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| |Earliest known form oral | | |Earliest known form oral |
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| == Issues ==
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| === Time frames ===
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| [[Genesis]] provides specific dates and time frames for the major events, particularly those related to [[the flood]]. For example:
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| {{bible quote|''"Now it came about in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the water was dried up from the earth. Then Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the surface of the ground was dried up. 14In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry."'' - |book=Genesis|chap=8|verses=13-14}}
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| On the other hand, the author is unaware of a single [[mythological]] account from another ancient culture which records its events in such a detailed time frame.
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| === Genealogies and geography ===
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| [[Genesis]] provides [[genealogies]] for the line from [[Adam]] to [[Noah]] giving the year each had the next child in the line and the year they died. For example:
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| {{bible quote|''"When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. And after he became the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Kenan lived 910 years, and then he died."'' - |book=Genesis|chap=5|verses=12-14}}
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| [[Genesis]] also provides a remarkable degree of [[Garden of Eden|geographic detail]]. For example:
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| {{bible quote|''"Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria And the fourth river is the Euphrates."'' - |book=Genesis|chap=2|verses=10-14}}
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| Some other ancient historical and [[mythological]] accounts do indeed provide rudimentary genealogies and basic geography. However, none do it in such striking detail, with such objective style. The description of Eden reads like a dry geography text, not a mass-market novel.
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| === Objective description of characters ===
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| A compelling element of the presentation of central figures within the Old Testament is that there are no heroes. The presentation is of real people struggling with real problems in life. Attempting to faithfully live by the will of God but battling with their flesh to be overcome by the spirit. For example the following five are prominent examples of the real-person feature of the Old Testament literature.
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| The five men are;
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| * [[Noah]] was both "righteous in his generation" and a sloppy drunk;
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| * [[Abraham]] was both praised by God as "a man of faith" and a coward who lied out of fear;
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| * [[Moses]] was chosen to lead his people from Egypt, but was also meek, shy, and had a bad temper which ultimately kept him out of the promised land;
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| * [[David]] was a "Man after God's own heart," an adulterer, and a murderer;
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| * [[Solomon]] was the wisest man of his day, but married pagan wives and allowed them to set up temples opposed to God.
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| The objective style in which these men are described is inconsistent with hero-myths. Hero-myths build up characters into such flawless beings that they become flat and unbelievable to the modern mind. The [[Bible]], on the other hand, describes its characters in such rich detail, both good and bad, that the characters strike us as ''real''.
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| === Earliest known form ===
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| The earliest known form of [[Genesis]] is written. There is no evidence that it arose from oral traditions. Some academics ''assume'' that there was one, but they do this without evidence to support their claim. Genesis has been held out as being based on documents written by [[Moses]] himself. Other apocryphal accounts like the [[Book of Jubilees]] which are totally factually consistent with Genesis (and stop before Moses's death, unlike Genesis) explicitly claim to have been written by Moses.
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| This contrasts sharply with [[Greek]] [[mythology]], which was collected from oral traditions by Greek historians and mythographers like Herodotus seeking to record their country's beliefs, as well as poets and dramatists whose manifest purpose was to entertain and inspire, rather than to provide historical annals.
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| ==References== | | ==References== |
