Literary Structure Posts

The author of Genesis is a master craftsman. He introduces comparisons in places where we would not expect them, such as comparing the story of Hagar in the desert and Abraham on Mount Moriah. At first, these seem like totally different stories, but…

The author of Genesis was a great literary craftsman. A modern reader might not  immediately see this because we expect literature to be written like our own culture. Genesis, in fact all the Bible, is written with a different idea of what makes goo…

One of the most common ways of structuring a narrative for the author of Genesis was to use a chiastic structure.  We saw this earlier in the story of the flood. As a reminder, in a chiastic structure, the author creates parallel points  arranged in…

Different types of literature demand different structures. We write novels differently than blog posts, and short stories differently from e-mail messages. The literary culture of the Bible was no different, except that the literary forms come from …

The opening overture to the book of Genesis (1:1-2:3) is presented in a parallel structure. The vertical relationships point to the two great creative acts of God, forming and filling. The horizontal relationships represent three areas of ac…