Robin Routledge. Ancient Near Eastern. Did God Create Chaos?

Instructions from my professor: For this assignment, you are simply to summarize your chosen article without any
commentary on what you think or others think about what he author says or the Bible passage the
author is discussing.
Your summary should be about 5–6 pages double-spaced. A Good Summary
There is an art to writing a good summary. A good summary focuses on the main or the
important things an author says, and it does not get encumbered with unimportant details.
Remember, in a summary you cannot say everything that an author says: you are giving a
shortened version.
It is important to remember that a summary is not an outline: they are too different types
of description.
Summaries can be any length, and in fact for this assignment you will be writing 3
summaries of your article: a one sentence summary, a one paragraph summary, and a roughly 5-
page double-spaced summary.
The one sentence summary is similar to a thesis statement, and should be in the form: So
and So (the author) argues that … (and here you give their primary argument.
The one paragraph summary is otherwise known as an abstract. It should be about half a
page long double spaced. On ATLA many of the articles come with an abstract. I would use this
as your basis, but make sure that you completely put it in your words and acknowledge in a
footnote that you have used this abstract. Thus, you will put a footnote saying: This abstract is
based on the one found at ATLA. Sometimes, the abstract on ATLA is the same as the one found
in the beginning of the article itself. You will then reference it as you would anything else from
an article.
The full summary will be about 5 pages double spaced. Naturally you are to use standard
12-point text and 10-point for footnotes.Focus on the Argument
Your summary should focus on the main argument of the article. This will help you when you
come to analysis, where you will be analysing this argument.Headings
Your paper will have three headings
The first will be “One-Sentence Summary”. Place you one-sentence summary under this
heading.
The second will be “One-Paragraph Summary”. Under this sub-title you will summarize
the text in one paragraph (half a page double-spaced). This one paragraph summary of a text is
often called an abstract. You will then summarize your article in one paragraph: “Smith argues
that . . . (here you can repeat your one-sentence summary). First, he demonstrates that . . . He
then follows with several examples showing . . . etc.”
The third will be “Full Summary”. Here you will give the full summary. In this summary,
you will expand on what you have said in the one-paragraph summary.Documentation
You will need to constantly state in your summary where in the article you can find what
you are summarizing. You will also need to constantly be using the authors name or a pronoun
referring to the author so it is absolutely clear that every statement you are making is the author
of the article's opinion and not your own. The first time you use the author's name you need will
use his first name, and after that only his last name. You are to reference the article by putting
page numbers in parentheses.
For example:
Steven R. Scott by giving an overview of the contents of the
priestly creation account (56). In doing so he draws attention the natural
structural divisions of the text. He then presents a diagram of his
proposed chiastic structure (57) and proceeds to discuss this structure in
detail in the rest of the paper.
Scott begins by noting that the priestly creation account is
enclosed by a very clear inclusio (58). He notes that the order of the
elements is slightly reversed which he says is common in Hebrew poetry
and provides examples (58).
He then discusses what he calls the chiasm proper which for him
begins with the creation of light (59).
For this assignment I want you to use in text citation. As you are only referring to one text only
the numbers are necessary. A bibliography at the end is not required.