School of Suspicion

Category: The Bible and Its Neighbours

The Hebrew scriptures did not arrive out of nowhere. These articles set Genesis, the prophets and the law beside the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Canaanite material they grew up among, and ask what their writers were answering, borrowing and refusing.

  • Pre-Adamites, the People Outside the Garden

    Pre-Adamites, the People Outside the Garden

    By the fourth chapter of Genesis the named population of the earth is four people, and one of them has just killed another. The murderer then says something that makes no sense in a world containing three people. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy…

  • Sons of God, Daughters of Men, and Nephilim – The beginning of Ancient religions

    Genesis 6:4 ends with a phrase that belongs to Homer more than to Moses. The children born to the sons of God by the daughters of men, it says, became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. That is heroic vocabulary. It is the language a poet uses of Achilles or of Gilgamesh,…

  • 1. Eden and Göbekli Tepe — Stories Before Scripture

    1. Eden and Göbekli Tepe — Stories Before Scripture

    Genesis opens with no man to till the ground and closes the garden by making one. Read beside the gatherers who raised Göbekli Tepe, Enkidu’s first bread, Hesiod’s golden race and the law that sent farmers back to gathering every seventh year, with the birds that sow not and the bread asked for daily.