Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in Biblical Narratives

A Hermeneutical Study of Genesis 21:1-21

Kris Sonek

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9783110209747
• eBook ISBN: 9783110209754
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism

A modern reader studying biblical narratives encounters various literary approaches and ways of understanding interpretive concepts. Hence an attempt to put forward a comprehensive hermeneutical model of reading biblical narratives. Such a model should aim at a synthesis of various approaches, and show how they are interrelated.
The book proposes a hermeneutical theory which uses modern approaches to literary texts for the exegesis of biblical narratives. The book discusses three spheres of the reader's knowledge about reality: immanent, narrative, and transcendental. The move from immanent to transcendental knowledge through the mediation of narrative knowledge results from the mediatory role played by the biblical text, which refers the reader to a transcendent reality. This theory is then applied to the exegesis of Genesis 21:1-21, and involves the evaluation of the New Criticism, rhetorical criticism, structuralism and narrative analysis, reader-response criticism, the historical-critical method, as well as deconstruction. In order to satisfy the postulate of pluralism in interpretation, the hermeneutical theory draws upon a variety of ancient and modern sources such as Aristotle, T. S. Eliot, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Paul Ricœur.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. General or Special Hermeneutics?
• 2. The Illustrative Pericope Gen 21:1-21
• 3. A General Hermeneutical Model
• 4. Immanent Knowledge
• 5. Narrative Knowledge
• 6. Transcendental Knowledge
• 7. The General Hermeneutical Model: Corollaries
• Conclusion
• Backmatter