1980

One of the most obvious starting points to a literary-critical analysis of sources of the story of the Flood is chronology. The first point to stress is, of course, the discrepancy between the information in Genesis 7:12 that the Flood prevailed for 40 days, and 7:24, which says that the waters increased over the land for 150 days. The classic literary critics saw here a proof of the existence of two completely different chronological systems and they wrote that these systems had been combined by the redactor in order to obtain one coherent chronology.

This chapter seeks to present a new hypothesis as to the number of chronological systems preserved in the Flood story: not two but three different chronologies. But before I turn to the thesis I must briefly deal with the traditional description of the chronological systems of J and P respectively.

The chronological system of J

The fragmentary state of the J sections in Genesis 6–8 is well known and needs no comment here. Below I shall mention some consequences of the defective-ness of the J version.

The dates in the fragments of J are:

1. • Genesis 7:4: seven-day interval to the coming of the Flood.

2. • Genesis 7:4: forty days as the duration of the Flood.

3. • Genesis 8:10: seven days from the first sending out of the dove to the second.

4. • Genesis 8:12: seven-day interval between the second and the third sending.