Division of the Book of Exodus into fundamental literary units according to the thought of its final writer-redactor. Presentation of the research method sequence

Kosek Wojciech, Jelonek Tomasz, Poniży Bogdan, Hałas Stanisław
2020 Zenodo  
The present paper shows subsequent methodological steps to discover the division of the Book of Exodus into basic literary units according to the thought of its final writer-redactor, the one who arranged the text under to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. In the first step, one ought to make a list of the more essential means of dividing this book, which occurred from the very beginning to our times. It concerns, of course, the version in the Hebrew language, and also its translations
more » ... into different languages, including the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate. One must take into account also the contribution of the contemporary biblicists done through their translations and scientific discussions and analyses resulting in books or articles in specialized magazines. The comparative material collected in this way will answer the question about the criterion for the division of the text: is there visible an original logic in the contemporary editions of the Bible according to which the last editor-writer finally shaped this holy text? What is this original logic? Can this be discovered with scientific credibility? The second step of the methodological looking for the original division of the Book of Exodus will be a through-out reading of the Hebrew text. For providing the fulfillment of the requirement to read the text profoundly, one will involve the principle of theocentrism as the essential criterion for this task. Namely, to understand the sacred text, one should look especially for those places where God of Israel – יְהוָה – appears as the subject (dynamic center) of acts and simultaneously the grammatical subject of the biblical sentence. As a result of such reading, one will discover the six-element literary structure of Ex 1-18 as the first main part of the Book of Exodus; its second part – Ex 19-40 – will not be analyzed in the present publication.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.3627728 fatcat:7s4kuuubzrgpthuljd2ehuathu