A narratologist's Critical Reflections on Synchronic Studies of the Bible: A Response to Gregory T. K. Wong

Abstract

It is common that "synchronists" claim that the book of Judges is a meaningful and coherent text. Some of them even describe it as a coherent narrative, that is, a narrative with a plot. They then draw the conclusion that these suggested patterns or structures so to speak "reinterpret" or "overnarrativize" the individual stories and motifs in these stories, which thereby are given both new functions and new meanings. However, there is a logical lapsus in this reasoning that relates to a theoretical issue: Given the relative autonomy of narratives and, as a consequence, their relative resistance to reworking, can such assumed effects be achieved, and how, if this were the case, can it be done? My conclusion, based on theoretical arguments and an analysis of the book of Judges, is that these stories and their motifs cannot be transformed in the way synchronic scholars suggest.