: 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.
