composition of the present narrator’s word” (1983, 319). While this definition is not inherently antagonistic toward a historical intention in the text, it is usually assumed that such sagas “tend to consist of largely unhistorical accretions upon a possibly historical nucleus” (Moberly, 36). Other proposed genre labels for all or part of Genesis include novella, legend, fable, etiology, and myth (Coats, 5–10). Such terms are obviously prejudicial to the historical intentionality of the book. They