The Discourse of the Flood Narrative

This paper approaches the Genesis Flood Narrative from the standpoint of contemporary discourse analysis. As a developing discipline within linguistics, discourse analysis is currently being applied to a variety of texts in many languages—from Western Europe to folk cultures. The aim has been to apply the techniques of discourse analysis in a somewhat routine way to the Flood Narrative without resort to ad hoc procedures. Discourse analysis anticipates a certain range of style within any text. Thus, material which is on the BACKBONE (event-line of a narrative) will inevitably differ from material of a supportive and depictive nature. Likewise, material at the peak (high point) of a story will almost always differ from routine narration. Finally, quoted material will differ stylistically from the surrounding narrative framework. All these insights contribute to the understanding of the Flood Narrative and the appreciation of its unity. Thus, the material on this event-line of this and other narratives in Biblical Hebrew consists of verb-initial clauses with verbs in the waw plus prefixal tense—exclusive of wayěhiy (from hāyâh ‘be’) which is usually depictive and functions in the paragraph setting to initiate a chain of backbone verbs. Clauses off the backbone have verbs in other tenses—often preceded by an initial noun—or are verbless. At the peak of the Flood Narrative (Gen. 7: 17–24), however, a special feature of event-line paraphrase sets in, so that explanatory and depictive material, instead of being off the line, is expressed in the waw plus prefixal verbs which are elsewhere restricted to the event-line. The effect is like that of slowing down the camera at the high point of a movie. Quoted material in the Flood Narrative differs considerably from that found in the surrounding context; e. g., the speeches of God are not themselves narrative but procedural (how to build the ark), instructional (what to do when the ark is built), and predictive-promissory (the convenant after the Flood). Since different genres have different features which have radical effects on the details of a discourse, considerable stylistic variety ensues within the overall unity. The slow-moving and redundant nature of the pre-peak episodes is explained as OVERLAY—a rhetorical device in which the same ground is gone over repeatedly in a way which highlights important motifs. This device is well attested in non-Western literatures. Such repetitions need not be attributed to divergent sour

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• The Historical and Social Background

  Thomas L Brodie•Genesis As Dialogue•2001

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• Genesis As Dialogue

  Thomas L Brodie•Genesis As Dialogue•2001

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