01_VanSeters_copiaaaa_01_25 28/04/15 11:15 Pagina 15 DATING THE YAHWIST’S HISTORY: PRINCIPLES AND PERSPECTIVES 15 gamesh Epic that would be familiar to the Babylonians in the 6th century. Now it seems clear that J has combined this flood story with a quite different western tradition about the creation of the world and the earliest human ancestors. This is quite similar to the way in which a late version of the Gilgamesh Epic has incorporated the flood story into the larger narrative. It was the skilful writing of the author of the late version of the Gilgamesh Epic who was able to combine quite diverse literary traditions to enhance his own version of the story 21. Likewise, the originally independent Meso- potamian flood story was also combined with the chronological history of kingship such that there was a line of kings from before the flood, and the restoration of kingship and its succession after the flood 22. 2. The Genealogies and the Tower of Babel The Yahwist, as an ancient author of Israelite antiquity, fre- quently did the same thing. Thus, in his genealogy of the ancestral Table of Nations, he digresses from his genealogical succession to include an account of the building of the Tower of Babel as an ex- planation for how it was that all of these descendants of the ances- tors were dispersed into different regions and peoples with so many different languages. The story of the building of the tower is obvi- ously intended as a parody on the construction of the great ziggurat of Babylon whose temple at the pinnacle was intended as the meet- ing place of heaven and earth 23. This massive structure, begun by Esarhaddon and finally completed by Nebuchadnezzar, was built with a large body of foreign corvée labour, speaking many different languages, including no doubt the Jews of the exilic community. The Tower of Babel story concludes with the dispersion of many peoples to different regions, which anticipates the movement of the Aramean family of Abraham from Babylonia westward. This fits remarkably well J’s Babylonian context and literary style of com- 21 See J.H. TIGAY, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia, PA 1982) 238-250. 22 W.G. LAMBERT – A.R. MILLARD, Atra-Ḫasis. The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford 1969) 15-21. 23 See my earlier treatment of this story in J. VAN SETERS, Prologue to History. The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville, KY 1992) 179-185.