The term is misleading. Narrative criticism is not about critiquing authors and their stories. As with all the various criticisms that are practised in biblical studies, it is a way to approach a biblical text and analyse (not critique of criticise) it from a chosen perspective. In the case of narrative criticism, it is about understanding a story as story, that is, seeking to comprehend how the story works.
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Narrative criticism is a relatively new approach, developed in the later 20th century. Underlying it is the conviction that the books of the Bible should – also – be understood as literature. This is perhaps more obvious for a book like Job than for, say, the book of Judges or one of the Gospels, but it is increasingly recognized that most if not all books of the Bible are careful, even artistic constructions. Someone creatively put these texts together, and it is important to pay attention to this dimension of the text. And in the case of narratives, this means reading the stories as stories.
Here is an additional reason to engage in narrative criticism. There is a problem that is peculiar to narratives in the Bible and it has to do with application. Usually, stories mainly describe what happened. They don’t tell us directly what is right or wrong. It is often not obvious what the lesson or absolute or norm or principle (timeless truth, if you will) is that we should derive from it. Narrative criticism helps us to notice the hints and clues that are ‘hidden’ in the text. This enables us to see more clearly what the text expects us to embrace or reject.
Basic Elements in Narrative Criticism
So how does one do this? I was surprised to find how many elements of narrative criticism we (unwittingly?) take into account as we follow the inductive approach in courses like the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) and the Bible Core Course (BCC). A story consists of characters, events, and settings (such as time and place). Much of this is caught by asking the basic questions: who, what, when, where, to whom, how, and why. An additional element is made up by rhetorical devices and figures of speech; this should also be familiar to anyone who has been introduced to inductive Bible study. And then there are what Mark Powell (1990:32-34) calls narrative patterns, which are essentially laws of composition (such as repetition, comparison, and contrast). In other words, if you are involved in SBS or BCC you may engage in more narrative criticism than you are aware of!
In what follows, I will look at five basic elements at the heart of narrative criticism in more detail.
Setting (When and Where)
Every story needs location and time (both in the sense of a point in time, that is, when something happens, and in the sense of duration of time, that is, how long things take). At times, statements about place or time convey more than just setting. When something happens at night or on a mountain, for instance, the question becomes what this implies. Is it something dark or ominous (as when Judas leaves the last supper to betray Jesus, John 13:30)? Is it meant to remind us of God’s appearance on Mount Sinai (as in the transfiguration, Mk.9:2)? In addition, there is social or cultural setting, which includes the historical background.
Characters (Who)
In every story, there will be one or more characters. Some of these will be more important than others. In fact, some may be part of the setting more than that they function as ‘real’ people. We learn about these characters, especially the ones that are central to the story, both by what we are told about them directly and by what we can see in the story (actions, speech, even their thoughts). Based on this, we ascribe certain character traits to them and infer their beliefs and values. As a result, we either like or dislike a character.
In this, we are being led by a character that may be quite hidden in the text and that we don’t normally think of as a character in the story: the narrator. In biblical narrative this narrator is usually identical with the implied author, that is, the author that becomes visible in the text.
Yet another unusual character is the implied reader. This is the reader that the narrator has in mind. It is the ideal reader for this text, a construct, not a real person. As such, the narrator will assume the reader knows certain things. A simple example is ancient measures of weight. We may lack this information and will then have to find it somewhere else: we need to “have the historical information that the text assumes of its implied reader“ (Powell 1990:97). “The goal of narrative criticism is to read the text as the implied reader” (Powell 1990:20).
In case all this talk about implied authors and readers sounds overly complicated, there is a significant benefit from this way of thinking about texts. Inductive Bible study asks for the intended meaning of the author, but often enough we do not know or are uncertain who the author is. The same is true of the original readers. And we do not have direct access to the author or his readers; all we have is the text.
Narrative criticism puts the focus on the text (which we have in front of us), not on people that are largely unknown and certainly inaccessible to us (or worse, speculative and hypothetical sources). We do not know what was going on in the mind of, say, Paul or Jesus, but we can learn about the author or narrator (and the implied reader) that becomes visible in the text. Even if we don’t know the name of the author, we can therefore still know something about him. This enables us to not be overly concerned with or hindered by questions of authorship and dates in our interpretation.
Events (What)
To have a story, something must happen. A sequence of events takes place that are in some way related. How they are related is more a function of plot (see below), but to understand the plot we must first notice the events.
Point of View
In one sense, the point of view is the position of the narrator: from where does he view the events recounted in the story? More importantly, point of view asks for the norms and values and the worldview that the story promotes. This is sometimes called the ideological or conceptual point of view (Resseguie 2005:169). What are the standards of judgment? How are we to evaluate “action, dialogue, characters, setting, and events“ (ibid.)? In principle, the narrator will help us to answer these questions. The way a story is told reveals “the norms, values, beliefs, and general worldview that the narrator wants the reader to adopt or to reject” (ibid.:167).
As noted above, the challenge with narratives is application: to determine what is good and normative. Narrative criticism enables us to wrestle with this problem and helps us to come up with answers.
- The most obvious way a narrator can guide us is through comments: information or statements that are not part of the events. Think of the book of Judges for instance. It repeats this phrase: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eye” (Jd. 17:6, 18:1, 19:1, 21:25). This is an implicit judgment on what is happening in the book and an important key to the overall message of the book.
- Another important clue is when we are told about the inner life of characters: their thoughts or emotions, things that are normally not knowable.
- Important is also how characters relate to each other and what their statements and comments are. For this, however, it is crucial to determine the standing of each character in the narrative. For instance, if Jesus says something, we can assume the narrator wants us to take this as true and reliable. If the disciples say or do something, we cannot be quite so sure; we must carefully consider the context to know if they are on the right track or not. When it is the Pharisees and Sadducees, we can assume their words and actions are to be evaluated negatively, unless the context points in a different direction.
- Often, the clues are quite subtle, and we need to draw inferences from repetitions and other observations. This calls for caution because we can obviously overinterpret the text and read things into it that aren’t there. But if we don’t take these hints into account, we under-interpret the text – also not good.
Plot
The plot is the way the story is told, the storyline. This is where the pieces are brought together. They are linked through elements like causation and conflict. Ideally, we now understand what the story aimed to accomplish, and are therefore able to apply its lesson or principle in our own circumstances.
In Closing
Each of the elements discussed above can be taken as a focus to study a book or story by tracing its appearance and function in the story. It is worth the effort, because:
The power of story is precisely that it does more and impacts us deeper than theological truth and absolutes, doctrine, ethical guidelines, and even practical principles. This is why the Bible is a storybook.
Attribution
Nick Youngson, “Plot,” ImageCreator, http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/typewriter/p/plot.html, CC BY-SA 3.0
References
Powell, Mark Allan (1990), What Is Narrative Criticism? (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress)
Resseguie, James L. (2005), Narrative Criticism of the New Testament: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic)
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