Like Herman Gunkel, Umberto Cassuto suggested that Israelite epic is demarcated by certain recurring phrases. He cited, for example, the phrase, ‘‘And X lifted up his eyes and saw...,’’ found at Gen. 18: 2, 24: 63 and 64, 37: 25, etc. (1971: 36-8). Given the nature of the content and the wide distribution of the repetitions presented, however, Cassuto’s case for epic language is less convincing than the case for a general, traditional-style language that characterizes much of the Israelite tradition, across genres (see Niditch 1987, 1993a, 1996). Victor Sasson suggested that one of the essential linguistic patterns of Israelite narrative, the so-called waw-consecutive, ‘‘was originally used in Old Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew in war, war-related epic, and mythic texts’’ (2001: 603). Again, the notion is intriguing but too sweeping to be useful in a search for an ethnic genre. Something more specific is required comparable to Frank Cross’s observation that the phrase 'Ih twldwt, ‘‘these are the generations,’’ marks the presence of a certain kind of priestly material in the Hebrew Bible (1973: 301-5). Possible candidates for such markers of epic are the phrases, wyhy bymym hhm, literally ‘‘And it was in those days... ’’ or ‘‘It came to pass in those days...,’’ the related bymym hhm, ‘‘in those days,’’ wyhy bymy...,’’ ‘‘And is was in the days of X,’’ and wyhy ’ys, literally, ‘‘And there was a man....’’
Wyhy, the so-called waw-consecutive of the imperfect form of the verb ‘‘to be,’’ is used throughout ancient Hebrew narrative to demarcate time (see van der Merwe 1999). In an extremely common use of this term, the narrator provides a specific time frame for the scene or story that follows: e. g. ‘‘(Itwas) at that time’’ (Gen. 21: 22; 38: 1; 1 Kgs. 11: 29) or‘‘(It was) at the end of X amount of time’’ (Gen. 12:41,41: 1;Deut. 9: 12; Judg. 11: 39; 2 Sam. 15: 7; 1 Kgs. 2: 39) or ‘‘(Itwas) on the next day’’ (Num. 17: 23; Judg. 9: 42; 21: 4; 1 Sam. 11: 11, 18: 10, 31: 8). Less common throughout the narrative portions of Hebrew Bible is the phrase literally translated ‘‘And it was in those days'' and the briefer variant‘‘In those days.’’These phrases are represented densely in Judg. 19: 1,17:6,18: 1, 20: 27 and 28, 21: 25, and in 1 Sam. 3: 1, 28: 1; LXX 1 Sam. 4: 1. The context for all of these usages is foundation myth, often including a war or battle and reference to the career ofahero. Theformulaicphrasesmarktalesofoldentimes. After such a phrase at Judg. 17: 6, 18: 1,19: 1; 20: 27 and 28; 1 Sam. 28: 1; LXX 1 Sam. 4: 1, the story of a war or battle that tookplacein the significant past is soon to follow. Judg. 21: 25, an inclusio for 17: 6 or 19:1, comments on the battles that have just been described. At Judg. 20: 21 and 1 Sam. 3: 1, particular heroes are introduced who are significant in a cultural history. Variation upon the phrase, ‘‘in those days,'' does seem to frame the sort of content scholars exploring various traditions have found in epic. And the phrase is found densely in a specific corpus of similar tales, tales from the days of the early rulers of Israel. There are relatively few uses of these phrases outside of Judges and Samuel, and five of these introduce passages that are similar in orientation to those of Judges: Gen. 6: 4 refers to the presence of the great heroes of old, the Nephilim; Exod. 2: 11 introduces the bandit career of Moses; Ezek. 38: 17 refers to old-time prophets; in Neh. 6: 17 and 13: 15 and 23, Nehemiah describes his role in his own memoir as a significant feature of the nation’s past.
Two additional temporal phrases may mark epic material in the Hebrew Bible. The first phrase, ‘‘It was in the days of King X,’’ alludes to some aspect of the career of a king. Gen. 14: 1 and Isa. 7: 1 are both preludes to battle accounts while Esther 1: 1 introduces the tale of threat to Jews in diaspora that ends in self-defense, battle, and survival. The reference in Gen. 14 is especially interesting because it places Abraham in a heroic, epiclike setting, quite in contrast to other patriarchal accounts. This mock-heroic tale may suggest that Israelites themselves recognized and adapted an epic genre (Niditch 1993b: 101-2). The second phrase, ‘‘There was a man,’’ is found densely in Judges and 2 Samuel (Judg. 13: 2, 17: 1, 19: 1; 1 Sam. 1: 1; 9: 1; 2 Sam. 21: 20; 1 Chr. 20: 6) and introduces a figure who will be part of an important founding myth, often the hero’s progenitor (Samson’s father Manoah in Judg. 13:2; Samuel’s father in 1 Sam. 1:1; Saul’s father in 1 Sam. 9: 1), other times the key player in the unrolling of a series of events in the foundation tale (Judg. 17: 1, 19: 1; 2 Sam. 21: 20). A close examination of one aspect of ‘‘texture’’ when matched with qualities of‘‘text’’ or content thus seems to reveal some linguistic markers of heroic and perhaps ‘‘epic’’ material and has led scholars repeatedly to Judges and 1, 2 Samuel. A closer examination of the content is in order.
World History
