is to wind up like Lamech in further destruction. The chronology itself is simply a tradition whose form is maintained to hold together the full story that is being told–a story that teaches.