Step 2: Discovering Patterns in the Linear Text

Let's look more carefully at the creation narrative and highlight some key patterns:

The highlighted patterns reveal important connections within the text:

• Red highlights show "bracketing" or inclusio, where phrases at the beginning are mirrored at the end (e.g., "heaven and earth" in 1:1 and 2:1).
• Blue highlights show thematic or verbal parallels between different days of creation (especially between Days 1-3 and Days 4-6).
• Gold highlights show recurring formulas or patterns that appear throughout the creation narrative (like "God called" or "God blessed").

As we'll see later, these color-coded patterns point to a sophisticated literary structure that isn't immediately obvious when reading the text linearly.

For a complete explanation of all highlighting patterns used, visit our Pattern Recognition Guide.

Step 3: Identifying Types of Patterns

Looking more carefully at our highlighted text, we can begin to understand what these patterns might reveal about the structure of the passage.

First, let's examine what each type of highlighted pattern suggests:

• The phrases highlighted like this form a frame around the entire passage, with "heaven and earth" appearing at the beginning and end, and God's activity ("hovered" and "rested") similarly bookending the text.
• The phrases highlighted like this show intriguing connections between different days of creation. For example:
  • "Let there be light" (day 1) connects with "Let there be lights" (day 4)
  • "In the midst of the waters" and "firmament Heaven" (day 2) connect with "Let the waters swarm" and "firmament of heaven" (day 5)
  • "Earth" and references to vegetation (day 3) connect with land animals and references to the same vegetation (day 6)
  These connections hint at relationships between days 1-3 and days 4-6.
• The phrases highlighted like this show recurring formulas like "God called" and "God blessed" that appear in similar contexts throughout the text.

The most obvious organizing principle in the creation narrative is the six-day framework. Each day follows a similar pattern:

1. Divine speech: "And God said..."
2. Creative action
3. Divine evaluation: "God saw that it was good"
4. Conclusion: "And there was evening and there was morning, the nth day"

But there's another intriguing pattern. Looking more carefully, we notice that days 1-3 seem to share thematic parallels with days 4-6:

• Day 1 (light) shows connections with Day 4 (luminaries)
• Day 2 (firmament, waters) shares language with Day 5 (fish, birds)
• Day 3 (land, vegetation) has parallels with Day 6 (land animals, humans)

This pattern of relationships suggests the days might be organized in pairs, rather than just a straight sequence. This observation hints at a possible two-column arrangement that could better display these connections.

Combining these observations about different types of patterns, we can begin to envision how the text might be organized to better display these relationships. Let's first note the natural sections that frame the six days:

• Verses 1:1-2 form a natural introduction or prologue to the six days
• Verses 2:1-3 form a natural conclusion or epilogue concerning the seventh day
• These sections also contain parallel language that frames the entire narrative

With these patterns and sections identified, we can now consider how we might arrange the text to better reveal its inherent structure.

Step 4: Proposing a New Arrangement

Based on the patterns we've observed, we might try reorganizing the text to better display these relationships. What if we arrange it in a format that:

1. Places the prologue and epilogue as bookends
2. Arranges days 1-3 alongside days 4-6 to show their parallels
3. Preserves the subdivisions within each day

Such an arrangement might help us see connections that remain hidden in the linear format. Let's try organizing the text into a tabular structure to see what emerges:

Now the structure becomes clear! The creation narrative is organized in a 3×2 grid:

• Rows: Prologue (1a-1b), Six Days (2a-2b), Epilogue (3a-3b)
• Columns: Column a and Column b, which reveal different aspects of creation
• Subdivisions: The six days are further organized into three pairs (A, B, C), with some pairs subdivided (i, ii)

Step 6: Reading the Tabular Structure

With the text arranged in this tabular format, we can now read it in multiple dimensions:

Reading Down the Rows

The rows of days reveal another organizational principle:

• Row A (Days 1 & 4): Deals with light, illumination, and time divisions (upper realm)
• Row B (Days 2 & 5): Concerns the middle spaces - sky and waters - and their inhabitants
• Row C (Days 3 & 6): Focuses on earth, vegetation, land creatures, and humans (lower realm)

This arrangement creates a vertical hierarchy that matches our experience of the world: heavenly bodies above, atmosphere and sea in the middle, land and its creatures below. The text literally maps onto the world it describes!

Now we can understand what the different highlight colors represent in this tabular structure:

• The highlights like this show connections between phrases in the left and right columns
• The highlights like this show relationships between similar formulas in different rows
• The highlights like this show the bracketing that frames the entire structure

Conclusion: The Tapestry Revealed

The creation narrative turns out to be a masterfully constructed literary unit with multiple dimensions of meaning. What begins as a straightforward chronological account reveals itself as a sophisticated tapestry - a text woven on a literary loom.

This "woven text" approach isn't limited to Genesis 1. Throughout scripture, we find literary units that function as two-dimensional weaves, offering depths of meaning inaccessible through linear reading alone. Learning to recognize these patterns opens new horizons for understanding the biblical text.