Chronological and Thematic Order/0

Chronological and Thematic Order

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Introduction

When deciding how to arrange a historical narrative, an author must balance the competing elements of chronology and thematic order.  Should events be told in the order that they occurred or based on their relationship to one another?  When should one component be preferred over the other?

The Biblical text sets chronological order as the norm, but in many places it is willing to sacrifice it for literary reasons. In several places in Torah, the achronology is explicit in the text.  Time or location markers such as people's ages, a switch of locale, or more rarely, definitive dates, clue the reader into the phenomenon.  More often, though, the true timing of scenes is ambiguous, and for textual or conceptual reasons a case might be made for achronology, but no definitive proof can be found in the text.

Two Units Reversed

At times, two textual units completely swap places with one another, appearing in reverse order.  This might occur when an event or law's import for future generations differs from its import for the generation when it happened.

• Laws of Sacrifices in Vayikra 1-5 and 6-7 – Vayikra 1:1 teaches that the national laws of sacrifices discussed in Chapters 1-5 were all said to Moshe in the Tent of Meeting.  In contrast, the directives of Chapters 6-7, aimed at the priests, were given earlier at Har Sinai (see Vayikra 7:37) and relate to to the sacrificial ceremonies surrounding the Tabernacle's consecration (as discussed earlier in Shemot 29).  It is possible that the written account flips the true chronology due to the differing needs of the desert generation and the future nation.  In the desert, Moshe first transmitted the laws relating to priests since these were necessary for them to fulfill their immediate tasks.  When writing for generations, however, it was more important to begin with those laws which are relevant for all times, and only afterwards to include directives related to the one time event of the Mishkan's consecration.

Overlapping Units

When a story takes place over an extended period of time, often some of its components might overlap with the events of surrounding narratives.  Instead of constantly switching back and forth between the two, the Torah often completes one narrative unit before moving to the other. This might take the form of a short epilogue that is brought forward to provide closure to the unit, or several verses which are pushed off to serve as an introduction to a later story.¹  The misplaced piece might be only one verse long or several chapters.  Several examples follow:

• Death notices – The lives of the main protagonists discussed in Sefer Bereshit often overlap with those of subsequent characters.  Nonetheless, the text is organized so that it focuses on only one leader/forefather at a time, and tries not to interrupt his story with  events which relate only to other figures.  As a result, each narrative unit closes with a statement of the death of its main character, even though this only happened later, during the life of the next protagonist discussed.² 
• Tower Of Bavel
• Epilogue to the Manna Story – Shemot 16 focuses on the story of the manna's first arrival, but also mentions its later preservation in the Ark, and its cessation after the forty years of wandering.  Rather than interrupting later narratives to share these events in their chronological place, the text concludes the story here.  For a spectrum of opinions regarding the timing of the events mentioned in the epilogue, see Epilogue to the Manna Story.

¹ Thus, the focal point of the unit tends to remain in its chronological place while supporting information and elaborations might be moved either forward or back.

² For examples, see the the death of Noach in Bereshit 9:29, Terach in Bereshit 11:32, Avraham in Bereshit 25:8, and Yitzchak in Bereshit 35:19.