The purpose of this 'Akzent' is to present and to analyse a surprising observation that was made by the late Austrian scholar Claus Schedl. He discovered a relation between the numbers in Genesis 5 (the ages of the patriarchs, see table 1) and the number of words as they stand in the Hebrew Genesis text. This observation is the most intriguing part of his so-called 'Toledot-Hypothesis', which I presented already in 'Akzent 2' (see abstract there and compare especially his German commentary "Geschichte des Alten Testaments" !). In Genesis 11 we find a second table of patriarchs and their ages, which can probably be interpreted in much the same way. However, I will focus on Genesis 5 since here we find an example of Schedl's explanation which can be evaluated statistically. 

Basic information of 'Akzent 6' can be found in my article " 'Einweihung' durch Henoch ? Die Bedeutung der Altersangaben in Genesis 5", which I wrote in 1995. 'Akzent 6' is not a simple translation and is shorter than that paper. Yet it contains some additional comments about the application of Schedl's idea to the other numbers in Genesis 5 .

The number collections in Genesis 5 and 11 already constitute quantitative structures (QS) in a narrow sense (as exemplified in the German introduction: Beispiele ). But there is a much more surprising trait attached to them which has been discovered by Claus Schedl. According to his hypothesis the ages of the patriarchs are to be interpreted as text lengths measured in words. The triplet of numbers recorded for any of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 (Table 1) is related to the text section in which the story of this patriarch is being narrated. The purpose of this relation should have been the securing of the textual tradition by the scribes who were initiated into this system.

Schedl already knew about the fact that Genesis chapter 5 has 365 words and he assumed this number to be of symbolical meaning: the 365 days of a solar year. Furthermore he supposed the 365 years of Enoch's lifetime to be of the same symbolical meaning, the latter interpretation being a wide-spread assumption in theological exegesis. Yet he did not further discuss the interesting question if this number (and perhaps the numbers 65 and 300 reported on Enoch as well) can also be interpreted as textlengths in some reasonable sense. This is a surprising fact since he tried to show that the numbers recorded for Adam and Noah coincided quite neatly with the lengths of their respective text sections.

There won't be any doubt about chapter 5 as a whole being a traditional text unit clearly delimitated from chapters 4 and 6. It is 365 words long. 
The text reporting directly on Enoch and containing the important information about his life (V.24) apart from the formula 'name, age, children', presents itself as counterpart for the number 65. But there is a catch: The successive sections for the patriarchs overlap each other and it may well be that this problem held Schedl back from further pursuing this idea. 
However, the end of each patriarch's section is well defined by the remark about his death, so Enoch's section ends clearly at the end of verse 24. But the beginning can be defined in at least three different ways:

2) At the beginning of the sentence where the patriarch's name is first mentioned. - (For Enoch: the beginning of V.18) Doing it this way the central figure of this sentence is the direct ancestor and we create an overlap up to the end of the section of the pre-ancestor. So definition 2 comprises two sections according to definition 1. This is ambiguous. 

3) Start exactly with the first mentioning of the patriarchs name. - (For Enoch: The last word in V.18) This starting point does not coincide with the beginning of a sentence, but the section begins with the name of the very patriarch on which it is reporting.

So if we are looking for a section which is reporting directly on Enoch, then it is precise to choose definition 3 and start with the last word of verse 18 ('Enoch') and end with the last word of verse 24 ('God').

It seems to be improbable that this structure has emerged by chance. But several arguments can be stated against such a conception:

1) Given 30 numbers in a single chapter, isn't it probable in the first place that any of them coincides with the number of words of the whole chapter?

2) If one of the complete lifetimes coincides with the length of the complete chapter (an incidence less probable than that in question one), then there is always a subdivision of the chapter into two counterparts of the two terms of the sum.

3) The separation of Hebrew words can be defined in some other way. Then all coincidences disappear.

4) Variant readings that lead to variations of the number of words could not be taken into consideration.

5) The boundaries of the Enoch-section could perhaps be defined otherwise. Then at least two of the three sections would change. 

Ad 2) The statement is correct. However, we don't have any subdivision but a dissection into two numbers which are dividable by 100 without remainder. The probability of such numbers occuring by chance can be calculated. Furthermore (not mentioned in my German article), the possibility of such a dissection of the chapter does not make it probable, that at the same time this subdivision is a reasonable one! Most probably it will look quite arbitrary with regard to the dissection of the contents.

Ad 3) I exclude any definition of the separation of Hebrew words as extremely unlikely that differs from the Biblia Hebraica (plus separation where maqqeph occurs). For isolated cases compare Ad 4.

Ad 4) This statement is wrong. Correct is: The number of words per section has to be constant. (I wrote in my German article that the sum of all changes has to be constant. But this is wrong as well: this sum has to be zero.)
This is just the postulated mechanism for securing the text.

Ad 5) The boundaries of the Enoch-section have been substantiated and are being assumed as correct for the time being. This question will be discussed again later on.

The next step of this quantitative structure analysis is a statistical test of the hypothesis that the coincidences of ages and numbers of words have not happened by chance. I have done this already in my article, but at present lack the time to rewrite it to an easily understandable English version for this 'Akzent'. I will only present the result of the test and leave it to the reader to consult the article for details of the substantiation.

The statistical test takes into account only two of the three coincidences (the numbers 65 = LF = PF and 300 = LR = PR ) in order to use only independent random variables. The calculation of this test yields an error probability of 0.6% , which is already statistically significant. The dissection of the 300 into 200 + 100 was not taken into account since it is rather difficult to say how many other dissections would seem not to have occured by chance as well. However, rounded numbers must have had a special meaning for the ancients as well as for us, because they were used above average for patriarchal ages.

The test result leads to the conclusion that the structure of Genesis 5 did not come into being by chance but, I suppose, through intentional construction by the author or redactor. 

As definition for the Enoch-section the most  meaningful one was selected. Anybody can make up his own mind how probable it is to arbitrarily invent a meaningful definition of text sections and still find a coincidence with numbers mentioned on the semantical level of the text: Simply apply the same procedure on a similar text and look what comes out. 

As an example we choose Genesis 5 according to the Samaritan Pentateuch (v. Gall edition, 1918) and select the same 

There is still an important question left that I did not answer in my German article: What about the other numbers in Genesis 5 ? In order to answer this question we should first ask ourselves: 

1) How should the other numbers be interpreted, given the fact that the ages for Enoch coincide precisely with Enoch's text passages according to Schedl's definition? Would it be senseful to invent an additional hypothesis to explain these numbers in some other way than as textlengths? Why should such an additional hypothesis be invented at all?

2) Given the numerous changes suggested by OT scholars during the last 150 years or so: what should we expect with regard to the coincidence of the other numbers of words and ages? The answer is simple and can be given immediately: If only a small fraction of the supposed changes were correct we should expect not even a single coincidence ! Even in Genesis 5 the success of Schedl's approach is surprising, but it can be understood e.g. by assuming that the literary material of pedigrees does not appeal very much to redactors in the same way as it does not appeal to commentators. (There may be more reasons, but I want to discuss the other numbers.)

3) If we do not find exact coincidences for the other numbers of Genesis 5: How are these deviations to be interpreted apart from explaining them as redactional alterations?

With regard to the dissection 930  = 130 + 800  I have no idea how to subdivide the text appropriately, at least no idea that I would dare to publish on my homepage ;-)  . However, Claus Schedl had very precise (but also rather complicated) suggestions how to construct a revised Hebrew text which then fits exactly into this scheme. I think that for professional exegetes there is no way around re-evaluating his ideas of 1964  in order not to miss helpful suggestions Schedl had to offer in his book.

The length of the complete text of Gen. 6,9 (containing the Toledot formula)  - Gen. 9,29  is  1182 words. The next Toledot formula we find in Gen. 10,1. If the identification of numbers for years and words is correct, then 232 (=1182 - 950) words have been added to the Noah story. But before we abandon all too lightly understanding this puzzle, let us put the cart before the horse and take a look at chapter 9. At the end of the chapter we read that "after the flood Noah lived 350 years". The story of Noah's life after the flood is essentially told in chapter 9 ... and this chapter is 353 words long ! This is again a striking (nearly exact) coincidence between the statement on the semantical level and the text envisaged as a chain of words. We can conclude that the additional 232 words have probably been inserted somewhere in the preceding text.

The whole text then is 1298 words (~ 1300) long.  And to our surprise we find: 1300 - 350 = 950 . If we see it this way, then there are approx. 350 words (instead of 232) which have been inserted and the question inevitably arises, if the last section as a whole (chapter 9) has been added to the flood narrative. However, I am not sure if this really is the solution. Chapter 9 does not look like a text that has been considerably revised. Still more important: counting 600 words starting at 

There is still one detail to be mentioned, which also leads to the supposition, that about 350 words have been added to the flood story. It is the well known fact that we are told the flood lasted one year and 11 days, which probably was meant to be one lunar year of 354 days + 11 days = 365 days = one solar year. Perhaps it was originally intended to be kind of a telescopic design: the number of words corresponding with the days of one year, inserted into a chain of words (the Noah story) corresponding with the years of Noah's lifetime. An intriguing idea, isn't it?

I wind up by saying that even in chapter 5 it is something like a miracle that the three numbers coincide precisely with three well defined text lengths. But they do ! I assume that the stereotyped character of Genesis 5 does not appeal very much to redactors (and commentators ;-) of all times.