Paul Davidson wrote an exploration of source critical work on the flood story (or better stories) in Genesis a while back, which I’ve been meaning to share. In it he writes:
The flood story provides an ideal text for identifying the compositional history of Genesis because of how obvious many of its editorial seams are. Carr’s model — that the Priestly text, written to replace an earlier version, was instead combined with that earlier version — explains very well the text in its present form.
Conservatively oriented readers may prefer to read the text synchronically — as though it were written all at once by a single author, as Jewish and Christian traditions have typically claimed. However, this way of reading the text simply is not capable of explaining the text’s many oddities and complexities. Models like Carr’s have greater explanatory power, allowing us to make greater sense of Genesis through analogy with other texts we know were based on multiple sources.
As a New Testament scholar, I’d be interested to hear from those who work primarily in Hebrew Bible what their sense is of challenges to source critical work of this sort, such as Joshua Berman’s Inconsistency in the Torah.
Elsewhere around the blogosphere on the subject of the flood account(s) in Genesis (and elsewhere):
Interview: discussing Flood Mythologies with Erica Mongé-Greer
Answers in Genesis: Meteor Strikes May Have Triggered Noah’s Flood
Inbreeding Is Disastrous, Says Scientist Who Believes in Noah’s Ark
Pete Enns on Noah and Lot in Genesis
Noah: A Relatable Ancestor of Humanity
A new book on sources for the Akkadian flood story
Related to the above, have a listen to Igor Stravinsky’s exploration of the biblical story, “The Flood.”
There is an interesting discussion of it in the book Stravinsky Inside Out by Charles Joseph. It is particularly striking for the way it begins with creation and the gathering of the waters to allow dry land to appear, which the Genesis flood story directly reverses as God allows the world to return to its primordial state as a watery chaos.
And for your further musical enjoyment, here is a symphony by one of Stravinsky’s piano teachers!
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