b. The Book of Kings as Narrative Literature This is not to say, of course, that the book is without its ‘fictive’ elements. It is a story about the past; but it is also a story about the past. The text may clearly seek to tell us about real events and characters in Israel’s history; but it does this in ways that equally clearly owe as much to narrative artistry and literary convention as to any desire to describe things ‘as they really were’. It is at this point that modern readers who have been