2.6:chosen passage: Hosea 11:1-11 – “When Israel was a child . . .”
One of the most important tasks in analyzing the literary world of your selected passage is to identify how it functions as a part of a larger whole. The books of the Bible were originally written on scrolls of papyrus and often consisted of block letters smushed together with little or no punctuation to tell you which letters went with which word and where the paragraph breaks would indicate a shift in thought. There simply were no paragraph breaks! Part of this was making good use of all of the space you had to write with! So, readers of these texts would have to read and discern where words and paragraph breaks would be: Does this section of writing better go with what comes before or what comes after?
So the first thing we want you to do is determine what makes your selected Bible passage a ‘literary unit’.
What is it that makes you particular passage a ‘unit’ which fits together?
Are there ‘beginning markers’? that is, words or phrases which seem to indicate the beginning of a new section of writing?
Beginning markers might include a title or a shift in time, place, people, theme, style.
Are there ‘ending markers’? that is, words or phrases which seem to indicate a conclusion or a summary statement.
When you look at the verses which come before or after your particular passage, why were those verses left out from the passage designated for you to study?
What are the literary clues which make the case that the verses selected for your passage function as a unit which is set apart from the rest of the chapter or the book of the Bible it is in?
Instructions
These deep dives require that you read each item of the instructions very carefully.
As you respond to each element of this deep dive, it is recommended that you copy and paste your responses into a separate, word-processor document you can save and keep for your own records. Doing so will allow you to save your notes and research to help you write your final paper.
Spend some time below analyzing your passage of the Bible you will write your “Three Worlds” paper on.
Make a list of no less than 10 statements (formatted as a list) which indicate your passage functions as an individual unit and point to specific words, phrases, and terms which help mark it off as a separate unit from what comes before or after it.
Alternatively, if you believe your passage does not function as a separate unit, provide your list of statements to make that argument. Should more verses before or after your passage be included in your passage or not? Why or why not?
