4
Develop a Next-Level Memory
Joshua Foer, the author of the New York Times bestseller Moonwalking with Einstein, tells his own story of how he went from being a journalist covering the USA Memory Championship one year to winning the championship the next year. How did a person with an average memory become a memory champion? Here’s how he describes himself:
My memory was average at best. Among the things I regularly forgot: where I put my car keys (where I put my car, for that matter); the food in the oven; that it’s “its” and not “it’s”; my girlfriend’s birthday, our anniversary, Valentine’s Day; the clearance of the doorway to my parents’ cellar (ouch); my friends’ phone numbers; why I just opened the fridge; to plug in my cell phone; the name of President Bush’s chief of staff; the order of the New Jersey Turnpike rest stops; which year the Redskins last won the Super Bowl; to put the toilet seat down.1
After one year of practice, how was he able to memorize the 107 first and last names of random faces in fifteen minutes? How was he able to memorize eighty-seven random digits in five minutes, or a pack of playing cards in one minute and forty seconds (breaking the US record)? The answer: by employing certain memory techniques.2
Some maintain that they would love to learn Hebrew but simply do not have the ability to do so. In other words, they claim that they do not have a good memory. They have a difficult time memorizing lists by rote, and it makes them fearful even to think about such an activity with all the jots and tittles associated with Hebrew. This chapter is designed to alleviate such fears and give you proven strategies for memorization. The first section of this chapter will address the objection that some people just don’t have a good memory. The second section will offer six strategies for how to effectively memorize new material.
How Good Is Your Memory?
In previous eras, memory (along with grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was an essential part of classical education. Today, however, the average person is not skilled in the art of memorization. This change occurred because we are no longer dependent on memorizing information out of necessity. Do you know your parents’ or close friend’s phone numbers? I don’t. It’s stored in my contacts list, and so memorizing it is no longer a necessity. Since the invention of the printing press, the need to remember information has steadily declined. We have access to books and websites, all through our personal computers and phones.
Most people have the capacity to memorize new information (including new vocabulary words and vowel changes) but do not have the training on how to most effectively use their mind to grasp and retain new information. In fact, memorizing new information may be best served by taking the time to discover your learning style. Just because a certain method works best for one person doesn’t mean that same memorization strategy will work for you.
Think back through some things you memorized easily that have stuck with you. Perhaps you remember detailed sports stats or musical lyrics. Perhaps you have a work of art emblazoned in your memory from a trip to the local art gallery. Think of something you remember well. Now, consider how you memorized those things. Very often, our best memory strategies go unnoticed in our own brains because we don’t have to work hard to remember things by using our best memory techniques. We are hardwired for that memory strategy or learning style, and so we are not cognizant of even thinking while using it. Perhaps you easily learned song lyrics because a musical verse and regular rhythm makes the words stick. If so, then put your Hebrew paradigms to music. Maybe that piece of art maintains its details in your mind’s eye because you’re a visual learner and the visual stimulation of the colors in the frame brought delight to the neurons in your brain to solidify that image. If so, then perhaps your memory of Hebrew will work best when you stimulate brain synapses with visual pictures of Hebrew vocabulary or images that correspond to a Hebrew word’s meaning. One word that I did this with was נטע, “to plant.” For whatever reason, I remembered this word because the bottom edge of the ayin looked to be digging into the ground like a plow, so the farmer could “plant” seeds. It was a visual cue that I remember to this day.3 The point is, everyone has the capacity to memorize new information, but learning how to learn may take some effort up front.
As we begin to think of developing a hearty memory, the goal is to get the data from short-term memory to long-term memory. The process of acquiring new information includes three stages: decoding, storage, and retrieval. Because the brain is constantly inundated with new information, much of the information that we receive is not stored. Most information goes into our short-term memory. But if this information is not frequently accessed, the brain thinks that it is not important and so it focuses on other information. One of the best ways of moving information from our short-term to our long-term memory is to access that information on a regular basis through repetition.
If you are uninterested and unengaged in a topic, then it will be difficult to learn. If you convince yourself that Hebrew is not necessary and that you are studying Hebrew only to get a degree, it will prove to be challenging for you. In contrast, if you are interested, excited, and passionate about Hebrew, your study of the language will be aided. The more you are engaged in the material, the quicker you will assimilate it.
Thomas Hyde and James Jenkins conducted a psychology experiment regarding memory in 1969.4 Their study demonstrated that making meaningful connections with random words helped the participants recall the words more accurately. For example, those told to merely reflect on the pleasantness of a word (getting their emotions involved) had nearly twice the success of those who were told to recognize if the word contained the letter E. In other words, if we can relate what we are memorizing to our emotions (as opposed to merely memorizing by rote), the effectiveness of our labor will increase greatly. Emotions can enhance one’s memory.
It is also good to eat healthy, exercise, and get enough rest. Eating good foods provides the nutrients needed for your brain to function properly. A healthy diet can help produce a healthy mind. It is also important to keep our body healthy through physical exercise. Dominic O’Brien, the eight-time world memory champion, ramped up his exercise training before a memory competition. We tend to be more alert and have more energy when we exercise regularly. Finally, it is also crucial that we get enough rest. This is often a challenge for students who are also working and have other responsibilities. But without adequate rest, it is difficult to be efficient and productive. If you’re tired, you will have a hard time concentrating, something that is crucial for memorization.
Use Mnemonic Devices
A mnemonic device is a memory technique that helps one encode and later recall information. The key is to associate the new material with something you already know. Although this may take a bit more time up front, the payoff is well worth it. Instead of staring at the same words over and over again because they don’t “stick,” it is much better to invest a little time so that you actually memorize the word the first time you see it. What are the best practices for effectively memorizing information? Below are seven strategies and techniques that have been proven to aid in the memorization process.
Use Your Imagination and Association
As we mentioned, association is one of the key ways to move information from a short-term or working memory into long-term storage. Like other brain processes, association doesn’t happen on its own. We have to be proactive and “think about thinking.” Use previously existing images and consciously link them with new words or concepts. You must try to relate the new word to words you already know, either in English or in other languages. Think of things that stand out and are unique. They could be silly, crazy, impossible, or absurd. Typically, the more extreme they are, the more effective they will be.
If we don’t associate a piece of new information with something we already know, the information will not find a home and will quickly be forgotten. Once it is associated with a clear mental image, however, it has sticking power. The clearer the picture, the more that image is burned into your memory.
A more specific way to use association in Hebrew is to associate the meaning of words with words you’ve already learned. This type of association can work within a much larger context of words too. We mentioned earlier the similarities between the זבח word family (זָבַח, “he sacrificed”; זֶ֫בַח, “a sacrifice”; and מִזְבֵּחַ, “an altar”). Another example of this is the word מִדְבָּר (wilderness). However, it’s not initially what you may think. If you remove the מ from מִדְבָּר, you have the root דבר. Most of us know this root as “to speak.” However, Hebrew has a rarer secondary root of דבר that means “to drive out.” This is the cognate root for מִדְבָּר. It is the “place of the driving out” or “the wilderness.” This whole context of association works like this. Most people learn דבר (to speak) and מִדְבָּר (wilderness) pretty early in their Hebrew journey. If you throw in the few occurrences of דבר (to drive out), you can more easily remember מִדְבָּר and you can remember a more obscure word like דבר (to drive out). At the end of the day, a good deal of memory work can occur by making these associations. Minimally, you can associate new vocabulary words with words you’ve learned previously.
Use Substitute Words
When learning a new language, it is often difficult to associate words with something you already know—especially if the words represent abstract ideas. One of the most helpful tools is to pronounce the Hebrew term and try to identify English words (or words from other languages you know) that sound similar. Linking a similar-sounding word or phrase in your native language will help you memorize the new word in a foreign language.
I usually tell students to say the Hebrew word (which requires them to have learned the proper pronunciation first) and then to associate the word with the first thing that comes to their mind. This will often be an odd association, but since we don’t always have a pictorial association with a word in Hebrew, the association of the sound of the word will be the next best thing. So, after saying the word, you can make an association based on what you just said. One that I remember from over a decade ago is כָּתַב, meaning “to write.” I always enjoyed carpentry work with my dad when I was young, and one of the fond memories I have is of him whittling off the end of a carpenter’s pencil. He would “cut off” (which sounds like כָּתַב) the end of the pencil so that we could “write” with it. That may seem odd to you, but your associations will seem odd to me. Find the ones that work for you and employ them to the fullest.
Let’s try this with another example. The Hebrew word יָשַׁב means “to sit, dwell, settle.” When I was learning this set of vocabulary, the first thing that came to my mind was “shoving” someone off the end of a bench in a baseball dugout in order “to sit.” Hence, “ya shove” someone over in order “to sit down.” I can’t tell you where this image came from in my brain or why it popped up at that moment, but to this day I not only remember יָשַׁב but also remember why I remember יָשַׁב. We tend to forget average, everyday things. Thus, the more outrageous the example becomes, the more likely it will stick.
Use Acronyms
An acronym is simply an abbreviation that is formed from the first letter (or letters) in a phrase or word. For example, Tanakh (TNK, תנך) is the acronym for the sections of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (תּוֹרָה), Nevi’im (נְבִיאִים), and Ketuvim (כְּתוּבִים). The first letter of each word formed a new word. A well-known acronym is used for teaching children the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. When the first letters are put together, we get ROYGBIV. That doesn’t look like anything until we see it as someone’s name: Roy G. Biv. Today there are thousands of school children who are familiar with and thankful for Mr. Biv for helping them learn the colors of the rainbow.
One example that I use in class helps students memorize the rules associated with how the vowel points change in noun syllables. The grammar that I use for first-year Hebrew focuses heavily on morphology, and I require students to be able to tell me how a vowel will change if it is in a certain syllable of a given word. This method is helpful when we begin adding suffixed elements such as feminine singular or plural, masculine plural suffixes, or pronominal suffixes. The acronyms for these rules are as follows:
CAPL: Closed Accented Prefers Long
OPRL: Open Pretonic Requires Long
CURS: Closed Unaccented Requires Short
OAPS: Open Accented Prefers Short
OOPPS: Original Open ProPretonic [reduces to a] Shewa
These are significantly shortened versions of the rules from the textbook, but along with the full explanation in the textbook, these acronyms help students with all of noun morphology. It sounds crazy up front, but I often hear students reciting these acronyms in the hallways at school. Trying to memorize such rules by brute force (rote) is possible but very difficult and time consuming.
Use Silly Stories
The key here, once again, is to associate something that you already know with something that you are learning, or to develop a creative and memorable story or image in your brain that allows you to make the associative jump to long-term memory. One example that I’ve borrowed is called the Hebrew Love Story.5 This story works when trying to memorize the various ways that inseparable prepositions (ב ,ל ,כ) attach to the front of a word with an initial yod. The most common example I use is the word יְהוּדָה. I teach students that the inseparable prepositions point “normally” with a vocal shewa (לְיְהוּדָה). In יְהוּדָה particularly, this construction now leaves two vocal shewas at the beginning of a word, which Hebrew doesn’t allow. I teach that when we have two shewas at the beginning of a word, they “fight.” The first shewa becomes a short vowel, often a hireq, and the second shewa becomes silent (לִיְהוּדָה). Now the students can see the beauty of the relationship between a hireq and a yod that culminates in the historic love relationship known as a hireq yod (לִיהוּדָה)!
I usually spice up the story with some reflections on the love between Ruth and Boaz, and so this rule usually becomes the “Boaz” rule. “Add the ‘normal’ preposition with a vocal shewa; engage the shewa ‘fight’; then let Boaz work his גִּבּוֹר חַ֫יִל magic.” Whether students remember the whole story or not, they usually remember that in the Hebrew Bible “to Judah” looks like לִיהוּדָה and not לְיְהוּדָה.
Use English Cognate Terms
In Hebrew, it is difficult to find English cognates since English vocabulary is a melting pot of languages. In addition, our most common cognates in English are not Semitic. Some words find associations, but I’m not sure if they are true cognates. One example is the Hebrew word for “camel,” גָּמָל. You can hear some minor similarities, certainly enough to help with memorization, even though its status as a true cognate is questionable. Most dictionaries say the English camel is of Semitic origin but that it entered English through Latin.
Another place where cognates can be helpful for learning Hebrew is in names. Many of the Hebrew words we may recognize are in the form of names in English. For example, my name, Adam, is the Hebrew אָדָם, “man.” That alone can be helpful for remembering the word. Another one that I remember is the verb נָתַן, “to give.” For some reason when I was learning Hebrew, I saw this word in relation to Benjamin Netanyahu (נְתַנְיָהוּ). His name is a combination of the verb נָתַן, “to give,” and the divine name, יהוה. That association alone helped me remember both of these basic vocabulary words. While these are not what I would consider true cognates, they are ways in which something you already know in English can be associated with the new information you’re learning in Hebrew so that it is more easily memorized.
We’ve mentioned already the value of learning Hebrew vocabulary by seeing the relationship between Hebrew words built off the same root. One particular book that groups Hebrew vocabulary according to roots is Building Your Hebrew Vocabulary: Learning Words by Frequency and Cognate by George M. Landes.6 This book organizes vocabulary words by verbal roots and in order of frequency. Along with each verbal root, you get nominal cognates to that root that may or may not occur as many times as the verbal root. The value of this arrangement is that you learn the most common verbal roots (on which other vocabulary is built) while you simultaneously learn more obscure vocabulary that would be difficult to remember if learned in isolation from its verbal root. A good example of this is the verbal root עָלַה. I’ve copied the vocabulary card that I used when learning the vocabulary in Landes’s book for my comprehensive exams (see fig. 4.2).7 One thing you see immediately is the number of cognates related to the verbal root עָלַה. Some of these may be questionable, as Landes admits. The second thing to notice is that some of these nominal and adjectival cognates on the card occur minimally in the Hebrew Bible.8 These may be words that, if learned independently of the verbal root, would be difficult to associate with something else. However, because of their association with the verbal root, it at least will give you something to which you can connect these potentially obscure nominal cognates.
Use the Method of Loci (Memory Palace)
This particular method of memorization, called loci (“places” in Latin), is employed by all the top mnemonists (those who study and practice the art of memorization). The origin of this technique, at least according to legend, goes back to the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century BC. The story states that after he delivered an ode in honor of a nobleman, he was summoned outside the grand banquet hall by two young men on horseback. At the precise moment that he crossed the threshold, the entire building collapsed and everyone inside was killed. Foer explains, “As the poet closed his eyes and reconstructed the crumbled building in his imagination, he had an extraordinary realization: He remembered where each of the guests at the ill-fated dinner had been sitting. Even though he had made no conscious effort to memorize the layout of the room, it had nevertheless left a durable impression upon his memory. From that simple observation, Simonides reputedly invented a technique that would form the basis of what came to be known as the art of memory.”9
Things that we can see with our mind are easy to memorize. With this technique a person envisions a building (house or palace) or even a route and then places objects to be remembered in various rooms (or along a path). These objects are not usually average or ordinary but are exaggerated, or something abnormal is associated with them. The person places these objects in the house in a particular order that is followed every time. To recall these items, the person then goes room by room through the house seeing the items that were placed there. Foer states, “The idea is to create a space in the mind’s eye, a place that you know well and can easily visualize, and then populate that imagined place with images representing whatever you want to remember.”10
The memory palace can be organized as simply or as complexly as needed to accomplish the goal. For some, a memory “palace” can be made with only one “room/setting” that associates a certain word with its surroundings. If you’re working to memorize the word for “wilderness” (מִדְבָּר), perhaps your memory palace can be something as simple as imagining Israel wandering around in הַמִּדְבָּר (the wilderness) for forty years. If you remember the word “wilderness” by envisioning a bear (pronounced with a Southern accent, “bār”) in the middle of the wilderness, then you can now imagine a bear walking around alongside Israel in הַמִּדְבָּר (the wilderness). Make it even more memorable; make it a polar bear. Your memory palace doesn’t have to be elaborate to be effective. The goal is to make it personal and make it memorable.
As an example, let’s say you need to learn the words יָשַׁב (to sit), כָּתַב (to write), מִדְבָּר (wilderness), and מִלְחָמָה (battle). First, you will need to develop mnemonic devices to help you remember the English glosses of these words. As you build this “palace,” imagine the wilderness again, and you know there is a bear in the wilderness because that is how you memorized the word. At this point, you don’t see the bear though. The word for “battle,” מִלְחָמָה, has the word לֶ֫חֶם (bread) in the middle of it. These words are not related except that you remember that you are willing to get into a “battle” over “bread” (your mnemonic device). As you approach the people of Israel in the wilderness (מִדְבָּר), knowing the bear is near, you sense grumbling from the people because there is no bread. To make matters worse, you visit Joshua’s Sandwich Shop, but there are no seats, so “ya shove” (יָשַׁב) Enoch off his chair so you can “sit down.” The waitress comes over to take your order, but her pencil is broken. When learning the word כָּתַב, you imagined a flat carpenter pencil that forced you to “cut off” the end of it to sharpen it so that you could “write” with it. The waitress recognizes her need to “cut off” (כָּתַב) the end of the pencil so she can “write” your order, but then the bear arrives at Joshua’s Sandwich Shop too. Noticing that there is only one loaf of bread left in the shop, you “battle” (מִלְחָמָה) with the bear over the last loaf.
You can see that it doesn’t take long before you have a fairly elaborate picture in your mind, and you are able to continue to add to and reconstruct your “palace” (city or room) around new vocabulary you add to your repertoire. The images need to be clear in your mind. As you seek to recall these words at a later time, you simply walk through the “palace” or story seeing all the images that you have created.
Another way to apply the memory palace logic is to associate the picture in your mind with the context of a story in the Hebrew Bible. Rather than making up a story in your mind, you begin to fit the Hebrew vocabulary into their already-existing biblical contexts. As I mentioned before, when I’m pronouncing vocabulary for first-year students, I will tell them, “This is the word used in the Bible when . . .” and then give a biblical context with which they are familiar so that they can associate that word with that setting in their mind’s eye. It never fails that nearly half the class nods their heads in affirmation once they’ve made that connection. The more you can connect your memory palace to already established pictures in your mind, the better new elements added to the palace will stick.
Use an Alternative Method of Loci
While talking with some friends, I’ve discovered another method for memorizing Hebrew vocabulary that is similar to the memory palace in that you develop a “storyboard” in your mind that you can return to time and again in order to memorize vocabulary words.11
In this method, the first step is to associate a “story” with each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each of these stories must be just one simple sentence with a subject, verb, and object. For example, א may be assigned the sentence “Ox pulling a plow.” ב is assigned “Belle singing into microphone.” The goal is to associate a sentence with a subject, verb, and object to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The key for this method to work is to memorize these one-sentence “stories.” This method takes some time to set up, but once you have these one-sentence stories memorized, the power of this method starts to take shape. Because the key is memorizing these one-sentence stories, I would encourage you to make them all your own rather than using someone else’s.
After memorizing these sentences for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, you can begin to apply these stories to any triliteral root in the Hebrew Bible. This method is quite effective for learning Hebrew verbal roots since many roots are based on a triliteral word. Let’s look at the word עבד as an example. Each letter of the root has a particular sentence that you’ve already associated in your mind. ע is “Pelican eating fish.” ב is “Belle singing into microphone.” ד is “Dwight speaking to crowd.” These are odd, sometimes weird, and uniquely yours. There is no standard for what sentence has to be associated with a particular letter for this technique to work. After associating the sentences with the Hebrew letters, you will take the subject of the sentence for the first letter of the vocabulary word, the verb for the second root letter, and the object for the third root letter to create a new sentence that is exclusive to this triliteral root. Here’s how it lays out:
| Pelican (subject) eating fish. | ע |
| Belle singing (verb) into microphone. | ב |
| Dwight speaking to crowd (object). | ד |
| New sentence: “Pelican singing to the crowd.” | עבד |
Now that you have created this new sentence that is uniquely related to the triliteral root, the creativity has to kick in again. You take that sentence and make a story associated with the meaning of the triliteral root. For this example, my student remembered, “Pelican singing to the crowd because he is serving them.”
I realize that after all that, you may wonder if it is worth it. Those who have used this method would say it is. Think about how to remember homonyms, like עבד and אבד. Since you have a different one-sentence “story” associated with א and ע, you have a unique mental image of an ox singing to the crowd for אבד and a pelican singing to the crowd for עבד. Because the mental image you assign the ox singing to the crowd will be different from the pelican singing to the crowd, you will likely be able to remember the difference between these homonyms. Another place where this method can be helpful is with obscure or rare words. You may not encounter these words very often, and so remembering their meanings will prove difficult. However, if you can always go through and associate your sentences and stories to the triliteral root, you will then discover again your unique story associated with that particular root and be ever closer to remembering the meaning of the word. Like most memory techniques, this one takes some diligent creativity up front. But again, once you’ve put in the preliminary work, this method can work its magic.
These techniques are merely tools to gain proficiency in Biblical Hebrew. Although it will still take planning, practice, and perseverance, using these methods will make the acquisition of Hebrew easier (and perhaps more enjoyable). Everyone has the God-given capacity to memorize new material, even languages! Let’s tap into our ability and use it to learn the language of the Old Testament.
Chapter Reflections
- On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate your memory?
- Are your eating and sleeping patterns conducive for fostering a good memory? If not, what needs to change?
- What mnemonic devices do you find the most intriguing?
- What would it look like for you to employ all the memory techniques in this chapter?
- Choose three to five Hebrew words and see if you can come up with a way to memorize those words by using the memory palace technique.
Asyndeton and Discourse Grammar
Discourse grammar describes grammatical relations above the boundary of the clause or between sentences in a discourse or text. Asyndeton, a recognized feature of discourse grammar, comes from a word in Greek: deton means “bound,” syn means “together,” and a means “not.” So putting all three morphemes together, asyndeton means “not bound together.” Normally, clauses or sentences in texts are connected by particles called conjunctions. In Hebrew literature, almost all clauses or sentences begin with vav (and). The conjunction vav joins two things at the same grammatical level. So clauses or sentences in a discourse are normally joined by vav. When a clause or sentence has no connector or conjunction, we call this situation asyndeton, “not bound together” by the vav connector.
According to Stephen G. Dempster, who pioneered discourse grammar study of Biblical Hebrew, asyndeton is quite rare and consequently is noteworthy for the hearer or reader.12 It functions to mark two things: (1) the beginning of a section or sequence of clauses, much like indentation marks the beginning of a new paragraph; or (2) a clause that functions as a comment on or explanation of the previous sentence.
The first clause in Genesis 1:1 is not prefixed by vav. This case of asyndeton is marking a new beginning—in fact, it marks the first paragraph or section in the entire text.
We can also see asyndeton in Genesis 1:27. The verse contains three clauses or sentences: (1) and God created man in his image; (2) in the image of God he created him; and (3) male and female he created them. The first sentence has a normal clause pattern: verb-subject-object (וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙). The conjunction vav is used, and the verb is a vav-consecutive imperfect—all standard in Hebrew narrative. The remaining two sentences have a different clause pattern: modifier-verb-object (בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם׃). Both are also asyndetic—that is, not connected by the conjunction vav; both verbs are perfects. This is a clear discourse grammar signal with pragmatic significance: these clauses do not advance the narrative but digress and pause to comment on the first clause in the verse. These two short sentences are grammatically marked as circumstantial information or parenthetical remarks. The author is digressing from the narrative to stress two particular aspects or features of the creation of humankind. In other words, the last two clauses are footnotes dealing with the first clause or sentence:
A. Humankind resembles God in some way.
B. Human sexuality is binary and entails two distinct genders, male and female.
By pausing to stress these two things, the author prepares us for the two commands given to humankind in the very next verse:
A. Be fruitful (three imperatives in Hebrew).
B. Rule over the other creatures (two imperatives in Hebrew).
The actual literary presentation is chiastic in structure. The word chiasm comes from the letter in the Greek alphabet known as chi (χ), which is shaped like an X. The top half of the letter has a mirror image in the bottom half. If, for example, a literary piece has four distinct units and the first matches the last while the second matches the third, the result is a mirror image, a chiasm. The following diagram illustrates the chiastic structure of the Genesis passage:
God created mankind in his image
according to his likeness:
A in the image of God he created him
B male and female he created them
Bʹ be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth
Aʹ and subdue it
and rule over the fish/birds/animals
Thus, binary sexuality (i.e., duality of gender) is the basis for being fruitful, while the divine image is correlated with the command to rule as God’s viceroy. These observations from the discourse grammar of the narrative are crucial. They are decisive in showing that the divine image is not to be explained by or located in terms of binary sexuality in humanity.13
Asyndeton is also crucial in interpreting the difficult passage in Genesis 6:1–4.
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (ESV)
Note that verse 4 contains two sentences, one verbal (followed by a long relative clause) and one verbless:
הַנְּפִלִ֞ים הָי֣וּ בָאָרֶץ֮ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵם֒ וְגַ֣ם אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵ֗ן אֲשֶׁ֨ר יָבֹ֜אוּ בְּנֵ֤י הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־בְּנֹ֣ות הָֽאָדָ֔ם וְיָלְד֖וּ לָהֶ֑ם הֵ֧מָּה הַגִּבֹּרִ֛ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר מֵעֹולָ֖ם אַנְשֵׁ֥י הַשֵּֽׁם׃
These mark a new paragraph and a comment on verses 1–3.
The temporal expressions “in those times” and “afterward” are significant. Two main possibilities exist for interpretation of these expressions. If one interprets “those times” to be the times described in verses 1–3, then what is distinguished are the times before the flood from the times after the flood. The relative clause introduced by “afterward” would seem to indicate that the cohabitation of the sons of God and the daughters of humans continued after the flood. One might possibly conclude that the Nephilim were the product of such unions (cf. Num. 13:22, 28, 33).
Yet a different interpretation is possible. The expression “afterward” (אַחֲרֵי־כֵן) usually occurs in the second of two verbal sentences: the first sentence says that event X did or will happen; the second says that subsequent to the event in the first sentence, event Y did or will happen.14 Here we must note that the expression אַחֲרֵי־כֵן is modified by a relative sentence that refers specifically to the event in verse 2.15 Therefore one could assume that “those days” means before the cohabitation of divine and human beings. Verse 4 would then comment that the Nephilim were in the earth before the business of angelic and human beings cohabiting and also afterward and therefore had nothing to do with these unions.
This latter interpretation is strengthened by considerations of discourse grammar. Verse 4 consists of two clauses or sentences, the first verbal, the second verbless. Both are marked by asyndeton (i.e., no conjunction or connector at the beginning of the clause/sentence). In the first, the verb is non-initial, meaning the subject occurs before the verb. This pattern marks a commentary or explanatory digression. The fact that the first sentence is subject initial indicates a new topic. The relative sentence in verse 4 correlates this new topic with the events of verse 2. The verbless clause is a further comment on the Nephilim. They were the heroes from the distant past. This may mean the distant past with reference to the writer, or it may indicate a period long past in reference to the event of 6:2. Therefore the writer would be demythologizing the Nephilim. These heroes of ancient times were there before and after the events of 6:2 and were not necessarily related to them at all. Thus, verse 1 describes an increase in female humans, verse 2 describes a cohabitation of angelic and human beings, and verse 3 concludes that the result is still human and therefore under God’s judgment, while verse 4 states that all this has nothing to do with the well-known Nephilim. Since the word Nephilim is not otherwise explained, they must have been well known to the ancient (first) readers of this text.
If Jewish writers in the Second Temple period had properly understood the discourse grammar of their sacred texts, already one thousand years old, they would not have produced their speculations about Genesis 6:1–4 in the Enochic traditions.16
1. Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (New York: Penguin, 2011), 6.
2. See K. Anders Ericsson, “Exceptional Memorizers: Made, Not Born,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 6 (2003): 233–35. Ericsson concludes, “This research provides compelling evidence that ordinary people can dramatically improve their memory performance with appropriate strategies and practice” (235).
3. The sketch of the farmer “planting” with נטע (fig. 4.1) is credited to my dad, Harvey Howell. My dad taught visual arts for over thirty years in Tennessee and continues to help me learn Hebrew visually.
4. See Thomas S. Hyde and James J. Jenkins, “Recall for Words as a Function of Semantic, Graphic, and Syntactic Orienting Tasks,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12 (1973): 471–80.
5. The Hebrew Love Story comes from Russell Fuller and Kyoungwon Choi’s introductory Hebrew grammar, Invitation to Biblical Hebrew: A Beginning Grammar (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006), 35.
6. George M. Landes, Building Your Hebrew Vocabulary: Learning Words by Frequency and Cognate (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001).
7. The card images displayed here were created for personal study, but the definitions come verbatim from Landes, Building Your Hebrew Vocabulary, 50.
8. Landes lists the number of occurrences of the cognates in the book, but they were not transferred over to the cards we used.
9. Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, 94.
10. Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, 96.
11. I learned about this alternative method of loci while talking to one of my Hebrew students, Richi Hofer. He pointed me to the student who told him about it, Joel Bell, who subsequently pointed me to Daniel Wilson as the source of this memory technique associated specifically with Hebrew. I’ve corresponded with Daniel via email to get the details of this method, and his ideas are presented here with permission. The examples given in this section are all Richi Hofer’s personal examples.
12. Stephen G. Dempster, “Linguistic Features of Hebrew Narrative: A Discourse Analysis of Narrative from the Classical Period” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1985).
13. As, for example, in the exposition of M. Smith: “The creation of the human person involves male and female. . . . The imagery of the human in terms of the Divine in Genesis 1 seems to assume a divine couple, male and female, since the human person is created in the image of the Divine, partaking of both maleness and femaleness.” M. Smith, “God Male and Female in the Old Testament: Yahweh and His ‘Asherah,’” Theological Studies 48 (1987): 339. Earlier, Karl Barth promoted an approach to the divine image also based on the duality of gender. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1, authorized trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, and Harold Knight (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 186; and Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/2, authorized trans. Harold Knight, G. W. Bromiley, J. K. Reid, and R. H. Fuller (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960), 203.
14. Although this pattern is standard or usual, it is not the only kind of construction, as Gen. 41:31 shows.
15. This is apparently the only occurrence of אַחֲרֵי־כֵן where it is modified by a relative sentence. BDB adduces 2 Chron. 35:20, but the parallel is not exact or compelling.
16. See Peter J. Gentry and Andrew M. Fountain, “Reassessing Jude’s Use of Enochic Traditions (with Notes on Their Later Reception History),” Tyndale Bulletin 68, no. 2 (2017): 261–86.