ironically, is at the heart of the current challenge which historical criticism faces—a challenge to both its notion of history and its notion of a text.16 Believing readers may at this point object and say that advocates of both historical and literary approaches are wrong to assume that the Bible is like any other book and hence should be read like any other book. However, one of the marvels of our God is that we hear his voice as it is mediated through human writers, using the conventions of literary