Harlots and Heroines: Women in the Old Testament

Tips For Reading Hebrew Narrative -- Diane Jacobson

I. Know the General Themes and Purpose of the Book

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.      When do you learn what you know?

F.      What don't you know?

G.     With whom do you sympathize, empathize?  Who do you dislike?  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.