I assume the reason to enlist the chiasm feature is to say this indicates the time period in which Genesis was written. Chiasms can also be deployed in fictional works… for the same reason.
I know I sound dismissive, but it really isn’t my intent. I am just a little surprised that anyone thinks something like the “Tablet Theory” proves how old a text is.
One of the things I was planning to write on was a possible counter-point to the Tablet Theory, called the “Animal Skin Theory” - - but was stunned into silence when you yourself brought up the vellum of Egypt!
One nice thing about the Tablet Theory is that it can be a help to an audience to better visualize how a writer or compiler might reference Temple archives.
But it’s not really a discovery right? If you are in a place that uses clay, you have tablets. If you are in a place that uses papyrus, you use papyrus. There’s no real THEORY in the Tablet Theory, right?
If I announce that a newly developed CAMEL THEORY is a big biblical breakthrough, I might expect to be asked: how are camels a breakthrough?
To this I would say: “Well imagine a Bible scribe has all these tablets from Babylon, and all these Papyri from Egypt. Well, he’s gotta have a couple of camels to carry all that around if he goes to share his work with his mentor back in the city of Susa!”
BINGO! Nobel Prize in Literature, right? Come on … don’t be a cynic. It’s a Theory. And it’s new. And it goes right to the heart of what a scribe has to do with all those tablets and scrolls…
No, the use of the word “tablet” is not some kind of claim that fixes a date for the original composition of the accounts in early Genesis. It is a shorthand term for an observation of how " toledot" phrases are used in ancient literature, based upon Wiseman’s growing familiarity with ancient tablets at the time when he noticed them all through the early chapters of Genesis, and elucidated how the “toledot” phrases functioned, textually, when written clay tablets. Their presence did, indeed, indicate a very early origin for the text, stylistically. While the first “toledot” phrase is in Genesis 2:4a, the first chiasm encompasses Genesis 2:a-2:4b. This links the accounts as needing to be read together, and being of equal validity to the overall narrative, and doesn’t allow us to choose between them as though they were contradictory somehow.
For a more in-depth examination of the peculiar features of the text of the early chapters of Genesis, see Damien Mackey’s “Tracing the Hand of Moses” in footnote 2 of an introductory article here:
It’s not a “new” theory at all --just a sorely neglected one, because it was not (and still isn’t) fashionable in the academy, even though it has far more going for it than JEDP theory.
Read @jongarvey 's estimate of it’s cogency, if you can’t seem to hear it from me. This is not “my discovery,” just my drumbeat for a much older, cast aside theory that’s been widely overlooked and underevaluated, because it’s usually underestimated and misunderstood…
Hi, folks. My presence has been politely requested, which I take as a compliment. As noted, health matters together with other demands have made that difficult, and continue to do so. And, just because it wasn’t already bad enough, I had a knock on the head last week, and the concussion is taking some time to resolve itself. (And yes, I’ve been checked over in the ER.) So, this comes with my best wishes, and my hope that you won’t take my absence amiss. CJC
@jack.collins A hard head, a soft heart, a sharp wit, a good wife; what else could a man want, knowing that the God of all Israel loves and has adopted him?
I’ve taken a few good knocks to the head before, myself, and it always seems to focus my sense of mission!
Cheers, Dr. CJC!