# Genre of Genesis 1 and Statistical Analysis



## CharlieJ (Nov 4, 2009)

The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story

Steven Boyd from the Master's College has published some statistical analysis on the genre of Gen 1-2:3 based on verb distribution.


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## Zenas (Nov 4, 2009)

What an interesting way to approach the problem. I was pleased to read the article, at least what I could understand.


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## au5t1n (Nov 4, 2009)

That's amazing! As an amateur linguist, I think that's one of the coolest approaches to handling this question I've ever seen. I'm such a nerd.


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## DMcFadden (Nov 4, 2009)

Dr. Boyd was part of the ICR "RATE" project. He carried the portfolio of biblical studies alongside the geologists, techtonics guy, and physicists. A popular version of the project, *Thousands, not Billions of Years *(ed. by Don de Young) features a full chapter by Dr. Boyd (somewhat longer, if memory serve me, then the article you cite).

A HIGHLY technical statistically laden (not for the faint hearted or math phobic!!!) full version of Boyd's paper appears as "Statistical Determinaton of Genre in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence for an Historical Reading of Genesis 1:1-2:3," appearing in _*Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth*_, Larry Vardiman, Andrew A. Snelling, and Eugene F. Chaffin, eds.(El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research), pgs. 631-734.

That is MORE than 100 pages of technical Hebrew and statistics!!!

It is amazing reading if you are comfortable with "heteroscedasticity," "multicollinearity," "strichography," AND the "waw-perfect." He follows the "logistic regression curve" in "determining genre from the ratio of preterites to finite verbs," and calculating a 95% confidence interval.

In a conclusion that will bring tears to the eyes of many an altar call, he concludes that *"With X equal to 0.654762, the vertical interval for this text (the range of probabilities for the text being a narrative) is 0.999942 ≤ P ≤ 0.999987 at a 99.5% confidence level."*


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## DMcFadden (Nov 5, 2009)

BTW, if it was not obvious from my post, I think that most people would be better off rerading the layman's version in *Thousands not Billions* rather than the full scientific (and I do mean SCIENTIFIC) paper in the ICR tome. You can get it from Amazon: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Thousands-not-Billions-Challenging-Questioning/dp/0890514410]Amazon.com: Thousands not Billions: Challenging the Icon of Evolution, Questioning the Age of the Earth (9780890514412): Donald DeYoung: Books[/ame]


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## Skyler (Nov 5, 2009)

That is cool. There's hope for computer linguistics yet!


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## Nathan Riese (Nov 5, 2009)

That was the craziest article i've ever read.

This is the ONLY part that I understood


> Conclusion
> The distribution of preterites to finite verbs in Hebrew narrative differs distinctly from that in Hebrew poetry. Moreover, a logistic regression model fitted to the ratio of preterites to finite verbs categorizes texts as narrative or poetry to an extraordinary level of accuracy. With its probability of virtually 1, Genesis 1:1-2:3, therefore, is a narrative, not poetry.
> 
> Three major implications from this study are (1) it is not statistically defensible to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 as poetry; (2) since Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a narrative, it should be read as other Hebrew narratives are intended to be read as a concise report of actual events, couched to convey an unmistakable theological message;13 and
> (3) when this text is read as a narrative, there is only one tenable view of its plain sense: God created everything in six literal days.



i.e., I'm on his side. Yay! The really smart numbers guy is on my team!


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