Dr. Alice C. Linsley
Genesis is a complex and layered text. Shalom Ratgeizer, an Israeli Bible scholar, notes, “The texts were written by different authors in different times and places in and outside Eretz Israel and were meant for different audiences. The literary styles, languages, and theological ideas are different and at times contradict each other.”
The older material in Genesis pertains to the earliest biblical populations and to the antecedents of the Messianic Faith among Abraham's Hebrew ancestors. Over these older layers are glosses and anachronisms that reflect at least two later sources: the Deuteronomist Historian, and the later hands of Jewish writers. The Deuteronomist writes from the context of the Neo-Babylonian Period, c.700-300 BC, about 1500 years after the time of Abraham. The Jewish insertions reflect even later periods. They date from around 400 B.C. to 200 A.D. The different sources are detected by the contextual incongruities and unraveling the interwoven elements is necessary if we hope to understand the Book of Genesis.
Understanding also requires attention to the anthropologically significant data that highlight contextual incongruities. Consider a Native American chief with a fleet of birch wood canoes controlling trade between villages on the Mississippi in 1720. Fast forward a mere 200 years to 1920 when a river magnate controls commerce on the same river with his fleet of riveted steel ships. Same river, very different cultural contexts.
The cultural contexts of the biblical persons in Genesis 4-12 were as distantly in the past for First Century Jews as they are to most readers today. Adam and Eve lived around 5000-4800 B.C. in a vast well-watered region called Eden. Nimrod, one of their descendants, left Kush (East Africa) and became a city builder in Southern Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C. (Gen. 10). Abraham the Hebrew was one of his descendants.
Abraham's territory extended between Hebron and Beersheba. He also had control of the wells that he dug in Gerar around 2000 B.C. To understand biblical history, we must grapple with the shifts in temporal, spatial, and cultural contexts, and the best disciplines to apply in this effort are cultural anthropology, archaeology, DNA studies, and linguistics.
Critical reading can prevent imposing a presumed or denominational interpretation on the text. The richness of the Genesis narratives is found by tracing the layers and listening for the subordinated voices. Often those are the voices of women.
Discerning the Antecedents
Biblical anthropology asks about antecedents. It explores what comes before what is described in the text. What events preceded the events recounted? It seeks to understand the cultural context of the earliest persons named in Genesis: Adam, Eve, Cain and Seth, etc. It is concerned with ancestors and received traditions. From what earlier context did certain practices develop? What traces of ancient memory can be uncovered?
The biblical text always speaks of something older, some prior action that solicits a response from later generations. The later generations are enjoined to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is a thick cultural web surrounding the God of the early biblical Hebrew.
That context is not apparent to the casual reader because it is hidden behind layers of Jewish midrash, denominational interpretations, theological typologies and mythological motifs. The motifs of the tree of life and the serpent are found in many of the world's religions. They are clues as to the lush riverine contexts of the early Hebrew who believed that a woman of their ruler-priest caste would bring forth the Son/Seed of God who would crush the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15). God’s adversary bruises the foot of the Woman’s Son, but the Son crushes his head. That expectation was expressed around 4000 years ago and recorded in Utterance 388 of The Ancient Pyramid Texts: "Horus has shattered (crushed) the mouth of the serpent with the sole of his foot".
Similar references are found in the later Vedic texts. "The Ancient Man danced on the serpent, who still spewed poison from his eyes and hissed loudly in his anger, and he trampled down with his feet whatever head the serpent raised, subduing him calmly as if he were being worshipped with flowers. Kaliya, his umbrella of hoods shattered by the gay dance of death, his limbs broken, vomiting blood copiously from his mouths, remembered the Guru of all who move and are still, the Ancient Man, Narayana, and he surrendered to him in his heart." (Srimad Bhagavatam 10:6, from Andrew Wilson, Ed. World Scriptures, p. 449.) The early Hebrew were a priest caste that believed in God Father and God Son. The Son of God was called HR which means Most High One in ancient Egyptian. The Greeks referred to HR as Horus. In Ancient Egyptian Re means "father."
In the Ancient Pyramid Texts, a priest prays for the King, saying, "Horus is a soul and he recognizes his Father in you..." (Utterance 423)
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus is called the "advocate of his Father" (cf. 1 John 2:1), and all the gods are said to be "in the train of Horus." Here we find the language of a royal procession such as this: "When He ascended on high, He led captives in his train, and gave gifts to men.” (Eph. 4:8).
Biblical anthropology insists that the texts be read objectively and with an eye to extracting data that helps us to understand the earlier contexts. The mythological Adam and Eve are posed as the first parents (apical ancestors). This is consistent with many African origin stories. Among the Gikuyu, the first man and women were called Gikuyu and Mumbi. However, these are not the first humans on earth, but the founders of the Gikuyu people. Likewise, Adam and Eve are the founders of the clans that come to be identified as Horite and Sethite Hebrew. These were Abraham's ancestors.
Abraham is the father of many peoples, an icon of faith, and a "sent away son" to whom God delivered a territory in ancient Edom. The sending away of non-ascendant sons is a feature of the marriage and ascendancy pattern of the biblical Hebrew. That feature drove the Hebrew dispersion out of Africa and the spread of the primitive Messianic Faith that came to be known as "Christianity".
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