outhouse wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 6:45 pm
Since none of these people have ant historicity as ever existing, what is your point here?
Personally, I like to search for identical phrases such as:
וַיְהִ֗י אַחַר֙ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֔לֶּה And it came to pass after these things
This phrase appears 5 times in the Tanakh.
And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him: 'Abraham'; and he said: 'Here am I.' (Gen. 22:1 JPS)
And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said: 'Lie with me.' (Gen. 39:7 JPS)
And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the king of Egypt.
(Gen. 40:1 JPS)
And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him. (1 Ki. 17:17 JPS)
And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, hard by the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. (1 Ki. 21:1 JPS)
This could be one, two or more writers, my guess is that the passages are more or less contemporaneous.
If we search for a fragment of the phrase:
אַחַ֣ר׀ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה we pick up a few additional lines from from the book of Ishtar.
After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was assuaged, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her. (Est. 2:1 JPS)
After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were with him. (Est. 3:1 JPS)
This guy was working on what has to be at least tied for the most dubious book in the Tanakh, so it might figure that he might have been too lazy to write out the complete phrase. In any case, certainly a different guy than the other examples. But as Bob Dylan said -
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
It is important to try to understand how the various stories were constructed and the interrelations. I'm not satisfied with the conclusions KLewis gives or implies but think listing and discussing them is useful.