When reading the narrative sections, the sections with stories, they can seem boring to us because they seem so different than the detailed language of modern storytellers. The stories of the bible are terse. There’s not much detail on the surface.
However, when we jump into their world and understand how they tell their stories, we’ll begin to pick up on details we’ve missed.
These features of the narrative are called poetics. Poetics are as Adele Berlin says, "Poetics is to literature as linguistics is to language". They are the basic elements of literature, the building blocks. Most of this will be found in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament. I’m getting these from Bruce Waltke’s book, An Old Testament Theology.
Here are 5 poetics to look for when reading biblical literature.
Motif
A motif repeating pattern in music and literature.
These don’t mean much on their own, but as you reading the story, they help shape the story.
Some examples in Joseph story are the repeated use of dreams, pits, prison, and silver.
Joseph has a two dream when he’s a young boy, he interprets two dreams when he ’s in prison, and he interprets the dreams of the Pharaoh.
Joseph is sold for 20 pieces of silver by his brothers. Joseph as the governor of Egypt gives his brothers their silver back when they return the first time. And Joseph puts his silver cup in Benjamin's grain sack when they leave the second time.
Water is also a motif in the life of Moses.
There’s a lot of these. We can find these when we’re constantly reading the bible, and when we’re reading we look closely at what’s happening.
They can even go beyond just a book. Egypt is a motif through the Old Testament in particular. Abraham goes down to Egypt during a famine. Joseph’s brothers go down during a famine. Joseph goes down to Egypt to become a slave. The people of Israel go down to Egypt to become slaves. Lots of stuff happening with Egypt.
Leitwort
A keyword, or “lead word” is repeated in a story th..
