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I started John Van Seters' Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis. Here are three points:
1. Why does the history of Israel begin with creation and the "primeval origins of peoples and nations" (page 1)? According to Van Seters, many scholars have casually dismissed this question, as if its answer is obvious. Of course you start the story at the beginning, right? But Van Seters thinks that it's actually an important question:
"...the beginning of a national tradition by an account of the primeval origins of peoples and nations, as we have it in Genesis, is rather exceptional in Near Eastern historiography and therefore its form is not so obvious as it may appear to us by its very familiarity."
2. On pages 38-42, Van Seters discusses literacy. Did the United Monarchy produce J's history, as Gerhard Von Rad argued? After all, before and during the time of the United Monarchy, literacy and the production of literature existed in other ancient Near Eastern nations---in Mesopotamia and Egypt. There was even literacy in "major cities of Syria-Palestine prior to the rise of the Israelite-Judean state" (page 38). Why couldn't literacy have existed in the time of the United Monarchy? Perhaps David "inherited a complete bureaucracy of scribes with court archives and perhaps even a library" (page 38).
But Van Seters doesn't think so. He states that "The very few early epigraphic finds demonstrate that alphabetic writing was known, but they hardly justify the assumption of widespread literacy or the production of literary works in this period" (page 39). But Van Seters also looks at the development of writing and literature in ancient Greece to show that the production of literature does not happen overnight. Sometime before the eighth century B.C.E., ancient Greece began to have a "fully alphabetic script" (page 39). Until the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E., "there were few epigraphic remains and a rather limited number and range of literary works" (page 39)---which is what we see with Israel during the time of the United Monarchy. During the eighth-fifth centuries B.C.E. in ancient Greece, information was primarily transmitted by word of mouth.
Well, not completely. Here is what Van Seters says was going on in ancient Greece during the seventh-fifth centuries B.C.E., in terms of writing:
Seventh century: "Laws or decrees" were promulgated (page 39). The epics of Homer and Hesiod were probably in writing by this time, "but the dating is disputed" (page 40).
Sixth century: Laws and treaties were "written in stone 'for eternity'" and publicly displayed (page 39). Coinage "came into common use" and ostraca were introduced (page 39). Letters were rare, however, because "papyrus was expensive" (page 40). Written poetry, wisdom sayings, and philosophical works were "produced" (page 40). So were "collections of oracles" and "inscribed dedications to temples" (page 40).
Fifth century: There were letters at this time, but they were reserved for special occasions, such as "sensitive secret communications" (page 40). Literacy was primarily for "administrative and pragmatic applications", and papyrus was "probably used for some legal and other documents as well as literary works" (page 40). Van Seters states on page 40:
"Works in prose narration did not begin until the end of the sixth century and came into their own only in the fifth century. These were the antiquarian histories of the various states whose substance was very close to the oral traditions of myth and legend. The fifth century became the great classical period of literature in which a number of literary genres blossomed. But it must be emphasized that this did not take place until several centuries after the introduction of writing among the Greeks."
Well, it appears to be four centuries, which I don't consider to be "several", but Van Seters' point is that there was a space of time between ancient Greece having a few epigraphic remains, and it having full-blown works of prose. So why should we assume that Israel during the United Monarchy was capable of developing a full history in prose, when all we can see is that she had a few epigraphic remains at that time?
Here is what Van Seters posits for ancient Israel from the tenth-sixth centuries B.C.E., in terms of writing:
Tenth-ninth centuries B.C.E. (which includes the time of the United Monarchy): There may have been "limited use of writing, especially in the court or administrative circles" as well as "some royal inscriptions of a monumental type, but their number was probably small and their length quite brief" (page 40). Van Seters acknowledges this as a possibility because "kings have always wanted to leave a permanent public record of their deeds, their building activity, and their gifts to the deity, even if few could read them" (page 40). There is also the Moabite Stone in the ninth century, but royal inscriptions are rare at this time.
Eighth century: Administrative ostraca begin to turn up in excavations unearthing this time, "and their number increases greatly in the seventh and sixth centuries", along with "lmlk seals and those with personal names on ceramics along with votive inscriptions and graffiti on building walls and other objects" (page 40). There is the Saloam tunnel inscription near "the end of the eighth century", but "royal inscriptions" are "rare" (page 41). There is the Balaam text from around 700 B.C.E., which is an early piece of prose. Van Seters states that "By the eighth century, collections of prophetic oracles were being produced", there may have been "the public proclamation of laws and covenants in written form" (as the "Josiah reform" indicates), and "foreign stimulus from Egypt and, after the rise of Assyrian domination, from Mesopotamia encouraged the development of wisdom literature and the use of king lists" (page 42).
Seventh century: Van Seters states that "Bullae and bullae impressions of the seventh and sixth centuries attest to the use of papyrus for documents, including correspondence", which shows the existence of "document consciousness from the seventh century onward, so that personal use of writing before this time must have been rare" (page 41).
Late seventh-early sixth centuries: "[E]xtensive prose literature developed" that was "historiographic in form" (page 42).
I think that Van Seters' construction appears to be balanced. He acknowledges literacy in pre-exilic Israel, but he believes that there was development.
3. Much of my reading today was cool, for it concerned Mesopotamian and Greek traditions about the "Primeval Age"---creation, the development of culture, etc. For Van Seters, the "western tradition" is that of ancient Greece, whereas the "eastern tradition" is that of Mesopotamia. On page 98, Van Seters sums up his conclusions on their traditions about the Primeval Age:
"The western focus on the origin of peoples and tribes and on the first inventors of culture and the treatment of these by means of genealogical chronology is absent from the eastern tradition. By contrast, the eastern emphasis upon the creation of humankind, universal kingship and the flood as the end of the primeval age, and the structure of a king-list chronology play only a marginal and secondary role in the western tradition as late foreign elements."
Van Seters tries to account for exceptions to his characterization of the traditions. Ancient Greece, for example, had a flood story---Zeus tried to destroy humanity, and a "righteous and pious couple, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha", survived on a small boat, then recreated humans and animals (pages 81-82). But Van Seters says that this appears in Greek tradition in the "early fifth century BC and was very likely an import from the Near East" (page 81). Regarding creation, Hesiod from the eighth century B.C.E. has a story about the degeneration of humanity. First, there was the golden race, "and this age was one without sorrow or toil and with great abundance", but this race died and became "kindly spirits" who help humanity (page 87). Then there was the less noble silver race, which became underworld spirits after Zeus punished it for its impiety. Zeus then created the bronze race, but it ended up in Hades after killing itself with war. Zeus then made a race of heroes, who fought in Thebes and Troy, and members of this race either died in battle or ended up in the Isles of the Blessed. The current race is the one of iron, and it has "much labor and sorrow", and will continue to worsen until it is destroyed in judgment by Zeus (page 87). But Van Seters says that this story is not historiography.
And Mespotamian tradition says that "the gods, such as Enlil or Enki, taught humankind the arts of civilization at the time of their creation, [but] the theme of inventions is not a Mesopotamian tradition" (page 86).
