Genesis, A Royal Epic. Loren R. Fisher

      GENESIS, A ROYAL EPIC

      Introduction, Translation, and Notes / Second Edition

      Copyright © 2011 Loren R. Fisher. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

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Almost every scientific generalization is a supreme act of creative synthesis. There comes a time when an accumulation of smaller discoveries and observations can be combined in some great and comprehensive view of nature. At this point the need is not so much for increased numbers of facts as for a mind of great insight capable of taking the assembled information and rendering it intelligible. Such a synthesis represents the scientific mind at its highest point of achievement.1

      Gordon’s comprehensive view of the Mediterranean World and his synthesis has created a new and an enlightened way of approaching our search for the foundations of our culture. It is a privilege to have worked with Cyrus H. Gordon.

      Stan Rummel, who studied with me at Claremont and took over the Ras Shamra Parallels project when I left Claremont, has assisted me during the preparation of this translation. I want to thank him for his help. We have worked on many of the problems of Genesis during regular meetings that were scheduled for that purpose. He has put a lot of time into this project, and this work is much better because of his help.

      I also thank the members of the Hebrew Bible Seminar of the Westar Institute (the late Robert W. Funk, director) for their comments and help on translation problems. From 1987 to 1991, we met twice a year. At each meeting, Genesis and its complexities took more than their share of the time.

      I extend many thanks to Dr. K. C. Hanson, Editor-in-Chief at Wipf and Stock Publishers, for his help with this second edition. His editorial work was important as usual, and his scholarly intuition and assistance has been priceless. As always, I thank my wife, Jane Sheldon, for her editorial help.

      I want to thank my son, Prof. Daniel C. Fisher—who is Claude W. Hibbard Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan and Curator of Paleontology at the University of Michigan Museum—for all of his encouragement and help, especially with Appendix II, and my conversations with Judith P. Fisher concerning the cover have been extremely rewarding. I want to thank Betty Lou Whaley for the original front cover concept. The embossed background on the cover of the first edition is an image of a gastropod mollusc (Murex trunculus), one of the snails used by the Phoenicians to produce a precious purple dye. It was used to dye garments for the royalty. I have used it as a symbol for this very precious Royal Epic. The following terms are interesting in that they refer to both the Phoenicians and their purple dye:

      Mycenaean Greek, Po-ni-ke

      Ugaritic, Pwn and Pwt

      Hebrew, Pûnî

      Greek, Phoinix and Phoinikes

      Latin, Punicus

      Preface to the Second Edition

      There are not many changes in this second edition. The format and structure of the translation has been changed, and it is now divided into four parts:

      Part I 1:1—11:26

      Part II 11:27—25:18

      Part III 25:19—37:1

      Part IV 37:2—50:26.

      Part IV has been reset to represent the prose, as opposed to epic line, structure of that section. Furthermore, the bibliography has now all been gathered to the end, and an Index of Ancient Documents has been provided to track the references in the Introduction, notes, and appendices.

Genesis is a royal epic constructed from many sources by the scribes of Jerusalem, and I suggest that this could have happened during the reign of King David. In my novel, The Jerusalem Academy, I try to show how this happened. I am more convinced than ever about this event. One reason for my optimism is the discovery in Jerusalem—or to be more specific in the City of David, the oldest part of Jerusalem—of a cuneiform tablet. There is a good article on this by Eilat Mazar, Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Yuval Goren.2 Actually the tablet is just a fragment (designated Jerusalem 1), and that means we cannot say much about the content. However, by analyzing the signs carefully, the authors who studied it have determined that the scribe, who wrote this tablet, had a better hand than the two scribes who wrote tablets 285–291 of the Amarna letters. The Amarna letters were sent by the ruler of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, to the Egyptian Pharaoh.3 So the authors say:

In fact, it is our impression that the scribe of Jerusalem 1 shows greater expertise than the scribes of Abdi-Heba in EA 285–290. Our conclusion, then, is that the scribe of the Jerusalem fragment seems capable of producing high-quality international-standard scribal work, a conclusion that is also supported by the shape of the fragment, as indicated by the surviving piece of the left edge, which seems to us to be closer to the Mesopotamian ideal than most tablets from the cuneiform west.4

      This new information may not prove my view that there was a scribal school in Jerusalem before and during the Davidic monarchy, but it certainly points to a great teacher and at least two other scribes. My view is based on the fact that great centers needed and had scribal schools. In my novel, Magon of Tyre was such a scribe and a great teacher of Babylonian cuneiform.

Genesis