How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative

Top Highlights

“To sum up, at an interpretive level, settings serve three overlapping functions in a story: they enable the events that happen in them, they serve as a container for and extension of characters and events, and they take on symbolic overtones.” (Page 30)

“We can assign this dominance of narrative in the Bible to at least three causes. First, it is rooted in the character of God, who is the God who acts. Second, biblical writers are preoccupied with history, and they overwhelmingly want us to know what actually happened. To record what happened is to tell a story. Third, life itself has a narrative quality, being comprised of exactly the same ingredients that stories possess (setting, characters, plot, progression in time, and so forth). The narrative quality of the Bible is part of its truthfulness to life.” (Page 12)

“A story has two components known as form and content” (Page 17)

“It is a truism that history books and the daily news tell us what happened, whereas literature tells us what happens.” (Page 19)

“To summarize, at any moment in a story the characterization is being done by one of four possible agents—the author or narrator, another character in the story, the character himself or herself, and the action.” (Page 43)