Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: The Flow of Time in Genesis.

Certain quirks of the text of Genesis have lead (certain) scholars to posit multiple sources behind it,

which (they claim) have been messily spliced together.

On closer inspection, however,...

...these ‘quirks’ turn out to be deliberate and consistent features of the text.

Genesis 1–12 consists of a number of independent panels,

each of which begins its narrative just before the previous panel finishes...

...and takes the story on from there (cp. the diag. above).

Panel One runs from 1.1 to 2.4.

It narrates creation week—the world’s first seven days.

Panel Two then runs from 2.5–5.32.

It picks up the story in Day Six, which it fills out in further detail.

And it continues on until the 500th year of Noah’s life (5.32).

Next comes Panel Three, which runs from 6.1–10.32.

It picks up the story in the 480th year of Noah’s life (6.3 w. 7.6)—that is to say, it begins 20 years before Panel Two closes—,

and it continues on until 10.32,

...where it describes the division of the human race into many nations.

Before we move on to consider Panel Four, we need to note an important aspect of Panel Three’s narrative.

While the text of 5.32 lists Noah’s sons as ‘Shem, Ham, and Japheth’, that is not the order in which these three sons were born.

Ham was the youngest of Noah’s sons (9.24).

And Shem doesn’t seem to have been the eldest of Noah’s sons,

since Noah fathered his first son in his 500th year, and Shem’s 100th year coincided with Noah’s 602nd (cp. 5.32, 7.6 w. 11.10).

(The phrase יפת הגדול in 10.21 should probably, therefore, be read as ‘Japheth the eldest’.)

As such, 5.32 lists Noah’s sons in their order of importance in the subsequent narrative rather than their order of birth.

On, then, to Panel Four (11.1–32).

Panel Four picks up the story when the world still speaks a single language (11.1), i.e., before the division of the nations (described at the end of Panel Three),

and reveals the *cause* of that division,

namely the rise and fall of the Tower of Babel.

The Panel then continues on until the death of Terah (in 11.32).

Finally comes Panel Five, which begins rather awkwardly.

To see why, consider how Panel Four closes.

In 11.26–32, Terah is said: a] to father ‘Abram, Nahor, and Haran’ at the age of 70, and

b] to leave Ur, settle in Haran, and die there at the age of 205 (11.31–32).

In light of these events, ch. 12’s events read rather awkwardly for at least two reasons.

First, Abraham is told to leave his country/land (12.1)—i.e., *Ur*—,

which suggests the events of 12.1 are set in Ur *before* Abraham has arrived in Haran (in 11.31).

And, second, when Abraham departs from Harran (in 12.4), he is apparently the head of his household

(cp. 12.5, where Abraham ‘takes’ Sarah and Lot with him, with 11.31, where Terah ‘takes’ Abraham, Lot, and Sarah with him),

which suggests Terah has passed away (per Stephen’s assumption in Acts 7),

despite the fact Abraham is only 75 years old at the time (12.4) (which means Terah should still be alive).

Some scholars say these events cannot plausibly be reconciled with the text of 11.26–32,

especially those who think 12.1 shouldn’t be read as a pluperfect (for grammatical reasons).

Indeed, the Samaritan Pentateuch has Terah die at the age of 145 precisely in order to lessen the tension in the above events:

But we do not, I submit, need to worry about the finer points of the Biblical Hebrew pluperfect,

nor do we need to accept the Samaritan Pentateuch’s emendation.

We simply need to be accustomed to our narrator’s modus operandi.

As usual, Panel Five picks up the story before the end of Panel Four (in order to expand on its events in greater detail), at which point Abraham is still in Ur.

And, like Noah’s sons, Terah’s sons are not listed in order of age, but in order of their importance in the subsequent narrative.

As such, the narrative begins exactly as the careful reader would expect it to begin.

In sum, then, the apparent ‘quirks’ of Gen. 1–12’s narrative are not the hallmarks of a careless redactor,

but are deliberate and consistent features of the text.

THE END.

Note: Whether the rest of Genesis employs a similar approach I’m not yet sure. @danieldriver has thought carefully about the chronology of Genesis’s later chapters and may be able to tell us.