Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> Dear List Members (particularly those interested in discourse analysis),
>
> Now that the semester has wound down, I can post a question.  But, is
> anyone out there?
>
> Is seems to me, as I try to analyze passages according to a discourse
> approach, that I find dissimilar forms used to express a complete
> thought or action.  (See examples below.)
>
> Historical Narrative
> Gen 1:5
> Wayyiqtol (mainline): “And God called the light day”
> X-qatal (offline, but completes thought): “and/but the darkness he
> called night.”
>
> Gen 4:2 b,c
> wayyiqtol (mainline) “And it happened that Abel was and shepherd of a
> flock”
> X-qatal (offline, but completes thought) “but Cain was a tiller of the
> ground.”
>
> Gen 4:3b-4a
> wayyiqtol (mainline) “And Cain brought. . .”
> x-qatal (offline but completes thought) “and/but Abel brought. . .”
>
I'm getting ready to dash out the door so I can only address this one
cluster at this point, but these are all chiastic.  F. I. Andersen
(The Sentence in Biblical Hebrew) explains chiasmus as a device for
tying two things into one, two sides of a coin, so to speak.  Each of
these illustrates this quite well, and there's no need to
mainline/offline or anything else.  This is one of my many gripes
with discourse analysis, but that's another topic...these are simple
chiasmus.  Nothing more.
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to
do with it.
                  -Emerson