Lecture outline:

I. Introduction: Starting over

II. Why we're reading the Bible in Humanities 110

III. Why Genesis is so difficult to read

A. Reading against received notions and past interpretations

B. The different source materials of the Torah: J, E, P, D and R

C. The difficulties of Biblical style

IV. A reading of Genesis

A. A comparison of creation accounts: Hesiod, Ovid, and Genesis

B. The importance of the word: division and covenant

Genesis Timeline:

c. 1280 BCE	Exodus of Jews from Egypt
c. 970	Construction of first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem
950-900	First strands of Genesis and Exodus ("J" and "E") written down
750-700	Homer composes the Iliad
c. 650-600?	Deuteronomy strand ("D") composed
586	Babylons destroy first Temple; Jewish exile in Babylon begins
c. 550-500?	"P" strand composed
538	Cyrus, King of the Medes, conquers Babylon and restores Jews to Jerusalem
537	Building of Second Temple begins in Jerusalem
c. 400	Redaction ("R") of "J," "E," "P," and "D"
c. 90	Canonization of the Hebrew Bible complete
70 CE	Jewish revolt (beginning in 66 CE) against Roman rule culminates in destruction of Second Temple
312	At Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine, converted to Christianity, wins control of the western half of the Roman Empire
1611	King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible published
1952	Revised Standard Version of the Bible published

Terms:

parataxis: a syntactic structure of parallel clauses in a sequence connected by "and"

hypotaxis: a syntactic structure involving main and subordinated clauses

doublet: a term in Biblical scholarship for a paor of narratives in the Bible re-telling basically the same events: e. g., Genesis 1-2. 3 and Genesis 2. 4-2. 25

exegesis: interpretation

Torah: the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers. Known in Christianity as "the Pentateuch"

the "universal "history: Genesis 1-11: the story of creation through the story of the Tower of Babel. Genesis 12-50 is known as the "patriarchal" (or "family") history because it tells specifically of the history of the patriarchs, the family of Abraham

Scholarly designations for the source documents for the Torah:

"J" --	Perhaps earliest source material, originating in southern kingdom of Judaea (?); name derives from "Jehovah" (mistranslation for "YHWH," or "Yahweh"), which is the sacred term by which God is referred
"E" --	source material originating from northern kingdom of Israel (?); name derives from "'elohim," which is the term by which God is referred
"P" --	Largest source material, including most of the legal sections and the matters concerning priests (hence its name)
"D" --	Source found only in Deuteronomy (hence its name)
"R"--	The Redactor, or editor, who assembled parts of the above sources together to produce the five books we now know as the Torah

Quotations:

1. "Hebraism and Hellenism,--between those two points moves out world. At one time it feels more powerfully the attraction of one of them, at the other time of the other; and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and happily balanced between them." --Arnold, 130.

2. "It would be difficult... to imagine styles more contrasted than those of the two equally ancient and equally epic texts [i.e. the Odyssey and the Hebrew Bible]. On the one hand, externalized, uniformly illustrated phenomena, at a definitive time and a definitive place, connected together without lacunae in a perpetual foreground; thoughts and feelings completely expressed; events taking place in leisurely fashion and with very little suspense. On the other hand, the externalization of only so much of the phenomena as is necessary for the purpose of the narrative, all else left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative alone are emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent; time and place are undefined and call for interpretation; thoughts and feelings remain unexpressed, are only suggested by the silence and the fragmentary speeches; the whole... remains mysterious and 'fraught with background.'"--Auerbach, 11-12.

3. " ...[T]he 'author' was the ancient figure of the past--Moses, or some other figure deemed close to God--whose inspired communications were believed to have been preserved in tradition long enough to be recorded by later writers in the book bearing his name. This is why ancient scribes could, quite honestly, claim an inspired or revealed status for a book of their own composition. They viewed themselves as mere vehicles through which the truths given to the inspired ancient author spoke to the present and the future."--Jaffee, 56.

4.
"Tell me, O Muses who dwell on Olympos, and observe proper order
for each thing as it first came into being.
Chaos was born first and after her came Gaia,
the broadbreasted, the firm seat of all
the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympos,
and the misty Tartaros in the depths of the broad-pathed earth,
and Eros, the fairest of the deathless gods;
he unstrings the limbs and subdues both mind
and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men.
Chaos gave birth to Erebos and Black night;
then Erebos mated with Night and made her pregnant
and she in turn gave birth to Ether and Day.
Gaia now first gave birth to starry Ouranos, her match in size to encompass all of her,
and be the firm seat of all the blessed gods."
--Hesiod, Theogony (trans. Athanassakis), lines 114-28.

5.
"Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven,
Nature was all alike, a shapelessness,
Chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter,
Nothing but bulk, inert, in whose confusion
Discordant atoms warred [.....]
Til God, or kindlier Nature,
Settled all argument, and separated
Heaven from earth, water from land, our air
From the high stratosphere, a liberation
So things evolved, and out of blind confusion
Found each its place, bound in eternal order."
--Ovid, Metamorphoses (trans. Humphries), lines 5-9, 21-6.

 Works consulted:

*Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981.

*-----. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996.

*Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1868:Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.

*Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. 1953; rpt. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974.

*Bloom, Harold, ed. The Book of J. Trans. David Rosenberg. New York: Random House, 1990.

*Fishbane, Michael. Biblical Text and Texture. 1979; rpt. Oxford: Oneworld, 1998.

*Fokkelman, J. P. "Genesis and Exodus." The Literary Guide to the Bible. Ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987. 36-65.

*Friedman, Richard Elliot. Who Wrote the Bible? New York: Summit, 1987.

*Jaffe, Martin S. Early Judaism. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1997.