Hendel Leitwort Style (1)

Sacred History,Sacred Literature

Essays on Ancient Israel, the Bible, and Religion in Honor of

R. E. Friedman

on His Sixtieth Birthday

Edited by

Shawna Dolansky

Winona Lake, Indiana

Eisenbrauns

2008

Offprint from

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page i Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

ç

Copyright 2008 by Eisenbrauns.All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America.

www.eisenbrauns.com

The publication of this book was generously assisted by the University of California, San Diego, Judaic Studies Program

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sacred history, sacred literature : essays on ancient Israel, the Bible, and religion in honor of R. E. Friedman on his sixtieth birthday / edited by Shawn Dolansky.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and indexes.ISBN 978-1-57506-151-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Judaism—History.

I. Friedman, Richard Elliott. II. Dolansky, Shawna.BS1171.3.S33 2008221.6—dc22

2008040327

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the AmericanNational Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed LibraryMaterials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

†‘

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page ii Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

iii

Contents

Richard Elliott Friedman: An Appreciation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

William H. C. Propp

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Shawna Dolansky

Part 1The Hebrew Bible

Ezekiel and the Levites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Jacob Milgrom

Framing Aaron: Incense Altar and Lamp Oil inthe Tabernacle Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Carol Meyers

Necromancy and 1 Samuel 19:22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

W. Randall Garr

A Tale of the Prophet and the Courtier:A Responsive Reading of the Nathan Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Herbert Bardwell Huffmon

A Forgotten Cultic Reform? 2 Kings 3:2b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

André Lemaire

Scribal Error and the Transmission of2 Kings 18–20 and Isaiah 36–39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Bradley Root

Empirical Taxonomy and the Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

A. Dean Forbes

Place-Names as Superlatives in Classical Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

H. G. M. Williamson

The Real Formal Full Personal Name of the God of Israel . . . . . . . . . 81

David Noel Freedman

l

uu

z

Part 2Source Criticism

Leitwort

Style and Literary Structure in the J Primeval Narrative . . . . 93

Ronald Hendel

How Moses Gained and Lost the Reputation of Being the Torah’s Author: Higher Criticism prior toJulius Wellhausen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Michael M. Homan

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page iii Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

Contents

iv

How Was the Bible Written? Reflections on Sources and Authors in the Book of Kings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Robert R. Wilson

Part 3Israel and the

Ancient Near East

The “Biblical” Origins of Passover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Jeffrey C. Geoghegan

“Plowing with a Heifer” in Judges 14:18:Tracing a Sexual Euphemism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Shalom M. Paul

Aramean Skin Care: A New Perspective on Naaman’s Leprosy . . . . . . 169

Laura M. Zucconi

Abraham and Damascus in Some Greek and Latin Textsof the Hellenistic Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

John A. Emerton

Rethinking Sectarian Judaism: The Centrality of the Priesthood in the Second Temple Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Risa Levitt Kohn and Rebecca Moore

Part 4The Bible and Archaeology

In Defense of Forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Baruch Halpern

Can Archaeology Serve as a Tool in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

William G. Dever

“You Shall Make for Yourself No Molten Gods”: Some Thoughts on Archaeology and Edomite Ethnic Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Thomas E. Levy

Female Infanticide in Iron II Israel and Judah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Beth Alpert Nakhai

Part 5Religion and

Religious Studies

Elements of Popular Piety in Late Medieval and Early ModernJewish Psalms Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Alan Cooper

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page iv Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

Contents

v

The Biblical Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Stephen Cox

Walter Rauschenbusch, the Social Gospel Movement, and How Julius Wellhausen Unwittingly Helped Create American Progressivism in the Twentieth Century . . . . 315

Steven Cassedy

“Starving” the Patient: A Jewish Perspective on Terry Schiavoand the Feeding Tube Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Randy Linda Sturman

l

uu

z

Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331Index of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page v Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

99-Offprint_Cover-FriedmanFs Page vi Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:59 PM

93

Leitwort Style and Literary Structure in the J Primeval Narrative

Ronald Hendel

University of California, Berkeley

Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antediluvious and annadominant the copyist must have fled with his scroll.

—James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake

The Leitwort style of biblical narrative was first clearly elucidated byMartin Buber, the existentialist philosopher and popularizer of Jewish mys-ticism. From my (admittedly biased) view, this was his most importantcontribution to civilization. He wrote:

By Leitwort I understand a word or word root that is meaningfully re-peated within a text or sequence of texts or complex of texts; those whoattend to these repetitions will find a meaning of the text revealed orclarified, or at any rate made more emphatic. As noted, what is repeatedneed not be a single word but can be a word root; indeed the diversityof forms often strengthens the overall dynamic effect. I say “dynamic”because what takes place between the verbal configurations thus relatedis in a way a movement; readers to whom the whole is present feel thewaves beating back and forth. Such measured repetition, correspondingto the inner rhythm of the text—or rather issuing from it—is probablythe strongest of all techniques for making a meaning available withoutarticulating it explicitly.1

Buber argued that the Leitwort style is a distinctive literary technique forthe production of meaning in biblical narrative. Hermann Gunkel had ear-lier pointed to the repetition of key words as part of the economy of bibli-cal narrative, but he attributed these traits as much to the primitive qualityof the ancient Hebrew mind as to deliberate literary artistry.2 Buber much

1. M. Buber, “Leitwort Style in Pentateuchal Narrative,” in Buber and F. Rosenzweig,Scripture and Translation (trans. Lawrence Rosenwald; Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1994; German original, 1936) 114.

2. H. Gunkel, Genesis (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997; German original,3rd ed., 1910) xl: “As a rule, quite in contrast to our sense of style, the expression isrepeated with the recurrence of the substance so that the same word often runs through

00-FriedmanFs.book Page 93 Wednesday, September 24, 2008 5:53 PM

Ronald Hendel94

more convincingly demonstrated that the Leitwort style is a deliberatetechnique, a constitutive feature of biblical poetics. In recent years RobertAlter, Meir Sternberg, and others have revived Buber’s discovery and con-tributed to our understanding of this literary phenomenon.3

In what follows, I wish to trace some of the intersecting webs of Leit-wörter in the J portion of the Genesis primeval narrative (Genesis 1–11). Tosome scholars, attention to the biblical sources of Genesis may seemquaint or unliterary. In contrast, I would agree with those who maintainthat the interplay between source and discourse is a crucial dimension of athorough literary analysis and that we need to develop forms of attentionsensitive to the mixed voices in the text.4 Studies of Genesis that claim todiscern literary patterns without paying attention to source distinctionsare generally unconvincing, tending to blur or harmonize important fric-tions in the text. A complex reading that takes into account the many-layered senses and histories of the text is a worthwhile and perhaps neces-sary goal.

In both the J and P layers of the primeval narrative of Genesis 1–11, theLeitwort style creates a unifying literary texture that is perceptible and ef-fective within each source and in the composite text. In the following I willlimit my remarks to the J text, in which the Leitwort style has several over-lapping effects. First I will consider the way Leitwörter are used to link suc-cessive stories, thereby creating a unified narrative sequence out of whatwere probably previously disparate and unconnected stories. Within the Jcomposition, what Buber calls the “back and forth” movement of the Leit-wort style serves to join together the stories in a coherent sequence and

3. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981) 92–112; M. Stern-berg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 390–427; see also Y. Amit, “The Multi-Purpose‘Leading Word’ and the Problems of Its Usage,” Proof 9 (1989) 99–114. Amit observes thatthere are “two separate functions of the leading word: sometimes it appears throughout astory as a key word, and sometimes it can be seen as a connective” (p. 109). I would addthat these are not necessarily separate functions; as I will show, the Leitwörter in Genesis1–11 often do both.

4. See R. E. Friedman, “Sacred History and Theology: The Redaction of Torah,” in TheCreation of Sacred Literature: Composition and Redaction of the Biblical Text (ed. Friedman;Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) 25–34: J. Barton, Reading the Old Testa-ment: Method in Biblical Study (2nd ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 237–46;D. M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis: Historical and Literary Approaches (Louisville:Westminster John Knox, 1996) 4–15; and my remarks in “Tangled Plots in Genesis,” inFortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman (ed. A. B. Beck et al.;Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995) 35–51.

the narrative like a red thread. . . . Undoubtedly, this practice originally arose because ofthe poverty of the language. The narrators, however, whose narratives are available to us,adapt this style because they can thereby reproduce their impression of the account’sunity.”


Leitwort Style in the J Primeval Narrative 95

binds the stories together. Second, I will explore how the Leitwort style cre-ates intertextual links between stories that are not successive. In several in-stances, as scholars have noted, the web of Leitwörter indicates a largerliterary structure, yielding a doubled sequence in which several stories are“twinned” with another, most notably the Garden of Eden with the Flood,and to a lesser extent, Cain and Abel with the Curse of Canaan, and theSons of God with the Tower of Babel. Close attention to the Leitwort styleilluminates the compositional strategies of the J source in creating a unityout of a prior diversity, and in shaping the intertextual effects in the move-ment from Creation to Flood to Abraham.

My analysis of these Leitwort effects builds on the work of numerousscholars, not only Buber and Gunkel, but also Umberto Cassuto, whosecommentary on Genesis 1–11 pays close attention to the Leitwort style,5

and Jack Sasson, along with several others who have commented on thedoubled narrative sequence of the primeval narrative.6 Most of the in-stances of Leitwörter addressed below have been noted previously, but it isuseful to gather them together to expose a key dimension of the poetics ofthe primeval narrative.

It is a pleasure to offer this study in honor of Richard Friedman, whohas done so much to clarify and refine our understanding of the biblicalsources and to join this understanding with a sophisticated reading ofthe text.

1. The Leitwort Effect in Successive Stories

An important effect of the Leitwort style in the J primeval narrative isto bind successive stories together more richly, such that there is a senseof narrative continuity beyond mere temporal succession. In order togauge the compositional significance of these links, I will first consider

5. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (trans. Israel Abrahams; 2 vols.; Je-rusalem: Magnes, 1961–64; Hebrew original, 1944–49).

6. J. M. Sasson, “The ‘Tower of Babel’ as a Clue to the Redactional Structuring of thePrimeval History (Genesis 1:1–11:9),” in The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon(ed. G. Rendsburg et al.; New York: Ktav, 1980) 211–19, reprinted in I Studied Inscriptionsfrom before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11(ed. R. S. Hess and D. T. Tsumura; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 448–57; R. L.Cohn, “Narrative Structure and Canonical Perspective in Genesis,” JSOT 25 (1983) 4–5;G. A. Rendsburg, The Redaction of Genesis (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1986) 7–25;Carr, Reading the Fractures, 235–40; idem, “bÇbloÍ GenevsewÍ Revisited: A Synchronic Analy-sis of Patterns in Genesis as Part of the Torah (Part Two),” ZAW 110 (1998) 327–34, 342–44; and somewhat differently, S. Niditch, Chaos to Cosmos: Studies in Biblical Patterns ofCreation (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 59–69; and H. J. L. Jensen, “Über den Ursprungder Kultur und der Völker: Eine transformationskritische Analyse von Komplementaritätund Verlauf in der jahwistischen Urgeschichte,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 2(1987) 36–45.


Ronald Hendel96

the indications that these J stories were not linked in succession in thenarrative traditions (which may have been primarily oral) that served asJ’s narrative source. Gunkel pointed out a number of such indications,that is, logical gaps or inconcinnities, which cumulatively indicate that“the old legends did not originally exist in the current combination, buteach existed independently in oral tradition.”7 Some of these gaps or con-tradictions are the following:

1. “Cain knew his wife” (Gen 4:17). The problem, as commentatorshave noted for millennia, is that no woman has yet been born for Cain tomarry.8 This is a problem that the J narrative does not address.9 It is argu-ably a problem that only arises in the sequencing of the stories, that is,when originally independent stories were joined in chronological order.The problem of Cain’s wife is not a problem that arises in the Cain andAbel story itself, it only becomes one when this story is the immediate se-quel to the Garden of Eden. This problem inspired colorful solutions byearly interpreters, usually involving a sister of Cain and Abel.10

2. A similar problem obtains regarding the existence of other peopleat the time of Cain. In Gen 4:14, Cain protests his punishment on thegrounds that “whoever finds me will kill me.” Presumably he is not refer-ring to his parents. This creates the problem of what the 17th-century her-etic Isaac La Peyrère called “the pre-Adamites.”11 In other words, the Cainand Abel story conflicts with the Garden of Eden story in requiring thatother human families exist at the time of Adam and Eve.

3. Yahweh’s punishment of Cain, that he be a ‘wandering vagrant’ dnw [n

in the land of ‘Wandering’ dn (4:12, 16), coexists uneasily with the follow-ing statement that he “built a city” (4:18). This activity implies a settled,urban existence. The friction between the Cain cursed to wander and theurban Cain is arguably another indication of originally distinct storiesjoined together.

4. Another inconcinnity is the cultural legacy of Cain’s descendants:Jabal is the father of all pastoralists, Jubal is the father of musicians, andTubal-Cain the father of metalworkers (4:17–21). Since according to the

7. Gunkel, Genesis, 2; see also J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Edin-burgh: Black, 1885; German original, 2nd ed., 1883) 315–17.

8. N. Wyatt notes (“Cain’s Wife,” Folklore 97 [1986] 88–95) that according to thenarrative sequence of the J text, Cain’s wife must have been Eve!

9. Note that the P genealogy in Gen 5:4 does cover this exigency: “[Adam] begat sonsand daughters.”

10. J. L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of theCommon Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998) 148–49.

11. I. La Peyrère, Prae-adamitae (1655); see R. H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676):His Life, Work, and Influence (Leiden: Brill, 1987).



narrative sequence the flood must end these lineages, the problem arises asto how these lineages and their associated cultural activities persist afterthe flood. Hence, the account of Cain’s descendants as culture heroes con-flicts with its placement before the Flood story.

5. A similar problem of continuity through the flood is posed by the ex-istence of the Nephilim. According to Gen 6:4, “the Nephilim were on theearth in those days, and also afterwards.” The “also afterwards” seems to bea nod forward to Num 13:33, when the Nephilim are once again on theearth. This inconvenient fact conflicts with the flood story, in which “allthat remained (alive) were Noah and those with him on the ark” (Gen7:23, J). The persistence of the Nephilim is a problem (which the J storyseems briefly to acknowledge) that arises when this story is placed beforethe flood.

6. A problem of temporal and logical sequence also occurs between theJ portion of the Table of Nations and the Tower of Babel story. The distri-bution of the descendants of Noah into an ethnic and geographical diver-sity in Genesis 1012 sits uneasily with the initial ethnic and geographicalunity in the Tower of Babel story. The Tower of Babel story begins, “Thewhole earth had one language . . . and they found a valley in the land ofShinar and they settled there” (Gen 11:1–2). But in the previous chapter,the lineages of Noah’s sons had already become a linguistic and geograph-ical diversity spread over all the earth. The abrupt shift from ethnographicdiversity to unity seems to be a problem that arises in the literary sequenc-ing of the two accounts.

7. The building and naming of the city of Babel in 11:1–9 also sits un-easily with the previous naming of Babel as Nimrod’s capital city in 10:10.And further, if we are to assume that Babel is the first city built, then it sitsuneasily with the attribution of the building of the first city to Cain in4:17. These, too, are frictions that appear to be a product of the literarysequence.

These and other logical and narratological difficulties in the J primevalnarrative indicate that the stories circulated independent of their currentliterary sequence in Israelite tradition prior to their textual crystallization.(A clue of a different type is the apparent truncation of the story of theSons of God and the Daughters of Men, where only the bare outlines ofthe story are told in 6:1–4 and the rest of the story suppressed.)13 The Jwriter created a unity out of this diversity by recounting them in sequence,

12. The J portion is 10:8–19, 21, 24–30.13. See recently R. S. Hendel, “The Nephilim Were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1–4 and its

Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in The Fall of the Angels (ed. C. Auffarth and L. T. Stuck-enbruck; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 11–34.


Ronald Hendel98

in a distinctive and brilliant narrative voice, laced together with Leitwörter.The most notable Leitwörter that weave together the successive stories areas follows.

Garden of Eden with Cain and Abel 14

(a) µh µmry[ yk w[dyw ‘They knew that they were naked’ (Gen 3:7)

wtça hwj ta [dy µdahw ‘The man knew Eve, his wife’ (4:1)

wtça ta ˆyq [dyw ‘Cain knew his wife’ (4:17)

wtçaAta dw[ µda [dyw ‘Adam knew his wife again’ (4:25)

The Leitword [dy ‘to know’ echoes throughout the Garden of Eden story inits various nominal and verbal forms. When the first couple eat from thefruit of the “Tree of Knowledge (t[d) of Good and Evil,” they indeed be-come like gods, “knowing (y[dy) good and evil” (3:5, 22), but ironicallytheir new knowledge is most immediately perceptible as consciousness oftheir own bodies: “They knew (w[dyw) that they were naked” (3:7). This as-pect of carnal knowledge (which is only one of several dimensions of thisknowledge) is resumed at the beginning of the Cain and Abel story when“the man knew ([dy) Eve, his wife.” This particular pursuit of knowledgeyields the first children, whose sibling relationship becomes the focalpoint of the story. Knowledge is not the major theme of the Cain and Abelstory (though compare 4:10 with 3:8) and serves primarily as a verbal andthematic transition from the Garden of Eden story. This transitional effectrecurs in 4:17, “Cain knew ([dyw) his wife,” introducing the story of Cain’sdescendants, and in 4:25, “Adam knew ([dyw) his wife again,” returning thestory to the first parents and the line that will lead to Noah and Abraham.

(b) ˚tqwçt ˚çya law ‘and to your husband will be your desire,˚bAlçmy awhw and he will rule over you’ (3:16)

htaw wjqwçt ˚ylaw ‘and to you will be its desire, and you musthbAlçmt rule over it’ (4:7)

Yahweh’s punishment of Eve and his moral admonishment to Cain haveoverlapping diction. The operative Leitwörter in these two divine speechesare ‘desire’ hqwçt and ‘rule’ lçm, foregrounding the complexities of desireand discipline—between male and female spouses and within the humansoul. For Eve this is a punishment, because she previously desired the for-bidden fruit and gave it to her husband, despite Yahweh’s prohibition.

14. On the verbal echoes that link Genesis 3 and 4, see most fully Cassuto, Genesis, adloc.; and W. Dietrich, “‘Wo is dein Bruder?’ Zu Tradition und Intention von Genesis 4,”in Beiträge zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie: Festschrift für Walther Zimmerli (ed. H. Donner,R. Hanhart, and R. Smend; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977) 98–100.



Yahweh’s speech-act enacts a punishment that corresponds to her trans-gression. Henceforth she will desire the man, and he will rule over her—these are structures of the new (patriarchal) world order. In continuityand difference, Cain is caught in the conflict between his own desire—kindled by jealousy and anger—and his moral self-governance. The verbaland thematic linkages of desire and rule place Eve and Cain in a compli-cated analogy, as subjects addressed by Yahweh regarding the difficultconsequences of their moral choices.

(c) hmhbhAlkm hta rwra ‘Cursed be you, more than all the animals’(3:14)

˚rwb[b hmdah hrwra ‘Cursed be the soil because of you’ (3:17)

hmdahAˆm hta rwra ‘Cursed be you from the soil’ (4:11)

The curses on the snake and the soil in the Garden of Eden story verballyrecur in the curse of Cain. In each case, Yahweh announces the cursewith the Leitwort rwra ‘cursed be . . .’, and the following words, ˆm hta

and hmdah ˆm, from the first two curses are combined in the third. Thesnake is cursed ‘more than’ or ‘apart from’ ˆm all the other animals, mean-ing that he, in contrast to all the other animals, bears a curse. The soil inturn is cursed ‘because of you’ (that is, the man), and as a result he willhave to have to earn his living by hard agricultural toil. This punishmentreverses the man’s earlier life of ease in the Garden, as a consequence forhis eating the forbidden fruit, and defines a new harsh relationship be-tween µda ‘man’ and hmda ‘soil’. The diction of the curse of Cain echoesthat of the snake (ˆm hta rwra in both cases), while severing his livelihood‘from the soil’ (hmdah ˆm). Previously, Cain was a farmer; now the soil willnot yield its strength for him. In the repetition of Leitwörter, the curses ofthe snake and Cain foreground the common isolation of the two crimi-nals, and Cain’s alienation from the soil extends the problematic rela-tionship between µda and hmda. The soil was cursed because of man, nowCain is cursed in relation to the soil. The reversal of subject and object in3:17 and 4:11 makes an artful link in the painful relationship betweenman and the soil, now stained by a brother’s blood.

(d) µdahAta çrgyw ‘He banished the man’ (3:24)

yta tçrg ̂ h ‘You have banished me’ (4:14)

The conflicts in the two stories end with Yahweh banishing the hu-mans—Adam and Eve from the Garden, Cain from the soil. The verb ‘tobanish’ çrg makes these two endings clearly echo each other, suggestingthat in some sense Cain’s exile is a repetition and intensification of Adamand Eve’s exile. This Leitwort establishes a thematic continuity by joining


Ronald Hendel100

the punishments of the first humans to the universal fear of banishmentand exile—a common plight in the ancient world and a complex themein the JE texts.15

(e) µdqm ˆd[b ˆg ‘a garden in Eden in the east’ (2:8)

ˆd[ ˆgl µdqm ‘east of the Garden of Eden’ (3:24)

ˆd[ tmdq ‘east of Eden’ (4:16)

After the banishment of Adam and Eve, Yahweh stations fierce monsters‘east of the Garden of Eden’ to guard its entrance, and Cain is banishedto wander ‘east of Eden’. The repetition of the Leitwörter µdq and ˆd[ re-verse the idyllic quality of the earlier scene when Yahweh planted ‘a gar-den in Eden in the east’ (2:8). The word µdq means ‘east’ in these phrases,but it can also mean ‘antiquity, ancient days’, a second meaning thathovers over the stories. The word ˆd[ means something like ‘abundance,bounty (of food and other provisions)’, which is precisely what the Gar-den provides its dwellers. Adam and Eve are cast outside of the bounty ofthe Garden, and they cannot reenter. Cain is perhaps doubly banishedfrom this bounty, since he must wander like a vagabond, cut off from thelife-giving soil. In this repetition of Leitwörter, Cain’s fate clearly echoesAdam and Eve’s.

Sons of God with Flood

(f) . . . brl µdah ljh yk yhyw ‘When humans began to increase . . . tbf yk . . . waryw and (they) saw . . . that good’ (6:1–2)

µdah t[r hbr yk hwhy aryw ‘Yahweh saw that the evil of humans had increased’ (6:5)

The chain of Leitwörter that link these stories have some dramatic inver-sions of meaning: ‘humans’ µda, ‘increase’ bbr, ‘saw’ har, and the opposi-tion of ‘good’ bwf and ‘evil’ [r. In the Sons of God story, against thebackdrop of the increase of humans, “the Sons of God saw that thedaughters of men were good (i.e., beautiful)” (6:2). The Flood story be-gins with these words recurring in a different and menacing way: “Yah-weh saw that the evil of humans had increased” (6:5). The subject shiftsfrom the Sons of God to Yahweh, and what the subject sees shifts fromthe beauty of human women to the evil of the human heart. The in-crease of humans and the lusty perception of the Sons of God contrastswith the increase of human evil and the moral perception of Yahweh,

15. See B. D. Sommer, “Expulsion as Initiation: Displacement, Divine Presence, andDivine Exile in the Torah,” in Beginning/Again: Toward a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts (ed.A. Cohen and S. Magid; New York: Seven Bridges, 2002) 26–33.



who will proceed to eliminate the multitude of humanity. In many ways,these two sequential stories seem to be logically unconnected (note theproblem of the persistence of the Nephilim addressed above); Well-hausen colorfully calls Gen 6:1–4 a “strange erratic boulder” in its liter-ary context.16 The verbal echoes at the beginnings of the two storiesprovide some measure of stylistic continuity and thematic heighteningin the transition from one story to the next.

Curse of Canaan with Tower of Babel

(g) ≈rahAlk hxpn hlamw ‘From these the whole earth scattered’ (9:19)

≈rah lk ynpAl[ ≈wpnAˆp ‘Lest we be scattered over the face of thewhole earth’ (11:4)

µçm µta hwhy ≈pyw ‘Yahweh scattered them from there over ≈rahAlk ynpAl[ the face of the whole earth’ (11:8)

As noted above, the origins of the diversity of peoples is addressed twicein the J primeval narrative, once in the genealogy of Noah’s sons in theTable of Nations and again in the Tower of Babel story. This doublingseems indicative of the diversity of traditions that are combined in the Jtext. This diversity also provides an instance for a verbal link betweenthe beginning of the Curse of Canaan, where Noah’s three sons are againintroduced, and the Tower of Babel story, where the men of Babel revealtheir motivation for building the city. This link is effected by the relatedverbal roots ≈pn and ≈wp ‘to scatter’. In the first story, the narrative com-ment that “from these [Noah’s sons] the whole earth scattered” (9:19) isproleptic, preparing the future. These words echo in the speech of themen of Babel, who fear such a future: “lest we be scattered over the faceof the whole earth” (11:4). By use of the Leitwort style, the text creates asense of thematic continuity—of prediction and fulfillment—out of whatmay otherwise seem a narrative inconcinnity. At the end of the Babelstory, this future, of course, comes to pass: “Yahweh scattered them . . .”(11:8).

Tower of Babel with Call of Abraham

(h) µç wnlAhç[nw ‘Let us make ourselves a name’ (11:4)

˚mç hldgaw ‘I will make your name great’ (12:2)

The transition between the primeval narrative and the Abraham narra-tive is a key turning point in Genesis. The repetition of the Leitwort µç

‘name, fame, glory’ in 11:4 and 12:2 effects a counterpoint and link at

16. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 317.


Ronald Hendel102

this narrative hinge.17 The men of Babel desire an enduring name and soproceed to build the city and tower, but their hubris results in their owndispersion and the destruction of their monuments. Rather than makingthemselves a name, they ensure their ephemerality and namelessness. Incontrast, Abraham achieves a great and enduring name the right way, byYahweh’s election and by Abraham’s righteousness (doing “as Yahwehtold him,” 12:4). Abraham is successful where the men of Babel failed,hence his name endures. There are other significant inversions of Leit-wörter at this juncture, most notably, as Hans Walter Wolff observed, fromthe fivefold repetition of rr[ ‘to curse’ in the primeval narrative to thedense fivefold repetition of ˚rb ‘to bless’ in Gen 12:2–3.18

2. The Leitwort Effect in Paired Stories

The biblical reading tradition established by the Babylonian rabbis di-vides Genesis 1–11 into two portions (twçrp), with the caesura at “Theseare the generations of Noah” (Gen 6:9). In recent years, scholars have per-ceived that there is also a parallelism of sequence and theme in these twosections. Jack Sasson astutely elucidates this doubled structure:

[T]he episodes culled from Hebraic traditions of early history were con-ceived in two matching sequences. . . . Each one of these sequences de-scribes the manner in which man was removed progressively from therealm of God [viz., Garden of Eden and Flood—R.H.], in which he initi-ated fraternal (and hence human) strife [Cain and Abel and Curse ofCanaan], divided into tribal and national groupings [Cainite andShemite genealogies and the Table of Nations], attempted to restore hisdivine nature or gain access to the divine realm, but was foiled in thisby God [Sons of God and Tower of Babel]. In each case, it is the conse-quence of this hubris which launched God into a decision to particular-ize his relationship with man. In the first case, God destroys mankind,allows it to survive through his choice of Noah, but almost immedi-ately recognizes (Gen 8:21) that His measure was a shade too drastic.. . . [In the second case,] [d]istressed by man’s repeated attempt to un-balance the cosmological order, and no longer allowing Himself theoption of totally annihilating mankind, God finally settles on one indi-vidual, uproots him from his own kin, and promises him prosperityand continuity in a new land.19

17. L. Ruppert, “‘Machen wir uns einen Namen . . .’ (Gen 11,4): Zur Anthropologieder vorpriesterschriftlichen Urgeschichte,” in Ruppert, Studien zur Literaturgeschichte desAlten Testaments (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1994) 124–42.

18. H. W. Wolff, “The Kerygma of the Yahwist,” in W. Brueggemann and H. W. Wolff,The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions (2nd ed.; Atlanta: John Knox, 1982) 54–55. Theoccurrences of rr[ are 3:14, 17; 4:11; 5:29; 9:25.

19. Sasson, “Tower of Babel,” 456–57. Cf. the expansion of Sasson’s thesis in Rends-burg, Redaction of Genesis, 7–25.



Sasson argues that this thematic and literary structure was the product ofthe redactor of Genesis, who combined the J and P texts. David Carr hasrightly noted, however, that this dual structure exists already in the pre-Priestly primeval narrative, which indicates that this literary structure isa feature of the earliest written crystallization of these stories.20 The com-bination of the J and P primeval texts does not obscure this dual struc-ture, since Creation and Flood (each followed by genealogies) also form atwo-part structure in the P primeval narrative.21

This large-scale structure of the J primeval narrative can be schematizedas follows, including the transition to Abraham:

Garden of Eden FloodCain and Abel Curse of CanaanGenealogies GenealogiesSons of God Tower of Babel

Abraham

This structure can be represented thematically as follows:

Beginning; encroachment and Destruction and new beginningexile from divine realm

Strife among sons Strife among sonsSocial differentiation Social differentiationEncroachment of human/divine Encroachment of human/divine

New Beginning

The Leitwort style plays an important role in this literary structure, creat-ing a series of intertextual links between the “twinned” stories. In particu-lar, there is a dense set of interlinking Leitwörter between the Garden ofEden story and the Flood story. There are less prominent Leitwörter link-ing the story of Cain and Abel with the Curse of Canaan, the two genea-logical sequences, and the Sons of God with the Tower of Babel. All ofthese links create a degree of intertextuality that binds the stories and se-quences into a complex literary unity. The primeval era divides into theantediluvian and postdiluvian eras (as it also does in Mesopotamian tradi-tion),22 but it also anticipates—by theme and Leitwörter—the transition

20. Carr, Reading the Fractures, 236; idem, “bÇbloÍ,” 342–43.21. For example, E. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (Berlin: de Gruyter,

1990) 289–93. I should note that Rendsburg (Redaction of Genesis, 103–6) takes the dualstructure in Genesis 1–11 as an argument against the standard model of J and P sourcesin this text, a proposal that I find unconvincing; see previous note.

22. Cf. the Mesopotamian expression lam abubi ‘before the flood’ and W. W. Hallo,“Information from before the Flood: Antediluvian Notes from Babylonia and Israel,”Maarav 7 (1991) 175–76.


Ronald Hendel104

from the unresolved problems of primeval times to the story of Abra-ham.23 The major Leitwort correspondences in this dual structure are asfollows:

Garden of Eden with Flood

(a) ˚rwb[b hmdah hrwra ‘Cursed is the soil because of you. hnlkat ˆwbx[b In painful labor you shall eat from it’ (3:17)

hmdahAˆm wnydy ˆwbx[mw ‘From our painful manual labor on the soilhrra rça which [Yahweh] has cursed’ (5:29)

hmdahAta dw[ llql ‘[I will no longer/never again] curse the soilµdah rwb[b because of man’ (8:21)

The cluster of Leitwörter, ‘curse’ llq/rra, ‘the soil’ hmdah, ‘because of’rwb[b, and ‘painful (labor)’ ˆwbx[ create an intertextual echo-chamber in3:17, 5:29, and 8:21. This collocation of words and the human fate theyrepresent are first sounded in Yahweh’s punishment of the man in theGarden of Eden (see above, part 1). In Yahweh’s curse, the easy relation-ship between µda ‘man, human’ and hmda ‘soil’ is sundered.24 Because ofthe man’s perfidy, he will be alienated from his source and will have towork the cursed soil in hard labor. This is one of the painful conditionsof life outside of Eden.

The birth of Noah in 5:29 picks up these words and ideas and in La-mech’s naming speech promises relief from this curse. Based on the word-play of jn ‘Noah’ and µjn ‘relief’, Lamech proclaims that Noah will “provideus relief from our work, and from our painful manual labor on the soilwhich Yahweh has cursed.” This prediction lingers in the background ofthe ensuing Flood story. Noah’s invention of wine is no doubt a partial ful-fillment of this promise (9:20–21), but the most verbally direct fulfillmentis in Yahweh’s words in 8:21.

23. In this respect, I find unconvincing the argument that the J primeval narrative iscompositionally independent of the Abraham story; so F. Crüsemann, “Die Eigenstän-digkeit der Urgeschichte: Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion um den ‘Jahwisten’,” in Die Botschaftund die Boten: Festschrift für Hans Walter Wolff (ed. J. Jeremias and L. Perlitt; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981) 11–29; Carr, Reading the Fractures, 241. Some of the in-concinnities between the primeval narrative and the Abraham cycle pointed out by Crüse-mann are akin to the inconcinnities within the primeval narrative itself (see above, pp. 96–97), and in my view pertain to the divergent traditions that the J source weaves together.

24. On the thematics of µda and hmda in the J primeval narrative, see P. D. Miller Jr.,Genesis 1–11: Studies in Structure and Theme (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978) 37–42; E. Zenger,“Beobachtungen zu Komposition und Theologie der jahwistischen Urgeschichte,” in Dy-namik im Wort (ed. E. Zenger and J. Gnilka; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1983) 48–50; and below, pp. 108–109.



At the end of the J Flood story, Yahweh proclaims his new resolution: “Iwill no longer/never again curse the soil because of man, for the inclina-tions of his heart are evil from his youth” (8:21). This momentous state-ment clearly sounds the same Leitwort cluster as the curse in Eden and thebirth of Noah (varying rra with llq, both meaning ‘to curse’),25 but it isnot entirely clear how it should be understood. There is a verbal ambiguityin Yahweh’s words, hmdahAta dw[ llql πsaAal, which can mean either ‘I willno longer curse the soil’ or ‘I will never again curse the soil’.26 The formermeaning would mean that the curse is annulled and that this consequenceof Adam’s transgression is forgiven. But this would suggest that agriculturallabor is no longer hard and painful, which belies human experience andundermines the etiological aspect of the curse in Eden. The latter meaningwould most naturally apply to a one-time event, presumably the Flood,now described as a punctual curse on the earth that will never again recur.This makes sense contextually, since Yahweh in the next clause clearlypromises never again to send a Flood, but it seems an odd meaning giventhe previous prominence of Yahweh’s curse on the soil (hmdah).

Buber’s comment that the Leitwort style “is probably the strongest of alltechniques for making a meaning available without articulating it explic-itly” has a powerful corollary here, in that the meaning of Leitwörter is of-ten inexplicit and multivocal. In this case, the sense of dw[ llql πysa al

hmdahAta can be parsed in two different but equally acceptable ways. TheLeitwörter echo the curse on the earth in Gen 3:17, which was earlierbrought into relation with Noah in 5:29, and hence it argues for ‘I will nolonger curse the soil’. Perhaps agricultural labor will no longer be quite sohard, and Noah’s promised relief has come to pass. But the followingclause in 8:21 has the same construction, dw[ πsa al, which clearly means‘I will never again (destroy all life as I have done)’. This parallel phrasingsuggests that the first clause be read ‘I will never again curse the soil’, inwhich case this punctual curse, capable of repetition, most naturally refersto the Flood. I would suggest that this multivocality does not need to beresolved one way or the other, but that the Leitwort style allows it to beboth. There is a lingering ambiguity in Yahweh’s promise, which suggestsrather than explicitly defines its meaning. This is one of the literary virtues

25. Note the collocation of the two verbs in Gen 12:3: raa ˚llqmw ‘And those whocurse you, I will curse’.

26. See the arguments of R. Rendtorff, “Genesis 8,21 und die Urgeschichte des Jah-wisten,” in Rendtorff, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Munich: Chr. Kaiser,1975) 188–97; O. Steck, “Genesis 12,1–3 und die Urgeschichte des Jahwisten,” in Wahr-nehmungen Gottes im Alten Testament: Gesammelte Studien (ed. O. Steck; Munich: Chr. Kai-ser, 1982) 119–24; D. L. Petersen, “The Yahwist on the Flood,” VT 26 (1976) 442–44;Crüsemann, “Eigenständigkeit,” 24; and the commentaries.


Ronald Hendel106

of the Leitwort style, and it contributes to the residue of ambiguity at theend of the J Flood story. The curse of Eden seems to be ameliorated,though this is not quite clear, even as Yahweh reconciles himself to thepersistence of human evil.

Cain and Abel with Curse of Canaan

(b) hta rwra ‘Cursed are you’ (4:11)

ˆ[nk rwra ‘Cursed is Canaan’ (9:25)

Three creatures are directly cursed in the J primeval narrative: the snake,Cain, and Canaan. The repetition of hta rwra in Gen 3:14 and 4:11 (treatedabove, [c], p. 99) place the snake and Cain in relation in two successivestories. Noah’s speech-act “Cursed is Canaan” creates an intertextual linkbetween the non-successive stories of Cain and Canaan. This verbal echorests within the larger parallel structure of the two stories.27 Both dealwith the sons of the human protagonists of the previous story, and one ofthese sons commits an offense and is cursed. The details are different—fratricide differs from shaming one’s father, and the curse issues from Yah-weh in one story and from Noah in the other. Nonetheless, the cursing ofa son creates a sense of recurrence and adds to the accumulation of cursesthat provides the backdrop for the blessing of Abraham.

Genealogies

(c) dly awhAµg tçlw ‘To Seth also was born’ (4:26)

awhAµg dly µçlw ‘To Shem also was born’ (10:21)

The genealogies after the stories of Adam’s and Noah’s sons are linked ver-bally by their begettings (Qal of dly in J) and also by the stylistic repetitionin 4:26 and 10:21, in which the Qal passive of dly recurs in a distinctivebut slightly varied sequence. Seth (tç) and Shem (µç) have similar sound-ing names, and they are both apical ancestors of the Israelites, that is, atthe top of the genealogical branch that descend to Israel. Thus it may bethematically apt that their acquisition of heirs echoes in the Leitwort styleof these two verses.

Sons of God with Tower of Babel

(d) twnb . . . µyhlahAynb ‘the sons of God . . . the daughters of men’µdah (6:2, 4)

µdah ynb ‘the sons of men’ (11:5)

27. Cohn, “Narrative Structure,” 5; Rendsburg, Redaction of Genesis, 14; Carr, Readingthe Fractures, 236–37.



There is a verbal similarity of the protagonists in these two stories: the‘Sons of God’ (µyhlah ynb) and the ‘daughters of men’ (µdah twnb) in 6:1–4,and ‘the sons of men’ (µdah ynb) in 11:5. The latter expression (usuallytranslated idiomatically as ‘men, humans’) is used only here in the prime-val narrative and effects what Christoph Uehlinger calls “a latent Leitwortassociation” between the two stories.28 These phrases also suggest thatthese daughters and sons of µdah (literally, ‘the man’, i.e., Adam), are upto no good, which the two stories show to be the case. Like the Sons ofGod and the daughters of men in 6:1–4, “the sons of men/Adam” in 11:5threaten the boundary between the divine world and the human world,and Yahweh responds with a punishment that restores this boundary, di-minishes human power, and establishes new limits for the human world.

(e) µçh yçna ‘men of name/fame’ (6:4)

µç wnlAhç[nw ‘Let us make ourselves a name’ (11:4)

˚mç hldgaw ‘I will make your name great’ (12:2)

The Leitwort µç ‘name, fame, glory’ links the story of the Tower of Babelwith the Call of Abraham (as observed above, [h], pp. 101–102), and also ef-fects a horizontal link between the Tower of Babel and the Sons of God.29

The semidivine offspring of the Sons of God and the daughters of men aredescribed in 6:4 as “the heroes of old, the men of fame” (lit., ‘name’ µç).The nature of this fame is left unspecified. But as men of ‘name’, these mys-terious heroes achieve what the men of Babel desire (11:4). These semi-divine heroes are also called the Nephilim, which literally means the ‘fallenones’, perhaps hinting at their famous deaths.30 The ambiguous fame ofthe Nephilim places them in relation to the hubristic desire for fame by themen of Babel. Both provide a negative foil for Abraham, whose “greatname” is achieved by Yahweh’s election and by Abraham’s righteousness.The Nephilim and the men of Babel are antitheses to Abraham—their“fame” is that of antiheroes, and we do not know their names, whereasAbraham is the genuine hero, whose name and glory endures.

28. C. Uehlinger, Weltreich und “eine Rede”: Eine neue Deutung der sogenannten Turm-bauerzählung (Gen 11,1–9) (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1990) 569; also Rendsburg, Re-daction of Genesis, 20. Uehlinger and Rendsberg also point to ljh ‘to begin’ as a Leitwortlinking the two stories, though I would describe this as a broader linkage among several“beginnings” in the primeval narrative (4:21; 6:1; 9:20; 10:8; 11:6).

29. Rendsburg, Redaction of Genesis, 20–21; Uehlinger, Weltreich, 569; Carr, Reading theFractures, 187.

30. R. S. Hendel, “Of Demigods and the Deluge: Toward an Interpretation of Genesis6:1–4,” JBL 106 (1987) 21–22.


Ronald Hendel108

Conclusion

The Leitwort style has significant effects in the J primeval narrative. Mostof the stories placed in sequence are more richly bound in continuity bythe thematic connections sounded by the Leitwörter. The sequence as awhole has a twinned or two-paneled aspect, effected particularly by thecluster of Leitwörter that resound in the Garden of Eden and the Flood sto-ries, and less prominently by those that link the other twinned stories. Sev-eral of the Leitwörter also anticipate the turning point from the primevalnarrative to the patriarchal narrative, announced by the call of Abraham in12:1–3, which serves as a major narrative hinge in Genesis.

With Abraham, the genealogical focus of the narrative narrows to asingle line, that of Israel and its immediate kin.31 The primeval narrative isa mythic representation of the human condition and serves as a backdropto the story of Israel. It begins with a single line with Adam and Eve,branches out into the multitude of humanity, then returns to a single linewith the Flood, and branches out again. But the branching is problematiceach time. The Flood is only a temporary solution, and Yahweh renouncesit. Abraham and his line become the lasting solution.

At the same time that the primeval narrative is a prelude to Abraham, itis also a searching inquiry into the nature of human existence, cast in themythic idiom of a representation of origins.32 For example, consider theLeitwort pair of µda and hmda ‘man/human’ and ‘soil, earth’ (addressedabove, [1c], p. 99 and [2a], p. 104). The first human is made from the soiland learns at the end of the story that he must return to it. Human mortal-ity is connected to our origins and nature as “earthy” creatures, yet ourmortality was only made clear as we were expelled from paradise. In otherwords, death is both inevitable (by our nature as µda made from thehmda)33 and somehow joined to our ancestors’ moral choices and imperfec-

31. See the remarks of Carr (“bÇbloÍ,” 327–47) on this “structural pattern in Genesis:the way its semantic focus expands and contracts along genealogical lines.”

32. The genre “myth” is aptly described in this sense by A. Dundes (Sacred Narrative:Readings in the Theory of Myth [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984] 1): “A mythis a sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came to be in their presentform.” See further H.-P. Müller’s treatment of the mythic functions of the J primeval nar-rative in “Mythische Elemente in der jahwistischen Schöpfungserzählung,” in Müller,Mythos-Kerygma-Wahrheit: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Alten Testament in seiner Umwelt undzur Biblischen Theologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991) 3–42, esp. 34–42.

33. The mortality of humans, even in their creation, is strongly suggested by thephrase ‘dust from the earth’ hmdahAˆm rp[ (Gen 2:7), since rp[ ‘dust, loose earth’ is com-monly used in expressions of mortality; e.g., rpaw rp[ ‘dust and ashes’ (Gen 18:27, J) andthe proverb-like statement in Gen 3:19, ‘For dust you are, and to dust you will return’;see D. R. Hillers, “Dust: Some Aspects of Old Testament Imagery,” in Love and Death inthe Ancient Near East: Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope (ed. J. H. Marks and R. M. Good;Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987) 105–9.



tions. Both senses inhere in the relationship between humans and death,signaled by the Leitwort style and the story’s outcome. Similarly, our hu-man destiny as agriculturalists is connected to our material bond with thesoil, but it is also connected with our ancestors’ flawed behavior, whichrenders humans unfit for paradise. Our sexual drives and differences arealso related to our nature as µda, since at first there was only one human(inchoately male),34 and the first woman was built from his rib. Male andfemale strive to reunite, to become µda once more, to gain the primal plen-itude, a taste of paradise. From this reunion comes new life, hence thewoman is called ‘Life’ (hwj). But giving new life is painful, it is the painfullabor meted out to the woman, just as subsistence agriculture is the hardlabor of the man. Both forms of µda share hard labor, in complementaryways. For µda to survive on the hmda requires the tools of civilization, soYahweh gives the humans sturdy clothes (3:21), Cain and his descendantscreate new forms of civilized life (cities, shepherding, metal tools, and mu-sic; 4:17–22), and Noah, as an hmdah çya ‘man of the soil’, discovers wine(9:20). There is anxiety and fear but also much good that derives from therelationship between µda and hmda. What a modern philosopher mightanalyze as the condition of our “being-in-the-world” (Heidegger) is, insome important respects, articulated in the primeval narrative’s portrayalof the deep relationship of µda and hmda.35

The J primeval narrative is a profound, complex, and sometimes dis-turbing treatment of the origins and deep structures of humans existenceand the world we inhabit. Humans are created for paradise, but do not lastthere long. We are troubled and unruly creatures, capable of knowledgeand virtue, but also driven to violence and evil. We are “like gods,” in somerespects, but are also earthy and chaotic, often at cross-purposes with Yah-weh and with each other. How this unruly world of great extremes comesinto being is the burden of the primeval narrative. How to improve thistroubled world is what happens next.

34. See recently, A. Brenner, The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and ‘Sex-uality’ in the Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1997) 12; P. A. Bird, Missing Persons and MistakenIdentities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 164–65.

35. Cf. H.-P. Müller’s definition of the function of myth (“Mythos und Kerygma: An-thropologische und theologische Aspekte,” in Müller, Mythos-Kerygma-Wahrheit, 201):“Der Mythos beantwortet die Frage, warum Seiendes bzw. das menschliche Dasein durcheinen Sinn legitimiert wird.”


Documents

Hendel Leitwort Style (1)