0018 What if Genesis is neither history nor fiction?

The title of the book offers this option as well.

Charles Halton proposes that an alternate judgment arises after cuneiform-bearing clay tablets are unearthed from tells in the Near East.  They are found in ruins of royal libraries.  Clever scholars figure out how to translate them.

First the tablets are read.  Then, they are interpreted in light of the genres that they display.  The literature of the ancient Near East contains its own genres.

Reading yields what is.  Interpretation produces what ought to be.  Genre brings interpretation (what ought to be) into relation with reading (what is).

0019 Here is a picture of how extra-Biblical contemporaneous writing offers the neither option.

0020 This judgment clearly transcends the either/or dichotomy of the religion and science controversy.

Or does it?

In one genre, Gen 1-11 is read and interpreted as history.

In another genre, Gen 1-11 is read and interpreted as fiction.

Does the old either/or battle merely shift to the terrain of genre?

Yes, we may project modern genres onto the literature of the ancient Near East.

No, the literature of the ancient Near East is neither history nor fiction.

0021 In the previous blog, the relation, genres of the ancient Near East, serves as a antithesis to the relation that both parties in the religion-science controversy are in agreement, the separation of nature and grace.

What does this imply?

The modern period begins, as Charles Halton recounts, with Galileo’s thesis as the antithesis of Aristotle’s framing of the reading and interpretation of the Bible.  The resulting controversy hinges on the dichotomy of nature and supernature.  They are separate.  Either Genesis is history (and natural knowledge is not pertinent) or fiction (and natural knowledge is irrefutable).

0022 The postmodern synthesis begins with the admission that the literature of the ancient Near East expresses genres, that do not match the modern genres of history or fiction.  Genre offers a path to bring reading into relation with interpretation.

0023 The recovery and translation of cuneiform texts from the ancient Near East offers both science and religion new opportunities.  Science may observe and measure genres as phenomena.  Religion may compare written origin stories of the ancient Near East to Gen 1-11.

0024 The latter inquiry produces an observation that is hard to ignore.

All origin stories of the ancient Near East (with the exception of the Genesis Creation Story) depict a recent creation of humans.  For example, in one ancient Mesopotamian myth, humans are created to do the work of the gods.

How far is that from God creating Adam and giving him a garden to tend?

This observation is consistent with the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0025 Is the first singularity historical?

No, it occurs in prehistory, starting around 7821 years ago.

Yes, it potentiates history.  In fact, it potentiates all the written origin myths of ancient Mesopotamia.

0026 How so?

The hypothesis of the first singularity entails four key features.

First, the semiotic nature of hand-speech talk, practiced by all humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, favors constrained social complexity.  In contrast, speech-alone talk facilitates unconstrained social complexity, characteristic of our current Lebenswelt.

Second, the transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk is called “the first singularity”.  The first singularitystarts when one culture (unwittingly) loses the hand-component of hand-speech talk.  This culture is the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

Third, the semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk explains the dynamic trends towards increasing labor and social specialization, evident in the Ubaid from its inception.

Fourth, relative differences in wealth (labor specialization) and power (social specialization) inspire adjacent hand-speech talking cultures to abandon the hand-component of their hand-speech talk (in imitation).  These extra-Ubaid cultures are not aware of the consequences.  Through mimesis, speech-alone talk spreads to all the world, seeding the potential of unconstrained social complexity.

0027 These four features explain why the origin stories of the ancient Near East depict recent origins for humanity.  The transition from hand-speech to speech-alone changes the semiotic qualities of language so much that, mythologically, humans are born again.

Oh, the Ubaid even forgets the “again” part.

According to Mesopotamian myths, humans are created by newly differentiated gods.

According to Genesis, Adam is fashioned out of dust.

0028 Does Charles Halton (or any of the other contributors) know about the hypothesis of the first singularity?
No.

For the most part, these Biblical scholars are not worried about religion versus science controversies.  They discuss the question of genre, rather than the more difficult topic of reconciling Biblical anthropology and human evolution.

0029 Little does Halton (and the other contributors) realize that the entire scientific framework of human evolution relies on materialist assumptions that are valid for many other species, but not our own.  Really.  Take a good look at a sheep and a lion and imagine a human as an adaptation into a material niche.  The proposition is ludicrous.

Three masterworks, available on smashwords, change all that. Each anchors a series (or course) in smashwords.  The Human Niche covers the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Our niche is not material. Our niche is the potential of triadic relations.  An Archaeology of the Fall dramatically portrays the discovery and implications of the first singularity.  How To Define the Word “Religion” examines a crucial difficulty facing our current Lebenswelt.  How do we know whether our spoken words are true?

0030 Well, if that is the case, why would this little book on the genres of Genesis be relevant?

0031 Does a debate over Biblical genres offer clues concerning the character of life during and after the start of the first singularity?

0032 For one, technically, the first singularity precedes history, even as it potentiates history.

0033 For two, how can anyone tell the history of an event that no one knows about?

The Ubaid practices speech-alone talk from the start.  Plus, the consequences of practicing speech-alone talk are unfathomable.  The semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk potentiate labor and social specialization, resulting in increasing wealth and power over the span of generations.

Who is going to figure that out?

Surely, the Ubaid is aware that other Neolithic cultures practice hand-speech talk. But, those are loser cultures.  All the action is happening in the Ubaid.  The other cultures are way behind.  Plus, they intend to catch up.  They drop the hand-talk component of their hand speech talk.

The change in semiosis between hand-speech and speech-alone is so dramatic that even these neighboring cultures forget the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  The tree of life disappears.  The seeds of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are sown in distant lands.

0034 For three, Gen 1-11 may be regarded as a witness from within the spontaneously differentiating and specializing Ubaid villages, as they develop into Uruk town-chiefdoms, then into Sumerian city-states.

0035 The third point in the previous blog seems odd, almost unbelievable.

Somehow, a discussion of genre allows the claim that Gen 1-11 offers as an insider’s tale of the emergence and tribulations of one of the world’s first civilizations.

0036 So, what does the insider think about how the Ubaid begins?

James Hoffmeier, the first contributor, says (more or less), “Genesis 1-11 begins the story of redemption (for all) with the loss of God’s presence, intimacy between God and humans, and access to the tree of life.”

0037 Does that sound like the loss of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Before the first singularity, there is no history.  There is no concept of history.  No gesture-word can picture or point to “history”.  Instead, traditions are timeless, just like the circles of the North American Plains Indians and the dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines.  As long as the group lives, no one really dies.  The dead become ancestors.

After the first singularity, there is history.  Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden.  There is no going back.

0038 The scientific hypothesis of the first singularity changes the landscape of inquiry into what it is to be human.

Biblical scholars, such as James Hoffmeier, sense that a purely material interpretation of human evolution cannot stand.  Similarly, a purely instrumental interpretation of the Bible cannot stand.

For centuries, Biblical inquiry is dominated by a Wissenschaftlich seeking to identify authorship through the grammar and the vocabulary of the text itself.  Today, Wellhausen’s four-source hypothesis, although interesting, is moribund.

0039 That will change under the challenges posed by the hypothesis of the first singularity.

What if Gen 1-11 is an insider’s tale of the birth and development of the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk?

If it is, its lessons entangle all civilized humanity.

0040 James Hoffmeier gives a literary overview of Gen 1-11, before considering genre.

Notably, a break between the primeval and the patriarchal narratives appears precisely at the point when Terah, Abraham’s father, enters the story.

It is almost as if the genre changes.

0041 Have I seen a change in genre before in the book that I am looking at?

Yes, the story of Galileo marks a change of genres, from Aristotelian formulations to empirio-schematics.

Galileo stands at the twilight of the Latin Age, which opens with St. Augustine and continues for twelve hundred years.  According to Thomist and semiotician John Deely, the Latin Age is the second age of understanding.

Galileo stands at the dawn of the Age of Ideas, which runs four hundred years to the present. The Age of Ideas is an era of Wissenschaftlich.  Analytical and scientific approaches dominate.  Now, this third age of understanding draws to a close.

The fourth age of understanding, the Age of Triadic Relations, enters civilizational awareness, with the philosophy of Charles Peirce.  Peirce’s philosophy empowers the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0042 Here is a list.  For each period, the top item labels the cycle and the bottom item names the genre.

0043 Hoffmeier mentions a pattern, discerned by David Clines, of sin, divine speech, mitigation and punishment.  This pattern is encapsulated in the Story of the Fall.  The pattern repeats over and over in Gen 1-11.

I naturalize this pattern as failure, reorientation, paradigm implementation and coping with contradictions inherent in established paradigm.

This describes a cycle.

Does this cycle last for four generations of four generations (that is, around 400 years)?

0044 If so, then here is my guess.

Within each cycle, one genre predominates.

I can call each cycle a genre or a denkstyle.

0045 If this guess makes sense, then there may be nine genres in Gen 1-11, corresponding to nine cycles from the start of the Ubaid to the end of Ur III.

Here is a picture.

0046 There are three cycles between the start of Ubaid and its first expansion into northern Mesopotamia.

One cycle to the start of the Uruk.

Two cycles to right before the Sumerian Dynastic.

Then, three cycles to the twilight of Ur III, when the Sumerian language is no longer spoken.

0047 How do Hoffmeier’s first two genres, legend and myth, fit into this idea of the confluence of cycles and genres?

Legends associate to distant cycles.

Myths go with recent cycles.

0048 It is like a river.  Legends are like the uniform flow of water.  Myths are like the waterfalls and eddies.  Legends move under the pull of archetypes, just like water uniformly moves according to gravity.  Myths are like whirlpools and turbulence, generated by the landscape beneath the stream.

The metaphor is water.  The flow of genre is the thing itself, moving through time from the first singularity.

0049 Hoffmeier’s third genre is family history.

The Genesis phrase, “these are the generations”, seems to be an organizational marker.  The genealogies are a genre that imply a period of continuity, as expected when a cycle, or a suite of cycles, proceeds.

0050 The start of Ubaid to the end of Ur III spans nine cycles.

On the one hand, the primeval history does not delineate them all.

On the other hand, the genealogies in the primeval history express how cyclesfeel, especially from the point of view of a family holding together within southern Mesopotamia, for thousands of years.