Ep 56: The Genesis of Genesis with Dr David Carr

00:00The Bible, when you get inside it more, turns out to be this complex, sometimes conflictual

00:08dialogue between different perspectives that are very opposed to each other.

00:14Many people, when they read the Bible just presuppose, "Oh, I'm supposed to just agree

00:18with everything in it and just, you know, organize my whole life around it."

00:23But the Bible itself models a process of argument and wrestling and that sort of thing.

00:29That's how this text got put together.

00:33Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beecher and you are listening to the

00:39Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:44Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:49How are things today, Dan?

00:50Oh, man.

00:51Things are good.

00:52We're going to dig into some stuff, the Genesis, if you will, of Genesis.

00:59The precursors to the Genesis, which sounds like a lot of fun.

01:05Why don't you introduce our guest who's going to tell us all about it?

01:08Sure thing.

01:09Today we're going to be talking with Professor David M. Carr, who is Professor of Hebrew Bible

01:14at Union Theological Seminary in New York and in New York, excuse me, and also teaches

01:19classes at Jewish Theological Seminary also in New York.

01:24Welcome to the show, David.

01:25Thank you so much for being here with us.

01:27Well, it's so great to be here.

01:29Thank you for having me.

01:31Well, we're glad we could have you.

01:34I have been working with your stuff for a while now.

01:37I wrote a dissertation at Exeter University that was mainly focused on Hebrew Bible and

01:45really enjoyed some of the stuff that you've written, particularly the formation of the

01:52Hebrew Bible, writing on the tablet of the heart, reading the fractures of Genesis was,

01:57I think, the first work of yours that I came across, which I think you published almost

02:0230 years ago.

02:04And then today we're going to be democratizing to some degree your work in both a commentary

02:12on Genesis 1 through 11 and your book, The Formation of Genesis 1 through 11, biblical

02:17and other precursors.

02:20Does that sound right?

02:21Do we get the brief correct there?

02:24That was fantastic.

02:25Okay, I wonder if you might just, to begin, introduce yourself a bit, let our audience

02:33know who you are.

02:37Yeah, well, as you did a great job of introducing where I am right now at Union Theological

02:45Seminary in New York.

02:46I talked for 12 years, a little seminary in Ohio before that.

02:50So I've been at this Hebrew Bible thing for a good while, and I'm amazed that I still

02:57find it fascinating.

02:59I can be an eternal student.

03:01I just attached Bible to some other topic, and it's legit, which is a lot of fun.

03:08I have to say, I feel like over my career, I've done a lot better job speaking to doctoral

03:16students and fellow colleagues with my work, and I've tried at various points to write

03:21to a broader audience, and to some extent have reached folks, but it feels like somewhat

03:27like somebody with a rifle who's aiming at a target and always hits above it.

03:32That's true of me.

03:34So I'm so happy to have this chance to talk with you all and have you bring me into contact

03:39with your amazing audience.

03:42Yeah.

03:43We're excited to have you, we're excited to get to it.

03:47I will admit that I have not, look, your books are apparent, Dan has said how amazing they

03:58are.

03:59I have not been able to access it.

04:00I didn't get a copy of your book before the thing, so I'm a babe in the woods.

04:05I apologize.

04:06I wish I had been able to dive in beforehand, but something tells me I wouldn't get it.

04:12Something tells me that I don't have the necessary background, so I'm going to be here filling

04:19in for our listeners, asking dumb questions, and I think we'll be able to make it through

04:24together.

04:25Sounds great.

04:27As Bill Murray says in my wife's favorite movie, What About Bob?

04:32Baby Steps.

04:33That's a good way to start.

04:36That's a good way to go about this.

04:39We're going to start with defining what we're talking about.

04:42Genesis 1 through 11, also known as the primeval history.

04:45Why do we have our own title for these 11 chapters?

04:49Where is this coming from and what sets it off from the rest of the book of Genesis?

04:54Well, these chapters are the part of Genesis that really talk about general human origins.

05:01The people of Israel don't yet appear anywhere in these chapters.

05:06Abraham will be called by God at the beginning of chapter 12 right after these chapters,

05:11and that starts the story of the promise to him and his descendants and the gradual formation

05:18of the people of Israel out of his grandkids.

05:23That story is going to start in Genesis 12, but Genesis 1 to 11 are these stories of ancient

05:30primeval origins of creation, of flood, of various emergent aspects of human civilization,

05:39of the great cities of Mesopotamia.

05:42Basically, the writers of Genesis are telling about their setting before they're going to

05:48get to the big story of how they came to be as a people.

05:52Yeah, I think a lot of our even listeners who haven't read the book cover to cover would

05:59know a lot of the sort of stories of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, because they're iconic.

06:09We're talking Adam and Eve, we're talking Noah and the flood, we're talking the Tower

06:14of Babel, we're talking or Babel or whatever you call it.

06:19These are pretty, every children's Bible storybook has all of these stories in it.

06:27And then there are entire books of the Bible that aren't touched in the children's books,

06:34so there's something special about these stories in that way.

06:40Yeah, so true, and for the various people who tried to read the Bible from beginning

06:44to end, usually they make it through the first 11 chapters, they're going to cut out sometime

06:50maybe later on, but they'll make it through this primeval history.

06:55The narrative slows to a crawl as soon as we get past those, although I got to say chapters

07:02five and 10, you know, when you start to get into who begats, yeah, that that can be pretty

07:09thick.

07:10That can be fair enough, fair enough.

07:13Now you you mentioned this is where the writers are kind of establishing their setting, and

07:17I think a lot of people assume one of two things, either that these chapters come down from

07:24hory antiquity somewhere in the obscure past are incredibly ancient texts, or they adopt

07:32the tradition that Moses received the whole Pentateuch by Revelation.

07:37And so this, that's kind of the, the temporal setting is the time of Moses.

07:43But for scholars, that's not likely when these texts came together.

07:49If you had to, we'll talk a little bit more about the details as we get deeper into the

07:53interview, but if you had to kind of lay our scene a little bit, where are we talking in

08:00time for these stories coming together?

08:05So yeah, this is a great place to start.

08:07I think we can think about authors who are literate scribes, you know, they're the scholars

08:20of their community and a tiny community in what we now call Israel Palestine in the sort

08:28of eastern edge of the Mediterranean.

08:31And they are writing about give or take 25, 26, 100 years ago, and, and they're, they're

08:41working within what in their setting is a just a really pretty tiny kingdom.

08:47It's only a little bit bigger than the greater, greater New York area where I live.

08:53And, and they have all around the major civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, also large Syrian

09:02cities and stuff.

09:03Those are the sort of big kingdoms that they have to contend with.

09:08And, and they're small scale farmers or village dwellers, there's some a little bit larger

09:15towns and that's probably where these scholars worked, but they're living in this kind of

09:20context and they're having to contend with everyday life, which can be really hard in,

09:27in those contexts and, and sometimes massive catastrophes.

09:32In many ways, I think the story of the formation of the Bible is, is the story of various texts

09:39being written in the furnace of communal trauma, and it's not just one.

09:46It's a bunch of them, one after the other as this little, these little tiny kingdoms

09:50are buffeted by major empires who have an interest in their area.

09:55And so that's, yeah, that's a very different way.

09:56I realize of setting the Bible, setting it in the context of a group of people confronting

10:04the difficulties of everyday life and of collective trauma.

10:08But for me, getting insights into the way the Bible was forged in that kind of context

10:15really adds a whole different level of meaning to me.

10:18And it helps me understand why the Bible became the text that we're still talking about today,

10:26like on this podcast, when a lot of the texts of these major empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia

10:33were lost in the sands when the kingdoms were destroyed.

10:39There's some, some kind of resilience in these texts that was forged in trauma.

10:45And I think people nowadays and across the centuries can hear that deeper music in them.

10:52And I think it's, it's reflecting some of the universal experiences of, of humanity.

10:58You mentioned the trauma, the fact that they have persevered.

11:02And a part of that is the fact that the, the groups of people who have curated those texts

11:08have managed to persevere in the face of so much persecution, so much trauma.

11:142,500, 2,600 years ago, we're talking just before and after the Babylonian exile, which

11:22seems to be one of the largest traumatic scars that is left on, on the surface of, of the

11:28Hebrew Bible.

11:30Would you say that these texts begin their formation prior to the exile and kind of take

11:34the shape that we know them now, after returning from the exile?

11:40Is it a little hard to tell or is it something where we can say, oh, this is definitely before

11:46this is definitely after?

11:48It's so rare in biblical scholarship that you can say anything is definite.

11:53I have to say, I will say this for what it's worth as an orientation point.

11:59One of the things that scholars started to recognize already over 300 years ago is that

12:06these chapters in Genesis and actually much of the rest of the Torah are formed really

12:12out of two, probably originally separate written strands.

12:18And scholars often refer, I know you know this already, but just to mention it for anybody

12:23in the audience who doesn't.

12:27One of those strands is referred to by scholars as the priestly strand, not that there are

12:32any priests in the primeval history really, but that's what they call it, the priestly

12:37strand or P for short.

12:41And then the others, and it starts with the seven day creation account in Genesis 1.

12:48And then it includes those genealogies that bog people down often in Genesis 5 and 10

12:54that you were mentioning Dan.

12:57And then it also includes other crucial parts of the flood narrative and that sort of thing.

13:02That's one strand that originally existed separately.

13:06And then there's what scholars used to refer to, and many still do, as the J strand, the

13:12holistic strand.

13:13I tend to prefer a more neutral term for complicated reasons of non-P, non-priestly strand, which

13:21starts with the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 2 to 3 in the Cain and Abel story, I mean

13:26amazing stories, narrative stories that have a very different feel to them than the seven

13:32day creation account or whatever.

13:35And then it continues with its own flood strand and onto the story of Noah and his sons and

13:42the Tower of Babel story.

13:44Anyway, this J strand or non-P strand, you'll hear me use the term non-P more here.

13:51It has its own separate character to it.

13:56And most scholars over the last few hundred years have thought it was an originally separate

14:01strand.

14:03And back to your question Dan, I am still of the opinion and I'm probably in the majority

14:09in North America but in the minority vis-a-vis some of my European colleagues.

14:14I think the non-P strand is a pre-P strand and probably pre-exilic.

14:19So it was formed in the time there's still a lot of trauma going on but that big one

14:23hasn't happened yet.

14:26And whereas the priestly strand almost certainly was formed in the wake of the Babylonian exile

14:35of the destruction of Jerusalem and that kind of thing and you can see that subtly reflected

14:40in different aspects of that material.

14:44We had Leanne Feldman on a bit ago to talk about her book The Consuming Fire.

14:50So we have a little bit of an orientation to P. I believe she's a little closer to Joel

14:58Baden and the neo-documentary hypothesis than I am and perhaps than you are but you mentioned

15:06the seven-day creation account that we find in Genesis 1-1 through Genesis 2, 3 or 4a

15:16and then we have the other one running from the second half of Genesis 2-4 down through

15:21the rest of the Adam and Eve story.

15:24I'd love to hear, I bring up the fact that these are two different, originally independent

15:30creation accounts quite frequently on social media and the picture that I have tried to

15:36paint is of an earlier account where there are concerns with the way God is represented.

15:44There are concerns with the way the creative act is represented where we have the priestly

15:51group coming in and trying to massage it into something that's a little more comfortable.

15:57Could you talk about your thoughts on the relationship of these two creation accounts?

16:02Sure.

16:03Yeah, it's a fascinating example, I think, of writing and counterwriting where the two

16:09texts are originally set up in opposition to each other before they're then brought into

16:13the same strand.

16:15But the Garden of Eden story, this is a story that I've been reading it for decades as a

16:22full-time professional scholar and I still see new things in it every time.

16:27But it's this incredible story about how God sort of initially creates these child-like

16:32humans in the garden, tells them, you know, you can have all these yummy trees, anything

16:37you want except for this one tree in the middle of the garden and anybody who has kids knows

16:43if you want to guarantee that somebody's going to eat from something, you just do that.

16:48Just tell them that they can do anything.

16:50And it says if you eat from this tree, you will definitely die, you will surely die.

16:59And there's this whole die, like I won't go deeply into the story, but the woman eventually

17:04realizes, hey, wait a minute, thanks to the snake, I realized this tree will give me some

17:09good wisdom.

17:10I'll become like God knowing good and evil and she and her man eat from it and the snake

17:16is right.

17:17Their eyes are open.

17:18They get wisdom.

17:19But God then says, oh, this is not good.

17:24They have God-like knowledge.

17:28What if they also eat at the tree of eternal life and gain immortality?

17:32I've got to send them out of the garden and does so.

17:35And as a result of that, the humans will definitely die just as God had predicted.

17:44It wasn't that God was going to put them to death, it's just that they will gain mortality

17:47because God can't tolerate having them in the garden.

17:51If they've eaten at the tree of knowledge.

17:53What's interesting back to your question, Dan, about this story is it's positing a God

17:58who's worried about humans becoming too God-like.

18:04And God is kind of remarkably human in this story.

18:08Walking in the garden, jealous, kind of duplicitous with regard to the humans, there's a lot going

18:14on there.

18:15I like this picture of God myself.

18:19But apparently the authors of the priestly story weren't so happy with it.

18:23And so what's remarkable about the way they tell their story in Genesis 1 is they tell

18:29this story about a absolutely majestic royal-like God who says decrees and instantly things

18:38are just magically kind of come into place.

18:42And as a crown of this entire creation, this God is not scared of having humans be God-like,

18:50but actually makes humans as God-images in order to rule all living creatures in this

18:58cosmos.

19:00So it's like diametrically opposed to the message of the Garden of Eden story.

19:07And there are all sorts of other subtle indicators that the person who wrote Genesis 1 had the

19:13Garden of Eden story in mind and was trying to replace it.

19:17And then the radical move was made later to turn what was supposed to be the replacement

19:24into the prologue of the Garden of Eden story, and they were put one after the other in the

19:30same strand.

19:32And that decision, do you think this is more an archival move?

19:38Let's record them on the same scroll, or do you think this was a literary move?

19:43We're going to appropriate for our own purposes the priestly account as kind of an introduction

19:50to the other one.

19:53Or do you think we don't really have a way of knowing what was in their minds?

19:58That latter statement is probably the most accurate, we don't have a way of knowing what's

20:02in their minds, but that's a typical scholarly cautious thing.

20:06I will say one of the exciting new developments in Pentateuchal study, and believe it or not,

20:11even after 300 years, we're coming up with some really exciting new stuff, I think, is

20:17becoming more aware of ways in which these two strands I was talking about earlier, the

20:23priestly strand and the earlier non-priestly strand, or maybe not always earlier in some

20:28ways.

20:29They existed separately, but I mentioned before that the community in which these were written

20:37is pretty tiny, and literacy within the ancient world of the Levant was not widespread.

20:45So if you have a tiny kingdom with only a tiny minority of people able to read, and

20:50you have two complete accounts of the origins of the world, people are going to know about

20:57both of them, and they're going to start to add to each one in relation to the other.

21:02And so we're starting to see evidence in these two strands that they were modified by scribes

21:09who were still transmitting them separately before they finally come to a point where

21:14they kind of go, "Well, why are we working these two documents separately?

21:20Let's just make them one document and have it all together."

21:24And I think that's probably the most plausible explanation for why they did it.

21:31It's sort of archival, but they're also reading these for meaning.

21:35And so, for example, when they put these two creation stories together, there was no really

21:40real alternative.

21:43But to put the larger, more spacious vision of the creation of the whole cosmos in Genesis

21:501 at the beginning, and then put what was actually the earlier creation story about the Garden

21:57of Eden as a follow-up.

22:04You mentioned that it presents a deity who's a little bit jealous of their deity.

22:12They've created humanity to till the ground, to do all these things.

22:17Sounds quite similar to some Mesopotamian stories that we have where, well, one, we've got,

22:22for instance, Gilgamesh who's seeking out eternal life.

22:25He had to watch his buddy die and decompose, and he doesn't like that idea, and so he's

22:30seeking out eternal life.

22:32And there's a serpent that snatches it from him right at the end.

22:37But we've also got Enuma Alish and other traditions from the Sumerian, the Akkadian literature,

22:45humanity being created to do the work that gods don't want to do.

22:50And they're also keeping them at arm's length.

22:53Do you see the influence of any or maybe many of these traditions on the way these authors

23:02are writing?

23:03Are they writing in response to?

23:05Are they inspired by?

23:06Are they rejecting these other traditions that are probably far more widespread in the

23:12empires around them?

23:13Yes, I definitely think they are.

23:16And you did a really nice job of summarizing a lot of these key elements.

23:20The story of the Garden of Eden is it never exactly verbally parallels anything in the

23:28Gilgamesh epic, but it's constantly in interaction with some of its ideas.

23:33If you mention the theme of immortality, which obviously is a big ultimate result, but also

23:40the snake and the fruit and the lost human chance at immortality, Gilgamesh almost has

23:49that immortality and loses it.

23:51There are just all sorts of subtle ways in which that's reflected.

23:54And then the Enuma Alish epic seems to have been the background for the Genesis one seven

24:01day a creation account where the Enuma Alish epic is all about trying to show how the Babylonian

24:10state God, Marduk, is the end all be all the supreme God over all the other gods.

24:18And he can create by a word and destroy by a word and he creates the cosmos out of dividing

24:26up the sea goddess into two and there are all sorts of interesting ways in which Genesis

24:32one says kind of, Marduk doesn't even begin to figure into the picture.

24:39In fact, there are no gods that figure into the picture.

24:42There's just God, capital G, and that's it.

24:46And so it sort of does, it tells an Enuma Alish-like story, but now with Marduk completely obliterated

24:54and the God of Israel as the center point of the story.

24:58So I think both of these stories are constantly interacting with the literatures of these

25:04bigger empires that surrounded the scribes.

25:08And as I say in one of my books, writing on the tablet of the heart, this is scribes ancient

25:18scholars of the time that literate minority, they learn to write on older literature.

25:28And at least at some point we can't reconstruct exactly how or why it appears that that older

25:35literature that they were reading and actually probably memorizing were these stories of Gilgamesh

25:44or Otrahasis is another one that comes off, we might talk about that a little later.

25:50That were really important parts of the curriculum of the ancient Near East.

25:56And so if you were going to be a scholar, a literate person, you knew them.

26:00At least at certain periods in history.

26:02Yeah.

26:03That was the canon, the literary canon at the time before the canon as we know it now.

26:12So I think the Garden of Eden story is fascinating.

26:17I also think it's fascinating to consider how it's trying to be, well, the priestly authors

26:23to some degree seem to be trying to supplant it, where God says, "Mm, it's not good that

26:29we have this situation and let's try this, let's try this.

26:33This isn't working."

26:34And then the priestly authors say, "No, no, no, no, no, no."

26:37God says it and then immediately recognizes, "Yes, this is good."

26:42So it seems to be saying, "No, not that way, it's our way."

26:48Now a question I get frequently that I've talked about on social media a lot is the relationship

26:54of Genesis 2 and 3 to Genesis 4.

26:58Because once we transition, we've got Adam and Eve in the Garden and then we transition

27:04to children of Adam and Eve and it seems like the narrative in Genesis 4 is presupposing

27:14a fully populated earth where Cain is like, "Hey, people are going to notice this and

27:22I'm going to get in trouble and so I'm going to go over here to this city that has a name

27:26already.

27:27My wife, my perspective, my understanding is that Genesis 4 is probably written or initially

27:37circulated independently of Genesis 2 and 3.

27:40I don't know if people have strong feelings about which came before the other, but what

27:45can you tell us about what you think about the relationship of these two parts of ostensibly

27:50the same story?"

27:52Yes, I'm totally with you, Dan, in terms of thinking that the story of Cain and Abel

27:59was the earlier one and it doesn't presuppose a primeval world where they're the very first

28:06people because at the very least Cain can go off and get a wife and it's not clear where

28:12that came from.

28:14So they're all kinds of interesting parallels between the Cain and Abel story and the Garden

28:20of Eden story.

28:21They have almost two pages of the parallels listed that people have noticed over time.

28:27What kinds of parallels are those?

28:30Well they kind of go through a very similar sequence.

28:33I should get the book out, but you start out with a problem situation in the case of the

28:41Garden of Eden story.

28:42It's this forbidden tree.

28:44In the case of the Cain and Abel story, it's Cain getting really pissed off because God

28:49didn't pay attention to him and his offering and only focused on his brother's offering.

28:54And that's never explained in the story.

28:56It's just Cain's really mad and God basically confronts him and says, "You've got a choice

29:04here.

29:05This is paraphrasing wildly, and you need to master sin."

29:11And then the very next thing he does is take his brother out to the field and kill him.

29:17The corresponding thing in the Garden of Eden story is they eat of the fruit.

29:21And then both stories go into a dialogue with God and interrogation that goes back and forth.

29:28And then there's an aftermath.

29:30You have the same reference to, because part of Genesis 3 is your desire will be for your

29:39husband, which could be a sexual desire, could be a desire to dominate, but he will rule

29:48over you as also parallel, isn't it, between Genesis 3 and Genesis 4 with sin lying at

29:53the door?

29:54Yeah.

29:55Sin is lying at the door.

29:56Its desire is for you.

29:58You must rule over it, which is this is an actual verbal parallel.

30:03There's no way to imagine that these two texts were not written in relation to each other.

30:08And then the question becomes, which came first, or how are they related?

30:15Many scholars, maybe because the Garden of Eden story is so famous and so central, and

30:20that sort of thing presupposes the Garden of Eden story was first, and those things that

30:24seem to cite it in the next chapter in Genesis 4 were a later imitation of the Garden of Eden

30:32story.

30:33I'm more tempted to think the reverse for various reasons, that the first you had the

30:38Cainable story that is really a kind of an implicit story that's providing some background

30:43to enabling people of the authors, the Kenites, and that then the person who wrote the larger

30:52non-priestly primeval history, this pre-exilic primeval history, sort of took that Cainable

30:59story as a model for what they did in the Garden of Eden story, and they sort of extended

31:04it backward.

31:05That's what I think makes more sense.

31:07Yeah.

31:08One of the things that I found really interesting, I was saying this to Dan earlier before we

31:14had you with us on the call, is that I liked that the subtitle of your book, The Formation

31:22of Genesis 1 through 11, is biblical and other precursors.

31:26And I said to Dan, wait, the Bible is the precursor to the Bible, and he was like, yeah,

31:31it was.

31:32And that's kind of what we're talking about, is like, the Bible continually precursing

31:36itself.

31:37Yes.

31:38Exactly.

31:39That the Bible, when you get inside it more, turns out to be this complex, sometimes conflictual

31:45dialogue between different perspectives that are very opposed to each other, which for

31:52me, kind of becomes an interesting model, many people, when they read the Bible, just

31:57presuppose, oh, I'm supposed to just agree with everything in it and just organize my

32:03whole life around it.

32:05But the Bible itself models a process of argument and wrestling, and that sort of thing.

32:11That's how this text got put together.

32:14Do you think that the people who originally read these texts, the people for whom these

32:20texts were written at the contemporaneous to the time of the writing?

32:26Do you think that they understood them in that way as being explorations of ideas as

32:31opposed to literal truths?

32:34Well, I think they had a different idea of literal truths than we do.

32:38The way they would write history would not be the way most of us would try to write a

32:42good quality history now.

32:44They were more comfortable, say, reconstructing what they saw Abraham must have said because

32:52of what they believe, and they would think, okay, then that's what he said.

32:56What I believe would be what he would say, and that's what you do.

32:59We wouldn't do that now.

33:03But I think, for example, back to the example we were talking about before of the priestly

33:09creation story being written to contradict the Garden of Eden story and replace it.

33:15I think the people who wrote that priestly creation story believed that what they were

33:20writing was correct, and that the Garden of Eden story was incorrect.

33:26I do think that's one reason why they wrote it the way they didn't, didn't just sort

33:30of add some things around the edges of the Garden of Eden story and leave it at that.

33:35They really felt like they believed in it, and in a sense, I think, yes, they both believed

33:42that what they were writing had happened, but they were as equally committed to what

33:48it meant about God, what it meant about the Sabbath, because that's the crowning aspect

33:55of the seven-day creation account, and that sort of thing.

33:59They believed in it, but then the texts travel over time, and it turns out that both of these

34:06texts persist as important, that the priestly account doesn't succeed in replacing the non-priestly

34:14material, and so 150 years later, communities say, "We're not going to let either one of

34:22these go," and so they just put them together.

34:26No. Yeah, it's funny, when I was reading through this part of Genesis, and I read the account

34:36of the Flood, and then I got to the Tower of Babel, and I went, "Oh, yeah, because if

34:41everyone's descended from the same family, we have a language problem, how do we explain

34:46why there's so many languages, and suddenly there's a reason why we need to explain why

34:51there's all of these languages?" And so it made sudden sense to me, like there's a certain

34:56sense that can be found in just going like, "Oh, wait, some smart-ass just was like,

35:02"Okay, well, if we all descended from Noah, why are those guys speaking a different language,

35:07and those guys a different language or something like that?" It just seems like a lot of these,

35:12you know, there are questions that get answered by the next thing or whatever.

35:19Yeah, that's exactly it, and really back to what, where we started this conversation

35:24about what is a primeval history. A primeval history is a story about how these aspects

35:32of the audience's reality came to be. It's just, it's all of that, and this actually

35:39kind of relates to something I think many people haven't realized enough reading these

35:43chapters, which is, they sometimes will talk about a creation story, fair enough in a way,

35:50and then they'll distinguish a creation story like the Garden of Eden or the Genesis 1

35:55seven-day account, which we've been talking about so far, from the stories that come after,

35:59as if they're somehow different stories. But for the ancients, the social reality that

36:07they lived in was as much a part of their world as the natural, what we call our natural

36:12scientific reality. They didn't separate a sort of natural world from a social world.

36:17So the whole primeval history, all the way up to the tower of Babel story that you were

36:22just talking about, Dan, is in a sense a creation story. It's all an origin story about the

36:29world they live in, including multiple languages, including, you know, farming and childbirth

36:37and Sabbath and wine and sex and all this sort of thing is, it's all bound up together.

36:48And that's all part of this origin story, which is Genesis 1 to 11.

36:53I want to move on to what I think is one of the most fun three passages of scripture in

37:02the Hebrew Bible, namely the the Benalohim story in Genesis 6. But before I move on to

37:08that, I wanted to ask you real quick, do you think there's anything to the theory that

37:12there was a liturgical function for these creation accounts that they were part of New

37:18Year's festivals, that they were part of some kind of liturgy and in a temple or anything

37:23like that?

37:24So I think that there's a good case to be made for a liturgical function for some of

37:30the non-biblical precursor texts from Mesopotamia. For example, the Anuma Aelish has certain

37:36connections into the Akitu New Year's festival in Babylon. And that's part of why the authors

37:44of this text, who were dealing with the trauma of Babylonian destruction of their city and

37:50temple and exile, wanted to write their counter to this important text in Babylonia.

37:57But I don't think that's the primary context for these texts in Genesis 1-11. As you probably

38:07know, Dan, I really do think for most of the texts in the Bible, whatever some of their

38:12genres are that imitate some other things, they were mainly meant for use in ancient

38:18education in schools to be memorized so that you could sort of educate the next generation

38:24in that literate minority. And so that's what I think these texts are doing.

38:29Okay.

38:34Which now brings us, we're going to talk a little bit. I think we can summarize some of

38:39the total dotes, the genealogical material a little bit later. But when we get to Genesis

38:456, we have the sons of God who notice that they really like the cut of the jib of the

38:54the daughters of humanity and come down and take wives and have children with them. And

39:01the text says there were Nephilim on the earth in that day and after. And this seems to me

39:06to be a story that seems inserted at the beginning of the story of the flood to give a more plausible

39:15rationale for the destruction of all the earth. Because once we actually get to God making

39:21the decision to destroy the earth, all it says is he looked around, there was violence everywhere.

39:27And so he decides to destroy the earth. What can you tell us about precursors to Genesis

39:356, the role of this story and the beginning of the flood narrative?

39:40Yeah. Well, this is one of my favorite texts too, actually. It's such an interesting, I

39:47mean, it's just these little corners of the Bible where you kind of go, Oh, man, I can't

39:51believe this is here. Why didn't anybody tell me about this? You know, I guess now that

39:57it's juxtaposed with the flood where which as you say starts with God seeing that the

40:02evil of humanity is just thorough going and that sort of thing of being sorry, God made

40:07them. Since this story comes right before that, it's been tempting for many interpreters to

40:12say, Okay, well, there must be something wrong with these divine human marriages. The puzzle

40:18is that humans do absolutely nothing wrong in the story. The only people only beings that

40:26do anything are the sons of God who take the humans for wives and then have giant children

40:34of them. And so.

40:36And the agency of these human women wouldn't matter anyway. This is not a their will when

40:42it comes to marriage is pretty relevant in the text. They are taken in this text. They

40:48are taken there. There's evidence that women had agency within marriage in ancient Israel,

40:53but that's certainly not highlighted here. It's just the sons of God doing it. And God,

41:00this is another place where I think we can overeat it. God is not does not ever say they

41:05did something wrong. God just says, my spirit can't abide in these humans. And I will set

41:14a lifetime limit of 120 years. And then he goes on to say, and then giants were in the

41:21land at the time. And and this is the time of the warriors of old who were the men of

41:25the name. And I mean, one thing I think we just have to remember, Dan, here is that 120

41:35year lifespan within the world of the ancient land was huge. Like they could barely conceptualize

41:44anyone living that long. That was like the absolute outside limit. Interestingly, we find

41:49the exact same lifetime limit mentioned in Mesopotamian wisdom texts that are preserved

41:56in Syria that are talking about the sort of absolute limit of human life. So this is something

42:03people are talking about this another place where Genesis is based on some precursors of

42:07some kind, maybe not that particular text, but that kind of ideas and circulation. But

42:12where I'm going with this is, you know, in the ancient world, we see myths around us

42:18in in Hittite literature, in ancient Greek literature, that when the gods mate with humans,

42:26the resulting offspring have the characteristics of both. And that can mean usually that they're

42:33big because gods are big. I mean, I got to remember that gods are really huge in the

42:39ancient world. They're also beautiful, gods are beautiful. If there's a male, they're

42:46strong, they're incredibly strong, super humanly strong. And the other thing that humans can

42:52get from being the mixed divine human heritage is they can become immortal. And so what seems

43:00to be an issue in this story is very similar to the Garden of Eden story, where God will

43:05not abide humans having divine immortality. And this, this act by the sons of God threatens

43:13that. And so God doesn't say, Oh, bad, you, you know, you did this or whatever. God just

43:19says, okay, well, we're going to have to just put a circuit breaker on the lifespan of the

43:24offspring. And so they're going to be big and they're going to be strong. And that's

43:28part of why we hear about giants and about warriors of old. That's they're the divine

43:33human offspring. But they're not going to be immortal. And but they'll have a but they're

43:40also this is a subtle detail is there going to be men of the name, which is I don't know

43:46how it's translated in many common translations. But the idea here is one of the the ancients

43:53were well aware we all die. And the question becomes, well, okay, so what comes after there

43:58was no concept of afterlife in this culture. So you to some extent, it would be your kids.

44:04You'd have kids and that would be your immortality. And that in the Garden of Eden actually talks

44:10a lot about that at the end. That's so that's one form of living on even though you will

44:15certainly die. But the another main way that you had immortality in the ancient world was

44:20fame. And so this text says I'm setting 120 year limit. It's great big limit, actually,

44:29for divine human offspring. But they're going to be famous. They're going to be the giants

44:35that you know from other legends. We hear about them in the book of Joshua and so on.

44:40They were in the land of Canaan when the Israelites come or or the warriors of old who are the

44:46men of the like the giant famous warriors of David. These are people who were part of

44:51the broader setting of the audience and they can. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we know about those those

44:55guys, you know, and they're they're a testimony to sort of the truth of the story. So anyway,

45:01where I'm going with this is it's a take on this story that really doesn't involve any

45:05wrongdoing really. It's just kind of humans kind of struggling against this border of immortality.

45:13But but but then you have this real disjunction that happens where all of a sudden after this

45:18where humans do nothing wrong, if anything, the women are raped to God sees that the evil

45:25of humans is just complete in total. And they kind of go, what? Where where did this occur?

45:33And and I don't find it in this Genesis six story. Maybe you'd find it in the Canaan

45:38Abel story, though it's just one guy, and then his son, Lomik. The place where many

45:45people have tried to find that evilness is that's an incorrigible evilness is in the

45:49Garden of Eden story. And I think that's a lot of why people see original sin and that's

45:55sort of thing in the Garden of Eden story, where it's just a story of two kids growing

45:59up in many ways. So where I'm going with this is really to say, I really think what we're

46:05looking at right there between this really interesting ancient story about the origins

46:09of giants and famous warriors and the flood narrative, which is talking about the evil

46:15of humanity, is this is kind of a scene between an earlier layer of that origin story, which

46:24had no flood. And in a later layer that was written in a very different time with very

46:32different precursors that has a different vision of what humanity's about and and and

46:37what God's about too. You have a very different sort of flavor to the flood story that starts

46:43right then. And this this is something that you bring up in your book, but when we get

46:48into Noah's life, it seems like Noah's claim to fame is viticulture. And we have these

46:54references to the people who are around and it's like, Oh, they're the ones who dwell in

46:58tents. And they're the ones who make these these instruments and tools and everything.

47:02It's like, well, it doesn't matter what they did. If they're about to all be destroyed

47:08in the flood, the way the story is told, it doesn't seem to be anticipating the destruction

47:14of all humanity. And then all of a sudden, we get the flood. So in your book, you talk

47:19about how it seems that the flood is a later insertion into this narrative. Can can you

47:26expand a little bit on on the flood narrative, how it's coming in and interrupting things?

47:31Sure, I can. I mean, you touched on the first major indicator, which is just that chapter

47:37four of Genesis, when it's talking about the descendants of Cain, they build cities, they

47:42found music and pastoring periods and building tents. And there's this whole building of

47:50culture and this sort of thing. And then you have this story we were just talking about

47:54in Genesis six, which where there are a bunch of giants and warriors, which the audience

47:58is supposed to know about and think this story would explain. And then suddenly a flood comes

48:04in wipes everybody out. And so it's unclear kind of how the other story, how these stories

48:10work, if that's actually the case. Now there is a ancient Mesopotamian story of the flood,

48:18Atrahasis. And then a adoption of that story into the Gilgamesh epic that we were talking

48:23about earlier, that solved this problem by actually having all the artisans and stuff

48:30come on the arc with the flood hero. So it's like, it's a big party. Everybody's on the

48:34boat together. And so you can explain it that way. But the way the Genesis flood story goes,

48:41there's only Noah, his sons, and their wives on the arc. That's it. So there's a real kind

48:48of narrative problem there. Some ancient Jewish rabbinic interpreters solved this part problem

48:53partly by imagining that one of the major giants that was born of the union of the gods and

49:01women held on to the outside of the arc during that flood. And that's how he made it long.

49:08I thought you were going to say that his nose stayed just above water level. That's so tall.

49:15I like that maybe there's a that's a rabbinic tradition. I have an uncovered. I think there's

49:21the snorkel theory of. But anyway, people early readers saw that there was this issue

49:27and they had to try to explain it. I think the another thing that kind of is striking,

49:33I think you mentioned, Dan, that Noah's main claim to fame seems to be that he founded

49:38bit of culture, the making of wine, which in ancient Israel was like, this is a big deal.

49:44People in the ancient world drank fermented beverages. It was one way to have safe drinking

49:49water because the alcohol would automatically take care of bacteria. And of course, it also

49:54get a little buzz from it or more than a little buzz than Noah's case. So anyway, so Noah's

50:00name is explained in terms of his founding of viticulture. But we don't get to hear about

50:07him doing that until after the flood story where he's kind of reintroduced to us as he's

50:13a man of the arable ground. And then we hear about, okay, what did he do with the ground?

50:20He planted vines and then he got drunk on the fruit from it. I mean, what did he know?

50:26He's the first human to do it. So he's just like drinks a whole lot of it and he's flat

50:30out drunk and gets naked. And there's a whole story that comes from that. So that's one

50:35Noah. But then there's this flood hero, Noah, that's like this, it has a very different

50:41character to him. So I think I speak of sort of the two Noah's, the original Noah who

50:50founds viticulture and has this drama with his sons and the flood hero, Noah, which is

50:56what some later authors make of that figure as they make him into the flood hero using

51:02the Mesopotamian stories as their model.

51:06Now when we get to the flood, you talked about two different strands, the priestly and the

51:13non-P or J strand. And we see two beginnings, two middles and two ends to the flood story

51:21kind of woven together, don't we?

51:23We do. I mean, this is actually relatively rare throughout the Torah to find two stories

51:31parallel to each other that are so tightly interwoven, like episode by episode. In most

51:36cases, it's more like the two creation stories we were just talking about where you have

51:41a complete priestly text and then a complete non-Preecely text and they're not mixed together.

51:48But you know, you can't really pull that off with a flood story. If you told one flood story

51:54and then got at the end and said, I'm never sending another flood. And then you told the

51:58other flood story. It would begin to look like the divine abuse cycle, I think.

52:05They get away with it once, but we already took care of that with the creation.

52:09Yeah, but it's remarkable that they preserve so much of these stories. Now many scholars

52:16have pointed out in the last decade or two, there are some gaps at points where it seems

52:23like, for example, the J or non-P story doesn't have an account of Noah receiving instructions

52:29to build the ark and then building it. That's only in the priestly strand. But again, I just

52:35think for the authors who were combining these, they weren't idiots. They wanted to produce

52:40a reliable, readable narrative. So you can't have them building two arks according to two

52:46different designs and that sort of thing. So there were places where they had to edit

52:51some, but still even with all that, when you take apart all the doublets that occur across

52:57these chapters, you end up with remarkably continuous, not completely continuous, but

53:02remarkably continuous stories that episode by episode, it adds up to about 10 different

53:09parallels. They all add up to the flood story and they even have completely different chronologies

53:17that don't match up with each other. Yeah. I think that's one of the exciting places

53:22where we can kind of see the seams of these things being worked together. The sale of

53:27Joseph into Egypt is another one that I've thought is fascinating because you can pull

53:31them apart and get to full narratives. We've, I've talked before about Noah and his sons

53:41and you talk a bit in the book about how it seems that Ham is a late edition here. There

53:46are some textual things going on here, but one of the popular theories is that of what

53:52exactly went wrong and we don't have to get too deep into this, but are you, do you favor

53:58a sexual sin having been committed or is this really as simple as seeing the father naked

54:07and basically spreading his shame rather than protecting his, his honor? What do you think

54:13the nature of the, of the indiscretion there is? I think in terms of the original text,

54:19it's pretty clear that it's the later, I mean, the latter option you mentioned Dan that there

54:26was a strong belief in the ancient world that I think in our contemporary world we're remarkably

54:32out of touch with, but it's the idea that children owed their parents loyalty and honor.

54:41It's the sort of obey your parents kind of thing, but it was very deeply ingrained a basic

54:46idea that that's you really owed the older generation respect. And, and there's even

54:55a text in Ugarit, which is a city north of ancient Judah and Israel that talks about the

55:02duty of the child to take care of their father when he's drunk, that when you're, if you're,

55:11if your parent gets vulnerable, you know, because they've had a few too many, your job

55:17as the child is to preserve their honor and take care of them. And it is that which actually

55:25the original son in the, that story of no one's son is probably Canaan. That's what Canaan

55:32fails to do is he, he both sees his father's nakedness and then perhaps most importantly,

55:41he goes out and tells his brothers about it. So he, he just radically compromises that

55:48idea of filial duty. And so, you know, a hungover Noah wakes up, realizes what his youngest

55:57son has done to him and curses Canaan to eternal slavery. While blessing Shem, which in Hebrew

56:08means name. So we're back to the name theme we were talking about earlier, blesses Shem

56:15and his brother Yaphet. So I, for me, that's what I think the original story was about.

56:21But, but there's some text later in Leviticus that talk about the sort of sexual promiscuity

56:29of Canaanites and that kind of thing that have verbal resonances with the story we're

56:35talking about. And I think over time and in tradition, early Jewish tradition and later

56:41those, the kind of sexual connotations of that got kind of merged into this story. And

56:48of course, the nakedness to play a role in that. But the story says nothing whatsoever

56:54of anything that the son has done to Noah other than see his nakedness and talk with

57:00his brothers about it. And we're going to get the name theme coming up again at the end

57:07of the primeval history when we have folks who are building this tower, the tower of

57:13Babel in order to it says it's going to touch the heavens. But the main thing is they're

57:18going to make a name for themselves. And again, we have God looking down stroking their

57:24beard saying not too happy about this. Let's go down and frustrate this. Now, in your book,

57:32you talk about the the tower of Etemianonki, which was constructed much earlier in near

57:40Babylon was not totally destroyed, but fell into disrepair and took decades like 80 some

57:49years for a project to finally kind of repair things. And so it, it seems to me like maybe

57:58this is kind of these folks thumbing their nose at the Assyrians for for leaving this

58:06unfinished tower, not managing to get it finished for a while. Can you talk a little bit about

58:12about the precursor for the story of the tower of Babel? Is this is this a reflection of the

58:17tower of Etemianonki? I do think it is. Yes, I think that seems clear. And then the question

58:24becomes sort of how is it interacting with that tower at what point? We all know this

58:30tower is the tower of Babylon, I think, but it was and it was located in Babylon, but

58:36there were significant periods of time when Babylon was actually ruled by an empire located

58:41a bit north of Babylon in what we now know as northern Iraq, but was ancient Assyria.

58:49And the Assyrian empires were incredibly powerful. They actually totally destroyed the Babylonian

58:57sort of their southern neighbor a couple of times. And in the wake of one of those destruction,

59:04the Assyrians got involved in what was really the first big renovation project to go back

59:10to what you were talking about Dan, where they actually for the first time cover the tower with

59:15ceramic outside things that are that are like they're fired porcelain and stuff. And and it's

59:26striking to me that the aspects of the story, it's very detailed actually in its description of

59:33the construction correspond a lot more in some ways to this Syrian restoration of the Babylonian

59:40tower than they do to like the state of the tower during the Babylonian exile. It seems to be every

59:47and also what other thing is, you know, later on when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem,

59:55burned its temple, killed most of its people, deport most of the rest of them into largely

60:02salinated abandoned parts of Babylon to finish their lives far from their homeland. You know,

60:08in the wake of that, most of the people who went through that really had a pretty low view of the

60:13Babylonians, you know, and we have various oracles in the books of Jeremiah and Isaiah and elsewhere

60:19that really proclaim absolute destruction of the Babylonians or Psalm 137 says, "Happy are those who

60:25bash the babies of Babylon heads against the rock." This is the attitude toward Babylon that comes

60:32in the wake of the exile. Whatever is going on in the Tower of Babel story, it's not that.

60:38Humans come into conflict with God in a way without even knowing it really. God just gets

60:46worried about their collective power. But it's not like they're bad or evil. And so I think back to

60:53your question about like, how is it related to this tower? I think it's one of the most famous

60:58architectural wonders of the ancient world. And the authors of this text seem to know some pretty

61:05detailed stuff about it. And so they use it as a jumping off point for telling a story about the

61:11spread of humanity in the wake of the flood, because you've got to spread over the whole earth now,

61:16and how you've got the linguistic diversity, you know, different languages that we were talking

61:21earlier about. So that's their jumping off point, their knowledge of this amazing tower.

61:27And that gives us the 70 nations of the earth. And now the table is set to introduce our hero,

61:35Abraham. It sounds like the, our main narrative arcs in the primeval history are kind of presenting

61:43humanity is just trying to do their best, where the deity is kind of like a foil is the antagonist

61:51and in the story that is making sure that they don't breach those boundaries between humanity

62:00and divinity. And at the same time, though, we're also working a lot of etiologies, a lot

62:05of origin stories for the world as we know it, whether that is this unfinished tower that those

62:11losers over there, we're trying to build or why man, I really hate snakes, or all the different

62:19aspects of human civilization as they understood it are, well, not all the different, but

62:26several of the different aspects are represented ideologically in these stories. If you had to kind

62:33of sum up what the authors of the primeval history are getting at, what would you say is kind of the

62:40point? What would you say there? They want their their listenership to come away with.

62:45Yeah. If the Bible were a podcast, what would they?

62:50That's, you know, you really threw me a tough one there off the bat. So give us a, give us the

62:58elevator pitch. Give us the 25 words or less. Yeah. Well, I would just say, I was talking earlier

63:05about how the these biblical texts were forged amidst trauma. And I actually think that was true.

63:11I, that was true definitely for the priestly material, almost all my colleagues, including my

63:16wonderful colleague, Leanne Feldman, would agree with me in defining the priestly narrative and

63:21placing it more or less in that period, I think. And, but even the non-priestly strand that I was

63:29talking about, when you had the flood, the flood is really talking about catastrophe and about God

63:35dealing with human evil. And then somehow finding a way to cope with it, like saying, okay,

63:42I sent one flood, but I'm just, I realized they're evil, but I'm not going to do that ever again.

63:46And one of the things I, I don't know if we talked about this at the beginning of the podcast,

63:51but one of the books I did write for a broader audience had to do with trauma studies and the

63:58forging of the Bible amidst trauma. And so that's somewhere where I've been coming from in this

64:02talk, but holy resilience. Exactly. And the, I do think that, you know, a lot of the big message

64:11that people are supposed to get out of both of these strands is that God can take whatever humanity

64:17can throw at God. That it was a struggle, not easy, there's some back and forth, but God has dealt

64:27with a lot. And the world we now have is a result of God's kind of having to come to terms with a

64:36humanity that doesn't fully live up to the ideal God originally envisioned. That's more than 25

64:41words, but that's my, it's great. One of the things that I want to talk to you about is to flip that

64:47on its head and talk about, talk about it from the opposite perspective of God sort of being a

64:55disappointment to humanity. But we're going to, if we get to that, it will be in the patrons only

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66:01And David, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

66:05It was such a pleasure to talk with you both.

66:07Thank you, David. And bye everybody.

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