Lesson 2 | Text Hierarchy: Narrative
[3] The Mainline of Narrative
A story is basically shaped like a horizontal line: it moves from one event to another, forward in time. Of course, there are ups and downs, conflicts and resolutions, but its basic movement is always forward.
The stories of the Bible share this shape. But we’re not focusing on the plot in this shape, but rather the events that move it forward—even small events. And these events have verbs at their core. These verbs are the backbone of a story—its mainline clauses.
In narrative, the mainline clauses are made of sequential-imperfect verbs.
What a Narrative Text Hierarchy Looks Like
Let’s illustrate this with another example within the large narrative of the Exodus, this time from chapter 14.
We started in the middle of a large discourse block, so our passage doesn’t begin with asyndeton.
Most importantly, notice the verbs in blue: each is a sequential-imperfect, and thus each moves the story forward. The clauses that are indented are offline clauses: they are supporting or explaining the mainline clauses in some way. (The ESV sometimes shows offline clauses by using words like “while” [8c] and “when” [10a].)
Why It’s Important
In a brief description on his website, Dr. DeRouchie explains why text hierarchy is important:
"By creating a text hierarchy, the interpreter can demonstrate where units of text begin and end and which elements within that text are of greater significance than others from a grammatical perspective. The benefit of this method is that since it is a linguistic approach, it removes much of the guesswork when determining a passage’s main point, flow of thought, boundaries, and so on.”
—Jason DeRouchie, “Creating a Text Hierarchy in the Hebrew Old Testament,” emphasis mine.
This is similar to what we try to accomplish when making a phrase in English. But one important difference is that with a Hebrew text hierarchy, we can be even more accurate since we are using the language the biblical authors wrote in!
Your Turn
From now on, in addition to dividing the clauses from Jonah in the assignments, you will also indent offline clauses, keeping mainline clauses on the right margin.
So let’s get some practice doing that first using a passage a little later on in the story of the Exodus. (There is a passage module underneath the Phrasing module so that you can check your parsing of verbs.) Here’s what to do:
- Divide the text into clauses, with one verb per clause.¹ With the Editing toggle on, select the Indent tab. Then click/tap between the words you want to divide.
- Indent the offline clauses. With the same Indent tab selected, drag the dark grey handle to the left.
Divide the text into clauses and indent all offline clauses.Optional
Log in / create an account to enroll or continue where you left off.