ABSTRACT
B. Gemser in his commentary on Proverbs remarks that viii 22-31 is reminiscent of the style of a creation hymn. In the Book of the Apophis, which is a magical text composed for the purpose of securing the victory of Re over the demon Apophis which threatens the cosmos, the function of the temporal clauses is to assert the pre-existence of Re himself. Prov. viii 22-31 begins with a positive statement—"The Lord created me"—and only then proceeds to the "when not" and "before" clauses. It is only in Prov. viii 22-31 that the temporal clauses, in spite of their subordinate syntactical position, constitute an ordered statement of the actual creative process. The temporal clauses do not form a single series, but are broken up, in accordance with the special purpose of the passage, by a series of apodoses each having roughly the same meaning.
