I'm continuing my way through John Van Seters' Prologue to History. Here are two items:
1. The first item is J's creation story in Genesis 2-3. I'll use something that Van Seters says on pages 128-129 as a starting point:
"In the interests of the religion of Yahweh, [the Yahwist] has rationalized the role of the mother goddess by replacing her with the first woman/mother, Eve, 'the mother of all living.' By restricting the creation of humanity to a single pair, he has also created a 'historical' beginning from which a genealogical chronology could be developed. This is a 'western' innovation not reflected in the eastern tradition."
Keep in mind that Van Seters means "Greek" when he says "western", and "Mesopotamian" when he says "eastern".
According to Van Seters, J uses a variety of sources. There are clear similarities between Genesis 2 and the account of Marduk's creation: both begin by saying that certain things were not yet "in existence", both refer to a water source from which "creation begins", and both present the creation of plants and animals as occurring after the creation of humanity (page 123---quotes are Van Seters' words). But the account of Marduk's creation says that the goddess Aruru "created the seed of mankind with" Marduk (Van Seters' words). Genesis 2, however, affirms that Eve is the mother of all living. There is another difference between Genesis 2 and Mesopotamian texts: "the Mesopotamian texts speak of people being created in various numbers but never as a primal pair", and "This is also the case for the Greek myths" (page 116). (On page 142, however, Van Seters refers to a Phoenician tale that the first-second century C.E. antiquarian Philo of Byblos discusses regarding Genos and Genea, who were considered to be "the original human pair".) But Genesis 2 has a single pair from which all humanity descends.
Mesopotamian traditions have nothing about a woman contributing to the "downfall of humanity", Van Seters states, but J may have used Greek traditions, such as Hesiod's story of Pandora, which is about the "first woman after man was already in existence", the origin of "married life", and "the beginning of trouble for the human race", which was caused by a woman, Pandora (page 125).
Van Seters also holds that J drew from the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 28 is about the king of Tyre being expelled from Eden on account of his pride regarding his beauty and wisdom. Van Seters suggests that Ezekiel 28 was based on a Neo-Babylonian story (which is in a text) about the creation of the king "alongside of, and distinct from, the rest of humankind" (page 120). In his creation, the king was endowed with "all the appropriate attributes of royalty" (page 120). The text does not present the king being expelled for some sin, but Van Seters notes that, every New Year, Babylonian kings had to confess their sins before the high priest to "continue in office" (page 121), and so the concept that the king was a sinner could have been derived from this. But Van Seters settles on the idea that Ezekiel turns a Babylonian story about "the myth of royalty" into a prophetic condemnation of the hubris of kings (page 121).
What does this have to do with Genesis 3? In Ezekiel 28, the king of Tyre claimed to be divine on the basis of his wisdom, and, in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge because they believed that, by doing so, they would become like gods.
Another thing to note: Van Seters talks about scholarly tendencies to notice bumps in Genesis 2-3, which leads some scholars to the conclusion that Genesis 2-3 was not a full-flowing composition, but rather different traditions being put together in a clumsy manner. (For example, the Tree of Life is at the beginning and end of the story, but the middle focuses on the Tree of Knowledge, without even mentioning the Tree of Life.) But Van Seters says that there are juxtaposed oracles in Ezekiel 28 that J is drawing from, and that causes "some tension within the composition of the Yahwist" (page 122). I noticed Van Seters taking this sort of route in Life of Moses: Van Seters doesn't like to divide J up more than he has to, nor does he want to see J merely as a compiler of diverse oral traditions, for he believes that J was a creative author (who still used sources). And so, when Van Seters sees bumps in J, he attributes that to J trying to make due with the sources that he has. J is trying to produce a coherent history out of his sources, and the result can get pretty bumpy!
I want to comment on the Tower of Babel, for I found Van Seters' discussion of that to be fascinating. Van Seters thinks that J is basing that story on different sources, such as a Mesopotamian tale about Enki confusing languages to disrupt the worship of Enlil, as well as the attempt of Esarhaddon (of Assyria) to restore the Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki, only for it to be destroyed "in the time of Ashurbanipal", after which time Babylonian kings rebuilt it, employing a labor force of various people-groups, speaking different languages (page 183). For Van Seters, J's story of the Tower of Babel is from the exile, and it is lampooning the efforts of the Babylonian kings to rebuild Etemenanki. Van Seters states that "The etiology of the name 'Babel' is meant as a kind of 'historical evidence' that divine judgment was passed on the city in primeval times and could perhaps happen again" (page 184). This leads into another point of Van Seters: that J's message is universal, affirming that all people should obey God and do good, lest they suffer divine judgment (page 191). And J is making this statement in exile, which explains his use of Babylonian sources and exilic writings by Ezekiel, as well as events that are occurring during the time of Babylonian hegemony (e.g., the rebuilding of Etemenanki).
2. On pages 161-165, Van Seters takes on the traditional Documentary Hypothesis' approach to the Flood story. The traditional Documentary Hypothesis says that J and P had two separate Flood stories that were combined by a redactor. But Van Seters' position is that J wrote the base story, and that P added some supplements---dealing with "the chronology of the flood, its nature and relationship to all of the cosmos, the numbers and types of the creatures taken into the ark, and so forth" (page 165). The traditional Documentary Hypothesis identified J and P by the names for God that each source used, assuming that J used "Yahweh," whereas P used "Elohim." But Van Seters says that "we have already seen a few instances where J has used Elohim instead of Yahweh" (page 161). Can vocabulary help us to distinguish the sources? Not necessarily, for both J (Genesis 7:1b) and P (6:10) say that Moses was righteous in his generation, leading even Wellhausen to conclude that P must have been dependent on J (page 161).
I'll stop here, for today.