Women in the Old Testament
Tips For Reading Hebrew
Narrative -- Diane Jacobson
I. Know the General Themes and Purpose of the Book
(Genesis:
God's Promise of progeny and land; Blessing; Election; Strife; Providence)
II. Set the story in context. Know the plot and put
story in the context of the larger plot.
Connect details with what comes before and after. Note use of similar words in seemingly
unconnected events. Note objects such as clothing, water, etc.
III. Describe the major movement/structure of the
story (type-scene; forms)
A.
Outline
story (which events are crucial or peripheral)
B.
Identify
other stories with similar structure
(Genesis:
endangerment of matriarch; betrothal; rival wife; birth of children)
C.
Notice what happens at the beginning, end, and middle of the story
D. Notice repeated words or
phrases and descriptive details
(also
puns, irony, symbolism, dramatic connections)
E.
Attend to issues of causality and conflict
(Why
do events happen and where are the major conflicts)
IV. Identify major & minor characters (round, stock,
and flat; full-fledged, type, and agent;
multi-dimensional, stereotyped, one
dimensional)
A.
Notice who has name
B.
Notice who has voice. How does speech
function? Who talks to whom?
(dialog,
reporting --all Hebrew narrative is drawn toward dialog)
C.
Notice who is both subject and object of action
D.
What do you know about characters and how do you know?
(Do
you know from narrator, from character, or
from
another character's speech or action?)
E.
What
don't you know?
F.
With
whom do you sympathize, empathize, have antipathy for? Why?
V. What is the narrator's point of view? How do you know?
VI. In what setting is the text?
A.
Attend
to spatial settings. (inside/outside;
sacred space; doors)
B.
Attend
to temporal setting (time of day; festival).
Time can be chronological or typological; locative or durative.
C.
Attend
to social settings. (banquets; gates; wells)
VII. Notice important themes such as the role of
violence, power, election, morality.
VIII. Where is God in the text? Do we know God's point of view concerning
the
action and characters? How? Where is the theological/moral force?
Sources: Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Narrative, N.Y.: Basic, 1981.
Berlin, Adele. Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994.
Powell, Mark Allen. What is Narrative Criticism? Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.