Should we call in the Jews For Jesus to pinch-hit?
I appreciate the apology. And I still think there is enough in the text to hang this hat on (not in an “I’m right you’re wrong” way but a “that’s also a reasonable reading, if less supported” way) but I’m interested to see how it fits in with later passages.
I don’t understand why you seem to think the Talmud/Midrash might be off topic. How can a scholarly commentary on the text be off topic? All I’m saying is that the details they contain that are not in the Bible, like Cain and Abel fighting over their twin sisters, had to get started somewhere. I realize that they may have had long oral traditions by the time they were first written down, but they still got started somewhere.
Nice discussion. My point though is not that the holes can’t be filled - I trust they can in any number of ways - but that given that there were all of 4 humans referenced at the time of the Cain YHWH conversation, the story cries out for an explanation. And it’s not there. So it’s a plot hole, a glaring one. How did it make its way into publication?
Of course it didn’t: the printing press didn’t come until much later. Books, scolls, codexes or whatever must have been rather different creations back then. And that’s just technology, multiple posters have noted the long tradition of commentary on the Torah. My (uneducated) assessment is that original compilation of stories that is Genesis is strung together partly with gum and bailing wire in parts: sometimes the seams show. Here’s a question: at what point did the Torah become something that can only be commented on, and not edited?
Glad you are enjoying the discussion.
The Cambridge History of the Bible, volume 1, pp 72-76, indicates the the most probable time of the final redaction of the Torah (along with most of the rest of the OT) was during the 4th Century B.C., after the Persians allowed the restoration of the nation of Israel after the Babylonian Captivity. There is some evidence the Persians insisted that any religion so restored would have to have an official document of some form to stand as an indication of that religion’s beliefs. It is not likely to have been the first editing or redaction of the traditional texts, but it is probably very close to what there is today.
So… some of the compilers might have been working on deadline? For more than one audience, some of whom weren’t especially friendly? Might a few of the legends have been bowdlerized to some extent?
When a work of art has multiple goals, something typically has to give. Seen in that light my plot holes may have been of rather secondary priority.
There’s reason to think the works were repeatedly redacted over the 5th Century B.C. through the 4th Century B.C., so undoubtedly thinks were added, removed, replaced and reworked over the course of over a century.
Just to clarify, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to Palestine in the 6th century BCE, and fell to Alexander in the 4th century BCE, so a strong 4th century BCE Persian influence on the Torah is unlikely.
The date the books of the Torah reached their final form is still debated by scholars, and varies from book to book. Most scholars agree that a lot of work was done during the Babylonian Exile, but it’s more likely that it was done as a result of internal pressures, i.e. to explain how God could allow such a thing to happen, than at the order of Persian authorities.
Tony Sinclair:
Because the perspective from which the Talmud and Midrash were compiled presumes the direct, word-for-word revelation of the Pentateuch to Moses, and that every divine letter thereof is fraught with significance, and that it was motivated by simple truth. Where this series of threads talks about J documents and E documents and how sloppy the redactor must have been to have neglected or repeated certain things, or when the redactor might have lived and what his agenda was. I could cite you how a particular Rabbi derives something from an “extra” word in a verse, and the communal roll-eyes from the members of this board over the silliness of harping over text that was compiled from folklore which itself was originated by a bunch of illiterate, ignorant shepherds will be such that I’ll get motion sickness.
This is a Cafe Society thread. I respect that. I feel that I have something to contribute here even without compromising that spirit with my belief that the Torah is divine and that the Talmud is a faithfully-transmitted record of its less-explicit aspects. For the most part I have kept my participation limited to a) translation issues, as I’m familiar with the original Hebrew, b) explicit scriptural references from elsewhere in scripture where I feel they have been overlooked, and c) logic (e.g., where someone pointed out that Abel’s raising of sheep was inherently incompatible with original vegetarianism a few threads ago). Perhaps when we get to the legal portions of the Bible, I might note certain matters of modern Jewish practice that are based there. I strayed a bit in this thread because I thought I had good reason, but I don’t think it’s in the interests of a Cafe Society thread series to bring up Talmudic interpretations that depend on the faith that the Word (capital W) is perfect.
I appreciate what you are saying, but IMO you are taking your restraint way too far. IMO a literary discussion of a text should welcome all viewpoints. I understand that the OP doesn’t want a religious debate, but nobody is talking about that. IMO it would be ridiculous to exclude comments that may help us to understand what the author(s) of the Torah thought or meant, just because the commenter believes or disbelieves in divine revelation.
Everyone realizes that the ancient rabbis assumed divine inspiration of the text. Surely the audience here is intelligent enough to allow for that in evaluating the commentary, but IMO it would be a great loss to the discussion to disallow it.
I’d actually go so far as to say that I would not want to read the thread without it. It’s pretty much the only way I’m going to get interestingly different interpretations, save also for other religious takes on the subject. I know the scholarly take and the Fundamental Christian take, and even some of the Catholic take.
I was fascinated last thread that some of the stuff I’d been taught as a fundie agreed with the Jewish interpretation.
Two things I’ve wondered for years about the above passage:
Cain had a wife (his sister per oft heard legend [and Byron]) and a son, and perhaps some other kids, and the only other people mentioned were his parents and siblings, yet he built a city. Even assuming that city translates loosely as a fort-town (though the writers of the OT would certainly have known what a city looked like- there were cities with thousands of inhabitants in existence by then), has there ever been an official explanation among Torah scholars or OT apologists as to how or why you could build a city for, at most, a group of people who could fit into a large room?
And the lines about Jabal being “the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock” and his brother Jubal “the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe”: how would this be possible if all humanity was wiped out by the Flood and all subsequent humanity bottlenecked through the descendants of Noah (in which case the tent dwellers and flute players and grape growers and men who stare at goats and those who say “Nih!” and everybody else would have the exact same ancestry)? OR, are there legends that some people survived the flood?
I’ve been reluctant to address this issue, because I brought it up once before (a few years ago) and ended up bombarded with “rolleyes” and “facepalms”. I admit I’m utterly unfamiliar with Jewish interpretations.
But my stepfather is a devout Christian who doesn’t do the “literal interpretation” thing (he believes that much of the Old Testament is allegorical), and he’s said some things that make a great deal of sense to me. It all starts with the verse (sorry, I don’t have the specific reference at hand) that says, “male and female created he them”. My stepfather believes that Adam, and all those other named “characters” was not a “singular male individual” (his term). “Adam” was “mankind”. In other words, God created humans as a race, not as a single individual. Somebody upthread already mentioned that the name, “Adam”, means something close to “humankind”. God created “Eve” out of Adam. Adam/Man was favored, but ultimately little different from God’s other species-creations. The creation of “Eve” was actually the granting of free will, when Man became truly autonomous.
The named descendants of Adam were, again, not “singular male individuals”. They were groups of people. And this also explains those outrageous lifespans. Making up some names, “Bob” lived for 100-odd years and “fathered” “Joe”. “Bob” wasn’t a dude, he was a tribe (perhaps originally founded by a guy named Bob). The Bob tribe existed and grew for 100-odd years, at which point the population expanded to the point that their geographical territory couldn’t support the population. So “Joe” took a bunch of people with him and relocated to a new area, founding a new tribe that came to be known as “Joe”. Meanwhile, “Bob” continued on for another 800 years, possibly sending out other “sons” over the years, before finally petering out. The tribe of “Joe” took a hundred years or so to outgrow its own territory, and eventually gave “birth” to “Jack”, who took some people with him to found a new tribe in a new location.
IOW, those named “characters” aren’t individuals, but rather groups/tribes. So, if God created mankind as a race, rather than as a single male and single female, there’s really no problem with who Cain married.