karl, i agree with you completely on the statistical issue. but what fascinated me in this episode was rather the formation of a legend. is the legend (say, the rabbinical stories involving serah) really a later invention, or was it already known to the biblical editor and justifies her inclusion in the text? the case of dinah is slightly different because the story of her misfortunes is already included in the biblical text.
nir cohen On Fri, 25 May 2012 14:32:42 -0700, K Randolph wrote > Nir: > > This is in the context of listing all of Jacob’s sons and daughters, > grandsons and granddaughters, at the time Jacob moved to Egypt. There were a > whole slew of sons, but only two daughters mentioned (Dinah was also listed). > > Such an imbalance between males and females is highly unusual, but not > unheard of, even in modern days. (Several years ago there was a little news > story, about one column inch in a newspaper, about a family that was > celebrating the first birth of a daughter in over a century of sons only. > Trivia that was unimportant, so forgotten until recently reminded of it.) > > It looks like later writers are making a mountain out of a molehill. > > Karl W. Randolph. > > On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat. <[email protected]> > wrote: > in relation to the misterious mention of serah's mention in genesis > 46:17, i found the following source fascinating: > > http://www.bibleandjewishstudies.net/articles/serah.htm > > it appears that serah is mentioned three times in genesis and several times > in the jewish and samaritan tradition. besides jim's questions, this raises > two additional aspects: > > (i) was serah mentioned in 46:17 in relation to the rabbinical > tradition of her role in making two important revalations connected with > joseph? this raises the following issue: can we get a better idea > of the biblical dating issue by including extra-biblical sources? > i suppose this point was examined somewhere. > > (ii) was serah mentioned because of inheritance issues, similar to those > mentioned in relation to CLOFXAD's daughters? > > nir cohen > > -- Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org) _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
