Name Games
The 10 generations from Adam to Noach have almost exactly the same names as the 7 generations from Kayin to Lemech. Kain becomes kainan, chanoch becomes chanoch, Irud becomes yered, M'chuyael becomes Mahalalel, m'sushael becomes m'sushelach and Lemech becomes Lemech. [Genesis 4:17-18 & 5:1-31] Even the names Adam and Enosh are related, as Enosh is aramaic for Adam. This similarity of names can be easily understood if one sees these various passages as variant version of the same story, but if these are really two variant stories, how likely is it that two sets of 7 people coincidently have the same names !?
Assuming multiple authorship also explains another problem. It is quite odd that mankind has always been named after Enosh. Why did he, specificly, merit to have mankind named after him. If we view Enosh as a variant version of the name Adam, this actual makes a lot of sense.
And yet, another mystery solved. The language of Genesis 5:1-28 is distinctly P in style and diction. Yet suddenly, in verse 29 there is a very strong shift from the style of P to J. This shift occurs exactly with the birth of Noach, the very place where the genealogy of J [gen. 4:17-18] left off.
Is it possible that Rashi was sensitive to this problem? Rashi comments that Lemech's daughter married Noach, the daughter of the other Lemech. Perhaps, though I concede this is a stretch, Rashi is somewhat based off of the similarity in the two genealogies.
posted by littlefoxlings at 12:02 AM
7 Comments:
Not a terribly compelling problem. A very traditional answer might go something along the lines of Kayin ruining the sequence of personalities that needed to begin with Adam and climax with Noach, and therefore Enosh begins the series again. This matches with the traditional understanding of 4:25 that Shes is some kind of replacement figure. And the whole problem goes away if you don't consider any (or at least all) of these names to be historical, a position that many in Orthodoxy have come to for reasons of conflict with science rather than textual problems, but which nevertheless makes the repeating of names a mere peculiarity of the text and not an unlikely historical coincidence.
As for the switch to J, are you serious? You can make the case for verse 29, but 30 and 31 are an exact parallel of 26 and 27 as well as all of the previous such pairs in the chapter. At most you'd need to posit that J's 29 is followed by 2 P verses before reverting to J. But it's not a clean separation by any stretch.
Rashi is obviously referring to Naamah being the only female mentioned in the entire chapter. Even if he was picking up on the dual geneologies, marrying Noach to Naamah wouldn't solve any problems or make much sense.
10/30/2006 10:45 PM
For your own sake, switch comments to haloscan (haloscan.com) which makes them much easier for you to manage and for other people to subscribe to.
10/30/2006 10:58 PM
Hencoop,
I agree that your reading of Rashi is more likely. That is typical Midrashic style. That was what I meant by calling it a stretch.
As to verse 29, yes, I was referring to only verse 29, not to 30-31. Chapter 5 is distinctly P, but verse 29 has many of the reasons to be assigned to J, including
1. A reference to the curse of the land – a J story
2. The Tetragammaton
3. The stiff style of P is gone and the language begins to vary more.
4. Adamah, is more common in J, though it does appear in P many times I admit
5. Etzev is more common in J, though it does appear in P many times I admit
I find the idea that these stories were not meant to be taken as fact hard to accept from a textual standpoint. Even if you do say this – what literary purpose is served by this repetition?
I like your answer and it is certainly plausible, my only problem is that it requires that you invent a complex theory of the message of the verses which has little other support. If, to answer any problem, we can suggest a complex imaginative solution that has no basis otherwise, we will be able to say anything we want and are not bound to the text at all. I realize that critics will say that multiple authorship is equally imagined though.
10/30/2006 11:15 PM
Hencoop,
I agree that your reading of Rashi is more likely. That is typical Midrashic style. That was what I meant by calling it a stretch.
As to verse 29, yes, I was referring to only verse 29, not to 30-31. Chapter 5 is distinctly P, but verse 29 has many of the reasons to be assigned to J, including
1. A reference to the curse of the land – a J story
2. The Tetragammaton
3. The stiff style of P is gone and the language begins to vary more.
4. Adamah, is more common in J, though it does appear in P many times I admit
5. Etzev is more common in J, though it does appear in P many times I admit
I find the idea that these stories were not meant to be taken as fact hard to accept from a textual standpoint. Even if you do say this – what literary purpose is served by this repetition?
I like your answer and it is certainly plausible, my only problem is that it requires that you invent a complex theory of the message of the verses which has little other support. If, to answer any problem, we can suggest a complex imaginative solution that has no basis otherwise, we will be able to say anything we want and are not bound to the text at all. I realize that critics will say that multiple authorship is equally imagined though.
10/30/2006 11:15 PM
Reason 1 is circular - it's only a J story if you assume there's a distinct J. It's just as easily a P reference to a J story and a demonstration that they are in fact the same source.
Reason 2 is dealt with traditionally as mercy/justice, and the implication in a traditional sense would be that Noach's birth represents a sort of mercy or that the initial curse was tempered with mercy. I know the names of God are a classic way to divide texts, but the traditional reading can often adequately account for which name is used where.
Reason 3 is meaningless and reasons 4 and 5 are weak by your own admission. You are left, essentially, with pulling a single verse out of a text with very clear P stylings and marking it J because of the tetragammaton and the reference to the story that is claimed not to be known by P. speaking locally about this one text, cherry picking a single verse is less plausible than assuming that this text is clean and really does reference a story from J and use a name you'd expect in J. It's a general problem with a lot of biblical criticism - sort of a chicken egg - because if any time you find a verse in P that seems like it should be J or vice versa you simply rip it out, then of course P will never refer to J and vice versa. It's self fulfilling.
10/30/2006 11:38 PM
I find the idea that these stories were not meant to be taken as fact hard to accept from a textual standpoint.
I also find it hard. I am compelled to go there by scientific evidence, but of course the reading is more difficult. One of my Rebbeim took the approach that the text was intended to be read as literal - by the generation of the midbar and even by the bulk of religious Jews in all generations - and yet isn't literally true. In other words, one can admit that it's been traditionally read as literal (although that's arguable - what the heck is maaseh bereishis that we only teach in secret?) without agreeing that it really is literal, by saying it's a sort of simple explanation for the simple folk who wouldnt be able to handle the reality. This seems from my readings to be the Rambam's opinion.
Even if you do say this – what literary purpose is served by this repetition?
Good question. On a purely literary level I can't personally come up with one, unless the whole piece is nonliteral or poetic and its simply parallelism for the sake of parallelism. On a drush level I gave you one thought, and I am sure there are others. Of course, that's begging the question of whether the text was written with drush in mind, and obviously that rests on whether the text is divine or human, so we are back where we started.
10/31/2006 1:02 AM
As an aside, multiple sources in Bereishis may be theologically less problematic than in the rest of Chumash if one accepts the midrashic story that the Israelites had some sort of scrolls with their national history that they preserved in Egypt. Much as Sefer Daniel openly incorporates another document, it's not terribly troubling to see Bereishis as an amalgam of earlier sources - with the editing directed by God, but even so an amalgam. You could turn my question on me then and ask why God would leave in contradictions, but once we are being this theoretical, who knows? I don't particularly ascribe to this, and anyways it doesn't help with anachronistic language or the fact that the same apparent source divisions do show up in the rest of Chumash, but it's another point to keep in mind.
10/31/2006 1:08 AM
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