Eli Gutierrez Christian Scriptures 1

4/29/2019 – Alter Dr. Lai Ling Ngan

How Alter has altered me

I am a Pastor’s kid, so I grew up reading Bible stories all the time. I use to think I knew very

well the stories of creation, Abraham, Moses, and the conquest of the Promise Land.

Nevertheless, in the last year I have begun to learn to look at the Bible in a different way. It has

not been an easy journey, changes sometimes are difficult and even painful. But I can say with

much confidence that it has been worth it and that reading the Bible is something that I will be

doing for the rest of my life with joy, passion, and devotion. The book of Robert Alter The Art of

Biblical Narrative has been especially helpful in my understanding of the Scripture and also my

own calling and ministry. Alter is very helpful in pointing out a series of important features of

biblical narrative that are useful to understand what is the Bible and how to read it. But, above

all, what I appreciate about Alter’s book is his own examples of biblical analysis. I enjoyed how

Alter can take a few verses of a biblical story and analyze them with academic rigor and creative

artistry at the same time. I wish I could read Alter’s comment to the whole Hebrew Bible and,

actually, I will look to do it because he has a tremendous gift as a reader of the Scripture and an

admirable scholarly background. In this brief essay I will review how Alter has altered my

understanding of the Bible, how to read it, and how that affects my own perspectives.

In the first place, Alter’s literary approach to the Bible is a push back against the critical

methods. Without throwing away important insights of biblical criticism, he manages to capture

the unity of the biblical text that, in the end, is what we really have. In Bible criticism, sometimes

there is much attention focused on the differences between sections of the biblical text. It is like

if scholars are trying to break apart the text. Nevertheless, Alter calls our attention back to the

similarities that give unity to the text. He sees the text in its interconnected unity. Alter has

helped me to see again that, as a matter of fact, what we have is a continued and continuous story
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in which its unity can be grasped in spite of the inconsistencies. In sum, the unity of the biblical

texts is evident in its present form. If the texts were not the production of a single hand, as it

seems to be, the final form is indeed the result of a final editorial work which, in spite of the

diversity, gave unity to the whole book.

Furthermore, Alter has helped me to see the not only the unity of the biblical text but also the

art of its narrative. The narrators did not only do a plain editorial work but an artful composition.

He proposes that a literary analysis of the Bible is the best reading of its texts. I agree that while

it should not be the only way to read the Bible, it is the first one and, perhaps, the more useful.

There are several features to look that Alter proposes: artful use of language, shifting plays of

ideas, conventions, tone, sound, imagery, syntax, narrative viewpoint, compositional units, etc.

Doing this requires careful attention to the details of the narrative. For me, personally, that is a

very important insight. That means that the best reading of Scripture is based upon the closest

reading of the text, profound attention, and reflection. To see the Bible as literature does not

necessarily reject the view of Scripture as divinely inspired. Indeed, as Alter shows, there are

revealing insights that a literary approach to the text can bring about. And in fact, the literary

approach uncovers more precisely what is the meaning of the text in its final form.

Traditionally, Christians tend to see the Bible as reliable history. Personally, I grew up in a

tradition where you could not question the historical truth of the Bible. From the pulpit, in

Sunday school classes, and in personal talks, the Bible was seen as an authority in historic and

scientific fields. They even used to offer “proofs” of the biblical data. To be honest, I always

struggled with such a view of the Scripture; however, it was difficult to challenge it when that

meant to question the divine origin and inspiration of the Bible. As I began to study deeper, I

realized that there is another view of the Bible, a much better view that does allow questions to
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the text and, at the same time, a committed faith to its message. Alter’s views strengthened my

confidence in the fact that the biblical stories are not necessarily historiography but fictionalized

history or historicized fiction. Even now it is not easy for me to say that the Bible is fiction.

Nevertheless, that makes perfect sense. As I read the stories of the Bible with these new lenses it

is perfectly clear that the intention of the writer was not an accurate account of the facts, but

something else. Every story has its own particularities, but what is evident now is the artful

imagination of the writers ascribing feelings, intentions, and motifs to the characters. And that is

particularly noticeable, for example, in the monologues.

In some sense, Alter’s view to the Bible is not so new to me. Alter reads the Bible stories

closely looking for details. Again, in some sense, that is what many of my leaders, teachers, and

Pastors do when they study the Bible. Nevertheless, Alter has taught me to understand more

clearly the importance of doing so and how it can be done in a much deeper way. Alter has

helped me to see the Bible as an artful creative and purposeful work by authors that were playing

with words, and literary resources to convey a message. Also, Alter has helped me to categorize

the features of biblical narrative in order to comprehend them better and be able to recognize

them more easily in my reading of the Bible.

For example, Alter calls our attention to the use of repeated words, the so-called letiwort.

This repetition is communicating a message for itself. It is not a coincidence but a purposeful

feature of a certain kind of narrative. Also, it is important to look at type-scenes. In the Bible

stories we find a lot of those. For example, the barren woman who asks God for a child. There

are many of those stories in the Bible. Identifying these type-scenes helps us to recognize that the

narrator is working with a known fixed convention and, therefore, look at the modifications of

the motif that he is making in order to communicate a message. For instance, in some cases, the
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use of conventions is intended to characterize a particular person in the story. In that sense, Alter

has helped me seeing the biblical stories as an artful and purposeful work in order to understand

better what the author was intending to say. It is easier for me now to see how the protagonists of

the stories are characterized, and in doing so I am able to find treasurable lessons.

Alter has the quality to point out something in the biblical narrative that I have not seen

before. For example, I really have not noticed before the fact that the narration of events in the

Bible is done primarily in dialogue, and I found it very interesting. That means that the narration

is not an accurate account of things just as they actually happened but the artful and purposeful

creation of conscient, imaginative, and creative writers. However, that does not mean that the

events are not based on actual historical occurrences. It only means that the stories have been

embellished and that the wording and the final narration is a literary product. For me, that is

something huge. That means that God speaks through the creativity of the biblical writers. The

biblical documents are not the word of God dictated but the product of God's inspiration through

the artistic work of the writers. In other words, God uses people to communicate his message,

God works in association with us, and that is wonderful.

Moreover, Alter helped me to understand that the fact that the biblical writers drew from

different sources does not mean that the Bible is a randomly arranged compound of unrelated or

contradictory stories. No, even the different and inconsistent accounts of one character or event

were arranged in a purposeful and artistic way. Sometimes we cannot know the exact motives for

a priestly writer to maintain duplications, inconsistencies, tensions, or contradictions, but we can

see how the story was written with aesthetic and thematic elements. One of the insights that was

really helpful for me was that the biblical redactors might have certain notions of unity rather

different from our own. If they kept contradictions in one same story is not because they did not
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notice them. They should be aware of the problem; however, they decided to keep both sources

for some reason. Sometimes we can know why, sometimes not. The study of the composite

nature of the Bible answers more the question of “how did we get the Bible?” or “what is the

Bible?” rather than questions of meaning and purpose. A literary approach to the Bible can

answer better questions as “why does the Bible say that? or “what does it mean?”.

I want to be a Pastor, so one of the things that I am going to be doing the rest of my life is

reading, studying, teaching, and preaching the Bible. Alter has helped to find pleasure, joy, and

play in doing so. Reading the Bible is not a tedious scholarly task, it as an art. And art is

enjoyable. Alter has shown me that I need to be creative, imaginative, and playful in reading the

Bible. That is something that I have not seen that much in my time in seminary. Sometimes,

reading the Bible scholarly can be so not fun. However, Alter has altered me towards a more

enjoyable reading of the Bible and I am really thankful for that.

Finally, reading the biblical stories as literary products resulting from an artistic process

opens my eyes to a whole new perspective that allows me to find insightful lessons that I could

not see otherwise. Alter’s view of the Bible requires a close reading to the details of a narration. I

really love the way in which he explains how all the details of each story are interwoven and

serve to specific purposes. That challenges me to prepare myself for a life-long endeavor of

reading the Bible closely and faithfully. Above all, may the Spirit of God lead me to read it

always according to his will. But, I need to be honest, Alter does not speak of that at all. He helps

us a lot to understand better what the Bible is and how to read it, but he does not say a word

about the most important thing in reading it, to do it prayerfully asking for the help of the Holy

Spirit. May he lead me to do so all the days of my life.