Goldingay (1993: 302) speaks of the need for two acts of imagination if we are to appreciate the significance of such stories for us and for our lives in today’s world. The first is the act of imagination that is needed to let the story grasp us as it would have grasped the hearers or readers for whom it was first composed. In practice, that means entering imaginatively into the world of the story so that we can understand and share the concerns and questions it expresses. But, since our aim is not