Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 28:3 (Summer 2014)
Article: The Significance Of Three Narrative Parallels Of Men And Women In Luke 1, John 3-4, And Acts 9
Author: David E. Malick

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PP 28:3 (Summer 2014) p. 15

The Significance Of Three Narrative Parallels Of Men And Women In Luke 1, John 3-4, And Acts 9

David E. Malick

David E. Malick has a ThM and completed PhD coursework at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS). He was an assistant professor at DTS and Southeastern Bible College (SEBC). He does doctoral work at the University of South Africa, practices law, and continues to teach the Scriptures at his church in Birmingham, Alabama. He is married to Lynn Gannett-Malick, the Education Chair at SEBC.

Introduction: A Hermeneutical Prologue

Biblical narratives are constructed word after word and line after line without the aid of tables, mechanical layouts, or images that show patterns to the reader. Even though the medium is linear by necessity, the resulting narratives have contours. Even though the narratives have progression in thought, the pathway is not always straight. Narrative writers provide textual, literary clues to the structure of their works through the employment of embedded patterns such as repetition, lead words, summary statements, the arrangement of units, intercalations, and the editing of known material.

One such pattern places two narratives in proximity to one another so that the reader will compare and contrast the accounts and arrive at conclusions beyond those contained in either particular narrative. The author uses duality and balance to show his theology as he invites the reader to weigh the paired stories and consider what they have to say when viewed together. Not everything is explicitly stated in the text.

By modern analogy, author Ernest Hemingway employed a theory of omission, often referred to as an “iceberg theory,” where only a small portion of a story is explicitly expressed, and the reader senses the larger portion implied beneath the surface.1 The pressure of implication moves the reader so that she or he probes the narrative for clues to the implied world from what is explicitly shown on the surface. Present-day novelist and short-story writer Tobias Wolff specifically expresses his trust in the reader to find what is not out in the open, but present through particular clues in the text:

I like my stories to the degree that I have felt that I have trusted my reader. That the reader is able to apprehend, perhaps even at an intuitive level, those things which I’m hoping the reader will understand without being told.2

Even though the canonical gospels and the Book of Acts are not modern short stories, their writers often employ omission in their writings.3 For instance, the logical connections between in...

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