Sermon Tone Analysis

The Old Testament: Reading the Narratives

Background

The narratives comprise over 40% of the Old Testament.

In fact, the narrative is the most common genre in the entire Bible.

Narrative books include: Genesis, Joshua, Ruth, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jonah and Haggai.

There are narratives in Exodus, Numbers, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isiah and Job along with Matthew, Mark, Luke John and Acts.

Hebrew Narratives

Not understanding the reason for the writing of the Hebrew narrative or it’s unique literary characteristics will cause and has most certainly caused it to be misread and misunderstood by many Christians who replace their intended meaning with external ideas.

One thing is certain, as a Christian, the Old Testament is your “spiritual history” as Gordon Fee puts it.

All of the promises and callings of God to Israel are your historical promises and calling.

But only if they are read, interpreted and applied correctly.

What is a narrative.

Narratives are stories—purposeful stories retelling the historical events of the past that are intended to give meaning and direction for a given people in the present.

The narratives tell us what happened in the past and like any story the have 3 basic parts.

1. Characters

2. Plot - a conflict or tension the needs resolving

3. Plot resolution - the resolution of that conflict or tension.

They

Who are the characters of the story?

1. Protagonist (the main character) - God

2. Antagonist (the person who brings about the conflict or tension of the plot) - Satan or those opposing Him

3. Agonist (any other major characters that move the story or are involved in the tension of the plot) - God’s People

At their core the Hebrew Narratives are God’s story not our story.

It becomes ours only when God makes us a part of it.

What is the Plot?

Creator God has created a people for his name bearing his image who were intended to care for the world that He created for them.

But something happened.

An enemy of Creator God lied and persuaded those people to betray God and bear his image and become God’s enemy as well.

But because of His love for His people God rescues them from the clutches of the evil enemy and brings them back into His family and restores His creation in a “new heaven and new earth”.

It is a long story of redemption, in fact, it is still being written.

Three Levels

The story of redemption is actually told at 3 levels.

The Top Level (Third) - is the metanarrative - God’s universal plan of redemption working through His creation and focusing primarily on His chosen people.

Primarily - Creation, the fall, the power and implications of sin, the need for redemption and Christ’s incarnation, sacrifice, and victory - You’ve heard me call it the redemptive story or the story of redemption.

The Second Level - God redeeming a people for His name by the Old then New Covenant.

This is how God uses his people as a whole.

We focus on the old covenant in our conversations.

The bottom or “first” level - all of the individual narratives that make up the whole.

The stories about the hundreds of individuals in the greater story.

So when Jesus says that all of the scriptures (the Old Testament) testify about him in he was speaking to the Top Level or the metanarrative not each individual story that make up the whole.

When we read the first level stories we must ask ourselves “how does this fit into the second and third level stories”

because that is why they are there, they serve the metanarrative.

What they are not

Old Testament narratives are not allegories - they do not have hidden meanings.

- David’s 3 stones, the walls of Jericho, Moses going up and down Mount Sinai, Abraham securing a bride for Isaac

Old Testament narratives are not parables - they are not meant to teach moral lessons

- They are intended to tell what God did in the history of His people to to show examples of right or wrong behavior

- We can recognize right and wrong behavior and see it’s consequence but that isn’t the reason for the narrative.

For instance we can see right and wrong behavior in Abraham or Jacob and Esau, but that isn’t the intent of the text.

The intention is to show how God made His promise to Abraham and carried it on through Jacob and not Esau.

The point of that story is that God didn’t carry his promise through the “right” way of the first born.

By the way we see that narrative displayed throughout Jesus’ family line.

Old Testament narratives are not systematic teachings of God moral law.

- Again we can recognize the importance of God’s moral law and the consequence of breaking it, but you, generally speaking won’t see In doing this, this person was wrong, those are seen and implied by God’s reaction or the consequence of the action.

So we can use them as examples of right and wrong behavior and the potential consequence of it, but it shouldn’t serve as the sole scriptural basis of that lesson.

- When it does serve that purpose typically the characters say it outright.

For instance Samuel condemning Saul from the grave or Nathan condemning David for his adultery and murder.

Characteristics of Hebrew Narratives

We will look at the the characteristics of hebrew Narratives by the longest single-focused narrative in the OT.

The Story of Joseph found in the book of Genesis.

In the narrative the divinely inspired Moses skillfully narrates the story of Joseph and his journey to become the second most powerful man in Egypt.

Where to begin?

The Narrator

The narrator, while not mentioned in the story itself, is crucial to our understanding of the story and ultimately it’s intent.

The narrator is omniscient - since he is the one that is telling the story, he determines what we will ultimately know, therefore he knows everything about the story he is telling.

He never shares all he knows nor does he comment or evaluate what he is telling - He leaves that up to the characters.

He tells the story in such a way that you would be drawn into it and see everything for yourself - you would put yourself in the middle of the story - not the plot, but that you could see the story happening around you.

The narrator is responsible for the “point of view” - The narrator determines the perspective from which we hear/see the story.

Because we believe that he is divinely inspired ultimately it is the divine point of view.

What does that look like practically - , , , repeats the phrase “The Lord was with Joseph” the narrator is revealing the divine perspective.

Sometimes it is revealed through the characters - in Joseph says that what was intended to harm him God intended for good

The Scene(s)

Instead of the story being built around a person or character it is more scene based.

The story moves from moment to moment, scene to scene and the scenes fit together to make up the whole narrative.

Each scene can exist on it’s own but it is the combination of the scenes that make up the whole story.

Let’s look at the example listed in the “text”

Gen 37

Scene 1 Joseph rats our his brothers and they hate him

Scene 2 Joseph recounts a dream

Scene 3 Joseph recounts another dream

Scene 4 Joseph searches for his brothers - break in the action to show the divine nature of what happens next.

Scene 5 Joseph is captured and sold

Scenes 6-8 The plot to kill Reuben’s intercession and Judah’s role in rescuing Joseph with all moving the story along to Joseph in Egypt.

The Characters

Each of the scenes of course are built around the individual characters.

While the characters don’t drive the story-the moments do, the characters are central to the scene.

The characterization of each individual relies very little on appearance.

So if the text does mention a physical trait, it would be wise to take note of it.

Instead they will pay closer attention to status (wealthy, poor, alien, wise, etc) profession or tribal or national identity.

Two features of characterization

1. Characters appear in contrast or in parallel.

- if in contrast (most often) they must be understood in relationship to each other for example in our text the contrast between Joseph and his brothers is at the center of the section of the narrative in 42-45

- if in parallel it is usually significant to the 2nd level narrative like John the Baptist being the reenactment of Elijah and Mary’s story echoing Hannah.

2. The characterization happens within the words and actions of the characters and not by the descriptions of the narrator.

We see their characterizations by what they say and do rather than an explicit statement from the narrator.

The Dialogue

Since the characterization happens within the words and actions of the characters in the story dialogue is extremely important.

There is a sort of back and forth between the narration and dialogue.

Three things to look for in the dialogue.

1.

The first piece of dialogue plays a significant role in the story and the plot