the intellect, but an artistic work which seeks also to appeal to the imagination and win the commitment of readers or hearers of all ages and abilities. It employs suitable devices of narrative art to capture and intrigue the audience. It needs little more than a first run through Exodus to see that narration has taken over and supplanted historiography, and that under the impetus of the narrative portrayal of basic truths as events, there are many features which, as events, are improbable or even