![]() Astounding levels of coherence were found throughout, with Jonah positioned prominently at the center of the sub-group. Because the Septuagint arrangement showed early promise of strong coherence, especially in its five-book sub-group, Joel+Obadiah+Jonah+Nahum+Habakkuk, the search for points of coherence was narrowed to that sub-group. For the Septuagint arrangement to have the best opportunity to demonstrate its own coherence, a fully searchable Hebrew retroversion of its Greek text was generated. With three arrangements attested across the manuscript traditions, the goal would be to search each arrangement for all points of coherence in every grouping of books across the textual hierarchy whichever arrangement shows the strongest coherence, while also explaining the presence of the other arrangements, would represent the original shaping of the Twelve. An ideal test bed for this theory is the grouping of the Twelve Prophets, its coherence having been hotly debated for decades. As such, the same methods used to show coherence for an individual book can be used to demonstrate coherence for a grouping of books. ![]() This is the nature of biblical authorship – the shaping of existing texts into a coherent whole. An individual biblical book is a text made from existing texts (narratives, poems, etc.), while a grouping of books is a book made from existing books. This study explores the simple idea that each grouping of books within the Hebrew Bible was authored, in the same sense that any individual biblical book was authored. It was concluded, therefore, that there are no occurrences of true interrogative clauses in Hebrew without some sort of interrogative marker. The remaining verse contains the verb שׁאל 'ask' which, itself, implies interrogation. It is suggested that this is an idiom that itself was understood to imply interrogation. Three of the remaining four exhibited a similar structure, each beginning with שָׁלֹם 'peace, wholeness', with שָׁלֹם being the content of the question. My findings were that forty of the forty five verses suggested as examples were rhetorical questions. This is relevant to some interpretations of Gen 3:1. Included in this dissertation is an assessment of the claim made by some Hebrew grammarians that a clause may be interrogative in Hebrew even though it lacks any interrogative marker. The particle כִּי marks information that qualifies the meaning of a clause by reference to time, place, manner, cause or condition. כִּי is considered to be a circumstantial adjunct, and operates at a lower level than אַף. It functions in marking the overall logical structure of the discourse. אַף is determined to be a discourse adjunct, indicating that the following information proceeds from and adds to the preceding discourse. This study concludes that אַף and כִּי act as separate particles, each having its own function in the discourse. The functional analysis also aids in interpretation of four other verses which have been problematic. Once a pattern has been established, it is finally applied to Gen 3:1 where the translation of אַף כִּי has been a problem for hundreds of years, in an effort to arrive at a translation that is consistent with the use of these particles elsewhere in the MT. Each occurrence is examined using Functional Grammar techniques to see if a consistent functional interpretation can be made. This dissertation is an examination of all occurrences of אַף כִּי in the Hebrew Bible.
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