Which also fits perfectly as a subscript. Naoh's sons would have been the perfect account givers for all the events from Gen. 6:9b.
Since toledoth doesn't mean eyewitness account, it has nothing to do with how suitable they are as witnesses. To be perfectly suited for a toledoth, they don't even need to be alive at the time it was written, they just need to have descendants.
You'll also find, that genealogies (not to be confused with toledoth) often appear at the front or near the front of accounts. So it's no surprise to me that in multiple toledoth that are strung together you'd have subscripts directly followed by genealogies in the following toledoth.
Toledoth isn't confused with genealogies, that is its basic meaning. It is not just a chance association, each time we read the standard 'these are the generations of JoeBloggs', it is followed by a list of JoeBloggs' children and descendant or an account of how his children were born. What we see with Wiseman's theory is just the sort of chance association you were talking about. Of course as long as Genesis traces the origin of Israel you are going to get passages related to the person above their toledoth too. The way to test if that is a coincidence or the real meaning of toledoth is the times when Genesis leaves the story of Israel and gives the genealogies of their cousins. Each time this happens Wiseman's meaning of toledoth breaks down.
Gen 25:12
These are the generations of Ishmael is preceded by an account of Abraham's other wives and children and his death. Why would Ishmael have this story? Abraham kicked him and his mother out. It was Isaac who lived at home. But the generation of Ishmael is followed by the list of the descendants of Ishmael. Right after the list of Ishmael's descendants we read Gen 25:19
These are the generations of Isaac. Was the editor confused and wrote 'these are the generations of Isaac' as a
subscript to Ishmael's children? Or was he talking about the account of Isaac's children being born that follows the generations of Isaac?
It is the same with Gen 36:1
These are the generations of Esau. The chapter before is all about Jacob, but it is followed by a whole chapter listing Esau's descendants. Yet if Wiseman is to be believed this chapter about Esau's descendants has the
subscript Gen 37:2
These are the generations of Jacob. This isn't followed by a genealogical list but it is followed by the story of Jacob's children and how Joseph fell foul of his brothers.
Interestingly, the generations of Esau comes in two parts. Gen 36:1
These are the generations of Esau is followed by a list of the children born to his wives while he lived in Canaan and tells how they then moved to the hill country of Seir which became known as Edom. We then have Gen 36:9
These are the generations of Esau the father of the Edomites in the hill country of Seir. It recaps the names of Esau's sons and goes on to give all the descendants in their new home in the hill country of Seir.
Gen. 6:9 This is the account of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.
Gee, I don't see any list of descendants there.
...Gen 6:10
And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Gen. 11:27 This is the account of Terah.
Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth.
Hmmm. This one doesn't have a genealogy either, just the mention of Terah's sons that then a narrative.
But it does tell you Terah's sons and his grandson Lot. Toledoth can be longer and cover multiple generation but the basic meaning is birth and comes from
yalad to beget.
Gen. 25:19 This is the account of Abrahams son Isaac.
Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
And no genealogy here either. Just the mention of only one of Abraham's sons and his age at the time he married followed by a narrative. So far your claim isn't bearing on the evidence.
...Gen 25:21
And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
22 The children struggled together within her, and she said, "If it is thus, why is this happening to me?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
23 And the LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger."
24 When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.
25 The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau.
26 Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.
Seems pretty appropriate to me.
Gen. 37:2 This is the account of Jacob.
Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his fathers wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
And strike 4. No genealogy here either. All that follows is a narrative of Joseph's life, many of the details of which, Jacob didn't have access to.
It just tells the story of Jacob's children. Clearly toledoth is broader than a who begot whom genealogy and can include narratives of how the children were born or the narrative of the children, but each time the toledoth, a descent or birth, deals with the children the person named, down many generation or one, as a genealogical list or as a narrative, but it is always about their children. With Wiseman, any time it is possible for the the use not to fit his ideas, it doesn't.
And then when you apply the fact that genealogies are lists of ancestors and not descendants actually none of them work. If I told you I wanted you to take a look at my genealogy, what would expect to see? A tree of my ancestors? Or a tree of my descendants?
You are assuming genealogies have to follow the conventions we use in English where we normally label genealogies after the descendant rather than the ancestor. How do you know that was the labelling system used in Hebrew? You probably haven't got to it yet, but I did mention Ruth 4:18
Now these are the generations of Perez, which is preceded by the story of Ruth which Perez Judah's son was in no position to know, but is followed by a list of Perez's descendants down to David. The fact that all of the these are the generation of JoeBloggs are followed by lists of Joe's descendants or the stories of his children shows us the Hebrew convention for naming genealogies was very different.
Indeed Wiseman's claim fail every time they they weren't able to work just by chance.
It appears you've gone from the toledoth being "about" the named individual which didn't work out, to a "genealogy" of the named individual, which also doesn't work out. Either you need a new theory or come on board with me on this one.
No I was saying if you have a text that is about someone, the genealogy will be named after them whether it is a list of ancestors or a list of the person's descendants. Matthew names his list of descent ending in Jesus 'the book of the generation of Jesus', where as in the Da Vinci Code (
) the line of Jesus' descendants is named after him, Jesus' bloodline. But you are right about one thing, I am still learning and studying the topic. While Matthew used the Greek
genesis, generation to describe Jesus' ancestry, Toledoth in the phrase 'these are the generation of' is used consistently to describe someone's children or descendants. In places like Numbers it is used in the form 'by their generations' can be used to refer backwards to people's ancestry and being recorded according to their lineage Num 1:22 AV
And the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest son, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers. It is also used for order of birth Exodus 28:9
You shall take two onyx stones, and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, 10 six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth, though this may come from their order in the genealogy. It is never used to describe an account written or owned by someone.
But this truly has been part of the stumbling block of the toledoth for so long. Traditional structures just don't seem to work. But when we realize toledoth is not a term for genealogies all all, and that these are concluding remarks (per ancient structures) rather than introductory remarks (per less ancient structures), suddenly all the problems disappear. A toledoth could start with a genealogy, or it could start with a narrative. No more confusion.
Apart from all the places Wiseman's idea doesn't work.
Now Wiseman, to his credit, put forth this hypothesis that toledoth did not mean genealogies, but rather accounts, chronicles, histories, records, etc. And at the time he actually received very broad support from scholars. They are listed in his book (which I linked a few posts back). And in fact most modern dictionaries will affirm those translation options.
For instance, KM Hebrew Dictionary: account, record, genealogy, family line.
Strongs also lists history within its range of meanings.
But I don't think the translation generations ever works, frankly, in Genesis. Nor does genealogy. A genealogy can be in a toledoth, but a toledoth is not a genealogy.
As you can see in the examples above, most of the primary toledoth in Genesis are not followed by genealogies. (Unless of course you're going to change the definition of a genealogy, but hopefully you wont go there)
I wouldn't have a problem with account or record as a broader meaning of toledoth, though each time these are the generation of is used it is followed either by the genealogical list of their descendants or an account of their children. An account is certainly the broader meaning in Gen 2:4, (unless you want to read evolutionary meaning into the toledoth
). That is the only place his idea of toledoth as a colophon or
subscript is the best reading of the text. Worse still is his idea that toledoth is an account written by the named person or owned by them rather than an account of that person, or more simply their genealogy.
But what does work in every case (as Wiseman to his credit pointed out) is the author/owner theory. In every case it works out perfectly. All the named author/owners were either eyewitnesses to their account, or had access to eyewitnesses to their account. Adam was a contemporary to the events in his toledoth. Noah was a contemporary to the events in his. Shem, Ham and Japheth were contemporaries to all the events in there toledoth. Now in their case, we don't know which particular sections they each recorded. Seems more likely Japheth or Shem handled the part regarding Ham's sin. Regardless, Shem would have been a perfect account giver of the Table of Nations and Babel accounts, given is long lifespan after the Flood. And both Isaac and Jacob would have had access to direct witnesses of all the events in their toledoth.
That is simply an artefact of the long lifespans in Genesis where you want to claim authorship, or that people mentioned further down the text in Genesis usually lived later so you can always say they could have got their hands on earlier documents. But there is simply no basis for the claim that this is what toledoth means.
Now the only question is, why is there no toledoth subscript for Joseph? Wiseman had his own theories, but I think the simple answer may be, writing structures were different in Egypt. They may have used different methods and employed different structures. Scholars have noticed some egyptian attributes in this particular section, and I think it simply was a case in which there was no subscript included, and therefore Moses simply didn't know who the author was.
The Bible covers a great deal of time and therefore we should expect to see structural changes as we progress through the book.
Or there could be more documents and sections of documents making up Genesis than the ones marked by toledoth, or the Joseph section. Even if Wiseman were right, you would only get a colophon or
subscript included if the whole document all the way down to the end was inserted in a particular place. If the editor chose part of a document that covered the area he was dealing with there, then the
subscript would be left out.
