Genesis without the Flood

So here’s the longer post.

Lamech and sons. It was very hard to get the AI down to four sons, so I’m going to accept the extra bearded baby, or whatever that is.

Since writing my last few posts on the first chapters of Genesis, I’ve found some scholars who distinguish between a few different layers in the non-Priestly Primeval History,¹ including one that didn’t have a Flood story. I’ll briefly discuss two such suggestions and finish by thinking out loud for a bit.

Wellhausen: three ‘Jehovist’ layers

Julius Wellhausen is the Don of the Documentary Hypothesis as it was accepted by most scholars for much of the twentieth century. In his Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments, he argues that the non-Priestly parts of Gen 1–11, deriving from a source he calls JE (because it combines the J and E sources), shows at least three layers (translation mine):

JE has a history which unfolded in several stages and is the result of a longer literary process. The original core can be seen in Chapters 2, 3, 4:16–24, 11:1–9. Chapters 6–10, dealing with the Flood, were combined with this by an editor who already encountered them in written form, possibly—but not probably—in the context of a larger historical work. This editor must also be held responsible for the insertion of some of the shorter passages, which never existed independently, but always as parasites on a foreign substrate, in any case of 4:25f, 5:29, 4:1–15, 10:16–18a.

Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs (3rd ed., 1889), pp. 13–14

A well-hatted Wellhausen

So according to Wellhausen we have:

1. A pre-Flood version: Garden of Eden, offspring of Cain, Tower of Babel;
2. a non-Priestly Flood story;
3. added passages by the editor who combined 1 and 2, including the Cain and Abel story.

He also sees different hands at work in the Flood story, identifying later interpolations in Gen 9:20–27 (blessing of Shem and Japheth and curse of Canaan) and 6:1-4 (the sons of God and the daughters of man).

Dershowitz: Noah’s Famine

Much more recently (2016), Idan Dershowitz identified a pre-Flood narrative in an excellent paper I only just read, despite having known the popularising TheTorah.com version for a long time. Dershowitz traces the Primeval History’s motif of the cursed soil: the soil is cursed because of the first human’s trespass (Gen 3:17–19); Lamech expresses the hope that Noah will comfort mankind for this curse (Gen 5:29); and because of Noah’s actions, Yʜᴡʜ states that he will no longer (thus Dershowitz) curse the soil because of mankind (Gen 8:21). Together with other indications such as Noah being referred to as “the man of the soil” (9:20), Dershowitz takes this as an indication that the great primeval cataclysm was originally not a flood, but a famine. This famine was imposed after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and lifted in “the days of Noah” (possibly referenced as such in Isaiah). Thus, unlike Wellhausen, for instance, Dershowitz sees Noah as a pre-Flood character who was secondarily turned into the Flood hero.

The Flood and Garden of Eden stories

Both of these scenarios assign the non-Priestly Flood story and the Garden of Eden story to different layers. But there’s some reason to think they go together:

• The opening of the Garden of Eden story seems to anticipate the rains that will bring the Flood. Without the non-Priestly Flood story, the notice that “Yʜᴡʜ God had not yet made it rain on the earth” (Gen 2:5) doesn’t go anywhere.
• Before the woman is created, Yʜᴡʜ God forms all the (domesticated² and wild) animals and all the birds of the sky (Gen 2:19-20). The (domesticated) animals and birds (of the sky) are also the two categories that are let onto the non-Priestly Ark (Gen 7:2-3) and sacrificed after the Flood subsides (Gen 8:20).
• Pace Dershowitz, I think the cursed earth motif reads as an integral part of the non-Priestly Flood story. Dershowitz makes the great observation that the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint both read ‘day and night’ at the end of Gen 8:22 as an adverbial clause (against MT, where they complete the list of phenomena that “will not cease”). But I disagree that the resulting promise of ongoing annual cycles of rainfall can only point to a famine and not to the resolution of the Flood story (especially if the Flood resulted from the first time rain fell at all). As for the cursed soil, I think it’s easier to take Yʜᴡʜ’s statement as “I will not curse the soil on account of mankind again“. In other words, the curse remains in place: agriculture is still a lot of work, just as snakes still go on their belly and, I’m told, childbirth is still painful. As predicted by Lamech, Noah doesn’t cause the curse on the earth to be lifted, but merely provides comfort—by discovering wine. All the curse references would then belong to an Eden & Flood layer.

So can we rearrange the non-Priestly material in the Primeval history in such a way that Eden and the Flood stay together?

No-curse, no-Flood Noah

Way too many sons, but I dig the wrathful Lamech here. Also the goat.

Everyone seems to agree that the Flood layer is later than the non-Flood layer, which seems reasonable. What is left of the non-Priestly Primeval History if we get rid of both the Flood and Eden?

• Most of Genesis 4: Cain and Abel and the line of Cain. This is a weird point to start a historical work, but if the Garden of Eden story was added later, it could have replaced the original opening explaining where the human and Eve come from. Wellhausen wants the Cain and Abel story to be later than what precedes and follows it, seeing a big contradiction between Cain’s punishment of living as a nomadic fugitive and the statement that he goes on to build a city. I don’t find his arguments very convincing; against the main one, it’s not clear whether it’s actually Cain or his son Enoch who founds the first city. It’s also quite hard to make sense of Lamech’s boast at the end of the chapter without the Cain and Abel story preceding it, IMHO. On the other hand, Wellhausen points out that some facets of the Cain and Abel story rely on Gen 3: the reference to the cursed soil and the strange re-use of Gen 3:16 in Gen 4:7. Verse 16 also contains a reference to Eden as a place where Cain lives before going to Nod. And isn’t it anachronistic for Abel to be a shepherd, seven generations before “Jabal, the ancestor of those who dwell with tent and livestock” (Gen 4:20)? So maybe it is only the very beginning and the second half of Gen 4 that predates the Eden and Flood stories after all, as Wellhausen writes.
• Genesis 6:1–4 works just fine without the Flood: there’s a problem (human-divine intermarriage) and a solution (human lifespan limited to 120 years). The solution would also seem to contradict the Eden story, which (in my view) presupposes human mortality. And of course the origin of the Nephilim in this passage and their continued existence in later stories (Israelite conquest) is hard to square with the Flood wiping everyone out.
• Wellhausen makes a big deal of the sons of Lamech in Gen 4 giving rise to different social classes: pastoralists, bards or something like that, and smiths. Perhaps we should include city-dwellers (Enoch, several generations earlier) as well. But where are the farmers? This could be where Noah, “the man of the soil” and canonically also a son of (a different) Lamech, comes in. Gen 9:20-27 works pretty well without assuming knowledge of the Flood, although we do need some notice introducing Noah’s sons at some point.

As for the last few passages, I think has Wellhausen has some good observations here. In the Tower of Babel story (first part of Gen 11), Yʜᴡʜ’s thoughts are phrased very similarly to those right before the curses and expulsion from the Garden in Gen 3, including the intriguing first person plural. The premise of building a city, implicitly for the first time, also contradicts Cain or Enoch’s city-building in (pre-Flood) Gen 4. So we could be dealing with an Eden–Flood–Babel layer. This layer would then nicely sandwich the older non-Priestly Primeval History materials, as well as providing the whole complex with a new, watery core.

Finally, Wellhausen has some involved reasons for assigning parts of Gen 10, the Table of Nations, to JE (and the rest to P). I’m not sure about this and also not sure whether this would work better in a Flood layer or maybe as a later insertion. It seems to contradict the Tower of Babel story, though, so probably not the Flood layer itself.

Summing up

One last intense Lamech family portrait to see us off. I like to think one of these guys is Naamah, the sister of Tubal-Cain.

Like Wellhausen, I think this leaves us with at least three layers in the non-Priestly Primeval History, but I’d divide them up differently.

1. We can get a pretty consistent and continuous story starting with the line of Cain up to OG Lamech, who fathers the first pastoralist, musician, smith, and farmer (Noah). Nephilim shenanigans result in the limiting of the human lifespan. Noah discovers wine, resulting in a blessing for his sons Shem and Japheth and a curse for his grandson, originally maybe also a son (not my idea), Canaan. Note that the beginning of this narrative has not been preserved. Nor do we have clear birth notices for Noah’s sons in this layer or for Noah himself.³ Parts of the Table of Nations might go here too.
2. Eden is added at the beginning, Babel at the end, the Flood in the middle. Noah becomes the Flood hero; probably still a son of Cainite Lamech at this point. The cursed soil plays an important recurring role (Eden, inserted etymology of the name Noah, Flood) and everything’s also set in the East now (Eden, Babel).
3. I think I want to follow Wellhausen in seeing the Cain and Abel story as a post-Eden addition: it seems distinct from the Eden and Flood stories, but depends on the preceding Eden story in a lot of ways. Maybe the Rivers of Eden passage was inserted at this point too. Nimrod? Who knows?

After several weeks of working on this off and on, “Who knows?” might indeed be the best way to sum up my thoughts on the matter at this point. In any case, I feel like it’s a nice thought experiment to see how far we can get in a Genesis that lacked not just a Flood story, but one without Eden itself. It would also be fascinating to see how well each of these layers connects with non-Priestly stories later in Genesis and the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) as a whole. But for now, I want to blog about easier topics like historical morphophonology or Afroasiatic reconstruction for a while.

1. That is, Gen 2-4, parts of Gen 6-10, and the beginning of Gen 11. ↩︎
2. Not explicitly mentioned as being formed, but they are named soon after. ↩︎
3. I’m almost tempted to suggest emending Gen 4:22 to “And Zillah too had children … and the brother of Tubal-Cain, Noah.”
   Which would be completely baseless and irresponsible.
   So I won’t.
   👀 ↩︎