READING THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE

How Bible Stories Work

A GUIDED STUDY OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE

Leland Ryken

How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative

© 2015 by Leland Ryken

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

First edition by Weaver Book Company.

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 9781683591528

Digital ISBN 9781683591535

Cover design: Frank Gutbrod

Contents

Series Preface

Introduction:

Getting the Most Out of Biblical Narrative

1. The Subject of Every Story:

The Embodiment of Universal Human Experience

2. Setting in Bible Stories:

Seeing the Particulars

3. Characterization in Bible Stories (Part 1):

How Writers Do It

4. Characterization in Bible Stories (Part 2):

What Readers Need to Do

5. Plot Structure and Unity:

The Beginning, Middle, and Ending of Each Story

6. Plot Devices:

How Storytellers Tell Their Story with Beauty and Skill

7. Hero Stories:

A Neglected but Fruitful Narrative Genre

8. From Story to Meaning:

How to Find Significance in a Narrative Text

Series Preface

This series is part of the mission of the publisher to equip Christians to understand and teach the Bible effectively by giving them reliable tools for handling the biblical text. Within that landscape, the niche that my volumes are designed to fill is the literary approach to the Bible. This has been my scholarly passion for nearly half a century. It is my belief that a literary approach to the Bible is the common reader’s friend, in contrast to more specialized types of scholarship on the Bible.

Nonetheless, the literary approach to the Bible needs to be defended against legitimate fears by evangelical Christians, and through the years I have not scorned to clear the territory of misconceptions as part of my defense of a literary analysis of the Bible. In kernel form, my message has been this:

1. To view the Bible as literature is not a suspect modern idea, nor does it need to imply theological liberalism. The idea of the Bible as literature began with the writers of the Bible, who display literary qualities in their writings and who refer with technical precision to a wide range of literary genres such as psalm, proverb, parable, apocalypse, and many more.

2. Although fiction is a common trait of literature, it is not an essential feature of it. A work of literature can be replete with literary technique and artifice while remaining historically factual.

3. To approach the Bible as literature need not be characterized by viewing the Bible only as literature, any more than reading it as history requires us to see ...