Assignment

Approaching Genesis 1-3 as literature:

Read through Genesis 1-3. Pick one continuous episode from these chapters (I.e., a narrative that can stand out on its own and does not have any disruptive substantive breaks that shift the focus to a new episode). Then write about two pages, double-spaced, in answer to the following questions:

1. This is a story. What story-like patterns are there in the text?

(Repetitions? Correlated events? Here you may refer to Leland Ryken's text; How to Read the Bible as Literature -- but be sure to cite any sources properly.)

2. Is there any visual/imagistic detail? How does it contribute to the story? (You may elect to do a word-study on one or two individual Hebrew words in the passage, in order to get more traction on this.) "Imagistic" may refer to descriptive characterizations associated with experiences from any of the 5 senses, though its denotation may seem to be most properly associated with the visual faculty.

3. What are some of the emotions you would experience, if you experienced the story in a sympathetic way - i.e. if you took it seriously as a story?