From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Subject: Re: Differing accounts of creation in Genesis
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 22:14:18 GMT
Summary: Loren, you should know better

In article <1992Sep28.183350.8305@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:

> 	But look at more than the verb tenses. I'm told that many of
> the sentences in Genesis 1 and 2 are preceded with a particle
> translated as "and", "then", or "and then", depending on the context.
> In effect:
> 
> 	Then this
> 	...
> 	Then that
> 	...
> 	Then the other thing
> 
> 	Temporal order is clearly indicated -- for both creation
> stories.

Nope.  It isn't that way at all.  The "particle" in question is simply
the standard Hebrew (Semitic, actually; Arabic uses the same one :-))
conjunction "and."

What is going on in identifying "waw-consecutive" construction is the
*recognition* of a stylistic convention of narrative.  There are lots
of places in Hebrew narrative where one can cross-check[*] that clauses
strung together with "and" are *intended* to imply temporal sequence
(as opposed to the linearity imposed by speaking or writing, which may
or may not otherwise be intended to map to a timeline.)
---
[*] i.e. adduce substantial textual evidence in the same passage that
would tend to confirm such an analysis, and no counter analysis
---

English narration uses the same convention, though I gather that it is
more formalized in biblical Hebrew, whereas most "artistic" English
tends to rely on other stylistic devices.  When one reads Genesis 2,
one *will* see it in the context that waw-consecutive typically DOES
imply time sequence.  It is a legitimate inference that waw implies it
in Genesis as well.

But it is important to keep clear what is text and what is inference,
and whether the inference is based on some real evidence in the text
or is merely a knee-jerk reflex from the theological bias one brings
to reading the text.

In the same way, the "explanation" that the story in Genesis 2 is
"really" not in conflict with Genesis 1 "because blah, blah, blah"
is inference.  What the text HAS is two stories, with very different
styles and not a WORD about how the reader is supposed to place the
two into relationship.  We look at the stylistic differences -- for
example, the Genesis 2 story has lots of place names and punning
personal names and is very localized, whereas Genesis 1 is "cosmic"
and totally avoids names for creatures or places.  The sequencing is
utterly explicit in Genesis 1 ("evening and morning, the nth day")
while, as remarked, implicit through waw-consecutive in Genesis 2.
The two stories are "doublets" like lots of others, including patri-
archal genealogies, flood descriptions and even the giving of the
Decalogue.

The problem of *reading* the dumb text is how to place all these very
interesting things into relation, when the texts we have simply place
them in juxtaposition (caveat: the decalogue instance does have in
the text machinery [which may or may not be convincing to a reader :-)]
to "explain" the doublet.)

Traditional exegesis, Christian or Jewish, may have lots of "explana-
tions" about these things.  The problem is whether they are persuasive
and WHO they persuade.  Orthodox Judaism maintains that most if not all
the interpretive, exegetical framework to understand the text of Torah
goes back to a parallel oral law *given at the same time.*  I find this
historically very unlikely, but as long as one grants more authority to
the canons of Jewish exegesis than to speculative/critical/modern histo-
riography, then such a one will find the traditional explanations quite
persuasive.

Christians have less excuse for setting traditional "answers" to the
textual questions over reasoned text criticism -- only in the Roman
church does one get anything at all approaching the Jewish claim to
found interpretation in divine authority, and even there the claim
is basically "refounded" in a patristic exegetical milieu much later
than the texts being interpreted, so us sneaky rationalists can get
in even in the Catholic tradition.

The problem I have with traditional "answers" to the textual questions
is that they have exactly ZERO textual evidence to support them.
The usual "evidence" given to support tradtional readings is that if
you buy them all, you get a nice, neat [if rather complex] system.
I see absolutely no reason to take that as relevant to the matter.
Human beings are VERY GOOD at constructing elaborate systems, which
often times prove to have very little "real" to do with the supposed
object of the system (try classical Mediterranean or Chinese medicine
for examples.)

The stylistic differences of Genesis 1 and 2 imply, to me, different
traditions being edited together.  Conservatives would likely HOWL
in rage at similar stylistic fault lines as used in post-Joycean
novels -- yet are willing to swallow it as God's authorship in this
case.  Bizarre.  If someone proposes to me that "the" reason for the
two stories being so different is some bit of unverifiable pious gush,
I am inclined to see someone in the grip of "traditions of men" -- 
someone who, in the more naive and extreme Christian literalist forms
simply CAN'T see the text as it is, but only as overlaid with a lot of
purely imaginative adhocery -- and yet goes around telling *others*
that *they* are the ones who are ignoring scripture.

> 	I feel that this attempt to argue away the inconsistent
> chronological ordering when one puts the two tales together is pure
> special pleading. Each tale, however, is fairly coherent (I'm not
> going to insist that each one is _perfectly_ coherent, however); it's
> just the two together that produce the blatant contradictions.

Only in some framework that makes the different narrative styles have
similar claims on the reader.  This is where you are jumping off from
the text just as much as those with the special pleading "answer."  I
will agree with you about the special pleading if we are talking about
someone who is asserting "the" (or even "a valid") answer to a problem.
But instead of jumping to ANY conclusions, one needs to start by seeing
if there is some identifiable set of ASSUMPTIONS made in the first
story about how it is to be read [well, as I said, there the temporal
framework is explict and clearly laid out; definitely part of the
assumptions of the narrator], and those made in the second [where it
is in fact VERY MUCH less clear what kind of reader inference the
narrator there expects, particularly as to timing.   Not that there
isn't a reasonable inference from waw-consecutive, just a more serious
issue of whether the narrator GIVES A DAMN.  If the form of this tale
is similar to other folktales, one might notice a storyteller tellling
the "same" story in arbitrarily different sequence on different nights.
The supposed J-stratum of Genesis (which the second story belongs to)
is quite aligned stylistically with old Near Eastern storytelling in
motifs and style.  I would FAR more likely agree to inferences that
derived from such a _mise-en-scene_ (or _Sitz-im-Leben_ :-)) than
to inferences by some stupid engineer who thinks that all sequences
are in time.

> 	I suspect that these two stories were included in the same
> book because both were "recognized traditions", as it were, no matter
> how embarrassing the two tales look side by side.

Again, you need to bring some prior assumptions to the text to get to
any notion that the two traditions are "embarrassing" when set side
by side.  Clearly, whoever first PUT them there (or at least those
who transmitted the result, who held it sacred :-)) would not agree.
There is no embarrassment unless it somehow fails to live up to a
presumption on YOUR part about what it "has" to do to deserve respect.
And I have no reason for embarrassment unless I share your presumptions
or perhaps take you as some kind of authority in the matter.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."
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