The Art of Biblical Narrative

The Art of Biblical Narrative
Author: Robert Alter
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0465025552

From celebrated translator of the Hebrew Bible Robert Alter, the "groundbreaking" (Los Angeles Times) book that explores the Bible as literature, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Renowned critic and translator Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative has radically expanded our view of the Bible by recasting it as a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In this seminal work, Alter describes how the Hebrew Bible's many authors used innovative literary styles and devices such as parallelism, contrastive dialogue, and narrative tempo to tell one of the most revolutionary stories of all time: the revelation of a single God. In so doing, Alter shows, these writers reshaped not only history, but also the art of storytelling itself.

The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative

The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative
Author: Hans W. Frei
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 1974-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300026023

Laced with brilliant insights, broad in its view of the interaction of culture and theology, this book gives new resonance to old and important questions about the meaning of the Bible.

Reading Biblical Narratives

Reading Biblical Narratives
Author: Yaira Amit
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2001
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781451420449

Based on a series of lectures given in Israel, Amit introduces the reader to the subtle ways of the biblical narrators. Covering issues of character, plot development, catchword association, narration, and dialog, she brings the biblical text to life, helping the reader enter the stories from new vantage points.

God as Storyteller

God as Storyteller
Author: John A Beck
Publisher: Chalice Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780827212541

The Bible is filled with carefully told stories that are designed to reach from their pages into our lives. They reach out to entertain us. They cause us to laugh or make us cry. But most importantly, the stories in the Bible shape our thinking and our faith. This book honors the role of God as storyteller and explores how God's inspired authors carefully select and present an event so as to instill it with meaning. In order to deepen our appreciation of the storyteller's craft, this book surveys the traditional categories of narrative criticism to see how the design of scene, plot, characterization, narration, time, and wordplay shape the story we read. But the reader will also find a considerable portion of this book devoted to a new form of narrative analysis-narrative geography. Since the stories of the Bible are filled not only with people but also with place, we note how the storyteller may strategically use, reuse, and nuance geography as part of the storytelling process. As we come to a fuller appreciation of how the events of the Bible become its stories, we will have set the stage for a discussion of the reader's craft, seeking meaning in such stories. In the end, the reader will be rewarded with a new and exciting way of reading God's stories that appreciates not only their composition but also their meaning.

Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative

Style And Structure In Biblical Hebrew Narrative
Author: Jerome T. Walsh
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-08-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814683762

The pages of the Hebrew Bible are filled with stories - short and long, funny and sad, histories, fables, and morality tales. The ancient narrators used a variety of stylistic devices to structure, to connect, and to separate their tales - and thus to establish contexts within which meaning comes to light. What are these devices, and how do they guide our reading and our understanding of the text? Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative explores some of the answers and shows scriptural interpretation can be a matter of style." Part one of Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative examines a wide variety of symmetrical patterns biblical Hebrew narrative uses to organize its units and subunits, and the interpretive dynamics those patterns can imply. Part two addresses the question of boundaries between literary units. Part three examines devices that biblical Hebrew narrative uses to connect consecutive literary units and subunits. Chapters in Part One: Structures of Organization are "Reverse Symmetry," "Forward Symmetry," "Alternating Repetition," "Partial Symmetry," "Multiple Symmetry," "Asymmetry." Chapters in Part Two: Structures of Disjunction are "Narrative Components," "Repetition," and "Narrative Sequence." Chapters in Part Three: Structures of Conjunction are "Threads," "Links: Examples," "Linked Threads: Examples," "Hinges: Examples," and "Double-Duty Hinges: Examples." Jerome T. Walsh, PhD, is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of Botswana. He is the author of 1 Kings in the Berit Olam (The Everlasting Covenant) Studies in Hebrew Narrative and Poetry series for which he is also an associate editor. "

The Heart of Biblical Narrative

The Heart of Biblical Narrative
Author: Karl Allen Kuhn
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 194
Release:
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1451412215

Modern biblical scholarship has long been preoccupied with the relationship between history and doctrine. Karl A. Kuhn argues that an overly rational approach to the thought of the biblical authors misses the equally important but long neglected affective dimension of biblical narrative.In Part I of The Heart of Biblical Narrative, Kuhn presents an approach to the Bible that applies "affective analysis" to get at a "cardiography of biblical narrative." Biblical narrative in both Israel's scripture and the New Testament is understood fundamentally as an attempt to persuade and move the reader, not simply to convince the reader of certain truths.In Part II, Kuhn's close reading of the opening chapters of Luke's Gospel shows how biblical authors employed pathos as a way of drawing readers into their narrative and, thereby, their understanding of reality.

Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative

Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative
Author: Adele Berlin
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1983
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781575060026

Poetics, the "science" of literature, makes us aware of how texts achieve their meaning. Poetics aids interpretation. If we know how texts mean, we are in a better position to discover what a particular text means. This is a book which offers fundamental guidelines for the sensitive reading and understanding of biblical stories. - Back cover.

The Sense of Biblical Narrative II

The Sense of Biblical Narrative II
Author: David Jobling
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1987-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567426807

These three studies continue the methods and aims of Volume I (1978, 2nd edn 1986), applying a structuralist method developed mainly from Claude LTvi-Strauss and A.J. Greimas to various texts and problems in the narrative sections of the Hebrew Bible. The new studies go beyond those of the previous volume, however, in two ways. They begin to take account of the deconstructive method of Derrida, the 'standing on its head' of structuralism; and they seek to make a contribution to feminist and liberation exegesis and hermeneutics. The first study is a deconstruction of Genesis 2-3, showing that the oppositions which the text purports to establish (including divine vs. human and male vs. female) are in fact assumed in advance. The second deals with the implicit political theory of the Deuteronomists, and discovers an 'indeterminate' attitude to monarchy. The third, inspired by Norman K. Gottwald and seeking, from a great methodological distance, to illuminate his problematic of Israel's origins, analyses the attitude implied by the Bible towards Transjordan and the Israelites who live there.

Take Care How You Listen

Take Care How You Listen
Author: John Piper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2012-07
Genre: Listening
ISBN: 9781952850073

Take Care How You Listen is an ebook on listening well. It is comprised of five unedited sermon manuscripts from the preaching ministry of Pastor John. We pray this resource will serve your personal reflection as you heed Jesus' command to "take care how you listen" (Luke 8:18).