The secret code used to bury bad news in the Bible: Researchers uncover the 'Genesis Death Sandwich'
- Researchers say text uses system to 'bury bad news' - concentrating mentions of death in the middle of the book
- First example of the literary technique
By MARK PRIGG
| tactic in modern politics - but researchers say it was actually first used in the Bible.
British and American researchers say they have uncovered a secret 'Genesis Death Sandwich' that reveals a 'striking pattern between the two key themes of ‘life’ and ‘death’'.
'The opening and closing verses of the book contain frequent mentions of life, whereas mentions of death are only found in clusters in the middle,' they say.
British researchers say they have uncovered a secret 'Genesis Death Sandwich' hidden in the structure of the Bible - with mentions of death concentrated in the middle, sandwiched between mentions of life
HOW THEY DID IT
The text-analysis tool, called Search Visualizer, represents entire texts as a grid with each square representing a word and coloured squares representing search keywords.
When used to examine the words 'life' and 'death' in the King James Version of Genesis, the new pattern emerged.
The team at Keele University, UK, and Amridge University, USA, say the find is the first known use of a technique known as ‘bracketing’, which sandwiches one theme between two mentions of another theme.
The technique is commonly used today, such as when bad news is sandwiched between two bits of good news.
Dubbed the 'Genesis Death Sandwich', this pattern offers the first clear example of this common rhetorical structure being used in the text describing the creation of the universe.
'This is a significant discovery for historians and theologians interested in the Old Testament, and shows that whoever wrote the version of the text that has been passed down to us was clearly employing this rhetorical structure,' said Dr Gordon Rugg of Keele University, who developed a new tool for analysing texts.
Called Search Visualizer, it represents entire texts as a grid with each square representing a word and coloured squares representing search keywords.
When used to examine the words 'life' and 'death' in the King James Version of Genesis, the new pattern emerged./.../
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2282270/The-secret-code-used-bury-bad-news-Bible-Researchers-discover-Genesis-death-sandwich.html#ixzz2MPO9iZTz
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