Statistical Determination of Genre in Biblical Hebrew - Institute for ...

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650 Steven W. Boydof events is important. Sometimes the characters march in place. Timespeeds up, slows, stops or even goes backwards—but only for a shorttime. Shortly, the inexorable sequence resumes. Time is linear innarrative. Not so in poetry.4. Statistical Study: Exploratory PhaseThe discussion above shows that characteristic features of poetry arealso found in narrative. The converse is also true: characteristic featuresof narrative are also present in poetry. We conclude that qualitativedescriptions of poetry and prose—although helpful in identifying theirgenre—do not rigorously distinguish them. We turn instead therefore toexamine countable features of texts, which admit a statistical analysis.As argued above, parallelism is not easily quantifiable, and, therefore,this most prevalent linguistic feature of Biblical Hebrew poetry cannotbe used to distinguish prose from poetry. But Biblical Hebrew has otherlinguistic features, which are easily counted, measurable characteristics,such as morphological distribution, word order, and clause length. 374.1 The Distribution of Finite Verbs in Biblical HebrewAlthough it would be ideal to look at all of these features,morphological distribution was the easiest to determine and, whatis more, preliminary tests indicated that prose and poetry evincestrikingly different distributions with respect to this countable feature.The specific morphological distribution chosen was the distribution offinite verbs, verbs inflected for person (1st—I, we; 2nd—you; 3rd—he, she, they) as well as gender (masculine and feminine) and number(singular and plural). 38The distribution of finite verbs should be ideal for ascertaining if atext is a narrative. Since narratives are characterized by an attention tosetting, plot, characterization, and point of view (narrator)—with plotas arguably the most important—we need to find a countable linguisticfeature, which reflects the action of characters unfolding in time.Finite verbs carry the main action. The other verb forms in Biblical
Evidence for an Historical Reading of Genesis 1:1–2:3 651Hebrew do not. Infinitive constructs provide the setting, often marking acircumstantial clause. Volitives (jussives, imperatives, and cohortatives)indicate what one individual wants the action of himself (singularcohortative) or others (jussive, imperative, and plural cohortative) tobe, but it is not that action. Infinitive absolutes modify finite verbs.Participles are used attributively, substantively, or predicatively (asverbs). When they are used this last way they do not indicate the mainaction.There are four finite verb forms in Biblical Hebrew (see Glossary,p. 725): the preterite (wayyiqtol), the imperfect (yiqtol), the perfect(qatal) and the waw-perfect (w•qatal). Rarely, the preterite occurswithout the initial waw patach (or qamets) before the prefix (such as inthe last two verbs of Psalm 8:6) and, therefore, could be misconstruedas an imperfect, but for the most part it is a sequential past tense. 39 Of allfinite verbs the distribution of preterites within the finite verbs shouldmost clearly mark whether a passage is tracking events through time.The imperfect can be a present/future, general present or modal whenthe action is ongoing or anticipated or it can express habitual actionwhen the action is in the past.Preterites with prefixed waw-consecutives must come first in asentence. If another syntactic element is fronted (it comes first in thesentence instead of the verb to indicate a contrast), the verb cannot bea preterite, but will usually be a perfect. The perfect is normally a nonsequentialpast tense, although word order constraints demand that itbe used in a sequential sense if an explicit subject precedes what wouldotherwise be a preterite.The waw-perfect is perforce clause initial and is used to expresshabitual action in the past and sequential action in the future. It continuesthe force of the verbs that precede it. It is often found in proceduralliterature, such as the instructions for assembling the tabernacle(Exodus 25–31).4.2 Statistical Study: Two QuestionsThe statistical portion of this study asks two pertinent questions.
Page 1 and 2: Chapter 9Statistical Determination
Page 3 and 4: Evidence for an Historical Reading
Page 6 and 7: 636 Steven W. Boydan historical rea
Page 8 and 9: 638 Steven W. Boydapproaches this t
Page 10 and 11: 640 Steven W. BoydThe coherence pri
Page 12 and 13: 642 Steven W. Boyd3. Problems of a
Page 14 and 15: 644 Steven W. Boydformat, but the t
Page 16 and 17: 646 Steven W. Boydis too subjective
Page 18 and 19: 648 Steven W. Boydthey are highly s
Page 22 and 23: 652 Steven W. BoydThe first questio
Page 24 and 25: 654 Steven W. Boyd0.8037Ratio of Pr
Page 26 and 27: 656 Steven W. Boydensured the stati
Page 28 and 29: 658 Steven W. Boyd1.00.90.80.70.60.
Page 30 and 31: 660 Steven W. Boyd1.00.90.80.70.60.
Page 32 and 33: 662 Steven W. BoydAs in Figures 6 a
Page 34 and 35: 664 Steven W. Boydmodel with all B
Page 36 and 37: 666 Steven W. Boydfor a one variabl
Page 38 and 39: 668 Steven W. BoydClassification wa
Page 40 and 41: 670 Steven W. Boydpoetry.With this
Page 42 and 43: 672 Steven W. Boydentire population
Page 44 and 45: 674 Steven W. Boyd1.00.9Probability
Page 46 and 47: 676 Steven W. Boydnot poetry, with
Page 48 and 49: 678 Steven W. BoydAbraham is noted
Page 51: Evidence for an Historical Reading
Page 54 and 55: 684 Steven W. Boydto Ashdod, they
Page 56 and 57: 686 Steven W. Boydthe account of th
Page 58 and 59: 688 Steven W. BoydBalaam tried to c
Page 60 and 61: 690 Steven W. BoydI have given Ar a
Page 62 and 63: 692 Steven W. Boydtruth claim of in
Page 64 and 65: 694 Steven W. Boyd(3) the Samson pe
Page 66 and 67: 696 Steven W. BoydImperfects/Finite
Page 68 and 69: 698 Steven W. BoydAlso, logistic re
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700 Steven W. BoydTable B4. Finite
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702 Steven W. BoydTable B8. Finite
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704 Steven W. Boydcoefficients mode
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706 Steven W. BoydaThis story does
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708 Steven W. BoydTable D5. Chronol
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710 Steven W. BoydTable D6. Functio
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712 Steven W. BoydTable D8. Tempora
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714 Steven W. Boydseventh day, and
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716 Steven W. Boydas a standard for
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718 Steven W. Boydpoetic sensibilit
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720 Steven W. Boydby what precedes
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722 Steven W. Boyd43. Pampel [2000,
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724 Steven W. Boyd57. These were id
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726 Steven W. Boydthe major disjunc
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728 Steven W. Boydpp. 321-334, Zond
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730 Steven W. BoydFokkelman, J. P.,
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732 Steven W. BoydUniversity Press,
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734 Steven W. BoydWeil, G. E., Bibl
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