The Status of Biblical Narrative

Abstract

Biblical scholarship has yet fully to come to terms with the problematic status of the narratives which constitute so large a part of its subject. Neither proposals that they be treated as “history” nor as “fiction” address the fact that our modern concepts of both history and (to a lesser degree) of fiction are themselves derived to a surprising degree from those narratives themselves. Rather than encapsulating them in anachronistic straightjackets, we should therefore rather try to ask what we have lost by being no longer able to read them in their own terms. Such an approach would not involve putting the clock back, nor breaking with the great hermeneutical tradition, but would rather be an extension of it to meet the challenges created by the continuing evolution of our modern scholarly skills.