Jan
30
Is Genesis 1-11 Poetry or Prose?
When it comes to the first few chapters of Genesis, some people like to claim that it is merely poetry (and thus at least partly fictional), as opposed to narrative prose about actual things that happened in real time. (Of course, even poetry can point to reality despite flowery or phenomenological language.) This affords them some wiggle-room to doubt (some of) what the text is saying — you know, “embarrassing” things with scientific, theological, and/or philosophical implications.
Last week, I cited from Dr. Walter C. Kaiser’s book The Old Testament Documents in answer to a challenge by Dr. Hermann Gunkel, who claimed that Scripture is not historically reliable. Specifically, Gunkel claimed that the events described early in Genesis were fictional and based on other ancient Near Eastern mythologies. This time, I wanted to provide Kaiser’s arguments against the claim that Genesis 1-11 is poetical, based on literary and philological particulars of the text. (Keep in mind that Kaiser’s impressive CV includes, among other things, being a Distinguished Professor of Old Testament with expertise in ancient Near Eastern empires and multiple ancient languages, including biblical Hebrew.)
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“What are the signals that Genesis 1-11 sends about its literary form? First of all, from a purely grammatical point of view we can point to the author’s use of the waw conversative with the Hebrew verb to describe sequential acts. Also the frequent use of the direct object sign in Hebrew and the employment of the so-called Hebrew relative pronoun all point conclusively to the fact that the literary form is prose and not poetry, for every one of the features just mentioned are found in Hebrew poetry only, if at all, with extreme rarity. Therefore, say what we will, the author of Genesis 1-11 thought he was using the same literary form in this part of the work, which has the same organizing rubric throughout all parts, that he used in Genesis 12-50, where he gathered all of the ten sections under the rubric, “the accounts/happenings of.” (See above image for an example.)
To determine that Genesis 1-11 is in prose form is not the end of the discussion, for there are a number of different prose forms such as speeches, records and narratives. While there is little in these first eleven chapters of Genesis to represent speeches and prayers, large sections of this material are made up of records. Included in this category would be lists, laws, letters, and genealogical records. Since Genesis 5:1 makes reference to a “letter” or “scroll” as a source of one of these lists, which has the same formula as is used as the outline or framework on which the whole book is hung, it is clear that the writer is trying to indicate that he is being dependent on written sources and records. It is also particularly instructive that the end of the book of Ruth, which uses the identical formula, is in the literary form of narrative. It is also noteworthy that the genealogy at the end of the book of Ruth purports to be a link between patriarchal times and the times of David.
There are still large blocks of text unaccounted for in Genesis 1-11 that are unmatched in form to any of the lists, records or written sources noted above. The bulk of Genesis 1-11 is in narrative form; not poetic narrative, such as some of the OT prophets exhibit, but prose narrative. Poetic narratives would provide for forms such as myths, sagas, legends, anecdotes, and various other types of tales, but Genesis 1-11 does not give any of the indicia that would allow for these types of narratives.
Contemporary scholarship needs a whole new paradigm shift in its way of approaching Genesis 1-11. As Langdon B. Gilkey deftly noted, there is a real “continental divide” in biblical scholarship. Gilkey confessed that his stance and that of most modern scholarship is “half liberal and modern on the one hand, and half Biblical and orthodox on the other, i.e., its world view or cosmology is modern while its theological language is Biblical and orthodox” (p. 143). Gilkey explained it this way:
“What has happened is clear: because of our modern cosmology, we have stripped what we regard as ‘the Biblical point of view’ of all its wonders and voices…. [W]e have rejected as invalid all the innumerable cases of God’s acting and speaking” (p. 152.)
I agree not only with Gilkey’s analysis but also with his solution; for he went on to conclude that “first there is the job of stating what the Biblical authors meant to say, a statement couched in the Bible’s own terms, cosmological, historical, and theological.” (p. 153)
Thus, if we do not insist on our own a prioris, we believe the arguments adduced above will yield the conclusion that the genre we are dealing with in Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative-prose, interspersed with reports, lists, sayings, and a few poetical lines such as Genesis 4:23-24….
The claim that Genesis 1-11 is historical narrative-prose does not exclude figures of speech or figurative language. E.W. Bullinger can list approximately 150 different items in these eleven chapters illustrating one figure of speech or another. However, to say that something is figurative is not the end of the interpreter’s responsibilities: the exegete must state the name of the figure, define it according to its classical or biblical usage, give other examples from biblical literature, and assign a meaning in keeping with the limits of that particular figure of speech. The figure of speech points away from itself to the reality behind the figure. Therefore, one must not assume that the imaginary was intended unless other textual clues are present.
The best textual clue that this material is historical narrative-prose is the literary formula that was used ten or eleven times over throughout this book. Now that the patriarchal materials have proven to reflect such a definite historical setting in the world of real events, it is clear that in the writer’s judgment, at least, he thought he was doing the same thing in Genesis 1-11.
One more important distinctive is to be noted: Everything, from the creation story in Genesis 1 to the story of Joseph at the end of this book, is in a linear succession and is viewed as a progression of happenings belonging to a certain order of sequencing. The cyclical view of time, so often found in the cosmologies of the ancient Near East, with their threat to return to the chaotic again, never once appears in Genesis. It is this linear view of events and happenings that actually inaugurates the very discipline of history, rather than stands as antagonistic to it. Other cosmologies do not know of a once-for-all creation that took place in a beginning and is tied to an ongoing stream of events. Time only appears in human perception to go around again and again, only to reappear once again in a cyclical fashion; but time and happenings are actually linear and successive as the Hebrew accounts describe them in Genesis 1-11.”
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Sounds like a pretty good case against poetry and in favor of historical narrative-prose to me.
