Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 147:586 (Apr 1990)
Article: The Bible as Literature Part 2: “And It Came to Pass”: The Bible as God’s Storybook
Author: Leland Ryken

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BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 131

The Bible as Literature
Part 2:
“And It Came to Pass”: The Bible as God’s Storybook

Leland Ryken

Professor of English
Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

[Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of four articles delivered by the author is the W. H. Griffin Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, November 7–10, 1981).]

According to a rabbinic saying, God made people because He loves stories. Henry R. Luce, founder of Time magazine, commenting on his magazine’s interest in personalities, quipped, “Time didn’t start this emphasis on stories about people; the Bible did.” One of the most universal human impulses can be summed up in the familiar four-word plea, “Tell me a story.” The Bible constantly satisfies this human longing for stories. Once when I wondered which passage to choose for the midweek Bible study, my son commented, “Choose a story, not a poem.”

Scholarly interest in biblical narrative has never been higher than it currently is. In fact the literary approach to the Bible is almost synonymous with a narrative approach. Narratology is a thriving enterprise that cuts across disciplinary lines.

The Narrative Shape of the Bible as a Whole

One of the attractions a narrative approach to the Bible offers is its way of seeing the Bible as a whole. Educational research has established that the biggest variable in a learner’s ability to assimilate data is the presence or absence of a unifying framework within which to place individual items. Viewing the Bible as a story provides such a framework for the Bible as a whole.

To demonstrate that the big pattern in the Bible is a narrative pattern, all one need do is consider the things that make up a story. The soul of a story, said Aristotle, is plot. This is a way of saying

BSac 147:586 (Apr 90) p. 132

that the most essential ingredient of a story, without which it could not exist, is a sequence of events. The essence of plot, in turn, is a conflict around which the whole action revolves.

Above all else, the Bible is a series of events, with many interspersed passages that interpret the events. From beginning to end, moreover, the Bible is arranged around a central plot conflict between good and evil in a way that a newspaper, a history book, a book of sermons, or a systematic theology never is. In terms of its overall organization, the Bible obeys the dynamics of narrative by its reliance on a central plot made up of individual episodes.

Stories, moreover, consist of interaction among characters. Such interaction is different from the usual forms of historical writing, such ...

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