Defining the Jews
He rewrote part of it and sent it back with the comment: "I suppose this is the kind of nonsense you want." The publishers did indeed want this "nonsense" and "The Ark Before Noah" more than lived up to their expectations. The Judeans, therefore, would have been taught...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | eng |
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | He rewrote part of it and sent it back with the comment: "I suppose this is the kind of nonsense you want." The publishers did indeed want this "nonsense" and "The Ark Before Noah" more than lived up to their expectations. The Judeans, therefore, would have been taught the Babylonian Flood narratives as preserved in the cuneiform writings, but when transferring them to their own history, gave it the twist that the disaster was brought about by the Creator of the Universe through man's violence, with salvation coming thanks to the righteous Noah. "So we have," [Irving Finkel] adds, "an explanation as to how these stories could move from cuneiform into Hebrew, a mechanism by which it was possible." The resulting Hebrew Bible defined the Judeans, uniquely among all previous religious literature, "as a people whose existence was predicated on Scripture. First it defined their history, and then their existence," Finkel says. "The Babylonian captivity created Jews out of Judeans." |
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| ISSN: | 0792-6049 |