Fact-Checking the Torah -- doublets, anybody?

Are there any doublets in Torah? I think there are possible candidates for derived doublets – or rather triplets – but again, the comparison to Olrik’s standards and definitions doesn’t necessarily confirm that.

The wife-stealing stories in Genesis are the candidates.

Avraham and Sarah in Egypt, due to a famine, turn Sarah over to Pharaoh, whose country immediately experiences a plague. Pharaoh finds out somehow that Sarah is Avraham’s wife, not his sister, and gives her back. Over 25 years later Yitschaq is born.

Avraham and Sarah in Grar, no famine involved, turn Sarah over to Avimelekh. Gd tells Avimelekh he’s done something wrong and he returns Sarah. The next episode is Yitschaq’s birth.

Yitschaq and Rivqah in Grar, due to a famine, turn Rivqah over to Avimelekh. We only find this out because Avimelekh looks out a window and sees Yitschaq and Rivqah m’tsacheq. Avimelekh calls in Yitschaq and complains, giving the first hint that he has taken Rivqah into his house. He returns Rivqah. Esav and Yaaqov are already born at this point in time.

The Avraham-in-Grar is the longest and most detailed form of the narrative, but it ignores the famine issue present in the other two. It also has the teasing denouement of whose son Yitschaq really is, Avraham’s or Avimelekh’s. Compared to that, the other two stories are tamer because there’s no suspicion that the king who took the wife fathered the child.

The most likely candidates for the pair of derived doublets are the Grar stories, because of one more detail. Both are followed by incidents in which the protagonist conflicts with Avimelekh and his general, Fikhol, about wells, and both end in a reason for the name Beer Sheva. But in this case the Yitschaq incident is the longest and most detailed, and it refers to wells (plural) that Avraham dug. That suggests that the Avraham episode is the derived doublet. Without considering this, it seems as if the Yitschaq episode of the wife swapping is the derived doublet.

The Grar episodes are also surrounded by a theme of laughter. Avraham laughs first, but not until after the Egyptian incident; Sarah laughs next, immediately after the angel announces that she will give birth. These are dual reasons for Yitschaq’s name. After they return from Grar and Yitschaq is not only born but weaned, the world laughs together with Sarah. But she sees Yishmael m’tsacheq, which can mean “joke around” but also “fight”, and as a result orders Avraham to throw him away. And in the Yitschaq story the marriage is discovered when the king sees him and his wife m’tsacheq, which can also mean “flirt”. It seems to me that from the annunciation to Avraham of Yitschaq’s birth, to the return of Rivqah, is a story cycle.

Olrik specifically states that there is no one path for how narratives change. They can languish and then re-floresce, with differences related to but not dictated by interim changes in the culture. One narrator can take a narrative in a rational direction and another can develop a subordinate character into the protagonist of a related but separate cycle. To know which of these stories were the originals and which were derived and how, we would have to have a time machine and go back and drop in on different periods to see when they arose and in what format. But they seem to be the best candidates in Torah for derived doublets.

And now for something completely different...