The Structure of Genesis

The Tablet Theory of the origin of Genesis, as further developed by Curt Sewell (here), identified 11 tablets, and minimal colophon content.  Here I have expanded the colophon content to include relevant verses according to context.  Sewell's primary contribution to the Tablet Theory was to propose Tablets 8 and 10 as sub-tablets of 7 and 9, respectively.  I have preserved that below.

In addition to expanded colophon content, I propose that Tablet 5 may really be two separate documents.  Additionally, instead of listing section 11 as spanning the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, as Sewell does, I recognize that Genesis ends with a highly structured postscript of it own.  The Joseph Postscript adopts a different style than that of the earlier colophon-derived postscripts, probably because it was written under a different literary era.  None-the-less, its presence indicates the writer's intent to maintain the "postscript structure" of Genesis.

The end result is a proposal in which Genesis is composed of the 10 sections as listed below.

For those not familiar with the word "colophon" it refers to a postscript, as used in Babylonian and Mesopotamian writing, that is often located at the end of a text and provides information relative to the scribe who wrote the text, and sometimes additional information about the place it was written, its content, its purpose, or its owner.

Tablet	Verses	Content	Owner or  Writer
Section 1
1	Gen. 1:1-2:3	{Creation of the heavens and the earth}	revealed by God (to Melchizedek?)
Colophon 1	Gen. 2:4	These are <toledot> of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.
Section 2
2	Gen. 2:5-4:26	{Story of Adam and Eve; the fall; sin}	as first told by Adam (probably transmitted orally until finally written)
Colophon 2	Gen. 5:1-2	This is the book of the <toledot> of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.
Section 3
3	Gen. 5:3-6:8	{Adam to Noah, death ages, but not of Noah; corruption of mankind; mentions 3 sons of Noah}	by Noah
Colophon 3	Gen. 6:9-10	These are <toledot> of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. 10 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Section 4
4	Gen. 6:11-9:29	{The flood narrative with some repetition. The death of Noah.}	by Shem, Ham & Japheth (possibly blended account)
Colophon 4	Gen. 10:1	These are <toledot> of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood.
Section 5
5a	Gen. 10:2-10:31	{Descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth}	by the Clans of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (compilation by ?)
Colophon 5a	Gen. 10:32	These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their <toledot>s, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.
Section 6
5b	Gen. 11:1-11:9	{Tower of Babel story}	by Shem
Colophon 5b	Gen. 11:10a	These are <toledot> of Shem.
Section 7
6	Gen. 11:10b-11:26	{Simple genealogy from Shem to Terah, including death age of all individuals except Terah}	by Terah
Colophon 6	Gen. 11:27a	Now these are <toledot> of Terah.
Section 8
7	Gen. 11:27b-25:11	{Abraham's life and death beginning with his father Terah, Terah's death, Isaac's life and details about Rebecca, details about Ishmael}	by Isaac
Sub-Title 78	Gen. 25:12	Now these are <toledot> of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maid, bore to Abraham
78	Gen. 25:13-18	{12 sons of Ishmael; Ishmael's death}	by Isaac, from Ishmael (Isaac lived to 180, Ishmael to 137)
Colophon 7	Gen. 25:19a	These are <toledot> of Isaac, Abraham's son:
Section 9
9	Gen. 25:19b-35:29	{Jacob's life story and the death of Isaac}	by Jacob
Sub-Title 910	Gen. 36:1	These are <toledot> of Esau (that is, Edom).
910	Gen. 36:2-43	{Esau's descendants and chiefs of Edom, some redundancy}	by Jacob, from Esau
9	Gen. 37:1	Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan.
Colophon 9	Gen. 37:1-2a	These are <toledot> of Jacob.
Section 10
11	Gen. 37:2b-50:21	{Joseph's life story, but not his death; story about Judah; Jacob's death}	by Joseph
Postscript 11	Gen. 50:22-26	{Structured postscript to Joseph's intimate account of his life: Joseph...Egypt -Joseph lived to 110 --Ephraim's children --Manasseh's children --Joseph's promise --Joseph's command -Joseph died at 110 Joseph's body...Egypt }	by Ephraim?

Quick Quotes: Understanding how GOD engineered major evolutionary advances

One of the purposes of this blog is to help Christians appreciate scientific discovery washed of it's metaphysical naturalism bias and also see where the discoveries fit in a Creationist perspective on Genesis 1.

The article on sciencedaily.com Early animals: Death near the shoreline, not life on land includes reference to a few supporting facts for the Ages of Joy creation model, as well as a quote worth looking at.

The article's author, not the scientists themselves, sums up the article with this quote:

Understanding how life engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

The AOJ perspective is that "life" cannot "engineer".  Life is an abstract phenomena.  It can't "plan, design, operate", aka engineer, on it's own, per se.

 The quote would better stand as:

Understanding how life GOD engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

This quote would then reflect the Theistic Engineering philosophy behind the Ages of Joy creation model.

We can use this quote to differentiate three views:

• Metaphysical Naturalism:  "life engineered major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Evolution: "God used major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Engineering: "God engineered major evolutionary advances" 

Reflect on these differences and please post your thoughts below.

The conclusion of the research finds the following:

Shillito notes, "It reveals how even surprising events can be preserved in the ancient rock record, but -- by removing the 'earliest' outlier of evidence -- suggests that the invasion of the continents happened globally at the same time."

This is consistent with the descriptions in Genesis 1 of God working powerfully to engineer life and bless it to flourish.  The "simultaneous explosion of complexity" is something AOJ attributes to God's engineering prowess.

Facts uncovered in the article include:

• first animals on land emerged globally during the latest Silurian.

The Silurian is part of the mid-Paleozoic which AOJ places in the first part of Day 3 at about the same time that the first vegetation appeared, such as the bryophytes.  These first land animals were created by God when He first separated the land from the seas, but, unlike the plants created on Day 3, they would later go extinct to be replaced by the fauna created on Day 5 and Day 6.

Your name, O Lord, endures throughout all ages

In Psalm 135:13, the psalmist praises God and provides these reassuring words:

Psalm 135:13 English Standard Version (ESV)

Your name, O Lord, endures forever,
your renown,[a] O Lord, throughout all ages.

In this passage, a parallel chiastic structure is used which is an element of Hebrew poetry.  The two lines of the poem accentuate the concept by stating the same idea in two ways.

Translated from literal Hebrew at studylight.org, the passage reads as follows:

Yahweh Your name [endures] forever
Yahweh Your memorial throughout generation and generation

God's name is parallel to God's renown (or remembrance): this is a reference to God's fame and glory.

The phrase endures forever is parallel to throughout all ages: this parallels the ages of this world's existence to the longest timeframe that the Hebrew language can communicate.

The literal meaning of throughout all ages is generation and generation.
And the Hebrew word translated as forever is olam meaning includes variations on the theme of long duration such as antiquity, everlasting, unending, and forever.

Therefore, God's fame and glory lasts throughout all generations which equates to the longest imaginable timeframe which is captured by the Hebrew word olam.

Genesis 2:4 contains the colophon statement for Genesis 1: "These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created in the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens."

Ages of Joy interprets these generations in the same manner that the ESV renders Psalm 135:13, that is, as "ages".  In other words, the "generations" or "ages" of Genesis 1, plus all the ages that followed up to the time when the Psalmist wrote his words, plus the rest of the ages yet to come, span a timeframe corresponding to forever, meaning the longest imaginable and communicable timeframe available to the Hebrew language.  The everlasting nature of God is attested to by His creation.  He is eternal and His creation is from of old.

At Ages of Joy, we purport that each Day of Genesis 1 corresponds to an Age or a Generation as stated in Genesis 2:4.  Taken together, these generations contribute substantially to the overall time frame of "generation and generation", that is, the time from the beginning in Genesis 1:1 through to the next beginning in Revelation 21:1.

The ages have a "day-like" structure, with a time in which God works, and then a night/morning element that mark major transitions, like the passing of a day or the ending of an age.  Said another way, each Day is like a generation, having a beginning, but also an ending and a passing-on.

God's fame endures through the ages of creation as all the "sons of God shouted for joy" Job 38:7b.

Ages of Joy takes an expansive view of God's creative handiwork and His enduring fame and glory, first before angels and then among mankind.  Whether the ages of Genesis 1 are each thousands of years long, or million or billions of years long, cannot be discerned from the Hebrew text alone, but the implication of these passages of Scripture is that the creation week spanned a very long period of time.

Some may argue that Psalm 135 is poetry and therefore we cannot take it literally.  To this, I would respond that poetry must be interpreted and the intent of the author is to convey that God is big and His creation is old; time goes on and on, but God is always present, always renowned.  Some think of the creation week as a mere passing of several dozen hours of time, but I think we need to extend that view to think of the ages past in which God was at work and see the finiteness of man against God's eternality.

This analysis does not constitute a proof of the day-age interpretation, but does lend support to the validity of such an interpretation.