How to transform a conflict into a friendly contact: The Bible pattern in Gen 31

Abstract

There is a good reason to take Gen 31 as a mythological precedent of solving a territorial dispute with regard to Gilad between Israel and Damascus. The present paper offers a structural analysis of Gen 31 which shows that the structure of its text is non-linear and can be considered a sort of a matrix texts. As a result, the message of this text is non-linear too: it allows combining traditional reverence for the forefathers and monotheistic worship of YHWH.