by Leland Ryken
The Need to Be an Active Reader
To read stories well, then, we need to be active—in visualizing, in imagining scenes, in entering into the spirit of events, in identifying with characters. One sure way to impoverish our experience of a biblical story is to remain outside of the action, as though we were simply being told a series of facts. Personal involvement, achieved by an active use of the imagination, is the first requirement for reading biblical narrative. The stories of the Bible demand the answering imagination of the reader for their effect.
Rule number one for reading the stories of the Bible is simply this: look upon biblical stories as an invitation to share an experience, as vividly and concretely as possible, with the characters in the story.
The Basic Ingredients
Stories are always built out of three basic ingredients: setting, characters, and plot (action). Reading a story involves paying attention to the interaction of these three elements.
The Functions of Settings
The setting of a story is simultaneously physical, temporal, and cultural. The physical scenes that storytellers build into their stories serve several functions. They are usually a necessary background for understanding the action that occurs within them. They are of course an important part of the concrete vividness by which storytellers enable their readers to enter fully into the experience of a story. They may be an important part of the identity of a character (as when Abraham, the nomad and domestic hero, is repeatedly linked with rural landscapes and tents).
Physical Settings Build Atmosphere
Physical settings can also establish the atmosphere or tone of a story. The atmosphere of danger from which Peter is delivered in Acts 12 is effectively established by scenic details of prison, guards, chains, and iron gates. The hostility of Joseph’s brothers (Gen. 37) is actively abetted by the details of setting that the storyteller chose to record—the remoteness of the region, such features of landscape as open pits, and the nearness of the route traveled by trading caravans.
Symbolic Meanings of Settings
In addition to their literal meaning, physical settings often assume a thematic or symbolic meaning in biblical stories. The idealized love story of Ruth and Boaz is reinforced by the rural (pastoral) imagery of growing crops and harvests. Spiritual revelations often occur on mountains (e.g., Moses’ meeting with God on Mount Sinai, Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, and Jesus’ transfiguration on the Mount of Olives). The symbolic use of geography in the synoptic Gospels and Book of Acts is also well known: in the Gospels, Galilee is the place chosen by God to reveal his salvation and Jerusalem is the place of rejection; the Book of Acts opens in Jerusalem, seat of the Jewish religion that rejected the Gospel, and ends after a long travel section in Rome, capital of the Gentile world to which the Gospel was sent.
Settings and Structural Unity
Another function of physical settings is to lend structural unity to a story. The episodic plot of the Exodus is unified in part by the continuous references to wilderness, water, fire, and rock. The story of Elijah is repeatedly linked with hills and mountains, the story of Jacob with rocks. Events in Genesis are joined by a common pastoral (rural) setting, and those in the books of Esther and Daniel by the continuous references to court life. The movement from Galilee to Jerusalem is an important structural principle in the synoptic Gospels, just as the transfer of action from Jerusalem to Rome in the Book of Acts gives shape to both the action and the theology of the story.
Temporal Settings
Stories have a temporal setting as well as a physical setting, and this, too, can be important to the overall impact of a story. It is important in the story of Esther that the events occurred during the Jewish exile in Persia, when the Jews were a vulnerable minority. The impact of the story of Jonah depends on our knowing that the action occurs at a time in history when Nineveh was the capital of the world-conquering Assyrians, known for their cruelty and terrorism.
Cultural Settings
The setting of a story includes, finally, a whole cultural climate—the set of beliefs, attitudes, and customs that prevail in the world of the story. Without the information biblical scholars have uncovered about ancient cultural practices, modern readers become prime candidates to misread the stories of the Bible. Did Jacob steal the birthright from Esau? Technically he bought it (and cleverly made the bargain binding by insisting that Esau swear an oath as he smelled the pottage), based on the practice among ancient Hurrians of transferring a birthright from one brother to another through negotiation and payment. The opening verse of Ruth, which tells us that “a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab,” is a bland piece of factual data until we know something about the ancient hostility between Jew and Moabite. Once we know the cultural background, the statement explodes with hidden suspense, as if a contemporary novelist were to begin a story, “In 1946 a certain Jewish family went to Germany.”3
The Importance of Paying Attention to a Story’s Setting
Many readers ignore the settings in biblical stories, but to do so is to miss much of the meaning. Sometimes, it is true, setting functions as little more than a lead-in to a story (for example, “Jesus began to teach by the lake” in Mark 4:1). But whenever a storyteller begins to elaborate the setting, we can rest assured that it is there for a purpose, either to make the story come alive in our imagination or as a contribution to the meaning of the story. Many of the stories of the Bible devote so much attention to scenic details that these details are virtually stage directions in a play.
Rule two for reading the stories of the Bible is therefore this: pay close attention to every detail of setting that a storyteller puts into a story, and if setting has an important role, analyze how it contributes to the story.
The Role of Character in Narrative
The old debate whether character or plot is more important in a story is one that need not detain us. Character is what produces action; on the other hand, characters are known to us through their actions. The important thing is to be alert to the way in which character and plot work together to produce the total effect.
How Characters Are Portrayed: 1. Direct Description by the Storyteller
It is useful to be aware of the means by which a storyteller can portray a character. One is direct description. When a biblical storyteller informs us that “Joseph was well-built and handsome” (Gen. 39:6) or that Esther “was lovely in form and features” (Esth. 2:7), all we need to do is take the writer’s word for it. No further interpretation is required from us. It is significant to note, though, that this type of direct description is very sparse in the stories of the Bible. Even in the Gospels it is the exception rather than the rule for the authors to clarify Jesus’ motivation by telling us that he was angry or moved with compassion.
2. Other Characters’ Responses
A second way in which we know characters in a story is through other characters’ responses to them. Our picture of Jesus in the Gospels is repeatedly determined by the way in which humble and oppressed people flock to him in admiration, while the people with religious and civil power hate him. The responses of a series of Persian kings to Daniel establish him firmly in our imagination as a person of distinguished ability and personal integrity, as does the fact that his personal enemies admit among themselves that “we will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God” (Dan. 6:5).
3. A Character’s Words and Thoughts
A third way to know a character is through the thoughts and words of that character. To sense that Abraham is a family man, Jacob a schemer, Ruth a gentle woman, and Jesus a person of compassion and authority as the occasion demanded, all we need to do is pay attention to their characteristic thought patterns and recorded speeches.
4. Self-Characterization
To have persons in a story characterize themselves is als
o a way of revealing character to us. The great example is of course Jesus, when in the Gospels he repeatedly explains himself and his mission. But there are other notable examples of the same technique in biblical narrative: Job’s repeated portrayal of himself as an innocent person, King Saul’s admission that David is more righteous than he is (1 Sam. 24:17), or the autobiographical strand in many of Paul’s speeches in Acts.
5. Actions as a Clue to Character
There are, indeed, numerous ways in which a character emerges from the pages of the Bible as a full-fledged person. Mainly, though, the characters are known to us by their actions. It is a commonplace that the stories of the Bible tend to be told in a very spare, unembellished style. We are told only the most important things, and this usually means that the writer concentrates on showing us a character in action. The alternating of Abraham between faith and expediency, the courage of Ruth, the moral perfection of Jesus—these character traits emerge mainly from the actions we observe the characters performing.
Characterization Involves a Reader’s Interpretation
Whenever a storyteller decides to let a character’s actions do the talking, he thereby places a burden of interpretation on the reader. Often we know exactly how to interpret an action because we can place it into the context of moral commands elsewhere in the Bible. When Cain murders Abel, when David commits adultery with Bathsheba, or when Ananias and Sapphira lie, we have no difficulty in judging their characters negatively on that point. Conversely, when Abraham exercises faith in God or shows generosity toward his nephew, or when Joseph resists sexual temptation, we do not need to take a Gallup poll before concluding that they are examples of moral virtue.
But there are many other places in the stories of the Bible where the assessment of what a character is like is open to alternative interpretations. Is the youthful Joseph’s telling Jacob about his brothers’ bad behavior an example of moral courage or ignominious self-serving? Why does Joseph manipulate his brothers before revealing himself to them? Did Esther compromise her religious principles when she fit in so well at the Persian court that she even managed to keep her Jewish identity a total secret? Many of the stories of the Bible raise interpretive questions like these, and we need only read around in the commentaries to see what a lack of consensus there is on some of them. Because biblical stories leave so much unstated, they are “fraught with background and mysterious,” “greatly in need of interpretation,” writes Erich Auerbach in his classic study of the plain style of biblical narrative.4
Paying Attention to Details
The practical result is that we must get maximum mileage out of the few details that are given regarding the characters in the brief, unembellished stories of the Bible. It also means that we are often left to choose somewhat tentatively from among alternative interpretations of character and action. “The Bible’s highly laconic mode of narration,” writes Robert Alter, captures “an abiding mystery in character as the biblical writers conceive it, which they embody in their typical methods of presentation.”5 In virtually all cases of ambiguous or uncertain characterization, the main point of the story is unaffected by disagreements on how to interpret a character’s motivation or behavior at a given point in the story.
SUMMARY
Characters are an essential part of any biblical story. Therefore, the third rule for reading stories is, use every relevant detail in a story to get to know the characters as fully as possible.
A Definition of Plot
The plot of a story is the arrangement of the events. That arrangement is not random. A plot is a coherent sequence of interrelated events, with a beginning, middle, and end. It is, in other words, a whole or complete action.6
Conflict: The Heart of Plot
The essence of plot is a central conflict or set of conflicts moving toward a resolution. One of the very first things to pay attention to when reading a story is the conflicts that organize the story from the very beginning. They can be of several types.
Types of Plot Conflict: 1. Physical Conflict
Most stories involve some type of physical conflict. Throughout the Bible we read about characters struggling for survival against physical adversity and danger. In fact, the stories of the Bible are a nearly continuous series of either narrow escapes or calamities. This is not surprising, for conflict against physical forces has always been a staple in the stories of the world. Of course, the struggle for physical survival in biblical stories usually provides the occasion for some further (frequently spiritual) action. But if we are to read these narratives as stories, we must first of all respond to the literal situations, preferably as a child responds to stories of physical danger.
Such stories are among the best-known ones in the Bible. The struggle for physical survival is the background against which Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph live out their lives in the stories of Genesis. The story of the Exodus is a never-ending series of shortages of food and water. As for that perennial favorite, the narrow escape, we find it repeatedly in the Bible—in the stories of Jacob and Elijah and David and Daniel, in the Gospels, in the Book of Acts. We should not minimize the element of physical conflict in the stories of the Bible; it is a major element in the stories, either as the thing that arouses our narrative interest or as the occasion for a religious theme (such as the providential emphasis that is so recurrent in biblical narrative).
2. Character Conflicts
Conflicts can also occur between characters. Many of the famous stories in the Bible are built around great character clashes: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, the Israelites and their oppressors, Jonah and God, Elijah and Jezebel, Jesus and the Jewish leaders, Paul and the Jews. The best way of organizing a discussion of such stories is obviously around the development of the character conflict.
3. Moral or Spiritual Conflicts
Still other plot conflicts are primarily moral or spiritual. They occur chiefly within a character. The story of Cain and Abel, despite the external violence, is ultimately a story of good in conflict with evil. So is the story of Jezebel’s seizing of Naboth’s vineyard. Job fights an inner battle to understand his suffering and to maintain his faith in God in the midst of that suffering. Jesus went through an agonizing inner struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane.
SUMMARY
Stories are always built around plot conflicts. These conflicts progress toward some type of resolution, and when the resolution occurs, closure comes quickly. Noting plot conflicts is one of the best ways to organize a story, either in the actual process of reading or when talking about the story.
The fourth rule for reading stories is to identify the exact nature of the plot conflicts in a story, noting how they develop and are finally resolved.
Narrative Suspense
Regardless of what else we might say about stories, the basic characteristic that determines whether they succeed or fail is the element of suspense, that is, the ability to arouse the reader’s curiosity. The novelist E. M. Forster has described the matter very succinctly: as story, a narrative “can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”7 This applies also to stories in the Bible.
How Stories Awaken Our Curiosity
To engage our continuing interest, storytellers must make us want to know how a given situation will turn out. The means by which storytellers generate this kind of curiosity are multiple, but the most universal one is plot conflict that calls for progression and final resolution. Putting characters into situations of danger or testing is therefore a staple in storytelling. An alternative way of eliciting reader interest is portraying vivid or striking characters about whose destiny we are made to care. Again, in biblical stories encounters between humans and God, even when the encounters do not involve conflict, generate interest about how the meeting will turn out
Analyzing How a Story Generates Interest
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br /> Two of the most productive questions I have learned to ask about a given story or episode within it are, “Exactly what accounts for the narrative interest that this story elicits from me?” and, “How does it make me a participant in the action?” These questions are a good entry into the specific details of a given text. We might note in passing that some stories make us wonder what the outcome will be, whereas with other stories we already know the outcome but are led to wonder how that outcome will be achieved. The classic example of the latter type is the story of Joseph, where the destined ending of the story (Joseph’s triumph over his brothers) is announced at the beginning, but where we could not possibly guess from the opening situation how that ending could be achieved.