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{{Short description|First eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis}}
{{Use shortened footnotes|date=July 2021}}
[[File:Bingen Six Days of Creation.jpg|thumb|279x279px|The six days of creation as represented by [[Hildegard of Bingen]] ]]
The '''primeval history''' is the name given by [[biblical scholar]]s to the first eleven chapters of the [[Book of Genesis]] in the [[Hebrew Bible]]. These chapters convey the story of the first years of [[Chronology of the Bible|the world's existence]].{{sfn|Blenkinsopp|2011|p=ix}}
The body of material tells how God created the world and all its beings and placed the first man and woman ([[Adam and Eve]]) in his [[Garden of Eden]], how the first couple were expelled from God's presence, of the first murder which followed, and God's decision to destroy the world and save only the righteous [[Noah]] and his sons; a new humanity then descended from these sons and spread throughout the world, but, although the new world was as sinful as the old, God resolved never again to destroy the world by flood, and the history ended with [[Terah]], the father of [[Abraham]], from whom descended God's chosen people.{{sfn|Blenkinsopp|2011|p=1}}
The primeval history is generally considered to have been completed along with the rest of the Book of Genesis in the 5th century BCE, but a sizeable minority of scholars have dated it to the 3rd century BCE, pointing to discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the [[Hebrew Bible]].
==Structure and content==
The history contains some of the best-known stories in the Bible plus a number of genealogies, structured around the five-fold repetition of the ''[[toledot]]'' formula ("These are the generations of..."):{{sfn|Blenkinsopp|2011|p=4}}
* The ''toledot'' of heaven and earth ([[Genesis 1:1]]–4:26)
** The [[Genesis creation narrative]] (the combined [[Hexameron]] or six-day cosmic creation-story of Genesis 1 and the human-focused creation-story of Genesis 2)
** The [[Garden of Eden|Eden narrative]] (the story of [[Adam and Eve]] and how they came to be expelled from God's presence)
** [[Cain and Abel]] and the first murder
* The book of the ''toledot'' of Adam (5:1–6:8) (The Hebrew includes the word "book")
** the first of two [[genealogies of Genesis]], the [[Kenites]], descendants of Cain, who invent various aspects of civilised life
** the second genealogy, the descendants of [[Seth]] the third son of Adam, whose line leads to Noah and to Abraham
** the [[Sons of God]] who couple with the "daughters of men"; the [[Nephilim]], "men of renown"; God's reasons for destroying the world (first account)
** God's reasons for bringing the Flood (second account), his warning to Noah, and the construction of the Ark
** the [[Genesis flood narrative]] in which the world is destroyed and re-created
** Noah the husbandman (the invention of wine), his drunkenness, his three sons, and the [[Curse of Canaan]]
* The ''toledot'' of the sons of Noah (10:1–11:9)
** the Table of Nations (the [[sons of Noah]] and the origins of the nations of the world) and how they came to be scattered across the Earth through the [[Tower of Babel]])
* The ''toledot'' of Shem (11:10–26)
** the descendants of Noah in the line of Shem to [[Terah]], the father of [[Abraham]]
==Composition history==
{{Main|Composition of the Torah}}
===Sources in Genesis===
{{Main|Documentary hypothesis}}
Scholars generally agree that the [[Torah]], the collection of five books of which [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] is the first, achieved something like its current form in the 5th century BCE.{{sfn|Enns|2012|p=5}} However, the almost complete absence of all the characters and incidents mentioned in the Primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in the 3rd century BC.{{sfn|Gmirkin|2006|pp=240–241}}
Genesis draws on a number of distinct "sources", including the [[Priestly source]], the [[Yahwist]] and the [[Elohist]] – the last two are often referred to collectively as "non-Priestly", but the Elohist is not present in the primeval history and "non-Priestly" and "Yahwist" can be regarded here as interchangeable terms.{{sfn|Carr|2000|p=492}} The following table is based on Robert Kugler and Patrick Hartin, "An Introduction to the Bible", 2009:{{sfn|Kugler|Hartin|2009|p=85}}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
! Verse !! Priestly !! Yahwist
|-
| 1:1–2:4a || Creation story A || {{n/a}}
|-
| 2:4b–4:26 || {{n/a}} || {{ubc|Creation story B|Garden of Eden|Cain and Abel}}
|-
| 5:1–24 || Descendants of Adam || {{n/a}}
|-
| 6:1–8 || {{n/a}} || {{ubc|Nephilim|Reason for the Flood}}
|-
| 6:9–13 || Reason for the Flood || {{n/a}}
|-
| 6:14–8:22 || colspan=2 | {{ubc|Flood|Renewal after Flood}}
|-
| 9:1–17 || rowspan=2 {{n/a}} || Noahide covenant
|-
| 9:18–27 || {{ubc|Noah's drunkenness|Sons of Noah|Curse of Canaan}}
|-
| 10:1–32 || colspan=2 | Table of Nations
|-
| 11:1–9 || {{n/a}} || Tower of Babel
|-
| 11:10–32 || Descendants of Noah || {{n/a}}
|}
===Relationship of the
Genesis
===Mesopotamian (and Egyptian)
Numerous Mesopotamian myths (and one Egyptian myth) are reflected in the
{| class="wikitable" style="align: center;"
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|- style="text-align:center; background:#ffffec; vertical-align:top;"
| style="text-align:center;"|Genesis creation narrative: Genesis 1
| style="text-align:left;"|[[Enuma Elish]], the Babylonian creation myth, has a very similar opening to Genesis 1, refers to such entities as the "Deep" (Hebrew [[Tehom]]), arrives at a cosmology very similar to the one in Genesis 1:6, and shows a similar concern for reckoning time through the creation of heavenly bodies. God's creation of mankind in his image also recalls Mesopotamian myths, as does man's sovereignty over nature. In addition, the way God creates through the spoken word in Genesis 1 mirrors the Egyptian
|- style="text-align:center; background:#ffffec; vertical-align:top;"
| style="text-align:center;"|Genesis creation narrative: Genesis 2
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|- style="text-align:center; background:#ffffec; vertical-align:top;"
| style="text-align:center;"|Genealogies
| style="text-align:left;"|The [[Sumerian King List]], like the list of the descendants of Cain, explains the origin of the elements of civilisation. [[Enoch (ancestor of Noah)|Enoch]], seventh in the line of Adam and taken by God, mirrors the king [[Enmerduranki]] and the sage
|- style="text-align:center; background:#ffffec; vertical-align:top;"
| style="text-align:center;"|[[Genesis flood narrative]]
| style="text-align:left;"|The great deluge is told in a number of versions beginning in the early 2nd millennium; like the later
|- style="text-align:center; background:#ffffec; vertical-align:top;"
| style="text-align:center;"|[[Tower of Babel]] (Genesis 11)
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==Themes and theology==
===Creation, destruction and re-creation===
The history tells how God creates a world which is good (each
===Chronology===
The [[Genesis creation narrative]] marks the start of the [[Biblical chronology]], the elaborate system of markers, both hidden and overt, marking off a fictive 4000 year history of the world.{{sfn|Levenson|2004|p=11}}<ref group="Note" name="Levenson">"How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all." Levenson, 2004, pp.
==See also==
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===Bibliography===
{{refbegin|30em|indent=yes}}
* {{Cite book
|last = Alter
|
|
|title
|publisher
|year
|url
|isbn
}}
|first = Joseph
|last = Blenkinsopp
|
|title = Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation: A discursive commentary on Genesis 1-11
|year = 2011
|publisher = Bloomsbury T&T Clark
|location = New York
|url = https://books.google.com
|isbn = 978-0-567-37287-1
}}
|
|
|author-link = David M. Carr
|chapter = Genesis, Book of
|editor1-last = Freedman
|editor1-first = David Noel
|editor1-link = David Noel Freedman
|editor2-last = Myers
|editor2-first = Allen C.
|title = Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible
|publisher = Eerdmans
|year = 2000
|isbn = 9789053565032
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qRtUqxkB7wkC&dq=%22earliest+origins+of+Genesis%22&pg=PA492
}}
|title = The Formation of Genesis 1-11: Biblical and Other Precursors
|last
|first
|publisher = Oxford University Press
|year = 2020
|isbn = 9780190062545
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=E8DgDwAAQBAJ&q=The%20Formation%20of%20Genesis%201-11%3A%20Biblical%20and%20Other%20Precursors
}}
|last1
|first1
|author-link = Philip R. Davies
|
|publisher = Westminster John Knox Press
|year = 2008
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=M1rS4Kce_PMC&dq=%22Bible+I%3A+Chronology%2C+facts%2C+and+causality%22&pg=PA45
|
}}
|first
|last
|author-link = John Day (biblical scholar)
|title = From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11
|year = 2014
|publisher = Bloomsbury
|isbn = 9780567370303
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rtveBAAAQBAJ&q=From+Creation+to+Babel%3A+Studies+in+Genesis+1-11
}}
*
|title = From Creation to Abraham: Further Studies in Genesis 1-11
|last
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|publisher
|year = 2021
|isbn = 9780567703118
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=gIpFEAAAQBAJ&q=From+Creation+to+Abraham:+Further+Studies+in+Genesis+1-11
}}
|last =
|first
|author-link = Peter Enns
|title = The Evolution of Adam
|year = 2012
|publisher = Baker Books
|isbn = 9781587433153
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=BNxeoqoTg-YC&dq=%22The+specifics+of+Wellhausen%22%22postexilic+setting%22&pg=PA5
}}
|last = Gertz
|first = Jan Christian
|chapter = The Formation of the Primeval History
|editor1-last = Evans
|editor1-first = Craig A.
|editor1-link = Craig A. Evans
|editor2-last = Lohr
|editor2-first = Joel N.
|editor3-last = Petersen
|editor3-first = David L.
|editor3-link = David L. Petersen
|title = The Book of Genesis: Composition, Reception, and Interpretation
|year = 1994
|publisher = Eisenbrauns
|isbn = 9789004226579
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rQIyAQAAQBAJ&dq=%22The+Formation+of+the+Primeval+History%22%22Jan+Christian+Gertz%22&pg=PA107
}}
* {{cite book
|last = Gmirkin
|first = Russell E.
|title = Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus
|year = 2006
|publisher = Bloomsbury
|isbn = 9780567134394
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=CKuoAwAAQBAJ&q=composition+table+of+nations+genesis
}}
|last1
|first1
|chapter
|editor-last
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|year
|chapter-url
|isbn
}}{{Dead link|date=November 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* {{cite book
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|editor1-link=Richard Hess
|editor2-last=Tsumura
|editor2-first=David Toshio
|editor2-link=David Toshio Tsumura
|title="I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood": Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11
|series=Sources for Biblical and Theological Study
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|isbn=0-931464-88-9
}}
|last1 = Hughes
|first1 = Jeremy
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|url =
|isbn = 9780567629302
}}
|first = Helge
|last = Kvanvig
|title = Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading
|year = 2011
|publisher = BRILL
|isbn = 978-9004163805
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=e1hnJYbShWMC&q=Primeval+History%3A+Babylonian%2C+Biblical%2C+and+Enochic%3A+An+Intertextual+Reading
}}
|last
|first
| | |editor1-link = Adele Berlin |editor2-last = Brettler |
|editor2-link = Marc Zvi Brettler
|title = The Jewish study Bible
|chapter = Genesis: introduction and annotations
|date
|pages
|publisher = Oxford University Press
|isbn
|url
}}
|last1
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|title
|publisher
|year
|url
|isbn
}}
|last1
|first1
|last2
|first2
|chapter
|editor-last
|editor-first
|title
|publisher
|year
|isbn = 9781593336127
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=vo55jHJv2xYC&dq=%22the+flood%22%22suspends+time+and+calendar%22&pg=PA6
|
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20141217000705/https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vo55jHJv2xYC&pg=PA6&dq=%22the+flood%22%22suspends+time+and+calendar%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=C06KVLyvLIWE8QWu_YHIDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20flood%22%22suspends%20time%20and%20calendar%22&f=false
|archivedate = 2014-12-17
}}
|last1
|first1
|title
|publisher
|year
|url
|isbn
}}
|last = Sailhamer
|first = John H.
|author-link = John Sailhamer
|title = The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition and Interpretation
|year = 2010
|publisher = InterVarsity Press
|isbn = 9780830878888
|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=pBVWU9U85m0C&q=The+Meaning+of+the+Pentateuch%3A+Revelation%2C+Composition+and+Interpretation
}}
|last = Thompson
|first = Thomas L.
|author-link = Thomas L. Thompson
|chapter = Narrative Reiteration and Comparative Literature
|editor1-
|editor1-first = Thomas L.
|editor1-link = Thomas L. Thompson
|editor2-last = Wajdenbaum
|editor2-first = Philippe
|title = The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature
|year = 2014
|publisher = Routledge
|isbn = 9781317544258
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NFNsBAAAQBAJ&dq=%22Narrative+Reiteration+and+Comparative+Literature%22&pg=PT150
}}
{{refend}}
[[Category:5th-century BC literature]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Book of Genesis]]
[[Category:Primeval history| ]]
|