Narrative in the Hebrew Bible

by Gunn, David M.; Fewell, Danna Nolan

• ISBN13: 9780192132451
• ISBN10: 0192132458
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-07-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Strategies for Reading	p. 1
Narrative	p. 1
Biblical narrative	p. 3
Historical criticism, literary criticism, and the meanings of the text	p. 7
Varieties of interpretation: Genesis 4 through 2000 years	p. 12
Similarity and difference	p. 27
Tamar and Judah: Genesis 38	p. 34
Characters and Narrators	p. 46
Readers and people	p. 46
The narrator	p. 52
The characters	p. 63
Reconstructing characters	p. 75
Reconstructing YHWH	p. 81
Abraham and Sarah: Genesis 11-22	p. 90
Designs on the Plot	p. 101
Reading for the plot: desire for order	p. 101
Plots and points of view: Judges 10-12	p. 112
Fracturing the plot: the codas to Judges and Samuel	p. 120
Jonah and God: The Book of Jonah	p. 129
The Lure of Language	p. 147
Repetition and variation	p. 148
Multivalence, ambiguity, and metaphor	p. 155
Reading for the metaphor: Judges 1	p. 158
Allusion and intertextuality	p. 163
Reading between words and stories: the house of David	p. 165
Nebuchadnezzar and the Three Jews: Daniel 3	p. 174
Readers and Responsibility	p. 189
Literature and ideology	p. 189
The Bible and ideology	p. 192
Genesis 2-3: women, men, and God	p. 194
Conclusion	p. 204
Bibliography	p. 206
Index of Passages Cited	p. 253
Index of Biblical Names	p. 257
General Index	p. 260
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