How to Read the Bible as Literature 2

How to Read the Bible as Literature: . . . and Get More Out of It: Chapter Two  The Stories of the Bible    The Prominence of Stories in the Bible  GOD MADE PEOPLE BECAUSE HE LOVES STORIES.

Chapter Two 

The Stories of the Bible 

 

The Prominence of Stories in the Bible 

GOD MADE PEOPLE BECAUSE HE LOVES STORIES. So claims a rabbinic saying. Henry 

R. Luce, founder of Time Magazine, quipped, “Time didn’t start this emphasis on 

stories about people; the Bible did.” 

Narrative is the dominant form in the Bible. Its prominence is well captured in 

Amos Wilder’s oft-quoted statement that “the narrative mode is uniquely impor- 

tant in Christianity.”¹ What this means to readers of the Bible is that the more they 

know about how stories work, the more they will enjoy and understand vast por- 

tions of the Bible. 

 

Historical Documentation Versus Literary Narrative 

 

The stories of the Bible vary widely in regard to the fullness with which they are 

told. Some are entries in a historical chronicle; they obey the documentary im- 

pulse to tell what happened, avoiding the literary impulse to present in detail how 

it happened. 

At the other end of the continuum we find full-fledged stories like those of 

David and Job. These obey the literary impulse to present an event rather than sim- 

ply tell about it. They are full, circumstantial, and embellished with detail, and they 

allow the reader to recreate the story in his or her imagination. 

Not every sequence of events in the Bible is a story in the literary sense of that 

term. Given the continuum that ranges from a bare summary of events to a full ac- 

count of how the events occurred, the closer a story is to the detailed end of the 

spectrum, the more justified we are in approaching it with the interpretive tools 

outlined in this chapter. 

 

Stories as an Invitation to Share an Experience 

 

Whenever a biblical storyteller goes beyond the documentary impulse to record 

what happened and proceeds to describe how it happened, he thereby signals that 

he wishes us, the readers, to share an experience, perhaps a prolonged experience, 

with one or more characters. The phenomenon known as identifying with char- 

acters in a story involves a reader’s going through the action with a specific char- 

acter. 

 

Readers as Participants and Spectators 

 

The implication of this experiential dimension of stories is that as readers we 

must be active, either as participants or as spectators. The power of story as a lit- 

erary form is its uncanny ability to involve us in what is happening. Storytellers 

put us on the scene and in the middle of an action. They pluck us out of our own 

time and place and put us into another time and place. As Norman Perrin puts it, 

“The natural function of narrative is to help the reader hear the voices, take part in 

the action, get involved in the plot.”² The more vividly storytellers portray the ac- 

tion and characters and settings, the more compelling is their sway over our atten- 

tion, as the biblical storytellers knew so well. 

 

The Need to Be an Active Reader 

 

To read stories well, then, we need to be active—in visualizing, in imagining 

scenes, in entering into the spirit of events, in identifying with characters. One 

sure way to impoverish our experience of a biblical story is to remain outside of 

the action, as though we were simply being told a series of facts. Personal involve- 

ment, achieved by an active use of the imagination, is the first requirement for 

reading biblical narrative. The stories of the Bible demand the answering imagi- 

nation of the reader for their effect. 

Rule number one for reading the stories of the Bible is simply this: look upon 

biblical stories as an invitation to share an experience, as vividly and concretely as 

possible, with the characters in the story. 

 

The Basic Ingredients 

 

Stories are always built out of three basic ingredients: setting, characters, and plot 

(action). Reading a story involves paying attention to the interaction of these three 

elements. 

 

The Functions of Settings 

 

The setting of a story is simultaneously physical, temporal, and cultural. The phys- 

ical scenes that storytellers build into their stories serve several functions. They 

are usually a necessary background for understanding the action that occurs with- 

in them. They are of course an important part of the concrete vividness by which 

storytellers enable their readers to enter fully into the experience of a story. They 

may be an important part of the identity of a character (as when Abraham, the 

nomad and domestic hero, is repeatedly linked with rural landscapes and tents). 

 

Physical Settings Build Atmosphere 

 

Physical settings can also establish the atmosphere or tone of a story. The atmos- 

phere of danger from which Peter is delivered in Acts 12 is effectively established 

by scenic details of prison, guards, chains, and iron gates. The hostility of 

Joseph’s brothers (Gen. 37) is actively abetted by the details of setting that the 

storyteller chose to record—the remoteness of the region, such features of land- 

scape as open pits, and the nearness of the route traveled by trading caravans. 

 

Symbolic Meanings of Settings 

 

In addition to their literal meaning, physical settings often assume a thematic or 

symbolic meaning in biblical stories. The idealized love story of Ruth and Boaz is 

reinforced by the rural (pastoral) imagery of growing crops and harvests. Spiritual 

revelations often occur on mountains (e.g., Moses’ meeting with God on Mount 

Sinai, Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and Jesus’ 

transfiguration on the Mount of Olives). The symbolic use of geography in the 

synoptic Gospels and Book of Acts is also well known: in the Gospels, Galilee is 

the place chosen by God to reveal his salvation and Jerusalem is the place of 

rejection; the Book of Acts opens in Jerusalem, seat of the Jewish religion that re- 

jected the Gospel, and ends after a long travel section in Rome, capital of the 

Gentile world to which the Gospel was sent. 

 

Settings and Structural Unity 

 

Another function of physical settings is to lend structural unity to a story. The 

episodic plot of the Exodus is unified in part by the continuous references to 

wilderness, water, fire, and rock. The story of Elijah is repeatedly linked with hills 

and mountains, the story of Jacob with rocks. Events in Genesis are joined by a 

common pastoral (rural) setting, and those in the books of Esther and Daniel by 

the continuous references to court life. The movement from Galilee to Jerusalem 

is an important structural principle in the synoptic Gospels, just as the transfer of 

action from Jerusalem to Rome in the Book of Acts gives shape to both the action 

and the theology of the story. 

 

Temporal Settings 

 

Stories have a temporal setting as well as a physical setting, and this, too, can be 

important to the overall impact of a story. It is important in the story of Esther that 

the events occurred during the Jewish exile in Persia, when the Jews were a vulner- 

able minority. The impact of the story of Jonah depends on our knowing that the 

action occurs at a time in history when Nineveh was the capital of the world- 

conquering Assyrians, known for their cruelty and terrorism. 

 

Cultural Settings 

 

The setting of a story includes, finally, a whole cultural climate—the set of beliefs, 

attitudes, and customs that prevail in the world of the story. Without the infor- 

mation biblical scholars have uncovered about ancient cultural practices, modern 

readers become prime candidates to misread the stories of the Bible. Did Jacob 

steal the birthright from Esau? Technically he bought it (and cleverly made the 

bargain binding by insisting that Esau swear an oath as he smelled the pottage), 

based on the practice among ancient Hurrians of transferring a birthright from 

one brother to another through negotiation and payment. The opening verse of 

Ruth, which tells us that “a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife 

and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab,” is a bland piece of 

factual data until we know something about the ancient hostility between Jew and 

Moabite. Once we know the cultural background, the statement explodes with hid- 

den suspense, as if a contemporary novelist were to begin a story, “In 1946 a cer- 

tain Jewish family went to Germany.”³ 

 

The Importance of Paying Attention to a Story’s Setting 

 

Many readers ignore the settings in biblical stories, but to do so is to miss much 

of the meaning. Sometimes, it is true, setting functions as little more than a lead- 

in to a story (for example, “Jesus began to teach by the lake” in Mark 4:1). But 

whenever a storyteller begins to elaborate the setting, we can rest assured that it is 

there for a purpose, either to make the story come alive in our imagination or as a 

contribution to the meaning of the story. Many of the stories of the Bible devote 

so much attention to scenic details that these details are virtually stage directions 

in a play. 

Rule two for reading the stories of the Bible is therefore this: pay close attention 

to every detail of setting that a storyteller puts into a story, and if setting has an impor- 

tant role, analyze how it contributes to the story. 

 

The Role of Character in Narrative 

 

The old debate whether character or plot is more important in a story is one that 

need not detain us. Character is what produces action; on the other hand, char- 

acters are known to us through their actions. The important thing is to be alert to 

the way in which character and plot work together to produce the total effect. 

 

How Characters Are Portrayed: 1. Direct Description by the Storyteller 

 

It is useful to be aware of the means by which a storyteller can portray a character. 

One is direct description. When a biblical storyteller informs us that “Joseph was 

well-built and handsome” (Gen. 39:6) or that Esther “was lovely in form and fea- 

tures” (Esth. 2:7), all we need to do is take the writer’s word for it. No further 

interpretation is required from us. It is significant to note, though, that this type of 

direct description is very sparse in the stories of the Bible. Even in the Gospels it 

is the exception rather than the rule for the authors to clarify Jesus’ motivation by 

telling us that he was angry or moved with compassion. 

 

2. Other Characters’ Responses 

 

A second way in which we know characters in a story is through other characters’ 

responses to them. Our picture of Jesus in the Gospels is repeatedly determined 

by the way in which humble and oppressed people flock to him in admiration, 

while the people with religious and civil power hate him. The responses of a series 

of Persian kings to Daniel establish him firmly in our imagination as a person of 

distinguished ability and personal integrity, as does the fact that his personal ene- 

mies admit among themselves that “we will never find any basis for charges 

against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God” 

(Dan. 6:5). 

 

3. A Character’s Words and Thoughts 

 

A third way to know a character is through the thoughts and words of that char- 

acter. To sense that Abraham is a family man, Jacob a schemer, Ruth a gentle 

woman, and Jesus a person of compassion and authority as the occasion de- 

manded, all we need to do is pay attention to their characteristic thought patterns 

and recorded speeches. 

 

4. Self-Characterization 

 

To have persons in a story characterize themselves is also a way of revealing char- 

acter to us. The great example is of course Jesus, when in the Gospels he repeat- 

edly explains himself and his mission. But there are other notable examples of the 

same technique in biblical narrative: Job’s repeated portrayal of himself as an 

innocent person, King Saul’s admission that David is more righteous than he is (1 

Sam. 24:17), or the autobiographical strand in many of Paul’s speeches in Acts. 

 

5. Actions as a Clue to Character 

 

There are, indeed, numerous ways in which a character emerges from the pages of 

the Bible as a full-fledged person. Mainly, though, the characters are known to us 

by their actions. It is a commonplace that the stories of the Bible tend to be told in 

a very spare, unembellished style. We are told only the most important things, and 

this usually means that the writer concentrates on showing us a character in ac- 

tion. The alternating of Abraham between faith and expediency, the courage of 

Ruth, the moral perfection of Jesus—these character traits emerge mainly from 

the actions we observe the characters performing. 

 

Characterization Involves a Reader’s Interpretation 

 

Whenever a storyteller decides to let a character’s actions do the talking, he there- 

by places a burden of interpretation on the reader. Often we know exactly how to 

interpret an action because we can place it into the context of moral commands 

elsewhere in the Bible. When Cain murders Abel, when David commits adultery 

with Bathsheba, or when Ananias and Sapphira lie, we have no difficulty in judging 

their characters negatively on that point. Conversely, when Abraham exercises 

faith in God or shows generosity toward his nephew, or when Joseph resists sex- 

ual temptation, we do not need to take a Gallup poll before concluding that they 

are examples of moral virtue. 

But there are many other places in the stories of the Bible where the assess- 

ment of what a character is like is open to alternative interpretations. Is the youth- 

ful Joseph’s telling Jacob about his brothers’ bad behavior an example of moral 

courage or ignominious self-serving? Why does Joseph manipulate his brothers 

before revealing himself to them? Did Esther compromise her religious principles 

when she fit in so well at the Persian court that she even managed to keep her Jew- 

ish identity a total secret? Many of the stories of the Bible raise interpretive ques- 

tions like these, and we need only read around in the commentaries to see what a 

lack of consensus there is on some of them. Because biblical stories leave so 

much unstated, they are “fraught with background and mysterious,” “greatly in 

need of interpretation,” writes Erich Auerbach in his classic study of the plain style 

of biblical narrative.⁴ 

 

Paying Attention to Details 

 

The practical result is that we must get maximum mileage out of the few details 

that are given regarding the characters in the brief, unembellished stories of the 

Bible. It also means that we are often left to choose somewhat tentatively from 

among alternative interpretations of character and action. “The Bible’s highly la- 

conic mode of narration,” writes Robert Alter, captures “an abiding mystery in 

character as the biblical writers conceive it, which they embody in their typical 

methods of presentation.”⁵ In virtually all cases of ambiguous or uncertain char- 

acterization, the main point of the story is unaffected by disagreements on how to 

interpret a character’s motivation or behavior at a given point in the story. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

Characters are an essential part of any biblical story. Therefore, the third rule for 

reading stories is, use every relevant detail in a story to get to know the characters as 

fully as possible. 

 

A Definition of Plot 

 

The plot of a story is the arrangement of the events. That arrangement is not ran- 

dom. A plot is a coherent sequence of interrelated events, with a beginning, mid- 

dle, and end. It is, in other words, a whole or complete action.⁶ 

 

Conflict: The Heart of Plot 

 

The essence of plot is a central conflict or set of conflicts moving toward a reso- 

lution. One of the very first things to pay attention to when reading a story is the 

conflicts that organize the story from the very beginning. They can be of several 

types. 

 

Types of Plot Conflict: 1. Physical Conflict 

 

Most stories involve some type of physical conflict. Throughout the Bible we read 

about characters struggling for survival against physical adversity and danger. In 

fact, the stories of the Bible are a nearly continuous series of either narrow es- 

capes or calamities. This is not surprising, for conflict against physical forces has 

always been a staple in the stories of the world. Of course, the struggle for phys- 

ical survival in biblical stories usually provides the occasion for some further (fre- 

quently spiritual) action. But if we are to read these narratives as stories, we must 

first of all respond to the literal situations, preferably as a child responds to sto- 

ries of physical danger. 

Such stories are among the best-known ones in the Bible. The struggle for 

physical survival is the background against which Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph live 

out their lives in the stories of Genesis. The story of the Exodus is a never-ending 

series of shortages of food and water. As for that perennial favorite, the narrow es- 

cape, we find it repeatedly in the Bible—in the stories of Jacob and Elijah and 

David and Daniel, in the Gospels, in the Book of Acts. We should not minimize 

the element of physical conflict in the stories of the Bible; it is a major element in 

the stories, either as the thing that arouses our narrative interest or as the occa- 

sion for a religious theme (such as the providential emphasis that is so recurrent 

in biblical narrative). 

 

2. Character Conflicts 

 

Conflicts can also occur between characters. Many of the famous stories in the 

Bible are built around great character clashes: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, 

Joseph and his brothers, the Israelites and their oppressors, Jonah and God, Elijah 

and Jezebel, Jesus and the Jewish leaders, Paul and the Jews. The best way of orga- 

nizing a discussion of such stories is obviously around the development of the 

character conflict. 

 

3. Moral or Spiritual Conflicts 

 

Still other plot conflicts are primarily moral or spiritual. They occur chiefly within a 

character. The story of Cain and Abel, despite the external violence, is ultimately a 

story of good in conflict with evil. So is the story of Jezebel’s seizing of Naboth’s 

vineyard. Job fights an inner battle to understand his suffering and to maintain his 

faith in God in the midst of that suffering. Jesus went through an agonizing inner 

struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

Stories are always built around plot conflicts. These conflicts progress toward 

some type of resolution, and when the resolution occurs, closure comes quickly. 

Noting plot conflicts is one of the best ways to organize a story, either in the ac- 

tual process of reading or when talking about the story. 

The fourth rule for reading stories is to identify the exact nature of the plot con- 

flicts in a story, noting how they develop and are finally resolved. 

 

Narrative Suspense 

 

Regardless of what else we might say about stories, the basic characteristic that 

determines whether they succeed or fail is the element of suspense, that is, the 

ability to arouse the reader’s curiosity. The novelist E. M. Forster has described 

the matter very succinctly: as story, a narrative “can only have one merit: that of 

making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only 

have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens 

next.”⁷ This applies also to stories in the Bible. 

 

How Stories Awaken Our Curiosity 

 

To engage our continuing interest, storytellers must make us want to know how a 

given situation will turn out. The means by which storytellers generate this kind of 

curiosity are multiple, but the most universal one is plot conflict that calls for pro- 

gression and final resolution. Putting characters into situations of danger or test- 

ing is therefore a staple in storytelling. An alternative way of eliciting reader inter- 

est is portraying vivid or striking characters about whose destiny we are made to 

care. Again, in biblical stories encounters between humans and God, even when 

the encounters do not involve conflict, generate interest about how the meeting 

will turn out 

 

Analyzing How a Story Generates Interest 

 

Two of the most productive questions I have learned to ask about a given story or 

episode within it are, “Exactly what accounts for the narrative interest that this 

story elicits from me?” and, “How does it make me a participant in the action?” 

These questions are a good entry into the specific details of a given text. We might 

note in passing that some stories make us wonder what the outcome will be, 

whereas with other stories we already know the outcome but are led to wonder 

how that outcome will be achieved. The classic example of the latter type is the 

story of Joseph, where the destined ending of the story (Joseph’s triumph over his 

brothers) is announced at the beginning, but where we could not possibly guess 

from the opening situation how that ending could be achieved. 

An additional rule for interacting with biblical stories is this: in reading or dis- 

cussing the stories of the Bible, analyze exactly how the narrative generates interest, 

curiosity, or suspense. 

 

The Presence of a Central Protagonist 

 

Every story has a central character. This is simply one of the principles of selec- 

tivity and emphasis that storytellers impose on their material. The central char- 

acter is called the protagonist of the story, and the forces arrayed against him or 

her are the antagonists. 

Readers and interpreters of biblical stories would do much better with these 

stories than they often do if they followed a very simple rule: pay attention to what 

happens to the protagonist in the story. Stories are built around the protagonist. You 

can’t go far wrong with a story if you simply go through the action as the obser- 

vant traveling companion of the protagonist in the story. 

 

The Protagonist’s Experiment in Living 

 

There are several related points that are equally practical. It is helpful to view the 

protagonist of the story as someone who undertakes an experiment in living. This 

experiment in living is tested during the course of the action, and its final success 

or failure is a comment on the adequacy of the protagonist’s morality or world 

view on which the experiment was based. Abraham’s life, for example, is a venture 

in faith. Called by God and given nothing more tangible than some promises, 

Abraham packs up his belongings and follows God’s call. He has momentary 

lapses of faith, but his experiment in living is ultimately vindicated. He is blessed 

by God and dies at peace with himself and the world. 

 

Teaching by Negative Example 

 

A protagonist’s experiment in living might be weighed in the balance and found 

wanting. Once Saul has been propelled into the kingship of Israel, his experiment 

in leadership is to maintain his popularity with the people by doing what is expe- 

dient instead of obeying God. The tragic form into which the story is cast be- 

comes a negative interpretation of Saul’s experiment in living, showing that it 

failed. 

 

The Protagonist as Our Representative 

 

A related principle is that the protagonist of a story is intended to be represen- 

tative or exemplary of a whole segment of humanity, and perhaps of the whole 

human race. That is in part why writers choose to tell a given story. In the words 

of the modern fiction writer Flannery O’Connor, “Any character . . . is supposed to 

carry a burden of meaning larger than himself.”⁸ This universality is, in fact, one of 

the distinctive features of literature, as theorists from Aristotle on have noted. To 

test whether a story has this quality of being perpetually up-to-date is simple: if we 

can see our own experience in the events and characters of the story, the story has 

captured something universal about life. Every sermon based on a biblical narra- 

tive assumes that what happens to the characters in the story is somehow a 

model of the enduring human situation. 

 

A Literary Approach Stresses the Universality of a Story 

 

This shows the difference between a literary approach to the Bible and a historical 

approach. The task of the historian is to record what happened; the task of the lit- 

erary storyteller is to tell us what happens. The two ways of recording events can 

be combined; in the Bible they have been combined, and biblical stories can there- 

fore be approached as history as well as literature. The literary approach is one 

that explores the story as an experience with enduring relevance. We should per- 

haps note that this approach has more in common with preaching and ordinary 

Bible reading than the more historical interests of specialized biblical scholars. 

The foregoing discussion of the protagonist in biblical stories yields an impor- 

tant principle for reading biblical narrative: look upon the protagonist’s experiment in 

living as a comment about a significant aspect of human life and values. 

 

Narrative Unity 

 

Stories are unified wholes. In any well-told story there is a unifying framework 

within which everything in the story finds a place. Few things are as debilitating to 

a discussion of a biblical story than a failure to lay out the unifying pattern(s) of 

the story. In the absence of such a framework, the story remains a series of dis- 

jointed and isolated fragments. Three basic principles on which stories are built 

are unity, coherence, and emphasis. These are, perhaps, the last things we dis- 

cover as we read through a story, since they are not fully evident until the story is 

finished. But the unity and coherence of a story are virtually the first things we 

should mention when discussing a biblical story. 

 

Identifying Where a Story Begins and Ends 

 

One of the first things to do with a story is to determine its precise boundaries. 

This involves deciding where the story begins and ends within the surrounding 

biblical text. Sometimes this delineation depends on a reader’s or commentator’s 

purpose at the moment. For example, it is quite possible to treat the story of Abra- 

ham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Gen. 22) as a self-contained story. But that 

same material becomes only an episode if we are discussing the story of Abraham 

as a whole. 

 

Dividing a Story into Scenes or Episodes 

 

Determining the shape of a story entails not only fixing its boundaries but also 

dividing it into its scenes or episodes. A good study Bible has already done most 

of this work for the reader. It is important to attach accurate headings to each 

scene or episode, since these units become the major building blocks in con- 

structing our conception of the overall movement of the story. Once we have 

determined the overall shape and individual episodes of a story, we can proceed 

to the further question of narrative unity. 

 

Unity of Hero 

 

Narrative unity can be of several types. Aristotle theorized that the unifying ele- 

ment in a story is a “unity of plot. . . , not as some persons think. . .unity of hero.” 

This is generally true, but Aristotle underestimated the ability of a literary hero to 

impose a satisfactory unity on a story. Even in stories that have unity of plot, the 

presence of the protagonist throughout the action also lends unity to the story. 

When we recall the stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Ruth, Esther, and Jesus, 

our impressions of the stories organize themselves partly around the hero or 

heroine. 

 

Episodic Plots 

 

When a story is unified only by the presence of the hero, and not by a corre- 

sponding unity of action, its plot is called episodic. In such a story, the events suc- 

ceed each other but do not form a cause-effect chain in which one event produces 

the next. The episodes in such a story can be rearranged or deleted without de- 

stroying the flow of the story. Such episodic plots are rare but not unknown in the 

Bible. The first six chapters of Daniel are six separate ordeals, joined only by the 

fact that they all involve Daniel or his acquaintances. The story of David is even 

more episodic. The Gospels, despite the presence of unifying motifs and a general 

chronological movement, are basically episodic plots. 

 

Unity of Action 

 

In general, however, narrative unity implies that a story deals with one action. Out 

of the mass of events that constitute the life of a person, the storyteller selects a 

single action for the purpose of a given story. The story of Gideon, for example, is 

unified by more than the presence of the hero throughout the story; it is a single 

action— Gideon’s conquest of the Midianites. The story of Jacob is built around 

the hero’s struggle with his own character flaws and his family. The story of 

Joseph is unified by the hero’s quest to fulfill the destiny announced at the very 

beginning of the story. Out of all the things the author might have written about 

Ruth, the storyteller selected details that contribute to the motif of Ruth’s quest for 

a home in a foreign land. 

 

Multiple Plots 

 

Occasionally a story in the Bible is sufficiently complex to be called a multiple 

plot. But even in those cases the action is carefully controlled and shaped. Each 

thread of action, when isolated from the others, meets the test of being a single, 

self-contained action with a beginning, middle, and end. The story of Abraham is a 

good example. It consists of at least four interrelated but discernible actions: (1) 

the chronological shape of the hero’s life from age seventy-five to his death; (2) 

the progressive revelation of the covenant that God repeatedly announces to Abra- 

ham; (3) the quest for a son and descendants and land; (4) the hero’s struggle be- 

tween faith and expediency. The plot is multiple, but it is not episodic, because 

each thread of action follows the principles of coherence and unity. 

 

Cause-Effect Connections Among Events 

 

Unity of plot implies not only that the writer has selected details to fit a single ac- 

tion—it also implies the principle of causal coherence among the events. A uni- 

fied plot is not a mere succession or accumulation of events but a sequence of 

events that are linked by a chain of cause and effect. In a famous reformulation of 

Aristotle’s theory that episodes in a story follow one another by “probable or 

necessary sequence,” novelist E. M. Forster wrote that the mere sequence “the 

king died and then the queen died” does not constitute a plot. But the statement 

“the king died and then the queen died of grief” does contain a plot in kernel 

form.⁹ For me, the most convenient test of whether a story has such causal coher- 

ence is to begin at the end of a story and march backward through the main 

events. (Others may prefer to start at the beginning and proceed to the end.) If, for 

each major episode, I can say that a given event happened because of the previous 

one, the story has causal coherence. 

 

How to Discern Coherence 

 

How important is it to engage in such plot analysis? There can be no doubt that 

the concentrated impact of a story depends heavily on the presence of causal 

coherence. Plots that are too loose or random make weak stories. Furthermore, a 

story will remain largely a series of fragments in the reader’s mind unless he or 

she has some framework for recognizing the coherence among the episodes. Ana- 

lyzing the cause-effect connections between events in a story is one good way to 

discern the coherence of a story. 

Other ways of becoming aware of the coherence of stories may work just as 

well, such as simply being alert to how a character or situation changes or pro- 

gresses or is reinforced as we move from one event to the next. In hero stories, for 

example, each episode turns out to be a variation on the theme of defining the 

hero, but close scrutiny usually reveals that with each successive episode we learn 

something new about the hero, and often the very order in which we learn those 

things is important. 

 

Charting the Progress of a Story 

 

To discern the unity of stories with multiple plots, it is useful to arrange the uni- 

fying patterns into a chart or diagram. In the story of Abraham, for example, we 

can isolate four main narrative concerns: (1) defining the hero; (2) progressive 

revelation of the covenant; (3) the quest for a son and descendants; (4) the con- 

flict between faith and expediency. The diagram on page 48 allows us to see at a 

glance what motifs appear in the successive episodes. 

Several things stand out. The only motif that is picked up in every episode is 

the emerging portrait of the hero, confirming that the literary family of the story is 

heroic narrative and demonstrating that unity of hero dominates the story. The 

diagram also shows that the storyteller had a good grasp of the narrative principle 

of variety; he avoided monotony by picking and choosing among the various 

narrative threads (never, however, leaving a given narrative concern untouched for 

too long). The chart suggests at a glance how interrelated the various levels of ac- 

tion are. It also shows that the hero’s vacillation between faith and expediency per- 

sists nearly to the end of the story (being decisively resolved in Genesis 22, the 

episode of the sacrifice of Isaac). The completed diagram also confirms that Abra- 

ham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is the climax of the whole story, since all the 

main actions converge at this late point in the story. 

 

Relating Individual Episodes to the Overriding Framework 

 

Mainly, though, the chart underscores the principle that we must recognize in 

every narrative, even one that has a single plot line: it is crucial to see how a given 

episode relates to the overriding framework(s) of the story. Individual episodes in 

a story are not self-contained but exist in the context of the whole story. As Aris- 

totle said regarding the individual episodes of a story, “We must see that they are 

relevant to the action.” With or without the use of a diagram, relating episodes to 

the overall framework(s) of a story is the most important way of grasping the unity 

of the narrative and the best antidote to the fragmentation that weakens so many 

discussions of biblical stories. 

One of the most crucial of all rules for reading the stories of the Bible is there- 

fore this one: analyze in detail the unity of the story, noting how each episode relates 

to the overriding framework(s) and how the episodes relate to each other in the unfold- 

ing progress of the story. 

The interaction of setting, characters, and plot is the foundation of any story. 

There is, however, much more to the dynamics of biblical narrative than this foun- 

dation. Biblical storytellers invariably make use of additional narrative devices. 

 

The Test Motif in Stories 

 

One of the commonest of all the strategies that storytellers use is to put the pro- 

tagonist into situations that test him or her. Almost every major episode in the 

story of Abraham, for example, turns out to be a test of his faith. The story of Es- 

ther is organized around the test of the heroine’s loyalty at a time of national 

crisis. King Saul’s obedience to God is tested in the battles against the Philistines 

(1 Sam. 13:8–15) and the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15). Jesus’ teachings and claims about 

himself are repeatedly tested by his antagonists in the Gospels. 

 

Types of Tests: 1. Tests of Physical Strength or Courage 

 

The tests of the hero can be of several types. Tests of physical strength and en- 

durance, especially on the battlefield, have appealed most to storytellers through 

the centuries, and the Bible has its share of such stories. One thinks of the fa- 

mous stories of David and Goliath, Samson and the Philistines, Jael and Sisera, 

Gideon and the Midianites. 

 

2. Tests of Resourcefulness 

 

Other stories test the hero’s resourcefulness or cleverness. In the story of the 

stolen blessing (Gen. 27), Jacob’s ability to trick his father is tested from the mo- 

ment he enters his father’s presence. Ehud’s lefthanded trickiness is tested in the 

grim story of his assassination of Eglon (Judg. 3:15–30). David’s resourcefulness 

is tested in such incidents as his flight from Saul and his capture by Achish, king 

of Gath (see 1 Sam. 21:10–15 for the latter). 

 

3. Mental or Psychological Tests 

 

Generally, though, biblical storytellers prefer more subtle types of tests than those 

involving physical strength or resourcefulness. One category is the mental or psy- 

chological testing of the protagonist. In the Old Testament, the hero with an abil- 

ity to interpret dreams is the counterpart of the modern detective who can solve 

ingenious crimes. Other types of inner testing are also common in the Bible. For 

example, Joseph’s willingness to forgive his brothers and conquer his impulse to 

take revenge is sorely tested when his brothers show up in Egypt. Elijah’s ability to 

persist in his calling as a prophet is tested when Jezebel threatens to kill him (1 

Kings 19). Job’s patience is tested in his suffering, while the ability of Moses to 

withstand the pressure of adverse public opinion is repeatedly tested in the story 

of the Exodus. Many a biblical hero finds his or her courage tested by threatening 

situations. 

 

4. Moral or Spiritual Tests 

 

The most profound type of testing is moral or spiritual. We think at once of 

Potiphar’s wife tempting Joseph to commit adultery with her, or Daniel’s dilemma 

when the command to worship the emperor is published, or David’s fiasco with 

Bathsheba and Uriah, or Satan’s temptation of Jesus. What is tested in such sto- 

ries is the protagonist’s faith in God or obedience to God’s moral law. 

The test motif is pervasive in the stories of the Bible. Whenever it is present, it 

is a good framework for organizing the story. Usually it is also a key to the story’s 

meaning. 

 

The Centrality of Choice in Stories 

 

A related feature of stories is that they focus on the choices of the characters in 

the story. Stories concentrate on the person at the crossroads. Consequently, 

many stories are structured around the threefold principle of the antecedents, 

occurrence, and consequences of a crucial choice. The story of Esther is a good 

example. For three chapters we read about a series of events that finally converge 

to put Esther in the critical position of being the only one who can appeal to the 

king to save her nation. Chapter 4 focuses on her heroic choice to risk herself for 

her nation. The rest of the story suspensefully narrates how she gradually carries 

through on her choice to confront the king, and on what happens when she does. 

 

Choice as the Heroic Act 

 

Many a biblical protagonist achieves full heroic stature in the moment of choice. 

The choice, indeed, is what the story is finally about. We can recall Abraham 

choosing to leave his native land in obedience to the call of God, or his later 

choosing to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. We remember Moses refus- 

ing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and choosing to identify with the 

Israelites, or Ruth choosing to stay with Naomi, or Daniel’s three friends refusing 

to bow down to the emperor’s statue, or Jesus choosing to submit to God’s will in 

the Garden of Gethsemane. 

The prominence of testing and choice in the stories of the Bible has a corre- 

sponding rule for reading and discussing them: identify the exact nature of the tests 

that protagonists undergo or the choices they make, observing how the story is struc- 

tured around these tests or choices and noting how leading themes of the story are re- 

lated to testing and choice. 

 

Transformation as a Narrative Principle 

 

It is characteristic of stories that they do not end where they began. Change, 

growth, and development are the very essence of stories. Without some type of 

change in character or situation, stories bore us. In fact, one expert on stories 

theorizes that a “minimal story” consists of “three events, the third of which is the 

inverse of the first.”¹⁰ Aristotle’s principle of a story as an action having a begin- 

ning, middle, and end will serve us well here. The middle of the story is that which 

links the beginning and end and explains the difference that we find between the 

two situations. That difference nearly always centers on some notable change, 

usually one that involves the hero. 

 

Change in the Story of Origins 

 

Consider the very first story in the Bible, the story of origins that occupies Genesis 

1–3. According to C. S. Lewis this story “fulfills the conditions of great story better 

perhaps than any other, for, more than any other, it leaves things where it did not 

find them.”¹¹ The story begins with God’s creation of a perfect world. Then the ac- 

tion narrows to life in Paradise (Gen. 2). The third chapter reverses everything. 

Life inside the Garden is replaced by life outside the Garden, in a fallen and hostile 

environment. Unity among God, humanity, and nature is transformed into a world 

fragmented into warring components. As we read through the first three chapters 

of the Bible, we fall from the zenith of total bliss to the absolute nadir of cor- 

rupting sin. 

 

Types of Change in Stories 

 

The element of change is so central to stories that the best system for classifying 

stories is based on it. The change in a story can be a change of (a) fortune or situ- 

ation, (b) character, or (c) a combination of these. The resulting taxonomy of 

narrative types, with three biblical examples of each, looks something like this, 

beginning with stories in which the change is one of external fortune. 

 

Change of Fortune Stories 

 

In a tragic plot an essentially good character undergoes a catastrophic change of 

fortune caused by his or her tragic flaw (the stories of Adam, Saul, Samson). A 

punitive plot is one in which an unsympathetic or villainous character undergoes 

an adverse change of fortune as a punishment for misdeeds (the stories of 

Jezebel, Ahab, Absalom). In a pathetic plot (from the word “pathos”) a sympa- 

thetic character undergoes suffering or adversity through no particular fault of his 

or her own (the stories of Joseph, Job, Jesus). A comic plot is one in which a 

sympathetic character undergoes a change from misfortune or deprivation to 

happiness and fulfillment, or who survives the threat of misfortune and comes 

out all right in the end (the stories of Abraham, Ruth, Esther). A combination of 

pathetic and comic plots is possible if the suffering protagonist experiences a 

sudden upturn of fortune at the end (in contrast to the gradually improving for- 

tunes of the protagonist in the typical comic plot). An admiration story is one in 

which a sympathetic hero successfully masters one threat after another (stories of 

heroes who always win, such as those of Daniel, Deborah, Elisha). 

 

Change of Character Stories 

 

Stories in which the transformation is primarily a change of the protagonist’s 

character yield a different system of classification. In reform stories an initially un- 

sympathetic or evil character changes for the better (the stories of Jacob, Saul/ 

Paul, the prodigal son). In degeneration plots an initially good and sympathetic 

character degenerates (the stories of Adam and Eve, Solomon, Hezekiah). In reve- 

lation stories the focus is on the protagonist’s progress from ignorance to knowl- 

edge (the story of Abraham, who pursues several dead ends while learning how 

and when God will fulfill the promise of a son; the story of Job, who learns a great 

deal about God and himself as a result of his suffering; the story of David/ 

Bathsheba/Uriah in 2 Sam. 11–12, where David gradually learns that not even the 

king can sin with impunity). 

This classification of stories should be used flexibly. It does not cover every 

story told in the Bible. Some stories combine features of more than one type and 

should therefore be regarded as hybrids. For example, in the Bible (but not in liter- 

ature generally) tragic stories are always degeneration stories as well. The story 

types I have listed are simply useful organizing frameworks for some biblical sto- 

ries. They are not a literary straitjacket into which we should force every story. I 

leave it to my readers to discover that there are surprisingly few examples of some 

of these types and a notable abundance of other types. 

We can formulate this further rule for reading and discussing biblical narrative 

on the basis of narrative transformation: pay attention to the changes that occur be- 

tween the beginning and end of a story, noting carefully the precise ways in which char- 

acters change and the causes of those transformations. 

 

Foils 

 

Storytellers make significant use of foils in stories. A foil is literally something that 

“sets off” or heightens what is most important in a story. It is usually a contrast, 

though it can also consist of a parallel that reinforces something else. The com- 

monest type of foil is a character who accentuates the protagonist, but sometimes 

an event or thread of action can serve as a foil to the main plot. 

 

Characters as Foils 

 

Character foils occur in almost every biblical narrative. The virtuous Abel height- 

ens the villainy of Cain. Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law stands illumined by the 

contrast to Orpah, who returns to her home and gods. The roll call of such char- 

acter foils keeps expanding: Abraham and Lot, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, 

David and Saul, Mary and Martha, the Pharisee and publican. 

 

Contrasting Events as Foils 

 

Events can also function as foils. In Genesis 18, Abraham and Sarah entertain an- 

gelic visitors with ideal hospitality in a rural setting, and they are rewarded with the 

promise that their long-awaited son will be bom the following spring. In the very 

next chapter, the angels visit Lot to pronounce God’s judgment against the wicked 

city of sexual perversion where Lot has made his home. Instead of sitting down to 

a leisurely meal, they have to be rescued from attempted homosexual rape. Again, 

in the story of Saul and David, the tragic decline of Saul stands silhouetted against 

the rise of the youthful David. 

 

Parallel Events as Foils 

 

Plots can also be highlighted by parallel events that reinforce a main action. The 

story of Jacob provides good examples. The sibling rivalry Jacob perpetrated so 

well in his own childhood home is reinforced by the rivalry between Rachel and 

Leah after they become the wives of Jacob. Jacob’s character flaws as the deceitful 

trickster are all the more obvious when he is thrown into a twenty-year-long en- 

counter with his equally tricky Uncle Laban. 

Storytellers love to work with heightened contrasts and (less often) parallels. 

By means of such foils, they draw our attention to what is most important in the 

story. 

 

Dramatic Irony 

 

Storytellers are also addicted to a narrative device known as dramatic irony. It oc- 

curs whenever the reader knows something that a character in the story does not 

know. 

 

Irony in the Gospels 

 

For example, we read the Gospels knowing that the story ends with the resur- 

rection of Jesus from the dead. The Gospel writers wrote their accounts from the 

superior (postresurrection) knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah. But as we go 

through the action narrated in the Gospels, we can discern irony all over the place 

as the disciples and enemies of Jesus portrayed in the story operate in ignorance 

of who Jesus is and of his ultimate triumph. 

 

Irony in the Story of Job 

 

The most sustained piece of dramatic irony in the Bible is the Book of Job. As 

readers, we know from the prologue that God is not the cause of Job’s suffering 

(Satan is), that Job is blameless and upright, and that God is not punishing Job. 

The principal actors operate in ignorance of what has happened in heaven, and al- 

most everything they say is permeated with dramatic irony. As we read Job’s early 

speeches we know that Job’s accusations against God as a sadistic deity are un- 

true. In the speeches of Job’s “comforters” we observe the irony of orthodoxy: 

they mouth orthodox doctrine (suffering is punitive, wicked people bring calamity 

on themselves, God is just), but all this orthodoxy is wide of the mark because it 

does not apply to the specific case of Job. 

 

Localized Irony 

 

Dramatic irony is usually more localized than it is in the Gospels and the Book of 

Job. Much of the emotional voltage of the concluding chapters of the story of 

Joseph stems from our knowing, as the brothers do not, that they are unwittingly 

fulfilling the destiny prophesied in Joseph’s youthful dreams. Again, since we 

know that the crafty, lefthanded Ehud carries his sword on the unexpected right 

side, the storyteller in effect exchanges a grim wink with us at the expense of the 

doomed Eglon, with the result that virtually every detail in the story (Judg. 3:15–25) 

is electrified with hidden meanings. In a famous story from the New Testament we 

hear the approaching footsteps of the young men returning from the burial of 

Ananias even as we listen to Sapphira’s doomed attempt to pull off the same hoax 

that cost her husband his life (Acts 5:7–10). 

 

Dramatic Irony and Reader Involvement 

 

Dramatic irony is one of the most predictably effective ways of eliciting reader in- 

volvement in a story. It activates a reader to recognize a discrepancy. Once acti- 

vated, we are “hooked.” This may account for the fact that it is hard to find a story 

that does not include some irony, however subtle. But in the Bible irony is more 

than a bit of effective storytelling technique. In a universe where God’s ways tran- 

scend human understanding and in which an unseen spiritual world is portrayed 

as being just as real as the physical world, it is inevitable that discrepancies in per- 

ception will keep entering the action.¹² 

 

Poetic Justice 

 

Poetic justice is also common in stories. It consists of the narrative situation in 

which good characters are rewarded and bad ones punished. Such justice is what 

we usually get in biblical stories before the final curtain closes on the action. The 

boy-hero David triumphs and the blasphemous giant loses his head. The vil- 

lainous Haman is hanged on the gallows that he himself built, while Mordecai 

basks in his promotion. Job’s fortunes are restored, his tormenting “friends” are 

rebuked, and Satan has fled from the scene in total defeat. 

 

Why Storytellers Use Poetic Justice 

 

Such poetic justice is all but inevitable in stories. As readers, we intuitively expect 

it, even though we recognize that such justice is often absent in real life. Poetic 

justice is simply one of the conventions of storytelling. It is a way to round off an 

action with a note of finality (without it storytellers would hardly know how to end 

their stories). It is the storyteller’s way of clarifying how he feels morally and per- 

haps emotionally about the characters and events that have been presented, and, 

to use Aristotle’s great phrase, it satisfies our moral sense. 

Is the prevalence of poetic justice in the stories of the Bible a sign that the writ- 

ers have added a bit of fiction to make the story “turn out right”? It is more likely 

to be a matter of selecting stories that did turn out right. After all, what type of 

story gets told and retold in our own culture? And what type of story is offered as 

a testimony of God’s goodness or as the prototypical Christian life? Stories in 

which justice wins, good people are rewarded, and scoundrels get their comeup- 

pance. In the Bible, poetic justice is more appropriately called God’s justice. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

The prevalence of such standard narrative conventions as foils, dramatic irony, 

and poetic justice in the stories óf the Bible can be formulated into a principle of 

interpretation: be alert for the presence of foils, dramatic irony, and poetic justice in 

biblical narrative, both for what they add to your response to the story and what they 

contribute to the meaning. 

 

Stories Are Comments on Life 

 

The storytellers of the Bible do more than entertain us. They interpret as well as 

present the characters and events that make up their stories. “To tell a story,” 

writes John Shea, “is to create a world, adopt an attitude, suggest a behavior.”¹³ 

Storytellers even choose their stories partly on the basis of their significance and 

ability to embody truth. They are always on the lookout for stories that are striking 

and gripping, but they also choose stories in which, to use the French writer 

Baudelaire’s words, “the deep significance of life reveals itself.”¹⁴ 

The fact that storytellers mean something by their stories affects how we 

should approach their stories. A leading literary scholar speaks of “the rule of sig- 

nificance” as “the primary convention of literature”; by the rule of significance he 

means reading a work of literature “as expressing a significant attitude to some 

problem concerning man and/or his relation to the universe.”¹⁵ In reading the sto- 

ries of the Bible we need to balance the descriptive question “What happened 

next?” with the interpretive questions “What does it mean? What is the author 

driving at?” At both levels, stories are at least a distant literary relative of the rid- 

dle, teasing us into a process of discovery. 

 

What Stories Are About 

 

The rule of significance is especially relevant to the Bible, a sacred or religious 

book in which the authors claim to be revealing religious truth for the faith and 

practice of their readers. We should look upon biblical stories as making implied 

assertions about the three great issues of life: 

1.Reality: What really exists? 

2.Morality: What constitutes good and bad behavior? 

3.Values: What really matters, and what matters most? 

 

Biblical storytellers make these assertions, not directly, but by embodying 

them in setting, character, and action. Flannery O’Connor once remarked that the 

storyteller speaks “with character and action, not about character and action.”¹⁶ If 

this is true, about what to do storytellers speak by means of their stories? The 

same thing other thinkers speak about more directly: life, reality, truth. There is, in 

other words, a discourse level to these stories: they are the means by which the au- 

thor communicates something important to the audience or reader. 

 

The Need to Interpret Stories 

 

There is an obvious indirection about the storyteller’s approach to truth. Instead 

of stating ideas propositionally, the storyteller presents living examples of one 

principle or another, one aspect of reality or another, leaving the reader to infer 

those themes. In other words, stories impose the obligation of interpretation on 

their readers in a way that sermons and essays do not. 

 

The Dual Task in Interpreting Stories 

 

How, then, can the reader know what a given story means? Readers do not always 

agree on what a story means, though often it is possible to find a consensus. 

Keeping in mind that the storyteller both presents an experience and offers an inter- 

pretation of it, we can profitably pursue our quest to find the themes of a story by 

dividing the process into two phases: identifying what the story is about (the topic 

or subject of the story) and how the writer wishes us to view the experience that is 

presented (the theme of the story). 

 

Repetition as a Guide to What a Story Is About 

 

The most reliable guide to what a story is about is the principle of repetition. What 

keeps getting repeated in a story invariably becomes the central focus—the thing 

toward which everything points. The most important requirement for a story, com- 

mented the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, “is that it should have a kind of focus, . . 

.some place where all the rays meet or from which they issue.”¹⁷ Such focus is 

usually provided by repetition. Generally speaking, a story will partly interpret itself 

by repeating that which is essential to its understanding. 

 

Repetition in the Story of Gideon 

 

For example, in the first half of the story of Gideon (Judg. 6–7), virtually every inci- 

dent is a variation on the theme of the hero’s feelings of inadequacy. Gideon beats 

out wheat in secret to avoid detection (6:11). When the angel ironically greets him 

as “thou mighty man of valour” (v. 12 KJ), Gideon responds with defeatism (v. 13). 

When God promises to be with him, he asks for a confirming sign (vv. 16–18). 

Given the command to tear down his father’s pagan altar, Gideon does it by night 

“because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day” 

(v. 27). This story, we quickly learn, is going to be about what God did with a 

reluctant hero suffering from acute insecurity. 

 

Highlighting or Foregrounding 

 

In addition to repetition as a device to tell us what a story is about, biblical story- 

tellers use various techniques of highlighting or foregrounding to direct a reader’s 

attention to what is most important in a story. Anything that stands out from a 

common ground can become a signpost for the reader. 

 

Character Transformation as a Form of Highlighting 

 

In a story that centers on character transformation, for example, we rather au- 

tomatically pay attention to what caused the transformation. The story of Esther is 

typical. During the early part of the story, Esther conceals her Jewish identity and 

fits in perfectly with a pagan lifestyle. After her crucial decision in the middle of 

the story to unmask her concealed identity before the king, she becomes a na- 

tional heroine, no longer sliding with circumstances and taking the easiest way 

out of a situation. What is the story about? It is about the identity crisis of the pro- 

tagonist, an identity crisis very much tied up with the religious themes of the Old 

Testament. 

 

Proportionate Space as a Form of Highlighting 

 

Highlighting can consist of the amount of space that a given detail or event gets 

in a story. In the Greek text of the parable of the good Samaritan, for example, 

“there are forty-six words given to what precedes the arrival of the Samaritan on 

the scene but sixty words devoted to his arrival and, step-by-step, to his reaction. 

Since this reaction is so unexpected, it must be spelled out in explicit detail.”¹⁸ 

 

Crucial or Decisive Events as a Form of Highlighting 

 

There is an alternative to a writer’s using proportionate space to highlight the cen- 

tral feature of a story, and that is to throw a relatively small facet of a story into re- 

lief by making it the crucial or decisive aspect. Jacob’s wrestling with the angel at 

the brook Jabbok (Gen. 32:22–32) takes only eleven verses to tell, but it is the great 

turning point in Jacob’s story and the clue to what the storyteller wishes us to see 

in the story as a whole. In terms of sheer space, the aggressive selfishness of 

Jacob is far more dominant, but the prolonged account of Jacob the scoundrel ex- 

ists only as the background against which the main point of the story stands sil- 

houetted. 

The story of Ruth contains a similar instance of a small detail that gets fore- 

grounded. Near the end of the story, we find the ostensibly matter-of-fact state- 

ment that the child born to Ruth and Boaz was named “Obed. He was the father 

of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:17). In terms of space, it is of only passing 

interest, but as Ronald Hals comments, with the mere mention of David “the story 

of Ruth takes its place as simply one more bit of Heilsgeschichte [“sacred history”], 

for it clearly aims to trace the background of the great David. In fact, the story 

could well be described as messianic history.”¹⁹ 

 

Point of View in Stories 

 

Once we have discovered what a biblical story is about (and it might be about 

more than one thing), we need to complete the task of interpretation by deter- 

mining exactly what the storyteller says about and with that subject matter. What 

perspective are we invited to share with the storyteller? To use the terminology of 

literary criticism, what point of view governs the writer’s account of the characters 

and action in the story? The answers to these questions are multiple. 

 

Authorial Statement as a Guide to Point of View 

 

Sometimes a biblical storyteller enters the story and directly states the interpretive 

framework that he intends us to apply to the story. When the writer of the Abra- 

ham story stops the flow of ţhe action to state, “Abram believed the LORD, and ije 

credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6), the editorial comment presents a 

major theme of the whole story, namely, the reward that attendş faith in God. 

When we read later in Genesis that “the LORD was with Joseph and shewed him 

mercy” (Gen. 39:21 KJ), we know that the providential theme is a main meaning of 

the story. What is the controlling theme that underlies the Gospel of John? The 

writer himself tells us: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the 

Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). 

 

Scarcity of Authorial Statement 

 

Although such authorial commentary does occur in the stories of the Bible, the 

significant thing is how rarely it happens compared to what we find in stories out- 

side the Bible. Generally speaking, biblical storytellers narrate what happened but 

do not explain it. 

 

Normative Characters Within Stories 

 

It is much more common to find that characters within the stories of the Bible 

make key utterances that we intuitively recognize as summing up what the story as 

a whole is asserting. At the end of the Joseph story, Joseph himself suggests an 

interpretive framework for the whole story when he tells his brothers, “As for you, 

you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many 

people should be kept alive” (Gen. 50:20). This providential theme of the victory 

of redemptive suffering over intended evil is at the very heart of what the story 

communicates. Whenever a character in a story interprets the meaning of the 

story in this way, we can call both the character and the viewpoint normative (au- 

thoritative). The Gospel stories are filled with such normative spokespersons, 

such as the centurion in the Passion story who exclaims, “Surely he was the Son 

of God!” (Matt. 27:54). 

 

God as Normative Spokesman 

 

In the Bible there is a special category of normative characters. In many stories 

God or, in the Gospels, Jesus makes a stated or implied comment on the meaning 

of the action. The pattern begins with the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, where God 

enters the action to pronounce judgment against Adam and Eve for their disobe- 

dience. Thereafter the appearance of God as a normative character is the rule 

rather than the exception in Old Testament stories. A similar pattern pervades the 

Gospel narratives, where the stories involving Jesus typically include some pro- 

nouncement by Jesus about the meaning of an episode. 

 

The Typical Indirectness of Authorial Viewpoint 

 

The point of view in most biblical stories is conveyed, not by explicit statements 

from either the storyteller or normative characters within the stories, but in a more 

indirect manner. More often than not, the persuasive or interpretive strategy in 

biblical narrative is embodied within the details of the stories. It is up to the reader 

to read the interpretive signals accurately. 

 

Selectivity as a Form of Authorial Viewpoint 

 

Authorial selectivity and arrangement of details lie behind every story in the Bible. 

There is always more than one way to tell a given story. The story as it finally 

stands has been consciously assembled by the author for a calculated effect on 

the audience. In short, storytellers control what you see and don’t see, how you 

see it, and when you see it. 

 

Controlling What You See and Don’t See 

 

We can take the story of David to show authorial selectivity as a way of influencing 

how readers interpret a story. David’s story is included in three different Old 

Testament works. In 1 and 2 Samuel, the writer puts the first part of David’s life 

into a providential framework of God’s favor toward the hero, and he includes 

events that idealize David. Then all of a sudden in 2 Samuel 11–12 we get the 

Bathsheba/Uriah debacle, accompanied by God’s judgment. The rest of the story 

becomes a detailed anatomy of the misery that followed in the wake of David’s 

great sin. The writer has obviously given David’s life a tragic interpretation. 

But in 1 Kings (e.g., 9:4; 11:4, 6; 15:3) David appears as a norm of the godly 

ruler against which evil kings are weighed and found wanting. Even more striking 

is the picture in 1 Chronicles, which tells us both more and less than the Books of 

Samuel. Here we find six chapters describing David’s gathering of materials for 

the temple and his arrangements for temple worship, and seven chapters devoted 

to the hero’s military exploits. We hear nothing, however, about the Bathsheba/ 

Uriah episode. This selectivity gives us a heroic interpretation of David’s life, with 

emphasis on his piety and courage and national accomplishments. 

 

Character Portrayal as a Conscious Interpretation by the Writer 

 

The fact that David emerges as a partly different person in the various accounts 

shows that writers influence how we interpret characters and action simply by 

what they choose to include and exclude. Characters in biblical stories are con- 

scious creations of the storytellers, not in the sense that the writers disregard the 

real-life person, but in the sense that they decide what to include and exclude from 

their portrait. Just as people in real life elicit more than one response and assess- 

ment from those who know them, biblical writers do noTaſl see a given character 

in exactly the same way. We are here talking about the multiplicity of a character, 

not questioning the reliability of a storyteller. David’s life was both tragic and hero- 

ic. 

 

Point of View in the Gospels 

 

The Gospels are an even more famous example of how a biblical storyteller’s very 

selection of material results in an interpretation of the character and events that 

make up the story. Biblical scholars have established in detail how each of the 

Gospels tells the story of Jesus from its own perspective, and that this viewpoint 

is discernible in large part in what each author decided to include in his account. 

Luke, for example, included a number of distinctive incidents and teachings of 

Jesus that involve the poor, women, and non-Jewish people (especially Samar- 

itans) that are absent from the other Gospels. This selectivity reflects an interpre- 

tation of the person and mission of Jesus. 

 

Selectivity in the Hagar Story 

 

Selectivity can also produce more localized effects in stories. Consider, for in- 

stance, the way in which we respond to Hagar and her son Ishmael in Genesis 21. 

The relative illegitimacy of Ishmael and his exclusion from the covenant line are 

underscored by his antagonism toward Isaac, the true child of promise (vv. 8–10). 

If this antagonism and the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael were all that was in- 

cluded in the story, our impression would be one of simple condemnation. But 

the storyteller includes more than that. He elicits our pity for the mother and child 

wandering in the desert (vv. 15–16), and he lends a kind of sanction to them by in- 

cluding God’s rescue of Hagar and his words of kindness to her (vv. 17–20). If we 

had only the first half of this story, our final assessment of the characters and 

events would be far different from what they are now. 

All of this leads to an important principle of narrative interpretation: assume 

that the storyteller has included every detail for a purpose, and do not hesitate to reflect 

on how the story is affected by the inclusion of a detail as compared with the effect if 

the detail were omitted. 

 

The Ending of a Story as an Implied Comment on Its Meaning 

 

As readers we are influenced not only by what we see and don’t see (the writer’s 

selectivity), but also by the arrangement of the material. Most important of all is 

the way in which a story ends. One of the inherent principles of narrative is the 

idea of outcome. If characters in stories undertake an experiment in living, then 

the outcome of that experiment is an implied comment on its adequacy or inade- 

quacy. It is in this context that the narrative convention of poetic justice makes 

most sense. Why do most biblical stories end with poetic justice? Because it is a 

way for a storyteller to indicate his own world view and system of moral values. 

 

Endings in Biblical Stories 

 

Almost any story in the Bible will illustrate the way in which the outcome of the 

story casts a retrospective interpretation over the preceding action. In Genesis 13 

we read about the parting of the ways of Abraham and Lot and the different types 

of life to which they commit themselves. It is the type of crossroads experience 

that calls for a sequel. This is exactly what we get several chapters later, where 

Lot’s life degenerates into a sordid end, while Abraham’s life blossoms into a life 

of spiritual and domestic blessing. In the same story, Abraham and Sarah’s deci- 

sion to have a child by the maid Hagar leads to problems, both immediately and 

throughout subsequent Jewish history. That outcome influences how we interpret 

Abraham’s venture in expediency. Ruth risks herself by choosing a new nation and 

a new God, and the conclusion of the story shows the reward that was hers. King 

Saul decides to win popularity with the people by following a path of expediency 

instead of obeying God and comes to a tragic end. 

The accompanying rule for interpreting biblical stories is an important one: 

look upon the conclusion of a story as an implied comment on (evaluation of) the char- 

acters and events that the story has presented. 

 

Influencing a Reader’s Sympathy and Aversion 

 

Much of the rhetorical or persuasive strategy of biblical storytellers consists of 

getting readers to respond to characters and events in a designed way. At its very 

heart, narrative is a form in which authors influence their readers to respond with 

either sympathy or aversion to what happens in the story. A literary scholar who 

made a thorough study of the “devices of disclosure” by which selected story- 

tellers influenced how readers interpret the ethical meaning of their stories con- 

cluded that the meaning of a story “depended heavily on how successful its cre- 

ator was in controlling our sympathy and antipathy toward, approval and disap- 

proval of, characters, thoughts, and actions at every stage.”²⁰ 

The reader of the stories in the Bible has a special advantage in this regard. The 

stories of the Bible are embedded in a much larger book that contains an abun- 

dance of explicitly didactic and doctrinal material. The overtly didactic parts of the 

Bible are a constant frame of reference by which to evaluate characters and events 

in the stories of Scripture. 

 

Sympathy and Aversion in the Story of Naboth’s Vineyard 

 

We can use the story of Naboth and his vineyard (1 Kings 21:1–16) as an example 

of how the meaning of a story depends on the way in which the author manages 

to guide our sympathy and aversion toward the characters and events in the story. 

The first thing that secures our sympathy toward Naboth is his religious reason 

for refusing to relinquish his vineyard (v. 3). With the double reference to “the 

inheritance of my fathers” (vv. 3, 4) our minds reach back to the Mosaic stipu- 

lations regarding land as a sacred trust of the family that had originally received it 

(Lev. 25:13–28; Num. 36:9). King Ahab, by contrast, elicits our disdain by his 

sullenness, his irreligious insensitivity to the Mosaic law, and his childish pouting 

(v. 4). Queen Jezebel quickly emerges as even more shocking to our moral 

sensibilities. Her intrigue against the innocent Naboth violates both universal 

moral norms and biblical moral commands. As readers we protest every inch of 

the way as she manipulates the helpless Naboth, hires perjured witnesses, cruelly 

engineers the stoning of an innocent man, and callously tells Ahab to take posses- 

sion of the vineyard. Even if we did not have the benefit of Elijah’s pronouncement 

of God’s judgment in the verses immediately following, we would know what this 

gripping story means. 

 

Stories Communicate by Affecting 

 

Stories are affective by their very nature. They draw us into an encounter with char- 

acters and events to which we inevitably respond. Someone has said that “the 

writer expresses what he knows by affecting the reader; the reader knows what is 

expressed by being receptive to effects. The medium of this process is 

language.”²¹ Responses can, of course, be ill-informed or simply wrong, but we 

will do a better job of interpreting the meaning of stories, both in the Bible and be- 

yond it, if we pay attention to how the characters and events affect us, whether 

sympathetically or unsympathetically. Stories convey their meanings partly by 

influencing the reader’s responses to events and situations. 

The rule of interpretation that follows from the affective nature of narrative is 

this: pay attention to how a story influences your approval and disapproval of events 

and characters, and formulate a statement of what the story means on the basis of this 

approval pattern. 

 

The Clarity of Biblical Narrative 

 

We know from disagreements among readers that some biblical stories remain 

ambiguous or controversial (usually in part rather than as a whole) when this rule 

of reader response is applied to them. But the overwhelming majority of biblical 

stories will yield a clear interpretation based on a reader’s response to characters 

and events. It is true that biblical storytellers preserve the mystery of human char- 

acter and supernatural reality, but their implied assertions about reality, morality, 

and values are clear. Their stories conform to novelist Joyce Cary’s theory that “all 

writers. . .must have, to compose any kind of story, some picture of the world, and 

of what is right and wrong in that world,” and that good writers insure that “a 

reader. . .never be left in doubt about the meaning of a story.”²² Of course, if mod- 

ern readers disregard what the Bible says about reality, morality, and values in its 

doctrinal parts, they will naturally blur the focus that biblical storytellers have built 

into their stories. But that will be the fault of the reader, not the writer. 

 

SUMMARY 

 

The sheer quantity of “rules” for reading and interpreting biblical stories may 

seem overwhelming. If so, may I say that these principles are not a list that anyone 

needs to memorize. They are simply rules of storytelling and interpretation that we 

should be ready to apply when the occasion arises. We tend to apply most of 

these rules intuitively, simply as close readers of the biblical text. But most of us 

can sharpen our ability to read biblical stories by being more systematic than we 

usually are. 

A brief checklist of the narrative elements that require scrutiny looks some- 

thing like this: 

1.Physical, temporal, and cultural settings in a story. 

2.Characters in the story, with special emphasis on the protagonist. 

3.Plot conflicts and their resolution. 

4.Aspects of narrative suspense (how the story arouses curiosity about out- 

come). 

5.The protagonist’s experiment in living as an implied comment about life. 

6.Narrative unity, coherence, and emphasis. 

7.Elements of testing and choice in the story. 

8.Character progress and transformation. 

9.Foils, dramatic irony, and poetic justice. 

10.The implied assertions about reality, morality, and values. 

11.Repetition and highlighting as clues to what the story is about. 

12.Point of view in the story—how the writer gets a reader to share his atti- 

tude toward the characters and events. 

The Story of the Birthright as a Test Case 

 

To bring all of this into focus, I wish to apply these principles to the story of 

Esau’s selling of his birthright to his brother Jacob. The story is this (Gen. 25:27– 

34): 

 

²⁷The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open 

country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents. 

²⁸Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 

²⁹Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open 

country, famished. ³⁰He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red 

stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.) 

³¹Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” 

³²“Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?” 

³³But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his 

birthright to Jacob. 

³⁴Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, 

and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. 

 

The Experiential Realism of the Story 

 

The experiential realism of biblical narrative is fully evident in this brief story. Here 

is a story that turns upon a pot of stew. As is so often the case in the Bible, a thor- 

oughly mundane event becomes invested with a sense of ultimate spiritual des- 

tiny. The story revolves, moreover, around sibling rivalry and as such awakens our 

own experience of that archetypal phenomenon. It is the type of story that is thor- 

oughly rooted in familiar everyday reality. 

 

Foils in the Story 

 

The first two verses give us the background information that is essential to under- 

stand the story that follows. These verses introduce the grand foil or contrast 

around which the story is built. It is the spectacle of twin brothers with opposite 

temperaments and lifestyles. The outdoor hunter favored by his father is con- 

trasted to his quiet and domestic brother, who of course is the mother’s favorite. 

The opening contrast is so pronounced that we could predict conflict between the 

two brothers even before the plot of the story unfolds. This seething pot of sibling 

rivalry produces the central action of the story. 

 

The Setting of the Story 

 

The setting for the action at once gives Jacob the advantage. The tent is his natural 

environment. Esau, by contrast, is out of his depth in this setting. A pot of stew 

becomes a weapon in the hands of the family cook. A person as governed by his 

physical appetites as Esau proves to be is no match for a schemer like Jacob. The 

situation is one that we have seen dozens of times on television and in life: the 

gullible dupe waiting to be taken by the clever trickster. Our narrative curiosity 

about outcome is assured by the very situation. 

 

Plot Conflict and Reversal of Situation 

 

The conflict that underlies this story of sibling rivalry is the struggle to secure the 

benefits represented by the birthright. The situation—bartering between hostile 

persons—has conflict written all over it. In this conflict Jacob is the protagonist, 

the aggressive manipulator who initiates the action and dominates his brother. 

His chief strategy for getting the upper hand in the struggle is to put Esau in a 

position that tests him. With the smell of pottage in his nostrils, Esau is easy 

game. In six short verses, the opening situation is exactly reversed. The plot con- 

flict is resolved as we watch the birthright change ownership and the brothers’ re- 

spective fortunes reversed in that very exchange. As so often in biblical narrative, 

the significance of what happens is all out of proportion to the actual brevity of 

the story. By this single act of bartering, both Jacob and Esau have made a life- 

changing choice. 

 

Unity and Coherence 

 

Every detail in the story contributes to the unifying action of the exchanged 

birthright. At the end of the story Esau leaves the scene with a full stomach and 

without the birthright. He does so because Jacob made him swear to give him the 

birthright. This sale, in turn, occurred because Esau had asked for food. He had 

asked for food when he had come home hungry just as Jacob was cooking dinner. 

This is obviously a cause-effect sequence of events having a beginning, middle, 

and end. 

 

Techniques of Characterization 

 

What about the characters in the story? They are known to us through their words 

and actions. Jacob is above all the clever schemer. His cleverness is seen mainly 

in his ability to seize the opportune moment and to turn it to his advantage, and in 

his making Esau swear an oath to make the bargain binding, lest Esau later 

change his mind. Other traits also emerge from Jacob’s actions: he is aggressive, 

devious, unfair (even though he does not literally steal the birthright), unloving, 

unscrupulous in exploiting another person for his own advantage, and materi- 

alistic (the birthright assured him of a double portion of the inheritance). 

Esau comes off even worse in the story. He lives only for the moment. He can- 

not endure a little discomfort for the sake of future benefit. He has no capacity for 

grasping the covenant promises and spiritual blessings that would accompany 

this particular birthright. 

 

What Is the Story About? 

 

What does the story communicate at the level of theme or meaning? Patterns of 

repetition and the presence of a central character foil draw attention to two main 

themes. Esau’s experiment in living focuses our attention on the question of val- 

ues. The story is a memorable example of someone who chooses the lesser over 

the greater—immediate physical gratification over future blessing. Our proverb 

about “selling one’s birthright for a mess of pottage” means exactly what the story 

does. The Anchor Bible renders the last sentence of the story, “Thus did Esau mis- 

prize his birthright,” suggesting the inverted values by which Esau operates in the 

episode. Hebrews 12:16 provides a good interpretive framework for the story when 

it calls Esau “godless” or “profane” (kJ), having no adequate feeling for what is sa- 

cred. 

 

The Moral Aspect of the Story 

 

When we shift the spotlight from Esau to Jacob, the thing that keeps getting re- 

peated in the story is his unbrotherly behavior. Here the story becomes a com- 

ment about morality rather than values. The portrait of Jacob in this story is a 

memorable and frightening picture of what selfishness can do to human relation- 

ships. 

 

Point of View in the Story 

 

How does the storyteller get us to share his negative assessment of both brothers’ 

behavior? Like other biblical storytellers, he pays us the compliment of assuming 

that our own morality and sense of values are healthy. He depends partly on our 

negative responses to bad behavior in getting his point across. 

 

The Outcome as an Implied Comment 

 

He also uses the outcome of the story to convey his meaning. In the case of 

Jacob, we have to wait for subsequent episodes to see how destructive of self and 

family his experiment in self-serving proved to be. The verdict on Esau, by con- 

trast, occurs within the story itself, and it takes two forms. One is the storyteller’s 

final interpretive comment: “So Esau despised his birthright.” In case we were in 

any doubt, this parting shot tells us what the action shows about Esau’s inverted 

values. 

 

Esau’s Uncouth Speech Patterns 

 

Along with this direct evaluation, the storyteller secures a negative response to 

Esau by stressing his uncouth lack of manners and vulgar personality. According 

to one commentator, in verse 30 “Esau is depicted as an uncouth glutton; he 

speaks of ‘swallowing, gulping down,’ instead of eating.”²³ A good translation of 

what Esau says to Jacob in verse 30 would be, “Let me gulp some of that red 

stuff.” To accentuate the importance of what is happening, the author tells us in 

the same verse that Esau’s uncomplimentary nickname “Red” could be traced 

right back to this decisive event in his life. All of this is reinforced by the second 

half of verse 34, which “presents a staccato succession of five verbal forms . . . 

calculated to point up Esau’s lack of manners and judgment.” 

 

The Total Impact of the Story 

 

In a well-told story like this, everything works together to produce a unified im- 

pact. Form and meaning are inseparable. The sheer mastery of storytelling tech- 

nique elicits our interest and delight, and at the same time we sense the signif- 

icance of what happens in the story. We resonate with the story partly because it is 

simply good story material, memorable for its strong characters, its vivid situ- 

ation, and its conflict whose resolution was so momentous in the lives of the ac- 

tors. But we know that the storyteller also chose to tell the story for what it reveals 

about life. The story is a crucial chapter in salvation history and is simultaneously 

true to the way things are in the world. People still behave this way, and with the 

same dire results. We even have a proverb based on the story to prove it. 

 

Further Reading 

Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, vols. 1, 2, ed. Kenneth R. R. Gros 

Louis (Nashville: Abingdon, 1974, 1982), contain numerous literary explications of 

biblical stories. In the first volume, D. F. Rauber’s essay on the Book of Ruth (pp. 

163–76) is a particularly outstanding model of what a literary analysis of a biblical 

story should be. 

Robert C. Tannehill’s article “The Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narra- 

tive Role,” Journal of Religion 57(1977): 386–405, contains an abundance of good 

narrative theory that can be applied to biblical stories in general. Of a similar na- 

ture is Amos N. Wilder’s essay “Story and Story-World,” Interpretation 

37(l983):353-64, which provides a brief overview of some of the leading “rituals of 

storytelling.” 

Jacob Licht, Storytelling in the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1978), is particularly 

helpful in anatomizing biblical stories into four narrative ingredients: straight 

narrative that merely tells what happened; scenic narrative, in which the action is 

broken up into dramatic scenes; description of scenes and characters; and ex- 

planatory commentary by the storyteller. Robert Alter does similar things in The 

Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981). 

 

 

¹Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel (Cambridge: Harvard Univ- 

ersity Press, 1971), 56. 

²The New Testament: An Introduction (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 

1974), 165. 

³This formulation comes from Samuel Sandmel, The Enjoyment of Scripture 

(London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 26.