Narrating Selves and the Literary in the Bible

This article discusses how features in a narrative generate an understanding of its purpose and how this understanding affects our attitude when reading and interpreting a text. It focusses on biblical texts that aspire to be historical but still contain elements that are generally thought to belong to the realm of fiction, as well as on texts with an assumed argumentative purpose and traits that create a sense of literary art. The four texts are Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, the book of Nehemiah, autobiographical sections in Paul, and third-person narratives in the books of Samuel. The article suggests that our understanding of the frame determines the function and meaning of the forms; yet it also argues that the presence of certain forms might challenge conventional assumptions about the frame, that is, the purpose of some narratives.