Date of Award

5-1-2006

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Exegetical Theology

First Advisor

David Adams

Scripture References in this Resource

Exodus 15:1-21; Exodus 12:1-36; Exodus 13:9; Exodus 15:26; Exodus 16:16-36; Exodus 16:4

Abstract

The Song by the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21) has been studied frequently in modem scholarship. A natural and expected question is why study it once again? Despite frequent treatments within the academy, some key aspects of its relationship to the surrounding narrative and its function within that narrative have been neglected. The study advanced here considers the narrative and poem in relationship to one another in their basic bipartite structure, their character portrayals, their plot resolution, and their rhetoric. The resulting analysis presents an understanding of the poem as a hinge between the two main plots of Exodus that is important both for the rhetoric of the book and the larger rhetoric of patriarchal promise. Key elements of analysis include a survey of previous scholarship (chapter 1); a brief description of the methodology used here (chapter 1); a detailed consideration of the poem's translation issues, finite verbal issues, expressions, bipartite structure, and connections with the surrounding narrative (chapter 2); an analysis of the two main narrative arcs of Exodus, including a review of the larger patriarchal promise arc (chapter 3); and finally an analysis of the poem's narratival significance as a hinge within the book of Exodus and within the patriarchal promise plot (chapter4). The dissertation includes many illustrations and tables to help make clear key points of the analysis.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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