The Language of Genesis
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Moses wrote the Book of Genesis in a fully matured Hebrew language that was at that time (during the captivity and exodus) intensely under the influence of the Egyptian language -- the Hebrew language having been brought to its pitch of literary perfection by the Egyptian. The distinctly Egyptian tone in language, concept and custom pervades the entire book.
The key to the structure of the Book of Genesis, as we learned in The Toledoth in the Book of Genesis, following the most illuminating research of P. J. Wiseman, is to be found in the repetitious phrase, "These are the generations ['Toledoth'] of..." This valuable discovery left us with no doubt that the Book of Genesis was compiled from a series of ancient documents (histories) -- recorded on writing tablets -- each one signed by one or other well-known biblical character from the Patriarchal era (e.g. Noah, Shem, Terah, Isaac, etc.), who must have owned and/or written his own set of histories.
The main point that was to be concluded from all of this was that the Book of Genesis is a most ancient document, the bulk of its material having been written before the time of Moses.
Moses is traditionally regarded as being the editor or compiler of the Book of Genesis. I am going to produce some compelling evidence to show that this tradition is a reliable one. To this end, I expect to gain assistance from linguistics; specifically from the ancient Egyptian language. One Professor A. S. Yahuda made the enormously important discovery that Egyptian exerted a profound influence upon the language of Genesis. [1]
Here I shall be pre-supposing the following data pertaining to the historical Moses:
1). That Moses lived in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom; the time of those Asiatics of Stratum G/1 at Tell el-Daba (ancient Avaris), whom have been identified as the Israelites;
2). That Moses was, culturally speaking, "Egyptianized". For, since the aforementioned Asiatics, who were slaves, show every indication of having been "Egyptianized", how much more should we expect "Egyptianization" in the case of Moses, whom, we are told, had been brought up since childhood in the household of pharaoh (cf. Exodus 2:8, 10)! In fact, when Moses fled Egypt and arrived in Midian, he was straightaway identified there as being "an Egyptian" (Exodus 2:19).
3). Moses had been highly educated in all the culture of Egypt (Acts 7:22). Thus we would expect that he, in his speech and writing -- even after the Exodus -- would continue to reflect that sophisticated Egyptian influence in regard to idiom, polished phraseology, metaphors, etc.
Now, what we are going to discover in this article is that there does in fact exist a profound Egyptian influence of this latter kind throughout the language of Genesis. More:
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