Biblical Narrative

L'articolo si pone lobiettivo di dimostrare lìapplicabilità
dellìapproccio psicologico nel rintracciare il vissuto psichico dei per
sonaggi coinvolti in una narrazione biblica, proponendo unermeneutica fenomenologico-relazionale che permetta al testo di rivelarsi al
lettore e al lettore di auto-rivelarsi attraverso il testo.

In this article, I argue that John provides a window into the mechanics of how Jesus’s death saves, and this window is his use of the OT. When interpreters look through this window and ask how John understands Jesus’ death, our eyes are caused— by the passages John chose—to see substitutionary atonement as essential to the inner mechanism of how Jesus’s death saves.

This study examines the prevalent predicative utilization of the infinitive construct following the preposition l-(=l-+IC) in Phoenician, Punic and Neo-Punic. It compiles predicative l-+IC constructions through the different historical phases of Phoenician, providing a comprehensive insight into its use. Two distinct grammaticalization pathways of the l-+IC construction are suggested: obligatory attachment of the preposition l-to the IC, and its transition from adverbial to predicative usage. The varied modal functions of the independent predicative l-+IC construction are traced to these two primary processes. Widespread predicative use of the l-+IC in Late Biblical Hebrew and Qumran Hebrew is believed to echo Phoenician constructions-an outcome of the historically intensive language contact situation-underscoring its central role within the Phoenician linguistic structure.

This technical note develops the concept of the Field of Access through a comparison between Genesis 22 and Iliad XXIV, in dialogue with the opening chapter of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. The comparison with Genesis 22 is not an ornamental addition to the theory, but a structural necessity: if the Field of Access emerges partly from a dialogue with Auerbach, it must confront both poles of his foundational comparison, Homer and the Bible.

Rather than treating Auerbach’s distinction between Homeric foreground and biblical background as a merely stylistic opposition, the note proposes to formalize it as a difference between regimes of access to presence. In Iliad XXIV, the encounter between Priam and Achilles makes presence available through visible articulation: gesture, body, tears, performative speech, and physical proximity. In Genesis 22, by contrast, presence is organized through withheld and deferred access: command, silence, distance, minimal objects, interrupted gesture, divine voice, and delayed revelation.

Particular attention is given to the Hebrew verb ראה (ra’ah, “to see”) as a structural device linking visibility, provision, and divine availability. The central claim is that Homer and Genesis do not differ because one has mediation and the other does not; they differ because they organize mediated presence through different Fields of Access. The Field of Access is therefore presented not only as an interpretive concept, but as a comparative methodology for analyzing how texts regulate the availability of presence.

“… Jesus initially goes to safety on the far side of the Jordan, even though
this strategy this means the death of Lazarus, just as David flees beyond
the Jordan, and, following advice, does not get involved in the fighting
during which Absalom is killed and the conspiracy defeated”.
Stewart Fleming.

This study provides a rigorous phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis of Leah, the often-marginalized matriarch of the Genesis narrative. By contrasting her "tender-eyed" reality against the cultural worship of Rachel’s aesthetic form, the article explores the "logic of the unchosen"—the divine tendency to bypass human preference to establish eternal legacies.Through a focused intellectual framework—The Sublimity of Divine Scrutiny, the Shift of Spiritual Sufficiency, and the Sovereign Scope of Significance—the work challenges modern standards of visibility, performance, and validation. It posits that Leah’s transition from a desperate seeker of human affection to a herald of divine praise (Judah) marks the genesis of Messianic grace. Ultimately, the article serves as a contemporary manifesto for the overlooked, proving that the most profound architecture of divine destiny is often built upon the soil of human rejection.

This work is a compact commentary on the whole Bible written by Roman Catholic scholars according to the principles of modern biblical criticism.
Raymond E. Brown (1928-1998) was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was a specialist on the hypothetical Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus. He was professor emeritus at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York City, where he taught for 29 years.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer (1920-2016) was an American Catholic priest and scholar who taught at several American and British universities. He was a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Fitzmyer was considered an important scholar of biblical studies, particularly the New Testament. He also contributed to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish literature.
Roland E. Murphy (1917-2002) was an American Catholic priest of the Carmelite order, a biblical scholar and a specialist in the study of the Old Testament. He was the George Washington Ivey Professor of Biblical Studies at Duke University.

Gregory of Tours was captivated by the Christian Scriptures, and he worked them into his various texts as much as possible. Permeating within every episode he wrote are moral lessons, typological figures, or scriptural allusions or quotations. Gregory’s direct comparison between key figures in the Merovingian and biblical pasts (e.g. Moses and David, to name a few) has been well-acknowledged in recent years. However, what has yet to receive adequate attention are the minor (often unnamed) characters in Merovingian history who often feature as side characters in another protagonist’s story. Yet, these characters are vital to the story, which would not reach the conclusion that edifies the protagonist without them. Notably, some of the characters Gregory draws from the Biblical past into the Merovingian present are key women, such as Sarah, wife of Abraham, or Rebekah, wife of Isaac ─ two of the matriarchs of the Israelite nation. In so doing, he establishes very specific gendered expectations of the “normal” people whose lives he narrates.
This paper will analyse stories across Gregory’s various texts and the implications that these gendered narratives of “normal” people who are patterned on important figures from a distant past have on the overall section in which they are placed as well as Gregory’s overall argument on Christian history. In so doing, it will explore what these narratives can reveal to us about Gregory’s worldview. As will be demonstrated, even those who are considered minor characters have an important role in the overarching story of eternity and salvation.

“It is of interest to note that from this point in Israel’s history as the scriptures record it, Amalek is on the scene more consistently than any other nation in attack against Israel for the next 300 years, first assisting Eglon, then in association with Midian (Judges 6:3), and then in the days of
King Saul and David (1 Samuel 15 and 1 Samuel 30)”.
Dr. John Osgood.

For modern Bible readers and interpreters, the interpretive methods of typology and allegory may seem foreign, or even offensive, especially when framed as part of biblical interpretation that is worthy of God. As Christians living in the postmodern era, we become so accustomed, perhaps knowingly or unknowingly, to reading the Bible just like any other book. For most bible scholars today, the key to uncovering the meaning of Scripture lies in our ‘objective’ reading—analysing the texts of the Bible through the lens of empirical observation, rational analysis, and even skepticism, rather than treating the Word as authoritative and divinely inspired. With this method widely employed in our day, typological and allegorical readings of Scripture were simply discarded, regarded as irrational and arbitrary.

A diferencia de otros personajes femeninos de la Biblia como las matriarcas, Ester o Judit, Débora y Rut han pasado mucho más desapercibidas y han recibido escasa atención por parte de comentaristas y artistas. Sin embargo, también ellas son protagonistas de la historia de Israel pues sus comportamientos e intervenciones han formado parte de la actuación salvífica de Dios a favor de su pueblo. Débora, profetisa y juez, instrumento del que se vale Dios para vencer a los cananeos y Rut, origen de la dinastía davídica. Por otra parte, sus historias se entretejen con las de otras mujeres, Débora con Yael y Rut con Orfá y, sobre todo, con Noemí. Rescatarlas del olvido se vuelve, por tanto, una tarea imprescindible.

Thanks to the insightful and foundational observations made by previous
scholars (especially Gooding and Douglas), the book of Judges may
now be appreciated as another example of a ring composition. Or better,
Judges may be viewed as a “spiral” composition that is structurally designed to represent Israel’s decline. Hopefully, the elucidation of the numerous rhetorical connections in the parallel accounts and of the function of the centrally located Gideon narrative will provide a foundation for continued research on the meaningful structure and theology of the book of Judges.

Why are we fighting for Jerusalem?! *The results of Abraham's victory over the armies of the four kings; *The test of binding Isaac in Jerusalem on the summit of the Temple Mount; *The strategic importance of Jerusalem in ancient times; *The special religious status of Jerusalem for Jews, Christians and Muslims; *The consciousness of the Temple Mount; *What is "vital territory" in wars; *The military leadership of Joshua in the alliance with the Gibeonites; *The attitude of the king of Jerusalem and his Amorite allies towards the invasion of the Israelites into the land of Canaan near Jericho; *The military leadership of Joshua at the Battle of Gibeon Uri Milstein-IDF Systems Researcher-Date: 02/01/2026 The Goal-Jerusalem The decisive civilization process of Abraham, our Patriarch (Genesis 14), discussed in the above previous chapter, was determined in many areas.

The contributions to this German volume investigate how the various forms of the canon in Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism influence both exegesis and community practice. The various canonical perspectives presented in particular on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament aim to foster a constructive inter-religious dialogue.

This article establishes a novel typology of approaches to the moral analysis of biblical narrative based upon a single case study: the story of Lot and his daughters in Gen 19:30-38. By analyzing how interpreters throughout time have made and justified ethical evaluations of Gen 19:30-38, I identify nine distinct methods for interpreting biblical narratives from an ethical angle and arrive at several conclusions: (1) there are distinct modes by which interpreters ethically evaluate biblical narratives; (2) certain modes are used in combination; (3) different modes can reach the same conclusion, while the same mode can bring interpreters to different conclusions; (4) the proposed typology should reorient certain methodological priorities in biblical ethics. The significance of additional factors for the ethics of biblical narrative are also explored, including the role of certain historical-critical approaches and the nature of intertextuality, while several constructive suggestions are offered for work in the field.

“The Ethics of Hebrew Narrative: A Typology of Modes for Moral Analysis with a Case Study (Gen 19:30–38).” Journal of Ethics in Antiquity and Christianity 7 (2025): 83-104

https://doi.org/10.25784/jeac.v7i1.1488

The Solomon Accession Narrative (1 Kgs 1-2) is a dramatic and action-packed story of ninetynine verses in its masoretic form including additions. It is longer than, for example, the book of Ruth (eighty-five verses) or the book of Jonah (forty-eight verses), and it deserves as much attention on its own terms as they do on theirs. Perhaps because it was incorporated into the relatively strait-laced book of Kings, its qualities as a devilishly clever literary work have been underappreciated. In this paper I wish to survey the use of one literary device in the Narrative: double meaning. In a separate study of the original contours of the Narrative, I reached the following conclusions, following the work of other scholars. First, based on seven independent arguments, David's Testament (2:1-9) is not an original part of the Narrative. Second, the concluding regnal formula for David (2:10-11), the opening regnal formula for Solomon (2:12), and the notices about the ouster and replacement of Abiathar (2:27, 35b) are not original to the Narrative, either. Finally, the Shimei episode (2:36-46) originally included the so-called "Shimei duplicate", now extant only in the Septuagint (2:35 l-o ); the entire episode is secondary to the Narrative, but it was written in the same vein as it and was specifically modeled after the Narrative's episodes of the killing of Adonijah (1:50-53 and 2:13-25, consecutive in the hypothesized original form) and of Joab (2:28-34); thus, the Shimei episode is a fitting epilogue to the Narrative. 1 These conclusions are assumed in the present study. I claim the Narrative proper contains three instances of double meaning and the Shimei episode contains a fourth. I will begin with the Shimei episode and work backward, because the later instances are the clearest.

In analysis that is attentive to methodological accuracy, it is important to note that the definition of a subject will determine the eventual outcome of the results. The situation is no different in the determination of “intertexture” or of “apocalyptic discourse.” The definition of apocalyptic discourse that I will use for this study is the one assigned to us, namely, “Apocalyptic discourse reconfigures our perception of all regions of time
and space, in the world and in the body, in light of the conviction that God will intervene to judge at some time in the future.” It should be clear from the above that a different definition will yield a different understanding of apocalyptic discourse and thus different results.

Il rotolo e il libro, in quanto strumenti di supporto per la scrittura, rappresentano simbolicamente l’evoluzione e la trasmissione dei testi scritti. Per questo il volume in omaggio a Jean-Pierre Sonnet presenta una serie di contributi in cui si riflette sul signifi cato che il medium della forma scritta ha assunto nella composizione della Bibbia.
La miscellanea è formata da quindici contributi scritti da amici, colleghi, confratelli ed ex studenti di Jean-Pierre. Alcuni si concentrano sulla qualità narrativa e sull’arte poetica delle sacre Scritture, commentando anche passi biblici in cui si fa esplicito riferimento all’atto di scrivere. In diversi saggi si riflette sulla figura degli scribi di Israele e sul ruolo che hanno esercitato nel processo di composizione dei libri biblici e nella tradizione scritturistica.

Irene de Jong is widely regarded as one of the most esteemed scholars in the !eld of narrative analysis applied to classical literature. The recent Italian publication of her Guide to narrative analysis has introduced her work to a broader audience, revealing signi!cant parallels between her methodology and recent developments in biblical narratology. This article, the first of a two-part series, explores the intersections between de Jong’s approach and those employed in biblical narrative studies. It begins by focusing on her seminal work, the Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (2001). Key elements such as the roles of the narrator and narratee, as well as her insightful treatment of anagnorisis (recognition) within the plot of the Homeric epic, serve as fertile ground for comparison with biblical narratives. These comparisons demonstrate how classical
literary scholarship can offer valuable perspectives and tools for interpreting the narrative dimensions of both the Old and New Testament.