0047 How do Hoffmeier’s first two genres, legend and myth, fit into this idea of the confluence of cycles and genres?

Legends associate to distant cycles.

Myths go with recent cycles.

0048 It is like a river.  Legends are like the uniform flow of water.  Myths are like the waterfalls and eddies.  Legends move under the pull of archetypes, just like water uniformly moves according to gravity.  Myths are like whirlpools and turbulence, generated by the landscape beneath the stream.

The metaphor is water.  The flow of genre is the thing itself, moving through time from the first singularity.

0049 Hoffmeier’s third genre is family history.

The Genesis phrase, “these are the generations”, seems to be an organizational marker.  The genealogies are a genre that imply a period of continuity, as expected when a cycle, or a suite of cycles, proceeds.

0050 The start of Ubaid to the end of Ur III spans nine cycles.

On the one hand, the primeval history does not delineate them all.

On the other hand, the genealogies in the primeval history express how cyclesfeel, especially from the point of view of a family holding together within southern Mesopotamia, for thousands of years.