Narrative in the Hebrew Bible.

• Author: Edelman, Diana V.

This volume is part of a series designed to deal thematically with different kinds of material in the Hebrew Bible, using selected biblical passages from a number of books to deepen understanding of the wider theological and historical issues with which the Bible is concerned. The authors undertake their task by alternating chapters of methodological discussion with major readings that are related to the preceding chapter of discussion. In the present volume, chapter one discusses strategies for reading while chapter two presents a reading of Genesis 38. Chapter three explores characters and narrators, with chapter four focusing on a reading of Genesis 11-22. Chapter five considers plot design, and chapter six is a reading of the book of Jonah. Chapter seven deals with the "lure of language" while chapter eight is an illustrative reading of Daniel 3. Chapter nine ends the volume with a discussion of readers and responsibility. There are no footnotes; a selected bibliography of works representing literary-critical methods and readings of the Bible is included and is cross-referenced where applicable to the body of the text. The volume was completed in December of 1991 and published in 1993; the bibliography reflects items published through 1991 with limited updating through 1993.

The book reads as a defense of newer, ahistorical readings of biblical texts over against traditional historical-critical methods. It does not engage the newer forms of historical-critical investigations, which share the view espoused by the two authors, that texts are stories or interpretations of the past and not a simple reflex of actual events. In this sense, it does not accomplish the task of the series to deepen understanding of the wider historical issues with which the Bible is concerned. The final chapter addresses some elements of the historical issue by suggesting that story details and views of the world that are culturally specific to the ancient Judahites and Judeans and not shared by modern society can be given new meaning by "reading against the grain" (p. 201), i.e., by highlighting silences or gaps and by reading through the eyes of a marginal character rather than the hero. It does not deal with the issues of the history of the transmission of the text and how the reader determines which text to use, nor with the history of individual books or the canon, with the recognition that the final form is only a final stage and that books may have had...