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Article: Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- July 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John Van Seters characterizes the Yahwistic source ("J") as a work of history produced in the Exile. Covering Genesis here, he promises a sequel dealing with succeeding "J" texts. As in his earlier studies, Abraham in History and Tradition and In Search of History, Van Seters' argument is overwhelmingly form-critical: the use of genealogy and culture-history to structure an account of prehistory is Greek; the universal flood and king-lists are Mesopotamian. "J" combines the two. The possibility that ethnological genealogy in Greek historiography mimics Semitic models is not entertained. Yet "J" inherited his ethnography (as p. 279).
Our "historian" in Genesis is a ...