Poetics And Interpretation Of Biblical Narrative

Poetics, the "science" of literature, makes us aware of how texts achieve their meaning. Poetics aids interpretation. If we know how texts mean, we are in a better position to discover what a particular text means. This is a book which offers fundamental guidelines for the sensitive reading and understanding of biblical stories. - Back cover.

Poetics, the "science" of literature, makes us aware of how texts achieve their meaning. Poetics aids interpretation. If we know how texts mean, we are in a better position to discover what a particular text means. This is a book which offers fundamental guidelines for the sensitive reading and understanding of biblical stories. - Back cover.

Meir Sternberg’s classic study is “an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work.” (Adele Berlin, Prooftexts) In “a book to read and then reread” (Modern Language Review), Meir Sternberg “has accomplished an enormous task, enriching our understanding of the theoretical basis of Biblical narrative and giving us insight into a remarkable number of particular texts.” (Journal of the American Academy of Religion). The result is a “a brilliant work” (Choice) distinguished “both for his comprehensiveness and for the clearly-avowed faith stance from which he understands and interprets the strategies of the biblical narratives.” (Theological Studies). The Poetics of Biblical Narrative shows, in Adele Berlin’s words, “more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work―a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and successful narrative poetics.”

Based on a series of lectures given in Israel, Amit introduces the reader to the subtle ways of the biblical narrators. Covering issues of character, plot development, catchword association, narration, and dialog, she brings the biblical text to life, helping the reader enter the stories from new vantage points.

A pioneering work that answers the question: What do we do when we tell a story? Using examples from the Bible and popular literature, Robert Funk examines the structure of stories to uncover the underlying grammar of the narrative.

Understanding of biblical poetry is enhanced by the study of its structure. In this book Adele Berlin analyzes parallelism, a major feature of Hebrew poetry, from a linguistic perspective. This new edition of Berlin's study features an additional chapter, "The Range of Biblical Metaphors inSmikhut,"by late Russian linguist Lida Knorina. Berlin calls this addition "innovative and instructive to those who value the linguistic analysis of poetry." It is a fitting coda to Berlin's adept analysis.

Do Old Testament poetry and narrative, wisdom-writing and prophecy work on us in the same way as do nonbiblical literary texts? Competent readers over the centuries have arrived at conflicting answers to this question. Some (from Longinus on) have maintained that biblical books offer examples of supreme literary art; others have passionately rejected this approach, insisting that beauty and pleasure are not the Bible's business. Poetry with a Purpose argues that, paradoxically, both views are right. Biblical poetics is marked by an unusual tension between aesthetic and nonaesthetic (even anti-aesthetic) modes of discourse. To understand this dialectic is to understand something quite fundamental about biblical texts and, more particularly, about the nature of the contract that governs their reading. The text summons the reader to respond to a familiar form but at the same instant undermines that response, deconstructs that form. The book of Ester, for example, displays the conventions of the Persian epic tradition, but its style is subtly challenged by the text itself. Similarly, the book of Job might seem to conform to the classical concept of tragedy but ultimately presents a uniquely biblical version of the form. While the prophets use the language of myth, they will often explode or "demythologize" their own language, affirming purposed at variance with the world of myth. Harold Fisch applies his remarkably fruitful thesis to a number of biblical texts and modes, among them biblical pastoral, the Song of Songs, Psalms, Hosea, and Ecclesiastes. Equally at home in biblical studies and in general literature and theory, the author has produced a highly original work of unusual range and scholarship.