[lbo-talk] Americans and the bible

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Thu Mar 25 17:50:36 PDT 2010


On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Matthias Wasser <matthias.wasser at gmail.com>wrote:


> On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > much later. Chapter divisions in the 13th century, and modern
> versification
> > and numbering in the middle of the 16th century. There are longer
> > traditions
> > of something like paragraphing in both the NT and Tanakh (including
> > numbering), but neither has anything to do with the modern divisions
>
>
> A literally trivial question: what's up with the chapter division between
> Genesis 1 and 2? On my table copy the second creation story starts on 2:4
> or
> 2:5, with 2:1-3 (and possibly 4) being the denoument to the first creation
> story, which was otherwise contained in chapter one. Is there a logic here?
>
>
Well, it's possible that it was simply a mistake, but all in all Langton didn't really do a horrible job. So there's probably a reason for it, even if it's a bad one. So if there's logic, as I think there is, the logic would be scholastic theological logic, namely, that the work of the six days was the discrete unit. There are scholastic treatises on the hexaemeron, but not to my knowledge on the heptaemeron, if you take my meaning. But honestly that's a guess.

As for the text itself, you are right. What is currently 2:4 is the beginning of the second story. "And these are the generations" is a formula you see a number of times in Genesis.

j



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