Digital Logos Edition
There has been a recent trend to date many non-Priestly texts later than their Priestly counterparts, and this movement has significant synchronic, as well as diachronic, implications. The commentary engages these approaches, along with other recent proposals and methods, in providing a multi-layered reading of the diverse texts and strata of Genesis 1-11. This combination of diachronic and synchronic approaches yields new insights into these evocative and influential narratives at the outset of the Bible. This commentary offers a synthesis of close readings of Genesis 1-11 and up-to-date study of the formation of these chapters in their ancient Near Eastern context. Each interpretation of these evocative and multilayered narratives is preceded with a new translation (with textual and philological commentary) and a concise overview of the ways in which each text bears the marks of its shaping over time.