Berossus and Genesis

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:18 pm On the one hand you have tohu tiamat, bohu behemot. This relationship seems to be on solid foundation.
Simply ignoring the evidence and arguments set out by John Day and Gerhard von Rad does not advance the discussion. Try to synthesize the information, pro and con, and engage with the arguments and evidence set out.
Secret Alias
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Simply ignoring the evidence and arguments set out by John Day and Gerhard von Rad does not advance the discussion.
I know of at least 4 scholars who take such evidence to be important. The way you work a book comes out that says something you like and 'presto' a new law has been established. tohu is related in some way tiamat and bohu to behemot or at least it is more likely that Berossos is the source behind the Pentateuch. What is more compelling about Berossos?
Secret Alias
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Here's someone who argues for tiamat. I guess he doesn't count. It's all been settled. https://books.google.com/books?id=AFuHD ... at&f=false
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:35 pm
Simply ignoring the evidence and arguments set out by John Day and Gerhard von Rad does not advance the discussion.
I know of at least 4 scholars who take such evidence to be important. The way you work a book comes out that says something you like and 'presto' a new law has been established. tohu is related in some way tiamat and bohu to behemot or at least it is more likely that Berossos is the source behind the Pentateuch. What is more compelling about Berossos?
SA, the way to argue a point is not to toss out book titles at each other. I have quoted a core section of quite specific argument and all you have done in response is say, Hey, these books say something else! I like these better because I don't have to change my mind about anything! That's not how scholarly debate actually works.

Yes, if you read what has been presented so far, yes it is true that "tohu is related in some way to tiamat". But you are missing the point. Cho, whom you now link to, at least engages with the argument, but if you follow his reasoning, he gives his reasons for still opting for a relationship between Genesis with the Babylonian myth. What do you think of his reasons for that conclusion? Do you agree with them? What evidence does he actually offer?
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:37 pm Here's someone who argues for tiamat. I guess he doesn't count. It's all been settled. https://books.google.com/books?id=AFuHD ... at&f=false
Now at last you have linked to something relevant. Next, why don't you read it and then we can discuss his actual argument. See my previous comment for discussion points.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 2:37 pm Here's someone who argues for tiamat ... https://books.google.com/books?id=AFuHD ... at&f=false

Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible

Paul K.-K. Cho
Cambridge University Press, February 2019

This book examines the long-debated issue of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern myths. Using an innovative, interdisciplinary methodology that combines theories of metaphor and narrative, Paul Cho argues that the Hebrew Bible is more deeply mythological than previously recognized. Because the Hebrew Bible contains fragments of the sea myth but no continuous narrative, the study of myth in the Hebrew Bible is usually circumscribed to the level of motifs and themes. Cho challenges this practice and demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible contains shorter and longer compositions studded with imagery that are structured by the plot of sea myths. Through close analysis of key Near Eastern myths and biblical texts, Cho shows that myth had a more fundamental influence on the plot structure and conceptual framework of the Hebrew Bible than has been recognized.

https://www.google.com.au/books/edition ... QBAJ?hl=en
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/my ... ECFBB008E4

and a bibleinterp.arizona.edu article about it by the author, Paul K.-K. Cho
Secret Alias
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Maybe it's my mother-in-law being on life support but I just wonder why this debate is so vicious when in fact we are supporting two contested opinions. You are arguing two controversial propositions - namely that (a) the Pentateuch was written much later than generally recognized and (b) that a Greek author is the source of the narrative. I have taken for granted that Genesis derives from (a) Persian ideas about kingship and a pardes and (b) Babylonian creation myths. I don't know if I am wrong. But surely I am not so wrong that it disproves the general consensus that the Pentateuch was not developed from Greek sources in the third century.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Secret Alias wrote: Wed Nov 02, 2022 5:24 pm I just wonder why this debate is so vicious
geeze, mate, there's only been one person here labeling the other side "silly", "crazy", "living in another universe", being congenitally "evil", needing caps to see the "obvious", making excuses for failing to engage the actual points raised in the discussion and now accusing the other side of being "so vicious"??! wheh! :tombstone:
Secret Alias
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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Maybe it's my dog desperately trying to make friends in near subzero weather but it is silly to suggest the Pentateuch was created a generation from the time our earliest fragments can be dated. How old is oldest copy of Homer? So along comes a guy in the future arguing that the proper dating of the Iliad is "oldest fragment + 20 years."

It is silly to suggest that "Hellenistic Israelites" (I don't know what you would call these invented people) wrote a book which DOESN'T MENTION JERUSALEM to sacrifice animals anywhere other than Gerizim. He's wrong about the cult being invented to be established in Jerusalem. Gerizim is clearly being proscribed. The alternate possibility was that these "Hellenistic Israelites" were setting up a desert tabernacle IN EGYPT setting up a flimsy impermanent sacrificial religion which would have been abominable to the native Egyptian population. This is crazy hocus pocus pseudo-history now.

The sacrificial religion was first set up at Gerizim and later moved to Jerusalem.
Secret Alias
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Re: Berossus and Genesis

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I think we read the Pentateuch in a different way than the first Samaritans and Jews. For us it's a literary text first and foremost. For the ancients it was like an IKEA manual. The pieces fit here and here and then you have a "thing" - in this case a functioning religion. The portions that are read, the sacrifices. I can't imagine someone spending all this time writing and explaining sacrifice after sacrifice without at the same "making" a living model that functioned as a living religion. You don't need Plato for that. You don't need Berossos. The people that wrote the Pentateuch were like those guys who design fitness programs on YouTube. They didn't just "write" something, they enacted, they carried out the actions being prescribed on a daily basis.
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