To engross oneself in the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures is to be absorbed into a world of literature, a world in which the events of many thousands of years past are relived and re-experienced in the imagination of the reader and of the listener. Within this rich ability to form our imaginations exists techniques and features identified through scholarship and used by authors to evoke, reflect, instruct and suggest this reality into its fullness, and it is the way that these are used in the narrative of 1 Samuel 9:1-21 to which we will now turn our attention. Identified in the NRSV translation of the Bible as the narrative in which “Saul [is] chosen to be King” we find in this text the first story of Saul’s call to kingship and the circumstances around it . Throughout this narrative, the author, or perhaps more accurately, editor(s) , evokes a number of literary features to build a story and to portray the character of Saul. In this essay, we will focus on the features of the narrative’s folklorist character, the use of type-scene, the presence of suspense and anticipation and the motif of providence, exploring how these affect the story and how they portray the character of Saul.
Before beginning this essay proper, it is important to roughly outline the underlying methodology of Narrative Criticism that will be used in our interpretation of 1 Samuel 9:1-21. Narrative Criticism, as opposed to many other forms of biblical criticism, is focused primarily on the world of the text, that is, the story world as created by the narrative . This leads the interpreter to immerse her or himself in this world, suspending disbelief as one would in a fictional story to elicit the authors intended meaning with less reference to histo...
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...ok of Samuel: A Literary Study of Comparative Structures, Analogies and Parallels. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Ltd, 1990.
Gilmour, Rachelle. "Suspense and Anticipation in 1 Samuel 9:1-14." The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (January 2009).
LaSor, William Sanford, David Allan Hubbard, and Frederic William Bush. Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament. 2nd Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing co., 1996.
Mark, Strom. The Symphony of Scripture: Making sense of the Bible's many themes. Phillpsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001.
Powell, Mark Allan. What is Narrative Criticism? Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990.
Robert, Alter. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1981.
Rogerson, J. W., and Judith M. (ed) Lieu. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Carson, D. A. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.
It is the reader and his or her interpretive community who attempts to impose a unified reading on a given text. Such readers may, and probably will, claim that the unity they find is in the text, but this claim is only a mask for the creative process actually going on. Even the most carefully designed text can not be unified; only the reader's attempted taming of it. Therefore, an attempt to use seams and shifts in the biblical text to discover its textual precursors is based on a fundamentally faulty assumption that one might recover a stage of the text that lacked such fractures (Carr 23-4).
The Bible: The Old Testament. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Sarah Lawall et al. Vol 1. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. 47-97.
Hindson, E. E., & Yates, G. E. (2012). The Essence of the Old Testament: A survey. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic.
...hard to understand fully because of its comprehensive metaphoric language and the difference in culture from present day. It is also sometimes hard for us to understand God's actions because we think of him simply loving and caring rather than ruthless and violent. We need to understand that the creation of mankind is taking place in the recordings of these scriptures and so things may not be as customary as we would like to think. I believe that God has a plan for everyone. And, in the case of Saul, he had a plan to take away his kingdom in order to pass it on to David so the formation of history could continue. I also think this passage, like many other passages from the Bible, has a message linked to it, a lesson to the story if you will. The lesson is to prove that God's unlimited power must never be taken for granted or there surely will be hell to pay.
Gundry, Robert H., Ph.D. A Survey of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1970.
Robinson, B. A. (2008, March 30). Books of the Hebrew Scripture . Retrieved May 7, 2011, from Religious Tolerance: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_otb3.htm
Studying the Old Testament is not as straightforward as some may think. Being able to recall stories of the Bible does not necessarily mean you have a thorough grasp on the history of Israel and the surrounding nations. Some people read and discuss the Bible without a solid understanding of the history and social issues that were going on at the time. Being able to relate to the stories in the Bible and struggle with some of the same problems faced by the people in the Bible gives you a greater appreciation for the works in the Bible. I feel that having a firm understanding of all the related history of Israel gives a student of the Old Testament a far greater understanding of why these stories are in the Bible and what was meant to be learned from them. In this paper I give brief, yet significant, explanations of the Old Testament from the death of King David to the Maccabean revolt.
Harris, Stephen. Understanding The Bible. 6 ed. New York City: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2002. Print.
...pse." In Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation, edited by W. Klaasen and G.F. Snyder, 23-37. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1962.
LaSor, W., Hubbard, D., Bush, F., & Allen, L. (1996). Old Testament survey: The message, form, and background of the Old Testament (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans
New Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1989. Print. The. Russell, Eddie.
The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Nashville: Abingdon Press, ©2003.
1 Samuel is presented in the form of a narrative account of the life and contributions of Samuel. Like most of the bible, scholars have tried to determine the author, date of writing, purpose of the text and the historical and chronological order of events. The author is unknown. Some scholars believe Zabud, son of the prophet Nathan, a priest and the “personal adviser'; to King Solomon, wrote the text shortly after Solomon’s death. Others believe Samuel himself wrote the text, while some scholars believe the priest, Ahimaaz, was the author. Most do agree that the composition and editing took place in several stages over a considerable period of time.
Answering these questions is the purpose of this essay. I begin by arguing that the Bible cannot be adequately understood independent of its historical context. I concede later that historical context alone however is insufficient, for the Bible is a living-breathing document as relevant to us today as it was the day it was scribed. I conclude we need both testimonies of God at work to fully appreciate how the Bible speaks to us.