Andy taught 7 years in Lebanon learning some market place Arabic. Then during thirty years at John Brown he produced papers for ETS and articles in reference works published by Zondervan, Moody Press, and Baker . Most recently, he was the junior, partner with Robert Longacre in their discourse based analysis of Hebrew grammar.
Genesis 1: Past Narrative, i.e. Story Discourse, Expository Discourse; or Something in Between?
Abstract
Through the whole history of Conservative Evangelical thought one could conclude that Genesis 1 has been taken as Story Discourse, i.e. past narrative. But there are structural, literary features that could point towards a different notional intent for this chapter. Most of these features fall into two categories:
First, the usage of the wyyqtl (i.e. the imperfect form with the wan prefix) form can be taken as a strong proof of narrative intent since this is the dominant mainline form for most Old Testament narrative. This paper will question that view with three, clear non-narrative usages of that morphology in the Old Testament.
Second, there is the presence in Genesis 1 of structural features which are not typical for narrative in the rest of the Old Testament. These features will be examined.
On the basis of the data provided, there are strong literary and structural reasons for taking Genesis 1 as basically expository discourse rather than narrative discourse. I am not ready to state this as a final, definite conclusion. But, at this moment, I take the data as pointing very strongly in that direction.