Sunday, October 2, 2022

Eduard Nielsen on Genesis 7:24 and 8:2b

  

To be sure, the objection may be raised that 7.24 (‘the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days’) cannot agree with 8.2b (‘and the rain was restrained from heaven’), P and J respectively; as the rain is expressly stated to last forty days it cannot very well have stopped after one hundred and fifty days. Those who have some knowledge of the Semitic narrative style will not raise this objection. For 7.24 is the conclusion of a section telling of the destruction of the whole earth. This section is very naturally concluded by an anticipatory remark to the effect that the whole catastrophe lasted in all four one hundred and fifty days. That it really it anticipatory is shown by 8.3 (‘And after the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters were abated’). According to my opinion we have a similar anticipatory remark in 8.14 (‘And on the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was dry’). In 8.15 ff we hear of the exit from the Ark, and of Noah’s sacrifice which is answered by God’s promise. As we shall see later both sacrifice and promise agree excellently, not with the twenty-seventh day of the second month, but with the previously mentioned date in 8.13., New Year’s Day. On that day the waters were dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the Ark. But 8.14 stands as the conclusion of the passage about the Deluge. The flood came to an end of the twenty-seventh day of the second month. (Eduard Nielsen, Oral Tradition [Studies in Biblical Theology 11; London: SCM Press, 1954], 99-100)

 

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