Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LITERATURE, OLD TESTAMENT AS

The Creation of Eve, from Nine Illustrations to “Paradise Lost,” William Blake (1757-1827) (Gift by Subscription, 1890; Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the Land of Moab. Fresco print,
William Blake (1757-1827); Tate Gallery, London
(Victoria & Albert Museum, London/Art Resource, N.Y.)

In many ways, to speak of the OT as a work of literature seems to state the obvious. Its epic sagas, compelling dramas and lyrical poetry have long captured the imaginations of readers as well as inspired numerous writers, artists, and musicians. One need only think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, or Archibald MacLeish’s J.B. to see how the literary artistry of the Bible continues to engage creative communities and enthrall audiences.

Yet scholarly study of the OT had long been dominated by either an exploration of its religious and theological insights or an analysis of its historical settings and detail. Indeed, for many scholars, identification and examination of the Bible as a work of literature was equated with failure to take seriously into account the role of the religious, historical, social, and cultural settings of a text in the production of meaning. By the 1980s, however, analysis of the biblical text as literature — often using techniques of study developed by literary critics — received widespread recognition and acceptance as an interpretive approach to the biblical text. Examining the OT as literature does not preclude religious or historical study; rather, literary analysis brings yet another dimension to the interpretation of the biblical text and opens up the possibility of new and insightful readings.

Academic study of the OT, defined for many years by historical-critical methods, has long included some type of “literary” analysis. Form criticism, e.g., focused on the importance of classifying texts by their literary genre. The ability of a scholar to correctly determine the form of a given text, such as identifying a psalm as a hymn, lament, or thanksgiving, became a central component to understanding the Sitz im Leben which gave rise to that text. Ascertaining a text’s “setting in life” ideally assists a scholar in understanding how that text functioned in the communities which produced and first utilized it, thereby providing clues as to social, cultural, and religious structures operative in ancient Israel.

For example, Ps. 117 often receives classification as a Thanksgiving Psalm because it expresses gratitude toward God, describes God’s deliverances as the source of such thankfulness, and encourages all hearers of the word to offer similar praise to God. This psalm might be further subclassified as a community thanksgiving because of the references to a variety of persons being saved from distress as opposed to the deliverance of an individual. Given this corporate emphasis, form critics conclude that such community thanksgiving songs probably provided words for public occasions or celebrations. In this particular case, the psalm describes people traversing the dangers of desert and ocean or emerging from prison or sin in order to come to God. Many scholars thus hypothesize that this psalm was sung by groups of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for festal occasions. This attempt to comprehend a text’s setting and purpose strives to move the interpreter closer to the world of the text and thus to meaning as intended by the author and/or received by its original audience. Such movement shows the reader not only the proper way to approach a text but also how that text functioned in its own historical milieu.

Even apart from historical-critical methods, the definition of genre still stands out as a primary task in the literary analysis of biblical texts. In the OT, a reader encounters a wide variety of literary types — from myths, to folktales, to legal texts, to prophetic oracles, to apocalyptic visions, to proverbs, to short stories, to parables. The need for such a system of classification is simple — different types of literature are read differently and generate different effects; identifying genre means associating a text with a set of defined conventions which assist the reader in making sense of a text. For example, one does not expect short stories to read like law codes; each has its own typical manner of expression and each produces different response in the reader. Thus in the biblical text, the stories of David’s exploits as a warrior might invite the reader into an imaginative world of danger, challenge, and intrigue by relating how he defeated the giant Goliath as a young boy or gathered 200 Philistine foreskins to claim his bride or narrowly escaped from King Saul’s murderous intent on multiple occasions. The stories have clear plots, define characters, and use action and dialogue to excite, entertain, and build up empathy for the future king. By contrast, a cataloging of divine directives such as the Ten Commandments comes across as stark and serious in its absoluteness and inflexibility. Such a text simply states its demands in a basic list format to generate ethical obligation and compliance from its readers. Recognizing the distinctive qualities of different genres provides the reader with important clues as to how to read a text and thus at least one set of guidelines for interpretation.

On occasion the form which a biblical text takes is more formally defined. One example of such formal structuring, the acrostic, comes from biblical poetry. Acrostics build words or phrases or patterns from the initial letter of each word in a line. In the biblical text a particular form of acrostic — an alphabetic acrostic — builds patterns by using each successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet as the initial letter in a line. Such structuring was perhaps initially employed as a prompt to the memory. In terms of interpretation, it assists the reader to see the poem as covering a subject “from A to Z.” Texts in this format include Pss. 9-10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 145; Prov. 31:10-31; and Lam. 1, 2, 3, 4. When examining a text such as Prov. 31:10-31, the reader of the Hebrew text thus sees the qualities of a good wife delineated in a virtual catalog using the alphabet as a guide.

Exploring the stylistic features of a given text also plays a vital role in literary analysis. The techniques of textual construction illustrate both the conventions operative in certain kinds of writing in ancient Israel and the artistic creativity of the biblical writers. For example, the writers of poetry in the OT often use different types of parallelisms as a form of expression. Parallelism simply means the repetition of an idea in slightly different terms, as in Isa. 60:2. This verse reports, in part, that darkness (Heb. ḥōšeḵ) will cover the earth and a thick darkness (ʿărāpel) the peoples. “Darkness” and “thick darkness,” while different Hebrew words, convey the same idea as to earth and peoples; the ideas articulated thus receive emphasis through reinforcement of the image. On other occasions, parallelisms can denote opposites (e.g., Prov. 12:1) or build on one another to a climactic point (Judg. 5:26b).

Repetition of a key word or theme also occurs frequently in biblical texts, both poetic and narrative. The simple reiteration of a coda or line (e.g., “for his steadfast love endures forever” in Ps. 136) serves to attract the readers’ attention to the central theme. Sometimes this repetition appears at both the beginning and the end of a work; this feature is called an inclusio, and it functions as a frame to illustrate the major emphasis contained within. Inclusios occur both in shorter works such as Ps. 8, , which both opens and closes with “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” and in lengthier texts such as the book of Ecclesiastes which opens (Eccl. 1:2) and closes (12:8) with “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Repetition also serves as a structural element in narratives. The recurrence of stock phrases such as “and there was evening and there was morning” or “and God saw that it was good” in the first Creation story (Gen. 1:1–2:4a) serves as an obvious example. The repetitions place focus on the passage of time as well as highlight the reaction of the central character. Likewise, the continual hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in the Exodus account prolongs the narrative while also heightening the tension in the battle between God and Pharaoh for power.

Metaphor occurs frequently in the Bible as a way to express concepts which might otherwise defy expression. Most often depictions of God and the relationship between God and the covenant people rely on metaphor. In Hosea, e.g., among the many metaphoric descriptions of God are images such as husband and lover (2:2-13[MT 3-14]), parent (11:1-4), lion (13:7), bear (13:8), or even moth and dry rot (5:12). The use of metaphor both invokes the familiar to bring the object of concern, here God, into clearer focus and engages the imagination of the reader or hearer to determine how the metaphoric figure works as a descriptive. How and why is sin like scarlet? How is forgiveness like snow? (Isa. 1:18). The use of metaphor can be within the span of a line, or it can be much more extended as in the descriptions of the people as adulterous wives of God (Ezek. 16, 23) or in the stories of the two lovers in the Song of Solomon.

Many other features of literary analysis, such as the exploration of biblical narrative in terms of stylistic features such as characterization, dialogue and plot development, rightly could be, and perhaps even should be, included in this discussion. Such a listing, however, could not cover completely all of the approaches which literary scholars take in analyzing the biblical texts. What these scholars hold in common is a concern for relating the form and construction of a text to its meaning. The shared assumption here is that words alone do not convey meaning; how words are organized and presented in a text tells as much about what they convey to a reader as do the words themselves. Moreover, seeing the texts as literature also raises questions about how these texts communicate as art. This interpretive shift often moves the question of meaning away from a strict concern with what an interpreter determines to be the intent of the texts and its author and places emphasis on the reception and understanding of a text by its readers or hearers. Such a reorientation in the understanding of where meaning resides opens up a variety of new interpretive possibilities and challenges biblical scholarship to make a place for multiple interpretive voices and a variety of readings of any given text.

Bibliography. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Literature (New York, 1981); The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York, 1985); S. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible. JSOTSup 70 (Sheffield, 1989); A. Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative. Bible and Literature 9 (Sheffield, 1983); D. M. Gunn and D. N. Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible (New York, 1993).

Sandra L. Gravett

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LITERATURE, OLD TESTAMENT AS

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)