[Amezarak]

At least portions of the Pentateuch certainly date prior to the Exile, because we have direct archeological evidence in the form of dated, physical scrolls.

At any rate both the Babylonians and the ancient Israelites were Semitic peoples, so obviously they had a shared background long before the Exile.

There are also many references in early Genesis that do suggest it originates in traditions much older, including references to great cities and powers that were long, long gone by the Exile. This actually sent me quite recently down some rabbit holes.

[DiogenesKynikos]

I wrote specifically that the early chapters of Genesis date to the exile.

The Bible is not a single book. It's really a collection of different works, written over the course of centuries by different people. Different parts date from different eras (and then were subsequently edited over the centuries).

> we have direct archeological evidence in the form of dated, physical scrolls.

From what I know, only very short fragments of a few prayers survive from before the exile.

[Amezarak]

Sure, I don’t think anybody disputes that the Bible is a not single book written at once.

But the claim that any part of Genesis dates to the Exile is a weak historiographical claim, based primarily on a few pillars of very weak circumstantial evidence: a) we don’t have many physical examples dated to a prior time - but that’s not at all surprising; the vast supermajority of texts don’t survive, and many of the most ancient copies we do have are relatively recent discoveries; b) it makes sense to some people to argue this based on (reasonable) speculation about the development of the Jewish religion and the pressures at different periods of its development and c) as a corollary to b, one mainstream opinion is that Genesis can mostly be attributed to two different sources by a stylistic analysis and one of them is simply believed to date around the Exile.

This corresponds to the general current fads in historiography and history but it is by no means definite, and we shouldn’t be surprised if it is all overturned in a night by a single discovery, as these things very often are. This type of historiography is not really rigorous in a meaningful sense and is based essentially on current academic trends and a few authorities.

So we can safely consider the arguments underlying the dating ourselves without getting in too much trouble, but we don’t even have to do that to address your particular claim that the portions of Genesis must have been devised by an Exilic writer due to Babylonian influence. This essentially requires engaging in a deliberate pious fraud, which then was taken up by the other Israelites without question and who accepted the new stories with no recorded debate, and which also received no pushback when the Israelites who did not go into Exile. We would expect the possibility of diverging traditions on this point, but for example, the Samaritans have precisely the same story on this point, although the dating of that is also a point of contention. Either way, we should keep in mind that only some Israelites went into Exile, and plenty remained in Israel and Judah and maintained their traditions through the 70 year Exile.

It’s possible that this did happen. But it’s also the case that Babylonian contact was not new in the Exile period. The Israelites didn’t exist in a vacuum, they were part of the tapestry of the wider Semitic world for their entire existence and would have had familiarity with all these stories and beliefs the entire time. Indeed, it’s most commonly believed that the Israelite religion was not unique, but a simple development into monotheism from a normal localized Canaanite religion. And indeed, at some point, they all shared a common origin. Rather than adapting a Sumerian-via-Babylon story in a very late period, it’s a much more parsimonious explanation that some version of the story always existed amongst the Israelites in their oral tradition regardless of when it was committed to writing.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Whenever you date the writing down of the early chapters of Genesis, it's clear that the flood story heavily copied directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh. The parallels, down to little details, are too strong to be simply due to similar stories floating around.

I don't see why this should be called a "pious fraud." Babylon was a massive cultural center of that time, and the land of Israel was a relative backwater on its periphery. Babylon would have exerted an enormous cultural influence on the surrounding peoples, including the Israelites.

[Amezarak]

They wouldn’t have just been similar stories, they would have been descendants of the same story originating from the proto-Semitic people they both came from. We’re not talking about a coincidence, we’re talking about the same story.

Exactly as Romans and Greeks had basically the “same” stories, in most cases they were not copying from each other, they had the same source.

At any rate, as the example in your other comments shows, it doesn’t share the same “little details”, the little details are different.

> I don't see why this should be called a "pious fraud." Babylon was a massive cultural center of that time, and the land of Israel was a relative backwater on its periphery. Babylon would have exerted an enormous cultural influence on the surrounding peoples, including the Israelites.

Because you’re suggesting some Israelite in Babylon basically saw the stories and then inserted it into Genesis under different names, probably existing ones, and that everyone else just went along with it. That is, they all knew it was not part of their tradition and that some guy was just adding it in based on the Babylonian story but accepted the insertion anyway because…

[DiogenesKynikos]

Most religions are syncretic. You're taking a very modern view of Judaism, as a very clearly defined set of beliefs that cannot just borrow from other religions. Early Judaism (if that's even the correct term her, because this was a very different religion from what we now know) was not even clearly monotheistic. The idea of borrowing stories from neighboring peoples (especially incredibly powerful neighbors with great cultural influence) would not have been as shocking as it would be nowadays.

> they would have been descendants of the same story originating from the proto-Semitic people they both came from.

The Epic of Gilgamesh predates Genesis by about 1500 years. The people who wrote Genesis would have known of the Epic of Gilgamesh. I do not find it convincing to hand-wave the identical details in the stories (like the story about beaching on a mountain and then releasing birds from the Ark to find dry land, until one doesn't return) as merely suggesting a common origin. Babylon was a superpower of the time, both politically and culturally. The Israelites were influenced by it.

[Amezarak]

> You're taking a very modern view of Judaism, as a very clearly defined set of beliefs that cannot just borrow from other religions. Early Judaism (if that's even the correct term her, because this was a very different religion from what we now know) was not even clearly monotheistic.

Yes, as I said:

> Indeed, it’s most commonly believed that the Israelite religion was not unique, but a simple development into monotheism from a normal localized Canaanite religion.

Early Judaism was obviously polytheistic. The Flood story is almost certainly a story that dates back to those times, well before the Exile.

That said, by the Babylonian Exile, Judaism was clearly monotheistic and not "syncretic" (that's not how syncretism works anyway).

> The Epic of Gilgamesh predates Genesis by about 1500 years.

This is the issue. You're conflating the current academic consensus (very rough and subject to change) on the composition of Genesis with "when did the Genesis stories originate among the Israelites." Nobody thinks Genesis was written ex nihilo by some priests in Babylon and pressed on the rest of the Jewish population. (If nothing else, this would make post-Exile events totally untenable: how did they convince the non-Exile Jews of...anything?)

> The people who wrote Genesis would have known of the Epic of Gilgamesh. I do not find it convincing to hand-wave the identical details in the stories (like the story about beaching on a mountain and then releasing birds from the Ark to find dry land, until one doesn't return) as merely suggesting a common origin.

There's nothing handwavy about this. This is exactly how it works, in religions and myths across the world. Sometimes we've been able to trace it very clearly, as with Indo-Europeans. The more closely related the peoples, the more their stories match up. Two Semitic peoples in the same region having two near-identical stories without them having borrowed from one another is the least surprising thing in the world; oral tradition actually holds up pretty well in most cases (as documented in the original article.) This is in fact clearly supported by the theory of the composition of Genesis by multiple authors, with very slightly different narratives.

If you want to be more technical about the composition of Genesis, opinions vary, but the current consensus holds there were three or four main authors: the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priest. The only one of these believed to date to the Exile is the Priest, with all the others predating it. The earliest source is believed to be the Yahwist, supposed to be writing in the 800s BC. Critically, much of the Flood story and the details about birds are specifically believed to originate with the Yahwist source before the Exile period.

> Babylon was a superpower of the time, both politically and culturally. The Israelites were influenced by it.

Yes, as I specifically said:

> It’s possible that this did happen. But it’s also the case that Babylonian contact was not new in the Exile period. The Israelites didn’t exist in a vacuum, they were part of the tapestry of the wider Semitic world for their entire existence and would have had familiarity with all these stories and beliefs the entire time.

Either way, all the Semitic versions of the Flood myth likely depend on a Sumerian original, along with the general influence of Sumerian myth on Semitic belief. (Personally, I have no problem with supposing that it was based on some real event and then the tale grew in the telling, just as Gilgamesh was a real king.) It's of course conceivable that before the Exile the Canaanites and the Babylonians crosschecked each other's versions, but it's not at all necessary. There was never any reason for "late" contamination of the story by Babylonians; the pan-Semitic influence always existed, and whoever the proto-Israelites were, obviously they were wandering around somewhere concurrently with the other Semitic peoples.

At any rate, the Babylonians were very definitely on the downslope during the Exile period, as evidence by their permanent fall from notability after their conquest by the Persians at the end of it. They and Egypt were the two regional powers Judah was stuck between at the time. Israel, of course, was earlier destroyed by the Assyrians, who had been a definite superpower but saw their glory days end with Nineveh.