Narrative in the Hebrew Bible
After almost two centuries of historical criticism, biblical scholarship has recently taken major shifts in direction, most notably toward literary study of the Bible. Much germinal criticism has taken as its primary focus narrative texts of the Hebrew Bible (the "Old Testament"). This study provides a lucid guide to the interpretive possibilities of this movement. Attempting to be both theoretical and practical, it combines discussion of methods and the business of reading in general with...
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After almost two centuries of historical criticism, biblical scholarship has recently taken major shifts in direction, most notably toward literary study of the Bible. Much germinal criticism has taken as its primary focus narrative texts of the Hebrew Bible (the "Old Testament"). This study provides a lucid guide to the interpretive possibilities of this movement. Attempting to be both theoretical and practical, it combines discussion of methods and the business of reading in general with numerous illustrations through readings of particular texts. Gunn and Fewell discuss how literary criticism is related to other dominant ways of reading the text over the last two thousand years. In addition, they address characters, including the narrator and God; plot, modifying recent theory to accommodate the peculiar complexity of biblical narratives; and the play of language through repetition, ambiguity, multivalence, metaphor, and intertextuality. Finally, the authors discuss readers and responsibility, exploring the ideological dimension of narrative interpretation. An extensive bibliography completes the book, arranged by subject and biblical text.
1Strategies for Reading1Narrative1Biblical narrative3Historical criticism, literary criticism, and the meanings of the text7Varieties of interpretation: Genesis 4 through 2000 years12Similarity and difference272Tamar and Judah: Genesis 38343Characters and Narrators46Readers and people46The narrator52The characters63Reconstructing characters75Reconstructing YHWH814Abraham and Sarah: Genesis 11-22905Designs on the Plot101Reading for the plot: desire for order101Plots and points of view: Judges 10-12112Fracturing the plot: the codas to Judges and Samuel1206Jonah and God: The Book of Jonah1297The Lure of Language147Repetition and variation148Multivalence, ambiguity, and metaphor155Reading for the metaphor: Judges 1158Allusion and intertextuality163Reading between words and stories: the house of David1658Nebuchadnezzar and the Three Jews: Daniel 31749Readers and Responsibility189Literature and ideology189The Bible and ideology192Genesis 2-3: women, men, and God194Conclusion204Bibliography206Index of Passages Cited253Index of Biblical Names257General Index260
