'Genesis Death Sandwich' Discovered in Bible

Updated Thurs., Feb. 21, at 12:20 p.m. ET

Researchers using text-analysis software say they've discovered a new literary device in the first book of the Bible: the "Genesis death sandwich."

The name refers to a familiar rhetorical structure — sandwiching bad news in between the good. In the case of Genesis, the slices of white bread are themes of life, and the slimy cold cuts in between are mentions of death.

"The structuring of life and death in Genesis appears to be something that hasn't been noticed before," researcher Gordon Rugg, a senior lecturer in Computing and Mathematics at Keele University in the United Kingdom, wrote in a Feb. 21 blog post. "We think it's a standard literary device being used on a larger scale than had been previously realized. No aliens, no secret codes, no conspiracies, but some striking images, and a great name for a band."

For their study, Rugg and his colleagues ran the King James version of the text through software known as the Search Visualizer, which plotted mentions of life in red and death in green on a single gridded page representing the whole book. Their results showed frequent mentions of life in the opening and closing verses of Genesis, while themes of death were clustered in the middle. They say the device is an example of a literary convention known as inclusio, also called bracketing, where one theme frames another.
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