Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

Dear Lloyd,

the irony is delicious!  Meir Sternberg claims that BH poetics utilizes a
variety of gapping techniques to run its readers through interpretive paces
to the dramatic end: ideological literature.  the gaps are missing
information within the narrative, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent,
sometimes from the perspective of the characters, sometimes from the
perspective of the reader.  and all this from a priviledged narrator that
often displays the omniscience of God, and at other times is painfully
close-mouthed.  in Gen 1:1 the narrator is so priviledged as to know what
happened in the six days of creation, but he is equally as tight-mouthed
about what came before.

so, what's odd?  there was this dark, watery wasteland, and the ruax of God
was there.  the watery world had to have an origin, too, i guess, but
that's not where the story picks up.  when the story picks up in v. 3, the
watery world had already become.  are we to think that God *created* a
watery waste?  i don't think so.  the narrator should have wanted to point
out that the world had already *become* tohu vabohu when God *began*
creating. folks have mentioned already that the account has a lot to do
with God bringing about order: all the dividing, everything after its kind,
and so on.  in contrast, the narrator's Elohim would *not* have made the
world tohu vabohu.  Isaiah, in its references to tohu and bohu, also
reflects this idea of waste that has come into being, *not* at God's doing;
but the Isaiah personna(s) is different than the Genesis narrator in that
he places the responsibility for the tohu vabohu someplace: on lawlessness
of the people.  so i do see a gap in Genesis, but not the kind to which you
refer exactly.  i see a gap in information, and i must assume we are not
given the information because the the information is not germane, in
Genesis, to this ideological literature.  it is not the matter how the
world got so, for the Genesis narrator; it is only important to know that
the tohu vabohu is *not* God's doing.  the rest of what we need to know in
Genesis begins where God's creating begins.  

but all this talk rests on an imprecise understanding of hyh.  what can i
say?   i find what i *don't* know about BH is rather humbling.  :-\

Shalom,
Bryan

----------
> From: Lloyd Barre <barre AT c-zone.net>
> To: Bryan Rocine <596547 AT ican.net>
> Subject: Re: Gen 1.1-2, hyh
> Date: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 8:01 PM
> 
> Dear Bryan,
> 
> It strikes me as an odd understanding in light of the entire account. 
But
> I have encountered advocates of that translation.  They subscribe to the
> so-called "Gap Theory."  You would be amazed what allegedly went on in
the
> gap between the first two verses--nothing no less than the fall of Satan
> with his rebellious demons!
> That aside, I don't see why the author would want to introduce
speculation
> about how the earth became void, even by implication.  Others had stated
> that we have in Gen 1:2 a common description of the primeval state that
> preceded the ordering of the cosmos.
> 
> Lloyd
> 
> 
> At 06:05 PM 1/5/99 -0500, you wrote:
> >B-Haverim,
> >
> >What do you guys think of the qatal of hyh in v. 2 weha'arec haytah tohu
> >vabohu  ?  here it is in series with a verbless clause and a participle
> >clause.  why did the hyh surface?  why not a verbless clause?  I
happened
> >to get a sneak preview of the intriguing article by Vincent DeCaen on
the
> >verbless clause that is coming out in the new Eisenbrauns publication
> >edited by Cindy Miller.  in it, he's considering hyh to be notional in
> >verbless clauses and wondering why hyh surfaces sometimes and not
others. 
> >might it be that hyh is not merely a copula?  given the loaded use of
hyh
> >in Gen 1, might weha'arec hayta tohu vabohu mean "and the earth
> >*became*..." or "and the earth had become..."?
> >
> >it's interesting to me how such a lexical and verbal semantic micro
issue
> >can have such a macro effect on our understanding of Gen 1.
> >


B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
315-479-8267(h)