The Literary Structure of the Genesis Creation Story

Abstract

"Exegetical research on Gen 1 has been characterized since the eighteenth century essentially by a diachronic concern. Thus the Documentary hypothesis and the so-called Tatbericht-Wortbericht theory have been the two main starting points of any relevant scholarly study of this text. Recently, under the influence of contemporary literary studies, attention has been drawn to the validity of the synchronic approach, and more and more scholars have thus become aware of the importance of the literary structure of this text. The structure's dissociation from the thematic distribution of motifs has resulted in a tension which has been explained in terms of different sources, but this explanation has not permitted an adequate control. Thus, most scholars assume the existence of a literary structure, but all disagree about its contours"