Genesis 6-11 and other texts
The pages in this section examine the detail of the Genesis tradition about prehistory. Other Ancient Near Eastern texts are also discussed in this section, most of which predate the writing of Genesis. They have particular value in showing that traditions about the creation of the world, a primeval garden, corruption of the original world, a global flood and so on were not unique to the Hebrews.
The primeval tradition of all mankind
The Hebrew language evolved from Akkadian, which had a cuneiform script. Hebrew writing, however, was alphabetic and developed during the sojourn in Egypt (first half of the second millennium BC) long after cuneiform. No text in the biblical canon is likely to predate Moses, and there is evidence that even its oldest book did not attain its final form until the 7th century BC. Thus, if the first chapters of the Bible have any claim to be reliable historical information, it can only be on the basis that they rendered stories about the deep past that had previously existed as oral traditions. Ancient Genesis-like traditions have in fact been recorded from many parts of the world. Since they cannot have derived from the Hebrews or from Christian missionaries, they must have derived from a tradition that was once common to all mankind.
The tradition in ancient Sumer
This article argues that the material about the beginning of the world in Genesis 1-9 was already known in the third millennium BC, when it was part of an oral tradition. Elements of that tradition occur, distorted and often dismembered, in earlier Sumerian and Akkadian texts of the second millennium BC, a prime example being the flood story Atrahasis (c. 1600 BC).
This is a translation of the biblical text narrating the onset of the Cataclysm and its aftermath. Although not significantly different from the Revised Standard Version, the paragraphing is arranged so that each paragraph begins with a statement of the period covered by the succeeding narrative (a structure discussed in ‘The chronology of Genesis 7-8′ – see below). The period of destruction was just 40 days. So violent and total was the destruction that a further 330 days had to pass before it was safe for the occupants of the Ark to step out and begin life anew.
The Cataclysm – more than a flood
The disaster described in Genesis 7-8 was not a flood caused by rising sea-levels but total destruction of the terrestrial crust, with subterranean waters coming up from below.
The word used in the biblical text to denote this disaster is mabbul, which the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) translates as kataclusmos, ‘cataclysm.’ Paragraphing based on a close analysis of the chronological structure of the text shows that this term refers to the first 40 days of the total Flood period, and resolves the discrepancies which are commonly cited as evidence that the text was patched together from different sources.
Ussher and the genealogy problem
A fundamentalist approach to the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 reads them, along with the entire book, as originating in a literate culture. Because written information can be stored independently of memory, there is no need to abbreviate a repetitive, ever-increasing list, and the length of the genealogies as finally recorded can therefore be taken to be their actual historical length, allowing us to date the Flood to around 2500 BC. In reality, however, Genesis originated in an oral culture. The genealogies from Adam to Abraham originated in an oral culture, and, while they might once have included a chronological function, that function became unfeasible as time went on. In order to keep them manageable, they had to be repeatedly trimmed.
This page reproduces, or provides links to, translations of no fewer than five distinct texts from ancient Mesopotamia that refer to a uniquely devastating, historical flood, some of them in considerable detail. Recolonisaton theory argues that these versions were a politically and religiously inspired conflation of two distinct events, the primeval Cataclysm of Noah’s day and a much later inundation that took place in the Early Dynastic period, c. 2700 BC.
According to Genesis 10-11, the building of Babel – the city later called Babylon – was part of a project to build a great kingdom or empire. But God came down and confused the language of the people building the city, so that the language of all mankind was confused. Is this just a fanciful story or did such an event really happen? Archaeological and other evidence indicates that it did, at the end of the Late Uruk period (carbon-dated to c. 3150 BC).