The Book of the Toledot (Descendants) of Adam (Genesis 5; 11:10–26 and Related Texts)
This chapter moves through multiple phases in tracing the formation of Genesis 5 and 11:10–26. Because the textual history of these chapters is particularly unclear, the chapter starts by treating this issue. It argues that key indicators in Gen 11:10–26 suggest that the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch represent later scribal revisions that solve problems implicit in an early chronology found in the Masoretic text for Gen 11:10–26 by lengthening the lives of most postflood primeval patriarchs. In turn, it appears that the scribes who produced the Septuagint and Masoretic text of Genesis 5 used a similar strategy of lengthening the lives of primeval patriarchs in order to solve problems implicit in an early chronology found in the Samaritan Pentateuch text for Genesis 5. These scribes appear to have been dealing with problems that emerged when an earlier, pre-Priestly “scroll of the toledot (=descendants) of Adam” (Gen 5:1a), with its chronology of long-lived primeval patriarchs, was appropriated by the author of the Priestly source as the initial basis for the primeval history section of that source. This Toledot scroll, in turn, likely took its basic genealogical information from non-P materials about Adam and Eve’s descendants (now found in Genesis 4) as well as Noah’s offspring (Gen 9:18–27 and parts of Genesis 10). Yet it rearranged those materials into a form that was partially modeled on late versions of the Sumerian King List tradition, even as the nonroyal focus of the non-P materials was preserved.