Among the many unbelievable aspects of Genesis (creation
in six days, talking snakes, global flood, etc.) are the incredible lifespans.
Prior to the flood, the lifespans are just shy of 1000 years. In Gen
6:3, YHWH sets a limit of 120 years but that seems more of a goal than a
limit because descendants of Noah continued to live for hundreds of years,
although the lifespans decreased with every pasing generation (see Gen
11:10-32). The genealogies document a devolution from the golden age of
God’s original creation.
In Genesis, the genealogies and chronologies come from
the P source. The non-P sources rarely provide any sort of genealogy and never
mention ages. But when you combine the two sources together, the combination raises some
narrative oddities.
Putting the Sexy
in Sexagenarian
I’ve already discussed the stories (Gen 12 and Gen 20) of
Abraham
passing off his wife Sarah as his sister. When these stories are given
context by the P chronology, it casts them in a different light.
Gen 12 takes place some time after Abraham arrives in
Canaan. According to the P source, this happened when he was 75 years old and
Sarah is 10 years younger than Abraham. This means that when Abraham feared
that pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah as his wife because of her great
beauty, he was talking about a woman in her late 60s.
Gen 20 takes place in the year before Isaac’s birth.
Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen
21:5). Abimelech of Gerar, therefore, is supposed to have taken a pregnant
90-year-old woman into his harem. She must really have been a beauty for
Abimelech to ignore the obvious drawbacks.
The Expelled
Handmaid
Hagar’s story in Gen
21:8-20 is a parallel narrative to her story in Gen 16, previously
discussed. In both stories, the deity finds Hagar wandering in the
wilderness and announces her son will become a great nation. Because the deity
is referred to as YHWH in Gen 16 and Elohim in Gen 21, the Gen 16 version is
attributed to the J source and the Gen 21 parallel is attributed to the E
source.
Gen 21:8-20 takes place after Sarah has given birth to Isaac.
At the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with
Isaac and grows jealous thinking that Ishmael will inherit alongside Isaac. She
demands that Abraham get rid of the boy and his mother.
In Gen
16:16 we are told that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to
Ishmael. Since Abraham was 100 years old at the birth to Isaac, by simple
arithmetic Ishmael is 14 years at the time of Isaac’s birth. He’s well into his
teenage years by the time of Isaac’s weaning feast.
Abraham is reluctant to expel Ishmael because he is his
son after all, but God tells him it will be okay. With the divine reassurance,
Abraham gives Hagar some bread and water and sends her off into the desert with
Ishmael. In no time, the water is gone and she and the boy prepare to die. God
hears their cry, gives Hagar the encouragement that Ishmael will become a great
nation, and she sees a life-saving well of water.
Reading this narrative in isolation, Ishmael does not
appear to be a teenager of 16 or more years. At that age, he should be able to
fend for himself yet he is completely passive, totally dependent on Hagar. In
the isolated story, Ishmael is treated as a small child and that is how artists
through the centuries have portrayed him. Only when you marry the story to P’s
chronology do you get the cognitive dissonance of a teenager in the role of a
small child.
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| Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot (1796-1875). This represents about 1/12 of the entire painting which is more of a landscape study. |
Repeats and
Reboots
In case you haven’t noticed, at this point Genesis is
well into the rerun season. The wife/sister story of Gen 20 is another version
of the one in Gen 12 and Hagar’s encounter with God in Gen 21 is an alternate
version of Gen 16. The only portion of these two chapters that isn’t recycled is
Gen
21:22-34 which provides an origin story for the site of Beersheba. The
Hebrew word sheba’ sounds similar to shwebaa’ (= “seven”) and shebu’ah (= “swear”), so the story
describes an oath between Abraham and Abimelech involving seven ewe lambs.
An alternative origin story for Beersheba will be told
in Gen
26:17-33. This narrative involves digging
multiple wells and ends with an oath between Isaac and Abimelech of Gerar. If
Gen 20 and 21 are reruns of the wife/sister and Hagar stories associated with
Abraham, then Gen 26 (wife/sister and Beersheba origin) is more like a reboot
featuring Isaac as the protagonist in the same situations that Abraham faced.
Isaac’s version of the wife/sister narrative in Gen
26:1-11 supposedly takes place after death of Abraham at age 175 (recounted
in Gen
25:7-11) and the birth of Esau and Jacob when Isaac was 60 (Gen
25:19-26). Which would mean that when Isaac passes off Rebekah as his
sister, he must have also passed off Esau and Jacob as his nephews.
Live Long and
Prosper
Now, according to the P chronology, Isaac was born when
Abraham was 100 and Isaac was 60 when his twins were born. This would mean that
Abraham died when his grandsons Esau and Jacob were teenagers.
But in Gen
24, the aged Abraham sends off his servant to find a bride for Isaac. You
are led to think that Abraham is at death’s door and wants to see Isaac married
to someone from the “old country” before he dies. But according to the P
chronology, Abraham is “only” 140 years old and has another 35 years ahead of
him. Thirty-five years in which he will take another wife named Keturah and
have six more sons (Gen
25:1-6). Seems like Abraham is still pretty spry for an old guy.
Something similar happens with Isaac. Old and blind, he wishes
to impart his blessing to his Esau before he dies (Gen
27:1-4). When Jacob cheats Esau out of the birthright, Esau plans to kill
Jacob once Isaac has died and the period of mourning is over (Gen
27:41). He’s going to have a long wait, because P’s chronology has Isaac
living another 80 years (Gen
35:27-29). Using this chronology, Isaac would still have been alive at the
time Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into Egypt. That’s wild!
The phenomenal ages given in the P source play havoc with
the narrative arc. Much like a monarch, the patriarch is the tribal leader for
life. Abraham has to die before Isaac can become the patriarch and Isaac must
die before Jacob can take over. And this is exactly how the J narrative plays
out. It’s only when you combine the J narratives with the P chronology that you
end up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as contemporaries.
