>The narrative in Genesis is not written in a literary style

>>1812489
That the yahwists thought their folk tales were real.

>>1813900

Isn't Genesis primarily the Elohist?

>>1813900
>>1813901

No it's Priestly since the use of the word Elohim is used of YHWH, but Genesis 2 starts using YHWH-EL instead, though a consensus of it is Priestly it could suggest that the Yahwist and Elohist conflated the two make sure that YHWH is El and El and YHWH. I'm more skeptical of a separate author for J and E I conflate the two together.

>>1813901
The Elohist source is pretty fragmentary throughout all of the Torah.

>>1814367

Plus E usually lacks Elohim which is a prime example of Priestly material found in Leviticus. Elohist used El language to describe YHWH like El Elyon, El Shadday (shaddai?), El-Olam etc. etc.

>>1812489
I know he was writing 1600 years ago but I can't agree that (a) Genesis is written in the same style as Kings/Chronicles etc, and (b) Genesis has a consistent style from beginning to end. I wonder which historians Augustine had in mind with 'a style proper to hstory'

>>1814379
Genesis is pretty specific about ages, when people had children, etc, even with those over 900 years old. I'm not sure how you could possibly see this as an allegory and not intended to be a factual account.

>>1814392

it's likely that Genesis 1-11 is antediluvian or a primordial view of how the world began as the argument goes, the ages that go up to 900 could likely be an adaption from Sumerian Kings own dating method in which they dated their kings to 10,000 years of age. With the timeline it is a likely explanation of tracing back the members to Adam, this is similar to that of 1 Chronicles which uses the same method.

>>1814434
I don't disagree, but I don't think the Sumerians or the writers of Genesis didn't take this as literally true.

>>1814440

Yeah. I personally believe that the Genesis 1-11 narrative was originally an oral tradition but was heavily spiced up once they got to Mesopotamia, the parallels are very similar though maybe not enough of dependency. Though the text is more developed than any religious myths of Babylon and Persia.