Friday, February 1, 2008
Does Jewish Scripture have a distinctive style?
Does the Hebrew Bible have a distinctive narrative style that makes it different from ordinary books? In Back to the Sources, Joel Rosenberg seems to suggest it does. What are some examples, and how do they make reading the Bible different from reading ordinary stories?
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2 comments:
"The Bible encompasses a variety of genres: stories, hymns, proverbs, prayers, laws, prophetic speeches, and more" (83). Just based on this fact, the Bible is different from other books, which usually stick to one style or genre. Perhaps the distinctive style of Jewish Scripture is that it is a mixture of styles. But I think there is something more than this that makes the Bible different from other books. Though Holtz asserts that "Biblical narrative rarely moralizes" (63), it is clear that there are some instructions or suggestions that the reader is to follow. Does the fact that the Bible attempts to instruct people make it different from other books? Can anyone help me develop this idea a little further?
I was thinking of some other more specific features like repetitions (with slight differences), use of leading words, "intentional" gaps in the narrative, etc. that Rosenberg mentioned. Don't these sorts of literary strategies tend to make the Bible's readers work harder to get at the narrative's meaning than ordinary books do?
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