Enjoy!

A bit of background:

I was going to start editing a novella I wrote last February, called “Monster Story (working title)”. It got good feedback from my first readers, but they knew and I knew that it could be much better. It sat on my hard-drive for months while I worked on other projects. Meanwhile I thought long and hard about it, and realized that to get it to the point where I’d be happy with it as a novella, I’d have to re-write huge chunks of it, rather than just do edits.
To make sure I had everything worked out in my head, I thought I’d write my notes down as a dialogue between three characters. Imagine a director, a producer and a script writer, sitting in a room, trying to work out the details of a new movie project, almost from scratch.

The format is no accident, as I’ve recently read and reread the Raiders of the Lost Ark Story Conference, which is the transcript of the first story meeting between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan (the script writer) for that film. It’s a great read, especially if you already know and love the Indiana Jones movies. And who doesn’t? They come up with loads of great ideas, and quite a few bad ones too, but you see why the good ones made it into the final movies.

I was wondering if I could be just as creative as Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan combined. How’s that for setting a lofty goal?

So I thought, “If this works, it could be a fun creative writing exercise, and if not, at least I’ll have a good set of notes for the Monster Story rewrite.” And to make it more interesting, I gave the different characters different motivations, and story to play out between them over the course of the conference.

And so I began. It’s now less than four days later, and I finished a 35,000 word manuscript, which is just as long as the original “Monster Story” novella! Yet I think it’s a much better story. And it’s a much more interesting way to tell the story too.

I decided to edit it and release it online right away. Why not? It’s an experimental piece of fiction, but one I think works. The style of writing, which is nothing but dialogue, but not a script as such, is something I’ve done many, many times in the past. It came very naturally. No wonder I knocked out 10,000 words a day for three days. It has an energy I really enjoy.

And now that I’ve got the story locked down tight, even if it’s from the point of view of a movie script, I’ll probably write a longer and more traditional novel, the definitive version of “The Monster Story”, before the end of the year.

Clicking on the map will take you to the sosauce.com trip page where you can zoom in and out stuff. Also, the trip starts and ends in Punta Arenas, number 1 and 8 on the map. This means a loooong journey just to get there.

Yes, I’m returning to Antarctica! It is, by far, the most amazing place I’ve been to while working on cruise ships. Last time I managed to get off the ship and get up close to penguins on the islands and mainland of Antarctica. I even have a stamp in my passport! This time the ship will be doing what’s call “Scenic Cruising” which means it doesn’t stop, and nobody gets off. I will, however, try my best to wangle my way onto the zodiac, which they let off the ship so the photographer can take photos in spectacular places.

Either way, I bough myself a new zoom lens, so I’ll try to do as much wildlife photographs as possible. I hope to photograph:
whales
penguins
orcas
seals
various birds

And, as you can see by the map, I’ll be back in the Falklands again, for the forth time in the past year, so I’ll once again do my traditional walk and see if the bird families have grown up.

Other goals for this cruise:

- Write. Or, more specifically, edit Combat (working title) and Monster Story (working title). Combat won’t take too much, but the ending needs to change. Monster Story needs more work, and I intend to break the story into two parts. From the feedback I found that people were interested in the back story, but I skip over these events in the novel. What I’m going to do is write the “getting to the planet” story as a stand alone novella, and explain the entire story there. Then Monster Story will become the second novella in a sequence. I always had one more story to tell in the same universe, so that could become part three in a trilogy.

- Shoot video. I just released my International Juggler 2009 video. It’s now 2010, and this year’s video will continue in a similar way, but with a twist. It’ll have more structure.

- Read and record SFBRP episodes. I’ve decided to try out audio books, mainly because I wanted to get a copy of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, and audible could deliver it in minutes. Planning ahead means I could have ordered it from Amazon.com, but I’m not that clever.

- More video. I want to record some shaky footage of me in Montevideo and cut it into the Panic attacks video.

- New podcast. I’m thinking about starting a new podcast, where I release one per trip, telling stories and generally giving my thoughts about things I see and do. It’ll be called something like “Luke Around the World”, which is a crap pun, but sort of catchy. However, I only intend to release the podcast if I think it’s any good. Look out for that in a few weeks.

I think that’s about it. I’ll try to upload photos as I go.

This is the culmination of 12 months of traveling and juggling. The see the page on my website that explains pretty much everything about the video.

I was at a party back in 2001 (or maybe 2002), and I found a Shakespearean Fridge Magnet set. A play would have been too long, and I’d have run out of tiles. A sonnet, on the other hand, was just about the right length. It even conforms to the rules of sonnet writing. According to wikipedia:

A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unemphasized syllable followed by an emphasized syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

It even sort of makes sense.

This is a song I started writing on a beach in Ireland, back in 2006. I only just finished it today. One of my goals for 2010 is to write and record an album’s worth of songs, so to get myself into the project I decided to actually finish writing this one.

Here are some lyrics:
Watching the sun go down
Pretend there’s no one else around
Sitting Hand in hand
Pushing toes into the sand

And the birds skip out of reach
As the waves break on the beach
And the wind is blowing free
And sun kisses the sea

And there’s a whisper, hardly heard
It’s wonderful
Wonderful

A reflection in the eye
Of the sun at the edge of the sky
The blanket keeps the cold at bay
It’s the perfect way to end the day

As the sun dips out of sight
And the evening turns to night
And the clouds part overhead
And the stars shine down instead

And there’s a whisper, hardly heard,
It’s wonderful

Walking home now in the moonlight
There’s no hurry as the night’s sublime
Shooting star seen close to midnight
Make a wish, and make it good
Make it right
Make it count this time

Time is on your side
Time, time is on your side

And then finally fall asleep
And the dream is good to keep
And the dawn begins to break
And two lovers stir and wake

And there’s a whisper, hardly heard
you’re wonderful.

There are three main types of three club combat.

1.
The first is group combat, where it’s just a huge melee of jugglers, and it’s every man/woman for himself/herself. You can play this with three people, 30 people (at small juggling events), or 300 people (at the European Juggling Conventions). With a small number of people you can have “first to five wins” sessions, which makes it more interesting than just playing a series of one-off games.

At the larger events, during the “official” tournament, to counter the randomness of action in the large, crowded games, we have four rounds of open group games, then take the winners of the four games and put them into a four person final.

In 2009, I got through to the four person final, but was knocked out by Jochen, another Berlin juggler, who was the overall winner. This was the size of the match in 2009:

Here’s a video of the forth round of the four open games at the EJC in 2008. I went on to win the four person final:

But at conventions it’s not all about the “official” games; the more interesting sessions take place late at night. As soon as one game finishes, the next begins! And as you can play as long as you want, and drop out at any time, most nights the combat sessions last four or five hours. I and many others often play for over three hours at a time.

2.
One on one tournaments (or “Celebrity Fight Nights”) are events that normally last an hour and a half. Eight or twelve jugglers are invited to take part, and it’s knockout tournament, sometimes with group stages for the first rounds. This event is good entertainment for the audience, as the competitors play up their characters, WWE style, but the skill on display is as high as it gets. I’ve yet to win an EJC title, but have taken second place in four out of the last five EJC tournaments. I’ve lost to Jay Gilligan (the best player from America) twice and Jochen Pfeiffer (the best player from Germany) twice. Winning at the EJC is one of my life goals for 2010, although both Jay and Jochen will probably be there. Come to think of it, of the 20 or so Fight Nights I’ve played in, there have only been half a dozen individual winners. Jay Gilligan, Jochen Pfeiffer, Aaron Greg (from Canada), myself, Manu Laude (France), Florian Marienfeld (Berlin)… maybe one other person who has slipped my mind.

Here’s me and Jochen in the final round at the EJC 2009. We meet in final rounds quite often, and I’ve yet to beat him.

3.
The last kind of combat is Team Combat, where jugglers go two on two or three on three. There aren’t that many team events organized, as group and one on one tournaments are much easier to plan, but if you have four or six jugglers, team combat is by far the most interesting and tactical form of combat. Here’s a video of me and Flo vs JJ and DJ. It’s a few years old, but is the best breakdown of what can happen during a team combat match.

Combat is one of my favorite things about juggling, and juggling is my favorite hobby, as well as being my job. It has absolutely no use in a real fight, but it is a very complex and stupidly high skilled martial art.

1 – Work and travel:
1.1 – Keep working on cruise ships, though structuring the my time away better than last year to maximize time in Berlin/with friends/doing my own thing.
1.2 – I already know I’ll be visiting, on various cruises, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, India, and Dubai for the first time, along with a few other places. I may be going to Antarctica again too.
1.3 – On top of work travel, spend some frequent flier points and travel home from various gigs independently. In this way I hope to spend a week in New Zealand, and a week in Japan.
1.4 – Release my International Juggler 2009 video, the one I’ve been working on for the last year, which features me juggling in every country/place I visited.
1.5 – Shoot, edit, and release International Juggler 2010, a similar video as above, of all the places I visit in 2010. I have some ideas about how to make this different/better than the 2009 video, but I don’t need to think about that too much for the next few weeks.
1.6 – Go to Poland. I live really close, but have never been. What’s up with that?
1.7 – Go to the Berlin, British, and European juggling conventions. And a convention in September/October too. Maybe the Turkish again, maybe another.
1.8 – Spend four to six weeks in New York. I’ve visited the city for a few weeks, but I want to get to know the city better. I hear so many people from there talk about it, and I want to experience it all first hand.
1.9 – Maybe, if I can sort the dates right, I might go to DragonCon, to nerd out with the scifi and podcasting geeks.

2 – Juggling:
2.1 – Keep improving my solo shows and performing skills.
2.2 – Work on my Room show project, a juggling theater show. I plan to have all the set building work complete by March, and 20-30 minutes complete by May.
2.3 – Perform a short version of the Room Show at the Berlin Juggling Convention in June.
2.4 – Have an hour show finished by October, and put on a series of shows in my own home for invited audiences.
2.5 – Finish other juggling routines I’m working on at the moment.
2.6 – Run the British Young Juggler of the Year show for the sixth year. Also do a series of online workshops for those taking part, in attempt to raise the quality of the acts. Nobody has won a Gold Award yet!
2.7 – I’m in charge of the Open Stages at the EJC in Finland. That means seven or eight nights of zero stress and easy work as my superior organization skills result in everything running smoothly, and every night’s show rocking. Or so I hope.
2.8 – Generally rock out playing combat.
2.9 – Beat Jochen in the final of a Fight Night 3 Club Combat tournament. I’ve won a tournament we both entered before, but I wasn’t the one to knock him out.
2.10 – Release some more Juggling Podcasts.
2.11 – Release some interesting juggling videos on YouTube (I have a few good ideas).
2.12 – Juggle 9 clubs for 19 passes each with Pola.
2.13 – Also, depending other work commitments, I might enter Britain’s Got Talent. If I do have the time, the final decider will be the question “Will this cause me any stress at all?” At the moment I have very little stress in my life, by design, so I might as well keep it that way.

3 – Writing:
3.1 – Keep writing for this blog.
3.2 – Finish editing and release (and decide on final titles for) on my two works-in-progress novels: Combat Story and Monster Story. Completion dates: January and March.
3.3 – Have another run at Human Danger (working title), the novel I began but didn’t complete in 2009. I have a feeling this will be a longer-term project than just this year though.
3.4 – Research, outline, and write another novel I’m giving the working title “Arc of Life.” It’ll be a fantasy novel set in a world of strange creatures and magic. My fiction writing style at the moment is very much a “just get on with the plot” kind of thing, which means a lot is packed into a very small package. This works well for near-future science fiction thrillers. Writing fantasy set in a strange new world with a completely different history and landscape than our own will hopefully force me to concentrate more on descriptive scene-setting writing, rather than character, dialogue, and action.
3.5 – Start work on the final novel in the Minding Tomorrow world.
3.6 – Do an audio recording of one of my novels. As long as I keep my novels short, this could be a good way to get more readers/listeners. I’d need to buy a new microphone though.

4 – Podcasting:
4.1 – Keep reading science fiction novels and reviewing them for the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast. I also plan to review any fantasy novels I read.
4.2 – Be a guest on other podcasts. I know I’ll be back on the SFFaudio podcast at some point.
4.3 – Doing some more Juggling Podcasts. I really miss the interviews I did with other jugglers.
4.4 – I’m thinking of starting a new podcast about traveling. I enjoy posting photos here on the blog, but I see and do lots of things that I never write about here. For example, I have a lot to say about a place like Punta Arenas, but it’s not the kind of thing that would work as a blog post. I’m thinking of doing a trip-by-trip podcast, or just saving up enough observations and stories and experiences to fill 45 minutes, and releasing it whenever.
4.5 – If I’m going to do this, I’m going to buy a portable mp3 recorder with a mic attachment, so I can record easily while hiking across a city or up a hill.
4.6 – Thinking about that last point, what I should actually do is see if my iPhone would work just as well, as then I need to carry one less gadget.

5 – Photography:
5.1 – I have no plans for my photography. It’s the only hobby I have which has no performance aspect at all (I even podcast about my reading), so there is no pressure to do anything at all. I’ll just keep carrying my camera, and keep improving my skills and artistry.
5.2 – But I will try to keep posting photos to my blog.
5.3 – And I’m going to buy a new zoom lens, because the autofocus on my current (really shitty) zoom lens is broken.
5.4 – And I’ll probably buy another two or three camera bags.

6 – Music:
6.1 – Write an album’s-worth of new songs and record them by the end of the year.
6.2 – Write the music for Room.
6.3 – Buy a five string bass guitar and learn to rock.

7 – Other goals:
7.1 – Get better at speaking German. I plan to hire a personal tutor, as regular classes don’t work with my schedule.
7.2 – Try to spend a few hours a week in the gym whenever I’m on a cruise ship. I spend way more time than that in the bars, and in the jacuzzis, and eating, and other unhealthy things. A few hours in the gym will help me keep my fitness levels up.
7.3 – Spend more time with friends.
7.4 – Make new friends.
7.5 – Have sex.
7.6 – Maybe buy a new laptop. This macbook has served me well for almost two years, but I’m doing more and more music and video and photo editing, and it’s struggling a bit. I think I’ll buy a full spec 13″ MacBook Pro, and upgrade to a solid state hard drive for super quick load times.

8 – Consumption of entertainment:
8.1 – Catch up with Dexter.
8.2 – Watch more than the first episode of Battlestar Galactica. I’ve had the season 1 box set in my cabin(s) for the past eight weeks, and haven’t watched a single episode.
8.3 – Play more Natural Selection and, if it is ever released, Natural Selection 2. I might need more memory for my PC though.

I think that’s about it! The most important things to me out of all these are continued success with my job and the Room show. Unfortunately these two are at odds, as one requires me to travel, and the other requires me to be in Berlin.

Or maybe, looking at it glass full, the two goals create a balance, so when I’m not doing one, I should be working on the other.

Or maybe, if I work hard enough, the Room show can become my job by the end of the year, and then I don’t have to worry. So, if I have nothing to show for the Room project by April, you have permission to slap me hard.

And so, after making a list of all I’ve accomplished in 2009, and seeing how long it is, I’m very proud of my productivity for the year.

In the Win Column.

Work and travel:
- Got a lot better at performing. I got some really good compliments from people who saw me perform my show on a cruise ship back in 2007, and now again in 2009, and they said I’d really improved. This makes me feel good.
- Earned more money than I’ve been able to spend.
- Visited about 45 countries and territories, including many countries I’ve never visited before 2009. For example, I’d never visited Africa before 2009, and now I’ve been to Tanzania, Kenya, Morocco, and Egypt.
- Had really good summer trip to France, Spain, and Portugal.
- Did some good shows at street show festivals in Germany and Austria.
- Made an awesome video of me juggling in all the above countries, a video I’ll be releasing in January. I’ll release this very soon.
- Attended TAMLondon.
- And of course, while it isn’t a “productivity” or “accomplishment” thing, I’ve met loads of people along the way and made many new friends.

Juggling:
- Playing lots of combat.
- Did no performing or hosting at the Berlin convention. This was the plan, and I managed it for the first time in five years.
- Organized the British Young Juggler of the Year competition for the fifth year in the row.
- Hosted a good show at the EJC.
- After wanting to go for the past three years, I finally got to the Sundance Turkish Juggling Festival. I performed my full show, exactly the same as I normally do it for non-jugglers, and it went down really well. This means a lot to me, as I never want to make juggling acts for anyone else but me, and if I enjoy it, I think both juggling and non-juggling audiences should like it too.
- Created four new juggling routines and acts. Most importantly, these acts use juggling equipment I already carry in my case. This means I’m progressively taking less equipment for more minutes of material.
- Released loads of videos on YouTube, including magnet juggling, air bounces, squeeze catches, act videos, and more. Also I released a few 10 minute workshop videos about juggling.

Writing:
- Started yet another blog, and kept posting without many breaks.
- Released my first novel “Minding Tomorrow” online for free, as an eBook. I got loads of great feedback about it.
- Completed two other novels, though I’m still editing both of them. I should release them both over the next few months.
- Started writing a third novel, and while I didn’t complete it, I did learn a lot.
- Wrote a load of articles and workshops for the Kaskade magazine.
- After a year of reading, thinking, and studying, wrote my first Higher Biblical Criticism essay.

Reading and podcasting:
- Read about 40 novels.
- Reviewed all but one or two of those novels for the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast.
- Joined other podcasts as a guest, including the Friday Night Party Line, The Sofanauts, and SFFaudio. This is always a lot of fun, and I’d like to do more in the future.

Photography:
- This has become much more of a hobby for me in the past year, and I’m becoming more and more impressed with the images I’m capturing.
- I kept a photo blog at the EJC and the Turkish Juggling Festival, both of which I really enjoyed.
- I’ve had quite a few images picked for the sosauce.com photo of the day.

Music:
- Wrote six or seven songs.
- Recorded four music tracks.
- Bought a new guitar.
- Performed my very first solo singing and guitar playing set.

In the Fail Column.

- Back injury put me out of action for two months at the start of the year.
- Getting dumped by my girlfriend in August.
- Only having gay men hit on me since I’ve been single.
- Spending too much time away from Berlin, which means I don’t see as much of my friends as I’d like, and the projects I work on at home suffer.
- Not improving much with my German speaking skills, even though I can carry off simple conversations.
- Not progressing very far with my Room Project, a new juggling theater show that has been in the works for two years now.
- Not winning the Fight Night 3 Club Combat Tournaments at either the Berlin or European juggling conventions. I lost to Jochen in the final both times.
- After winning the 3 club combat in the official EJC games in 2008, I only came third in 2009. Come to think of it, I might have won the BJC games combat, but can’t remember.
- New Years Resolution: learning to touch type. I didn’t do this. I find the hand position on my laptop too difficult, as I end up resting them on the mouse pad. And also there’s this really hot spot under the heel of my left hand…

Also, left over from mine and Pola’s “10 Personal Juggling Goals for 2009″ list that we did in the end of 2008 Juggling Podcast, here are some that we failed:
- 9 clubs, 18 passes each.
- Motion tracking routines. I worked on this a bit, but the return on investment probably isn’t very high.
- Host shows together.
- Perform on cruise ships together.
- More Juggling Podcasts.

Meanwhile, in 2009, I’ve been enjoying:
- The computer game Natural Selection.
- The TV show Dexter.
- Watching Tennis and American Football.
- The following podcasts (in alphabetical order): Astronomy Cast, The Bible Geek, The Bugle, Collings and Herrin, Fighting Talk, Filmspotting, gadget, GeekNights, The Good Atheist, In Our Time, Little Atoms, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo, More or Less, Norman Centuries, Point of Inquiry, Richard Herring’s As It Occurs to me, Science Fiction and Politics, SFFaudio, The Skeptic’s Guide, Skeptoid, The Sofanauts, This Week in Google, This Week in Photography, and Writing Excuses. I listened to other podcasts, but not every episode, and not regularly.

So that’s my showing for 2009! Tomorrow I’ll post my goals and plans for 2010 and the years ahead.

What Mount Osorno looked like back in March:

Yesterday I took a walk around Punta Arena, the southernmost city in Chile. Man, that is one ugly place to visit! I took a few photos, but it’s hard to find an interesting shot. I may talk more about it in the future, as I’ve not yet moved the photos over to my laptop.

When I got back to the ship, I was feeling tired, and not very hungry, so I decided to have a bit of a sleep. When I woke up, I had to rush to the toilet for a series of diarrhea blasts and vomit lunges. Yup, the gastrointestinal norovirus struck me down.

Funnily enough, when I went to the Christmas Eve crew party, found myself in a huge room on deck three, surrounded by 500 crew, all hugging each other and kissing each other (on the cheek), and I turned to someone (I can’t remember who) and said something like “Wow, this place is a swirling morass of norovirus vectors.” Statement = true!

So I was quarantined to my room for 24 hours. And I took pills and got an injection in my arse. And at nothing but a plate of rice in all that time. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, not even opening my eyes long enough to watch a film. I couldn’t read either, though that might have been down to my current book not being very good. So all I did was lay on my back, try not to think about crying, crying, sleeping, and dreaming.

I had one of those weird dream-within-a-dream dreams. Some strange things happened, but when I woke up I everything was fine, and Pola was next to me in bed, and I was back in Berlin, and life was good. And then I thought “wait a moment” and woke up for real. And I was in my cabin, alone, single, a good 12,000 km from Berlin, sick, and starving hungry all at the same time.

I did, however, feel a lot better this morning, and I spent the day thinking (good thoughts), sleeping (with good dreams) and writing (see previous blog post).

Due to the quarantine, I missed visiting Ushuaia, and having a Christmas steak dinner with the production show cast. That’s a real pity, but I’ll be back in Ushuaia in January. I’ll aim to eat steak then.

Here’s a photo from the last time I visited Ushuaia.

If you have about an hour to spare, give it a read.

Repeating Stories in Genesis and Hints of the Shared Identity of the Patriarchs.

Introduction: Traditional causes of repeated stories.

In Genesis, and the other books of the Torah, many individual stories and story elements are repeated. Sometimes these repeated story elements are for thematic or literary effect, written by a single author, and might only be noticed by a knowledgeable reader. These repeated story elements tie together two meaningful events, such as Moses and Aaron’s ascent of Mount Sinai (Exodus 24) using much of the same phrasing as Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22).

Another source of repeated stories stem from the fact that the Torah was not written by a single author as a single piece of history or legend. Different theories have been posited to explain the many contradictions within the text itself, the different names of God, the differing importance of characters and themes, and many other factors.

The Supplementary Hypothesis says that the Torah was once a much, much shorter document, and over centuries many different authors added new material, expanding stories, changing others, adding new passages from other sources, and so on.

The Documentary Hypothesis posits that the Torah is made up out of four distinct and once-independent texts. The three main texts are known as the J, E and P texts, and each was written by a different author, or group of authors. At one point J and E were combined by a redactor to make a single document (RJE). Later RJE was combined with P, D and other sources to make the Torah as we know it today. As the source texts were widely known, the final redacted text had to include all (or a significant proportion of) the original texts. For this paper I’ll be holding to the Documentary Hypothesis. (To find out more see Who Wrote the Bible?, by Richard Elliot Friedman.)

The source texts often recount the same events, though the theme or the character or the exact details may differ from source to source. Sometimes it is impossible to have each story told two, three or four different times due to it being a defining point in the overall history. In these cases, the Redactor combined the stories into a single narrative.

For example, at the end of the story of Noah’s flood, God promises that he will never destroy the Earth again. He actually promises this twice! But the flood only happened once. Of course it did, because if it happened twice, one of God’s promises would have been broken (Genesis 8 & 9).

So the redactor has combined the J and P flood stories into one story. Within the single story we find many, many contradictions. For example, did Noah take one pair of each animal onto the arc (P) or seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals (J)? Did the flood last for a year or more (P) or for just forty days and nights (J)? Why did Noah release a raven (P) and then a dove (J)?

At other times, the stories can be repeated, one after the other. For example, the story of the creation of Adam is in both Genesis 1 (P) and Genesis 2 (J).

And, to use a previous example, the story of Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai is repeated many times. The Ten Commandments are given once in Exodus 20, again in Exodus 34 (with seven of the commandments being different), and with yet another retelling in Deuteronomy 5 (similar wording to the first Ten Commandments, but told in past tense and with many factual differences).

With the following arguments I’d like to show a third possible cause for repeated stories, in Genesis in particular.

Why combine sources?: The Torah as a Document of Common National Identity.

When founding a new country from disparate groups of people, it is good to have a single common shared history. Before they split, the northern kingdom of Israel and southern kingdom of Judah would have had a single historical founding population. They would have had a single set of founding legends, but over the years of separation the details of each of the legends would have changed.

In the case of the Torah, the E source contains the northern versions of the stories, the J source contains the southern versions of the stories, and the P source contains the priestly version of events.

However, each source has a different focus, a different theology, and a slightly different cast of characters.

The character of Abraham is common to all three sources, though his name changes from Abram to Abraham. In J, the character of Judah is given special attention, saving Joseph from his brothers (Genesis 37) and involved in other significant events, while he is hardly mentioned in P and E (in E it is the oldest brother, Rueben, who saves Joseph in Genesis 37). Aaron, a priest, is given special significance in the P source, as is expected, yet is hardly mentioned in J and E. Isaac, while very important in J, isn’t mentioned at all in E after his near-sacrifice at the hand of Abram.

So, to help unite the new nation of Israel, all of the different stories were combined into one document.

The next step: individual sources have different sources.

This theory can be similarly applied to the individual source documents. Albrecht Alt put forth the theory that the main characters in Genesis were the patriarchs of different nomadic tribes within the same region, whose stories were combined into a single narrative. This happened long before the separation of Israel into a northern and southern kingdom, so the characters’ events in J and E are still the same.

The general idea is that Abraham was the patriarch, the founder, of one tribe. Isaac was the founder of another. Jacob another, and maybe Judah and Joseph of others.

The different tribes would fight and conquer each other, with the largest and most important, the Abrahamic tribe, being most important. This newly created nation, made up of many tribes, needed a single unifying story. They probably had similar creation myths, maybe even the same flood myth, but the their founders were all different.

So, to include all of the patriarchs, a fake genealogy was created, one that tied all the characters into a single family. Abraham, being the patriarch of the most important tribe, was made into the grandfather. Isaac became the father. Jacob became the son. The patriarchs of other minor tribes were represented by certain grandsons and extended family members.

Equally importantly, the patriarchs of the tribes and nations outside the new borders were brought into the narrative too. For example, Esau could have represented a nation next door (Edom), with whom the new nation had a bad relationship, maybe slightly submissive, but eventually lived with in peace.

The story lays out all the citizens need to know about each other, who is most important, and how to relate to the nations surrounding their home lands.

This theory can also be applied to the role of James and John the Baptist in the story of Jesus. From historical records, it seems that James and John had religious sects surrounding them, independently of the very earliest Christians who followed Jesus. Later, the followers of James and John were brought into the fold, and James became the brother of Jesus, and John his cousin.

The final step: The Individual Patriarchs are the Same Person.

In the same way that the Genesis is made up from three sources, E, J and P, all portraying the same events from different perspectives, I’d like to suggest that the same thing happened at the lower level, within the sources themselves, particularly the J source.

The history of the writing of Genesis, and the people who wrote it, would look something like this:

1. A single tribe arrives in Canaan.
2. This tribe has a single patriarch, which I’ll call the Proto-Patriarch.
3. As the tribe grows, it splits into three main tribes, with other minor tribes besides.
4. Each of the three tribes defines its own territory; land which has special importance to their own history.
5. To distinguish their own identity from those of the others, the tribes begin to refer to the characters in their previously-shared founding legends with new names.
6. Many generations pass, and the names and geography within each founding legend changes so much that the fact that they all tell the story of the same Proto-Patriarch is obscured.
7. The tribes are reunited into a single nation, and their legends are combined into a single unifying narrative, the rough story that we find in Genesis.
8. Later, the nation splits into two halves, the northern and southern kingdoms.
9. The once-shared founding legends again diversify, concentrating more on local geography and important characters, and the facts begin to differ.
10. The J source is written in the southern kingdom of Judah.
11. The E source is written in the northern kingdom of Israel.
12. The Assyrians invade the northern kingdom, and people from the north flow south across the border.
13. A redactor combines the two sources into a new document (RJE).
14. A priest retells the same story, but from a more theological/religious viewpoint, setting the story straight for the purposes of ceremony and law.
15. In the time after the Babylonian exile the ultimate redactor combines J, E and P (or RJE and P), into the text we now know as Genesis, and along with other sources (most importantly D), into much of the rest of the historical parts of the Old Testament.

Steps 7 through 15 are generally accepted steps in the Documentary Hypothesis

As for steps 1 through 6, this is where I’m heading into new territory (new to me), so I better get onto some evidence to back up the Proto-Patriarch theory.

A note on methodology.

When looking for repeated stories among the patriarchs, I decided to make sure that the repetitions couldn’t be explained simply by the J, E and P source discrepancies. I used the The Bible with Sources Revealed by Richard Elliot Friedman to note which in which source each is mentioned.

As I completed my first pass, I noticed that the vast majority of references I’d made had the initial “J” next to them. Why so many repetitions in J, and not the other sources? I’ll leave that question for now, but I found the many repetitions within J so compelling. Elements were also repeated many times in P, but to a lesser extent. The E source has the least repeated elements.

Initial results: a possible story of the Proto-Patriarch.

PP lived in Canaan. As a young man he had problems with his older brother, taking his blessing, and this rocky start lead to them living in different places.

Despite trouble with his family, he was blessed by God and was generally very wealthy in terms of money and livestock. When I say “blessed” I mean being sneaky when it comes to gaining property.

God made a covenant with PP, promising that his line would become a great nation. At this time God told him to change his name. He also built an altar or two to give thanks to God.

To be the father of a nation, PP needed a wife. His father command him not to take a wife from among the Canaanite, but instead from Haran.

The woman unlucky enough to become PP’s wife was, through a cute story, his own cousin. I say unlucky, because PP’s wife didn’t get a good deal.

For a start, there was a famine. And when there was a famine they ended up going to Egypt for food. Even if they didn’t go to Egypt during that particular famine, PP and his wife did go somewhere with an overly sexed king. PP was afraid that the king would kill him for his wife, and so introduced her as his own sister. Through a series of comic events, this leads to the king paying him off, leaving PP richer than before.

Meanwhile, PP’s wife was barren. Instead of waiting for God to fulfill his promise via his wife, PP shacked up with his wife’s maid instead, leading to troublesome offspring of his own. Finally, in her old age, his wife gave birth. PP outlived his wife.

PP was a very old man when he died, and was buried by his sons in a cave in the field of Machpelah, that faces Mamre, in the land of Canaan.

A closer look at 14 repeated elements.

1. Trouble between brothers/sons, younger son comes out on top.

There are two ways to look at stories between a patriarch and his brother. The first is as just that, trouble with his brother. The second is trouble between a patriarch’s two sons.

Looked at in the second way, a repeating pattern is how a the younger son prevails over the older in terms of birthright or blessings from the father.

Abram

Abram’s brothers are hardly mentioned in Genesis. Haran, the father of Lot, dies in Terah’s lifetime. The cause is unknown, but Abram seems to adopt Lot as a kind of son. Strangely, Abram’s other brother, Nahor, seems to have married his own niece, the daughter of Haran and sister of Lot.

So while trouble with his brother isn’t mentioned explicitly in the text, all we have is the trouble between his people and Lot’s people. They divide Canaan between them and go their separate ways (13:8 J). While the P source says explicitly that Lot was Abram’s brother’s son, 13:11 (P) reads “And they separated, each from his brother.”

Isaac

Isaac’s half brother, Ishmael, isn’t a source of considerable trouble as portrayed in Genesis, but an angel says he will be. 16:12 (J) says “And he’ll be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him, and he’ll tent among all his brothers.”

Ishmael is interesting, as here we get a glimpse at an also-ran patriarch. Like all three main patriarchs, God promises to make him into a great nation (21:13 E). Like Isaac and Jacob, he takes takes foreign wife (21:21 E). Like Jacob he had 12 sons (25:13 P).

In this case, Isaac, the younger son, is blessed over his older brother, though Ishmael is only his half-brother, born from the wrong mother.

Finally, like Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers, Ishmael seems to have made up with his brother, at least to point where they bury their father together.

Jacob

Jacob’s troubles with his brother are more directly related in Genesis, to such an extent that I won’t go through it all here. However, right from the start, God says to Rebekah “Two nations are in your womb” (25:23 J).

Esau is portrayed hairy, a man of the field, who knew hunting (25:27 J), echoing Ishmael, who was called a wild ass, and who lived in the wilderness and was a bowman (21:20 E).

Again, Jacob, the younger son, is blessed over his older son.

Here the parallels to Ishmael and Esau could be either seen as PP’s relationship between himself and his brother, or between PP’s two sons. I suggest that the second reading is more important, as we can use the story of Jacob’s sons to show more troubles between sons.

Joseph et al.

Again, there are many issues between Joseph and his brothers. One particular incident that stands out is their use of a goat. They take his coat and dip it in goat’s blood to trick their Jacob into thinking a wild animal has killed Joseph (37:31 J), and in this way they win the favor of their father.

Jacob himself used a goat to win his father’s favor. When Isaac wanted delicacies from Esau to give him his blessing, Rebekah and Jacob conspired to use goat skins as a disguise, and goat meat as the delicacies to trick Isaac. While this is a thematic link, it shows a repeating pattern from one generation to the next.

We read in the blessing of Jacob’s sons, in chapter 49 (J), that the oldest brother, Rueben, lost favor with Jacob due to sleeping with his maid. See 35:21-22 (J). We also read that, due to their violence, the next two sons, Simeon and Levi, lost favor too. See chapter 34 (J). The result of this, in the J source, is that the younger Judah gains the blessing over his older brothers. Only the births of these first four sons of Jacob are told in the J source. This echos the theme in J of the younger son taking the blessing from the older, as Jacob did over Esau, and Perez did over Zerah.

However, in the E and P source we see parallels between Joseph and his half-brothers and Isaac and his half-brothers. Between Leah, Zilpah, Bilhah and Rachel, Rachel was Jacob’s own first choice. This was why Joseph and Benjamin were his favorite sons. This is a repeat of how between Hagar, Keturah and Sarai, Sarai was Abram’s own first choice, and Isaac was his most blessed son.

Jacob’s grandchildren.

Judah had twin sons by his daughter-in-law, Tamar. 38:27-30 (J) tells the story of how there is a mixup between the first and second-born twin. We don’t know how the story of Perez and Zerah plays out, but you can see trouble of Jacob-Esau proportions on the horizon; Perez’s ancestors include the kings of Judah, and Zerah’s don’t.

Finally, when Jacob blesses Joseph’s two sons, there is yet more confusion as to who is the older and who is the young. Due to Jacob’s bad eyesight, he places his hand on Ephraim’s head to bless him. Joseph points out that Manesseh is the older son, but 48:19 (E) reads “I know, my son, I know… But in fact his little brother will be greater than he, and his seed will be full-fledged of nations.” The next verse states “And he set Ephraim before Manasseh.”

It is no surprise that the J source, written in Judah, tells this older-younger-son-mixup story about the sons of Judah, and that the E source, written in the northern kingdom, tells a similar story about the sons of Joseph, where their name-sake tribes resided.

PP

While some of these verses are from different sources (J, E and P) the narratives arise within each source. Over the story of each of the patriarchs, we can see PP and his brother end up living in different countries. Or, to look at it the other way, PP’s younger son gains the blessing over the older son, the sons are then estranged, yet always reunite by the time of PP’s death, ready to bury him.

2. Covenant with God, Father of Nations.

God’s covenant with the patriarchs is repeated in each case, and sometimes in more than one source.

Abram

12:2 (J) reads – “And I’ll make you into a big nation, and I’ll bless you and make your name great.” In 12:7 (J) God adds – “I’ll give this land to your seed.”

Abram gets a second covenant conversation with God, though this is from a different source. 17:4 (P) read “I: here, my covenant is with you, and you’ll become the father of a mass of nations.”

Isaac

The covenant with Isaac is a reaffirmation of Abram’s covenant. 26:3 (J) read “Stay on in this land, and I’ll be with you and bless you, for I’ll give all these lands to you and your seed, and I’ll uphold the oath that I swore to Abraham your father, and I’ll multiply your seed like the stars of the skies…”

Jacob

Jacob’s Ladder (E) sets the scene, but the covenant is again given in the J source. 28:13 (J) reads “I am YHWH, your father Abraham’s God and Isaac’s God. The land on which you’re lying: I’ll give it to you and your seed. And your seed will be like the dust of the earth…”

In each of these we see a covenant, with God promising the land to PP’s seed.

However, it could be said that each of these is a reaffirmation of the previous covenant, confirming that God means, out of Isaac’s and Ishmael’s seed, Isaac’s is the important one. And out of Jacob and Esau’s seed, Jacob’s is the seed to watch. So maybe this is not evidence for Abram, Isaac and Jacob being the same person. But then, if this is the case, why have two generations of non-specific seed-line covenants before the one that really matters, Jacob’s is confirmed, all the while having to bless Esau and Ishmael too?

Joseph et al.

Once the blessed seed-line becomes non-specific, in the generation of Joseph, judging who will be most blessed becomes trickier.

Joseph dreams of his brothers bowing down to him, echoing Rebekah’s dream that one son will serve another. This could be read as a prophesy fulfilled by the end of Genesis, in the scenes where Joseph’s brothers bow to him in a literal sense.

However, in Jacob’s blessing in chapter 49, after those events, Joseph receives the longest blessing, at 18 lines. Notable are the lines from 49:25 (J) that read “… from your father’s God, and He’ll strengthen you, and from Shadday, and He’ll bless you, blessings from the sky above…” and so on. Joseph is the only son whose blessing references the god of his father. Also, the final line, 49:26 (J), reads “…on top of the head of the one separate from his brothers.” This may mean Joseph will be seen as greater than his brothers in the future, or might be a reference to his current position as a leader in Egypt.

Meanwhile, the second longest blessing from Jacob in chapter 49 (17 lines) goes to Judah. His blessing begins at 49:8 (J) with “Judah: You, your bothers will praise you.” This is quite unambiguous! Also, in verse 10 we read the lines “The scepter won’t depart from Judah, or a rule from between his legs…” The imagery here is again quite unambiguous. While Joseph is the most blessed, Judah will become the most important. This is no coincidence; Judah was a patriarch figure in his own right, especially in the southern kingdom bearing his name, where the J source was written.

As mentioned earlier, compared to these blessings, the eldest sons, Rueben, Simeon and Levi, are passed over for their earlier bad behavior.

Finally, in the E and P sources, Joseph’s sons, Mannassah and Ephraim, receive a great blessing from Jacob (chapter 48).

3. God changes the PP’s name.

This shared feature is from the P source only.

Abram

Directly after the P covenant, 17:5 (P) reads “And your name will not be called Abram any more, but your name will be Abraham…”

Jacob

35:10 (P) reads “Your name is Jacob. Your name will not be called Jacob anymore, but rather Israel will be your name.”

Isaac

There is no evidence that God changed Isaac’s name. However, Isaac’s early story is surprisingly vague compared to Jacob, Esau, and even Ishmael.

In the P text Isaac is born, is circumcised aged 8, and marries Rebekah. There is no account of Jacob’s and Esau’s birth in P, and this one of the only gaps in the P source, which can be read as an otherwise complete and unbroken story when separated from J and E. The P source next mentions Isaac at the blessing of Jacob, and then at Isaac’s death.

Why is there so little about Isaac in P? Do the gaps show material that might have shown him as more important, that weren’t included by the redactor?

In the E source Isaac is even more invisible. He is born and blessed, then taken by Abraham to the altar to be sacrificed. After that he disappears from the E source completely. He isn’t even mentioned as returning from the altar with Abram, leading to the remarkable question “Did Abraham kill his son as God first commanded?”

With so little known about Isaac outside of the J source, it is difficult to say if his name was changed like Abraham and Jacob in P, or not. This might have happened, with the just the pre- or post-change name being used throughout. We know that the redactor would change names within the different sources, to keep them consistent with the narrative.

For example, Abram’s name is change to Abraham only in P, but after the fact he is Abraham in all sources.

Conversely, Jacob’s name is changed to Israel in P only, but after the fact he is referred to many times as Jacob, many times as Israel, and many times with the non-specific Joseph’s/Rueben’s father title in both J and E. And in P, the only time Jacob is called Israel is in the very SAME verse in which he is renamed. The word Israel is mentioned once more in P, in 46:8, but only as a reference to “the children of Israel”.

So it is entirely possible that Isaac may have gone by two different names, and when the name-changing story from P was not included, the redactor harmonized the remaining few P passages to keep his J name only (and not needing to harmonize the E passages, as Isaac doesn’t reappear in E).

Even if not, we still have a two out of three hit for God changing PP’s name.

4. PP builds altars.

After his covenant with God, or after his name changing, PP builds altars to God. The places he did this change throughout, often with many altars being built by the same patriarch in the same source. These stories were probably created by preists in Canaan to give significance to certain locations that became their own places of worship.

P has no stories of altars or sacrifice until after the establishment of the priesthood in and the Tabernacle in Exodus, so altar building references can only be found in J or E.

Abram

Abram builds a series of altars to God in chapters 12 and 13. First he goes to Shechem. 12:6-7 (J) reads “And Abram passed through the land as far as the place of Shechem, as far as the oak of Moreh… And he built an altar there to YHWH who had appeared to him.”

In the next verse he goes to a place near Beth-El “…and he built an altar there to YHWH and invoked the name of YHWH.” In 13:3-4 (J) returns to Beth-El.

13:18 (J) reads “And Abram took up his tent and came and lived among the oaks of Mamre which are in Hebron, and he built an altar to YHWH there.”

Mamre and Hebron are important places in J because of this altar. In P they become even more “holy” due to Abraham buying a plot of land facing Mamre, where he buries Sarah and, later, is buried there himself.

Isaac

Beer-sheba is an important location to Isaac. In 26:24 (J) he gets a confirmation of the covenant from God. The next verse reads “And he built an altar there and invoked the name of YHWH. And he pitched his tent there, and his servants dug a well there.”

Jacob

After Jacob’s covenant with God, there is no altar building in J. However, in the same narrative, he does so in the E source. 28:18 (E) reads “And he got up early in the morning and took the stone that he had set as his headrest and set it as a pillar and poured oil on its top.” The next verse continues in J. “And he called that place’s name Beth-El, though in fact Luz was the name of the city at first.”

Having two names for a single location is handy, especially if the same event was claimed by two different communities, or two events, which are said to happen in two different locations, are later said to happen at the same place. Later in E, Jacob builds another altar in the same location. See 35:7 (E). The J source may or may not have shown Jacob building an altar before the JE redaction or the final redaction.

We have four distinct mentions of an altar at Beth-El, two visits by Abram in J, and two visits by Jacob in E.

Going by the J source only two out of three of the patriarchs build altars, yet the Beth-El altars, even if mentioned in two different sources, suggest another connection between Abram and Jacob.

One final note on altar building. This element is not only a common feature of these related patriarchs in Genesis. There is one non-patriarch altar; the one Noah built after the flood, 8:20 (J). However, its location is not noted, so might serve a different purpose in the story as compared to those of the patriarchs.

5. PP was blessed with much wealth.

God blessed PP with great material wealth, using trickery or miracles, depending on your point of view.

Abram

After pulling the “meet my sister” trick, Pharaoh lavishes Abram with gifts on Sarai’s behalf. 12:16 (J) reads “And he was good to Abram on her account, and he had a flock and oxen and he-asses and servants and maids and she-asses and camels.”

Once Abram leaves Egypt we read in 13:2 (J) “And Abram was very heavy with livestock and silver and gold.”

Isaac

Again, after pulling the “meet my sister” trick, Isaac is blessed. 26:14 (J) “and had livestock of flocks and livestock of herds and a large number of servants.”

While Isaac lying about his sister and him gaining wealth are not connected in the same way as it was for Abram, one event does follow the other. Because of the “meet my sister” trick, Abimelek commands that nobody harm Isaac, on the pain of death. Immediately following that, Isaac seems to take advantage of the Philistines’ land while there is a famine back in Canaan, and the Philistines can’t stop him.

The link here is subtle, but I suggest there’s more than a temporal connection between the two events; the trickery, and then wealth despite the famine. The antagonist in Abimelek’s other run-in with a patriarch is Abram. In this account, from the E source, the deal that Abimelek strikes is laid out in clearer terms: 20:15 (E) reads “Here is my land in front of you. Live wherever it’s good in your eyes.”

As the Abraham/E and the Isaac/J account of this story have most in common, it isn’t a stretch to say the unspoken deal between Abimelek and Isaac mirrors the spoken deal between Abimelek and Abraham.

Jacob

Unlike Abram and Isaac, Jacob’s trickery is premeditated, and involves breeding sheep and goats with spots and streaks. At the end of the story, 30:43 (J) reads “And the man expanded very, very much, and he had many sheep and female and male servants and camels and asses.”

While being rich with livestock and servants isn’t an element exclusive to the patriarchs, PP would probably have gained his wealth in a unconventional manner.

6. PP had a non-Canaanite wife, from Haran.

Abram

Sarai’s place of birth is not mentioned. Like Abram himself, the P source suggests she is from Ur. Confusingly, J suggests Abram and Sarai come from a place called Haran, though Haran is also the name of Abram’s brother and Lot’s father. E mentions Sarai is Abram’s father’s daughter, and as his half-sister, she would probably come from the same place.

Isaac

Abraham commands his servant to find a wife for Isaac from the land of his birthplace. 24:3-4 (J) reads “… you won’t take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanite among whom I live, but you’ll go to my land and my birthplace and take a wife for my son, for Isaac.”

The servant goes to “Aram Naharaim, to the city of Nahor.” In this case, the Nahor in question is the father of Terah, grandfather of Abraham, who comes from Ur in P, but Haran in J.

Jacob

This same story is repeated for Jacob, though this time it is from the P source, and Isaac commands Jacob directly, rather than via a servant. 28:1-2 (P) reads “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Get up. Go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and take a wife from there, from the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother.” This story is from P, and the previous command not to take a wife from the daughters of Canaan is from J.

Even if not commanded to by his father, Jacob takes a non-Canaanite wife in the J source. P says Paddam Aram, but J shows Jacob going to Haran.

6. Through a series of comedic events, PP marries his own sister/cousin.

Abram and Sarai

While making excuses for saying his wife was his sister, Abram lets mentions she is actually his sister. 20:12 (E) reads “And also she is, in fact, my sister, my father’s daughter but not my mother’s daughter, and she became a wife to me.” We don’t get the same information in J or P.

Isaac and Rebekah

In J, Abraham commands the servant to get a wife for Isaac from the land he was born, not specifically a relative. Even so, we read that Rebekah is a cousin in 24:15 (J), “… and here was Rebekah–who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother…”

Jacob and Rachel (and Leah)

At first, Jacob marrying his cousins doesn’t seem like a coincidence, as Isaac commands Jacob to take a wife from the daughters of Laban, his mother’s brother. However, this command is in P, and the longer story of Jacob meeting Rachel is in J, which is missing any commandment to marry a daughter of Laban. In 27:43 (J) it is Rebekah who tells Jacob to go to Laban, but she mentions nothing about marrying the daughters of her brother.

In P we also see Esau picking up on the command to not marry a Canaanite. He takes a cousin for a wife too, this time Ishmael’s daughter, Mahalath.

PP married his cousin, with a two out of three hit for the main patriarchs, and hints from the stories of minor characters that cousin marriage was the way to go. Maybe cousin marriage was a common occurrence at the time, but J shows two particular cousin marriages as special, notable events.

8. Famine in the land, and a connection to Egypt.

For the patriarchs, famines are catalysts for moving to a new location and the gain of wealth. And for some reason, Egypt always features.

Abram

12:10 (J) reads “And there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to reside there because the famine was heavy in the land.”

Isaac

26:1 (J) reads “And there was a famine in the land…” This could mean that famines were a common occurrence in Canaan, but the author puts in a note here to show this isn’t the case. Verse 1 continues “… (other than the first famine, which was in Abraham’s days)…” That these two events are so similar, even with identical wording, meant that the author had to add this note to make sure the reader didn’t get them mixed up.

Normally repeated events in the Torah aren’t commented on in this way, mainly because the events repeat across different sources. Here the repetition is within J.

The connection to Egypt is similarly strange in this story. God commands Isaac directly in 26:2 (J) “Don’t go down to Egypt. Reside in the land that I say to you…” Is this command added to distinguish the story further from that of Abram’s? Maybe, before the author of J made these stories clearly different, the destination or place of return, or the person the patriarch meets there, could have overlapped, as does the similar story from the E source.

Jacob

While a there is drought in Egypt, there is also a famine in Canaan. The first mention in J is in chapter 42. It begins “And Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt…” he commands his sons to go buy some of that grain.

The story of the famine in Canaan continues in chapter 43 (J): “And the famine was heavy in the land…” and again Jacob sends his sons to buy more food.

Again, staying with J, Jacob himself decides to go to Egypt in 45:28 (J), sets off in 46:5 (J), sends Judah ahead in 45:28 (J), arrives in the next verse, and stayed there to live in 47:27 (J).

PP will experience a famine. And it seems that during the famine, PP will go to Egypt. It’s his default option. That God must command Isaac not to do so, or else he too would have gone, like Abram and Jacob, is quite telling.

9. The “she’s my sister” trick.

PP’s wife is so beautiful that he’s afraid people will kill him for her. Jacob doesn’t get his own version of this story, but it happens twice with Abram and once with Isaac.

Abram

In chapter 12, the J source tells how Abram’s fears of the Egyptian’s wanting Sarai for themselves are well founded, and in verse 14 we read “… and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house” Pharaoh pays Abram for his sister. It is only when God sends big plagues against Pharaoh and his house that Pharaoh tells Abram to take Sarai and go.

In chapter 20, the E source tells a similar story, this time with Abimelek as the king. Again the king takes Sarah for himself. However, by the time God comes for vengeance, Abimelek hasn’t yet touched Sarah, and so Abimelek escapes punishment.

Isaac

The story in chapter 26 (J) has the same setup. However, this time Abimelek doesn’t even take Rebekah for his own. All he does is see her fooling around with Isaac. In verse 10 (J) he says “One of the people nearly could have lain with your wife…” Because Abimelek doesn’t actually sleep with or pay for Rebekah, this story has more in common with the E version in chapter 20 than the other J version in chapter 12.

Two stories this similar, repeated in the same source (J), is a rare event, and the author goes to extra lengths to show that they really are different stories, and not the same thing happening to two different people. This is undermined by the fact that the author of E used characters from one J story, and facts from the other, when composing his own text. That isn’t to say the author of the E source had read J, but that the facts of the story, even down to who the main character might be, hadn’t yet been tied down. The author of E didn’t worry about it too much, and only included it once. J wanted to include both versions, but had to point out they were different events.

10. PP’s wife was infertile, until God decided she wasn’t.

This is a strong element with each of the three patriarchs. It is seen as a test of faith and obedience in God, to keep following his commands even when it doesn’t look like any heir is on the way.

Abram

11:30 (P) reads “And Sarai was infertile. She did not have a child.”

The J source mentions this first in 15:2. “… what would you give me when I go childless…?” It confirms it in 16:1. “And Abram’s wife Sarai had not given birth by him…”

In chapter 18 (J), Abram is visited by three messengers from God. When they mention Sarah would have child, she bursts out laughing.

Isaac

25:21 (J) reads “And Isaac prayed to YHWH for his wife because she was infertile…” God answers him right away, and she soon gets pregnant.

Jacob

29:31 (J) reads “And YHWH saw that Leah was hated, and He opened her womb, and Rachel was infertile.” This happens later in the narrative than Jacob’s seven year labour for Rachel. Does this mean it took Leah seven years to get pregnant? Even if not, it shows that Leah could only give birth after God intervenes. The same verse also tells of Rachel’s infertility.

This is repeated in 30:1 (J). God opening Rachel’s womb is recounted in the E source, 30:22, but the story picks up again in J right away, with the naming of Joseph.

This shows that PP’s wife was infertile until God decides it’s time for her to give birth.

11. Meanwhile, PP was getting it on with the maid.

Abram

Chapter 16 (J) tells the story of Abram and Sarai’s Egyptian maid Hagar. The outcome is Ishmael.

Isaac

There is no story of Isaac sleeping with a maid of his wife in any of the three source documents.

There is, however, an intriguing verse in chapter 35. In among the the story of Jacob, verse 8 (E) reads “And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried beneath Beth-El, beneath an oak, and [Jacob] called its name Oak of Weeping.” Who is this nurse of Rebekah’s? And why do we learn of her death and burial, and not Rebekah’s herself? These questions can’t be answered within the text.

Jacob

Both the J and E sources tell how Rachel gave her maid to Jacob. 30:4 (J) reads “And she gave him Bilhah, her maid, as a wife.” 30:3 (E) reads “Here’s my maid, Bilhah. Come to her, and she’ll give birth on my knees, and I too will get a child through her.”

Having two wives, Jacob gets the same treatment from two angles. 30:9 (E) reads “And Leah saw that she had stopped giving birth, and she took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her to Jacob as a wife.”

So, with a two out of three match, I’d say PP had some action with his wife’s maid.

12. PP outlived his wife.

We only read about the deaths of the patriarchs’ wives in P and E.

Abram

23:2 (P) reads “And Sarah died in Kiriath Arba – it is Hebron – in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to grieve for Sarah and to weep for her.”

However, Sarah is mentioned in J after her death in P, as Isaac takes Rebekah to Sarah’s tent, 24:67 (J).

Isaac

There are no reports of the time of Rebekah’s death in any source. This is unsurprising due to the fact that E doesn’t mention Isaac after Abraham takes him to be sacrificed, and P is concerned with Isaac and Rebekah only when they relate to Jacob. It is only in 49:31 (P), when Jacob is instructing his sons where he should be buried, that we read that Rebekah is dead and buried.

Jacob

35:19 (E) tells of the death Rachel as she gives birth to Benjamin, while on the road to Ephrat. It includes the line “It is Bethlehem.” 48:7 (P) tells that Rachel died on the road to Ephrat, with similar wording, and contains the line “That’s Bethlehem.”

That the P and E sources have such similar wording is peculiar. But the P source continues at 49:29, and 49:31 (P) also mentions Jacob buried Leah, meaning she too died before he did.

So, while it might have been a common occurrence witn non-patriarchs too, PP probably lived longer than his wife.

13. Lived to an old age and died of natural causes.

Only the P source do we read about the deaths of all three of the patriarchs.

Abram

25:7-8 (P) tells of Abram’s death, including the lines “And he expired. And Abraham died at a good old age, old and full, and was gathered to his people.” He died aged 175 years.

Isaac

Isaac died aged 180 years. Using much the same phrasing as the death of Abram, 35:29 (P) reads “… and Isaac expired. And he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days.”

Jacob

While the deaths of Abram and Isaac are dealt with in a cursory manner, Jacob’s death is long and drawn out, and because God hadn’t made an exclusive covenant with any one of his sons, it’s interrupted with many accounts of him blessing his children.

First, we find out in 47:28 (P) that Jacob lived to 147 years old.

Next we have the J version of Jacob making Joseph swear to him to bury him outside of Egypt. This ends in 47:31 (J) with “And Israel bowed at the head of the bed.” If we skip the poetic blessing of his sons, the next line of J (50:1) reads “And Joseph fell upon his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him.” Taken uninterrupted this tells the events of Jacob’s death.

A similar thing happens in E. 48:21 (E) begins “And Israel said to Joseph. ‘Here, I’m dying…’” The E source continues, after the blessings and burial stories in J and P, with 50:15. It begins “And Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead…” Again, we have another interrupted account of Jacob’s death.

P tells of Jacob’s death in 49:33, “And Jacob finished commanding his sons, and he gathered his feet into the bed, and he expired, and he was gathered to his people.” We get the repeat of “he expired” and “gathered to his people” but not “old and full of days”. It seems that 147 just isn’t that old compared to 175 and 180.

14. PP was buried by his sons in a cave in the field of Machpelah, which faces Mamre, in the land of Canaan.

The P source is very insistent that all of the patriarchs were buried in the same place, a cave in the field of Machpelah.

Abram

The whole of chapter 23 (P) tells the story of how Abraham buys it from Ephron to bury Sarah. 25:9 (P) tells how Abraham himself was buried in the same place by his two sons.

Isaac

35:27-29 (P) tells how Isaac was at Mamre when he died and his two sons buried him, even though it doesn’t mention Ephron or the cave. However, in 49:31 (P), Jacob confirms that’s where Isaac was buried. At the report of Isaac’s death it says that Jacob and Esau buried Isaac, though when Jacob recounts the same event he says “There they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife.” Why Jacob doesn’t say “There we buried Isaac” or “There I buried Isaac” like he does with his own wife (“There I buried Leah”), is unclear.

Jacob

Again, 50:13 (P) goes to great lengths to confirm that Jacob was buried in the cave that Abraham bought from Ephron, in the field of Machpelah, that faces Mamre, in the land of Canaan.

However, J disagrees with P on this point. Jacob asks Joseph, just before he dies, to be buried with his fathers. 47:30 (J) reads “And I’ll lie with my fathers, and you’ll carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial place.”

50:5 (J) shows Joseph recounting his father’s command as “Here I’m dying. In my tomb, which I dug for me in the land of Canaan, you shall bury me there.” So not a cave, but a tomb that Jacob dug for himself, and with no mention of Isaac or Abraham.

This insistence by P that all the patriarchs were buried in the same place probably has more to do with the tourist industry of Mamre, a way to keep pilgrims coming to the land that the priests claim they bought from Ephron, than anything to do with a historic burial location.

Conclusion

Some repeated story elements may be intentional variations within the text by the authors of J and P. However, many repeats within the same source are flagged up by the authors themselves, trying to avoid confusion, rather than trying to be subtle with just wording or thematic similarities.

Other repeated story elements may be common to all fathers in Canaan. But if this was the case, why are so many repeated stories presented as notable events, rather than normal, everyday occurrences? The answer is that each event is extraordinary for people in 900 BCE, so much so that when they happened to each of the patriarchs they had to be included in the narrative.

The sheer number of unifying elements seems to hint at a single underlying identity and story shared by Abram, Isaac, and Jacob.