Hebrew Scriptures and More . . . .

Narratological Components

In recent Formalist/Structuralist works on narratology, it has been axiomatic to divide a narrative into three hierarchically related levels or structures of the narrative.¹ Genette for example, uses story (histoire), narrative (récit) and narrating (narration).² Within these narratological spheres, theorists have highlighted different analytical components and techniques. These are studied as poetics and may include plot, characters, settings of time and space, point of view, stylistic components that are structural, verbal or a gapping that is missing from the text.³

In his formative study on narrative discourse, Genette presupposed the temporal distinctions between story time (erzälte Zeit) and narrative time (Erzählzeit) by explicating narrative order, duration and frequency.⁴ This importance placed on temporality in narratives has been applied to biblical narratives by several scholars. Shimon Bar-Efrat, for one, recognizing that a narrative “unfolds within time, and time passes within it,”⁵ presents biblical applications to the duration and sequence (Genette’s “order”) of time, but has not noted frequency in this category. Biblical temporality, for Bar-Efrat, has the standard “tenses” and “temporal expressions” to elucidate time,⁶ however the dialogic nature of biblical stories are the preferred method. For Bar-Efrat, “conversation is the principal, often the sole component of biblical scenes, which presents a specific event occurring at a defined time and place.”⁷ Although summaries and narrative gaps can speed up the narrative, they play a subsidiary role overall. Sequence of time is ultimately governed by the narrative syntax,⁸ while regressions are generally avoided and narrative continuity is preferred.

Licht would agree with Genette and Bar-Efrat, that temporality is of prime importance in narratives. He summarizes the issue by stating that, “it is indeed possible to describe almost all technical features and devices of storytelling in terms of time manipulation, which could be elevated to the status of a general principle, on which a systematic and coherent theory of the craft could be based.”⁹ In Biblical narratives, he shows that although the stories indicate signs of adept temporal handling, nevertheless biblical narratives do not capitalize on abrupt temporal shifts or major time “distortions.”¹⁰ Licht does illustrate that delaying or temporal retardation along with “partial” flashbacks are used in the Bible to enhance the text’s artistry. It is interesting to note that Meir Sternberg on one hand would agree with Licht’s assessment that biblical temporality is relatively conservative, however he finds that it is more than just aesthetics that is at stake. For Sternberg, who focuses on temporal discontinuity that builds suspense along with encouraging reader curiosity and surprise, biblical temporality assists in establishing meaning in the story.¹¹

Genette plays down the role that “specifying the place”¹² would have in a modern novel,¹³ while Yairah Amit recognizes its import in biblical narratives.¹⁴ It is however, Bar-Efrat who has heightened the importance of the spatial component. He notes that it is the characters, by their movement that highlight places.¹⁵ This spatial component is so significant that he points out that, “. . . places in the narratives are not merely geographical facts, but are to be regarded as literary elements in which fundamental significance is embodied. . . . The places exist as a background to the events, as the arena within which the plot unfolds. . . .”¹⁶ This being said, Bar-Efrat maintains that of the two, time and space, time plays the more important role.

Narratological reflections on plot or storyline begins with observations on Aristotle’s Poetics and his analysis of tragedy.¹⁷ Aristotle has argued that the plot is the most important element of a tragedy, in fact he calls it the “soul of a tragedy,”¹⁸ which is followed secondarily by character,¹⁹ and then by thought. Aristotle defines his plot as the arranging of the events.²⁰ This plot is to be one complete story which is described by the often cited phrase, “having a beginning, a middle, and an end.”²¹ This may be related to Aristotle’s disapproval of episodic plots²² and why he tends to opt for the simple rather than the complex ones.²³ In terms of levels of complexity it is important that a causal relationship be maintained within the different elements. These characteristics of the plot should enhance a sense of pity and fear.²⁴ Reversals of situation, a change from ignorance to understanding and suffering are components of the plot that should further accentuate the sense of pity and fear.

Aristotle’s prioritizing the plot has been contested by many. Wimsatt and Brooks state that a focus on character eclipsed the plot “with the rise of romantic criticism and the drama of soul-analysis through reverie and soliloquy.”²⁵ Scholes and Kellogg are good examples of those who have in modern times followed suit. Although they advanced the understanding of plot to include small units, even to the length of one paragraph, they have tilted the scale toward character. They summarily conclude that the “quality of mind (as expressed in the language of characterization, motivation, description, and commentary) not plot, is the soul of narrative. Plot is only the indispensable skeleton which, fleshed out with character and incident, provides the necessary clay into which life may be breathed.”²⁶ However Wimsatt and Brooks’ observation that a “. . . plot without character is a puzzle, as in a detective story; character without plot is a series of conversations or soliloquies, as in some romantic closet dramas,”²⁷ warns against a too easy either/or.

Both Bal and Rimmon-Kenan have chosen to avoid the word “plot.” Rimmon-Kenan has found the term “too vague,”²⁸ and therefore deals with the events of the story, while Bal has used the standard Latin translation fabula to include the concept of the plot. It may be safe to argue that both Bal and Rimmon-Kenan and many other critics have been influenced by Vladímir Propp and Claude Bremond. Propp, for example, has been especially influential among biblical scholars. His careful analysis of one hundred Russian folktales from a formalistic/structuralist approach identified thirty-one functions.²⁹ His study argues that in these folktales, the “functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale.”³⁰ This places a considerable emphasis on what was traditionally called the plot.

The standard studies on biblical poetics have tended to place a lot of emphasis on the plot, with a few exceptions like Adele Berlin, who has only treated character and point of view.³¹ David Gunn and Anna Fewell, are more representative and argue that “plot is the organizing force or principle through which narrative meaning is communicated.”³² Utilizing Aristotle’s “beginning, middle and end,” they attest to a movement of exposition, conflict and then resolution,³³ as a general structure. Wesley Kort, is an example of one who argues for a great diversity of plot patterns that are significant for understanding narratives. He proposes that:

. . . a formal study of fictional plots will reveal three kinds of temporal patterns. One is rhythmic or cyclical; such plots, because they emphasize return, favor the past and are most easily expanded by natural metaphors. Other plots are patterned by the interaction of contemporary figures and forces. We can term such plots “polyphonic,” and we can anticipate that they will most easily be elaborated with social and political metaphors. The actualization of a particular person’s or group’s potential is a third kind of pattern. It is oriented toward the future and is most easily associated with psychological implications. To continue the musical terminology, we can call such plots “melodic.” While all three patterns may appear in a single narrative, one of them will be more inclusive and important in a narrative than the other two.³⁴

However, there are three outstanding issues in the plot of the biblical narratives that make it unique. First, is what Robert Alter has called the “Bible’s narration-through-dialogue”³⁵ bias. Although this tends to be a “doulogue”³⁶ and influences the portrayal of the characters through their speech, it especially impacts the unfolding of the plot. Second, biblical narratives often utilize a form of repetition in which a “variety of symmetrical patterns”³⁷ organize the narrative structure. This means that the plot can be studied via these symmetrical patterns and they may yield an understanding of the storyline. Third, the issue of narrative syntax is a crucial ingredient in the narrative flow.

The analysis of characters has played a significant role in narratology. Like the other major components, the study of characters has had its historic ups and downs. Rimmon-Kenan chronicles two major areas of academic conflict in recent times. One deals with whether the character has a life outside of the immediate literary setting or if they are context bound. Here, she argues that the division between text and story enables a both/and solution. She writes, “in the text, the characters are inextricable from the rest of the design, whereas in the story they are extracted from their textuality.”³⁸

The second problem that Rimmon-Kenan sees is the analytical conundrum where the characters are perceived as agents of action rather than having an integrity of their own.³⁹ Aristotle is a case-in-point. He ranked character as secondary to plot and argued that, “character is taken as an adjunct to the action.”⁴⁰ Here also, the solutions may be that one should avoid an either/or fallacy, pitting action or character as dominant. This is aptly stated in the often quoted dictum from Henry James that “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”⁴¹

More relevant to the use of narratology within biblical research is the classifications of characters. Under the strong influence of E. M. Forster, characters have been divided into “flat” or “round.”⁴² Forster’s classifications have been modified to account for a more fluid continuum with slight changes in nomenclature depending on the analyst.⁴³ Adele Berlin uses a threefold classification that is fluid, including the standard round and flat along with one she calls agent:

There is no real line of separating these three types; the difference is a matter of the degree of characterization rather than the kind of characterization. One might think of them as points on a continuum: 1) the agent, about whom nothing is known except what is necessary for the plot; the agent is a function of the plot or part of the setting; 2) the type, who has limited and stereotyped range of traits; 3) the character, who has a broader range of traits (not all belonging to the same class of people), and about whom we know more than is necessary for the plot.⁴⁴

Biblical narratologists such as Bar-Efrat have been especially keen to the fact that characterization is difficult in biblical narratives because the narratives themselves tend to be shorter than the well developed modern novels, forcing a conservation of characterization.⁴⁵ Furthermore, a character may change in their classification from pericope to pericope, making simplistic analysis difficult.

Scholes, Phelan and Kellogg had earlier proposed that primitive stories lacked the more developed, rounded characterizations. They opined:

Homer and other composers of primitive heroic narrative do not aspire to certain complexities of characterization which we find in later narratives and which we sometimes think of as essential elements in the creation of characterizations of interest. Characters in primitive stories are invariably “flat,” “static,” and quite “opaque.” The very recurring epithets of formulaic narrative are signs of flatness in characterization.⁴⁶

Some have protested that this observation is inaccurate when applied to biblical narratives.⁴⁷ The value of Scholes, Phelan and Kellogg’s observation is found in the fact that they have attempted to explain the difference between the ancient hero in a narrative who at times seems to be amoral over against characters that under the influence of Christianity have shown signs of deep inner life. They write:

When the private and personal relationship of the individual soul with God supplants this public concept of heroic excellence, then a culture will tend to develop a literature which deals with this private relationship and ultimately with other aspects of the inward life.⁴⁸

The issue may be that character is subordinate to a principle of heroic excellence in many ancient narratives. Be this as it may, there are many signs of well developed characterizations in biblical narratives which may be identified by various indicators. Alter give a succinct listing:

Character can be revealed through the report of actions; through appearance, gestures, posture, costumes; through one character’s comments on another; through direct speech by the character; through inward speech, either summarized or quoted as interior monologue; or through statements by the narrator about the attitudes and intentions of the personages, which may come either as flat assertions or motivated explanations.⁴⁹

A major problem that is correlative to characterization in biblical narratives is how to depict God as a character in the narratives.⁵⁰ Yairah Amit introduces the problem as follows:

. . . God is not a developing character, although various stories reflect God’s many aspects. Unlike mythology, biblical monotheism distances the deity from the sphere of other gods and sometimes even from the human sphere, avoids describing God, and does not pretend to know God well. As a result, God is depicted stereotypically as a type in most of the stories, being at times cantankerous, vindictive, forgiving, and merciful but always right and just in every situation. God is sometimes even a flat character who serves only the needs of the plot.⁵¹

This characterization difficulty has direct impact on the characterizations of the human characters in the biblical narratives as well. Amit points out that, “the more God is seen as commanding and reproving, punishing or merciful, the more the human characters are depicted as flat characters or as singular types such (sic) rebellious, sinful, or obedient. When God is portrayed as distant, there seems to be greater scope, or living space, for human motives and their complexities.”⁵²

The study of what had been called point of view or narrative perspective has been advanced by narratologists in their separation of narration and focalization. The term focalization was coined by Gérard Genette⁵³ and utilized with further refinement by Mieke Bal. Bal defines focalization as “the relation between the vision and that which is ’seen,’ perceived.”⁵⁴ The crucial issue is that focalization makes a clear, “distinction between “the one who sees” and “the one who speaks” . . . .”⁵⁵ “Who speaks?” deals with the narrative voice, which Genette has divided between a narrator who is a character in the story (homodiegetic narrator) and a narrator who is not a character within the story (heterodiegetic narrator).⁵⁶ Rimmon-Kenan has noted many more dimensions in which the narrator may be parsed. She states that “the level of the narration to which the narrator belongs, the extent of his participation in the story, the degree of perceptibly of his role, and finally his reliability,”⁵⁷ are crucial areas of distinction. The same can be said concerning those who make the distinction between overt and covert narrators.⁵⁸

Focalization centers in on the question “who sees or perceives?” Rimmon-Kenan has divided focalization based on two important criteria: “position relative to the story, and degree of persistence.”⁵⁹ In terms of position, focalization can be either external or internal. An example of the external would be a “narrator-focalizer,” while from the internal position, narratology deals with the “character-focalizer.” Rimmon-Kenan’s “degree of persistence” criterion understands that the focalizers can change from time to time.

From a broader conceptual perspective, Boris Uspensky⁶⁰ has provided a useful analysis of manifestations or facets of point of view / focalization which have been coopted by the above mentioned narratologists as well as major proponents of biblical narratology.⁶¹ Uspensky list four major planes in which point of view can be distinguished: ideological, phraseological, spacial and temporal, and psychological. These facets are not isolated from each other but instead tend to interrelate.

Narration and focalization presuppose a complex inner dynamic that is not self-evident. Mieke Bal has depicted this multidimensionality in several layers.⁶² First is the layer of the narrative as text. Here the real author/s and redactor/s write for real readers. In the next layer, the layer of the story itself, the narrator, who is distinct from the author⁶³ writes to the explicit or implied readers. The next layer is that which Bal has dubbed, fabula and it is here that the focalizer reveals to the implied spectator. The final core layer is where the actor interacts with another actor via action and direct discourse. This tiering of the narration and focalization silences the overly simplistic criticism that narratology may allow the reader to conjure up their private interpretation, while attempting to maintain the readers dynamic role in understanding the text.

A crucial issue for biblical narratology is the question of the omniscience of the narrator. Meir Sternberg, for example, argues that the narrator is omniscient since, “his narrative manifests all the privileges of knowledge that transcend the human condition.”⁶⁴ Shimon Bar-Efrat expresses similar sentiments when he writes, “The narrator in most biblical narratives appears to be omniscient, able to see actions undertaken in secret and to hear conversations conducted in seclusion, familiar with the internal workings of the characters and displaying their innermost thoughts to us.”⁶⁵ Bar-Efrat argues that the ultimate proof for the biblical narrators’ omniscience is that even God’s inner feelings are revealed.⁶⁶ David Gunn has questioned this broad notion of narratorial omniscience in biblical narratives. He argues that narrative gaps and ambiguities, “factual fudging or plain contradiction,” and even the “limitations evident in the implication of readership” all bode against this thesis. In fact he concludes:

Beyond that the narrator can perhaps see, as in a vision, but clearly does not know. The book as a whole is an invitation to belief and to action – and the narrator plainly narrates at a particular threshold in time, looking back to the known (or, I would want to say, the partially known) and looking forward to the unknown. The narrator is not all-knowing and makes no claim to be so. The narrator’s future and the implied reader’s future are open.⁶⁷

In adjudicating between the dominant position that the biblical narrator is basically omniscient and the cautious dissent of Gunn, one must consider the narrator and the explicit or implied readers not only from the perspective of the rhetorical thrust of the narratives, but also the difficult differentiation of the narrator and his understanding of God outside of God as a character. The fact remains that the revealing of God’s inner feelings or motivations are recorded sporadically and not in a consistent fashion. So, although one many generally presume that the narrator has much knowledge there is a hesitancy that may mitigate the omniscient categorization.

The last area, the study of style and structure in narratives tends to move beyond the general domain of narratology and into the sphere of rhetoric or rhetorical criticism. Aristotle for example writes on style in his The Art of Rhetoric, book III, chapters 1-12. The same may be said of James Muilenburg’s investigation into biblical style.⁶⁸ However the works of Bar-Efrat, Alter, and Sternberg have brought it into the main stream of research into biblical narratology.

Bar-Efrat understands style as embedded in the very language stratum of the narrative, one which deals with the words and sentences of the narrative.⁶⁹ In terms of Bal’s multidimensional layering of narratives, it is on the layer of the text that style and structure is located.

Although Bar-Efrat focuses specifically on words and sentences, Alter and Sternberg have analyzed themes such as repetition, conventions, reticence, ambiguity/gapping which cut across words, sentences and larger structural units. The larger structural units, both symmetrical and asymmetrical patterning may be considered a product of repetition.⁷⁰

1 Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 85-6.

2 Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 27. Shomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London & New York: Methuen, 1983), 3, uses the labels, “story, text and narration.” While Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 5, uses “text,” “story” and “fabula.”

3 See Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 39. Wesley A. Kort, Story, Text, and Scripture: Literary Interests in Biblical Narrative (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 16, lists four elements of a narrative: character, plot, tone, and atmosphere.

4 Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 33-160. Later he would have rather referred to the duration as speed. See, Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, 33-7.

5 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 141. For the full discussion of time see pages 141-184. See Yairah Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). 103-114, who utilizes sub-categories, mediated most likely through Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (New York: Methuen, 1983), 43-58.

6 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 144-45.

7 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 149.

8 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 166.

9 Licht, Storytelling in the Bible, 98.

10 Licht, Storytelling in the Bible, 120.

11 Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, 264-320. Note that Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 160 writes, “Monotony slows it down while interest and suspense speed it up.”

12 Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 215.

13 Bal has attempted to recognize the importance of “space and place” as aspects of the story and that “location” is an element of fabula. See Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 7; 132-42; 214-17.

14 Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, 115-25; Yairah Amit, “The Function of Topographical Indications in the Biblical Story,” in Shanaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, ed. M. Weinfeld, Volume 9 (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: M. Newman, 1985-87), 15-30. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 184-96 deals with spacial issues but makes it secondary to time, while J. P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide, trans. Ineke Smit (Louisville and Leiderdorp: Westminster John Knox Press and Deo Publishing, 1999), 97-111 gives more weight to structure and stylistics.

15 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 185.

16 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 194-95.

17 It is important to note that although Aristotle was presenting literature as mimesis, he was specifically dealing with poetry and not prose, plays and not novels. However in 1459a, 16-21, Aristotle discusses the διηγηματικος which is some form of a narrative with a priority of plot like the tragedy. By 1459b, 8ff. he is referring to the εποποιια, “epic,” which may be the same.

18 S. H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art with a Critical text and translation of the Poetics, 4th ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1923), 346-47, explains this phrase as being rooted in Aristotelian philosophy in terms of the relations between the body and the soul. He writes, “A play is a kind of organism. Its animating principle is the plot. As in the animal and vegetable world the soul or principle of life is the primary and moving force, the avrch, from which the development of the organism proceeds, so it is with the plot in tragedy.”

19 Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a, 39.

20 Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a, 3.

21 Aristotle, Poetics, 1450b, 26.

22 Aristotle, Poetics, 1451b, 34-36.

23 Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a, 13-23.

24 Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a, 4.

25 William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History, 1: Classical and Neo-Classical Criticism (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 37.

26 Scholes, Phelan and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, 239.

27 Wimsatt and Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History, 37.

28 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 135.

29 Vladímir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott, revised and edited Alan Dundes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 25-65.

30 Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 21.

31 See Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, 101, where she argues that it is “an enormously complex subject” and so leaves it untouched.

32 Gunn and Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, 101.

33 Gunn and Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, 102. See the more detailed utilization of Aristotle in Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives, 46-68.

34 Kort, Story, Text, and Scripture, 16.

35 Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 69.

36 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 96. Uriel Simon, “Minor Characters in Biblical Narrative,” JSOT 46 (1990), 11, writes, “. . . no single scene has more than three active characters and the dialogue only rarely develops into a three-way conversation.”

37 See Walsh, Style & Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative, 191-93.

38 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 33.

39 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 34-36. See also Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, 116-17.

40 Aristotle, Poetics, 1450a, 22.

41 Henry James, “The Art of Fiction,” as quoted in Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 35. Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, 116, writes, “functions and characters cannot be separated because they are always in a reciprocal relationship, one determining the other.”

42 These terms are from E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927), 49-50, discussed in most secondary literature.

43 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 41. Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 91 also uses the term “continuum.” See Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 116-19, who is critical about the use of Forster’s categories in general.

44 Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, 32. See also Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, 72 and Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 86.

45 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 86.

46 Scholes, Phelan and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, 164.

47 Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, 23.

48 Scholes, Phelan and Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative, 165.

49 Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 116-7. See Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 48-86, who gives an exhaustive list of techniques used by biblical narratives to indicate character.

50 See W. Lee Humphreys, The Character of God in the Book of Genesis: A Narrative Appraisal (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 1-21. When investigating God as a biblical character, Humphrey notes, “the character of God who emerges in our reading is not one to whom we would pray; nor is he necessarily one to whom anyone in the past prayed. That is, we do not engage him as someone in our world other than as we construct him from what we find in the story-world of the narrative.” (p. 5)

51 Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, 73.

52 Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, 84.

53 Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 189. Focalization is part of Genette’s larger discussion of mood and voice. See Mieke Bal, “Narration and Focalization,” in On Story-Telling: Essays in Narratology, ed. David Jobling (Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1991), 75-108, which is Bal’s analysis of Genette’s focalization.

54 Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the theory of Narrative, 142.

55 Bal, “Narration and Focalization,” 80.

56 Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, 245. Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the theory of Narrative, 22, uses the terms “external narrator” (EN) and “character-bound narrator” (CN).

57 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 94.

58 See Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 23-45.

59 Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 74-7.

60 Boris Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition, trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 8-119.

61 See Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, 55-7; Tremper Longman III, Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation, Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation 3 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), 87-8.

62 Bal, “Narration and Focalization,” 88.

63 Biblical narratologists are quite aware of this distinction between author and narrator. See Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, 145 and Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 14.

64 Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, 84.

65 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 17.

66 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 19.

67 D. M. Gunn, “Reading Right: Reliable and Omniscient Narrator, Omniscient God, and Foolproof Composition in the Hebrew Bible,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in celebration of Forty years of Biblical Studies in the University, ed. D. J. A. Clines, S. E. Fowl & S. E. Porter, JSOT Supplementary Series 87 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 60.

68 See James Muilenburg, “A Study in Hebrew Rhetoric: Repetition and Style,” in Hearing and Speaking the Word: Selections from the Works of James Muilenburg, ed. Thomas F. Best (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984), 193-207.

69 Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, 197.

70 See Jerome T. Walsh, Style & Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narratives (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 7-11 and Yitzhak Avishur, Studies in Biblical Narratives: Style, Structure, and the Ancient Near Eastern Literary Background (Tel Aviv & Jaffa: Archaeological Center Publication, 1999), 14-27.

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