Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Martin Badenhorst" <badenhorst AT op.org>]

Having watched for a long time - I'm pitching in.

There do appear some clues in the entire narrative structure that could mark
it as not being literal:

Foremost is the repetitions which occur in the text. They have a quality
comparable to good children's stories, which encourage memorization.

The second is the counting, which serves the same purpose, helping to
associate the different elements of the narrative to each other. Think of
counting songs like the Passover "Who knows the One?" with answer and
refrain repeating the elements.

It is within this framework that the refrain of "it was evening, it was
morning..." occurs.

I am of the opinion that these devices serve the same purpose as "once upon
a time" in English. It marks the narrative as not having occured - thus the
"once" is redundant. It also marks the narrative as not being a part of
normal history, thus the "upon a time" signifies a legendary narrative not
having to do with strict history. In other words, "once upon a time" alerts
us to the fact that the following narrative has nothing to do with anything
that ever happened - it in fact marks the exact contrary to that statement.

Greetings

Martin

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Martin Badenhorst OP
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