Abstract
The invocation of a question represents a special literary phenomenon. Characters sometimes ask for information; at other times, they invoke questions for rhetorical flourish. In the story of Cain and Abel characterization is achieved not only by such asking, but also by the fielding of questions. Yhwh and Cain invoke six interrogatives in a short narrative space, and their rhetorical interchange is a fine example of the Hebrew Bible's deceptively simple art. The protean interrogative forms function as part of an overall syntactic, compositional and stylistic plot design.
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