Terminological Patterns and the Divine Epithet "Shaddai" -- By: Wilfried Warning

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 52:1 (NA 2001)
Article: Terminological Patterns and the Divine Epithet "Shaddai"
Author: Wilfried Warning


Terminological Patterns and the Divine Epithet Shaddai

W. Warning

Summary

By juxtaposing the first seven occurrences of the divine epithet Shaddai in Genesis and Exodus it becomes evident that they are both terminologically and thematically interrelated and culminate in Exodus 6:3.

Concordances, and even more so today Bible computer programmes, are a means of gaining insight into the ‘workshop’ of the author of the Endgestalt, or final shape, of a given biblical text, because by making use of the computer the distribution of a given word can easily be traced. In some recent studies the vocabulary of certain passages of the Pentateuch has been scrutinised by tabulating all the words used in a given self-contained literary unit, an entity which may consist of a brief passage, a chapter or even a biblical book, thus bringing to light the distinct distribution, the relative frequency and the structural positioning of significant terms and/or phrases.1 By carefully tabulating their respective positions and counting the frequencies of the words used, several terms turn out to be significant as far as structural outlines are concerned, and it is these structures based on counting a given sentential entity, word or term, which have been called ‘terminological patterns’.2 In each of these studies it has been shown that the extant text has been carefully composed by its ancient author, the term ‘author’ being understood and used as referring to the person(s) responsible for the text before us, the person(s) who

composed the literary unit we call, for instance, ‘Genesis 17’, ‘the Joseph Story’ or ‘Genesis’, literary entities which did not exist prior to their composition, whatever the prehistory of their individual parts may have been.

Close reading of different biblical texts has provided another insight: Because of the symbolic significance ascribed by the ancients to the number seven (representing completion and completeness) in a variable-length list the seventh and, in case of a longer list, at times the twelfth position tend to be emphasised by means of some special term or phrase.3 It is my contention that the author of the extant text has employed this structural device in using the divine epithet Shaddai. Since this study is solely concerned with the final text, any discussion of sources and actual or alleged literary layers has deliberately been omitted.

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