Character and Design Patters

Recap

Bible is a diverse collection of writings

What kinds of diversity do we find within the Bible?

Authorial

Genre

Chronologies

Characters

We’ve talked about the Bible as containing different genres, what are the three main genres?

Narrative, Poetry, prose/discourse

What does it mean that the Bible is ancient Jewish meditation literature?

meant to be treasured and studied

read aloud

community driven

Last week we began a discussion about how to read narrative, we talked briefly about plot and setting.

What are the elements of plot? setting? how do they contribute to the meaning we find in a narrative section of Scripture?

representations of the events, not the actual events

multiple layers of plot, context is key

Setting can prime us for what may take place in a particular pericope.

Today we’re going to have a brief discussion about characters, and then talk about what Bible Project calls design patterns.

[Watch Characters video]

Biblical authors use characters as vehicles for their message primarily through showing rather than telling. Biblical characters are not meant to be people we try to emulate. In fact, they often represent how not to act! But the biblical authors use them to communicate the morals and ethics of a godly life.

Most of an author’s view of the world and the values they want to communicate are embodied in the narrative and expressed through the characters. Not only do characters serve as a narrator’s mouthpiece, but also what is and is not related about them, which of their personality traits are emphasized and which are not, these all reveal the ethical values and moral norms within the narrative. The decisions that characters are called upon to make when confronted with moral choices, and the results of their decisions provide indisputable evidence of a narrative’s ethical dimension. Shimon Bar-Efrat, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 47.

The Greek storytelling tendency of loading the story with details is one that modern literary practice has by and large adopted and developed. Precisely for that reason we have to adjust our habits as readers in order to bring an adequate attentiveness to the rather different narrative maneuvers characteristic of the Hebrew Bible. The underlying biblical conception of people’s character is that they’re unpredictable, constantly emerging from and slipping back into ambiguity. Thus, biblical narrative style is marked by the art of reticence. Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 129.

Direct Characterization (Telling)

Narrators rarely make comments in biblical narrative, and when they do, it’s with small details or brief phrases.

1. Physical appearance: Joseph’s looks, Saul’s stature, Esau’s hair, but only when relevant to the narrative.

2. Moral evaluation of a character’s actions: did evil, did good, righteous, wise, foolish, (Nabal, 1 Sam. 25:25).

3. Favoritism in the story of Isaac and Rebecca.

Direct characterization is extremely rare in the Bible. Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, uses the illustration of two types of painting. She compares realism (modern, Western narrative) with impressionism or pointillism (biblical narrative).

With small strokes or tiny dots (pointillism), biblical authors give us the trace of a character but we have to fill in the rest based on the little we know.

Esau is hairy, and in the story this description shows that he is outdoorsy, primitive, and behaves like an animal. Eli is old and blind, and this tells us he is both literally and relationally blind, because he ignores the rebellion of his sons. Saul is tall and David is short, and this detail speaks to the contrast of their characters. Saul imposes himself from above, while David humbly allows God to exalt him from below.

[In impressionist art,] The suggestion of a thing may be more convincing than a detailed portrayal. This is due to the tendency of our brains to project meaning onto images in order to complete our expectations. We see what we expect to see, and the surrounding information guides our perception. This is why we fill in a partially drawn figure to conform to our expectations, and in some cases too much information may destroy the image. The trick, from the artists’ point of view, is how much detail to include and how much to omit. This is a good corrective for those who wish biblical stories provided more concrete details, but this is precisely its narrative technique. The gaps left in all biblical narratives are intentional, so that with a few deft strokes the biblical author engages the imagination of the reader to construct a picture that is more “real” than if he had filled in David or Abraham or Joseph’s portrait with more detail. Minimal representation can give maximal illusion.Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative.

Indirect Characterization (Showing)

Names

The names of characters often indicate their role in the story.

For example, Saul means “the one asked for.” Abram/Abraham means “exalted father/father of a multitude.” Israel means “struggles with God.” Adam means “humanity.” Elijah means “Yaweh is my god.” The names of Naomi's two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, means “sicko" and "done-for.”

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In the article, “Character in the Boundaries of Biblical Narrative,” J.M. McCracken says, “Biblical narrators prefer to show people’s character rather than tell us an evaluation of their traits. Characters are something the biblical authors tend to speak with rather than about.” Instead of moralizing about a character’s decisions, biblical narrators simply show you the decisions and consequences of that character’s decisions and allow you to ponder the significance. For example, Moses kills an Egyptian. Why? Justice? An anger problem? Is his behavior good or bad?

Speech

Often, the narrative pauses and a key character will offer a long speech (Josh. 24; Samuel in 1 Sam. 8 or 12; Solomon in 1 Kgs. 8) or sing a song (Jacob, Gen. 49; Moses, Exod. 15; Hannah, 1 Sam. 2).

Sometimes, speech reveals character. Take Abraham speaking to his servants in Genesis 22. “The boy and I will go to the mountain and we will worship and we will return.” Is Abraham full of faith, or is he selling a line to avoid suspicion?

Once you realizes the Bible’s anti-didactic style is a narrative policy, you gain insight into the role of the aesthetic subtlety of these stories. They almost always shun extended commentary or explanation, let alone homiletics [= sermoning, moralizing]. These authors intentionally leave gaps for the reader to puzzle over—discontinuities, indeterminacies, non-sequiturs, unexplained motives—and they’re fully aware of the disorienting effect this has on readers as they try to draw lessons from the past. Biblical narrators conceal the meaning of their stories to an extent seldom equaled by any other literature in history. This style was not inherited by Israel’s neighboring cultures, rather it was invented and elaborated in the Israelite tradition of narrative and it’s nothing less than deliberate.

In day to day life, knowledge and information and the ability to understand the meaning of events is power. But in reading the Bible, we’re constantly puzzling over the gaps in the stories [why did Moses do that? why did God do that?], and this is strategic: our puzzlement is an imitation of our real position in life. It exposes our ignorance about the meaning of history or our lives. Biblical stories imitate our real-life conditions of inference, as we too are daily surrounded by ambiguities, baffled and misled by appearances, reduced to piecing fragments together by trial and error of interpretation, and we’re often left in the dark about the meaning of our lives to the very end. The scarcity of commentary by the biblical narrators forces us to constantly evaluate the character’s motives and the meaning of the plot as we look for clues. It is only by sustained effort that the reader of biblical narratives can attain to the point of view that God has possessed all along. Making sense of biblical stories is to gain a sense of being human.Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative - Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading, 42, 47.

The minimalist policy and narrative economics are very intentional. It forces you, the reader, to participate in the making of meaning.

What about the impressionistic nature of biblical narrative is difficult? What are the potential results of this type of narrative?

God as a Character

God is the only character who continues through every movement of the biblical narrative from beginning to end. God’s presence in biblical narrative tells us that the fundamental intent of these stories is to reveal God’s character, identity, and purpose in history.

Character: God wants good for people, and he wants to share creation with them (Gen. 1-2). God brings justice on human evil, and he also forgives and restores.

Identity: The author of the universe is the God revealed through the family of Abraham and Israel and ultimately through Jesus of Nazareth.

Purpose: God’s purpose is to rescue his creation from evil so it can be shared in love for eternity.

God has dual roles in biblical narratives.

The first role is that of present/interventionist God. Genesis 1-11 depicts God as a present, direct character walking and talking with people. He also appears or intervenes in wilderness stories. For example, the angel of the LORD comes to Hagar, Abraham’s pregnant slave, in the wilderness (Gen. 16:7-16). Moses encounters God in the burning bush and God calls him to bring the Israelites out of Egypt (Exod. 3-4, 24-31). In Numbers, God is present with the people as a pillar of cloud in the Israelite camp, and he speaks directly to Moses as he leads the people through the wilderness to the promised land (Num. 11-21). The prophet Elijah meets and speaks with God in the wilderness (1 Kgs. 19:9-21).

The second role is that of absent/supervisory God. In stories like Genesis 37-50, or in stories about King David, Esther, or Ruth, God is depicted as indirect, sporadically known, and hard to perceive. He supervises events from behind the scenes. The drama of these stories is about how the characters will relate to God when they don’t know what’s going on.

The more God is depicted as a present character, commanding or testing, punishing or forgiving, the more the human characters are depicted in a flat manner, as singular types such as rebellious, obedient, or sinful. But when God is portrayed as absent or behind the scenes, there is more narrative space for multi-faceted human characters and their complex motives. Yairah Amit, Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, 84

So far, we’ve discussed plot, characters, and setting. What questions do you have about how all this fits together so far?

Tonight, we’re going to start the discussion of design patterns, which we’ll continue next week. We’ll introduce the concept, but do some deeper exploration next time.

A coherent reading of any work of art, whatever the medium, requires some detailed awareness of the grid of conventions upon which and against which this particular work operates. Usually, these are elaborate sets of tacit agreements between artist and audience that create the enabling context in which the complex communication of art occurs. Through our awareness of convention we can recognize significant or simply pleasing patterns of repetition, symmetry, or contrast; we can detect subtle cues and clues as to the meaning of the work; we can spot what is innovative and what is traditional at each part of the artistic creation … One of the chief difficulties modern readers have in perceiving the artistry in biblical narrative is precisely that we have lost most of the keys to the conventions out of which these texts were shaped.

Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, 47

[watch design patterns video]

Repetition is one of the most important design features of biblical narrative. Repetition is used to create patterns that guide the reader’s focus, and it’s used to create expectations around where to look for meaning.

Biblical authors do this in a unique and pervasive way. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenweig, two Jewish scholars, gave this technique the name leitwort, which means “lead word” or “control word.”

A “lead word” is a word that repeats significantly in a text or group of texts, and by following these repetitions, one is able to decipher or grasp a meaning of the text … The repetition may not be of the same exact word, but of the word-root … which intensifies the dynamic action of the repetition … If you imagine the entire text stretched out before you, you can sense waves moving back and forth between key words, matching the rhythm of the text … it is one of the most powerful means of conveying meaning.

Martin Buber, Schriften zur Bibel, 1131

Example 1: “Good” in Genesis 1-4

Tables: Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3-4:17 (those in this group should pay attention to words like “right and regard” depending on translation.

How many times is “good” used? What does the repetition of the word do to advance the story?

Example 2: “Son of God” in Luke 3-4.

Sometimes a key phrase is repeated at strategic points. Luke has woven these stories together to emphasize how Jesus is the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah, and humanity’s representative. However, his identity is contested because some people question, doubt, or even reject him.

Luke 3:21-22; Luke 3:23-38; Luke 4:1-13; Luke 4:14-32 (22 specifically); Luke 4:33-41.

Example 3: “Seeing” Saul, David, and Samuel in 1 Samuel 9-16

This example spans a longer stretch of narrative, but the repeated idea of “seeing” serves as the lead word that ties the individual events together

Saul is introduced as a man “choice and good, there was no man more good than him, from his shoulders up, he was taller than anyone from among all the people.”

1 Samuel 9:2

Saul is searching for his father’s lost donkeys, but he can’t find them. He goes to the town where the prophet Samuel lives, and we find a rare narrator’s note in the text. “Formerly, in Israel, when someone wanted to inquire of God, they would say ‘Hey, let’s go to a seer.’ Today’s prophet was in that day, called a seer.”

1 Samuel 9:9

*Extra emphasis on Samuel as “one who sees” (Hebrew ro’eh, from the root “to see” ra’ah).

Later, “When Samuel saw Saul, the LORD said to him, ‘this is the man who will direct my people.’”

1 Samuel 9:17

Later, when Samuel declares Saul as king over Israel, he tells the people, “Do you see this one whom the LORD has chosen, there is none like him from among all the people.”

1 Samuel 10:24

Saul totally fails as Israel’s king, and Samuel says, “You Saul have rejected the word of the LORD, so the LORD has rejected you as king.”

1 Samuel 15:26

Next, we’re introduced to young David, and his story opens with: “The LORD said to Samuel … ‘I have rejected Saul as king over Israel … I will send you to Jesse of Bethlehem, because from among his sons I have seen for myself a king.’” The CSB translates it chosen but it is the same root word for seen.

1 Samuel 16:1

Jesse brings seven of his eight sons before Samuel. “When Samuel saw Eliab the firstborn, he said ‘Surely, the anointed king of the LORD is before me.’ And the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not focus on his appearance [Heb. mar’eh from ra’ah “to see”] or at the height of his stature, for I have rejected him: for God does not see as humans see; for humans see with their eyes, but the LORD sees the heart.’”

1 Samuel 16:6-7