The Babylonian Flood Story tablet was not excavated; it was found by a shepherd of Kibbutz Megiddo after the Oriental Institute excavators had closed shop. In a dump of excavated soil, the shepherd found a broken tablet, inscribed in cuneiform, bearing (on both sides) 37 lines of writing that included a portion of the […]
The Sumerian flood story cannot serve as the basis for independent meaningful comparison with the Bible for it has survived only in a very fragmentary state. The first 38 lines are missing, and there are long gaps in the narrative. As a result the outlines of the story must be reconstructed from the other […]
Three different Babylonian stories of the flood have survived- the Sumerian Flood Story, the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, and the Atrahasis Epic. Of these, the best known is Gilgamesh XI, which was one of the earliest cuneiform texts to be discovered and published. In 1872 George Smith read a paper called “The Chaldean […]
From the Historical Genesis of the Jewish People through the Reigns of King David, Saul, and Solomon to the Babylonian Destruction and Exile Over the past century, a scholarly consensus has emerged that the Hebrew Bible derives from a variety of sources which, with the exception of a handful of poetic selections, date back no […]
Overview Genesis 5-11 and the Historical-Critical Method, Christine Hayes, Open Yale Courses (Transcription), 2006. The Story- 2500 BCE-539 BCE, MyJewishLearning.com. Primary sources Genesis 5-11 Genesis 6-9- Noah and the Flood, Texts and Traditions, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken NJ, 1998. Genesis 11- The Tower of Babel, Texts and Traditions, ed. Lawrence H. […]
1866–1870 engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883), entitled “Le Lâcher de la colombe” (“The dove sent forth from the ark”). “Alors il lâcha d’auprès de lui la colombe pour voir si les eaux avaient diminué à la surface du sol.” (“Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from […]
So, last time I gave a reading of the creation accounts that are in Genesis 1 to 3. These are two very different stories but their placement side by side suggests the possibility of a joint reading. Nevertheless they are very different in character, and today I want to focus in on the second creation […]
5This is the record of Adam’s line.—When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God; 2male and female He created them. And when they were created, He blessed them and called them Man.—3When Adam had lived 130 years, he begot a son in his likeness after his image, and he named him […]
The Hebrew Bible Building the Tower of Babel represents an attempt by humanity to rebel against God’s sovereignty. In answer to man’s presumptuousness, God scattered the builders of the tower and generated the many different tongues spoken all over the earth. Nevertheless, this story assumes that humanity was at one time all united. This is […]
