25 August 2022 index-passages
The Flood narrative, of which Genesis 8 is a part, is generally considered to be a prime example of evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis. The way that the J and P materials are intermingled causes frequent repetition and issues with the timeline of the Flood. For a look at the sources underlying Genesis 8, see Bill Pringle's site. While the Flood narrative is a pretty clear example of how sources were stitched together, it is not always clear exactly which sentence comes from which source; you can see Dillmann on these passages for more exact details on some different possibilities for bits of the flood story.
Thoughout the Flood story, various words for living things appear -- the same as the categories of animals found in the creation narratives. They are tricky to translate and overlap in odd ways -- they do not perfectly match up to English words. The word behemah gets used, it seems, specifically of four-footed livestock, but in some cases seems to refer to all animals, wild and domestic. The word remes/ramas/romes, in various forms, seems at times to refer specifically to small animals that crawl or scurry about; but also for all animals in general. The word hay and related terms seem to refer specifically to wild animals at some points, but other times to animals in general. I haven't untangled all the details of the logic behind this, but it's worth watching that the words are tricky.
(8:1-2) Verses 1 and 2 up to the word "stopped", according to Driver, are the Priestly account of the "decrease of the waters".
(8:2) rain. According to Driver, the Hebrew word here refers specifically to heavy rain.
(8:3) at the end of one hundred fifty days. Hebrew mqṣh ḥmšym wmʔt ywm. The Samaritan Pentateuch begins the phrase with mqmṣ. Kittel says we should read mqṣ hḥmšym for the first two words, which doesn't make any change in meaning that I can see.
(8:4) seventeenth. The Septuagint reads twenty-seventh. Compare 7:11. Whether you go with Septuagint or Masoretic numbers the 7:11 and 8:3-4 would appear to equate 150 days to exactly five months, assuming a month of thirty days. The lunar month used in the Bible would come to about 29.5 days, which would make five months more like 147-8 days. What is going on here? Perhaps the thirty-day month comes from the Egyptian usage of thirty days per month.
(8:4) Ararat. The region also known as Urartu. This is an appropriate location for the biblical author, because as far as the biblical world is concerned, the mountains of Urartu, reaching nearly 17,000 feet, were the world's tallest (Skinner). These were, says Skinner, the "highest known to the Hebrews at the time of writing; just as one form of the Indian legend names the Himalayas, and the Greek, Parnassus."
There is a commonly repeated claim that the ark landed on the mountain today known as Mount Ararat. The biblical account does not go that far: it does not identify any specific mountain, but simply has the ark landing among the "mountains of Ararat".
(8:5) tenth. Following the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint reads "eleventh" (Skinner).
(8:5) visible. In Hebrew the niphal (roughly, passive) conjugation of the verb "to see". The KJV interprets this as meaning that the tops of the mountains were seen. But I don't think the narrative is at all clear that someone actually saw them (compare verse 13). "Visible" leaves the question open.
(8:6) window. The Hebrew word, ḥalon, is not the same as the word ṣohar, sometimes translated window in 6:16. While ḥalon occurs often enough, and in enough different contexts, that we can be pretty well satisfied that it refers to a window, ṣohar is a much more obscure word. Whether the ḥalon opened in 8:6 is the ṣohar built in 6:16, I cannot say.
(8:7) a raven. The Septuagint adds to see if the water had abated. Kittel endorses the Septuagint reading.
(8:7) Dillmann takes it went out back and forth as indicating that the raven went back and forth eating dead bodies. While this would explain why the raven behaved differently than the dove, it seems hard to me to interpret the text this way. I don't see any trace of a discussion about dead bodies here.
went back and forth. Following the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint and Peshitta -- Kittel says wrongly -- read "went and did not return".
(8:8) At the beginning of this verse, Kittel says one should add "And Noah waited seven days". For support he points to the expression "seven more days" in verse 10.
(8:8) to see. Interesting that Noah's purpose is only mentioned after he releases the dove; not earlier when he releases the raven. If the raven and dove were released for the same purpose, why not state that purpose when the first animal is released? But if they were not released for the same purpose, why is the raven's purpose not given? Dillmann thinks they were released for the same purpose, and that the purpose is stated with regard to the dove only because it was the dove only that fulfilled the purpose. I have doubts, but perhaps only because Dillmann knows something here that I don't.
(8:9) The dove returns because she finds nowhere to rest on a flooded world. But then, why does the raven not return. Dillmann (see 8:8) says it is because a dove will not land on carcasses as a raven would. Would carcasses really be floating in the water a year after the flood began? Perhaps not, but then again there would be no fresh olive leaves after a year of the earth being under salt water either.
(8:9) the waters were upon the face of the whole earth. How can the text say that the dove has nowhere to land, when we are told just a few short verses prior that the mountain-tops were uncovered, and the ark was in among the mountains of Ararat? For whatever it's worth (and I'm not sure how much bearing if any it has on this passage), Dillmann adduces Ezekiel 7:16 as indicating "the dove does not love mountains exactly".
(8:10) It looks like the Masoretes mispointed the word "waited" in this place. See Dillmann.
(8:11) olive leaf. According to Skinner, a symbol of peace, for which he cites Virgil and Livy as examples.
(8:11) And Noah knew. If Noah sends a dove out to see if the waters are dried, it would seem that he cannot simply look out of the ark to see. What this implies about the construction of the ark, I am not sure. Compare verse 13.
(8:12) waited. As in verse 10, it would appear that the Masoretes have mispointed "waited" here. See Dillmann.
(8:13) six hundred and first year. The Septuagint reads (with Kittel's approval) six hundred and first year of Noah's life.
(8:13) the covering. What was the ark "covered" with. And if the covering was over the whole top of the ark (about 450 by 75 feet), how does one remove such a covering? Following the Septuagint, Dillmann says it was something like a roof. It would seem from the way the verse is worded that it is only with the removal of the covering that Noah is able to see the dry land. And yet what about the window, out of which earlier he had been releasing birds?
(8:14). On the dating, compare 7:11 and 8:4. On the Masoretic reading, this makes the whole flood chronology take up a year and ten days. Figuring a lunar month of 29 1/2 days, a lunar year of 354 days plus ten days comes to 364, as if the writer was aiming to make the flood take up a solar year. On the other hand, where the Masoretic Text in 7:11 and 8:4 has "seventeenth", the Septuagint has "twenty-seventh." This makes the Flood equal to exactly one year, which Dillmann says is because the Egyptian calendar that would have been followed by the Septuagint translators was based on a solar year.
(8:15) God. The Septuagint reads "the Lord God" (Skinner).
(8:17) Every living thing. The Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Peshitta reads And every living thing (Kittel).
(8:17) and let them swarm upon the earth. The Septuagint omits these words (Kittel).
(8:19) Every living thing. Kittel says we should follow two Masoretic manuscripts, along with the Septuagint and some other ancient witnesses, in reading And every living thing. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th edition) tells us that these "others" are the Septuagint, Peshitta, and Vulgate.
(8:19) every crawling thing, and every bird, everything that crawls on the earth. The Septuagint, and Kittel endorses its reading, and all livestock, and all birds, and all crawling things that crawl.
(8:20) to Yahweh. The Septuagint reads to God (Skinner).
(8:20) In symbolic terms, a biblical offering was a way of "sharing a meal" with the deity. It therefore makes sense that only "clean" animals, that is, those considered appropriate for human consumption, would be offered.
(8:20) It is appropriate that the text says "altar to Yahweh" and not "altar to God", indicating that we are here dealing with the J source. The P source doesn't sanction sacrifice outside of the tabernacle/temple.
(8:20) Dillmann notes that stories in other ancient literature have the flood-survivor sacrificing after the flood. "Xisuthros, Manu, and Deucalion also sacrifice after their deliverance." A particularly interesting case is in the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the gods swarm like flies over the sacrifice made by the equivalent of Noah.
(8:20) burnt offerings. The Hebrew term traditionally translated as "burnt offerings" is ʿolot, from the verb "to go up", for how the entire burnt offering was sent up to God in smoke, as opposed to other sorts of offerings -- in which the person giving the offering ate part of it.
(8:21) Yahweh (both times). The Septuagint reads the Lord God (Kittel).
(8:21) smelled the soothing scent. The Hebrew expression is interesting. Like the English here, there is consonance. Perhaps we see here a trace of the Bible's tendency to de-anthropomorphize the deity. In the Gilgamesh Epic, the famished gods swarm like flies above the sacrifice. Gods, generally, seem to need to "eat" sacrifices in some sense in non-biblical thought. In the Bible, however, Yahweh does not eat sacrifices, but still (in a partially anthropomorphic depiction) enjoys smelling them.
(8:21) because. I can see two possible readings here, depending on what phrase is connected to "because". I till recently always "connected" (instinctively, without thinking about it) the "because" to "destroy". So that God might be paraphrased as saying, "The reason I might destroy humankind is because all their thoughts are evil from their youth. But I won't." On the other hand, Susan Brayford, in her commentary on the Septuagint of Genesis, reads the "because" as "connected" to the phrase "I will not destroy". In her reading, it is precisely because human evil is so deep-rooted in humans that God is, so to speak, going to be understanding, and not destroy them for a tendency that they have from childhood. So on her reading we might paraphrase God: "Humans are bent toward wickedness from childhood, and as a result, I wouldn't see fit to destroy them for such an ingrained tendency." I like Brayford's reading better than mine here.
(8:22) sowing-harvest, cold-heat, summer-winter. Rashi reads this as indicating six seasons of two months each. Dillmann, on the other hand, see just a two-fold division, repeated three times for effect. Winter is synonymous with cold, and it is when sowing occurs. Summer is hot, and is when harvest occurs.
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