First of all, the most evident and remarkable aspect in the writing style of this story are the numerous repetitions. In fact, all paragraphs until 1.27 have a very simple and easily identifiable structure containing all the same repetitions at each point: They all start with “God said” (except the first one), then “Let … be…” stating what God intends to create and finally, every paragraph is concluded by “evening came, and morning came; it was the (…)th day.” Thus, the paragraphs are according to the 6 days of the earth’s creation.
However, starting from Genesis 1.27, the structure of the story changes slightly. The beginning of this small structural change is marked by the short poem in 1.27. All the paragraphs before were in prose and thus, this sudden appearance of poetry, signifies a change in writing style and structure, which is supported by the fact that, for example, the last paragraph in chapter 1 is quite long compared to all the short paragraphs before. Nevertheless, even the three lines of poetry contain repetitions, for example, the term “he created them” occurs twice as well as it is mentioned twice that he created them (the humans) in God’s own image. This signifies that the general writing style and structure is kept throughout the story, since, for instance, the style of repetitive and structural important terms like “evening came, and morning came, the sixth day” (Genesis 1.31) keep on occurring also after Genesis 1.27 . Thus, the structure is only changed slightly at the end of chapter 1.
To conclude, the structure in “The creation of the universe” (Genesis 1 – 2.3) is very simple having always the same formulations at each part in the paragraphs. After Genesis 1.27, the structure changes then slightly. I, on my part, really appreciate this structure thinking that the bible should be a book, which must be easy for every common citizen to understand, and the simple, repetitive and easily identifiable structure in this story surely contributes significantly to one’s understanding of the story.
