Rightly Divided s01e02 Narrative

In this podcast episode, the host Tom Terry interviews Dr. Steve Posey about studying and interpreting biblical narratives. They discuss the definition of a biblical narrative and how they are purposeful stories that provide meaning and direction for people. They also talk about the historical accuracy of biblical narratives, citing external sources and archaeological evidence. The episode goes on to explain the three parts of a narrative: characters, plot, and plot resolution. They use the example of Joseph in Genesis chapter 37 to demonstrate how these elements can be found in the biblical text. This is Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org. I'm your host, Tom Terry, and in this podcast, we'll be exploring the various ways of doing Bible study so that you can get the most out of your time when studying God's Word. Our guest for this eight-week series on basic Bible study is Dr. Steve Posey, an instructor with International Leadership University. Dr. Posey teaches Bible study methods and conducts other training for crew staff all across Africa. He will be with us for the next seven episodes of Rightly Divided to help you get a firm grasp on how to study the Bible according to its various types of genre. For today's episode, we'll be talking about how to study and interpret biblical narratives. All right, Steve, thanks for being on the program again today. Thank you, Tom. Great to be with you. Let's get right into this. We're going to talk today about narratives in the Bible and how to approach those narratives and interpret them. So my question is, what is a biblical narrative and how prevalent are narratives really throughout the Bible? Well, great question. Biblical narratives, probably the shortest and maybe the best definition is biblical narratives are stories. That's what they are. They are stories that are purposeful. In other words, they have purpose and they tell the historical events of the past and they're intended to give meaning and direction for a given people in the present. Now, I mean, we're familiar with narratives in the modern age because we have narratives in novels and short stories that we read. So there are fictional narratives, but then there are narratives that are historical, right? So how do we know that the Bible's narrative is factual and not fictional? Oh, have you got two or three days? Sure, sure, sure. We've got all the time in the world on this program. Great question. Well, one of the things that helps us with biblical narratives, and specifically I'm speaking right at this moment of the Old Testament, one of the things that really helps us with those stories, which they are, they're historical stories, is that we find outside of biblical literature, we find references to the same people, maybe not the exact events, but we have references to those people. For example, the person of Moses. We know about Moses and we don't have to go to the Bible to find out about him. The Egyptians wrote about him. The Egyptians wrote about what he did and probably differs because it was a different perspective. And that's one of the things about a narrative. The narrator has the perspective that is carried into the story. We might say in that sense that the narrator is omniscient. He sees everything and knows everything. And he tells you what he wants you to hear and see. He doesn't tell you everything. I think the way that, first, there's external sources that collaborate or corroborate the narratives, and then secondly, the narratives tell us about real-life people, and we know about those people not only from extracurricular or extra-biblical sources, but we know about those people from other sources within the Jewish nation that we're not considering them biblical. Are there clues within the biblical text itself that tell us that narrative is historical and not fictional? Yes, I would say there are. I'm struggling right at this moment to come up with a situation. For example, when the people of Israel under Joshua, when they cross the Jordan River and they come into the Holy Land, into the Promised Land, there are, not today, but up until the last few years, the descriptions of the flood at that time of the year and how wide it would be and what would be in the water and the river match exactly what is said in the book of Joshua about the people coming across the river. So you have that type of a situation, and you find that the descriptions, for example, once again in the Old Testament, the descriptions of the other tribes, not tribes, the other nations that were in the Promised Land, the Midianites, the Canaanites are accurate, very accurate from other sources, in fact, from their own sources, and they describe those peoples and their gods and their idols and their customs almost to the T. So we have all of that that corroborates, as I said earlier, what we find. And that gives us greater confidence in the biblical text that what we're reading is real. First. Then secondly, there's a thing called archaeology, and it's not about Noah's Ark, but it's archaeology where every time a spade, it's been said, every time a spade goes into the ground in the Holy Land, the Bible becomes more believable. So you have those records found in the cities and the areas. When a spade does go into the ground, once again, it lines up with what the Old Testament specifically says about it. The other thing is when we move to the narratives that we find specifically in the New Testament, that would be the Gospels and the Book of Acts. They are the major sources of narrative in the New Testament. When we find those, we can go to all sorts of Greek and Roman records of that day, and we find that it's totally in line with what the Bible says. I don't remember clearly, but there was a dispute that Pontius Pilate was the one who was in charge, the governor, if you will, of Palestine at the time that Jesus was there. And the archaeologists dug up some other records, extra biblical, let's call them, and there he was. Yeah, they found it. That's where it was. Exactly the way that it was described in the four Gospels. All right. So tell us more about narrative. What are the parts of narrative, and how should we approach narrative when we're getting ready to interpret the Bible? Okay, good. Good. Well, narratives basically have three parts. First you have the characters, and you know, in any story, you have to have characters. But in the terms of what we were just talking about, and as we move forward, the characters in these narratives aren't made up, they're real-life people, and throughout the history of the Jewish nation, those are people who became important, some of them unimportant in terms of the overall history, but they played a role in what God was doing in the nation of Israel, and what he was doing in the world. So first you have the characters, and there's three types of characters in any narrative. First there's God, when we come into the Bible, and we call him the protagonist. He's the primary person in the story. We don't often think about this, but I guess it's best to say this, that God is the main character in Old Testament and New Testament narrative. It's all about God. So we get involved in the lives of the other people and that type of thing, but we'll talk about the three levels of narrative here in a minute, if you'll ask me that question. So God is the main character, but he's the protagonist, but then you also have Satan and evil people, and they are what we call the antagonists, and they're people who bring conflict or tension into the situation. And then you have God's people, they're the agonists, and they're the other major characters involved in the struggle that we find in the narrative. After the characters, we have the plot, and the plot is, the basic plot of the biblical story is that God has created people to know him, and that he made them in his own image, and yet along came an enemy, Satan, and deluded the people, deceived the people, that they could be in their own image, which is really Satan's image, and so they chose to do that, mankind has chosen to do that, rather than the image God made him or her in, and so that's the plot, and the enemy has persuaded the people to do that, and people have fallen for his deception. We find people often smile about Adam and Eve, but the problem is, it doesn't take very long to watch a two-year-old show you the results of what Adam and Eve chose. Then the third thing, the third basic part of a narrative, is what we call the plot resolution. We've got this problem, what are we going to do about it, how is it going to be worked out, and the long and the short of it in narrative is plot resolution is redemption. It's the long history of God bringing man back from the brink, if I can use that word, of his disobedience, sending his son Jesus to die on the cross, and then bringing redemption to mankind. That's the plot resolution. Now, every narrative doesn't say that in the Old Testament, for example, or even in the New Testament, but every narrative points to the plot resolution in various ways. So we have those three things, the characters, the plot, and the plot resolution. Okay, so as we're listening to you describing all of this, it's kind of hard to put it in place as to where in the text can I find that. So can you give us an example text from the scripture and then apply those things to help us draw that out? Sure. Let's use Joseph in Genesis chapter 37. We're introduced to him just a little bit before that. He's one of the 12 sons of Jacob, and he's the young one, and we see very quickly the characters. They're spelled out for us in chapter 37. We see that Joseph is having dreams. Oh, I'm sorry. Before we see he's having dreams, we see that he was taking care of the sheep, and he saw his older brothers doing something they shouldn't have done, and he came home and told Dad, and the brothers received discipline as a result. And so they weren't too happy with the little favorite son, and Jacob had shown favoritism to that son in a mini-colored coat or robe that he hadn't given to any of his other sons. So we have that characterization there. Then we have Joseph having dreams, and in those dreams, we begin to see who Joseph is. Unfortunately, we see a very young, arrogant man. Joseph is going to rule over his brothers, and in the warp and the woof of the narrative, you can just feel Joseph strutting his chest, puffing his chest out and saying, I'm going to be over you. It's not in the narrative particularly, but reading between the lines, that's what we see. And then we see the reaction of the brothers. It's a reaction of hatred. The older brothers hate their younger brother, and then we see the reaction of the father, which is really key in terms of this, because the father says, oh, you're not going to rule over all of us, fathers included. But then the narrator, who's omniscient, tells us something we need to know. He says, the brothers, they just put it out of hand. He's a horrible kid. Who does he think he is? Hatred. But the father, after saying, no, that's not going to happen, it says, but the father kept this in mind. He's setting us up for what's going to happen as we go through the rest of the narrative. So the narrator's telling us about how this, not exactly how, but he's telling us there's more to come. This isn't the last scene. And by the way, one of the things that tends to be, in terms of Hebrew narrative, narrators advance the story through scenes. They go from one scene, then to the next scene, then to the next scene, then to the next scene. And so it's very important to remember that, because by the time we're out of chapter 37, we have the scene of Joseph going to find his sheep. He couldn't find them, and he goes over to his brothers, and they think it's a good time to get rid of him. And all of these are scenes in the life of Joseph. The narrator's using those scenes to advance the story. That's very common in Hebrew narrative. Okay, let's go forward with that. You talked about the parts of the narrative and what they mean for us. What happens in the interpretive process? Because most of what you've talked about, if I'm understanding you correctly, is we're kind of in the observation phase, taking a look at the text, what the scenes are, what the characters are, how things are progressing. But then all of that means something to the author of that text, and we want to make sure that we're capturing the author's big idea. How do we do that? How do we get to that process? Well, I think the simplest way is to let the narrative speak for itself. For example, chapter 37, we see very clearly what the brothers think of Joseph. We see what Joseph thinks of himself at that point in time. And we see that his father knows that that's not right, but at the same time, he keeps it in mind. And we let the narrative speak for itself. Those are the reactions. One of the first things we want to do in interpretation is to not pull out of that a principle of life. Or, you know, the narrative is to tell the story. It's not to give us some great doctrinal principle of life. You know, we can take from that, well, you know, when we have a dream, then we are this or that. No, no, no, no. He had a dream and that's what it was. And that dream had to do with his future. But it didn't have, it's not some ethereal type of thing. That's interesting because, you know, in my own Bible reading time, I look for principles that might be there in text, including in narrative that I can learn from to apply into my own life. I might look at, let's say, do you use the Joseph story? I might look at Joseph, who, like you said, is being a little bit arrogant by sharing his dreams with his family of how he's going to be lofty and high. And then in that, I read that, okay, I don't want to be like that. I want to be a man of humility. And so there's a principle of humbleness, humility, or arrogance that I can learn from in that part of the story. I think that's fair. But what I'm saying is that didn't teach that. It wasn't teaching that. You can see that, observe the life of Joseph, and say, I don't want to be like that. That's fine. But then, let's say we were going to preach it. I would say, you know, one of the things that I can take from this for Steve Posey is that I don't want to be consumed with my own self and my own arrogance. It's not teaching that, but it's there. You see it. And so I don't, the word evades me, I don't generalize that. Let's put it that way. I don't generalize that. Here's what this passage is teaching. It's teaching that we don't want to be like Joseph. No, it's not teaching that. It's saying Joseph was arrogant, but I can learn from that, exactly what you said. So that's not then a matter of interpretation, that's a matter of application. That's a matter of application. But at the other end of it, you know, Joseph tells us a great deal. We need to keep reading. He tells us a great deal. We get into chapter 50 of Genesis, and we're saying, well, what was all of this about? The brothers sell him, and down to Egypt he goes, and then he has this encounter with the wife of Potiphar, and into jail he goes, and then he comes out of jail. And then when he gets out of jail, he, well, he tells, he interprets a dream in jail. And as a result of that, the jailer knows he's got power. And then Pharaoh has dreams, and they bring him into the presence of Pharaoh. And much like Daniel, at another time, much later of course, but just very much like Daniel, he says, only God can interpret dreams, but he can give us the sense of it. And so they both gave great glory to God, and Joseph is able to interpret the dream. He becomes a very important number two man in all of Egypt, and then his brothers come, because it's a worldwide famine in the known world at that time. And when they find out who Joseph is, they look at the floor, they're ashamed because of what they've done, and then when Jacob dies, they have fear. He's the second most powerful man in all of Egypt. Now that our father is dead, what's he going to do to us for what we did to him? And so they concoct a story of what Jacob said before he died, and Joseph's pretty perceptive, but more importantly than that, he says, you know, this was all what God did. He did it, he sent me here ahead so that many people could be saved. And he in that sense forgives them, and in that sense he brings what God is doing through his life and in his life to the fore. Now that is a principle that Joseph gives for his life, and we can ask this question in terms of application. Is what God is doing in my life for his glory? You see, I think that's fair. We don't just make a blanket statement, no matter what happens in our life, no matter what goes on, God is doing it to save people. No, no. But it's a fair application to say God's working in my life in ways that I don't understand, or might possibly not understand. So I think that's fair. Okay. Okay. Let me back up just a little bit. Please. Back to interpretation. How do you extract the meaning of the text in the interpretation phase? Well, that's various steps. First I have to ask the context question. What is the situation here? And with asking the context of what is going on here, I need to ask a cultural question. What's going on in this culture? What is it about the culture that is unique, if I can use that word? For example, when we're in chapter 37 of Genesis, we have Joseph put into the pit, and the brothers are going to kill him, and yet instead it's Judah and saves him. Reuben is gone. He had him put in the pit so that he could release him. He wasn't in total agreement with what the other brothers had decided. And Judah also isn't in agreement. He's trying to save him, and they are going to kill him. So along comes a group of Midianites, and they're on their way to Egypt. And Judah says, let's sell this guy, and he saves his life by selling him. Now later, in between chapter 37 and chapters 44, 45, 46, when we return to Joseph, we find out that Judah is an interesting character, and we learn more about him and Tamar. And so what we see is we see the interwoven stories of these brothers, who are, if we would say it this way, they're the beginning of the 12 who create the Jewish nation. Although it's Abraham who created it, but they're the beginning of the Jewish nation. And we see that not every one of them is 100% pure. It's an interesting contrast between Judah and Joseph, one who is morally, I don't want to say superior, but he's a moral man. And then you look at Judah, and really he's not a moral man. No, Judah is not a moral man. And yet, in his lack of total moral clarity, Judah becomes the basis of the Jewish nation in terms of what he did. And we see Judah surviving much longer than the other 12 tribes when we come to the two nations of Israel much later on. So God decides to bless Judah, even in his lack of total moral purity. If I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember that Judah was the one who offered himself as a slave before he knew that he was standing before his brother, after Joseph was Prime Minister. He offered himself in place of his brothers, which to me was a picture, and I'm going after meaning, I'm going after meaning in Christ, that's a picture of what Christ did for us as he took our place on the cross instead of us bearing the penalty for our sin. I think that is true, however, we know that because we have the New Testament. They didn't know it. Sure, yeah, that's right. So let the narrative speak at that level. We're looking at hindsight. Yeah, but yes, and we also see Judah, once again, we see this mixture of altruism in Judah, what we would want to see, and we see this, with Tamar, we see this guy who's immoral. And so we see that he's a real human being. And I think God wants us to take along that idea whenever we come to interpretation, we've got a real human being here. He has his strong points, and he has his weak points. But as we watch him, he too, like Joseph, is moving, if I can say the word, in the right direction. And this is what we see with Joseph. By the time we get to chapter 50, the guy who has the power to do away with all these guys who threw him in a pit, who were going to kill him, and et cetera, he has seen what God is doing. And I think that's a strong interpretation from there. Joseph saw what God was doing in his life. Application, can I see what God is doing in my life? That's a legitimate application. Am I looking for what God is doing in my life? Joseph was. But it's the story of God redeeming a people for himself, a people called Israel. And then, and quite honestly, the second level in the New Testament is the story of God redeeming a people for himself called the people of today who are Christians. And then the first level is the level, a broad range level, which gets into the hundreds of individual narratives of people who are part of what God is doing on this earth. And so those three levels, the meta-narrative, then just below that, God redeeming a people for himself, and then just below that, the hundreds of individuals involved in them. Those are important that we understand where we're at and what we're seeing. That helps us in our observation and our interpretation and our application. Okay, very good. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. On the next episode, we're going to explore poetry and see how we can draw things from poetry that bring meaning into our lives and help us to understand the story of the Bible even more. Thanks again. And we'll see you next time. Looking forward to it. Bye now. You've been listening to Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org. Today we've been looking at the basics of inductive Bible study for biblical narratives. This is the second in an eight-part series on how to study the Bible. I'm your host, Tom Terry, with PreachItTeachIt.org. Be sure to visit our website for tools and resources to help you craft your sermon or Bible study that you lead. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you again next time on Truth Rightly Divided, a podcast of PreachItTeachIt.org.