Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative

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Summary: A must for reading OT narrative
Review: Berlin is part of a fairly new method of studying the Bible: literary criticism. Traditional criticism (i.e. form criticism) deconstructs texts to pull out strands (like JEPD). Literary criticism is not concerned with how a text came to be, but on the text we have before us. Berlin enlightens the reader on how the Biblical author's use literary techniques to communicate meaning. Narrative is not usually explicit ("do this or dont do this). Narrtive teaches implicitly, by showing us how or how not to live. But to learn from narrative, we must be sensetive to the author's methods of communication. Berlin is famous for her statement "Before we can know what a text means we must know how it means.