Tragedy and biblical narrative : arrows of the Almighty
J. Cheryl Exum (Author)
In this study J. Cheryl Exum focuses on a neglected aspect of biblical narrative, its tragic dimension. Tragedy, she argues, poses questions about the elusive and necessary relationship of guilt, suffering, and evil that can only be resolved aesthetically, not thematically. The narratives discussed--the stories of Saul, of Jephthah, of the members of Saul's fated house, and of David--all grapple with the fact of human guilt, responsibility and accountability. They also through their portrayal of divinity as ambiguous, ambivalent, or in some other impalpable way problematic, implicate the deity in human misfortune and suffering. Using insights about tragedy, ancient and modern, the book offers detailed, provocative, and challenging new readings of texts whose unsettling and recalcitrant features cannot be adequately accounted for, or explained away, or reduced to something else. It suggests that the extraordinary range and power of biblical narrative has its source in the Bible's uncompromising portrayal of reality as embracing dissolution and despair in addition to resolution and repair
Print Book, English, 1992
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [England], 1992
xiv, 206 pages ; 24 cm
9780521410731, 0521410738
24246582
1. Biblical narrative and the tragic vision
2. Saul: the hostility, of God. Excursus: hostile transcendence in the Samson story
3. Jephthah: the absence of God. Excursus 1: the awful and sustaining power of words. Excursus 2: Jephthan and his daughter: a feminist reading
4. The fate of the house of Saul. Michal and Jonathan. Jonathan. Michal. Abner and Ishbosheth. Rizpah's vigil and the tragic end of the House of Saul
5. David: the judgment of God