Seventeen innovative studies are collected in this volume which has been produced under the aegis of the Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Manchester, and L'Institut des sciences bibliques, Universite de Lausanne. The majority of the studies engage with narrative through providing insightful working examples. Building on the many contributions of recent narratological research, for the most part the studies in this collection avoid the technical language of narratology as they present fresh insights at many levels. Some essays focus more on the implied author, some on the implied reader or hearer, and some on the way particular messages are constructed; some of the studies consider how author, message and reader are all interconnected. There are several creative proposals for refining genre definition, from law and wisdom to gospel and apocryphal writings. Some studies highlight the way in which narratives can contain ethical, religious, and cultural messages. Sensitivity to narrative is also shown by some contributors to expose in intruing ways the redactional processes behind the final form of texts.
Students of narrative in the ancient world will find much to consider in this book, and others engaged with literary studies more generally will discover that scholars of the worlds of the Bible and Late Antiquity have much to offer them.