ABSTRACT
Dailey et al., a leading non-biblical Mesopotamian scholar, demurs from some typical mainstream Old Testament scholarly tendencies to late-date aspects of the Old Testament narratives. There is the added discontinuity of the putative biblical characters in Genesis, for example Abraham. Writers such as J. Van Seters attempt to late-date Genesis, largely by appeal to parallels between predicate fragments in Genesis and later uses elsewhere. The complementary levels of historical and conceptual patterns clearly match on significant items between Genesis and Sumerian texts. Some of the data in the relevant part of Genesis appear to require construction as evidence of some synchronic influence, interaction, reception or synthesis with Sumerian and Ebla type of sources or polemical targets in circulation centuries before the Iron Age. It seems problematic to distance the relevant comparative features of Genesis to a temporally remote point so that all interactions are due to indirect mediation through the much later Iron Age and neo-Babylonian sources in the exile.
