Re: USAGE: Initial "and" (was Re: The Babel Text)

[&d@m r\ot]:
> Chapter 10 is a list of all the tribes of peoples
> decended from Noah and his sons, so it tells how the
> earth was repopulated after the Flood.  The "and" at
> the beginning of the Babel story in chapter 11 is
> connecting the two stories with 11 giving a more
> detailed acount of what happened than just a list of
> decendants as in 10.  The NIV translators used "Now"
> rather than "And" to start chapter 11.  I believe
> you'll find and used in this manner quite a bit in
> Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Bunyan and other Early
> Modern English writers.  It's one of many features in
> the English language which has changed since those
> days, but persists in written texts of the period.
This may be the case in Shakespeare etc., (to use and),
but it is not the case here.  I've read the Bible in Hebrew,
and I can tell you those vav-prefixes (meaning and)
appear at the beginning of sentences everywhere.  It
signifies continuation.  The English is just a direct
translation of the Hebrew, which would not be grammatically
correct in our language.

Jake