James Barr

"We shall work not on the macrocosmic scale of the literary forms, but on the microcosmic scale of the lexical forms."

"This book is therefore consecrated to the deeper and fuller study of that linguistic world in which the Hebrew Bible is set."

"The problem here is not so much a historical one, more a terminological and philosophical one."

"Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:"

"#creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience"

"#the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story"

"#Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."