Kia-ora,

I’m also glad of Peter’s work on laying this out. Thank you. Great points have been made. I’d also want to amplify the discussion a little.

I think it is important (if not neccessary) to separate the value of this narrative/historical approach as a Biblical reading/criticism from its direct application to developing theology. As an approach to reading and understanding the Bible it certainly stands. Peter suggests the reading’s strong appeal to the post-modern mindset, and perhaps it will become an OST Criticism, which I was fishing for here. Of course, our reading affects our theology but I can see a distance between the two disciplines (critical reading and developing theology).

Can I suggest that an ‘accurate’ theology, coming from historical/narrative criticism, is based on the themes of the narrative, rather than the specifics? When doing narrative study of a film or piece of secular literature it is the themes that often show us the creator’s purpose, not the individual shots or paragraphs (although they can carry dizzying amounts of information). This approach would, to the dismay of many, mean we would be further limiting our precise understanding of what the Biblical authors and redactors meant, but would (hopefully) illuminate what they wanted to communicate.

Although I wouldn’t recommend this approach to all theological explorations (here or elsewhere), it seems a logical step to take when our reading is based on narrative. Thoughts?