#### Raw Materials #1 So, in the real non-fiction history of our species: From around 3500–2300 BC, there was Sumer, the first: - City - Writing - Bar Joke - Bureaucracy (these guys always ruin everything) - In Sumer, we humans invented our first cities. - We didn't really know how to make "nations" yet. Then there was Akkad, the first: - Empire - Multilingual administration - Centralized military power Akkad invented scale, but not legitimacy. and Babylon (the first, how do we say, "modern city" that got so "modern" Everyone knows Genesis didn't actually happen right? We all know by now, the first book of the bible couldn't have possibly got it right. The Authors of Genesis couldn't have known the Serious Non-Fiction history of our species when they wrote the old myths 3000 years ago in Proto Canaanite... And even if the Authors knew a bit of Non-Fiction history, it's surely not visible in the stories they decided to write... ... right? Whatever we might know or not know about the past, The one thing we know for sure is that there was never any truth in the whole "Eden" thing. I mean just look at how obviously false this all is: ![[what-is-j-01.jpg]] Tigris and Euphrates? ![[what-is-j-11.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-02.jpg]] The tree of eternal life. ![[what-is-j-03.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-04.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-05.jpg]] Ok but just because the Author(s) of Genesis happen to have taken the oldest story ever written -- still the oldest one we know in human history, after millenia and all that archaeology we've done from their time until today -- I mean surely it doesn't make this Genesis thing somehow "Non-Fiction" just because the Authors put a bunch of references to The Epic of Gilgamesh, which just happens to still be the oldest story we've ever found until today... I'm gonna need something a bit more Non-Fiction than that, if you expect me to believe Genesis (of all things) is actually a Non-Fiction history, albeit a playful one that bends the rules, rather than an entire made up legend like we all know it is today... right? ![[what-is-j-06.jpg]] Babel? Erech? Accad? That sounds like... ![[what-is-j-07.jpg]] No way... A few sentences after this is a strange old story called the Tower of Babel. Immediately after that, we switch from the history of the world to the history of a people, and we meet a guy named Abraham, back before he got the "ha" added to his name. What does it say about Abra(ha)m again? ![[what-is-j-10.jpg]] He's from Ur. ![[what-is-j-09.jpg]] We know Ur. ![[sumer-cities-ur.png]] What the hell is this book? ![[what-is-j-15.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-16.jpg]] ![[what-is-j-08.jpg]] #### Raw Materials #2 So what's the first prose, and what's the Book of J? Well, J stands for "Yahwist." (I know I know. It's because the word "Yahwist" in German has a J instead of a Y.) The Yahwist (or Jahwist (aka, J)) is the name that bible scholars gave to the anonymous Author of the earliest parts of the Old Testament. Or Hebrew bible. Or Torah. Or Pentateuch. Or whatever you prefer to call it. Regardless of what we call it, I'm sure you've heard of the book. The bible isn't the sort of book that has an Author name on the cover. But people who study biblical history and archaeology for a living have managed to separate different Authors of the bible by their writing styles, word usage, and which era of the Hebrew language they use. We can tell the difference between modern English, Shakespeare English, Middle English (like Chaucer), and Old English (like Beowulf.) And once we're back at Old English, it's pretty much unreadable. > Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, > þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, > hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. That's the first line of Beowulf in Old English. You probably can't read it. Neither can I. It's usually translated to Modern English like this: > So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. But word for word, taken literally, it's more like this: > What. We of-the Spear-Danes in year-days, > of-people-kings, glory heard-of, > how those princes courage performed. So language changes a lot, and it's not hard to tell the difference between different eras of the same language. Over the past century or so, some bible scholars have done that for Hebrew. And if you use those techniques to tease apart the Old Testament, you can hunt down the earliest and oldest Author of what we now call the Old Testament, which also happens to be the earliest and oldest long work of prose our species wrote. And like we already mentioned above, that Author was someone called the Yahwist (aka J). J wrote most of the stories everyone remembers best. Adam and Eve. The tree of knowledge. Cain and Abel. Noah and the flood. The tower of Babel. The Abraham story. Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's daughters having sex with their dad while he's sleeping. (And naming the incest babies Ammon and Moab, two places right next to ancient Israel.) ![[biblical-israel-map.png]] Jacob tricking Esau (also known as Edom, see map above one more time) out of his birthright in exchange for some red soup. (A pun based on the fact that Edom in old Hebrew sounds like the word for "red.") Jacob working 7 years for his uncle Laban to get permission to marry Rachel, only to realize after the wedding night (how drunk was he?) that Laban tricked him into marrying his other daughter Leah, presumably as retalliation for Jacob's earlier trickery of Esau above. Jacob working 7 more years and ending up marrying Rachel too. Jacob's two sister-wives and their legendary sibling rivalry, in which they go back and forth adversarially impregnating both themselves and the maids to try to out do each other, and naming each of the kids a different Hebrew pun resulting in the twelve children of Jacob that become the twelve tribes of Israel. ![[rachel-and-leah-all-tall.png]] Rachel stealing something from her dad, and when he says "Rachel, c'mon, I know you're sitting on it, get up" she lies and says "I can't, um... I'm on my period?" and he goes "Dammit, ok you win." And Jacob wrestling with an unknown god figure all night, and as a result, getting renamed to "Israel." All of the above stories are by a single Author. That's J. Later authors (called by scholars the Elohist (E) the Priestly source (P), and the Deuteronomist (D)) added sentences and paragraphs in the middle of what J wrote. As we leave Genesis and enter into Exodus, we hear less of J and more of E and P. Leviticus is all P. Numbers is mostly E and P. Deuteronomy is almost entirely D. But Genesis -- all the stories we remember most -- is J. J shows up again in 2nd Samuel to tell the court history of David, but that's a story for another day. So, why am I talking about this? Let's look at the big picture and wrap up. It's impossible to drive around any modern Western city without seeing references to the bible everywhere. Once you have even passing familiarity with the bible, it's impossible not to see them. And (aside from the Jesus related ones) the vast majority are references to J. The later authors -- E, P, D, the prophets, and so on -- wrote what they wrote as revisions, supplements, and commentary on J. J was already a famous work, and known to them, at the time that they wrote. The inverse is likely not the case. What J wrote -- all those stories we've painted Western civilization with -- was written without knowledge of the later Authors or what they would add. It's impossible to understand how the bible came into existence without first understanding where it began. To do that, we have to read what J wrote, without latter day revisions and additions. There appear to be sections of J that were censored or lost. References remain in the Job 9:13 and 26:12, in Psalm 89:10, and in Isaiah 51:9 to what appears to have been J's original (now lost) version of the creation story in Genesis 1. The version we have today is a later revision by P (the author of Leviticus, and much of the law code in Exodus and Numbers). Because of that, it is impossible to read every word of J's original text. But the parts that remain are surprisingly complete and coherent, as a single narrative, after the latter day editions are removed. Whether you're religious or unreligious, whatever the bible is to you now, it is interesting to see what the bible was when it began. The Book of J is one of the strangest, cleverest, most ironic and witty works ever written. Its genre it not clear. It's all of them. It's far from obvious that J is a religious text at all. J is a Rorschach test. I have my own opinions about what J was up to, who she was, and what she believed. But those opinions reflect as much about me as they do about the text. Reading J is worth it, for all people of all faiths or none. Whether you're a believer or unbelievers, read J. You'll never look at the bible the same way again. Love always, -J's Son