Timeline

I've noticed some very odd things with the timeline -- there are so many it has to be a difference in culture with regard to how to tell a story or a linguistic difference.  I'll probably have to research it to understand it - but for now here are some examples (I should go back and see if I can find more -- and is this just Genesis?  Just Old Testament?  Or throughout?)

The examples for now are:

Genesis 7:12 -- "And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."

Then, Genesis 7:13 -- "On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark."

Then, Genesis 7:17 -- "For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth and as the waters increased..."


Another example:

Genesis 8:6-9 -- "After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.  Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.  But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; "


In English, when we tell a story like this, we would probably never have a sentence with a goal being sought, then reached.  Then in the next couple sentences that goal is again not yet reached.  But is there something about the way you order the chronology of the Bible, or parts of it, that follow some kind of linguistic rule in the Bible? 



(work in progress -- but comments while in progress are very welcome)